Dragon Island

by Berryhill, Shane

  At last, he finds it.

  He reaches down and pulls away a group of creepers hanging over a small crevice in the cliff face.

  “Get in!”

  Before I can argue or comply, the man is shoving me into the crevice. Once inside, I realize it’s not really a crevice at all, but a cave—one too small for the black man, but perfect for me.

  “I’ll be back!”

  With that, the man leaps upward. His legs dangle over the cave entrance for a moment then disappear from view as he climbs the vines running down the cliff.

  But he isn’t fast enough, and his stopping to help me costs him his life.

  The ground begins to tremor as the thing chasing us closes in. Dust rains down on me from the rock ceiling above with its every step. I sink to the ground and wrap my arms around my body, shaking uncontrollably with fear.

  The cave’s shudders abruptly stop. The black man screams. A moment later, this sound, too, stops, and I know he’s no more.

  The earth begins to shake again. I hear trees splinter and a noise that sounds like the world’s biggest suction hose starting and stopping, starting and stopping, starting and stopping. For some reason, it makes me think of Bear sniffing around in our backyard, on the hunt for an old bone he has buried.

  Then the giant eye appears before the cave opening, eclipsing my view of the world outside. The serpentine pupil dividing its red cornea shrinks in size as it focuses on me. The roar sounds, causing my rocky hiding place to shudder around me. Overwhelmed with terror, I lose consciousness.

  Chapter 3

  The samurai were fierce warriors comprised of feudal Japan’s noble class. Like their European counterparts, the medieval knights, the samurai’s main purpose in life was to serve their daimyo, or liege lord, and their greatest honor, to die fighting for him in battle. It is said that a samurai so associated his or her self with war that they considered the swords they carried to be the outward incarnation of their very own souls...

  —Excerpt from The Samurai Way, by Evan Newton (2003)

  I wake from a nightmare and scream at the snarling monster facing me. I scramble backward on my hands and feet until my back hits the cave wall. After a moment, I calm down. By the sunlight drifting in through the cave entrance, I can see it’s not a monster before me, but a dead man. A dead man dressed in what once would’ve been a suit of samurai armor, to be exact. It was the skull inside the remains of the helmet that frightened me so.

  Ha!

  Frightened.

  With my plane crashing and a giant monster chasing after me, I’ve been nothing but frightened!

  At least it’s daytime, now. I must have slept through the night after passing out.

  Anyway, I’m sure the dead samurai’s helmet has a proper name, but I’ve no clue what it is, and frankly, at this moment, I don’t care. It’s the sword pressed against his body that holds my rapt attention.

  I rise into a crouch and creep forward, my every step slow, cautious, and deliberate. Suddenly, I remember everything, including the thing with the monstrous eye that was outside last night, and I jerk my head toward the cave entrance, expecting to see it engulf the exit and blot out the sun at any second.

  I relax a little when it fails to appear.

  I turn away, noticing for the first time the crude paintings that cover the cave interior.

  No.

  To say the paintings are crude isn’t right. The word I’m searching for is...minimalist. My art teacher, Mrs. Fox, explained that the word minimalist means to purposefully take the simplest route to create art. In other words, less is more. That’s definitely the case in regard to the cave paintings.

  The samurai warrior is depicted in each one, fighting hordes of grotesque monsters that defy description and range in size from mouse-like to gargantuan. In the paintings, the samurai’s armor is made of a bright yellow wood lacquered to such a high sheen that it shines like gold.

  Here and now, the remnants of the cobweb-covered uniform are so rotted with time that they don’t even hold a suggestion of yellow, much less gold.

  All but the sword, that is.

  I reach down and brush away the dust and cobwebs from it. The warrior holds the sword in his hands, the hilt turned downward so that the tip of its wooden scabbard touches his feet.

  I take hold of the sword and tug gently, not wishing to disturb the body any more than I have to. The sword doesn’t move. I reposition my hands to get a better grip, and pull. I doubt the sword would do any good against whatever owns that giant red eye, but I know eventually I’m going to have to go looking for food and water. Having a sword in hand just might make getting them a little easier.

  I yank on the sword. The dead samurai resists a moment longer, then gives up his blade.

  I brush away more of the dust and webbing lining the sword and hold it up. The black scabbard is unbelievably smooth beneath my touch. Whatever sealant the maker used on it has more than withstood the test of time. My gaze moves to the dark leather woven around the sword’s hilt. Small reliefs of tarnished gold run its length. They match the golden, round hand-guard separating the scabbard from the hilt and the oriental dragon’s head pommel at the latter’s end. I polish the pommel with my thumb and it immediately begins to gleam.

  At last, I notice the remains of a small paper tie attaching the hilt to the scabbard. The tie must be some sort of seal—one obviously more symbolic than functional.

  I look at the dead warrior.

  “Sorry, dude.”

  I tug on the hilt and the sword abruptly slides a few inches from the scabbard. The action is accompanied by a brief ringing sound. The remains of the severed tie fall to the ground and I feel a pleasant, originless wind sweep over me on its way out of the cave. Despite the warmth of the breeze, I shiver as though someone has walked on my grave.

