Phoenix (18 page)

But Nia has the clam open and her mouth full, and she has to finish chewing. “Besides the intense blasts of heat that destroy everything in their path, and, you know, bubbling lava and all that,” she pauses, using a finger to dislodge the rest of the clam membrane from the shell before swallowing it down, then shuffling off in search of more clams.

I shuffle beside her.

She continues, “It’s the invisible killers that are the most dangerous, according to the books in Eudora’s library.”

“Invisible?” I repeat as she cracks an oyster and drops the edible portion into her upturned mouth.

“Poisonous gases,” Nia rattles them off like a memorized list, “sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen sulfide. You can’t see them. At best, you can smell them—but by the time you do, it’s too late. We may be dragons, but we still need oxygen.” She hoists another clam, dripping, from the sea, and begins pounding it against a rock.

Ram picks his way closer, gesturing with a handful of crab legs, “Dragons require more oxygen than regular humans,” he insists. “If gases are poisonous to humans, they’re not just as poisonous to dragons—they’re more so.”

“The most deadly volcanic phenomenon are the pyroclastic flows,” Nia continues, cracking another oyster.

“Pyroclastic?” I repeat, translating the Latin. “Fire…pieces?”

“It’s a phenomenon unique to volcano eruptions,” Nia explains. “Essentially, hot rock and lava become supercharged with pressure until the volcano finally explodes, shooting lava, hot gas, and shattered rocks at speeds greater than one hundred miles per hour.”

“Speeds greater than one hundred miles per hour,” I repeat, trying to think how fast we dragons can fly. Faster than that, once we’ve hit maximum velocity—but it takes a while for us to get going that fast. If we’re in a volcano, we’re not going to be able to outrun a pyroclastic flow. I voice the only logical conclusion. “The pyroclastic flow must not be deadly to dragons.”

Both Ram and Nia stop cracking shellfish and look at me.

“I think it’s deadly to anyone and anything in its path,” Nia clarifies.

“But if a dragon lives inside the active volcano—” My protest fades as I look back and forth between Ram and Nia, doubt clear on their faces. “So, what, then? You don’t think we’re going to find a real dragon?”

“I don’t know what we’re going to find,” Nia rises, clam in hand. “I just know we need to be careful. Yes, we’re going to have to hurry to locate the dragon, if there is a dragon, before the yagi catch up to us. But let’s not get in such a big hurry that we plunge headfirst into danger. We have to be careful, and watch for signs of pending eruption, even more so the closer we get to our goal. That’s all.”

While Nia slurps down the clam, I pry open a few more oysters and gulp them thoughtfully. It all feels a little futile, you know? Especially if there isn’t a dragon in the volcano after all. Fleeing toward Fiji has given us a goal to pursue, but ultimately, we’re just running from the yagi.

What’s going to happen when we reach the volcano? The yagi will catch up to us quickly, I’ve no doubt about that. And then what? Will the volcano dragon fly up from inside and save us from the yagi? Maybe toss the sacrificed virgins back out as trained ninja yagi slayers to fight on our behalf?

It doesn’t seem likely.

Although that would be cool to see.

No, most likely we’ll get there, find nothing, and have to continue fleeing the yagi indefinitely, until they eventually catch up to us.

And at some point, if we live long enough, Nia will choose a husband.

So, what do I have to look forward to? Death? Or maybe rejection, followed by death.

I’d like to find some way around those two alternatives, but we’ve come all this way, and I still feel no closer to a solution now than I did at the start of our journey. It’s as though I’ve tried to outrun my brokenness, my cursed tendency toward destruction, but no matter how fast I fly or how hard I fight, I can’t outrun it or fight it off.

I am cursed, indeed.

As Ram and Nia are preparing to sleep, and I’m circling the periphery of the island, taking my first shift at watch seriously, Ram approaches me, an intent look on his face.

I watch him warily. I can see Nia at the far end of the island, brushing her teeth.

What does Ram want? He almost looks angry, but then again, he looks angry a lot. It’s his stern look. It might not mean anything.

Or he could be heading over here to put me in a headlock.

He steps right up close to me, to the point that I’d shuffle away from him if I wasn’t on an outcropping of rock, and the only convenient stepping stones the ones he’s using to reach me.

