Shadowbridge

by Gregory Frost

  The plumes off the back of its head ended in purplish fans—one at the top of the head and one lower on the back of the neck—that seemed to rest on the water. Below the surface, its gills fluttered daintily. A puffy reddish mound, speckled like the torso, encompassed each eye. Tiny needle-like teeth encircled the crumpled mouth at the end of the reedy, tapered snout. The mouth flexed, wheezed, and blew spray at her. She thought of Muvros, the smaller dragon Tastion rode, and how it looked as if it were forever puckering for a kiss. This one was like that, too. She couldn’t help but smile.

  “Hello,” she said to it.

  The dragon glanced aside as if considering whether it should answer.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked herself as much as the creature. It exhaled another small jet of water.

  One of its paddle-shaped feet slapped against her side, and she flinched before realizing what had touched her.

  The dragon turned its head to face her straight-on, its eyes swiveling to find her. With its snout it nudged her, and its whuffling breath sprayed her face.

  Abruptly it turned as if to go, but remained, paddling in place. Its tail snaked across her belly. She dared to touch it now, expecting the creature to dive, to flee from her. Its skin was slightly rough. The mottling across its back was bumpy. Far down its back a third plume lay folded along its spine—another feature not visible from land. Now she understood how the riders could perch in place: They fitted against the base of the plume and held on to the lowest fan on its neck.

  The dragon glanced around at her, clearly impatient. The third plume fluttered in invitation. She swam up beside the dragon and pulled herself onto its back. The rough and oily skin chafed her belly and then the insides of her thighs as she sat upright. She bent her legs and clutched its sides with her knees. They fell between the larger ribs quite naturally. Whoever had first climbed upon a sea dragon would have thought the creature had been designed for them—as she did now. The dragon seemed to think so, too.

  She leaned against the rear plume and held to its neck. Neither her weight nor hold seemed to inconvenience the dragon. She was thinking, Well, this is nice, when it suddenly dove. The surface slapped her chin, closing her mouth. Water jetted up her nose, but she held on.

  The dragon made a swift circuit of the inlet, lunging forward with each oar-like sweep of its paddle fins. She leaned close to its back, hoping it wouldn’t stay under too long. And as if aware of her need for air, it immediately surfaced. Leodora flexed forward like a branch that had been pulled back and then released. She clung to the dragon’s neck, spitting, coughing, gasping. And then laughing.

  She laughed with a joy as naked as she. The dragon craned its neck and observed her with one solemnly inquisitive black eye. Then with a flick of its tail it scooted straight out of the inlet.

  The rocks to either side scraped against her legs. Another month, she thought, and the little dragon would be too big to fit through that opening. Another hour and there wouldn’t have been enough water to clear it.

  “How did you know about this?” she asked, as if the creature might suddenly explain itself. The transparent ruff fluttered, no communication she could understand. She had never seen any dragon in or near the inlet before, and she swam there nearly every day. When had it discovered the opening? Had it heard her farewell prayer? No, it would have had to be there already. Then she recalled that Dymphana had said a sea dragon had brought her mother home the night everyone thought she had drowned. This surely couldn’t be the same one—it was too young. But how did it know to find her? “How did one know to find my mother?” she wondered aloud. “Oh, I wish you could talk to me.”

  Soon she had adjusted to the dragon’s thrusting motion through the water and sat with her knees bent, her heels clutching its sides, riding erect, the way the fishermen did as they left in the morning. Proud.

  They journeyed well beyond the safe haven of her inlet, and farther out, around the point that divided Gousier’s land from the village. She watched her boathouse go by, stared through the open window as if she might glimpse herself watching herself. The dragon seemed to have an objective, a purpose. It carried her steadily within view of Tenikemac. “This is not a good idea, dragon,” she cautioned, but it didn’t heed her. She could have jumped off at any time, but the dragon’s purpose fixed her in place. The idea of the violation tempted and excited her. She was a girl out of their own stories. She was Reneleka and she was riding a sea dragon.

