by Finley Aaron
I correct my brother. “They didn’t. They yagi kept catching up to them, and they had to fight them off.”
“But before that—they hid out in Prague.” Ram tilts his chin upward in that superior, lecturesome way he has. “Yagi are bred from cockroaches. They avoid people, crowds, bright lights, loud noises. They avoid cities.”
While I’m pretty sure cockroaches actually love cities, I understand Ram’s point. The yagi can’t bother us—not obviously, at least—as long as there are people around. I continue scanning the horizon with my dragon vision. In addition to no yagi, I also note a shortage of cities. Or villages. Or any people at all. “Great—where’s the nearest city?”
“Beijing,” Nia offers, “but we’re at least a thousand miles from there, and none of us is in any condition to fly a thousand miles without rest.”
“It doesn’t have to be a city.” Ram slams his sword down, severing another leg from his elk. “A fishing village or port town will do—we should be able to find one of those on the coast. All we have to do is surround ourselves with people. Find a hotel in the middle of town. Get a room. And sleep.” He blasts a torrent of fire onto the elk leg.
I thoughtfully chew the bite in my mouth. I’m so tired I could fall asleep on this freezing cold mountain. The thought of a hotel room with a bed and blankets and pillows sounds beyond blissful. And the walls would block the wailing sound of the yagi, protecting us from paralysis even if they crept up on our hotel while we slept. It’s a tantalizing idea.
But there are obvious holes in my brother’s plan. “We don’t speak Russian. How are we going to get a room?”
“It’s a port town. Somebody’s bound to know—” Ram starts.
But Nia cuts him off. “I speak fluent Russian.”
If I look surprised, I can’t help it. “You do?”
“I learned it from a computer course in the white witch’s library. I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. There wasn’t much else to do for entertainment. I finished the Russian course and I’m halfway through Chinese.”
Ram looks pleased—both with Nia, and the possibility that his plan will prove successful. “Nia can help us find a room. And money talks. Do we have any credit cards with us?”
“In the wallet pocket of my scabbard belt.” I would put more emphasis on the fact that I’ve got a credit card and Ram doesn’t, but that’s not my only concern. “So, we’re just going to walk into town barefoot, two Middle Eastern guys and their African supermodel friend, in boxer shorts and a bikini, covered in swords? I’m sure Siberian fishing villages see that kind of thing all the time.”
I inherited my gift of sarcasm from my mother.
Ram scowls. He did not inherit a gift for sarcasm, and I think he resents it. “We have our cloaks. Once we get to town, we can go shopping. We just have to get there.”
But even as he’s talking, Nia unfurls one of the elk skins and flicks her right hand so that her talons sprout independently of the rest of her dragon-ness. She slashes the length of the elk skin with her razor-sharp nails, cutting long, ribbon-like strips. “We don’t have to go into town barefoot,” she explains, slashing another batch of ribbons. “Fresh leather isn’t as practical as tanned, and we’ll probably attract dogs, but we won’t have to go into town barefoot.”
She seems to have totally missed, or else chosen to ignore, my indirect compliment about looking like a supermodel.
Or maybe she doesn’t see that as a compliment. Hopefully I didn’t accidentally insult her. That wasn’t at all my intent, but how was I to know?
I still don’t understand her, which makes it so difficult to forge a connection.
As the sun sinks low and the evening fades, Nia shows us how to make boots from the elk skins. The seams are a little bulky, being stitched together with the strips of leather, using bone shards as needles (we pre-drill each hole with our talons—so much sharper than any bone shard, and we can do four holes at a time once we get the hang of it).
While Ram and I finish sewing our boots, Nia fashions a dress for herself from the remaining elk skin. It wraps around like a robe and ties with a thick leather ribbon, and she tries it on, looking up at us with uncertainty.
“Do I look like a freak?” she asks.
