A Most Refined Dragon Page 2

  “Does that hurt?” I rubbed the beast’s head and scratched its ears. It didn’t wince. “I am Shorassa, and I am naming you Snow.”

  Snow knew where all the early nuts and berries were and we rode with full stomachs. When my steed led me to viola and wild indigo to add to my crown, I was convinced the animal would take me anywhere I wanted to go. What I didn’t know was that it was taking me were it wanted me to go.

  * * *

  A quagga cart splashed through a puddle in the lane outside. Shoroko the man barged in and collected the breakfast tray. “Darda’s back from town. Left emmaw at Thedarra’s for their weaving circle. I’ve got work to do.” What he meant was: more important work than waiting on his sister.

  The cocoon lay split open at the bottom of the glass box. A magnificent black and orange insect was pumping its wings to inflate them. It looked like a butterfly, but was not. It was an ‘utter-fly’.

  Shoroko jabbed his finger in the direction of the bug and backed up. “No! Keep it away. I still haven’t forgiven you for…”

  “I told you, it was Thedarra who trained that one.”

  “But you’re the one who sold it to her and taught her how…” Shoroko waved his hand dismissively. “Forget it.” He hurried out the bedroom door and kicked something leaning against the wall in the hall, making a clatter.

  Now that Shorassa was done spinning her tale for the memora worm, her ears heard Shoroko’s boots stomp, her nose smelled the tanning oil from his new rigrash-hide coat, and her eyes saw a flash of feathers in the hall. He wasn’t dressed for farming. “Where are you going, Shoroko?”

  He scooted out of sight with his gear.

  “You brushed your quagga… Have your bow, arrows and toughest boots… I need a doctor. Fetch me a doctor, Shoroko!”

  From out in the hall he said, “We tried all the doctors.”

  “Don’t do it! Don’t go! She’ll kill you!”

  He poked his head in the door and flipped his curly black locks aside. “You wanted me to be a hero. You’ll get your wish – even if I’m not ready to be a man.”

  “I didn’t mean it!” Shorassa tried to scramble out of her bed but dizziness made her collapse. “Shoroko, I love you!”

  The front door slammed, followed by galloping, and then by Shorassa’s father walking in to check on her.

  “He’s gone, darda.” Her chest heaved, but she held back the sobs.

  “Yes, he has.” The middle-aged farmer sat beside his daughter and wrapped his arms about her, but her eyes were on the utter-fly.

  “Only you can help me now. Fly true.” She unbolted the window and flung it open. “Find her!”

  As the insect flew out the window, Shorassa beheld a vision. The wind held captive all the seeds she had ever sown. They floated, never reaching the ground, neither sprouting nor growing. When it ended, she looked over at the writing desk beside her loom. A dry quill pen lay atop a pile of wedding invitations that would never be sent. They were not for the Rainbow Bride, but for the bride that mattered most to her, a bride who would never be.

  “Let me change your bandages.” Her father slid Shorassa’s nightgown up to her knee and removed the puss-stained rag tied to her right calf to reveal deep gouges. “The wound is healing.” He said nothing about the spreading blisters.

  “Why did Tally attack me? She was going to be my bridesmaid!” She watched as her father’s strong, calloused hands wrapped her leg, and listened for an answer he didn’t have. Disease had confined her body to her bed, but only stronger shackles could imprison her soul, and now they were in place. A shout in her heart loud enough to reach the stars faded before it reached her lungs.

  Shorassa’s father held her and wept as she slipped into unconsciousness. He spoke aloud the words her lips were mouthing silently: “My dreams. My dreams.” Then he smoothed out her quilt and traced with his fingers the words embroidered there.

  When

  dreams of

  hope are long

  delayed, the heart

  grows sick, and soul is

  frayed; but when that longing

  is fulfilled,

  it plants

  a tree

  of life

  well tilled.

  Dangers from west and south marched closer, but Shorassa’s warning slept with her. Had she, like the cricket, sung her last song?

  Chapter 2: Window of Opportunity

  Morning, April 1st, 2008. Africa.

