Phoenix

by Finley Aaron

  If he’s thinking this will give him an excuse to cuddle with the coveted female, he can think again.

  Ram has been calling the shots for most of this trip, and you know what? I don’t like it.

  It’s not just the fact that he’s making all the decisions on behalf of both of us—my parents love to do that, and I don’t often rebel against them. It’s that Ram’s decisions are stupid and probably going to get us killed.

  So about the time I accept the fact that my brother is, indeed, taking us to a snow-capped volcano to spend the night, at about the same moment that I make up my mind that I hate the idea of sleeping there, and that we could have been fast asleep on a Tokyo rooftop by now, I also decide that I’m done.

  I’m done listening to Ram, and letting him boss me around.

  I need to stick up for myself, because quite frankly, our lives may well depend on that. Ram’s choice of a place to spend the night could be deadly.

  I’ve no sooner reached that conclusion, than we circle the cratered top of the volcano and shed altitude, coming to rest amid the powdery snow.

  Or Ram and Nia come to rest. I land a moment after them, barreling into my brother at full speed, sending him tumbling through the thick snow with me on his back, while I change into a human so I can yell at him.

  “Are you trying to get us all killed? We passed a thousand better places to spend the night, and I tried to tell you about them, but you wouldn’t listen to me!” As I’m making this speech, we skid to a stop and I aim a fist at my brother’s eye-socket, but he rolls out of the way and shoves me back, off of him.

  I land on my back in the snow.

  He pounces atop me and pins me down, his face showing a fury that surprises me, “What is your problem?” He roars, his words followed by a jet of fire that melts the snow around my head. “This is the perfect place—”

  “It’s freezing cold. Nia doesn’t have her bearskin, thanks to you,” I roll again, pinning Ram to the snowy ground for less than a second before he tumbles back on top of me.

  “Nia will be perfectly warm—far warmer than she’d be in your thousand places!”

  His words catch me off guard, spoken, as they are, with a kind of vehemence they couldn’t possibly have if Ram didn’t believe them to be true, though I can’t see how they could be true. We’re in the snow, on a mountain. It’s cold. I’m freezing, and I don’t think even the two of us together could keep Nia warm up here.

  “Boys,” Nia calls out from a short distance away. “Stop fighting and come enjoy this. It’s blissful.”

  Unsure what she could possibly be referring to, but intrigued by the note in her words that says whatever she’s talking about is exquisitely enjoyable, I lift my head and look in the direction of Nia’s voice.

  I can’t see her over the drifts of snow. All I see is a haze of fog which, upon closer inspection, might not actually be the mist I took it for. It almost looks like…steam?

  Ram lets go of me and bounds through the snow toward Nia. “I think I will. How hot is it?”

  “It’s really hot,” Nia answers. “Hotter than I think most humans could stand. But it feels perfect to me.” She laughs.

  Ram made Nia laugh. I really should toss him in a snow drift and sit on his head, but I’m too curious about what they’re discussing, and anyway, he’d only flip me over and sit on my head right back.

  In the time it takes me to stand, Ram is already at Nia’s side, lowering himself into a seated position near her. I trot over for a better look, but it’s not until I’m nearly there that I see the depression in the snowy hillside, where the snow has melted away from the sides of a hot spring.

  It’s a small pool, not more than six feet across in any direction, but there’s enough room for all three of us.

  Now I’m torn, because I hate to admit Ram was right, especially after I got so upset with him. And I’m not any more pleased that he brought us to this place, because obviously Nia is quite impressed and enjoying the warmth. Ram has scored major points in her eyes, whereas I tried to slug him for bringing us here.

  So I feel like a chump and probably look like one to Nia. But at the same time, I’m freezing, standing here in the snow in my boxer shorts. My toes are completely numb and my feet are stinging from the pain of the cold, and the water looks refreshingly warm.

  “Did you know this was here?” I ask Ram as I approach the side of the pool and dip my big toe into the water.