I try not to stare. She looked breathtaking in her bikini-like dragon girl outfit—she even made the bulky cloak look good. But there’s something wild and rugged and gorgeous about the sight of her in her elk-skin boots that lace up almost to her knees, with her robe dress that hangs mid-way down her thighs (I got the biggest elk I could grab, but there was only so much hide left after we made the boots). She even has a little meat still clinging to the leather around the edge of her skirt, like some kind of ruffled, edible trim.
I may be drooling. “You look amazing. Good. Really good.” Unsure what else to say or how she might take it if I try again to pay her a compliment, I leave it at that, hoping to take my next cue from her reaction to what I’ve said so far.
But Nia’s attention is on the horizon. “Are you two about ready? We need to get moving. They’re coming.”
I gaze into the glare of the setting sun. There, among the trees, darkness spreads like spilled ink. Is it my imagination, or have their numbers grown?
The yagi are after us. We won’t have any time to rest, not until we find a town. We need to fly.
“Let’s gather our things and get going.” Ram tosses the boots and Nia’s dress into the bearskin burrito bundle, while I strap on the backpack and we secure our swords.
Then we rise as dragons into the night sky, flying exhaustedly toward the coast.
The wind is favorable. This much is good. If the wind wasn’t favorable, I don’t think any of us would have the strength to fight it. We glide, half-sleeping, as the light fades from the sky and the stars appear above us.
We soar through the night, but nights are short in Siberia at this time of year, and the darkness in the east is already fading to gray by the time the sea spreads into sight far ahead of us, reflecting the stars to the sky. And between the sea and the sky twinkle lights of a different kind. Yellower, cruder, human.
A town.
Ram and Nia must have spotted it, too, because without any signal, we all adjust our direction to head for the cluster of lights. Though it will soon be gone, I’m grateful for the darkness, because this close to a town, small town though it is, we’re more likely to encounter humans.
Ever cautious, we drop from the sky a mile or two shy of the town, in a wooded area near a road. There we don our boots and adjust our cloaks and swords while Nia slips into her dress, draping her cloak over her shoulders and one arm while angling both her swords, as Ram and I angled ours, to protrude past the opposite shoulder.
I’m hungry, thirsty, and as tired as I have ever been. I don’t even have the strength to be cranky or competitive right now.
“Contacts?” Ram asks.
“Oh. Yeah.” I open the backpack and unzip the interior pocket. We always keep our backpacks stocked with all the basics—spare toothbrushes, clean shorts, and plenty of blister packs of disposable contacts.
The contacts are not prescription. They don’t alter our vision. They’re dull, color-changing contacts my mom orders in bulk from a specialty supplier. I think they were originally produced as a novelty for people to wear with costumes, but we keep the lenses in production with our family-sized orders.
Ram and I slip ours into our eyes with practiced ease, and show Nia how to put them in over her eyes.
They turn Ram’s eyes a deep, dusky blue. My scarlet red eyes become a ruddy chocolate brown, and Nia’s, a muddy hazel. To be honest, our eyes still look a little strange, but they’re no longer jewel-toned, no longer visibly glowing.
That’s all that matters.
We still look strange—just not as strange as we otherwise would. We’re not going to blend in with the locals. There’s no hope of that.
We just have to look normal enough to get a room at a hotel.
As we
start off on the hike toward town, I assess our appearance. Swords, daggers, cloaks that fail to cover the fact that Ram and I are nearly nude in the Siberian north. And elk boots that smell like a fresh kill. Ram finger-combed his shoulder-length hair and tucked it back behind his ears. My dark auburn hair is short and probably could use a good wash. We both need to shave.
I’m not going to deny we look peculiar —at least as peculiar as we smell.
But do we look too outlandish to get a room in this remote outpost on the Siberian coast? Surely they get some odd folks out here—people wearing elk skins, even.
We just need to get a room, to get away from the yagi long enough to sleep and make our plans. It shouldn’t be too much to ask.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The hike into town passes in a groggy stupor, except for a couple of dogs barking furiously at us from behind a fence. Fortunately the animals didn’t get out, or who knows what we might have had to do to defend our deliciously elk-scented boots?
