Liquid Fire

by Anthony Francis

  ———

  “And you are the first person to have summoned a dragon in over a hundred years.”

  36. Off the Deep End

  Dreamily, I strode through a tunnel of shimmering blue-green light. Myriad fluttering shapes broke the sunbeams into ever-changing shapes beneath my feet. The day was almost perfect . . . then a dark shadow loomed above me, blotting out the sun.

  I looked up. The vast shape sliding effortlessly overhead had a body longer than a car, fins wider than I was tall, mouth big enough to swallow a child—though Taroko, the Georgia Aquarium’s newest whale shark, was a filter feeder that never ate anything larger than a pea.

  The huge shark turned lazily, first showing its white belly, then the distinctive gray and white panther pattern on its sides. As Taroko slid overhead, Cinnamon squealed and hopped; on each bounce, her head rose almost to the glass top of the Ocean Explorer tunnel.

  “Ta-RO-ko Ta-RO-ko,” she cried, “the-SPLENdid-and-MAGnificent!”

  I sighed, and smiled. At last, things were back to normal.

  After the Gentry’s ominous warning, things were tense at the MSC—but no thieves snuck in to steal my nonexistent supply of liquid fire, no thugs leaned on me to divulge the location of my mythical dragon’s egg, and there were no more sightings of my possibly-possessed tattoo.

  Even the Dragon on my back had gone disappointingly quiet.

  And so, without data, I was left with what I had—inking new asp and vine tattoos to get back to full strength, researching liquid fire to find out what I could, trying to crack the code with Cinnamon, and injuring myself trying to learn fireweaving as remotely instructed by Alex.

  After we had signed the contracts, Alex had honored his part of the bargain—sort of. He had started to teach me regular firespinning, not magical fireweaving, insisting that I learn to spin poi before setting them on fire, and that I get comfortable spinning fire before I tried magic.

  It was hard to argue with that.

  I tried learning the theory, but, as Jewel had hinted, fireweaving was not simple, and trying to learn enough of it to reverse-engineer what the fire ninjas were doing—or what she was doing—was taking far longer than I expected, especially since the basics didn’t use magic.

  So it felt good to finally get a glimpse of normal life—a field trip with my daughter.

  No; it was more than just that. I’d taken her across the country to win a prize, only to have hers snatched away while I got mine. Now I was determined to make it up to her, to spend as much time with her as I could. It wasn’t just a field trip; it was an unspoken apology.

  We left the glass tunnel and its rainbow schools of fish to find an enormous plate glass window as big as the front of my house—another view of the same six million gallon tank. The tank’s newest star guests, Taroko and his companion, Yushan, slid past every few minutes, and I watched them closely. The Taiwanese whale sharks had adjusted well to their first month in the tank, sliding effortlessly through the waters. Their distinctive pattern would make an interesting full-body tattoo; I wondered if I could weave swimming magic into it. I’d have to talk to Jinx.

  “That’s most of the exhibits. Ready to go?” I asked, after Cinnamon and I eventually returned to the mammoth atrium of the Georgia Aquarium. All around us were engineered micro-worlds: rivers, lakes, the deep sea. “Get everything you needed for your report?”

  “What? No! Let’s . . . um,” Cinnamon said, whirling, eyeing the river exhibits we had already gone through an hour earlier. Then she caught the second question. “What? Oh.”

  “I take it the ‘oh’ is also a ‘no,’ ” I said, pulling out my buzzing smartphone. “Come on, Cinnamon. What did you need to see to finish your report?”

  “Oh, God, not that old thing,” Cinnamon said, ignoring my question and peering down at the phone. “That’s so last month. Why don’t you gets an iPhone—”

  “You means you want me to get you an iPhone,” I said, checking the call—it was Ranger. She was an artist friend who shared my newfound interest in firespinning. “And maybe I will, but as for me, this thing isn’t even seven months old. Besides, are iPhones even out yet?”

  “Mom! Didn’t you see the lines? Eeeveryone’s gots them at school,” she said—and I suddenly realized yet another downside to sending Cinnamon to an expensive private school—her friends all had parents who were rich, rich, rich. She said, “You gonna get that?”