  The plane was silver. The dwindling fuel, the wit of the pilots, and the accuracy of the gauges were immaterial, likewise the strong wind-shear from the unexpected storm, and the fact their GPS put them over Chad though they’d veered into Sudanese airspace. Not immaterial to the pilots and their passengers, mind you, but to unseen persons watching from afar. No, what mattered was the hue of the fuselage, and the woman whose fingers were skittering over the surface of her laptop keyboard: Dr. Melissa Long.

  Tap, tap, tap. In the chill of the cabin, Melissa enjoyed the warmth emanating from the underside of her laptop computer. She swiped the touchpad, scrolled through choices for eye color and selected green. In short order she raised the cheekbones, thickened the lips, exchanged blond hair for a thick mop of wavy black strands, darkened the skin tone, and tossed in muscles. Then she clicked ‘render’ and waited, jerking her head to the left every time her seat-mate shifted his position. Good, Kozi’s still asleep. Nevertheless, she held the screen in case she needed to flip it shut in a hurry.

  The features of her digital man were malleable; he didn’t exist. Her own straight black, shoulder length hair was a given. Her parents gave her the stylish but conservative glasses she wore for her thirty-first birthday that February, but the slits they covered were their original gift. Her eastern eyes defined and confined her. Her husband must be Chinese. Her digital heart throb was not.

  Melissa navigated to Intima, the favored dating service of young doctors, attached the image, completed the search profile and hit submit. Her email icon began its little dance. Click.

  No matches… Widen your search criteria?

  “No, I will not. I won’t settle for anything less than a Harlequin-sized, monster-slaying, GQ cover-ready, equestrian hunk skilled in farming and medicine. Vegetarianism optional.”

  The screen displayed additional options. Maybe it is TIME for a change. Choose a different epoch?

  Melissa's head filled with visions of 70's retro bellbottoms and sideburns, pompous Edwardian posers, steampunkers, faux royalty from King Richard's Faire – and then something that made her really shiver – transhuman cyborg geeks from the future. Faster than you can roll a twenty-sided die she clicked on the radio button labeled “Contemporary only”. She muttered, “No role-playing losers, please!”

  A spinning globe appeared along with a new offer. Maximize geographic range?

  She slid the mouse over the option but froze her finger. Do I want to risk becoming bait for a gaggle of green-card-chasers? She pined over the curly-haired hottie she'd drawn and sighed. If it means finding you, then yes. Click. After an interminable wait, she got her answer.

  Two matches found... First match declined... The remoteness of the second candidate requires the use of a non-electronic communication medium. Please check back in one hour.

  Melissa grabbed the top of the screen.

  “You left off the seven-figure income and skiing prowess,” said Dr. Kozi, who sat up and scrambled to block her from folding down her screen. “Tch, he looks nothing like me. Are you sure you know how to use that program?”

  She batted his arm away. “None of your business.”

  He ticked a list off on his fingers. “Impossible profile, mercy mission to Darfur, careless dresser…” He dodged her punch. “You sure you want a husband?”

  She folded her arms. “I believe in magic.”

  “That’s what it’ll take.” He folded his arms in mock imitation and made a convincing I-Dream-of-Genie blink.

  “I mean Practical Magic. The
movie.”

  “You lost me.” He stretched and yawned.

  “Sandra Bullock played this witch from a cursed family; if she married, her man would die young, like all her relatives. So she concocted a ludicrously detailed profile of a man who couldn’t possibly exist just so she would never find him and be heartbroken.”

  “And it worked?”

  She bit her lip and stared at her lap. “No. He ended up being real. But she found a way to break the curse.”

  “What’s your curse?”

  “My parents. There is no breaking them.” The next words squeezed forth from gritted teeth. “Nana lived to ninety-three.”

  “You’re a doctor!” He grasped an air scalpel in his thumb and index finger and slashed it back and forth in front of her nose. “Find a perfect Chinese guy, marry him, do a plastic surgery rotation, and go to town on his face.”

  Melissa grabbed his hand and pushed it aside, stared at her ideal man’s image and sighed. “My specs are more than skin deep. So how did you patch things up with Khartoum? Did you?”

  “Money and promises. No changing the subject.” He put his finger under her chin and brought her eyes up. “I think you already found someone. And you’re afraid.”

