by Erik Reid
Dani took my hand and lifted it between us as we walked side by side. “Do you see this?” she asked. “This is the hand of a grown man. I need smaller, more delicate fingers for the work I do. I’ll—
“Huh,” she said. “I’ve never seen that before. Five fingers on one hand. Give me the other one.”
While she inspected my other hand, I realized she was four-fingered. I wondered how long it would have taken me to notice that if she hadn’t made an issue of it.
“That’s too many fingers,” she concluded. “They’d only get in the way of careful work. No, I’m looking for a kobold.”
“And what, pray tell, is a kobold?” I asked.
“Hard little workers, with red skin and tall pointy ears. You’ll know one when you see one. Say, are you hungry?”
“Here’s your first lesson in human-ology,” I said. “Never ask a man if he’s hungry. The answer is always yes, and he will eat everything in sight unless someone stops him. A man is a black hole of calorie consumption. Many well-meaning hostesses have been driven to bankruptcy by allowing male guests to eat their fill.”
“I don’t know what half of those words mean,” Dani said, “but I’m going to take a risk here and buy you breakfast anyway. I noticed a fisherman this morning working a pond not far from here.”
We trekked across the grassy field ahead, ascending when a gentle hill forced us upward, and speeding up just a bit when we hit a downslope. For the most part, the land here was clear and flat, though the distance held thicker copses of trees that might eventually tighten into a forest.
Breakfast, I thought. The sun was low in the sky, but it was rising. Had I been passed out all night in this field? I shook that thought aside. It was almost like I thought any of this was real.
Before long, we reached the pond, its surface reflecting back the sun’s early glow in a gentle ripple. A man stood there with long pants tucked into high boots with a pile of fishing gear by his side. A thick heap of nets sat in an untidy mound next to a few small buckets of water with rippling surfaces. Smaller fish, I assumed, destined to bait the larger ones.
“Hi there!” Dani yelled.
“Who’s it?” the man yelled. He spun back, gasping, but he calmed when he saw Dani with me trailing behind.
“Just a hungry draykin,” she said, “and a monkey man.”
“Please, sir, could you spare a banana?” I asked, closing the gap between ourselves and the fisherman.
“Haven’t had a banana in years, mate,” he said. “Sorry I can’t oblige.”
“I was joking,” I said. “Just… nevermind.”
He was another draykin, like Dani, but older. His arms were pale with a purple undertone many hues lighter than his purple hair. Purple eyes with vertical pupils looked back at us from a face with skin loosened by upper-middle age. His cheeks sagged, pulling the corners of his eyes downward.
His breath still came quickly, like the spook we had given him would take time to fully subside.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” I said.
“Been hearing some noises in these parts, that’s all,” the man replied. “Sniveling and howling like I’m not at all familiar with.”
“Do the city guards patrol this far out?” Dani asked.
“Not usually,” the man said. “I have my filet knife and my claws. I’ve been catching and selling fish for twenty years without needing more than that to protect my interests out here. Should be fine, I’m just a little jumpy is all. My nerves won’t likely settle until I’ve finished prepping my haul to head back to the capital and start selling to all the chefs ahead of the lunch rush.”
“Anything fresh you can sell a pair of passersby?” Dani asked. “I’ve got two rounds to spend on breakfast.”
“It’s fresh as ever,” he said. “Two rounds should cover a hefty fish for each of you.”
She handed the man two circular coins fashioned from black metal and he passed her two large fish, not much different than salmon, wrapped in large green leaves. One of the nets he had sitting below the water began to twitch, so he turned his attention back to his trade.
We thanked him for the food, wished him luck, and walked off.
A short distance from that pond and the mighty tree that sat beside it, Dani pulled the fish from its wrapper and held it over her head. She tilted her lips toward the sky and straightened her neck.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked. “We’re eating these whole and raw?”
She lowered the fish and looked at me sideways. “You’d like us to cook it first.”
“Not to be a prima donna,” I said. “But yes. I need to gut the fish, debone it, and cook it. It’s a species thing.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “I’d prefer cooked food too, I just didn’t want to slow us down.”
We walked toward a distant tree that had a few downed limbs. I dragged three fallen branches loose and snapped off a pair of small twigs from them. I sat cross-legged by my kindling and started to rub the two twigs together, quickly realizing that there was an art to creating fire and I was no artist.
This is what separates monkeys from men. The ability to make fire. Today, I really was a goddamned monkey.
Dani giggled as I struggled. I kept at the task anyway, though the constant jostling of my body caused the pain of my torn skin to flare up. Beneath my hoodie, my T-shirt was plastered to my arm with dried blood.
Finally, Dani spoke up. “Roll up the leaves and place them in an X on the grass below the branches. I’ve made camp before. I can teach you how to cook like this. You don’t set the thicker branches on fire. You need them to hold the food up while it cooks, leaving room for air to feed the flames beneath.”
The leaves that had wrapped the fish were wet and a little slimy, but I rolled them tightly and set them down. While I rearranged the branches, Dani sliced her sharp pinky nail into the fishes’ bellies and scraped out the guts and blood. For a woman with such an upbeat disposition, she didn’t once flinch at the gruesome task. She just did the work and didn’t complain.