  “No,” I said, thumbing the call to voicemail. “I don’t want to be rude cell phone lady—and I don’t want to distract you from doing your homework. All right, young lady, once more with feeling—this time, fewer pretty pretties, more taking notesies.”

  While Cinnamon was getting notes and taking pictures for her field report on the Indo-Pacific reef, Ranger texted me: «Want to see some live dragons spin fire?»

  My jaw dropped. Numbly, I thumbed an affirmative and pocketed my phone. I couldn’t read that and not think of Jewel. She’d called when she landed, but promptly disappeared—no calls, no email, not even a text message, nor did she respond when I’d texted her. After a few weeks, I’d started to think that Daniel had gotten her—I’d heard from Carnes more recently—when on the sixth of August I’d received a postcard from her:

  Hey Skindancer, miss me? Hope you worried, but you needn’t. I’m safe, sound, and as far from the public eye as can possibly be. No wires on this isle! This may be a few days getting to you—Molokii will send it when he next goes to Maui. I trust you, but who knows who reads the mail? Thanks for saving me. And thanks for showing me your Dragons—both attached and unattached. Wish I’d gotten to know you better—I had fun with you.

  Thoughts of hot kisses from a might-have-been—your Fireweaver.

  A “might have been.” She was right. It was hard to imagine a more difficult long-distance relationship, between the attention hound and the underground princess, one grabbing the spotlight, the other trying to lay low on the other side of the planet.

  True to form, the airport Maui postcard had no return address and was postmarked the first of August, more than a week after the date on Jewel’s handwritten note sent near the end of July. It had taken Molokii longer to mail the card than it had taken the card to reach me.

  That worried me at first—Molokii was quiet, by necessity, but he didn’t seem like a slacker. Maybe the “isle” was on the other end of a ferry? No, Molokii drove cars. Well, even then, they could still be on the other end of a ferry. I hoped nothing sinister was hidden behind the delay. Maybe I was getting paranoid, but with my job as leader of the Magical Security Council, it was easy to see why. Every week, it seemed, I learned of a new threat.

  Everything worried me now, but I didn’t see what else I could do, other than keep a lid on Atlanta and keep talking to Carnes and Kitana. We all wanted to find the attackers, but I wasn’t going to patrol the streets of San Francisco, much less fly to Hawaii to fight fire ninjas.

  It didn’t take long for Cinnamon to finish her third circuit of the aquarium, this time on point. Once outside in the bright bright blinky light, I immediately pulled out my phone and called Ranger. “Hey, girl, what you got for me?” I said.

  “Oh, did I get your attention?” Ranger asked impishly. She sounded like she was smiling; that was a relief, as last I’d seen her she was recovering from a graffiti attack—just out of a burn ward, walking with a cane, and days from being homeless. “Thought you’d never call back—”

  “Bull, you knew I would,” I said. “That text was tailor-made to turn my head.”

  “Was it now,” Ranger said. We’d been emailing about firespinning ever since I got back from San Francisco—but we hadn’t actually spoken. “Well, now that I’ve got your attention, hello, Ranger, how are you, are you out on the streets or not—”

  “You know how to pick up a phone,” I said. “But,
since you asked, how are you—”

  “Off the cane,” she said, “And off the streets. In fact, the lawsuit has been settled to everyone’s mutual satisfaction, so the Candlesticks Apartments are back in business just in time for the Rise festival, which I am promoting. Like live music, fire, and hot guys hanging from wires?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “At least the latter two are intriguing.”

  “Oh, but the first is too,” Ranger said. “Ever seen the Loch Ness Dragons?”

