Dragon Island (19 page)

No answer.

“Ishiro?”

The only sound is that of the bridge swaying in the wind.

I admit to myself Kitsune and Ishiro are gone.

Possibly even dead.

I’m once again alone and unprotected here on
Dragon
Island
.

Tears leak from my eyes as my bottom lip starts to quiver.

What am I going to do now?

As if in answer to my thoughts, the mist before me parts to reveal the wide base of the pillar supporting Yamanba’s castle. A narrow stone staircase winds up its length until it vanishes along with the rest of the pillar into the mist higher above.

There it is, I think. Your chance for adventure. For glory.

For doing the right thing.

You didn’t see or hear anyone else fall. Maybe the Tengu took Kitsune and Ishiro alive—flew them off to the castle to be Yamanba’s prisoners?

It’s entirely possible. Highly likely, even, considering they are not lying here in the muck with you.

You could do it! You could go and save them and get the golden flower for the shobijin, just like Kintaro would.

Or you could try only to die a horrible, unimaginably painful death! I argue with myself. Are you letting all this talk about being Kintaro’s heir fool you?

You’re no hero! You’re just a scrawny Glee Club geek from the west coast. Worse still, you’re a coward.

Your father knows it. Ningai Ura knows it. And most of all, you know it!

The side of me arguing for heroic action starts to protest, but the other side calling for flight quickly chimes in again.

Look, even if you weren’t a coward—which, let me remind you once again, you are—you can’t be expected to do all this on your own.

That wasn’t the plan.

Ishiro was supposed to be your bodyguard, but now he’s flown the coop, literally. The Toho can’t think that you, an outlander, could possibly have a chance at pulling this off on your own.

I know your mother would certainly want you to choose caution over valor!

I nod, agreeing with the latter side of me.

“I didn’t ask for any of this. I’m out of here.”

Out of here to where, I don’t exactly know, but anywhere has to better than the castle of an evil hag.

If I’m going solo again on Kaiju Island, then I darn sure at least need to go armed.
Ishiro’s
katana may not be Kasugangi, but it will have to do.

I turn and place my hands on the hilt of Ishiro’s bloody sword, convincing myself that my decision to flee isn’t one of fear, but prudence. After some disgusting pulling and tugging, it comes free from the dead Tengu’s chest.

Sick and angry to be in a position where I’m forced to commit such atrocities, I bend over and throw up.

Once I regain my composure, I shove the blade into my belt and slog my way out of the daikaiju dung, my gorge threatening new heaves with each awkward, sinking step along the way. I scramble down the mound’s side before coming to a rolling stop a full story on the ground below.

I look at the giant pile of feces, a disgusted sneer on my face.

“Pal,” I say, anthropomorphizing the muck in doing so, “you just summed up my entire week!”

I give the pillar supporting Yamanba’s castle a last look and then set out in the opposite direction.

“Good riddance!”

It’s then that the familiar giant red eye appears like the glow of a lighthouse beacon in the fog high above me.

Although the impetus for their heroic behavior was often less than altruistic, it typically had no bearing on the end result of their deeds.

—Excerpt from
We Are Legend: The Truth Behind Heroes and Demigods of the World
, by Carl Davidson (1975)

I
just can’t win!

Just when I think I’ve seen the worst Dragon Island has to throw at me, new, even more unthinkable dangers are hurled into my path!

I stand like a canary caught in a cobra’s gaze, staring up through the shroud of fog blanketing my surroundings at the enormous red eye belonging to the creature that crashed my airplane. The eye hangs in the mist like an angry red planet.

I don’t know if the dark blanket of fog is emboldening the nocturnal
daikaiju
(Heck, come to think of it, I don’t even know if this daikaiju is nocturnal! I just assumed so considering I’ve only seen it before at night...and it’s the nastiest dragon I’ve encountered here), or what, but its presence here now at this particular time and place is just the icing on the bad luck cake I’ve been eating since I arrived on Kaiju Island.

The eye changes position and its twin appears within the haze so that two parallel red orbs now shine down at me.

A memory I definitely could’ve done without drifts up from my subconscious. It’s of my seventh-grade biology class. My teacher, Mr. Lofty, is discussing how, unlike herbivores, a carnivore’s eyes face forward so that they can better judge the distance to their prey.

The mist-enshrouded monster facing me is a perfect example.

Yeah? My mind argues. Well, Mr. Lofty also said predators tend to hunt in packs, so...

Two more sets of red eyes appear to either side of the first, silencing the voice in my head.

All three pairs swing from side to side in the air as though they are searching for something.

Maybe they haven’t seen me yet? Maybe the dung I’m covered in is hiding my smell?

The daikaiju utters a low growl that reverberates through the ground into my chest and I decide not to wait around and find out.

I whirl and sprint in the opposite direction of the creature, my trajectory taking me straight toward the pillar supporting Yamanba’s castle. It’s still visible through the open path in the mist.

Normally, I would be hesitant about going toward the home of a mountain hag, but Yamanba is the least of my worries right now.

I reach the pillar just as I both hear and feel the daikaiju take an earth-shuddering step behind me. I fall to the ground, shaken by the impact. Another step quakes the earth and I scramble onto the narrow stone staircase and climb upward on my hands and feet, the bulk of Ishiro’s sword at my side hampering rather than helping.

