Phoenix

by Finley Aaron

  “Then we need to find a faster way to kill them,” I insist.

  Ram glares are me. “Are you listening? There’s only one way to kill them. Besides, that’s not what we’ve been discussing. We have a plan.”

  “You have a plan? You made a plan without me?” I reach for more pizza—which they also bought without consulting me. How long were they going to leave me out of everything? The agitation I felt earlier towards my brother, which I put on hold until we found a place to sleep, now returns with renewed vigor.

  “The white witch told me of two different places where dragons may still exist. One is China.” Nia pauses to take a bite of pizza.

  “Ram’s been to China the last two summers, looking for dragons,” I fill in what I know as she chews. “He hasn’t found any.”

  Nia swallows. “Yes. And I don’t have any information that would help. China is a vast land. I searched there myself many years ago. They respect dragons there. Revere them. Even worship them. But I found no real dragons, only legends.” She pauses to take another bite.

  “But you said there were two places where there might be dragons,” I prompt, trying to recall what she’d said before. An island, right? Near Fiji?

  Nia is chewing, so Ram confirms my unspoken suspicions, “The other is an island near Fiji. We don’t know much—only that the island is between Fiji and Tonga. It’s roughly heart-shaped, and it’s home to a live volcano.”

  “Volcano?” I repeat through a bite of pizza.

  “According to legend, the dragon lives in the volcano.” Nia makes a face that says she’s not so sure about the accuracy of the story. “Long ago, the dragons of the volcano demanded that virgins be thrown into the fiery pit.”

  “Dragons demanded that?” My mouth is empty now and hanging slightly open. “I’ve never known a dragon that would do that.”

  “But you’ve heard the myths,” Ram reminds me. “You know the stories.”

  “Yes, but those stories aren’t real. They were spread by the enemies of the dragon world—by people who wanted to defeat dragons in order to conquer their lands and their people. A real dragon wouldn’t do that.” I look back and forth between Ram and Nia. “Would they?”

  “We don’t know.” Nia admits. “Maybe there is more to story. Maybe it was a test of bravery, and the dragons rescued the virgins at the last minute. Maybe the islanders lost their dragon, and made up the legend so no one would realize they were unprotected. Maybe the details have been embellished over the years, or merged with other traditions. We won’t have the answers until we go there and investigate the issue ourselves.”

  “So that’s where we’re headed?” I collapse the empty pizza box while Ram opens the box that was under it. “Fiji?”

  Nia pulls a slice of pizza from the fresh box. “I’ve wanted to travel there to learn the truth behind the information the white witch gave me, but I was forced to do her bidding and couldn’t get away. Besides that, I had hoped to gain more specific details about the location and what I might find when I arrived there. Coordinates of latitude and longitude, a more specific description…” her words fade.

  “We have enough to go on,” Ram reassures her. “It will have to be enough.”

  “So that’s the plan, then? When we leave here, we’re going to head to Fiji?”

  Nia nods. “We can fly over the open sea without much fear of being seen. Once we get far from the Sea of Okhotsk, the water yagi will not be so plentiful. We may be able to sleep while floating in the ocean.”

  “Or we may have to land again,” Ram concludes. “Either way, we’ll be ahead of the yagi. All we have to do is stay ahead of them until we get to Fiji.”

  “And then what?” I ask.

  Ram and Nia exchange looks.

  “Then we’ll know if the legend is true. We’ll know if there’s another dragon.” Ram concludes, leaving unspoken a bunch of things, including what we all know—that it doesn’t really change anything. Yes, we’ll know if there’s another dragon. That’s always been our quest. But it won’t save us from the yagi, only give us something to do while we run from them.

  “Let’s finish up this pizza and get some sleep.” Nia reaches for an empty plastic hotel cup, and heads for the sink in the bathroom to fill it. “Checkout is at ten tomorrow morning. We need to be ready to leave then.”

