Phoenix (13 page)

“Ram!” I slice, spin, glance at him, turn back and behead two more. “You and me—backs to Nia. We’ll cover her while she gathers her things. We’ll take turns.”

“There’s no time!” He grunts as he tries to push back the living with the headless bodies of the dead. “On my count, we fly. Grab what you can with your talons as you take to the air, but mind their barbs of venom.”

“Ram, no—we need to gather—”

But he doesn’t listen, only shouts over me. “On three. One. Two. Three!”

I have no choice. My plan won’t work without their cooperation, and Ram is too impatient to even hear me out. From the corner of one eye, I see golden light as Nia changes into dragon form. The yagi are too thick and they press in too closely.

I grab what I can—my backpack with one taloned foot, my scabbard belt and my other two swords with the other, and I rise just behind Ram and Nia.

Below me, the yagi swarm to cover our campsite. For a single second, I see what we left behind. Our cloaks, elk boots, the bearskin, Nia’s dress, assorted daggers. And then the yagi cluster too thickly for me to see anything. They cover the island. They’re crawling up from the sea.

We had to leave. There were far too many of them. And yet, if Ram had listened to me—if he’d trusted my plan, which was composed in a head not so groggy with sleep—we would have our things. My backpack would be on my back where it belongs, instead of dangling from one foot so that I have to struggle to fly and slip it on over my shoulders, both at the same time (which is very tricky because I need my wings to fly).

Ram is arrogant and bossy. He has always been that way. I didn’t mind so much when we were younger and he knew more than I did and had more life experience for me to trust. And yes, I had a history of breaking things, but how am I ever going to find out if I’ve grown past that if he won’t even listen to my plan?

We’re more like equals now, me and Ram. We’re nearly the same size, I’m almost as strong as he is, and my ideas are every bit as good as his—in this case, better. He should listen to me.

Why won’t he listen to me? Is it because he knows I’ve got the curse of the broken touch? I’ve never told anyone about it. I mean, yes, my siblings were all the time yelling at me for breaking their things, growing up, but that’s all. The curse was a secret I kept to myself.

Unless I haven’t kept it secret well enough. Ram’s my brother. He knows me as well as anyone. He remembers parts of my life from before I was old enough to remember. Maybe he knows about the broken touch, and he doesn’t want me to get too close to Nia for fear that I’ll scare her away or accidentally hurt her. Maybe that’s why my parents have always told me to be more like Ram, and never the other way around—because they know.

Am I that broken? That cursed? I know I’m tired and sometimes clumsy and there’s no doubt I too often blurt out inanities, but hey, everybody has their quirks.

That’s different from being so broken my own brother won’t listen to my ideas—not even my good ideas—for fear I’ve tainted them with my brokenness.

Or maybe I’m just tired and overthinking this.

Hopefully that’s it.

Speaking of, we’ve got a long flight ahead of us and we’re not as rested as I’d like. While the tuna we ate last evening was far more energizing than the pizza the night before, and I feel pretty good right now, that doesn’t change the fact that the north Pacific is a vast ocean whose boundless stretches of water offer nowhere for us to land.

We veer west. We’re going to have to follow the Ring of Fire, to fly off the shore of Japan and trace the circle down to the Philippines, before heading east again toward Fiji.

It’s a route that will take us out of our way, no doubt about that, but we have no other choice, not if we want to find a place to sleep tonight.

The yagi can swim.

I didn’t get a close look. Mostly I was trying to see what we’d left behind, to gauge whether there was anything so important we ought to risk dipping down to grab it. (There wasn’t—not that I had any limbs left to grab with, anyway, not unless I wanted to risk dropping what I already held and leaving something more important behind.) But from what I saw, the yagi were coming out of the ocean.

There may have been water yagi with them there among the waves. They look a great deal alike, especially from a distance when all you can see is the tops of their heads, and the rest of their bodies are underwater. I was too high and moving too quickly to get a good look, even with my dragon eyes.

And the creatures were clustered so thickly. It could be the yagi and the water yagi are working together, the water yagi giving their land-roving counterparts a ride across the waves, even.

