by Alan Marble
Jonah still felt weak, but the dizziness that was clouding his head was beginning to pass, the shock of the moment slowly losing its potency. Still, he leaned himself back so he was sprawled out on the ground, opening his eyes to the sight of a dark blue sky, the clouds streaked with orange as sunset approached. Carolus’ face was hovering over him at one side, and at the periphery of his vision he could see the dragon regarding him from the other. “And how am I supposed to handle it? Yay, I’m a dragon. Now what?”
The old man smiled down at him. “As I have said, you are still yourself, Jonah. This does not mean you must change who you are. Your outlook on life, your goals, your dreams, wishes and desires need not change.”
“But I’m still supposed to help you out. Help the clan out.”
“Yes,” he said, a little more hesitantly. “But again, it is my hope that you will choose to do so of your own will, as we cannot and will not force you to do so.”
Jonah pushed himself back up to a seated position, fixing his eyes on the black dragon resting nearby. Looking at it was, in a way, a defiance of the way the shift in his reality had unsettled him, as if doing so were somehow confronting his problems. “Well, like I asked. What happens now?”
“Unless you are feeling ill, and unless you object, your training should begin …”
He did not know in the least what that meant, but the raw absurdity behind the notion of being trained as a dragon somehow made him smirk. In his mind, he saw it as yet another opportunity to confront his situation head on. “All right,” he said, pulling himself up to his feet once again. “How do we do that? And I don’t want to hear any ‘wax on, wax off’ shit. Get down to business.”
Carolus regarded him with a bit of surprise and skepticism, but he supposed that he could not blame the old man. A little hesitantly, the older man nodded and cleared his throat. “Very well. First you must learn how to summon the ability to assume your true form, as well as how to control yourself in flight. Now, just as the young bird learns to fly through trial and error …”
“Remember. No lecturing,” Jonah interrupted, a little impatiently, scowling perhaps unintentionally as he regarded the black dragon.
“Jonah, it’s important to understand why things happen before simply doing them …”
Once more he interrupted, finding that he was losing patience - or losing the ability to force himself along. If he had time to think about it he might falter, might allow the doubt to come seeping back and unsteady him. He had to have answers and had to have them fast. “Yeah, well, you’ve said yourself that this situation isn’t normal. Please, humor me.”
The old man almost scowled, as well, taking a step back and folding his hands in front of him, striking a pose as if he were making some kind of assessment. “Indeed it is no normal situation. If you prefer, we will do it your way. The ability to call on your true form is something you will learn to control in time, but for now it is summoned instinctively by need. Falling, as you have seen, will trigger the reflex.”
“Tell me about it,” he responded a little darkly, recalling the night on the bridge, a memory he would just as soon discard.
“When in flight, it is much the same. I cannot tell you how to flap your wings, how to soar, how to bank, or any of these things. You must simply learn. Your body will do its best to keep you from falling to the ground or from crashing in to objects. Trust your body, trust the signals it sends you. It should not be hard for you to pick up on the basics fairly quickly if you simply follow your instincts and get a feel for it.”
All of it still sounded so absurd. Were it not for the fact that a dragon was standing feet away, watching patiently, he would have assumed it was, indeed, absurd. Part of him still wanted to believe it was absurd, too, but there was no better way than this to find out for sure. “All right. Easy enough. So how are we going to actually train?”
Carolus still looked a little skeptical and reserved, but he was starting to open up at least, adopting a less stiff posture. “Once you take off and manage to fly more than a few feet without crash landing, you’ll be pursued by your training partner,” he said, indicating the black dragon with a tilt of his head. “Her task is to try and catch you, run you down, force you to the ground by any means necessary. Your task is equally simple : evade her.”
Casting a dubious glance at the dragon, Jonah scoffed. “Any means necessary?”
“She won’t hurt you. Not seriously, at least. That much I promise you.”
The answer he got was hardly reassuring, but again, he supposed it was no more or less absurd than everything else going on. “And do I have a goal? Something I am supposed to do, beat her to it, win?”
“There is no goal. This exercise is not intended to be won, Jonah,” the old man said, with something approaching a faint smile. “She will catch you. That, too, I can promise you. Your only goal is to evade her for as long as you can. If you feel up to the task you can try fighting back, try to buy yourself a little more time. There are no points for how long you last, and no punishment for quick failure other than to try again and again until I feel you have mastered the basics of flight. Do you understand?”
“Almost,” he said, with something of a dismissive shrug. “How do you propose I go about, ah, changing in the first place?”
Carolus pointed in the direction of the lake. “How does my friend Ibrahim put it? A leap of faith?”
Jonah remembered that quite well, standing on a balcony with the eccentric, bald man urging him to jump off twenty stories high. The deck might not have been so tall, but he had seen enough to know that a fall from that height would do some serious damage if not kill. Worst case scenario, he might get a running jump and make it to the edge of the water, where it was just deep enough for him to drown when he knocked himself unconscious.
All the same, this was a moment of truth, it was his moment of truth. Even the day before he would not have imagined himself in this position. He was still certain that Rebekah was nuts, that Abe was nuts, that they were all either nuts or just plain sick. He still half believed that when he jumped from the deck the only thing he would accomplish would be to break his neck, but even then he would have an answer. Something he would not get just standing there.
