Dragonsapien (10 page)

Would she come
to her senses in a short while?

In many ways,
they didn’t care. Leon was far more useful in helping around the
island than Jake could ever be. It was far better that Jake took on
the role of Celly’s nursemaid rather than someone who was so much
stronger, quicker, versatile.

Jake, however,
was fully aware that Leon didn’t see it this way.

‘You say Leon
fancies you,’ he said casually as he stared into the distance,
trying to make out the details of the incoming dragon. ‘The way he
acts, though, it’s more like he hates you.’

‘Of course he
hates me. He hates me because he loves me, yet I’m not returning
that love. In many ways, you know, dragons are just like humans.
When he’s near me, he feels foolish, awkward; and he blames me for
making him feel like that. He still thinks that we’re destined to
be together; that, you being human, you can’t be more than some
silly little fad I’m going through.’

‘Ohh? And am I?
Is that all I am? Some silly little fad?’

Celly grinned,
secretly pleased by Jake’s concern that she might not care for him
as much as she did.

She grabbed his
hand tightly, running her fingers through his. She pulled him
closer.

She lifted her
head, her mouth, towards his. She gave him a swift, reassuring
kiss.

‘Course not
silly! But…’

‘But?’ Jake
repeated anxiously.

Celly nodded up
towards the ruby-skinned dragon that was now gracefully swooping
down towards the huts scattered across the beach.

‘But I’m not
sure
she’ll
be too happy about it.’

‘She? Who is
she?’ Jake asked curiously.

‘Leon’s
mother.’

*

By the time Jake
and Celly had walked across the beach towards the huts, everyone
had once again gathered beneath the canopy, as they had to greet
Erdwin and Leon’s arrival.

The mood,
however, was completely different. Whereas before it had been one
of excitement, even elation, this time it was a more foreboding
atmosphere that dominated the gathering.

Celly
apprehensively looked to her mother for an explanation.

‘Celly,’ her
mother said kindly, tenderly placing an arm around her shoulder and
drawing her close, ‘it’s Harry – Dr Frobisher. He’s been taken in
by the police.’

‘It’s far worse
than that!’ Leon glared at Celly as if she were responsible.
(Which, of course, she realised, she was.) ‘They’ve taken the
lawyers into custody too! Which means they either already know or
suspect
something’s
not quite right!’

Used to the
effortless grace of the dragons, Jake was shocked by Mrs
Frobisher’s more dishevelled appearance. She had been given some of
the fresh clothes that Erdwin and Leon had brought back to the
island with them, yet she still looked exhausted, beaten and out of
place. Her back was hunched, her face drawn, with eyes made dark
and bulbous through the anxiety she’d suffered.

She smiled wanly
at Celly.

‘Sorry Celly,’
she said. ‘Leon shouldn’t be so angry with you; you weren’t to know
your mistake would turn out like this.’

Jake sensed that
it wasn’t so much an apology for her son’s anger as an accusation
that Celly’s actions had brought disaster down on them all.
Certainly, Celly looked abashed.

‘I’m sorry Mrs
Frobisher, Leon,’ she said, glancing their way as she
apologised.

Her mother gave
her a sharp, reassuring hug.

‘Veronica – Mrs
Frobisher – will be staying with us, until things blow
over.’

‘Blow over?’
Leon snapped. ‘How’s it all going to blow over? Now dad and all the
lawyers are in custody, the police are bound to discover they’re
not human; and that’s if they haven’t done so already!’

‘Leon! Don’t
speak to Mrs Volance like that.’ Once again, Mrs Frobisher’s
supposed rebuking of her son was half-hearted and
unconvincing.

‘We all know
he’s right, Veronica,’ Erdwin stated diplomatically. ‘We can’t
allow them to be held. We have to go back. Hincheley, Mary; you can
come with me and–’

‘And me!’ Leon
insisted. ‘He’s
my
father!’

