In the Arms of the Dragon Princes

by Jessica Miller

  “Uh, Cliff? How long has it been since I got here?” she asked.

  Cliff gave her a weird look. “About a month. Why?”

  Gem was very much relieved to see him alive again. It was around this time that the Warrior King had come back to get her. Maybe, just maybe, I was successful in changing the past. Perhaps Mom was able to stop the old me, or a new bride had been picked before she got back to there. There won’t be any Warrior King coming after me because I was never the next bride.

  “You know, Gem, you always talk about the planet Mars in your dreams,” Cliff said with concern. “Sometimes you talk about your mom too. I have this feeling you need to settle something somewhere. Every time you go missing, I’m gripped with fear that I’ll never see you again.”

  Gem gave him a reassuring smile, taking both of his hands and squeezing them. “I think we’ve just been granted a new future,” she said with a huge smile on her beautiful face. “I will never, ever leave you, Cliff. We have a whole lot of years ahead to make new memories together.”

  He smiled. “I’d like that.”

  Then he leaned over and gave her a soft, sweet kiss on the lips. “I love you, Gem.”

  “I love you too, Cliff,” Gem whispered. Then grabbing his hand and pulling him down, they sat on the sand side by side. She tilted her head to rest it on his shoulder, while his canine friend joyfully bounced around them.

  “Now I’m ready to tell you everything,” she said. “Are you ready to listen?”

  “Of course,” was Cliff’s immediate reply. He placed his hand around her waist and pulled her even closer to him.

  “Once upon a time, in outer space, I lived in planet Mars…”

  THE END

  Bonus Story 35/40

  Taken by the SEALs

  Samantha Fry knew that Jack was returning tomorrow. Jack Plainview was the boy she had known all through her childhood, the boy who had always been picking up sticks and pretending they were guns, the boy with whom she had lost her virginity, the boy with whom she had smoked her first cigarette, the boy with whom she had first stopped being a Good Girl. She didn’t know this because he had contacted her. They had stopped talking about five years ago. They had just drifted apart in that inexorable way that happens between childhood friends who choose different paths. No, she knew because Barkton was a small town and in small towns news traveled fast.

  She had been in the store buying some milk and eggs when Miss Hag (her real name was Miss Hobson, but Samantha thought Hag worked better) sidled up to Samantha with a witch-like grimace and shoved a pointy stick-thin finger in her face. “That boy is coming home from the war tomorrow,” she barked. “That Jack Plainview what went off to the war some three years ago? He’s coming back. I remember you two as little kiddies, thick as thieves. You’ll be giving him quite the welcome?” The Hag licked her lips in a sickening caricature of feminine lust. “I bet you will.”

  Samantha had restrained the surprisingly strong urge to punch the Miss Hag in the nose. Now, home from her exciting, exhilarating, and massively fulfilling job of waiting tables at The Spatula, she lay on her bed in her one-bedroom apartment and looked up at the ceiling. She found herself wishing her parents were here. Her father had died four years ago, when she was twenty-four, and her mother had died a year after that. That her mother had died of cancer and her father in a car crash so soon afterward was a cruel punishment which Samantha didn’t feel deserving of. But it had happened and there was no point bemoaning it.

  She traced the pattern on her ceiling lazily with her eyes, wondering how changed Jack would be. She didn’t know why they had stopped talking. It had just sort of happened. He had gone off to the SEALs and she had never bothered to contact him and he had never bothered to contact her. And now most of her friends had moved out of Barkton to bigger and better things, and were so changed by their new lives that Samantha barely recognized them. The cities had taken them and warped them into pretentious cocktail-drinkers.

  Only Fiona had remained, her high-school friend with big bazooka breasts. Samantha thought about calling her up and going out for a drink but she didn’t have the energy, nor the inclination. She wanted, she realized, to see Jack. It was an urge within her that she barely comprehended. She had been fine, all this time, without seeing him. She had barely thought about him, unless in passing when someone at work had mentioned him. She hadn’t even seen a picture of him since he joined the SEALs.