Ram leans in close and asks in an almost conspiratorial tone, “What do you smell when you’re around Nia?”

“What do I…smell?”

He nods sharply, his brow furrowed with a sternness that silences any joking response I might make.

And I could make so many.

Instead, I stay serious. “Lately I’ve smelled fish. Seafood?”

Ram’s shaking his head like I don’t get it. “What does Nia smell like to you?”

I’m baffled. Is he asking if I think she has a body odor problem? Because we’ve all been flying what amounts essentially to back-to-back marathons interspersed with fighting the yagi. He can’t expect her to smell like baby powder and roses all the time. And to be honest, I’m sure Ram and I smell worse than she does. “Um, human sweat? Not bad human sweat, or anything. Not like she’s been eating a ton of garlic. You smell worse than she does, Bro.”

“But do you smell…” Ram makes a pinched face, his fingers raised as though he might grasp the right word out of the air as it flitters past him any moment.

I peek over to see if Nia’s headed our way. This is not a conversation she needs to overhear. To my relief, she’s splashing in a tide pool. Bathing.

Did Ram already have this conversation with her?

Before I can ask, Ram exhales loudly and settles on a final word for his sentence. “It.”

“It?” I repeat incredulously. “Did you tell her she smells bad? She’s over there bathing—”

“It won’t matter if she bathes. It won’t change anything.”

“What are you talking about?” I’m getting hot behind my ears, and I’m ready to slug my brother if it turns out he’s insulted Nia.

“I haven’t said anything to her,” Ram answers my first question second. Now he’s shaking his head. “Our father told me about it, but I didn’t understand until I met Nia.”

“What?”

“The smell.”

“The smell?”

Ram shakes his head. “It’s not really a smell. It’s like something you sense, maybe with your nose, maybe some other way. Maybe we dragons have a sense we don’t have words for, a sense reserved for this one thing.”

“What is the thing?” At this point, I might just slug him for being so obtuse.

“The mate scent.”

“Mate scent? What, like cats in heat?”

“No. Any male cat can smell a female in heat. The mate smell…is something that connects a dragon to his mate.”

“Have you and Nia been connecting as mates?” Maybe I should slug him now.

“No. I just—I smell her. Maybe it’s not a smell, but from the moment I saw her, it’s like she’s inside my head. I can’t shake it. I want to do anything and everything I can for her. Dad said it was like that with Mom.”

“Dad didn’t tell any of this to me.”

“He told me about it before I went off to China the first time. You were younger then. It didn’t apply to you.”

I make a face. Ram’s trying to tell me—with a surprising amount of sensitivity, for him—that our Dad apparently has not yet deemed me ready for the mate talk. “So, you’re telling me you can smell that Nia is supposed to marry you, and not me?”

Ram grins. This time, he’s not being sensitive at all. “I wasn’t sure.” He shrugs and grins even bigger. “But if you’re saying you don’t smell anything, or sense anything, or any of that—”

“I like her just fine.” I inform him, crossing my arms.

“Good.” Ram claps me on the shoulder, nearly knocking me from my perch on the rocky outcropping. “Because I’d like to make her your sister-in-law.”

Ram turns and trots off in Nia’s direction. Nia has finished her nighttime preparations and is settling in for the night. Ram joins her.

I continue to circle the island, mulling my less-than-happy thoughts, until the position of the moon tells me I can wake Nia for her shift. When I do, she scurries away to circle the periphery, so I don’t even get a chance to talk to her as I did last night.

And maybe that’s for the best, all things considered.

With so much on my mind, you’d think I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep easily, but exhaustion comes to my rescue. Thankfully, neither fire nor gold nor pleading screams taint my slumber, and the next thing I know, Ram is shouting something about the yagi having arrived, and it’s time to go.

I grab my things and take to the air before I’ve even fully opened my eyes. When I open them, I see it’s early morning. The yagi are still out to sea, less than a hundred yards from our islet, though their scent is thick, as is their presence.

There must be thousands of them.