‘I should go
too, Erdwin,’ Perisa declared. ‘It won’t be easy getting them out –
probably impossible, actually. As dragons, yes; that would be
relatively easy. But revealing ourselves like that would go against
the whole point of rescuing them, wouldn’t it?’

‘I think it
might already be too late to worry about revealing ourselves,
Perisa,’ Mrs Frobisher said miserably. ‘Harry was taken in a few
days ago, not long after Leon left with Erdwin. The lawyers were
trying everything they could to get him out, but when one of them
rang to warn me that they were being taken in too – and under a
heavily armed guard, too – I think it was quite obvious that I’d be
next. I didn’t want to endanger anyone else by moving in with them,
so I flew out here.’

‘Even if we
can’t get Harry and the others out, we need to at least start
warning everyone else that they might have to flee now
that–’

‘Flee?’ Leon
irately interrupted Erdwin. ‘Why flee, when we could easily defeat
any humans that came for us?’

‘And spread the
sense of terror the humans will already be understandably feeling?
It would lead to war, destruction, with God knows how many killed
on either side.’

‘But what will
we do, Erdwin?’ Mrs Frobisher asked deceptively calmly. ‘How are
the humans going to take it when they find we’ve been living
amongst them? Monsters; isn’t that how they’ll see us?
Dangerous
monsters, made more dangerous than ever because we
can blend unnoticed amongst them.’

‘I’d hope that
the fact we’ve lived amongst them unnoticed for so long
demonstrates that they have nothing to fear from us.’

‘But will
they
mean
us
no harm when they discover us?’ Leon
demanded.

‘I’ll come back
too,’ Celly said. ‘It’s not right that I stay here when I’m the one
respons–’

‘You’re too
weak, Celly,’ her mother pointed out. ‘Now Veronica’s here, she can
help you; she’s picked up an awful lot of medical knowledge in her
time with Harry.’

‘I should go
back with you too–’

‘No, Veronica;
you’re too tired to travel back just yet,’ Erdwin said. ‘Besides,
as Perisa says, you’d be of more use here, helping Celly recover.
She had a bad fall; Perisa will explain everything as we get
together all the things we think we’re going to need.’

‘What about
him
?’ Leon indicated Jake with a sharp, angry nod of his
head. ‘We can’t leave a
human
here with mum and
Celly!’

‘Jake’s fine! He
won’t hurt us!’ Celly said quickly.

‘Hmn, as if he
could,’ Veronica sneered dismissively.

‘
We
could take him back,’ Perisa pointed out. ‘If everyone’s about to
find out about us anyway, then–’

‘And let him
give away everything he knows about this island?’

Leon glared
hatefully at Jake.

‘I don’t want to
go back,’ Jake retorted. He glanced Celly’s way, swapped a swift
smile with her. ‘I’m fine here.’

‘That’s decided
then,’ Erdwin said, turning and indicating to the others that they
needed to start preparing to leave. ‘Jake stays.’

Jake could see
from Leon’s frustrated grimace and the hate in his eyes that that
hadn’t been the result he’d been looking for.

What
had
he wanted?

Had he wanted
Jake to be killed?

*

Celly and Jake
had hoped that Leon’s departure would mean they would no longer
have to suffer the uneasy feeling that they were being constantly
followed and watched by baleful eyes.

Leon’s mother,
however, more than adequately took her son’s place in this regard.
She made plain that she resented their closeness, not only
reproachfully glaring at them whenever they returned together from
the beach, but also taking out her irritation on whatever it was
she happened to be holding or close to at the time, loudly banging
or clattering wooden plates, pots, or chairs.

And the happier
Jake and Celly were, the angrier she would be.

The more they
laughed, the louder the furious clattering.

Still, Celly was
recovering quickly under Mrs Frobisher’s more expert
care.