  The first villager to see her was a woman on the beach, whose distant shout of alarm reached her ears even as others appeared in doorways and started down the beach. The woman flailed at the air and pointed. Shortly a dozen other women stood at the water’s edge.

  Only then did she remember that she was naked. She was violating practically every taboo imaginable. Public nudity on a dragon. It almost made her laugh. She still might have dived into the water, hidden from view behind the creature. Maybe they wouldn’t have recognized her. But she stayed.

  Then the dragon began circling away from the shore.

  When it had turned to face out to sea, she saw coming straight at her another dragon. On its back sat Agmeon. He had the ropes of a net wrapped around his wrists as he held on to his dragon’s plume. Agmeon’s son on a second dragon held the other end of the net. They were returning early with their catch. The son’s gaze traveled down her body and then up again, meeting her eyes with a look both of arousal and embarrassment.

  Agmeon’s furious, bloodshot glare held her rigid. She couldn’t shrink away now, and his anger passed to her, fueling her defiance; pride and self-esteem mixing with resentment of all the rules he embodied—how arbitrarily her position changed when he chose it. Let them banish her. They were too late. She had already banished herself.

  Agmeon’s mount swam past hers. From his look as he went by, she knew if he’d had a weapon and could have dropped his net he would have killed her on the spot. His son passed more closely but could only look at her from the side of his eyes. No one spoke. Only the dragons moved. Hers swam on as if it had encountered nothing. Nor had the other two seemed to notice it.

  The dragon took her around the point again and back to her inlet. She rode proud and straight the whole way, despite a trembling in her limbs she couldn’t control even though there was no one to see her now.

  “You meant to do this to me, didn’t you, clever little dragon?” she asked as they arrived. “You tricked me.”

  The creature didn’t acknowledge that it had heard her.

  “I think I’ll call you Meersh, how would you like that?”

  The sea dragon drew up beside the opening to the inlet and paddled in place. It looked back at her expectantly. The tide had begun to ebb, and the dragon could not swim into the inlet any longer. It seemed to know this.

  Everything that had just happened, she thought, had to have happened exactly when and as it did.

  She slid off and swam to the submerged shelf of rock. The dragon hesitated, watching her. “Go on, Meersh,” she said. “Go back to the story you came from. You’ve done your work. There can’t be any marriage with Koombrun after this. I’d have to leave the island now even if I didn’t want to.”

  The dragon extended its neck. Its puckered mouth whuffled in her face as though in reply, spraying her with gentle tears. Then it swung away and dove from sight. The sea immediately erased even the ripples of its going. She looked out across the water for a long time. The dragon did not resurface.

  Finally, Leodora swam back to her clothes. She wrung the blood out of them and put them on. Then, with one last look across the inlet to the unbroken sea, she started up the beach to her garret. The only proof that she hadn’t imagined her voyage was the red chafing inside her thighs from the dragon’s skin. She knew, however, that Agmeon would provide all the proof necessary for everyone else.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon out of sight in the boathouse.

  . . . . .

  At dinner she gauged Gou
sier’s mood before appearing, but he was ebullient and carefree. He didn’t know yet. “What a perfect day this was. Business was never better,” he said, adding, “I could have sold twice the fish I had”—which was as close as he came to upbraiding Leodora for what he perceived as her dereliction that morning. He rambled on about the stall, a wealthy family throwing a party who had taken every shellfish he had. He used the idea of a family to lead in to his delight with the village and how exciting it was going to be when they were united with Tenikemac in a “great big family.” Obviously, he hadn’t visited before coming to dinner, and with luck he wouldn’t have reason to before tomorrow. One more day was all she needed.