We fly swiftly southward, quickly outdistancing them, and veer east to keep from being seen by anyone on the main islands of Fiji. We pass by Fiji and Venua Levu while the sun is just rising, an orange ball on the eastern horizon. Anyone looking that direction might blink a few times at the strange scarlet, indigo, and gold specks flying across the face of the sun, but hopefully the blinding light of the brilliant dawn will be enough to deter them from looking too closely.

Now that we’ve cleared the main islands of Fiji, we slow our pace, searching the islands below for anything strangely heart-shaped, with an active volcano, halfway between Tonga and Fiji.

I’m taking halfway in a general sense, not as a precise note of location. I’m focusing my search on the entire span of sea between the two islands, ranging widely east and west in either direction.

And indeed, when I see it, we’re still closer to Fiji than Tonga. I spot the smoke rising from the cone first, and wonder ironically what the odds are that the volcano in question would be smoking at the exact moment we’re looking for it. As Nia said, the term active can be broadly defined.

But the islet is in the right area, and Nia circles closer, so I follow and so does Ram, though we’re flying high, well above any poisonous vapors that might be rising from the cone.

It’s not until we’re practically on top of the tiny island that its shape becomes clear: a classic heart, like a Valentine, or a volcano that long ago blew out a bit to one side, blasting away the top middle section while widening its shape according to that peculiar outline.

The three of us circle the island warily. I’m conscious, in particular, of my breathing, and whether inhaling makes me feel lightheaded or sick. So far, I feel only excited, yet wary.

But at the same time, I know we need to investigate quickly, because it won’t be long before the yagi catch up to us.

There’s a ledge along one ridge of the lip of the cone. We circle, seeing nothing out of place—really, not seeing much at all given the clouds of smoke that rise up thickly here, too close to the source for even the ocean breeze to thin them very much.

Perhaps I’m in a hurry or my curiosity has gotten the best of me, but I land first, on the lip of a ledge, a flattish, solid spot on the ridge of the cone, some ten feet long, two or three feet wide at its biggest point.

It isn’t much to stand on, but it gives me a place to set my feet while I attempt to peer deeper into the volcano.

A warm place to set my feet.

The ground is hot here. The heat from under the earth rises close to the surface at this point—closer and hotter than even the hot spring on Mount Fuji.

Is that a warning sign the volcano might be about to blow? It’s hard to say. Nia talked about increases in temperature and seismic activity, but I don’t know what the usual baseline is here. Maybe it’s always this hot here.

Anyway, there isn’t anywhere better to stand. The volcano is I guess what I would call a smallish volcano, especially compared to Mount Fuji. The opening at the top of this volcano is only a couple hundred feet wide, but the sides have eroded, so this little ledge I’m standing on is one of the few places broad enough to accommodate us.

Nia and Ram circle again, watching to see how I fare before landing beside me.

I’m crouching at the cone’s edge when they morph into human form beside me.

“See anything?” Ram asks.

“Smoke? A few bright streaks of something reddish down there—lava? I can’t say for sure—the smoke is too thick.”

“Any chance it might be a dragon?” Nia asks.

I cup my hands to my mouth, forming an improvised megaphone. “Hello?” I shout as loudly as I can. “Any dragons down there?”

Dragons down there. The walls of the volcano send my voice echoing back.

Ram and Nia exchange glances above my head.

I stand, not wishing to be left out. The two of them have gotten adept at holding conversations using only facial expressions. Dragons, in general, are skilled at communicating wordlessly, although the better you know a particular dragon, the easier it is to read their face. I can read Ram just fine and Nia pretty well, but not if I’m staring into the smoky cone of the volcano while they make winky eyes above my head.

Right now, they both look dubious and concerned.

“The ground is hot here,” Ram notes, prancing as though he’s got live coals beneath his feet.

Which in a way, he almost does.

“I don’t think this volcano is at all stable.” Nia doesn’t even have the sentence out before an ominous rumbling echoes up from somewhere beneath us.

“Did the ground just…tremble?” Ram scowls as he glances all around, as though searching for confirmation that what he felt was real.

“Seismic activity.” Nia gives him a knowing look.

“We should go.”

“But we haven’t even checked inside the cone yet,” I protest.

The cone, as though willingly participating in our conversation, makes a deep belching noise, and flings up a smattering of liquid rock about the consistency of applesauce, but probably a million times hotter.