by Ruby Ryan
He seemed put off by my vulgarity. "Sir, I only need an estimate..."
"How far from here to Mozambique?" I asked, thinking of the pulsing feeling in my head. "There and back."
"Oh, that's not too far, sir! 150 miles to the east. So should I put you down for 300 round trip, or...?"
I focused on my sixth sense. The dragon wasn't to the east; he was to the north. I grabbed the map off the rental car desk and flipped it until we were far enough zoomed out, then pointed to a small off-shoot of Mozambique near Malawi.
"There. I'm going there."
The man stared at me like he thought I was joking, then punched a number into his computer. "Better to drive than to fly, eh? With all the trouble..."
"Sure."
"Would you like to purchase insurance? For only..."
"Just give me the fucken keys, mate."
I stopped at the first convenience store I passed on the way from the airport to the highway. A cluster of kids that looked like trouble eyed me as I went inside, but I stared death back at them and they didn't bother me. I emptied the refrigerator of liters of water, carried them in my arms to the cashier, then went back for more. Ten pre-made turkey sandwiches. Two jumbo bags of potato crisps. A bottle of caffeine pills. The cashier stared at me but said nothing.
And then I got inside the jeep and drove.
And drove.
And drove.
The highway from Johannesburg to Pretoria was mostly urban, but once I was north of there on the N1 highway my view began to spread out with countryside. Hills rose up from the distant horizon, tan colored terrain dotted with splatters of green shrubs and short, squat trees. I drove through cities with African names like Mokopane and Polokwane, and Afrikaners names like Louis Trichardt and Breitbridge. The summer sun crawled across the sky, hung forever at its apex, then drifted down behind me. I drank water steadily, and popped caffeine pills, and ate soggy turkey sandwiches with one hand on the wheel and my eyes focused on the road ahead. I stopped to refill my petrol and empty my bladder, but nothing else.
I'm coming, dragon. I will not let you get to Harriet.
The guards at the border entering into Zimbabwe were curious about my plans, and why I was traveling at night, but I kept my answers vague and didn't have anything unusual in my car (though they shook my bottle of caffeine pills skeptically), so they let me pass through unimpeded.
My cell phone carrier had no service here, which meant I couldn't communicate with Harriet. Worse: it meant I had no fucken idea where I was going. Or how far I had left to travel. I didn't even have a map, but I didn't need one, not with the steady rumbling of the dragon's laughter in my mind to guide me. It taunted me, urging me to press harder on the accelerator and go faster, safety be damned.
I drove for as far as I could, struggling to keep my chin off my chest as I tried to focus on the narrow view in front of my headlights, the road extending endlessly.
Finally I couldn't safely drive any farther without crashing, so I parked on the side of the road and slept until the sun woke me like a gentle friend. I took my morning piss in the bushes next to the road, poured some water over my head and downed two more caffeine pills, and then I was traveling again.
The dragon's sensation in my head was more frustrated today. I could not place why, but I knew the feeling clearly. That was a good sign; if the dragon was frustrated, then things were good. He hadn't found Harriet.
Zimbabwe went on forever. I stopped for petrol at a dilapidated station and asked the attendant how much farther to Mozambique; and he only shrugged and said, "Far."
Time stopped making sense. There was only me, the road stretching ahead to the horizon, and the angry ball of emotion somewhere to the north.
Later, the countryside receded and the space between buildings shrank, and then I was driving through Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The hairs on my arm and neck stood on end; I could sense Harriet here! Even inside my air conditioned car the scent of her lingered like perfume.
I almost stopped. Part of me demanded to; it wanted me to jump out of the jeep and sprint on foot until I found her. But her scent was also faded, like she was no longer here. Like I'd just missed her.
And I could feel myself drawing closer to the terrible beast for whom this journey predicated. The dragon was now more east than north, and the road out of Harare curved in that direction. I would reach him today, I knew.
I would kill him today.
I didn't know how. I didn't know if I even could. But I knew I would try, even if I died in the attempt.