  While her uncle ate and grunted and babbled this way and that, Leodora experienced once again the recognition that she was doing something for the last time. With a focused inner quiet, she gazed around the room, burning each detail in her mind—the horizontal lines of the reeds that composed the walls; the rough plankings underfoot; the blue-dyed, frayed mat by the door; the fish oil lamps with their curlicue handles of carved bone. And beside her, Dymphana. She saw her aunt detailed in guilt: brittle, thinning hair shot through everywhere with strands of gray; a face wrecked and ravaged time and again by a useless sagacity she wasn’t allowed to express against Gousier’s pigheaded presumptions and temper. She was tied to him forever and had no idea that Leodora might not be. It was their lot; escape was unimaginable—and wasn’t that implicit even in the way Dymphana told her of her mother? Leandra, who escaped to nothing. To doom. It had been a cautionary tale as much as anything else. Gousier imposed the limits, and the women must do the best they could within those limits. Defiance destroyed you.

  Eventually Dymphana sensed her stare. While Gousier babbled, their gazes met, and for a heartbeat Leodora thought her aunt must see her plans as if painted upon her face the way wedding blessings would have been this time tomorrow. But Dymphana read something else in the look, smiled a worried, empathetic smile, and then pretended again to be attentive to Gousier’s chatter.

  . . . . .

  Later the two women carried the wooden bowls and utensils down to the water’s edge to rinse them. The moons were up and bright. The sea was calm. To the north the bridge spans glittered distantly their bejeweled solicitation. Emotion boiled up in Leodora. She found herself hugging her aunt and saying what she had fought not to say: “I love you, Dymphana. I’m sorry I have to go.” Horrified by her own confession, she could only wait for her aunt to destroy her.

  Dymphana stroked her hair and said, “My sweet girl, it’s all right. You won’t be far. We’ll still have time together. And maybe…maybe it won’t be so bad.” In the midst of her reassurances she began to cry. Soon it was both of them in the throes of miscommunicated despair. Leodora couldn’t stand the lie—this was worse than the confession. Another moment and the truth would explode out of her. She broke away and ran before she could confess everything she intended.

  Outside the boathouse she wept awhile longer. The tears now were for the future, for the pain Dymphana would endure. Gousier would take out his anger on her just as Soter had said. There would be no one else left to hurt.

  Finally she wiped her eyes and, snuffling, went inside, climbing the stairs. In her grief she failed to appreciate that a candle was already burning in her garret. She was almost at the top before she realized, and by then she could see him lying on her bed as if with eternal patience.

  Tastion. Naked.

  When he saw her face, however, his smile of feigned nonchalance went flat. He sat up, covering himself. “Gods, he spoke to Agmeon. He’s beat you, hasn’t he?”

  She shook her head, unable to communicate the events in any sensible way. He held out his hand. She didn’t take it. Remained where she was.

  Finally, as if she had asked a question, he said, “I came here to see you because…To tell you that the ceremony’s off. They’re proscribing any contact with you.”

  She was hardly surprised.

  “Do you understand that I won’t be able to come here again for a while? Maybe a long time? Not until things settle down. Why did you do that—ride a dragon? You could have done almost anything else and it would have been better. Parading naked through the long house is nowhere near as bad, and it’s bad enough. How in the ocean did you get a dragon to take you?”

  Unable to explain, she didn’t try. She said, “I won’t marry Koombrun.”

  He smiled. “I knew that. And whatever happens, you’ll still be mine.”

  “Yours?” After the emotional turmoil she had just put aside, his presumption was more than she could tolerate. “When have I ever been yours? When could I ever be yours? If I’m yours, Tastion, let’s go now and tell the village. Your father. Come with me, right now.” She offered her hand. “Come. Come on. Let’s see Agmeon for his blessing. You can go just as you are. It’ll be perfect.”

  It was his turn not to move. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? Just being seen with you right now would be punishable by drowning. And still, here I am. But why do you want to reject what we do have? What we’ve had all along. You act as if it’s all been just me. But it hasn’t been just me. It hasn’t only been what I want. Or were you not there?”

  “It’s too late for this argument.”