  Obediently, I take another piece of pizza and eat, but my heart is thumping anxiously. Something passed between Ram and Nia in that look they exchanged, something more than the fact that we don’t yet know how to defeat the yagi.

  Ram and Nia had plenty of time to talk before I woke up, while they decided to order pizza and then waited for it to arrive. What have they been talking about? More than just the possibility of finding dragons in Fiji.

  But neither of them looks ready to expound right now. And Ram’s right. We need our sleep.

  Still, it bothers me. Neither of them really answered my question. Whether we find another dragon in the volcano or not, that isn’t going to change the fact that the yagi are after us. Ram and Nia aren’t dealing with the real problem.

  The yagi are the real problem.

  Ram’s plan doesn’t even address that. His best possible scenario is that we’ll find another female dragon in the volcano. Maybe then Ram will fall in love with her, and I can marry Nia.

  But that doesn’t seem likely, because why would a female dragon want virgins sacrificed to her? Unless they weren’t really sacrificed, just tossed in to help her with housework, or something.

  Far more likely, we’ll find no dragons. Or worst of all, we might find a male dragon and Nia might decide she likes him better than either of us, and Ram and I will have only heartbreak to show for all our efforts.

  We finish off the pizza and go back to sleep.

  Sometime later, I awaken to the sound of the hotel room door closing, and I sit up straight.

  Nia is asleep in her bed, oblivious to the world.

  From the gray light outside the window, it appears the darkest part of the night has come and gone, but it’s not nearly checkout time. Not yet. Probably still the wee hours of morning. Most of the town is likely asleep.

  A shadow crosses the wall. Something’s moving outside. It might be no big deal, but we are four stories off the ground. What could be out there? A bird? The shadow didn’t look like a bird shadow, with wings. No, it looked almost…human.

  I rise and pad on silent feet to the window. Beyond the town I see the port with fishing boats and other ocean-going vessels in harbor.

  A dark form crosses the corner of the window, and I look up, pressing my face to the glass.

  Is that—yes, it must be. What else could look so much like a cockroach and yet be the same size I am?

  The yagi have arrived, and they’re crawling up the building.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I grab my swords and strap them on with deft fingers, realizing as I buckle the scabbards into place that Ram’s weapons are gone.

  As is Ram.

  He left the door unbolted, too. I mean, I’m sure it locked behind him, and all, but he can’t very well work the deadbolt from the hallway, so we’re less secure in here than we could be. And with yagi crawling all over the building.

  What was he thinking?

  Probably that he wanted to be the hero, to single-handedly impress Nia, and all that. He’s going to get us all killed if he keeps this up. Arrogant perfectionist with an ego the size of a dragon.

  I slip past Nia, who’s still asleep, and exit the room as quietly as I can.

  There’s no sign of my brother in the hallway, or any indication of where he may have gone. There’s a little green illuminated sign near the ceiling at the end of the hall, with an arrow pointing and something in Russian. Fire exit? Stairs?

  Did Ram go that way? Should I go that way?

  I move toward the sign, cautiously, one sword drawn, the rest within reach.

  What am I planning to do, anyway? I doubt the yagi have really taken o
ver the building. Though I couldn’t see much from my window, there didn’t appear to be that many of them scaling the walls—certainly not as many as there were in the woods. As Ram said, they’re not likely to invade a town en masse. Most likely these are the scouts, sent to sniff us out, or flush us out.

  I reach the stairwell. Light is filtering down from somewhere up above me. I run up the stairs. It’s a short flight—we’re on the top floor. There’s a door at the top with a glass inset window, through which I can see one yagi crawling over the edge of the roof, and another already on the roof, making its way toward me.

  No sign of Ram.

  If the yagi come through the door, they could infiltrate the building, and then there would only be one thin wooden door—probably hollow core, even, judging by the low-budget construction of this place—separating Nia from the yagi.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have left Nia sleeping.

  There’s no time to wake her up now. I burst through the door, swing my sword in a practiced butterfly maneuver, and decapitate the first yagi. At the same time, I kick the door firmly shut behind me and draw another sword with my left hand.