I will do it for you, Harriet.
Storm clouds appeared in the distance, slowly replacing the beautiful blue sky. And as they spread above me I realized they weren't clouds at all. A plume of smoke rose in the distance, a tornado of ash and dust. The volcano, Monte something. I didn't remember the name. It didn't matter.
I knew the volcano portended the dragon.
His emotions were acute here, vicious angry thoughts like jagged lightning. Carnage and murder and blood and fire and flesh torn with his teeth, the thoughts bombarded me against my will, the dragon's searching eyes gazing out over the terrain. Searching for Harriet.
Searching for the totem.
For the next hour, my eyes scanned the dark sky, waiting for my nemesis to appear and dive upon me. His fury mixed with my own and I found myself as eager to battle him as he was to find the totem, the duality of our natures in synchronicity. He was the Ruby Dragon, if what Ethan had said was right. And I was the Ruby Gryphon.
I hadn't known what that meant until now.
We were ancient enemies, in the same way the volcano in the distance was ancient, a millennia of battles and victories and losses eroding us until our souls were smooth. Now that I was here, the gryphon inside of me almost calmed. Like it was satisfied that I'd brought us here.
If we were destined to battle, the way I knew we had battled before, then I supposed that made sense.
And then the volcano wasn't the only thing spewing dark smoke into the sky. Ahead of me rose individual tendrils of black smoke, with flickering fires that were their sources. I neared the closest one and saw it was the wreckage of a plane, with a wide fuselage like a cargo plane and brown boxes strewn across the African plain.
The dragon did this, I knew.
Suddenly the dragon's fury ceased as if it had been cut off with a knife. It was replaced with curiosity, an intense focus I couldn't quite place.
And then joy.
The dragon burst from the dark ash clouds in the distance. I knew it immediately; my eyes were drawn to him as if he were a supernova, though he was so far away he appeared as only a tiny speck against the clouds. My eyes widened at the sight; after all the emotions and senses, fighting with him in the ring, feeling him inside my head and hearing Ethan explain it, seeing him here abruptly made it all real.
There were dragons in this world, and one was right in front of me.
Pleasure came off of his presence like waves. Pleasure at having me here, at having something to fight. A sick pleasure that turned my stomach; a greasy film over day-old food.
But that didn't make sense, a voice inside my head said. He'd beaten the shit out of me in the liquor store, and said he didn't want to kill me because then the totem would choose another host. So what did it matter if he fought me here? Why would that give him joy? Unless he was frustrated by his search and simply wanted to battle. But...
I blinked, and sensed it.
Not just it, but her. The totem and Harriet, somewhere to the right. I rolled down my window and stuck my head out, looking far behind me.
There.
A plane flying below the clouds, low enough that I could make out the six windows on the exterior that marked it a smaller plane. Instantly I knew Harriet was on that plane, with the totem that was so precious to us.
All of it made sense, then. The wreckage of the planes all around, knocked out of the sky by my foe. The dragon's terrible frustration, then i
nexplicable joy.
Somehow, he'd known the totem would come here. And now it had.
"No!" I screamed out my window as if Harriet could hear me. "What are you doing? NO!"
Throwing aside all caution, I jerked the wheel hard. The jeep flew off the road, ramped down and up over the ditch running alongside, and then I was flying across the open plain.
Above me, the dragon and Harriet's plane flew toward one another.
24
HARRIET
It had to be a bird. It looked like it had wings that were flapping, barely discernible in the distance as I squinted. In the seat in front of me Arnold did the same, a perplexed look on his face.
"Whatever it is," he said, "it's flying straight at us."
Chidi began to moan in the cockpit, and then turned the dials on his radio and spoke into his headset. Demanding that whoever was in this region identify themselves and make note of our position. He repeated himself again and again, voice growing more fearful every time.
Wing-flapping be damned, it couldn't be a plane. It was too big. Or maybe my perspective was warped by the strange twilight created by the cloud cover. Our eyes playing tricks on us.