  He leaned forward and tried to reach her, but she shifted back. He would have had to stand up to touch her. “How can it be too late? You’re not marrying him. This will blow over in time. They’ll forget, or at least they’ll get used to—”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “You keep saying that, and I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m leaving Bouyan, Tastion.”

  He snorted as if this were an impossibility. “Going to ride off on a sea dragon? Agmeon can’t talk about anything else. And no one knows the dragon you were on—no one’s ever seen it before. Or since.”

  “It was almost a baby, not grown up.”

  Tastion shook his head. “There aren’t any babies in our herd this season. So you don’t know where it came from, either. How can you expect it to come back and take you where you want to go. Believe me—dragons are headstrong. As moody as people.”

  “Tastion—”

  “Look, Lea, everything will return to normal for us in a few months, at most a year. You won’t ever have to marry Koombrun, you’ll stay where you are, and we’ll meet in secret like always.”

  She shook her head. How could he be so obstinate, so blind? He was no different than Gousier: His mind was made up regardless of the facts. “You should get dressed.”

  For a moment he sat in contemplation. Then he pulled his clothes from beneath the bed. He got up, standing brazenly in front of her in a state of half arousal. He sorted through the clothes as if unable to identify his trousers, offering her one last opportunity to have him. She held her position. When it became obvious that she couldn’t be coerced or enticed, Tastion shrugged as if to say it didn’t matter, and began to dress.

  She saw as if for the first time his true nature. Although she had always desired to ride Tastion as fearlessly as she had the dragon, she would not succumb. She would have left it at that and let him go; but then, in a way that all but dared her to disagree, he muttered again, “You’ll still be mine.” His shirt was half over his head. Leodora grabbed his hand and yanked him to the steps.

  “Wait, I don’t have my shirt on, Lea!”

  She ignored his complaint, hauled him stumbling down the steps and through the dark below. “Lea!” he said again, but laughingly this time. He thought he had won.

  Outside, on a path she could have found even on a moonless night, she led him into the deeper jungle. But she kept going, passing by their hidden spot, dragging him on. He was silent now, and even his hand in hers betrayed his tension behind her.

  When she stopped, the tower of Ningle loomed overhead. Lights sprinkled on either side of it, a coruscation on the night sky, a glow suggesting lines and forms, solidity out of nothingness.

  Leodora
began to climb the stone steps. She still had hold of him, and he stumbled up onto the first step after her. “What are you doing? Stop it.”

  She paused and looked down at him. “Climb up with me.”

  His eyes traveled beyond and then back to her. He craned his neck to see if they’d been followed. “Do you want me to be banished? I can’t do this. You know I can’t—”

  “It’s forbidden. Proscribed. Like me. Coming to my room and offering yourself to me naked is a crime, but you can do that. Why can’t you do this?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Because you want to do it. I want you to do this, but this you can’t—because you don’t want to.” She climbed another step and he tore free of her grasp. She let him go.

  He slid back down a step. “Stop.”

  “This is where I’m going.”

  He looked at the tower, at the sky. He tried to laugh at her. “Don’t be stupid. You don’t know any more about up there than I do. You don’t know anything except stories.”

  “It’s all I need to know. I can be whoever I want. You already are who you’ll always be. When my life moves forward, you won’t be part of it any longer.”

  “But, Lea,” he tried desperately, “you don’t have to go now. Don’t you see? The marriage is finished. You’ve destroyed it.”

  “Ah, and you don’t want to give up until you’ve had me completely. What you really want to say is that you’d have me remain on Bouyan for your pleasure.”

  “And is that so awful?”

  “Not for you. For you it’s idyllic. Just what you want. You ride out every morning, come back in the evening, drink and laugh with your friends, and then creep off to your kept whore. Of course you won’t be beaten to death on the morrow, either, or drowned if caught.” She climbed down past him and started back along the path. She heard him come crashing through the underbrush after her.