  “You’re wrong. On my fourth birthday, my folks took me to a Chinese New Year celebration. The weaving, silver dragon veered off course and knocked me down. After that, I was scared of dragons for years. But not men. I loved a real man once, but he vanished.”

  “Scared off by the dragon lady? Or her parents?”

  She eyed him coldly. “When I said vanished, I meant it. The police got involved. He went to work at his biology lab one day and never came home. His roommate acted chipper enough, though.”

  “A suspect?”

  Thunder assaulted their ears. The pilot shouted into his radio and asked for an update on the storm. The two nurses in front of them looked up groggily, then went back to sleep. The red-headed nurse snored.

  Sherry, how is it possible to snore louder than the jet engine? Melissa returned the focus of her annoyance to Kozi. “No, a blind date. My parents tried to set me up with Ren Fa, son of one of my father’s buddies in the oil business. Nice enough fellow, but his idea of a good time was playing drinking games at English Pubs. Through him I met his lab partner, Jason. After he was gone, Ren tried for me again, but I wasn’t interested. I was chocolate, but he was chocolate liqueur.”

  Kozi pointed to the picture on the screen. “Did Jason look like that?” He pulled a bagel out of a paper bag.

  “My tastes have changed.” Sniff, sniff. “What is that smell?”

  Munch, munch. “Smoked salmon.” He folded it back in its wrapper.

  “I don’t get the appeal of fish.” She sniffed again. “Onions make it even better.”

  “They’re capers.”

  “Even more ridiculous. Wolfing pickled flower buds is a great way to pick up girls.” Now Kozi leaned near to sniff her. She squirmed away and planted her palm on his forehead. “Back off, pickle-breath.”

  “I was just testing.”

  “Huh? Testing what?”

  “To see if your sense of smell is impaired, or if you just don’t care.” He pulled out a bottle with a bow and handed it to her. “My fish resents the unfair competition.”

  “Perfume?” She pushed it away. “Real smooth, telling a girl she reeks. Bet the manufacturer tested it on animals.” Melissa curled the right corner of her lips. “Of course – your second job.”

  Kozi’s eyes came together. “I don’t experiment on animals.”

  “I meant it the other way around, with you playing the rat. Aren’t those kisses from the nursing staff I’m smelling?” Thunderous turbulence shook the plane. Melissa grabbed her stomach, then reached for the Dramamine in her purse. “Detest flying. Keep the perfume. You’ll need it after I retch in your lap.”

  Kozi pulled out a pad and jotted down a list. It was soon his turn to hide what he was doing from her. After a wrestling match, the results were identical.

  Melissa read the wrinkled, half-torn sheet. “Hates fish. Hates French perfume. Hates flying. Hates her family. Loves freedom.” She shoved the list against his chest. “You’re wrong.”

  “Abut which?”

  “I love fish. Beautiful creatures that should be left to swim. You’re wasting your time trying to figure me out. Do what you want, but you will never find ‘Loves Kozi’ on that list, or your lips on mine.”

  A bright flash lit up the cabin. They were holed! Bullets from outside pierced the skin of the plane and ricocheted about. The whistle of the cabin decompressing was joined by thuds from loose equipment careening about the interior of the plane. Melissa stared drop-jawed at the window into the storm, then saw the hole in her chest. The pilots started screaming, but the howling wind carried away their words. Dr. Kozi ripped off his shirt and applied it to her wound. He stanched the flow of blood from her side, put his lips to hers to make a lie of her words and attempted mouth-to-mouth, but he couldn’t stop her consciousness from flowing out of her head.

  She saw another window, into glory, the one through which some who near death are privileged to see. The warm glow of the place beyond drove the chill in her body away. Melissa stared into the light expecting to see her life in review, or angels, or God, but instead she saw clear to the other side out another window, and into another pair of eyes looking back. Those eyes were nothing like hers. They were vast, and the scaly skin around them white, and the look penetrating and wise. And then those alien eyes grew impossibly wide, as they found common ground in the agony of mortal wounds and fear of death.

  Chapter 3: White Talon

  Morning, April 1st, Talon Mountains, Rampart.

