Dragonsapien (16 page)

But it was a
rippling light that meant much much more to him than a painful
memory of how he had come so close to being killed.

It reminded him
of the island, of the day he and Celly had first kissed, first
caressed, first – well, there were so many firsts that day, weren’t
there?

That rippling
lace of light, those sapphire blues, washing first over him, then
over her, had merged them, blended their otherwise separate forms,
bringing them together, making them one, eradicating differences
yet emphasising others.

They had flowed
within that swelling, heaving play of light, curled within it, swam
amongst it as if their souls were finally free.

However briefly,
that living, breathing light had made him as beautiful as she
was.

And – was that
what Celly had seen that day?

Not Jake, the
real Jake. But a Jake suffused with a light that seemed to have
been drawn from the stars.

Had she, like
Leon, been dazed by nothing more than an illusion of radiant
love?

A hole seemed to
open in his heart.

A black hole,
sucking up all the light, the remnants of joy, left within
him.

Leaving him
empty.

Hollow.

Dead.

He hung his head
in his hands.

He didn’t want
anyone to see that he was crying.

When he glanced
up at the pool once more, it was through the distorting haze of
tear-filled eyes.

And, suddenly –
he knew how to stop the dragons.

*

The pool lights
had been switched off.

The only
illumination across the now darkened city came from fluorescent
tubes that had been left on in the odd office, the odd
skyscraper.

The city was
silent, everyone left behind anxiously waiting for the
attack.

‘They’re making
a move.’

The calm way in
which the man wearing the headphones spoke reminded Jake of his
time with Celly and her protective circle of dragons. Jake was
standing with Captain Jones, looking up into the darkness,
wondering when they would see the first signs of the oncoming
dragons.

Everyone who had
been seated around the pool had left. Jake had offered his place on
the train to the waiter, who had accepted it gratefully.

In the distance,
there was a flicker of gloriously hued gems, floating high in the
darkness. More and more of them appeared, a Milky Way of
multi-coloured stars.

As they swiftly
approached, they spread out, grew in size, the ones towards the
front becoming more recognisable as dragons, their enormous wings
like flowing, beautifully embroidered cloaks.

Every skyscraper
abruptly blazed with light.

Light emanating
from the offices themselves, powerful projectors casting rainbows
of sparkling colour out into the night.

Light cast up
from below, playing across the massed windows of the skyscrapers,
bathing them in rippling images of the aurora borealis, of
sun-spackled seas, glistening treasure trove, molten gold, and
mercurial rivers of silver.

Light that
transformed the Tokyo skyline into an illuminated display of
everything that glittered, shimmered and entranced with its radiant
beauty.

‘It should
confuse them, at least briefly, making them easier targets,’ Jake
had explained when taking Captain Jones through his idea, backing
it all up with a description of Leon’s dazed stumbling after first
seeing Celly in all her glowing splendour. ‘At an educated guess,
I’d reckon that most of Celly’s attack troops are all under twenty
– they generally are in any war – and that’s the age when they’re
most likely to be affected by the beauty of all this
light.’

He hadn’t
mentioned another reason for his belief that the light display
might work. He had finally grasped, he believed, why medieval
illustrations portrayed dragons being defeated by nothing more than
a lone knight in shining armour; armour that shone with the golden
glow of the reflected sun, the emerald hues of the surrounding
trees, the glittering sapphire of the sky.

‘We’ve got our
own little touch,’ Captain Jones had proudly declared to Jake when
he’d returned with confirmation that the army command had become so
desperate they were willing to try anything. ‘Older shells, older
ordnance; when they explode, depending on the type, they either
suck in all the surrounding air or send out shock waves. In either
case, we figure it should cause those lungs they rely so much on to
either collapse or explode.’

The detonating
shells added their own deadly illumination to the scene, miniature
suns that briefly flared into existence, then died in an instance,
taking everything around them with them, the glittering light of
the nearby dragons flickering, falling, snuffed out as they hit the
ground.

Jake prayed that
a golden angel wasn’t amongst them.

*

The helicopter
hurtled across the darkened landscape, keeping low, heading in the
general direction of where Celly had last been seen fleeing with
the remnants of her force.

A bright,
rippling light penetrated the darkness ahead of it, interchangeable
images of a fluttering white flag and the word ‘Parley’, all
contained within a larger scene of a sapphire blue sea.

Jake was sure
that Celly would recognise the image as a sign that he was aboard
the helicopter. He had begged the generals to give him another
chance to ask for her surrender.

How could she
refuse this time? It would be pointless continuing a war that could
now only end one way; in the extinction of the dragons.

Every now and
again, caught in the diffused edges of the projected sea, the
cracked, shattered jewel that was a fallen dragon momentarily
flared into life amongst the blackened wreckage below.

It was
over.

The dragons had
a weakness after all.

*

Jake waited
patiently beneath the undulating sea the projector was casting up
into the darkened sky.

The helicopter
had landed and left him here, leaving the projector. If he wanted
Celly to come to him, he would have to be alone.

A dragon
appeared, circling at the farthest edges of the projected sea as if
she were a mermaid gracefully gliding through warm waters. Another
appeared, also circling, adding to the impression that Jake was
looking up from a seabed, up into a gloriously blue sea that only
extended so far before vanishing into a universe of empty
blackness.