All of that made more sense than the truth.
It moved gracefully through the sky, bobbing up and down in time with its massive wings. It was the color of blood, a deep crimson so dark it was almost as black as the clouds above. It had a long neck like a snake, and a wide head adorned with spiky horns on top and on the sides in a crest. Instead of feathers its body was covered with scaly skin, and the wings were so thin they were almost translucent.
My mind conjured up the name for it: dragon. A thing from childhood stories, and Disney movies with princesses and castles. An impossible creature here, or anywhere.
The gryphon figurine in my hand shook so violently I thought it might explode.
"Oh my God!" Chidi shouted from the cockpit as the dragon bore down on us. It grew rapidly, coming in from the side, but instead of crashing into us it soared across and above, coming so close I could see the individual claws at the tips of its hanging legs. The near miss made the entire plane jerk in the air, caught in the dragon's wake, and for several terrifying moments Chidi struggled to keep his grip on the controls.
Arnold dove across the aisle to the other window, gazing out with huge eyes. "Marvelous! Simply marvelous!"
I followed because seeing it was less terrifying than not seeing it. The dragon curved to the left, changing its course to follow us in the air, keeping up with effort. Its long neck craned toward us, inspecting the plane with ruby eyes.
And maybe it was my imagination, but the dragon's jaw hung open in what looked like a cruel smile.
It turned toward us, opened its jaw wider, and the world outside my window became fire.
It exploded toward our plane in a great fireball of orange and black smoke. The windows exploded from the heat, sending me flying backwards into the aisle. Bits of glass rained down on me and the carpet of the floor, and then alarms were going off, a wailing sound above the roar of the air from the open windows, and oxygen masks fell from the ceiling like jellyfish tentacles. The floor tilted, sending glass shards sliding along the carpet as I tried to get up, but there was a ringing in my ears to go with the rest of the noise and it hurt to simply think.
"...Reckmeyer!" I heard someone shout. "...seatbelt! Hurry!"
More heat exploded to my left but I somehow got up, swaying on the now tilted floor while the alarms wailed louder along with Chidi's screams, and I fell into the nearest seat. Glass cut my thighs through my pants but I didn't care, all I could do was reach between the seats and fumble with the seatbelt, as if that would miraculously save me from a plane crash, or a dragon, or anything else in this twisted nightmare, but somehow my fingers found the metal clasp and clicked it into place.
Smoke bubbled from the left side of the plane, blocking most of my view. My stomach flew up into my throat then back down into my gut as if we were on a boat in a storm instead of an airplane in the calm sky.
I looked out my window and saw the ground rushing toward us.
I don't remember the crash. One minute I was staring out the window, and the next I was in the back of the plane facing the lavatory door.
I coughed; smoke was everywhere, in my throat and nose and eyes. I blinked and looked around, but there wasn't much to see back here, so I unclasped the seatbelt and tried to get up.
Immediately I fell to the ground, my right knee unable to support my weight. There was a pain there, low and distant, like my brain had decided to stow it away for later. I coughed and gasped for air, and tried to look around through my tears.
My seat had broken free from the ground and had been thrown to the back of the plane. There was a fire up near the cockpit, and the fuselage to my right was marred by a massive tear a foot wide, but otherwise the plane was intact.
Ignoring the screaming YOU WERE JUST IN A PLANE CRASH voice inside my head, I tried to get up again, and once again my knee refused to cooperate.
The dragon's roar was alien and terrifying, a combination of an elephant trumpet and a cat snarl, and a thousand other animal sounds mixed together, but it sent a shiver through my bones and reminded me of what was going on. I wasn't safe here. I needed to get away.
I felt the dragon land rather than see it; the sensation was like an entire house crashing to the ground, picking me off the floor and bouncing me half a foot in the air. The unseen beast stomped on massive legs, growing nearer.