He had spent long enough sitting around, letting himself be dragged from point A to point B, waiting for someone to do something - waiting for something to happen. Sucking down a deep breath, he let out a bellow that surprised even himself and ran for the edge of the deck as fast as he could. Fifteen, maybe twenty feet away, it came up on him quick, and then he was at the edge. Too far to stop, too far to turn back, he was committed to his course. Resisting the urge to close his eyes, he leaped.
Throwing his arms out in front of him in something of a ridiculous Superman pose, he felt himself starting to soar, flinging himself from the edge of the deck as hard as he could, the ground below spooling out beneath him, bringing him closer to the edge of the lake. For a brief moment he thought that he had, indeed, jumped far enough to make it to the water.
Gravity, however, had other designs. In another blink of an eye he was falling rapidly toward the ground. Suddenly his arms and legs were flailing, and Jonah found himself screaming as he had quickly gone from a graceful sort of soaring motion to a veritable death plunge toward the lake.
It wasn’t going to happen. Nothing was happening, he could feel no difference in himself, could feel no urge to flap wings or do anything other than scream in terror as the earth rose quickly to meet him.
Somewhat miserably, he at least realized that he would have his answer.
THIRTEEN
Then there was a strange but slightly familiar tugging against his back, behind his shoulders. He remembered where had felt it, tumbling through the air toward his doom at the bottom of a canyon. This fall was nowhere near as far, nowhere near as long but scared him every bit as much, and when he felt that strange sensation something else suddenly leaped to the forefront of his conscious mind. Carol
us’ admonition to follow his instincts.
Without time to think about it, he pulled his arms and legs in tight against his body, pulling at muscles in his back that he wasn’t even sure were really there. The little tug behind his shoulders suddenly became a powerful pull, trying to yank him upward, the air around him seeming to thicken, his descent slowing in an agonizingly long moment.
Just when he expected to become one with the ground, it began to pull away from him once again. The urge to pull on muscles at his back renewed, and he gave in to the urge, flexing his body, feeling himself push against the air. From the corners of his eyes he caught a glimpse of movement at either side, thin and indistinct as they moved up and down in time to the flexing.
Wings. They couldn’t be anything other than wings.
Jonah was aware that something felt distinctly different. It seemed to evade comprehension, the way that he seemed to wear the world around him in a different way. Everything looked slightly different, felt different. Somehow he still could not wrap his mind around the thought that he was, indeed, a dragon; glancing down to try and get a look at his reflection in the water now beneath him he could see only an indistinct shape. The wings at `1his sides moved too quickly to get a look at. Though there was no explanation, his mind still had a hard time with the thought.
What was much simpler for him to comprehend was the simple fact that he was flying. Soon he no longer had to consciously think about the way he had to flex the muscles of his back - flap his wings - and it came almost as naturally as walking. Watching the blue waters of the lake spool out beneath him, catching a red glimmer from the waning sun, a sense of euphoria began to come over him, and he could not help but to let out an exultant cry.
It sounded surprisingly like the sound he had heard before, a deep, resonant trumpeting that rumbled and grated through the air. Again he tried it, bellowing out a deeply excited roar.
He discovered that turning was surprisingly similar to riding his motorcycle. Leaning his body to the side, putting his shoulder into it he began to wheel about, the horizon shifting around him as he slowly turned his way back in the direction he had come from. He was surprised to see that the villa he had come from had receded to little more than a point on a distant shore.
The part of his mind that continued to resist the idea was becoming more and more quiet, quickly overtaken by the raw and unmatched joy of cutting through the air, the way the wind whipped him in the face and flowed over his body.
As he approached the shore, however, something else caught his eye, a black shape moving gracefully through the air, approaching him with an almost frightening speed. At the last second he realized it was the other dragon, the one who had been tasked with taking him down. The creature had is claws out, pulling its wings back to reach out in a grasping fashion, roaring loudly at him.
It was going to collide with him; it was going to get him.
He tried to turn hard, but the thickness of the wind forbade him. His body suddenly twisted through the air as it yanked at his wings, pulled him around, sending him tumbling about end over end. The sky wheeled overhead, the horizon twisting and turning at crazy angles as he completely lost control of himself. He was vaguely aware of the other dragon passing by at a dizzying speed, the air itself seeming to quiver and reverberate as his passing, but she missed him, this time at least.
Still, he was tumbling through the air. Jonah could feel his heart thumping angrily in his chest as he flailed about in the air, his limbs trying to grasp at something that wasn’t there. Once more he had to let his instincts kick in, obeying the urges to tense and relax his muscles independently. He could feel his wings cutting through the air, catching against it here and there, slowly allowing him to level out, the crazy tumbling of the world about him slowing and coming to an end.
At last he righted himself mere feet above the surface of the lake, skimming the water with his limbs before pulling skyward, letting out a triumphant shout of relief.