Whatever the situation, however they’re accomplishing it, we know without a doubt the yagi can reach us even on an island in the midst of the ocean.

I don’t know how we’re going to get any sleep tonight.

Basically, we’ve got two options. One is to try to sleep floating, in dragon form, on the open ocean. I’ve done that before and it’s actually quite relaxing—as long as you don’t have yagi or water yagi after you. But as quickly as the yagi caught up to us on the island, I don’t think we dare go in the water.

That leaves land, which is usually my first choice, but it’s in short supply out here. If we follow the Ring of Fire, as we’ve been doing so far, we’ll be near Japan when we grow too weary to fly any further. Some of the northernmost islands are sparsely populated, but they’re also close to where we just came from. We’ll reach them sooner, but so will the yagi. We won’t get much sleep that way, especially if we have to post a guard to keep them from sneaking up on us and paralyzing us in our sleep.

And if we fly on, we’ll be among the densely populated areas. That creates its own problem. We can’t allow ourselves to be seen as dragons. We simply can’t. These days it’s more imperative than ever, because nearly everyone has a phone that can take pictures and video, so being seen means probably being recorded, as well.

If the world at large begins to even so much as suspect we exist, we’re going to have difficulties traveling anywhere. So we can’t fly into a populous area as dragons, not if there’s any chance we could be seen.

The other option is to land somewhere remote and walk into town, as we did in the Siberian fishing village. But you know as well as I do, that barely worked. In a more sophisticated, cosmopolitan place, we’d need to find regular clothes to try to blend in.

Add to that the fact that people tend to be short in Japan, and we’re going to stick out even more. Ram and I are both about six-and-a-half-feet tall. Nia’s somewhere around the six foot mark—taller than the average Japanese man.

No, I really don’t know what we’re going to do. I have my thoughts on the matter, not that I can express them in dragon form. Still, at some point we’ve got to land and talk it over. Maybe find a remote rock offshore, or something.

But we don’t. Ram’s taken the lead and he clearly has no interest in landing. We fly all day, keeping Japan just out of sight on the hazy horizon. The haziness turns to fog as the evening approaches and the air cools, but we’re still far out to sea.

I have an idea, and the fog would help. We could fly into Tokyo hidden in fog and land atop a high rise. We could sleep on the roof, surrounded by the busy city, protected by the insulating factor of the millions of people surrounding us.

I try to gesture to Ram as we’re flying, to communicate to him that I want to share my plan, but he just nods like he already gets it. I dip toward a rocky offshore outcropping, not just once, but three times. Each time he plows on ahead, without me. Nia follows his lead. As the busy metropolis of Tokyo comes into view, its skyline crowded with skyscrapers whose lights pierce the fog, we veer west, toward the city.

Okay, so maybe Ram has also thought of my idea. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t think he needs to bother to stop and talk it over.

We reduce our glow to barely more than a glimmer (not a difficult thing to do when we’re already exhausted from flying all day) and we glide in high above the city, navigating by the same high-wattage lights that mark the location of the tallest buildings so aircraft can avoid them.

We fly, and I’m watching carefully, trying to pick out a building that’s taller than most but still flat on top, somewhere we can land that’s not already crowded with a rooftop pool and gardens.

But the fog is thick and we never really get close enough to see, and before long the tallest buildings of the city are behind us.

We’re still flying, west by southwest now, and the city falls away behind us and my brother is a moron. I fly over his shoulders and tap him, gesturing with my taloned hands back in the direction of Tokyo.

Ram shakes his head and gestures ahead of us, but there’s nothing there except fog.

Does he know something I don’t know? Granted, I’m not the world’s foremost expert on geography, but I know more on the subject than a lot of people do. And I’ve never even been to Japan. I mean, I know this is Japan and that was most certainly Tokyo, because I recognized that one curved building you always see in pictures of the city, and the skytree tower, which I’m pretty sure is unique to Tokyo. And besides that, there may be a lot of crowded cities in Japan, but there’s only one Tokyo.