  I look down at the exposed blade. Amazingly, the steel is free of rust. It gleams in fact, seeming to pulse with a silvery, white light. The only flaw is the thinnest line of crimson running along its bottom edge. A portion of the red line drips to the floor and I realize in opening the sword, I’ve sliced the hand I’m holding the scabbard with. It’s just a small cut along the end of my thumb, but it’s bleeding profusely.

  The sword must still be as sharp as the day its owner first carried it onto the battlefield.

  I slide the sword back into its scabbard and prop it against the wall. I suck away the blood spilling from my thumb only for a new batch to come pouring out of it. I rip off a thin strip of cloth from the bottom of my semi-dry T-shirt and use it as a makeshift bandage.

  Then I huddle back against the cave wall. Sword or no sword, the closest I’ve ever come to being a samurai is playing Dynasty Warriors on my Xbox. I sit there, watching the light outside fade to black.

  Not the black of your room at night, with the light from street lamps coming in through the windows, but the complete and uninterrupted dark of the wild. Night in its rawest form where you are utterly alone.

  And with it, the roars come.

  None are as loud as the one from the night before. But there are hundreds of them. Unfamiliar howls from every direction.

  I really wish Bear was here!

  I try to convince myself that this isn’t happening—that the plane crash, the giant eye, the black man’s death, and the roars coming from outside are all just a dream and soon I will wake up, at home in my bed, mom griping at me because I’m not ready for school.

  But I can’t.

  This isn’t a dream. It’s a nightmare. And it’s real!

  I cry, my body shaking with great, heaving sobs. I cry for how worried my mother will be when she hears my plane went down. I cry for the black man and all the other passengers who were aboard my flight. But most of all, I cry for myself. I cry because I’m scared to death and I don’t know what to do!

  I try to make myself go to sleep. It should be easy. Like I said, sleeping like a rock on command is my second greatest talent—what my mom calls my s
uperpower. But for the first time in memory, my superpower fails me and sleep refuses to come.

  I thank Heaven when the pitch beyond the cave begins to give way to the predawn light and the roars fall silent.

  Normally I greet every day with a song in the shower. But right now, singing is the last thing I want to do!

  The scene outside slowly begins to take form and, tears still drying in my eyes, I decide I have to leave. I could probably go without food for several more days. But if I don’t find water soon, I’m going to die.

  I remove several leather straps from the samurai’s armor and weave them into a makeshift harness. This I attach to the sword’s scabbard at its apex and base. I slide the harness over my head, draping it across my torso so that the sword rides at an angle across my back. The fit is snug, surprisingly comfortable even, and I nod at my good work.

  I walk toward the cave’s mouth, ducking so that I can negotiate the dip in the ceiling. Once there, I turn and give the cave that saved my life one last glance, my gaze moving from the dead warrior to the walls and back again. Then I turn and peer outside the cave, scanning my immediate vicinity.

  The forest outside has been trampled to the ground. Great, broken trees lay on their sides, leaning over into crater-sized footprints left behind in the wake of the eye’s owner.

  Whatever this thing is, the world I know has never seen anything like it.

  I blink, hoping the scene outside will go away.

  It doesn’t.

  I take a deep breath and step outside the cave, expecting to hear the earth-shattering roar that I’m sure will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

  I hear nothing but the rise and fall of cicada song and the occasional chirp of a bird.

  I take another step.

  Still nothing.

  I breathe a less than easy sigh of relief, and walk out into the unknown.

  Chapter 4

  The multiverse, or meta-universe, is a hypothetical collective of infinite possible universes that exist alongside one another and comprise all of space and time. Many scientists theorize that, under certain circumstances, such as the existence of a gravitational anomaly (see wormhole. 5.A.), matter and energy may traverse the barriers existing between universes and cross over from one plane of reality into an entirely new realm of existence...

  —Excerpt from The Multiverse: A Wonderwork!, by Daniel Sabella

  I walk in what I think is the beach’s direction, dreading what I know I will see there, but hoping there will be food and drink to be salvaged among the plane’s wreckage. I trek through the woods, an impossible mixture of equatorial jungle and redwood forest, swatting my way through swarms of gnats as the cicadas sing all around me.

  Why of all places did I have to crash-land in a place with a giant monster?

  At least it’s summer here—wherever here is. Otherwise, I could be tramping around out here freezing my butt off!

  When my watch tells me half an hour has passed and I’m still walking through forest with no beach in sight, I decide to head back to the cave and reorient myself. An hour passes with no sign of the cave or the cliff face housing it, and I’m forced to admit to myself I’m lost.

  I collapse onto the ground and being to cry. My stomach bellows in mockery and protest. When I can ignore its growls no longer, I get up and start walking, heedless of my direction. Under my present circumstances, one path is as good as the next.

  The dense growth of trees around me starts to peter out. I begin to see giant, prehistoric ferns sprouting from the carpet of vines and leaves blanketing the forest floor. Then I see a small, stagnant puddle of water in the earth.

  Water! My mind screams.

  Before I can think about what I’m doing, I rush forward and fall to my knees. I throw an arm out to either side of the water puddle and plunge my face into it. I take several large swallows before the taste registers. When it does, it’s brackish and foul.