This consisted
of frequent, firm massages while Celly was in both her transformed
and untransformed states. Her back, in particular, was firmly
kneaded regularly, but Mrs Frobisher also squeezed and rubbed her
chest, stomach, neck and sides. Now and again, she would also
aggressively bend and twist Celly’s limbs in frog-like moves,
though Jake began to suspect that this was more punishment than
treatment.

At last, though,
Celly began to sense that strength and capability was returning to
her lungs. She could once again break the air down into its
separate elements, once again force those separated constitutes
into every extended area of her body, controlling the pressure,
altering her skin’s consistency, her muscles’ power or
mass.

‘So…’ Jake began
tentatively one day, as they lay alongside each other on the sand
by the water’s edge, ‘all this splitting up of the air; would I be
right in assuming that that’s how dragons used to produce flame?
Providing, of course, that it isn’t just a myth that they could
breathe fire.’

‘It’s true, yes;
and yes, it was through using the separated elements. They’d just
force it out through their mouths rather than around their
body.’

‘Then you could
do that?’ Jake said in amazement. ‘Breathe fire?’

‘Like you could
just start leaping around in the trees using your feet and your
tail to cling onto the branches, right? We
have
evolved,
remember? So, no, we can’t produce the chemicals that would have
ignited the gases.’

Jake lightly and
playfully ran a single finger along Celly’s bared stomach. She
shivered, giggled.

‘That
tickles!’

‘So…’ Jake said,
frowning thoughtfully, ‘what else is different from you and those
old dragons in the legends? Eggs; do you lay eggs?’

‘Eggs?’ Celly
chuckled uneasily. ‘That
would
be disgusting, wouldn’t it,
don’t you think?’

‘Hmn, yeah, I
suppose it would.’

‘How do you
think I could lay an
egg
?’ Celly sounded a little
annoyed.

‘Well, I read
once, I think, that a dragon’s egg might be quite small. It would
grow in a pouch; you know, a bit like a kangaroo’s
pouch.’

‘What? Now
you’re saying I might have a
kangaroo’s
pouch?’

She gave him a
light-hearted jab with an elbow.

Jake chuckled,
lightly running his finger over her smooth stomach once
more.

‘It wouldn’t be
really possible now anyway, I suppose. Not with you being more
human than dragon.’

Celly turned
slightly to look more directly into his eyes as she asked,
expectantly, ‘Is that how you think of me, Jake? As more human than
dragon?’

‘Yes; yes, of
course I do’ he replied honestly. ‘When you’re like this, well,
you’re
perfectly
human.’

‘Perfectly?
Am…am I beautiful, Jake?’

‘Beautiful?’

He bent his head
down towards hers, brought his lips to hers.

He kissed her
delicately, softly.

He let the
contours of his lips mould with hers.

And she knew his
answer.

*

When he touched
her like this, his fingers, his hands, running everywhere about her
body – where her body rose, where it fell, where one set of her
curves merged into others – she realised, strangely, her own
beauty, her own shape.

She only became
fully aware of her back, of its many arcs and angles, its
depressions and its rising, when he caressed her like this. She had
only ever seen it, twisted and ungainly, when she tried to see it
in a mirror. Now, although she couldn’t see it, she knew its every
curve. His touch made her skin tingle, made her gasp with pleasure,
as if she herself were the one doing the feeling, the sensing, as
if her skin, her body, at last appreciated her attention, her
interest.

Her neck, too,
under his touch, his kisses, even, yes, his heated breath, became
an area of uncountable excitable explosions of delight, each one
more pronounced than the first, building and building, until she
thought she could take no more – but she could, oh yes, she could
take more and more.

Her waist, her
hips, her thighs; before, they had only ever been relatively
unimportant parts of her body, regarded by her as being more or
less shapeless, neither wonderful nor awful. Now, under Jake’s
flowing touch, she appreciated what he was appreciating, the way
they merged together, seamlessly rolled one into the other. The
smooth indent of the waist, rising into the arc of the hip,
streaming into the less pronounced yet firmer curves of her
thigh.