  Shoroko pushed his sweaty mop of stringy, black hair out of his eyes. Even this small movement made him wince. His arms and legs were lacerated from squirming through the ventilation tunnel. He opened the blind on his lamp a finger’s breadth. Sniff, sniff. The odor of the brush fire he’d fanned into life a couple hundred yards from the cave mouth wafted by. Hope that’ll hide my scent. If that lightning had been any more convenient, I’d be roast dinner for a rigrash. The thunder receded.

  He rounded the bend on his belly. The draft on his face and the fishy smell made his eyes superfluous. She is here. He reached inside his tunic and withdrew a roll of cloth. He spread it out and held the lamp close. The embroidery glistened like it had on the day his sister gave it to him. On the top left corner was Brother Moon, and on the top right, Sister Moon. How he used to tease her, telling her that since Sister Moon was sent away because she was bad, his annoying sister would be sent away, too. Of course Shorassa told him the story had it all wrong and that Cousin Sun was jealous and chased her away but she would come back and bring help and there would be two moons in the sky again, meaning plenty of light for dancing. She always got her legends mixed up. Sho-sho, I will never forget you. As pictured on the cloth, she had her hand on his shoulder, and deep affection filled the eyes of her smiling face. The Claws robbed me of your smile. Today I will rob them.

  He slid his klafe from its sheath. Shoroko had trekked to Soulfish Lake to dive to the Lissai’s burial grounds. A guardian-fish almost made lunch of him before he found his prize: one Lissai tooth. Every day for the last week he’d pedaled the sharpening wheel until the edge was perfect. Drilling the hole for the handle mount broke three bits. My one klafe to your ten claws. I won’t fail.

  He poked his head out. Twenty feet below was a smooth stone floor. Benches and chairs were carved from the rock; small ones for men, and great ones for the hlissak and her attendants. Good, the friendship hall’s empty. After what you did, this room should gather dust forever. Shoroko climbed down. Great garlands of drying homzhash fruit hung from the ceiling in the corner besides the bathing pool. He reached for one, then pulled back. I am not a thief.

  A line of three natural pillars supported the center of the cavern. Shoroko removed his boots and tip-toed to the first. The clouds thin
ned and colored light dripped through shafts in the ceiling to flicker across the walls. The Lissai were masterful workers in glass. It was said they could chew sand and spit out finished crystal goblets. Overhead their handiwork divided light from rainwater, shunting the latter drip, drip, dripping into the pool.

  He extinguished his lamp. Deep grooves covered the now shimmering column. Huge swirls captured in permanent stone the freedom of storm and zephyr and the joy of diving and gliding. Shoroko had seen how it was done, when White Talon dipped her claws in molten iron and took swipes at the wall in the ecstasy that was hers after she chewed a fresh frond of rarest aliosha. We had no quarrel when you only carved stone. Why did you carve my sister?

  He could ask her, but one of two things would happen: White Talon would marshal her centuries of wisdom to beguile him, or she’d scorch him. Olissair sounds too noble for you. I prefer Jessnee’s word: dragon. Lissai are supposed to protect. Dragons only destroy. He took off his pack and slipped out a rolled up rigrash skin. The skin had protected its former owner from forest fire and Lissai breath, but not Shoroko’s bow. After washing the blood from his arms in the pool, he laced his sole defense onto his arms and legs and chest, pulled a cap over his head, picked his klafe up, and moved on.

  Past scratching posts and man-sized jars of herbs, the young man stalked. Once he entered the hallway, an explosive, guttural hiss sent shivers up his spine. The sound told him where his quarry was: the observatory. He crawled up the straight stair and paused at the threshold beside the ornate doorframe. Then he put a mirror on the floor and inched it forward with his toe. White Talon was staring in his direction. So much for surprise.

  A translucent, blue orb twice his height in diameter across hung from the ceiling. Fssshhhh. The olissair spat orange flame. Shoroko jerked back and slammed his head against the wall. Idiot. She wasn’t aiming at me. A segment of the orb started to glow.

  “Silverthorn! Where do you fly?” A leader’s customary tact moderated the emotion in White Talon’s voice, but the stone cracking smack of her tail against the floor spelled anguish. She spread her pale wings and rose on her hind legs. Kkkkhhhhhh. This blast enveloped the orb and parted into two streams that streaked into the hall, inches from Shoroko’s nose.