Phoenix

by Finley Aaron

  She falls silent.

  For uncounted minutes we sit in silence, observing the leaping flames of the bonfire before us, munching the last of the bear meat when Ram shares it around.

  Ram sits beside Nia and asks, “How did you survive?”

  “Hmm.” Nia tears meat with her teeth, chews, swallows. “Do you know what happens to a dragon when it dies?”

  “It burns?” I whisper the rumor I’d always heard, though I’ve never personally seen it. I’ve never seen a dragon killed—and killing is the only way we die. Dragons don’t die of old age or sickness. We’re essentially immortal, but we can be slain.

  “Yes.” Nia’s voice sounds thick. “When a dragon dies in dragon form, the last of its fire wells up and overcomes it. That’s why you never find dragon bones or carcass, or anything you can trace back to the dragon.”

  “Everything is consumed?” Ram clarifies.

  “Everything that is dead is consumed. In the case of my mother, when she was slain in a battle in the air, the faithful people of her tribe marked the place where she fell. They traveled to that spot and reached her shortly before she drew her last breath. When she burst into flames, they mourned her, but in the midst of the fire, they saw something that was not consumed.”

  Again, we’re silent, watching the raging inferno in front of us as it consumes the fuel I provided and dies down to ashes.

  Nia draws in a shaky breath. Her words are heavy, but clear. “It was my egg. She had not yet laid it, though I was fully developed and hatched not long after. The tribal elders told me that in times of trial, such as the wars that killed my parents and the last of the dragons of our kingdom, a dragon can retain her egg for the safety of the baby inside. So it was with me. My mother had not yet laid my egg when she died. The tribal elders raised me. They taught me about my heritage and even helped me learn how to assume my dragon form. I loved them. I loved them dearly. But they could not replace what I’d lost, and I longed to find more of my own kind.”

  Ram rises, finds a branch nearby, stirs the fire, sending sparks leaping skyward, and then tosses the branch atop the renewed fire. He sits again. “Is that what drew you to the one you call the white witch?”

  “In a way, yes. I had always wondered if other dragons might still exist somewhere. Knowing we can dwell in human and dragon form, I began to travel, hoping to find others living among their humans as a human, in secret. I searched first the region near my homeland, and eventually traveled the world in search of my own kind. Generations came and went, and soon my tribe no longer knew me. My sojourn grew. A few decades ago I first encountered the mamluki—or yagi, as you call them. They were easier to kill in those days.”

  “What do you mean?” Ram asks.

  “They’ve grown more sophisticated. There are more of them. I began to encounter them more often—first once every couple of years, then every year, then many times a year. I observed them and realized they were targeting me specifically. But why? Because I’m a dragon?”

  “Yes,” I whisper the answer, not because I don’t think she knows it, but because I want to communicate that we know it, too. That we understand. That we have fought these same enemies, and pondered their motives, just as she has.

  “Yes,” Nia echoes. “Once I realized that, I wondered if my enemy might be my greatest benefactor—that is, that those who were bred to kill me, might help me find others of my kind.”

  “Because they track down dragons.” There’s awe in my voice as I make the realization aloud. Nia is brilliant. We’ve been searching for dragons all these years, but never thought to follow the yagi to find them. “Yagi are bred to find dragons—they can locate them better than anyone.”

  “That’s what I hoped.” Nia sighs. “Instead, they led me to the white witch. She enslaved me. We eventually struck a deal—that I would haul these nets for her, if she would give me information on my fellow dragons. But my first attempt at using that information was a disaster.” Nia’s voice grows thick again, and she opens her mouth. At first I fear she’s going to start sobbing, but then, I realize it’s a yawn.

  Of course. She’s exhausted. She hasn’t slept in how long? And been in dragon form how much since then? It’s a wonder she’s awake at all. Her story, I suspect, has spilled from her in part because she’s tired. Her guard is down.

  Would she have told us so much about herself had she been well-rested? I doubt it. Sleep-deprivation can be a bit like drunkenness for loosening the lips—not that we dragons know anything about drunkenness. We don’t dare drink alcohol, because if we have it in our blood when we breathe fire, we could explode.

  Seriously. The sadistic dragon hunters of old supposedly used that trick to kill dragons—first getting them to drink alcohol, either through trickery or by withholding all food and water until the dragons were so desperate they’d drink. And then they’d provoke them to change into dragon form and breathe fire.

  An awful way to die.

  It’s just one of the many ways dragons differ from people. Another is that we don’t pass gas. Instead, the methane in our systems is redirected to our fire-blowing glands, and is emitted as fire.

  A much better system than the ones humans use for ridding themselves of excess gas. And it proves that, while some may refer to us as evolutionary throwbacks because of our resemblance to dinosaurs, in some ways, we’re evolutionarily more advanced.

  But it proves I, too, am exhausted. My thoughts are wandering to the strangest places on the brink of sleep.

  Ram, ever serious, rises and stirs the fire. “We can take the night watch in shifts. I’ll go first.”

  “I can go first.” Nia insists.

  “You’ve been awake longer than either of us, and in dragon form more of that time, too. You need your rest. I’ll go first. Felix can take the watch after three hours, and you can take the last three hours. That will give each of us six hours of sleep. We’ll rise at sunset and fly toward the sea.”

