Ariel (19 page)

"Figures. So what do we do now?"

She tossed her horn. "I guess we make camp again. I doubt we'll have any more—" A jet of flame overhead.

"The explosion," said Shaughnessy. "It'll probably attract them from miles around."

"Lovely," I said. "Fucking lovely."

"I don't think they'll bother us if we don't light another fire," said Ariel.

"I can't tell you how happy that makes me."

"At least George got his dragon." She walked over to where George sat with his back against a rock and nudged him with a hoof. "Right, George?"

"I didn't have anything to do with it." He looked morose.

I re-tied the pack and examined the sleeping bag. A choice cut of dragon
flambé
had plopped onto one corner and the blood had eaten away most of the material beneath. I picked up the sleeping bag by the other end and pulled. The meat rolled off, feathers dropped out from the hole, and ashes and burned wood chips flaked from the bottom of the bag. I put it over one shoulder, pulled the roll of duct tape from a backpack pocket, and sat beside George. I started patching the eaten-away section.

George stared glumly at his sword. An orange tongue of flame licked the sky and danced in reflection along the blade. I looked up, frowning. "What's the matter?" I asked, looking back to George. "Mad because you didn't get to play hero?"

"Well  .  .  .  . I was supposed to kill a dragon and I didn't have anything to do with it. It just blew up all by itself."

I didn't tell him that it had blown up because I'd shot it in the gasbag and the leaking hydrogen had ignited on the remains of the campfire. It would have made him feel worse.

"Your father doesn't have to know that," I said, knowing as the words left my mouth that it was the wrong thing to tell him. He made no reply.

I tried again. "Look, nobody becomes a hero by setting out to do it. Circumstances make heroes. Some people just end up in the right place at the right time and they do something they think is perfectly natural for them to do, and suddenly they're heroes."

"I
could
have killed it," he said.

I nodded. "That's what counts, George. You did all you could do—I saw you in front of that thing with your sword out. Heroism isn't necessarily
doing
something. Sometimes it's the willingness to do it, when the occasion is right." Which, I added to myself, isn't often, thank God.

"Isn't it good to be a hero?"

"It's not good to go out of your way to be. It can get you killed—you came pretty close tonight, you know. Look, you've been paying attention to the
Don Quixote
, haven't you?" He nodded. "That's what usually ends up happening when you set out to be heroic—you get dumped on your ass. I've met people who've done heroic things—but never a real, live honest-to-goodness hero. Those only exist in comic books and hungry imaginations." I looked at the patch job on the sleeping bag. It would hold, at least until I could find another one.

I patted George on the shoulder and told him not to worry and to get some sleep, then I stood up. Before I turned away he said, "Pete?"

"Uh."

"Um, I was supposed to come back with—I mean, my dad told me to bring back a piece of the dragon I killed, to prove I done it."

I nodded and yawned. It stretched my voice out. "We'll look for a piece of tail for you tomorrow, when it's light." I smiled at my own joke, but he didn't get it. He thanked me soberly and said good night.

I walked to the other side of the boulder, looking for a meatless piece of ground big enough for my sleeping bag. Ariel stood before me, tail swishing. "You certainly get preachy when you get half a chance," she said.

I unfurled the bag. "What do you want I should do? He was feeling pretty bad, so I gave him a pep talk." I smoothed out the sleeping bag.

She nodded. "I feel sorry for him. He tries so hard."

"He'll be okay." I drew Fred to check for damage, but there was none, thank goodness.

"I know." She looked at me a long moment. "Sleep well." There was a sarcastic note in her voice. She glanced at Shaughnessy, who was thirty feet away, looking up at the shapes of dragons in the air, their bodies like distant ships seen from below the water.

Ariel walked a short distance away and lay down with her back to me. I looked at the sleeping bag at my feet and looked back to Shaughnessy. I walked past Ariel to her. "We'd better get some sleep," I said.

My voice startled her and she spun, gasping. She put a hand lightly on my arm, placed the other against her chest, fingers spread. "I'm sorry. You scared me."

I glanced at her hand on my right biceps and leaned away just enough for her to lower it. "Sorry," I muttered. "Come on. We've got a lot of walking to do tomorrow."

"I don't know if my feet'll stand up to it." She smiled at the joke. I didn't smile back. We walked to the sleeping bag and she lay down on her side.

"Good night," I said.

She looked surprised. "Good night, Pete."