  But he had always been strong. She remembered when, as a silly girl with dreams of being a mermaid, she had waded into the river that bordered the west side of the town. The current had been furious with her, and had whipped around her in an effort to dislodge her. She had screamed and cried and been as incapable as any eight-year-old girl caught in the grips of a natural disaster. But Jack, just as young, just as scared, had jumped into the water and, with amazing strength waded through the strong current, grabbed her, and tugged her to the shore.

  She remembered looking up at his young, excited face, framed by the sun. “Sammy,” he’d said. “Are you okay, Sammy?”

  She must’ve been intoxicated with excitement. She’d reached up and touched his cheek. “Thank you,” she said, and he’d blushed so fiercely she’d laughed.

  As she poured herself a small glass of wine, she wondered if he ever thought of these childhood memories. She took a sip, and then she realized how selfish her thought was. He’d been at war. He’d had more important things to worry about. She sighed heavily and then tipped her head back and drained the last of her wine. Head a tad dizzy, steps a tad tipsy, she returned to bed and climbed beneath the sheets. Outside, snow fell in tiny crystals.

  Samantha watched the night turn white and glittery until she fell asleep.

  *

  Samantha’s first thought, upon awaking to the sound of her apartment buzzer screeching through the place, was that her boss had decided to interrupt her day off. He sometimes did this, despite the fact that she always refused and had only worked a day off once, and only then for triple pay. She wasn’t overly happy with her job but the fact was she was a good waitress, one of the only ones who had stuck around, and was able to demand more than the average employee.

  She was preparing a firm refusal in her mind. Mr. Adams would just have to find somebody else. Mr. Adams would just have to wait the tables himself. Mr. Adams must be more organized than this. Yes, she would say all that and more. She felt a bit mean, like when she and Jack had pushed that big fat bully Ryan Grate into the ant’s nest. Then they had watched him squirm and scream as half the school looked on. He hadn’t been such a bully the next day.

  She shook her head. Why was the past so ghost-like lately? Then she pressed the apartment buzzer. Oh, how she would give it to Mr. Adams! He wouldn’t know what hit him! He would wish he had never left The Spatula to come here and try and ruin her small time of peace.

  “Yes?” she said, trying to keep her voice chirpy.

  “Samantha?”

  She knew the voice; her hand fell away from the buzzer.

  “Samantha? Are you there? It’s me. It’s Jack.”

  *****

  She tried to convince herself that she wasn’t dreaming, that Jack Plainview was really outside her apartment on an average Sunday morning, but it was hard. She hadn’t spoken to him in over half a decade. But what was she going to do, leave him standing down there? Maybe if she walked down there and saw the ghostly apparition she would wake up and things would go back to normal. She knew he was coming back today, but she hadn’t expected him to come to her apartment personally. They had drifted too far apart for that.

  She ran into her bedroom and threw on some sweat pants and a t-shirt. Then she pressed the buzzer and took a deep breath, lest she mumbled something incoherent and absurd. “Jack?” she said, hating the note of desperation in her voice.

  “Sammy,” Jack said, laughing.

  “I’m coming down now,” Samantha said.

  Her legs were like jelly as she desc
ended the stairs. She gripped the railing and walked down with steady steps. She was slightly embarrassed by her reaction, but mostly she was shocked and thrilled and scared that Jack had come to her door, pushing himself into her normal, boring life. She opened the door with a smile.

  It was snowing outside, and the sky was clouded over in a shield of white. The weather seemed poignant to her, as though it was more important than the very real ghost standing in the weather. Come on, Samantha, just turn from the clouds and look at the ghost. How hard can it be? She forced herself to look down. She knew she probably seemed drunk and weird, but that was okay; Jack had known her long enough to know she was drunk and strange a lot of the time.

  She looked down. She gasped.

  Jack had been a tall, muscular, brown-haired teenager. Now he was an even taller, even more muscular brown-haired man. His face was square and strong, and his eyes were sky-blue, almost white. They were eyes that looked through you and into you at once. He wore a green shirt and khaki pants with cream-colored boots. He stood with a soldier’s stiff back, and a light beard grew on his face, silver and brown.