  Oh, bliss, it is hot. I can’t resist. Competitive as I may be—prideful, even—I’m too cold to stand in the snow when there’s a hot spring at my feet. Even if getting in means admitting I was wrong and Ram was right.

  Ram chuckles—I think because he knows he won, and that I made myself look particularly stupid in front of Nia. “Fuji is famous for its hot springs. That’s what all those resorts are at the base of the mountain. I figured we ought to be able to find a little something in an out-of-the-way spot. All I did was watch for steam and follow my nose.”

  I ease myself to sitting in the stone-lined pool. The water is crazy hot, but thanks to our fire-breathing alter-egos, we can handle the heat (just as we can eat so much more than regular humans, even when we’re in human form, and see better than most other humans even when we don’t look like dragons). Now that Ram mentions it, I notice the sulfur odor, which I should have detected earlier, if I hadn’t been so consumed with fighting my brother.

  It’s not a particularly pleasant scent, but we dragons have different standards for that than your average human. I, personally, love the smell of meat and animals and even fish. So the sulfur stench isn’t too offensive, though the fumes sting my eyes a bit, and take some getting used to. Even so, I’m exhausted, and the water is so relaxing it seems to sap all the tension out of my body.

  The next thing I know Ram is nudging me with his foot, and the night is distinctly darker.

  “Hunt us some food.”

  My stomach growls as though in response to Ram’s command, and I realize we’ve all been sleeping. We normally would have eaten hours ago when we first landed, but we were so tired and the hot spring so inviting, our hunger was superseded by the need for sleep.

  I eye my brother across the pool. Technically, it’s his turn to go hunting. I caught the tuna yesterday, and the elk before that. He hasn’t caught anything since the bear, what was that, three days ago? I’ve lost track.

  But—and it’s a big but—Ram is sitting next to Nia, so close her head is resting on his shoulder. Undoubtedly this is why he wants me to go—so he doesn’t have to disturb her.

  I don’t want to disturb her, either. Much as I despise the fact that she’s sleeping on Ram’s shoulder instead of mine, there’s the simple fact that she needs her rest and it would be petty of me to make her wake up just to send Ram hunting.

  Besides which, if I argue with Ram and Nia wakes up and I still end up losing the argument, I’ll look stupid in front of Nia. Again.

  No, there’s really no other option than to go hunting and hope that whatever I drag back here is so impressive, Nia will be grateful. Maybe she’ll even realize I’ve hunted up supper the last three days in a row, and she’ll chastise Ram for being lazy.

  It’s that hope that sends me out into the brisk night air, still dripping from the hot spring, in search of food.

  But it’s night and we’re on a volcanic mountain. I’m not sure what kind of wildlife they usually get around here. Squirrels? Rabbits? Nothing that’s going to impress Nia, not unless she’s been secretly hoping to make some rabbit-fur mittens. Nothing is stirring at this hour, anyway, so I head out to sea.

  The ocean isn’t far, not relative to the distance we’ve come. I swoop low over the water, peering past the waves as far as I can see, gliding low, away from land, searching for a tuna or some other large tasty fish, when I see something that doesn’t belong, not here or anywhere else.

  They’re riding the waves. They’re riding on each other. The water yagi swim swiftly, and on their backs
, sleek, inhuman antennaed creatures, their eyes riveted ahead with a determination that does not bode well for their target.

  There is menace in their eyes, a death threat that gleams with startling intensity in the darkness, reflected by every wave as they plow through the ocean in search of their prey.

  The yagi are coming for us.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When I first recognize them I startle and rear up in the air, spinning a half-circle to head back and warn Ram and Nia. But as my initial jolt of fear wears off, I realize a couple of things.

  One is that I’m still hungry. Maybe even more hungry now than I was before, and I haven’t caught us anything to eat yet.

  The other thing, quite guiltily, is that we should have posted a guard last night, taking turns at watch as we did our first night in the woods. If I hadn’t been so exhausted, I’d have thought of it, but I fell asleep before we could discuss anything.

  We all fell asleep.