Adrenaline stirs me awake as we pass the outskirts of the town on our way in. Most of the settlement appears to be still asleep. It’s not a very large town, maybe a few thousand people, and we’re able to locate the business district with ease. There are a handful of hotels to choose from. We pick the tallest building and enter the lobby.
There’s no one at the desk, but we ring a bell and a bleary-eyed man appears. I think he may have been sleeping just out of sight in the room behind the desk, whether in a cot or chair, I can’t see. He blinks a few times at our apparel, but when I slide the credit card to him across the desk, he smiles.
Nia’s talking in Russian. She’s taller than the man, and he looks a little intimidated by her, but he doesn’t freak out, and keeps talking.
Nia’s negotiating. I can’t tell, because I don’t speak Russian and I don’t even know Nia that well, but from the glimmer in her eyes and the tone of her voice (mostly pleasant, but with a commanding edge every bit as sharp as the sword at her back) I’d say she’s holding her ground on something.
It makes me slightly nervous. I mean, we’re outsiders here. We don’t want trouble. Granted, if trouble comes, we’re equipped to meet it—but only by giving away the fact that we’re not normal.
I don’t want to have to do that right now. I just want to sleep.
But whether it’s the edge in her voice or the blades on her back, Nia’s words do their work. The man at the counter turns his hands palm-up in a gesture of acquiescence. He scans my card and gives us a key card, speaking Russian to Nia and pointing to the elevator.
She smiles and says something that’s probably the Russian version of thank-you.
We don’t start talking until the elevator doors have closed after us.
Nia speaks first. “I got us a room on the top floor. Two double beds.”
“What was he arguing with you about?” Ram asks.
“It’s still early morning. Check-in for today isn’t until this afternoon. He wanted to charge us for last night and tonight. I told him half rate for last night, since we’ll only be here half the night.”
“I wouldn’t have pushed it,” I admit quietly as the elevator doors open and we step into the dimly lit hall. “We don’t want trouble.”
“Precisely.” Nia leads the way to a room whose door bears the same number as the key card envelope. “If I let him charge us for a full night we didn’t use, that tells him I’ve got something to hide—something I’m willing to pay to keep hidden. That’s not a message I want to communicate. Not if I don’t want trouble.” She slides the key card into its slot. A light blinks green and she steps in, switching on the light.
Ram and I step in after her.
“You really thought that through,” I admit.
She smiles—a weary smile. “This isn’t my first time staying in a strange hotel.”
The room isn’t anything fancy, but it looks clean and has two beds, as promised, and a deadbolt for the door. We’re on the fourth floor. It’s not the most secure fortress imaginable, but if Ram is correct, it should be enough to keep the yagi away from us long enough for us to catch up on sleep, and maybe even come up with a plan.
Because so far, our only plan has been try not to die.
And of course, I have my secret plan to woo Nia away from my brother, which to this point doesn’t seem to be working.
At all.
So if we could at least achieve those things—sleep, a plan, and maybe even a shower—I’ll be happy.
Ram takes off his cloak and dumps his swords on the only chair in the room. “I’ll take the side of the bed nearest the window—it’s the point most vulnerable to attack.”
“I’ll take the bed next to the bathroom.” Nia sits on the edge of her claimed bed and tugs off her elk boots. “And I want a shower, so if either of you need to use the bathroom, get in and out now so I can take my time.”
I grab my toothbrush, make quick use of the facilities, drink several large handfuls of water, and then fall, face-down, on the same bed Ram claimed. I don’t mind that he wants the side by the window, because it means I get the side closest to Nia. The beds are barely a foot apart, spaced by a tiny nightstand, so I could reach out and touch Nia, or hold her hand if she felt so inclined. And that’s a nice thing to think about in the brief half-second before I fall asleep.
You’d think, being absurdly tired as I am, that I’d fall into the deepest dreamless sleep. But if you’ve ever been beyond tired, you know that sleep-deprivation can mess up your regular sleep patterns and throw you into a weird sort of alternate-reality kind of sleep—as it does to me right now.