  The yagi that was climbing over the roof edge a moment ago now bounds toward me. I leap forward to meet him, greeting him with my blade neatly inserted in the seam between his head and body.

  The head drops, rolling on the lightly-sloped rooftop. I bound over it just as two more yagi scramble over the roof edge toward me.

  “What are you doing up here?” Ram’s voice calls from somewhere behind me.

  I glance back and spot him decapitating yagi up and down the other side of the roof.

  “Saving your butt.” I decapitate the two newest arrivals and dart to the front of the building, where six more yagi have breached the rooftop. “What are you doing?”

  “Protecting you and Nia.”

  “Doing a grand job of it,” I sever six heads neatly in a row, only to have two more yagi pop up behind them.

  And a swarm of them climb over the rooftop where I stood moments before.

  “Somebody has to.” Ram’s facing a small wall of yagi. He slices along the front row, severing countless heads, before pushing the bodies back, forcing the living yagi backwards off the wall.

  I see it all in a glance as I’m spinning to face the newcomers. The air is growing thick with their stench, and for every one we kill, two or more rise to take their place.

  Okay, maybe the first ones were scouts, but the rest of the horde has started moving in.

  “You know you can’t possibly kill them all. They’ll just keep coming. Eudora will just keep making them.” I kill three, then spin, executing a neat side-kick, knocking the bodies back to topple the newcomers.

  “Yes. Well. We’ve got to do something,” Ram counters, swords swinging, slicing off yagi heads. “Can’t just sleep while they surround us.”

  “Do something indeed,” I grunt from the effort of forcing my sword through a badly-aimed slice, while keeping those behind me at bay with another side kick. “What we’re doing doesn’t seem to be working. There are too many of them.”

  “I’d retreat,” Ram groans as he tries to push back a wall of yagi using the bodies of their slain comrades, “but they’d only follow us. We don’t dare lead them to Nia.”

  I spin, throw a few more sidekicks, and sever three more heads, but instead of gaining ground, I’m forced back, closer to my brother.

  “We’ve got to keep them from getting inside.” It occurs to me, even as I speak the words, that with the yagi swarming the building so thickly, our primary objective should be to defend the door.

  Ram turns that direction at the same time, and we both see the same thing.

  The yagi are pouring in behind us. They’re headed for the door.

  “No!” I shout, raising both swords, ignoring the yagi pouring onto the roof on all sides, caring only about stopping those headed for the door to the stairs.

  Ram leaps beside me, and we hack our way through the wall of oncoming dragon hunters, kicking the first decapitated bodies out of the way, trying to breach the throng that’s swelling toward the door.

  If they reach the door, it will be only a matter of minutes, maybe only seconds, before they take the stairs, sniff out our room, and burst in to attack Nia in her sleep.

  I cannot allow that to happen.

  “Keep your back to mine,” I order my brother. “We’ll have to force our way through them from the middle.”

  “There’s no time!” Ram insists, beheading those closest to the door.

  But even as he does so, a dozen more pour in behind those.

  I’m slicing with my swords as swiftly as I can, but we’re outnumbered.

  So vastly outnumbered.

  “We’ve got to work together!” I shout, swinging my blades, decapitating yagi two at a time, kicking their bodies back, trying to push the swarm aside.

  But my brother only grunts as he shoves back a wall of dead yagi bodies, their stunted necks spewing the oily neurotoxin that serves as their blood. He has to be the hero, doesn’t he? He just assumes my plans are broken, like everything else I touch.

  Nia’s safety is at stake. This is no time for his ego or my rampant failure. I just have to try harder, to overcome my inherent tendency toward failure.

  I focus my efforts on the point closest to the door, but they’ve already filled in between us, cutting us off from each other, cutting us off from the door. I lunge, swords swinging, trying to get to that windowed slab before the yagi reach it. Can yagi work a door knob? Are their hands that dexterous? Mostly their defenses are the rapier-like antennae on their heads, which aren’t quite as long as our reach with our swords, so we don’t worry about them too much.