His relief was short lived, however. The black dragon had already come about, effortlessly arcing through the air over the lake and coming right back at him. While Jonah found himself in awe at how easily she seemed to move, he still felt a little more confident now that he had made it this far. Building up his speed he aimed right for the dragon, pushing himself harder, harder, counting off the seconds in his head before he knew he’d have to pull up and out of the way to keep from crashing into her. There was no way she would expect him to do something so bold.
There was also no way for him to have expected just what she would do. Just prior to that moment when he was about to pull up she pulled her wings high and came to an abrupt, rapid halt in the air, facing him down with her jaws agape, as if she were about to roar at him, but instead it was a brilliant gout of fire issuing from her maw. Jonah almost flinched, the plume of fire spreading out rapidly into an intense ball, but then he realized that dragons must be flameproof. Undeterred by her attempt to throw him off, he pushed on ahead.
Immediately his assumption was proved wrong. A searing heat enveloped him, intense enough that he could not help but to react instinctively, shutting his eyes and pulling his wings in tight around him, forming a protective embrace. His hide stung, the heat screaming at him as momentum carried him through the fireball and out to the other side. Pulled into a ball as he was, it was only seconds before he plummeted straight into the lake with an enormous splash.
Water surrounded him in a cool blanket, briefly a welcome respite to the burning sensation that he had felt. His lungs, already starved for air, urged him to come up to the surface, his limbs flailing till he broke he surface once again, drawing in a deep gasp, opening his eyes again while he paddled in the lake that was becoming rapidly very cold.
He was strangely dismayed to see that it was with normal, human hands that he was splashing in the water. Glancing upward, he could see the black dragon wheeling up and away, starting to circle him like some kind of vulture. “Hey! Hey, what’s going on?”
“Natural talent cannot overcome the failures of overconfidence,” a voice called out behind him. He recognized it as Carolus’ voice, if somehow a bit deeper and more sonorous. Whipping around to get a look at the old man, he was startled to see instead a dragon hovering nearby, over the surface of the water.
A stark contrast to the graceful black female he had been trying to evade, Carolus in dragon form was somehow more stereotypical and frightening. Covered in ash gray scales, numerous horns and spikes seemed to issue forth from his hide in multiple locations : over his eyes, along his spine, the sides of his tail. He was larger, too, if not quite twice the size, and instead of being slender and graceful he was a massive, bulky beast. Gray eyes that almost matched the color of his scales loomed down at him, jagged fangs overhanging the dragon’s bite.
Jonah realized he was gawking, shaking a bit of the water out of his hair as he looked up at the dragon. “Carolus? You can talk?”
“Of course I can, we are not mute creatures! I have been near the whole time, watching you. You embrace your agility well, but you must learn to better respect your foe,” he rumbled, loudly.
“She cheated! She spat fire at me,” he protested, realizing that his skin was still a little singed, feeling almost like a light sunburn.
“Cheated?” The big dragon’s voice seemed almost amused as he flapped, his wings pushing the air down and creating a series of ripples in the water. “She has done no such thing. Those who would do you harm will not hesitate to use such powers against you, and powers more damaging and deadly still.”
Jonah sputtered a little, the little waves splashing him int he face and forcing him to squint. “Why didn’t you tell me how to breathe fire?”
The big dragon huffed a sort of grumbly sigh. “I do not know if you can breathe fire, and even if you did I could not help you. It is not a talent I have, myself. Many dragons are endowed with many powerful gifts, but these cannot be taught to you. You must learn them on your own.”
>
“Great.” He sighed a little as he paddled in the water again, and then frowned. “What do I do now? I’m not a dragon anymore … what happened?”
“Sometimes a great shock can force you back out of your dragon state. Falling in the cold water, for example. That, too, is something you must learn to overcome, Jonah. To lose your concentration in a difficult situation could have dire consequences.”
Jonah just shook his head. Once more the situation seemed beyond ridiculous, floating in a freezing cold lake and talking to a dragon about techniques. A few hours ago, it was something he would not really have imagined, and even now something about it seemed practically offensive to his sensibilities. Still, he could not sit and float in this lake forever. “Well, now what? How do I get back to this, ah, training?”
The big dragon dipped down without so much as a word, and before Jonah could so much as flinch a massive set of talons clutched him and hauled him right out of the lake. Carolus was as gentle as he supposed he could be, those massive talons holding on tightly enough to grip him but not enough to tear his sopping wet clothes, but something about being gripped like that was intensely frightening, enough to nearly make him cry out.
If the sensation of being grasped like that wasn’t unsettling enough, the dizzying speed with which he was hauled upward did not help. The big dragon flew almost straight up, each beat of his massive wings pulling them higher and higher into the air. The waves on the lake quickly faded into what looked like a smooth blue, and then he could spy the massive building on the lake shore like a small toy model, shrinking away. Still they climbed, higher and higher, surpassing even the mountain tops, into the clouds and beyond, where the sun still shined brightly.
Just when Jonah wondered how much higher the big dragon might take him, the talons released. For a moment there was hardly any sensation of movement, the brief sensation of floating there persisting until the wind rushing past him whipped into a frenzy. He fell through the clouds again, the distant lake shore beneath him slowly growing once again.