  And the man beside him—

  He was thinner, but taller, with thick black hair and a savage handsomeness. He wore a thick checkered shirt and faded blue jeans with dark boots. He regarded her coolly with forest-green eyes.

  Jack smiled at her. “Sammy,” he said. “Aren’t you happy to see me? This is Eli Smith, a fellow SEAL.”

  Samantha found herself nodding like a bobble-head. Words seemed things for experts in those moments. She couldn’t grasp them, let alone use them. She looked at the two men mutely for a couple more moments and then she saw herself: a silly, skinny, blonde girl standing there with her mouth open.

  She shook her head. “Of course I am,” she said, and smiled. “I’m just shocked, is all. It’s nice to see you, Jack. It’s nice to meet you, Eli.”

  *

  Sitting in her living room with Jack and this Eli, Samantha felt a distinct feeling of unreality, as though she were watching all this through 3-D glasses. She tried to keep her face clear of her shock. She had regained herself after her initial silliness and had made them all some coffee. She sat on the chair and the two of them sat side by side on the couch. Samantha watched Jack with a sort of animalistic curiosity as he sipped his coffee and looked around the apartment. This man was once the boy who had waded into the river and… it was strange.

  Eli picked up one of her books, a John Steinbeck, regarded it for a few moments and then set it down on the table. Samantha wasn’t a huge reader, but her father had loved John Steinbeck and recently Samantha had decided to read through all his novels as a sort of tribute.

  “We’ve shocked you,” Jack said.

  “Perhaps a little,” Samantha admitted. “I knew you were back to today.”

  “The Hag?” Jack said.

  “Yeah, how did you know?”

  “She charged at us as soon as we were in town. She was the one who gave me your address. She was adamant that I come and see you. I was going to anyway and I was thankful for the address. She looks ancient. Do you remember when she was just a gray-haired old woman, when we used to sneak into her garden? Now she looks like an actual fairytale witch or something.”

  Eli laughed, and Samantha laughed with him. They met eyes for a moment, this strange man sitting next to her childhood friend. “I can’t imagine that woman being young,” Eli said. It was the first thing he had said. Samantha was surprise by how deep his voice was; and it was tinged with the Deep South.

  “Oh, she was never young,” Samantha said. “Just less old.”

  They both laughed at that and Samantha found herself grinning like a gargoyle. They finished their coffee and sat in a companionable silence for a time. Samantha didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. That was a nice change from work, where every silence was filled with all the imaginable mundanities in mundane existence. Jack insisted on taking the mugs to the kitchen and then the three of them sat there.

  Finally, Jack leaned forward. “Sammy, I’m actually here with an ulterior motive.”

  “Really?” she said. Thinking: He needs a place to stay. But there isn’t room.

  But it wasn’t that. Instead, he leaned across the coffee table and touched her hand. His hand was firm and warm. “I want you to come on a date with me and Eli,” Jack said, staring into her eyes.

  “Both of you?” Samantha exclaimed.

  “Yes,” he said, staring hard into her eyes. “Both of us. What do you say?”

  *****

  She had no idea what to say. She didn’t know Eli, and she barely knew Jack anymore. All she and Jack shared was a childhood; all she and Eli shared was Jack. There was no foundation upon which to build an opinion of Eli, and a flimsy one upon which to build a reevaluation of Jack. She returned his gaze and tried to look within him and see if he was joking with her. Jack had never been the most prankish or boys, but maybe war had changed him. But as she looked into his eyes she saw that he was dead-serious. They both wanted her.

  “Why?” Samantha said.

  Jack shrugged. “Why not? I showed Eli a picture of you whilst we were over there, and I thought about you a lot. I’m not saying we do anything, Sammy. Let’s just go on a date, the three of us, and see how it goes.”