  Their most dangerous part are the spines on the undersides of their limbs, which contain a venom that’s potently deadly. It killed my grandmother. It killed my parents’ dog, and apparently killed the one-armed dragon Nia met.

  So I’m trying to stay out of the reach of those venomous barbs, which is tricky the thicker they mob us. And I’m working to stay clear of their antennae, as well. The trick is to keep moving, to keep a yagi-free circle around me, killing them four or five feet from my body, keeping them at kicking distance or further away. But more than any of those things, I’m trying to get to the door before they get it open.

  I can hardly see the door now, though it’s less than ten feet from me. The yagi block my view too thickly, and my eyes are stinging from the vapors of their dead, and my own sweat streaming down my forehead.

  “The door!” I shout, though I can’t see my brother anymore, either.

  I hear his voice, his tone condemning me from beyond the mob of yagi. “If you’d have stayed down there—”

  “Then what? You’d have been overwhelmed that much sooner!” I spear another yagi through the neck, but my hands are getting weak from the relentless fighting. My sword sticks, lodged in the thick exoskeleton.

  I tug the sword by its handle, simultaneously kicking the yagi back, pulling my blade free.

  But in the time it took me to free my sword, the yagi moved into my circle. They’re close now, more than rapier-antennae-close.

  Too close for me to use my blades in the manner I’m accustomed to.

  I hack at the nearest one, kicking in the other direction, overwhelmed. Ram was right, and I knew it when he said it, in spite of my protest. I should have stayed down there with Nia, or awakened her, or something. I did the worst possible thing I could have done, which was to leave her unprotected, asleep, when I knew the yagi were surrounding us.

  I didn’t mean to endanger her. I was only trying to help. It’s my broken touch, the anti-Midas-golden-touch, the curse of my breaking things.

  I thrust my guilt-driven swords at the yagi, hating what I’ve done, the very thing I vowed I wouldn’t do. Of all the things I never wanted to break, Nia is the most precious.

  Through eyes nearly blinded by stinging vapor and sweat, I see something from
the direction of the door.

  Something silver, like the blade of a sword. Are the yagi armed?

  But no, the creatures fall away from my side nearest the door. I step into the gap, finally able to swing my blade. I kill two more before I can spare another glance that way.

  Silver blades cut through the swarm. Two long swords.

  I behead two more yagi and spin again.

  Ram is nearly to my back. The yagi have fallen away from him, as well. Something is killing them with us, from the direction of the door.

  I kill two more, four more, Ram kills more, and then we kick aside the bodies. The path to the door is clear, and Nia is there, blades swinging.

  “There you are!” She doesn’t look at all impressed with our yagi-killing prowess or our skills at protecting her. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Killing yagi.” I behead two more. We’re finally pushing them back. Nia’s arrival has tipped the scales—but for how long? We’re all growing tired of fighting. My arms are tingling from the impact of blade against exoskeleton, and the splatter of yagi blood that burns like singing nettles. “Did you wake up?”

  I’ve no sooner asked the question, then I realize it’s a stupid question. Obviously, she woke up, or she wouldn’t be out here, awake.

  “They’re after me,” she reminds us, blades swinging, wisely ignoring my question. “If I hadn’t come up here, they would have broken through the window. I got all of our stuff. It’s there in the bundle, right inside the door. Can we just go?”

  “Let’s go!” Ram shoves back the yagi and grabs the bearskin bundle, changing into a dragon as he does so.

  I leap into the air and do the same as Nia rises into the sky beside me.

  Without a word, we fly past the sleeping village toward the blue expanse of the sea.

  Tired as I was from fighting, it was only fighting tired. After sleeping a day and a night and then some, I’m more rested and therefore better prepared to fly than I’ve been this whole trip. The sea air swells beneath us, providing lift, and we fly quickly. All three of us understand the need for haste—we must outrun the yagi while we have the strength to do so.