Rows of sword-like teeth punched through the ceiling of the plane, yellow and dripping saliva. It tore at the metal, one jerk, two jerks, and then abruptly the entire roof came tearing off to reveal the darkened sky.
The dragon roared again, this time angry and searching.
I crawled between my row of seats toward the opening in the fuselage. I had to get out of here, or this smoldering wreckage would become my coffin. Like all the others scattered across the plain around the volcano.
WHOOSH.
Another jet of fire shot across the air above us, obfuscating everything and making it impossible to see as the smoke spread. I focused on the foot of carpet in front of me as I crawled, desperate to escape.
The gryphon figurine.
I'd forgotten it! Now I felt it pulsing insistently, one row behind me on the ground. There, I could see it underneath the seat. I pushed forward, squeezing under the seat cushion, still inches away from grasping it. I felt the dragon stomping around the wreckage while I stretched as far as I could go, a single finger brushing against the cool stone, then two, then there, I jerked it forward and it rotated enough for me to grab it, to hold it close--
I gasped at what I saw: the stone was intact, but the flawless ruby on its back was marred by a jagged crack across the face. I don't know why, but I felt a lifetime of sadness at the sight, an immeasurable loss that couldn't be quantified.
Roland had given this to me, entrusted me with it, and I'd failed him.
25
ROLAND
I screamed bloody murder as I watched the dragon open wide his jaws and engulf the plane in flame, terrible hot black flame to match the tainted sky, and then the plane carrying my love, my mate, my Harriet plummeted from the sky.
I floored the accelerator and felt numb as I drove across the African plain.
The moment it crashed into the ground I felt a stabbing in my chest. The hot pain spread up and down my spine, forcing every muscle in my body to contract, and I clenched my eyes shut and screamed anew.
My jeep hit a bump, the wheel spun, and then I was rolling end-over-end across the ground, bouncing violently, glass shattering and metal being smashed by the momentum. I barely felt it beneath the deeper pain lancing every nerve in my body, like an out of body experience, trapped inside a prison.
The jeep tumbled, and rolled, and landed on its side and slid 100 more feet before coming to a stop.
I gasped as if I'd been holding my breath. I knew what had jus
t happened with the same sixth sense that had guided me this far:
The ruby was cracked. The gryphon totem had been damaged.
I had been damaged.
I groaned inside the jeep, held up by the seatbelt strap across my chest but still drooping sideways. My body ached like the pain from every bare-knuckle boxing match of my life combined. Neck, chest, arms and legs, everything fatigued and sore. I couldn't move. Bloody hell, it even hurt just to breathe.
I clicked my seatbelt, and collapsed onto the side window of the jeep. From here all I could see was the brown dirt on the other side of the glass, which somehow hadn't shattered.
I gazed at it, and the reflection in the window, like the failure that I was.
Then I... changed. My stomach settled, and my breathing returned to normal. Adrenaline kicked in and heightened my senses, dulling the pain.
And making me aware of Harriet.
She was terrified, and in mortal danger. But she was alive. She was nearby.
I could still save her.
Gritting my teeth, I got to my feet and climbed out the top of the jeep, which was actually the side door. I stood on top and gazed to the north, where the volcano gave its silent wail of smoke to the sky, and where a new wreckage smoldered with fresh fire.
The dragon loomed over the remains of the plane like a predator admiring his prey, head swinging back and forth. Searching. I felt his emotions anew, pride and impatience.
I'm coming!
I leaped off the jeep and sprinted north, toward the woman I loved and the death that would soon come.
26
HARRIET
With conscious effort, I put aside my pain of allowing the gryphon figurine to be damaged. I had bigger worries, and I was beginning to think more clearly.
There was a dragon, and it was probably about to eat me if I didn't get away.
My knee was in agony, but I managed to crawl ten feet across the plane to the opening in the fuselage. The only thing that saved me was the smoke above, a billowing barrier to shield my movements. I heard a man moaning in pain, Arnold or Chidi, but I didn't think I could save myself, let alone someone else.