I took the cleaned-out fish from her and placed them on the branches. I reached for my twigs again, but Dani stopped me.
“Let me handle that,” she said. She lay flat on the grass, just as she had when I first met her. Her elbows dug into the ground, her hands braced against her cheeks, and her chest lowered until her breasts were pinched between her rib cage and the hard earth.
Then, she closed her eyes, puckered her lips, and blew softly toward the kindling.
I thought, for a second, she was just screwing with me. Then the leaves began to smolder and smoke. A tiny orange flame took root, then spread across the surface of the green leaves.
“Right,” I said. “Dragon’s breath.”
“I’m not a dragon,” she said. “Dragons had powerful torrents of fire at their disposal. I just have a little heat and a spark, like all draykin do. That’s the extent of what we’ve inherited.”
I tossed the twigs into the fire and we watched them burn while the fish crackled and darkened. The leaves, whatever they were, held a slow, steady flame.
“Thank you for teaching me,” I said, “that the way to gut and cook a fish is to have Dani do it for me.”
“We all have natural talents,” she said. “I’m sure when the time comes, you’ll apply yours.”
“I could apply some talents now,” I said.
I took a spot next to Dani and lay flat so that my shoulder braced against hers and my face came close to her face. I peered into her bright green eyes, marveling at her reptilian pupils. It was a captivating feature on a woman otherwise so human in appearance. Her dark green wings were folded up against her back, and her tail lay flat against the grass, minimizing the features that would remind a guy like me that she wasn’t exactly human.
She blinked a few times, fluttering her long eyelashes at me. She glanced down at my lips.
I leaned in for a kiss, but the branches caught fire and shifted position,
sending sparks and heat outward in a threatening display. Dani sprang upward and raced toward the tree we lay beneath, snapping off a few low-hanging twigs and using them to spear the fish to rescue them from the flames.
“That was close,” Dani said. “They would have burned to a crisp soon.”
“Yep,” I said. “Things would definitely have gotten hot. Good thing we put a stop to that.” It’s okay, I saw the signs. She wants me. I’ll find my moment later.
We ate our fish quickly and without conversation. We seemed of one mind on that point. This little meal was so savory, with crispy skin on the outside and tender meat that melted into my mouth on the inside — I couldn’t spare a thought for talking at all.
Minutes later, we were both licking our fingers clean and stomping out the last of our cooking flames.
“Thank you for brunch,” I said. “Next time we should order the mimosas.”
“You say such odd things,” she said. “It almost makes up for your extra fingers.”
“Say what you will about my fingers,” I said. “I know how to use them. So what’s next on our agenda?”
“I hope it’s not rushing things,” she said, “but I think we might be ready.”
“For?”
“The kobolds,” she said. “Come on.”
I hiked with Dani across the grasslands, leaving the campfire’s ashes, the fisherman’s paranoia, and the city’s castle wall behind us. A range of mountains emerged along the horizon, a faint gray shape that darkened the edge of the sky a little more with each step that we came closer to it.
The top half of that range was covered in white snow, with one peak standing higher than all the rest. A narrow spire of diagonal rock jutted out from the top of that summit, its white snowy surface reflecting back the sun’s light in a distant flicker.
We weren’t destined for mountains today, though. No vertical climbs and lofty peaks. Quite the opposite.
Dani paused at the edge of a gaping crack in the surface of the earth. It stretched thirty feet across and ten feet wide, curling at the sides like Silura itself was smirking at us.
A disconcerting howl rose from the depths, along with a periodic banging reminiscent of a construction site. I looked over the edge, and besides a few rough outcroppings of jagged rock, it was too dark to see much else.
“Does that sound like someone being tortured to death down there?” I asked. “I can only think of a few reasons to howl with reckless abandon, and it doesn’t exactly sound like an orgy down there, so…”
“Torture?” she asked. “Probably not. That would be bad for business, unless Momma Jumbo changed her business model.”
Then she hopped inside the hole and vanished.
CHAPTER 4
“Be right there,” I yelled down, letting my voice echo into the cavern that had swallowed Dani whole. Over my shoulder, I couldn’t make out the shape of the castle anymore, just a blur in the distance that might be Varrowsgard. There weren’t any other landmarks that I could see, and a snowcapped mountain range blocked off the entire north.
Down was, if nothing else, the most interesting choice offered. I just had to put in a little effort to get there. I swung my leg over the edge and searched blindly with my toe until it scraped against a ledge, then I lowered myself onto it. Not every step was so easy — there were times I had to perch on a narrow ledge and use my arms to support my weight as I searched for the next foothold down.
Rock climbing is a great workout. It trains your back, arms, and legs in a wide range of motion. It also hurts like hell when your arm was recently mauled by an ancient hot dog sign.
I took solace in the fact that the injury, though painful, could only be a surface wound. It was likely a scrape more than anything else, or I wouldn’t be able to use my arm as fully as this. I would heal, and probably soon. In the meantime, I would grind my teeth and curse Jasmine’s name, since everything that had happened so far was pretty much exactly her fault.