  I jerk back my head and spew what is left in my mouth onto the ground. I cough as the rest tries to come up my throat.

  Disheartened, feeling as weak as the branch water I so desperately need, I slowly climb to my feet and continue walking. By the time evening arrives, I’m slogging knee-deep through open marshland, batting away Chihuahua-sized mosquitoes with the sword.

  No exaggeration.

  Small fish and who knows what else swimming beneath the water brush against my legs as I move. The lower the sun drops, the more swipes whatever’s down there takes at me. I imagine the alligators I’ve seen countless times on Animal Planet, swimming just beneath the swamp water’s surface, sizing me up, deciding which spot is the most tender.

  It’s with this thought in my head that I decide I need to take shelter as soon as possible. Luckily—inexplicably—there’s a giant hand rising from the swamp roughly a hundred yards ahead of me! It should do quite nicely.

  To tell the truth, I don’t know if it’s really a giant hand. It’s hard to say with all the creeper vines hanging over it. But that’s what it looks like to me: a giant forearm rising from the water to tower over the sparse swampland trees, five digits the size of Grecian pillars curling upward at its end.

  I reach the hand and climb up its side using the vines dangling from it. As weak as I am, it’s slow going.

  “One hand at a time,” I tell myself as my right hand reaches up and grabs a vine above my left.

  “One hand at a time.”

  Many hands-at-a-time later, I crest the edge of the giant appendage and drag myself onto it. Just in time too, for pain like a knife seizes my gut and I’m barely able to throw off the sword, pull down my pants, and swing my end over the edge before diarrhea begins gushing out my backside.

  When it’s over, I roll onto my back, too weak to even wipe or pull up my pants.

  That’s what I get for drinking swamp water!

  I think about crying, but decide I can’t waste any more moisture. It’s amazing what you can—or can’t—do when potential death stares you in the face.

  By nightfall, I feel a little better. Not much, but a little. I roll onto my side and use some of the vines padding the giant palm to clean myself. I hoist up my jeans, the act taking considerable effort, and move to the other side of the hand, propping up against one of its massive, vine-covered digits.

  Thankfully, my bug-bites up until this point have been relatively few. But here in the swamp, I will definitely need a cover for the night. I drag patches of the vines over me, using them as a makeshift mosquito net. Now all I have to worry about is disturbing any snakes that might be nestled down among the creepers.

  Can you say, gulp?

  If only Bear was here! No snakes or anything else would dare come around then!

  A long time ago, when I was just a little kid, before we lived in California, I was playing in our yard when I stumbled upon a huge rattler, coiled and ready to strike. I froze and screamed for Mom. She’d been nearby, working in her garden. She came running around the side of the house and saw what was happening. But every step she took to close the distance made the snake raise its head a little higher in warning. I bawled and bawled and bawled. That made the snake angrier, too.

  Having had enough of both of us, the rattler struck at me!

  Mom and I both screamed! But then Bear seemingly appeared out of nowhere to snatch the rattler in his jaws before it could bite me. Bear shook the snake back and forth for all he was worth! Then he trapped its head with his paws and ripped its body in two.

  And I was glad!

  Glad as I’d ever been!

  Mom scooped me up and ran into the house, covering me with machinegun kisses as she went. I tried to tell her I was okay—that Bear had saved me—but she wouldn’t listen. Under the circumstances, it was understandable.

  But Bear isn’t here, and I’m alone.

  I realize just how alone when I look up at the dark sky visible between the giant, curled fingers constituting my shelter. Staring up at the sky, I realize for the first t
ime in my life what true fear is.

  Yes, I’ve been in a plane crash. Yes, I’ve been attacked by some unknown, monstrous creature. Or at least, that’s what appears to have happened. But even with all this wild and crazy stuff going on, I’ve held on to the hope of rescue. Even if it’s a small hope.

  Looking up into the night sky, that hope withers and dies inside me.

  In movies, when two people who love each other are separated, as often happens in film, it’s a cliché they can look up into the sky at night and know, wherever the other person is—provided they are at least both in the same hemisphere—he or she is looking up at the same stars as their loved one.

  I don’t even have that going for me!

  The constellations above me are ones I’ve never seen. And they are not those of the southern hemisphere, either. I’ve studied Andromeda, Aquarius, and all the others in science class. Wrote a report on them, in fact. And it’s not them or those of the northern hemisphere I see above me. There’s one that sort of looks like Draco the dragon, but it goes on and on, rising from one side of the horizon to stretch across the sky and disappear beyond the other, as long and thick as our own Milky Way.

  “Why?” I ask the night sky. “Why is this happening to me?”

  No answer comes.

  I fall into a fitful sleep as the first of the roars begin.

  Chapter 5

  Archaeopteryx lived approximately 150 million years ago. Though often called the “original bird,” Archaeopteryx had more in common with theropod dinosaurs, sharing their sharp teeth, bony tails, and hyper-extendible second toes (see Killing Claw). In fact, many scientists hypothesize there existed a missing link between the two species—a creature much larger and even more fearsome...