  Nia doesn’t look at all pleased about sleeping until the last shift, but since she can’t seem to fight off her yawning, she reluctantly agrees, and curls up on the bear skin close to the fire.

  I pile pine needles nearby and wrap myself in my cloak, while Ram circles our campsite, tossing limbs on the fire and peering sternly into the woods.

  Sleep finds me quickly. Too soon, Ram stirs me awake and I rise to circle the fire while he sleeps.

  It’s still bright daylight, sometime around late afternoon. I can see clearly into the woods, and even in human form, my dragon eyesight penetrates the haze of distance. I can’t see through things like trees and mountains, but I can see sharply through the clear air, almost as though my eyes are fitted with binoculars.

  I see no sign of yagi, nor do I smell them. By my estimations, we flew a few hundred miles last night. How long did it take the yagi to catch up to us when we flew to the abandoned prisoner of war camp? Not long. Only long enough for me to fly back to the cabin, grab weapons, have the world’s quickest chat with my parents, and then rendezvous with Ram and Nia. An hour, maybe two, tops.

  And how far was the prisoner of war camp from where Ram and Nia and I first encountered the yagi? Forty, maybe fifty miles?

  So we’re, at best, ten times as far away from the yagi as we were then, but maybe only five times as far away. So they could show up five hours from when we last saw them. (When was that? I’m usually decent at math, but my sleep-deprived brain is muddled.) Or it might be as long as twenty hours, but more likely somewhere around ten hours.

  I think. I’m pretty tired right now.

  But here’s what I know. We flew for a few hours just to get here—low and slow, avoiding people. And the yagi were probably following us that whole time. Do yagi even need rest? Who knows? Either way, they’re going to show up sooner or later. Probably sooner. Most likely, if my calculations are correct, they’ll arrive sometime during Nia’s watch.

  I stop my slow circling around the fire and look at Nia, who’s sleeping pea
cefully on the bearskin. For a moment I’m struck by the amazingness of it—that there really is another dragon in the world, and we found her, and she’s beautiful.

  I need to protect her from the yagi and make up for all those years when she was alone. I need to convince her that she is no longer alone. That she can trust us and depend on us. More than that, I want her to know she is loved—and convince her to love me.

  But the yagi might well arrive while Ram and I are asleep. Nia wanted to take the first watch. She didn’t really want to come with us in the first place, because she was afraid the yagi would catch up to us and kill us.

  She wanted to turn herself over to Eudora.

  She only agreed to sleep because she knew she was past the point of exhaustion. She knew she couldn’t go anywhere unless she slept first.

  Then it hits me—creeping up from that dreadful place in my gut where the worst instincts always seem to originate.

  It echoes up my cold spine with every protest Nia made, every argument she gave for why she needed to give herself up to save us.

  If I can do the math, she’s probably done the math as well—she who first figured out you could follow dragon hunters to find dragons. Nia’s smart. She knows the yagi will be coming.

  She has no intention of staying with us, does she?

  CHAPTER SIX

  The realization keeps me awake even when my exhaustion rolls over me in waves that threaten to drown me. I haven’t had much sleep—just a tease, really, when you consider I was up all last night staking out the cave, and then I’ve been flying most of today. But the fear that Nia might try to leave us is enough to keep me from falling asleep even when my shift ends. Once I awaken Nia to take her shift keeping watch, I lie down and close my eyes, pretending to sleep.

  It would be so easy to fall asleep right now. My foot fell asleep earlier even though I was standing up at the time. That’s how tired I am. And faking sleep—making my breathing slow and even, keeping my body motionless—makes it that much more difficult for me to fight the undertow.

  In fact, the only thing keeping me awake at all is the fear that so resembles guilt, the guilty fear that says if Nia gets away now, it will be my fault for letting her slip away when I could have prevented it.

  After all, failure and broken things have always been my fault. It was always my fault if my team lost, playing knights and dragons with my siblings growing up. I was the youngest, the least skilled, the weak one, the first to lose and bring the whole team down.

  More than failing, though, I was the one who broke things. Not on purpose. I was just a little kid. And, okay, maybe I was too curious about Ram’s models or my sisters’ music boxes. I probably shouldn’t have ever touched them or tried to help build the model. But then my brother would come in and see me holding his beloved models (he built model cars, trains, planes, you name it) and yell at me, startle me, and I’d drop them, or try to put them back and fumble them.

  The first several times, I denied it was my fault. If Ram hadn’t startled me, or if the girls hadn’t screamed in such shrill voices, maybe I wouldn’t have broken anything.

  But at some point, I think by the time I was eight, I realized what was wrong.

  It was my fault.

  I have the broken touch.

  You know, like King Midas had the golden touch, and could turn things to gold with the tip of a finger? Well, I don’t have the golden touch. I have the broken touch.

  I break things.

  And if Nia escapes now, on my watch, I’ll have broken something far more precious than all the models and music boxes I ever dropped. Whatever I do, I cannot let that happen. And so, in spite of my exhaustion and the long silence, I vow to stay awake.