  Eli was staring at her frankly with his deep green eyes; eyes like a wild man of the forest. Jack leaned forward on powerful forearms and looked deeper again into her eyes, penetrating her consciousness, making her feel like a fifteen-year-old girl again. She remembered the time when they had had too much to drink, and her parents had been out, and it had happened and it had been horrible and beautiful at the same time. Afterwards he had held her and they had done it again a day later, and many times after that.

  “Sammy,” Jack said.

  “Jack,” Samantha replied.

  “Just one date,” Eli said peremptorily, with the tone of voice of a man who hates waiting. “Just one date, Samantha.”

  Samantha looked down at her hands, and then back up at the two men. There was a danger to them, but it was not directed at her. They were different to the bums that hung around The Spatula, the dirty men with beer-stained vests and big pot bellies dangling over cheap jeans. These were men who didn’t need to intimidate women; their selves had already been affirmed in years of struggle and bloodshed. She felt as though she were part of something bigger than her town as she sat in the presence of these two men.

  “One date,” she said firmly. “I will go on one date, and it has to be in the city. I’m not having the whole town talking. And my car’s broken, so you have to drive.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Eli said, smiling.

  Jack nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

  She was a fool. You heard about cases like this all the time, didn’t you? Woman tricked into abduction by Navy SEALs. She would be third-page, one-paragraph news. So why then did she feel a thrill of excitement run through her at the thought? Even after Jack and Eli had left, rather unceremoniously, Samantha felt as though her life had just been promoted to something alien.

  Yesterday, she had been a waitress. Today, she was a point of desire for two muscular, dangerous, captivating Navy SEALs.

  Life is strange, sometimes, she thought, as she washed the coffee mugs.

  *

  They had scheduled the date for the following Friday, so Samantha had to endure an entire week of work before it came. She only saw Jack around twice, on his way to the store. He smiled at her and they exchanged a few words, but nobody would have guessed that they were anything more than old friends or casual acquaintances. Nobody would have guessed that they were going on a strange date in a few days. People would have thought: There goes that nice boy who fought in the war and that waitress who is always smiling. And that’s it. Upon reflection, that was how Samantha preferred it. Small towns are a hotbed of gossip. She had no desire to be the talk of the town anytime soon.

  When you have worked at a place for a lo
ng time, days cease to drag or go quickly. There is a comfortable routine to them and one day is so similar to the other that they become indistinguishable. Usually Samantha floated through her work week in a kind of funk, moving here and there as though propelled by a force she neither saw nor comprehended. This week, however, she was too excited and nervous about her date to not notice the time. Each pour of coffee seemed to drag out to a full minute, and even her lunch break became a sort of chore.

  But then, finally, Friday arrived.

  She wished she was more excited on the day. She feared she had spent her excitement in the week. The nervous energy had been used up and now she felt nonchalant and relaxed, like none of this was any big deal, really. And she had been quite silly for thinking otherwise. Perhaps she would feel different when she saw the SEALs. Perhaps their dormant danger would awake something in her. Or perhaps this would fail and they would all slide back into their own lives.

  Either way, she had to choose what to wear!

  *

  She stood, naked, before her mirror. She had never been the hot girl at school. Her breasts were too small. She had been called boyish many times. She thought it was a fair description. She had smallish B-cup breasts and a small waist and a petite bottom. Her skin was cloud-white and reddened rather than tanned in the sun. Her cheeks were lightly freckled and her hair was a deep wood-brown. Her eyes were blue like Jack’s. (For a short period as children they had been the “Blue-Eyed Gang”.) She wore a dress that covered her breasts but showed her sleek, well-formed legs. It was blue and sparkly. The dress in combination with the dark eye-liner brought out her eyes. At least, that was the intention. She had been told that she had eyes that were at once ferocious and vulnerable.

  She left her long nails unpainted and then poured herself a glass of wine. She drank two glasses as she waited for the men. They were to wait outside her apartment in the car and call her (Jack had taken her number). She wondered if this was all some sick prank but if it was a prank, what was the joke? She didn’t need them. She was intrigued by them, yes, and curious about them, but need them? No, not now, not ever, she told herself.