I went to Ariel and kicked a fist-sized piece of dragon out of the way. She raised her head to look over her back when I knelt beside her. I touched her neck lightly. "Lay back down. I need a pillow."

She lowered her head back to the ground silently and I lay my head on top of her neck. I lay on my back, staring at the starry sky. In some places the stars were blotted out: dragons. I turned onto my side because they made me uncomfortable.

I was exhausted. My sleep was dreamless, I think because of Ariel.

* * *

I shook George awake.

"Huh? What's going on?" He looked around wildly. "Another dragon?" He reached for his sword.

"Nope. Wake-up time."

He stood and, forgetting his broken finger, tried to crack his knuckles as he yawned and stretched. "Shit." His accent stretched it into two syllables. "'Scuse me," he said to Shaughnessy's amused face.

By daylight the ground was an awful mess. Pieces of dragon meat and internal organs were strewn haphazardly over an area the size of a football field. The stench of ruined meat mingled with the smell of burned wood, producing an odor I could do without smelling again. All of us—except Ariel, of course—were filthy, ragged, and stinking like a slaughterhouse.

"What time is it?" I asked. "Looks like the sun's been up awhile."

George looked at his wrist. "I forgot to wind my watch."

"Five till ten," said Ariel. "I decided we needed the extra sleep."

I nodded. Desperate as I was to catch up to Malachi, we'd have been dragging by midday if we'd got up at sunrise. "All right. We'd better get packed and get a move on."

"I can't come with you," announced George.

We looked at him. He fidgeted. "I mean, I've got to get back home. They're expecting me back, and I've gotta let my dad know about  .  .  . this." He waved his broken-fingered hand at the mess.

I nodded. "We'll help you look for a piece to take back with you, George."

"I ain't sure there's enough left to take back. I mean, most of it just looks like steak."

"We'll find something," promised Ariel.

The four of us searched in separate directions, scouring the blackened ground for something worth taking back, something George could show his father to prove he'd slain a dragon. A bone, a claw  .  .  .  . No, too big. A scale from the tail, maybe, or the arrowhead tip. A section of leathery wing.

Naturally it was Ariel who found George's trophy. She called us over to the clump of burned-out trees she and Shaughnessy had run behind the night before. Embedded in a tree trunk was a tooth, its curved yellow-whiteness standing out against the black background. It was a foot long. I worked it loose and gave it to George. It was smooth, cool, and dry. The point was rounded. He stared at it.

"It's perfect, George," I said. "Nothing else around has a tooth like that. Your father will have to believe you."

He looked up at me with the tooth clutched in his hands.

* * *

We packed. George shouldered his Boy Scout pack with the tooth tucked safely away. I soberly shook his left hand; his right wrist was still swollen and the middle finger still splinted. You should see the other guy, I thought with amusement.

He shook hands with Shaughnessy and she pulled him in and gave him a hug. "You be careful," she told him.

"I will."

"Mind your wrist," I ordered. "You've got a week's traveling ahead of you even if you make good time. Here." I handed him the foil packet of beef jerky. "It'll keep you from having to hunt too much."

"Thanks, Pete." He turned to Ariel. He opened his mouth to say something—thanks, maybe—but she just blinked and nodded. He stepped forward and put his arms around her neck. Tears glistened in his eyes when he pulled away. I glanced at Shaughnessy but her expression was unreadable. Was she envious, I wondered?

We said goodbye again and walked away in opposite directions. I looked back once, and he saw me and waved.

His broadsword still dragged the ground when he walked.

Fourteen

Now hollow fires burn to black And lights are guttering low Square your shoulders, lift your pack, And leave your friends and go.

—A. E. Housman, "A Shropshire Lad"

Walking, walking, walking, and walking. My life since the Change seemed to consist of little more than putting one foot in front of the other and plodding onward. I could grow to hate it—but after more than five years it was the way I lived. I look at what I've written here and realize it sounds as if things all happened in rapid-fire sequence, but the truth is that most of it was boring. The dull parts have been left out because they're not worth mentioning, and there were plenty of them. What comes out in the telling are the highlights.

A river ran just outside Durham and we filled our flasks and continued. I let Shaughnessy carry the
bota
, the wine flask. We skirted Durham and I-85 turned north again just outside the town. We camped a few miles north of the town. I could tell Ariel's leg still hurt, but she never complained. Two nights later we made camp across the Virginia state line.

* * *

I finished reading
Don Quixote
to Ariel and Shaughnessy before we reached Richmond. Neither of them liked the way the novel ended.