I crawl and then run ever higher, moving around and around the immense pillar, clinging to the rock slabs forming the staircase each time the daikaiju’s steps shake the ground.

At long last, I’m looking down upon the giant eyes instead of the reverse. One of the daikaiju has taken up a position directly below me at the pillar’s base. I can tell by the closeness of its roars and the great leathery wings that occasionally unfurl to cut the mist before me like sails on the world’s biggest pirate ship.

It’s this that convinces me the dragons are oblivious to my presence. Otherwise, I’m sure this one would’ve already taken wing and put an end to me!

I hunker down into a sitting position, ready to wait it out, confident that, come nightfall, it will leave in search of other prey to kill and eat.

Eventually, night comes, whistling wind and driving rain along with it.

At least the weather cleans me of the daikaiju dung!

It also keeps me awake, forcing me to hold tight to the narrow stairs. Sleep might have sent me accidentally tumbling over the staircase’s edge to do what the kaiju on this island have thus far failed to, despite their best efforts.

The rain soaks me to the bone and the wind does its best to tear me from my thin perch. I try to cry but I find I’m unable to summon any tears. My sorrow has finally dried up along with the memory of any joy I once held. Dragon Island has scooped out my insides and left me empty.

When morning at last comes and the sky once again lightens into the familiar gray haze, the growls and roars of a giant monster are still unmistakable below me.

The dragon is still down there.

Waiting.

Blocking my path, intentionally or not.

And it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.

“Dang it!” I say between gritted teeth. Apparently I do have some emotion left in me after all.

I look down at the stone stairs I climbed yesterday afternoon to reach my current position. From there, my gaze shifts to fix on the tip of the enormous, scalloped wing rising from the haze below like the dorsal fin of a behemoth shark.

The way down is just no good.

At last, I turn and peer at the stairs leading upward—thousands upon thousands of stairs that lead to Yamanba’s castle!

I quickly curse and avert my gaze. Whoever came up with the phrase ‘between a rock and a hard place’ had no idea!

Moments later, I’m looking upward again. I stand, my body moving of its own accord.

What lies up there high above?

Tengu?

Yamanba, certainly.

But maybe Kitsune and Ishiro, too.

Maybe even salvation.

“Only one way to find out.”

I take a step up the stairs.

What do you think you are doing? the coward’s voice inside my head says. Are you crazy?

I take another step.

That dragon will go away!

My right foot lifts and plants itself down on the step above the one my left stands on.

Just give it another day or two!

Shut up, you! I think as I continue upward. You have been outvoted by necessity and survival!

What can I say? Even a rat will fight when it’s trapped. I suppose a coward will climb, too, when he is placed under similar circumstances.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

—Quote from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

A
day later, I’m still climbing the stairs that lead up and around the stony pillar supporting Yamanba’s castle. I encounter several bird nests along my trek, some the size of the one occupied by the monstrous archaeopteryx I met during my first days on Dragon Island. With that experience still fresh in my mind, I decide to only take eggs from the smaller nests to eat. All things considered, they go pretty well with the moisture I’m able to wring out of my clothes for drinking water.

Hey! Desperate times, desperate measures!

My upward plodding is exhausting and monotonous for the most part. My only source of excitement is combating the high winds constantly pushing and pulling at me in attempt to dash me to the earth below. And that kind of excitement I can do without!

I keep waiting—and waiting—for a break in the fog to appear. When finally it does, and I see the ivory walls of Yamanba’s Asian castle not far above, I allow myself a brief moment of delight.

I’m here! I think. I made it!

But my elation is short-lived.

I rush upward, moving around the stone-block pillar only to come to a screeching halt where the stairs terminate roughly twenty yards below the castle. The remaining length of the castle’s foundation separates me from my objective.

So close and yet so far, as the cliché goes.

I pull Ishiro’s sword from my belt and hack angrily at the blocks comprising the stone pillar.

“No! No! No!” I shout, heedless of any Tengu birdmen who might be flying within my vicinity. “What kind of lousy architect—?”

I’ve come all this way, enduring monsters, dragons, and countless other challenges, only to be denied my journey’s goal.

Rage and frustration swell within me to exit my mouth in the form of primal scream. My survival instinct kicks in, barely stopping me from hurling myself in mad desperation into the mist below. I drop Ishiro’s sword on the stairs and collapse onto my haunches to cradle my head in my arms.

This time, my tears come as hot and wet as ever. My entire body shakes with sobs as I wallow in unheralded depths of self-pity.

My.

Life.

Stinks!

And no one’s coming to save me. Not Mom. Not Dad. And certainly not any search party.

I’m alone. Without recourse.

I hear a small squeak sound above me. I wipe my face with the palm of my hand and glance upward, wondering what new slight Kaiju Island is about to give me.

A small, albino-furred mammalian creature—one not unlike a mouse—is clinging up-side-down to the wall, its body inverted so that it can study me with the two huge, curious eyes set above its twitching, pointed nose.

“What do you want?” I ask begrudgingly.

It cocks its head and then squeaks at me as if in reprimand for my rudeness. The little guy gives a final twitch of its nose before scrambling up and away on its tiny paws.

That gives me an idea. A crazy one, admittedly, but seemingly the only one available to me at the moment.

I examine the stone blocks constituting the castle’s foundation, studying their placement, noting which ones jut forward and which ones sink back into the wall.