  “No, but I think I’d like to,” I said, smiling at Cinnamon, who nodded vigorously. “My daughter would too. What kind of scene is Rise? Still like the old days—”

  “Yep. Twenty-one and up,” she said, and Cinnamon let out a sharp exhale and spun off. “Not quite BYOB, but it won’t be a full bar. We’re still trying to work the kinks out with the landlord. But, hell or high water, the Dragons go on at nine tonight—”

  “Tonight? Hell. Well, let me work out the kinks with my daughter,” I said, winking and tousling Cinnamon’s hair and headscarf. “If Mom can get permission to do something cool, she’ll be there tonight at nine. See ya—”

  “I’ve been to wilder parties than you,” Cinnamon said as I hung up the phone, “had more boys than you, did more drugs than you, been more drunk than you—”

  “On that last one, I highly doubt it, my little werekin friend,” I said, “not with all those Niivan organelles cleaning the alcohol out of your bloodstream before it hits your brain—”

  “How do you knows that?” she said.

  “From your textbook on Extraordinary Biology,” I said, not breaking stride. I looked back, and my bouncing tigger was stopped dead, staring at me with a dropped jaw. “What? You can’t expect me to help you with your homework without trying to learn it myself.”

  “Do you gots to do everything I do?” Cinnamon said. Her voice was oddly resentful.

  “No,” I said. “Just the fun stuff. Don’t worry. I don’t think I’m going to be doing any number theory or code breaking. I think that’s all you, baby.”

  “I’m not a baby,” she said hotly, “and I should too be able go to your stupid party—”

  “You’ll always be my baby,” I said, gathering her in my arms and kissing her forehead, “even when you win the Nobel Prize. But don’t be too eager—you may have had it wild and rough at the werehouse, but the Rise Festival could throw even you for a loop.”

  PUFFS OF FIRE blossomed in sequence up the sides of a thirty-foot arch of welded metal, meeting at its apex in a burst of flame that illuminated an endless sea of half-naked humanity beyond. As the flames faded, the arch lit up with the neon letters RISE ATLANTA.

  There were jugglers and firespinners and men on stilts. A dead-white bald man in goggles carved a burning wooden sculpture with a blowtorch, and a dreadlocked black woman with fuzzy boots did elaborate tricks with Tarot cards that seemed to glow. A thoroughly Native American man dressed as a chief wove his way through dancers of all nationalities performing an Indian-from-India traditional. There were welded sculptures and neon flowers, hemp garments and handwoven silks, Tesla coils and kinetic mobiles. Stages with live bands were surrounded with stands of indie records. And, at the heart of the festival, at the center of a crowd of appreciative women, were two slender young men in a breathtaking tug-of-war, pulling at each other via long cords embedded in fishhooks embedded in the taut skin of their bare, muscular chests.

  I smiled. Burning Man, writ small.

  I paid my fee and waded into the muddy crowd. Far too many people were crammed into the irregular no-man’s land behind the featureless black-and-white converted warehouses that were the Candlestick “Apartments.” A dancer pirouetted by, whirling sparklers—a bit late for Fourth of July, but I’d allow it. There were three distinct stages, with a folk band and an alternative band and a space band, all partway through sets—but nothing even remotely resembling Loch Ness Dragons, and it was already eight-fifty-five.

  Then I got a text, from the ever “reliable” Ranger. «Where *are* you?»

  I sighed, flinched as lightning crackled overhead, and replied, «Next to the Tesla coil. Where are my dragons?»

  «On the docks. Come in through the Tower.»

  I looked back saw a tall, beige four-story tower—the eponymous Candlestick itself, originally a guard tower and now supposedly where the landlord lived. Beneath the Candlestick was a wide, white blocky structure—into which crowds were already streaming.

  Ranger texted me instructions that led me in through the warren of apartments behind the “stage”—literally, a bunch of amps and a big disc set up on the loading docks—and one of Ranger’s friends led me down into a tiny roped-off area next to the sound booth.

  Ranger was a beefy woman, kind of a cross between Bettie Page and a crossing guard, wearing a beret and twirling a cane which was by now almost certainly for show. She gave me a quick hug and pointed me to the stage while wrestling the mike from the sound crew.

  “All right, it’s nine-oh-five and we promised we’d start on time,” she squealed, a mess of static and feedback. “Give it up for the Loch Ness Dragons!”