"It feels like Cervantes just got tired of writing it. The ending's too abrupt," complained Shaughnessy. "I know I'm supposed to feel terrible that he dies, but all I feel is shortchanged. I mean, he died in bed!"

I'd put the novel away and pulled out the road atlas, and was tracing our projected route with a finger. I-85 had just become I-95 and we would be in Richmond by late evening.

"Live a fast life, die a quiet death," said Ariel.

I looked up from the map of Virginia. "Mine ought to be pretty peaceful, then."

"Guess that means mine'll be horribly gruesome," Shaughnessy mused. "Up to now my life hasn't been anything to rave over."

"Stay with us," I said, "and I'm sure it'll get more interesting."

She shook her hair away from her face. "Fine."

In Richmond we camped on a concrete bank of what the map said was the James River near the downtown area, not far from the Interstate. Ariel kept watch all night; she said she didn't need the sleep. I'd been sleeping the way I had our last night with George: head on Ariel's neck, Shaughnessy alone on my sleeping bag. Tonight, though, Shaughnessy and I slept on our respective sides of the unfolded bag, me facing away from her. The concrete was hard under my right side.

I dreamed again.

I unbutton her shirt with trembling hands  .  .  .  .

It went all the way through, exactly as it had before, the same movie rewound and played again.

At the end of it I woke up trembling and breathing hard. Ariel stood a few feet away, looking at me thoughtfully. Shaughnessy slept with her back to me. I got up quietly, feeling warm wetness in my underwear. I avoided Ariel's look and unzipped the bottom compartment of my pack, drawing out a baggie of folded toilet paper. "Have to go to the bathroom," I said.

"Sure, Pete." She continued gazing at me thoughtfully. "Be careful."

"Right." I tried to appear casual as I went to the other side of the overpass above the dark river. I pulled down my pants and underwear. Whitish goop was smeared on my pubic hair and the head of my penis. I wiped it off with a soft wad of tissue. I lifted it to my nose and sniffed. Heavy, starchy. I tossed it into the river, fastened my pants, and leaned against the concrete part of the sloping overpass bank, trying to think. I suppose it was what they call a "nocturnal emission," a wet dream. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before and I was scared.

Ariel said nothing when I returned. I went straight to her and put my arms around her neck, feeling her softness on the insides of my arms, her coolness against my cheek. "What is it, Pete?" she asked gently.

I could only shake my head.

"All right. I'm here."

I pulled away from her, hands still pressing the sides of her graceful head. "I'm scared."

"Of what?" That same gentle tone, lacking in reproach, filled with concern.

"I don't know. I really don't. Different  .  .  . pieces of things, fragments. Too much of it is vague. Maybe that's part of it—uncertainty."

"New York."

I nodded. "I don't know what to do when we get there. If we get there."

"We'll help Malachi."

"We don't even know where to meet him. He doesn't know we're following him. Ariel, I don't even know if he's still alive! He might not have made it this far."

"You know better."

"We're probably so far behind him."

"He'll be on the lookout for us. I think he expected we'd follow him; he just didn't want us to hamper him on the way. If we don't find him, he'll find us."

"And then?"

"I can't say, Pete. We'll probably try to go up against Shai-tan and her master. Knowing Malachi, that will be the first order of business."

"And after that?"

"If we win?" She blinked. "We'll have removed a domino from in front of one far more capable. The griffin rider serves someone, too."

"The necromancer."

She nodded.

I swallowed and dropped my hands from her face. "Ariel  .  .  .  . I've been having  .  .  . dreams."

"I know."

"You do?"

"Yes. Whether you know it or not, Pete, I guard your sleep. Even when I'm asleep I keep a part of me focused on you. When you're troubled I can keep your sleep dreamless so you'll at least be rested when you wake up. But lately—" She sighed. "I wake up in the middle of the night because you're moaning, or making small noises like an animal. Often—" she seemed embarrassed "—you have an erection. Next day we'll break camp and you'll be quiet for a long time, most of the morning at least. I'll know that whatever you dreamt is on your mind, and the peace you're being robbed of by night is troubled by day, too." She lowered her head and, with it, her voice, until she whispered. "And whatever those dreams are, I can't stop them. They're too strong, or too subtle, for me."

And so I told her about the dreams. About how they'd become more graphic, more intense, awakening feelings within me I didn't want disturbed. I described them in detail, and I told her they made me afraid.

"When did they start?" she asked.