  If Ram hadn’t awakened me to go hunting, we might have all been sitting there, far too much like proverbial sitting ducks, and the yagi would have paralyzed us with their wailing and killed us in another hour or two.

  But that realization leads me to a third, which is that I have time.

  Not a lot of time, but enough. I can fly back to warn Ram and Nia before the yagi reach them. We can spare a few minutes to eat something, and therefore be energized for another long flight. I can fly faster than the yagi can swim, and they’ll have to navigate the coast and the mountain before they reach us.

  Swooping back almost to the front of the advancing horde, I discover a couple of other things. The first one isn’t so much a discovery as a deepening appreciation of a fact I’ve known all along, which is, those yagi are so hideous and ugly and relentless. Don’t they sleep? Don’t they ever get bored or have to take bathroom breaks or just give up already, maybe get a hobby? Seriously, I think there are more of them now than ever before—a crowd so thick they fade out of sight in the dark and fog.

  And the second thing, which is actually a helpful thing, is that sea creatures are fleeing ahead of the advancing yagi, escaping from this unknown but terrifying enemy, herded into a swimming seafood buffet, thick for the plucking. I swoop toward the first large fish-shaped shadow, thinking to pick up some dinner and be on my way, but then I realize the animal is a shark, which I don’t think Nia will be so pleased to see.

  There’s nothing romantic about casting a dead fish at a woman’s feet, only to have the offering leer up at her, grinning with multiple rows of razor sharp teeth. No girl likes that, not even if she’s a dragon.

  Nia was happy with that tuna the other night. I need to find something along those lines.

  Here where the sea life is thickly gathered, I can have my choice of entrees. I grab the first tuna I see, realizing only after I’ve done so that it’s smaller than the one I brought back last night. In my current famished state, I could eat this entire tuna myself and still be hungry.

  I spot a second, slightly larger tuna, and snag it with my other taloned foot, then jet swiftly back to Mount Fuji.

  Ram and Nia are still asleep. With my dragon vision, I see them well before I arrive. This high on the mountain, the fog is beginning to thin.

  I consider dropping the tuna in the hot spring, but I imagine Nia would not like waking up to a massive fish on her lap, even if it’s not a shark. And besides that, the creature would probably make the hot spring smell even worse.

  So I lay the tuna fish, instead, on the snow near the spring. The two fish look almost as though they’re on the crushed ice of a fishmonger’s display case, but then I start gutting them while calling out to Ram and Nia, “Wake up, you two. We’ve got company coming.”

  Nia looks at me, her eyes suddenly open wide.

  “Sushi?” I ask, holding up a filet of raw tuna. We’re not particularly close to the resorts, but I imagine if I blew a burst of fire long enough to cook the tuna, someone might see it and get curious.

  We have enough trouble without inviting more.

  “Company?” Ram repeats, catching the meat I toss their way.

  “The yagi are in the ocean not more than twenty miles off shore. I’d like to be gone before they get here.”

  “Regular yagi or water yagi?” Nia asks, sprouting talons and slicing sushi, tossing slender strips into the air, where they spin and swirl before arcing and falling. She catches them neatly in her mouth like so many pieces of popcorn.

  My affection for her swells, but I answer in a matter-of-fact tone, “Both. The water yagi are carrying the yagi on their backs. Like mutant jet skis.”

  “ETA?” Ram asks between mouthfuls of tuna.

  Estimated Time of Arrival, I translate in my head. “An hour, maybe more. Depends on how quickly they move once they hit land. They’ll have to avoid being seen by people. That should slow them down.”

  “The further ashore they come before we leave, the more they’ll have to backtrack to reach the ocean again. I can’t imagine they’re nearly as fast on land as they are at sea.” Nia smiles and tosses more sushi. “That will give us a good head start.”

  “Good. We have time to plan.” Ram makes a serious face, which is even more serious than his usual serious expression.

  Intensely serious.

  Why does he have to be that way? The plan seems clear enough to me. “We’ll continue to follow the Ring of Fire,” I offer as Ram pauses to tear off another mouthful of tuna. “Next stop, Taiwan.”