But Ram’s done a lot more traveling than I have, and he made those two trips to China which may or may not have involved visits to Japan (it’s not like I can ask him right now) so maybe he knows what he’s doing. Maybe there’s another city near Tokyo with better buildings to land on, and if we just fly a little longer—

Oh, no.

No.

That can’t be where we’re headed.

Oh, but it is. It’s the only thing visible through the fog now, and we’re flying straight for it.

I look at Ram and he gives me this pleased smile that says he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Except he doesn’t. He can’t possibly.

We’re headed straight for Mount Fuji.

Not to be confused with Fiji, which are a bunch of islands east of Australia and the closest landmark to our eventual island destination, Mount Fuji is the tallest mountain in Japan, and also an active volcano. I’m pretty sure it’s active, anyway, because wasn’t there an earthquake near there in the last few years, and speculation on the news about whether the volcano might erupt again? I don’t remember what they concluded, exactly, other than that it might blow its top any time. Obviously it hasn’t exploded too much yet, because the mountain is still there.

And just as obviously, we’re going there.

Mount Fuji might not be a completely stupid place to spend the night, except that the upper portion is covered with deep snow, and the mountain is also a popular tourist destination.

Granted, it’s a large mountain, something like thirty miles in diameter, maybe a hundred miles in circumference, so we can probably find an out-of-the-way spot to hide out without the camera-happy tourists seeing us.

The only catch is that Nia, who’s been shivering all through this trip, will probably freeze to death in the snow, especially considering her bearskin is a thousand miles from here on a yagi-covered island near the Sea of Okhotsk—and she would still have her bearskin if Ram had listened to my idea to gather our things before we left.

If he’s thinking this will give him an excuse to cuddle with the coveted female, he can think again.

Ram has been calling the shots for most of this trip, and you know what? I don’t like it.

It’s not just the fact that he’s making all the decisions on behalf of both of us—my parents love to do that, and I don’t often rebel against them. It’s that Ram’s decisions are stupid and probably going to get us killed.

So about the time I accept the fact that my brother is, indeed, taking us to a snow-capped volcano to spend the night, at about the same moment that I make up my mind that I hate the idea of sleeping there, and that we could have been fast asleep on a Tokyo rooftop by now, I also decide that I’m done.

I’m done listening to Ram, and letting him boss me around.

I need to stick up for myself, because quite frankly, our lives may well depend on that. Ram’s choice of a place to spend the night could be deadly.

I’ve no sooner reached that conclusion, than we circle the cratered top of the volcano and shed altitude, coming to rest amid the powdery snow.

Or Ram and Nia come to rest. I land a moment after them, barreling into my brother at full speed, sending him tumbling through the thick snow with me on his back, while I change into a human so I can yell at him.

“Are you trying to get us all killed? We passed a thousand better places to spend the night, and I tried to tell you about them, but you wouldn’t listen to me!” As I’m making this speech, we skid to a stop and I aim a fist at my brother’s eye-socket, but he rolls out of the way and shoves me back, off of him.

I land on my back in the snow.

He pounces atop me and pins me down, his face showing a fury that surprises me, “What is your problem?” He roars, his words followed by a jet of fire that melts the snow around my head. “This is the perfect place—”

“It’s freezing cold. Nia doesn’t have her bearskin, thanks to you,” I roll again, pinning Ram to the snowy ground for less than a second before he tumbles back on top of me.

“Nia will be perfectly warm—far warmer than she’d be in your thousand places!”

His words catch me off guard, spoken, as they are, with a kind of vehemence they couldn’t possibly have if Ram didn’t believe them to be true, though I can’t see how they could be true. We’re in the snow, on a mountain. It’s cold. I’m freezing, and I don’t think even the two of us together could keep Nia warm up here.

“Boys,” Nia calls out from a short distance away. “Stop fighting and come enjoy this. It’s blissful.”

Unsure what she could possibly be referring to, but intrigued by the note in her words that says whatever she’s talking about is exquisitely enjoyable, I lift my head and look in the direction of Nia’s voice.

I can’t see her over the drifts of snow. All I see is a haze of fog which, upon closer inspection, might not actually be the mist I took it for. It almost looks like…steam?