  But Nia must be waiting, biding her time until she’s sure and certain I’m asleep, because I’m nearly dozing off in spite of my fear when I hear a clink of metal.

  I open my eyelids the tiniest crack. I have slightly longish eyelashes for a guy (I think it’s my Azerbaijani heritage that causes it) so I can open my eyes to slits without it being too obvious my eyes aren’t completely closed.

  And through those eyelash-veiled slits, I watch Nia gather her things—slowly, stealthily. When she’s got everything ready—her swords strapped securely into place, where they’ll stay whether she’s in human or dragon form, and her cloak wrapped securely around her—she rises and turns one last longing look on Ram.

  One long, longing look. The firelight is flickering over her face and it’s not yet evening, so I can see her features clearly. I’ve mentioned we dragons can communicate a great deal with just a look. Right now, as she’s looking at my brother, Nia’s face says that she wanted so much, for so long, to meet another dragon.

  And there he is, and he’s more than she hoped for and everything she wanted, all in one person, and she hates to leave him but feels she must in order to keep him safe.

  She has a very expressive face.

  Then she turns. I keep my eyes open only the tiniest bit, expecting her to direct a similar look at me.

  And, okay, I admit, maybe I’m hoping the look she gives me will be even more longing.

  After all, I met her first. I flew after her—if I hadn’t flown after her so that she stopped with me in the woods, Ram never would have caught up to her or found her. The two of them would never have met, and she’d have gone back to Eudora or been caught by the yagi by now. She wouldn’t even know we exist if I hadn’t flown after her.

  So the look she gives me should hold all those unspoken sentiments.

  But she turns and leaves. She doesn’t look at me at all.

  It’s not as though I missed it. I’ve been watching her carefully through narrowed slits of eyes this whole time, and she hasn’t looked my way more than a couple of quick glances when her swords made clinking noises, when she was checking to see if I’d startled or awakened.

  Nia never gave me a longing look. Whatever looks she gave me then, those brief glances, were more like wary looks.

  And now she’s turned her back on us and is walking away, silently, to the other end of the open area where we’ve made our camp, farther from the fire.

  Nia still has not looked at me, but leaps into the air, morphing into a glorious dragon whose color puts the flames of our fire to shame.

  For the briefest second I’m simply shocked. She didn’t look at me at all? I mean, I know Ram has always before made me seem invisible, but I didn’t think I really was invisible, or so easily entirely dismissed.

  But Nia is already in the air, jetting away in the direction we came—in the direction of Eudora.

  And the yagi.

  I’ve got to catch up to her before she encounters the yagi. In her current frame of mind, she might well let the yagi kill her, thinking it’s the only way to save me and Ram and all of dragon posterity.

  I take stock of my weapons as I leap to my feet. Yes, I have everything ready. I’d feared Nia might leave—just not like this, not quite like this.

  In an instant I’m in dragon form, flying after her with all my might. She is fast and had a head start, but I am quick and desperate. Besides, I don’t think she’s flying full out at all—part of her is still conflicted, still tied to the fireside and the dragon she left behind.

  Not me, obviously.

  Knowing I must stop her quickly before she encounters the yagi, who could be almost upon us in another moment anyway, I fly for all I’m worth. When I’m nearly caught up to her, I dart through the sky above her and drop suddenly, inserting myself into her path.

  Nia swerves to go around me.

  I swerve the same way.

  She fakes left.

  I have four older siblings who gave up trying that trick years ago. I can see her intention from the glint in her eyes, and catch her as she doubles back the other way, wrapping my arms around her and using my wings to lower us gently to the ground even as she fights to get away. She struggles against me, beating her wings in an attempt to lift us both into the
air again, or to pull free of my grasp.

  Once again, my years wrestling with my siblings, both in human and dragon form, pay off to my advantage, and I’m able to pull her out of the sky without hurting her. That last part—the not hurting—is vital to me, not only because I’m a dragon protector and therefore wish no harm upon humans or dragons, but also because I want to win this woman’s affections, and I don’t believe that’s something anyone can be bullied into.

  Nia clearly doesn’t like being overpowered and pulled past the trees in the direction of the ground. She blows a blast of fire in my face. Fortunately I’m in dragon form, so it doesn’t really hurt me, though it’s hot and disorienting and momentarily blinds me, which is probably why we hit the ground a lot harder than I intended—I couldn’t see how close we were to the earth until after my shoulder made contact.

  We roll, a hearty tumble across rocks and sticks, and I think Nia might even be trying to use her claws on me, maybe out of desperation, and I remember another lesson I learned from being the youngest.

  The youngest, you see, is the weakest, at least for the first several years, and also the one most easily pitied by its parents. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but I’m not going to downplay the truth it taught me. That is: vulnerability is sometimes the best armor.

  It’s a paradox, I know, but when you think it through, it really works. You see, if Nia blasts fire in my face and I respond by blasting fire right back—if she escalates so I escalate and we both get meaner and tougher and fiercer, we could destroy each other.

  That’s not going to save the race of dragons from extinction.

  Besides which, if Nia feels threatened, of course she’s going to defend herself any way she can, which means not necessarily fighting fair.