  The stage went black. Spotlights flared. Drums rolled, crisp and military. And then a rough scream rippled out through the crowd—as bagpipes began to play.

  Two female drummers in dark mascara and military uniforms marched smartly onto either side of the stage; behind each of them were big, burly bare-chested bagpipe players in kilts. They marched out, the bagpipers really wailing on their instruments, the drummers less so; and the moment I noticed that, I saw, behind the weaving spotlights, a wan, goateed drummer at the back of the stage, filling out the rest of the drumbeat.

  Two dancers in dragon masks bounced onto the stage, and I realized the pale drummer was part of the real band and the “drummers” were just two more of the dancers when the stage exploded, a huge spray of flame roaring out behind the bagpipers, silhouetting a kilted female guitarist standing back to back with a Goth-punk female violinist.

  “Good evening, Atlanta!” screamed the guitarist, leaping forward, kilt flaring, landing with her big black chunky boots planted on the disc, seemingly staring straight at me as she began wailing away on her long bass guitar. “We are the Loch Ness Dragons!”

  The guitarist flicked back her rainbow bangs, leaned into a driving bassline, and began prowling forward in place as the spinning disc began turning beneath her feet. The bagpipers joined her on the spinning disc, marching in place beside her as she started to really wail.

  I glanced at Ranger, who smiled back at me. This worked. The song was a cover, but I hadn’t quite placed it yet—the Loch Ness Dragons were tight and had totally made the song their own. There was a flare of light, and Ranger cocked her head at the stage, smiling.

  I glanced back forward—and then my eyes went wide in shock.

  Behind the singer and the bagpipes was a spray of flame, a shimmering fan, sparking through all the colors of the rainbow with a distinctive, artistic, almost Chinese flair to its repeated arabesque pattern—and then I felt my dragon tattoo stir against my skin.

  This wasn’t just fire spinning—it was fire magic.

  I stood on my tiptoe, but I already knew what I would see. Behind the wailing lead singer was a lithe, curvy dancer dressed only in a dragon mask and silks and leather bits. Her face was hidden, but she wore long leather bracers, and spun a staff tipped with points of flame.

  ———

  It was Jewel, spinning like she was on fire.

  37. Jewel on Fire

  “Surprise, surprise,” Jewel said, mouth quirking up in a devilish smile.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I said, feeling a smile and a frown struggle on my face.

  We were “backstage” at Rise, in a big “living room” someone had carved out of the loading docks’ receiving area wi
th a Persian rug and a few sofas. The Loch Ness Dragons were still stuck pressing flesh and pushing CDs outside, but when I asked Ranger about the spinners, she grinned, led me backstage, and introduced me to Jewel with, “Your groupie is here.”

  I plopped down on the couch opposite Jewel and Molokii as they cleaned up.

  “So, Jewel,” I said. “When were you going to tell me you were in town?”

  “I, uh,” Jewel began, reddening as she slipped on her flannel shirt. “But isn’t this a nice surprise? And, for the record, I didn’t know I was going to be in town until Ranger strong-armed the Dragons into adding this performance, and when I found out she knew you, of course I—”

  “You slipped me a backstage pass,” I said, smiling halfheartedly. “Yes, that was a nice gesture, and this is a wonderful surprise—but also random, and last minute. What if I couldn’t have made it? Would you really have come to town without even calling me?”

  “Dakota, don’t be like that. I really didn’t know I’d be here,” Jewel said. She bit her lip. “But, if you hadn’t made it, I might have taken it as a sign. I got attacked like, a half dozen times when I was with you—once just because I tagged along with your daughter. You’re dangerous, Dakota. Call me superstitious, but I wanted to give us a little breather while I’m laying low.”

  I grimaced. Jewel had drawn precisely the wrong lesson from the Bay Area—she’d been the target of those attacks, and I was just a bystander. But I could see it—she claimed she’d never been attacked before meeting me, and I too saw the wisdom of getting the hell out of Dodge.

  And she’d said us. How promising. But still . . . “This is laying low?”

  “Not calling anyone directly,” she said. “Communicating by word of mouth—”