My dreams are vivid, strangely real, and filled with fire.
I’m no stranger to fire. I can make fire in my throat and spew it from my lips whether I’m in human or dragon form. Our fortress home in the mountains of Azerbaijan has fireplaces in nearly every room. I’ve been surrounded by fire for most of my life.
But not like this. I’m prancing on the coals of the fire I put out at our campsite as the yagi were bearing down on us. I’m kicking the coals, stomping them to extinguish their flames, but they’re burning, flaming, too many coals with flames leaping too high, so that I can’t see anything but fire all around.
And I’m peering through the fire, searching for something, when I see it.
An egg.
Nia’s egg?
Of course it’s Nia’s egg. She was born of fire. Her mother died and her body burned, and Nia was the only dragon left.
But I’ve got to keep her safe. I pick up the egg (it’s about the size of an American football—similar shape, too, just not so pointy on the ends) and I’m running, dodging flames, my way barred here and there by impassible walls of flame, until I realize there is no way out. It’s just flames everywhere.
I’m panting when I open my eyes. The lights are off in the hotel room, but it’s daytime, and the light-blocking curtains (which I’m sure come standard in hotel rooms in a part of the world where, at the height of summer, it never really gets dark at night) are wide open. I suppose Ram left them open on purpose so he could watch for yagi.
I roll over so my back is to my sleeping brother, and I see Nia lying on her stomach on the other bed, her head turned my way. The sound of my rolling over must have awakened her, because she opens one eye warily. “Everything okay?” Her words are half whisper, half silent mouthing.
“You’re a Phoenix.” I’m still partly asleep, not yet free of my dream, and I realize the words are true even as I speak them. I researched the phoenix legend as a kid, mostly because my name, Felix, sounds like the word phoenix. But Felix actually means happy.
Nia makes a face. “A phoenix is a bird. I’m a dragon.”
“A phoenix is a legendary creature who is consumed by flames and is born again out of the ashes.”
Nia blinks, sits up a tiny bit, and then sags back into her pillow. “Maybe in that sense I am. It doesn’t matter. Go back to sleep.”
“Okay.” I close my eyes,
the dream gone, empty sleep stretching before me like the vast ocean. But then I remember something important and open my eyes again. “Nia?”
“Yes?” The word is as soft as the sigh that follows it.
“When the phoenix emerges from the ashes, it’s stronger than it was before.”
This time her response is just a sigh.
“That’s important,” I assure her.
“Go to sleep,” she whispers.
And I do.
When I awake the next time, Ram and Nia are both sitting cross-legged on her bed, eating pizza out of a delivery box. The sky is hazy outside the window, the sun drooping in the long late-spring Siberian twilight.
I sit up straight. “Did I miss something?”
“I was hungry,” Nia explains. She lifts the box and holds it out to me. “Pizza?”
“Sure. Thanks.” I pull a cheesy slice, heaped with meaty toppings, from the nearly-empty box. Fortunately there are two more boxes under this one.
I wonder if they would have eaten them all without telling me.
Ram clears his throat. “We’ve been discussing our next move.”
“Um-hmm?” I’m chewing, but I encourage him to explain.
“We need to stay ahead of the yagi. We don’t dare go home because they’ll follow us there.”
I swallow a bite of pizza and add my thoughts. “We need to defeat them—destroy them, like Ed destroyed the source of the water yagi.”
Nia places her hand on my arm. “Destroying the source of the water yagi isn’t the same as destroying all the water yagi. The white witch won’t be able to make any more, but the ones she’s already made are still out there.” She withdraws her hand and grabs another piece of pizza. “I’ve been a prisoner of the white witch for over two years. In that time, I never learned how she made the yagi, so I don’t know how we would destroy that operation. And even if we did somehow destroy it, there would still be all the yagi in the world to contend with—and we only know of one way to kill them. Decapitation. One by one. There are simply too many after us. They’d overwhelm us before we dealt with a fraction of them.”