  Since we’re dragons, and we can cover vast stretches in a single flight (over 500 miles in one shift, maybe even 1,000 if we’re rested at the start and the winds are favorable) it’s always been important to us to know geography well. A dragon can get lost far too quickly if he doesn’t know where he’s going.

  Ram and I and our sisters grew up with topographical maps of the earth lining our bedroom walls. I used to fall asleep staring at the Pacific. I know these islands, and can picture their positions accurately without even closing my eyes.

  But Ram knows the geography as well as I do, and he shakes his head as he swallows, speaking as soon as his mouth is empty. “That will take too long. It’s too far out of the way—double the miles we need to cover. If we fly straight for Fiji, we can make it in two days.”

  “No!” I feel as though I’ve been punched. “Are you kidding? Fly for two days over the ocean, with yagi on our trail and nowhere to stop and sleep?”

  “There’s the Marshall Islands. We can rest on the Bikini Atoll—it’s halfway.”

  “The Bikini Atoll?” I can picture the hollowed crater of a long-dead volcano, little more than a wave-washed ring of sand and coral. Granted, the widest points are thick with palm trees, but it’s no fortress. Pretty much the opposite. “We’ll be sitting ducks. There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to hole up and fight.”

  “We don’t have to fight. We just have to rest until the yagi show up, and then keep going.”

  I shake my head as Ram explains. He’s not listening to me. He never listens to me—but he didn’t see the yagi swarm as they moved across the water. He doesn’t realize how many of them there are. He didn’t see the gleam of determination in their eyes that hints at their thirst for blood.

  They’re not going to stop until we’re dead. They’ll keep coming in greater numbers until they overpower us completely.

  But Ram didn’t see that. Maybe if he had, he would appreciate what we’re up against and recognize the wisdom of flying to Taiwan. The risks are already too great. We have no choice but to err on the side of caution. “We need to continue to follow the Ring of Fire. It’s safer.”

  “It’s slower.” Ram snaps back. “We’ll fly to the Marshall Islands, then straight on to Fiji. We can be there in less than two days.”

  “You’re assuming the yagi won’t kill us first. You didn’t see them. They’re horrendous—a horde too numerous to count. More than we’ve faced yet. We cannot defeat them.” I tear off a bite of tuna and chew angr
ily. I don’t like anything about Ram’s plan, but more than that, I don’t like Ram’s assumption that he’s the leader, that we’re going to do whatever he says just because he’s older. But he’s not the oldest—Nia is.

  And no one’s even asked her opinion.

  I swallow my bite of tuna and turn to face her. “What do you think, Nia? Which way should we go? You know how dangerous the yagi are. If we’re going to be safe from them, we need to follow the Ring of Fire.”

  I tear off more tuna while Nia finishes what she’s been chewing.

  Maybe Ram is purposely choosing to do the opposite of what I suggest because he thinks all my choices are cursed with brokenness. Well, maybe I’m more broken than a lot of people, maybe I’m unusually cursed, but I know what I’m talking about right now, and it’s not fair for Ram’s prejudice against me to force us to do the opposite of what I want to do every time.

  Maybe this time, I’m right. Maybe this time I’ll prove that my way isn’t always the broken way.

  Nia’s still chewing, her expression almost wary.

  But she’s got to side with me. In some ways, this is a preliminary test to see whose side she’s on—which brother she favors.

  If she picks Ram’s plan, it’s a nod in his favor, like she’s picking Ram.

  Like she’d choose to marry him over me.

  She looks back and forth between us. From her apprehension, I can tell she knows how much her preference matters. She’s knows there’s more at stake here than just the route to Fiji.

  “Honestly, neither of these choices is a good one. The yagi are going to be after us either way. But.” She sighs, pauses, shakes her head. “Ram’s plan is best. It will get us there sooner. That’s all that matters now.”

  “Ram’s plan,” I echo, dipping my head almost in a nod, though I can’t raise it again. It’s a gesture of deference, but more than that, I can’t look at Ram, not when his face is aglow with triumph. Nor can I look at Nia.