Celly silently
fluttered into view, her golden body awash with an undulating light
that immediately brought back so many wonderful yet also painful
memories for Jake.

‘I’m sorry,’
Jake said as soon as Celly soundlessly landed directly in front of
him.

‘Sorry again
Jake?’ Celly managed a tired smile. ‘What for this
time?’

‘It was my idea
– the light, I mean.’

Celly chuckled
even as she frowned in puzzlement.

‘Why, thank you
Jake. Such a glorious display, and all provided by you to – well,
for what? To illuminate the demise of a species that was at least
the equal of humanity?’

‘But, I mean –
the way it
confused
you!’

‘Confused
us?’ She stared back at him curiously, giving him a bewildered
grin. ‘Yes, I admit it, Jake – I
am
confused!’

Jake opened his
mouth, paused, decided he wasn’t sure what to say after
all.

What a fool he
was!

The light
display hadn’t worked! It hadn’t stunned the dragons as he’d
thought it would!

‘It was just a
light
, Jake – wait. Do you mean you thought it was some sort
of secret weapon?’

Seeing Jake’s
embracement, realising that she had correctly guessed his
intentions, Celly chuckled.

‘Jake, that
overactive imagination of yours! Still, it’s served
me
well
up until now, as I’ve already admitted; all those faultless
strategies I picked up from you. Seems like we’ve both misjudged it
this time though, right? Still, a bluff always depends on your
enemy taking fright, doesn’t it?’

‘Bluff?’ Now it
was Jake’s turn to frown in puzzlement. ‘What bluff?’

‘This whole war,
Jake; that was my bluff. There were never really enough of us to
cause you any real problems, if you’d just stood your ground rather
than retreating all the time. We weren’t going to let you know it,
of course, but we’ve been suffering losses that – well, they’re so
bad that our only chance was to keep you so terrified that you’d
always let your retreats be turned into routs. We weren’t expecting
you to put up a fight for Tokyo; so, what do you know Jake, perhaps
your secret weapon worked after all. It must have given your
soldiers a belief that they at last had a chance of
winning.’

She shrugged
resignedly, grinned like she was tired with it all.

She looked so
exhausted, so beaten, that Jake wanted to take her in his arms,
tell her that everything was – somehow – all going to be all
right.

‘Why tell me
now, Celly?’ he said instead. ‘Why are you telling me now that it
was all a bluff?’

‘Because it’s
finished, Jake; we’re finished.’

‘Peace, Celly?
You want to talk peace?’

She shook her
head.

‘No, Jake; it’s
too late for that. We couldn’t go back to how it was. And, after
all this–’ she indicated the destruction surrounding them with a
causal nod of her head – ‘it would be even worse. I only wanted to
come here to give you somethin–’

The nearby
projector let out a muted spluttering sound as, like an oversized
roman candle, it spat out first a red flare then a green and a
yellow one.

The three flares
effortlessly rose up into the illuminated sky.

Celly was a blur
as she stepped towards Jake, throwing her golden wings about
him.

Then the flares
exploded.

*

Even within the
shielding embrace of Celly’s wings, the shock wave rippled Jake’s
skin painfully, penetrated his lungs, pounding hard on their inner
walls. Next the air was sucked out of him, as if he were drowning,
drowning in the imaginary sea that suddenly enveloped him as the
projector toppled, casting it’s blue, undulating light low along
the ground.

*

As Jake fought
to get his breath back, a dragon fell to earth close by him, her
wings flimsy and useless, her eyes wide with agonised
shock.

The second
dragon, having been higher in the sky, was still falling. He struck
the ground with a dull thud, his wings crumpling about him like the
masts and sails of a clipper wrecked upon the rocks.

‘Celly!’

Celly’s wings
were no longer wrapped around him. She was on her knees, clutching
at her chest, her head bowed as she wheezed like an asthmatic
fighting for air.

Dropping into a
crouch alongside her, avoiding her weakening wings, Jake hugged her
tightly.

‘I take it we
were both tricked, right Jake?’ she gasped, adding a stoic chuckle
at the end.

‘Celly, Celly!
I’m so sorry, so sorry!’

‘Sorry yet
again
, Jake!’ she chuckled painfully, slightly shrugging off
his embrace so that she could reach down towards the thicker, lower
flap at the base of one of her wings.

From a small,
pocket-like fold of stretched skin, she produced what appeared to
Jake to be a small bundle of bright green cloth.

‘I’m
sorry, Jake,’ she wheezed, handing it to him. ‘I lied.’

Jake pulled
aside the green material.

Inside was what
could have been a half-grown ostrich egg.

Only this egg
shimmered as if its shell had been made of delicately cut
sapphires.

*

‘I didn’t want
you to think I was a monster.’

Celly was having
difficulty speaking.

‘Leon’s?’ Jake
asked, cupping the egg in one of his hands. ‘Is it
Leon’s?’

Celly laughed
bitterly and, her head still bowed, she felt for and grasped at the
edges of the green material that Jake still held in his other hand,
pulling at it, opening it out.

‘We don’t carry
a child for nine months, Jake. It’s over a year.’

At last she
looked up and turned to him.

‘And when our
daughter’s grown, Jake, I hope you think she looks beautiful in
this.’

She drew his
attention to the small green dress she’d now left flapping from his
hand.