When my feet finally touched the floor of that deep cavern, Dani was sitting on a stone bench with her legs crossed. A doorframe of ornately carved stone sat behind her, with a few torches visible deep down a long hallway.
“How did,” I said, panting for breath, “you get here,” I sat down on the floor and wiped the sweat off my forehead, “so fast?”
“I glided,” she said. “I think the kobolds bother with carving stairs in some places, for races that don’t have wings, but pterodraykin are pretty much the only ones that barter with Momma Jumbo in this area.”
“Oh,” I said. “Any chance you’ll fly me up when we’re done?”
“There’s a chance,” she said. The way she smiled said the chance was good, but I’d better behave. I had my own motivations for playing nice though, so I nodded and walked toward the entrance to Momma Jumbo’s underground kobold lair.
The hallway ahead was a tunnel carved from solid rock. These must be the foothills of whatever ice-covered mountain range was off in the distance, and the kobolds had done masterful work carving smooth walls, straight corridors, and supportive arched doorframes from the rock layers those mountains had pushed outward.
I ran my hands along the walls, tracing my fingers inside the geometric designs their artisan hands left behind.
“This is remarkable,” I said. “How far do these tunnels go?”
“No one really knows,” Dani said. “They just keep digging, like ants. They probably have hundreds of empty chambers down here, for lack of knowing what else to do with themselves.”
“Let’s peek inside some of them,” I said.
“We’re here for a reason,” she said.
“And we’ll get to it, but come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
Dani smiled and marched ahead, stopping at the next doorframe and placing her palms against the flat stone door that blocked it off. With a push, the door swung open on its hinges and revealed… nothing. Just as she had suspected, the kobolds dug rooms they didn’t even need.
“Satisfied?” she asked.
“Never. If there was anything interesting to be found, it wouldn’t be this close to the entrance.” We shut the door and kept walking, finding ourselves at an intersection of hallways. Torches lit the way forward, giving the whole subterranean complex a mild smoky scent. To our sides, the torches were smaller and spaced further apart. It was the less welcoming option, which made it the less traveled and all the more interesting.
From the right came the sound of banging, which could mean machines… or it could mean people with tools they could lash out at us with if we got too close. From the left came voices. That also meant people, but people whose locations we could assess without getting caught off guard.
I turned and headed left.
“Momma Jumbo is supposed to be straight ahead,” Dani whispered after me.
“Then we’d better explore this direction first.”
Dani stood in the intersection behind me as I stepped off her intended path. Each footfall ahead put distance between us, and I hated that. She was my safe harbor in this weird world. As much as I loved delving into the off-limits unknown, I’d love it more with her along for the ride.
I turned around and looked back at her, nodding my head toward this darker hallway and inviting her to join me. She wavered a bit, glancing back at the well-lit path that led to this Momma Jumbo she was so keen on visiting.
Come on, Dani, I thought. Don’t make me choose.
Just when I thought I might have to double back, she pivoted toward me and jogged quietly to catch up.
“I knew you’d come around,” I said.
“But doesn’t this make you nervous?” she asked. “Traipsing around where we’re not invited?”
“Nah. I’ve skulked around a few places I didn’t belong before. This is nothing. I mean, we’re already inside for one, and a building in use is less likely to have crumbling floors and ceilings to watch out for.”
I led us forward, stalking through a side tunnel
that twisted and turned. Now I was in my element, forging a path into forbidden darkness. It reminded me of the time I dragged Selena through one of the city’s abandoned subway tunnels.
Thirty-year-old equipment had sat exactly where workers left it after their final shift. Even the trash was vintage, with old glass soda bottles and candy wrappers from treats no one still manufactured. It was like a tomb and a time capsule rolled into one.
Selena wasn’t into it, but she came along anyway because it was important to me. I caught myself smiling at the thought of her, wondering when I’d even see her again. Then my hand swung toward my pocket.
My cell phone! I paused and worked at the buttons, powering it up. The cracked screen came to life, but there was no signal.
Of course there wouldn’t be. It was a silly little thing to hope for.
“What is that?” Dani whispered.
“A communication device,” I said. “But it doesn’t work here.”
Dani’s eyebrows lifted, pleading with me while her hands motioned in a request for lowered volume. “We shouldn’t draw attention,” she said. “We’re not alone down here.”
“No, we’re not,” I whispered. “Whatever voices we heard earlier, we’re getting closer to them.”
“We should turn back,” she said.
“Don’t you want to know what Momma Jumbo’s operations look like from the inside?”
“No,” Dani said. “I want to contract for help and leave so I can start my candy business.”
“Okay,” I said. “Soon.”
I paused at one doorframe and touched a slab of unfinished rock that blocked the room completely. No hinges, no handle. It was more of a boulder than a door. I pushed in every direction I could, but the hunk of rock didn’t budge.
“There are other rooms like this,” Dani said, pointing down the hall before us. “They’re blocked off for some reason. Let’s stick to the doors that actually open.”
“Whatever’s in here has got to be good,” I said. “Exotic foods, piles of money, jewels.”