Phoenix (19 page)

The glowing applesauce rock falls back down into the cone.

“Do you want to go down there?” Ram asks.

“I, well, I could,” I stammer something inconclusive while I debate my options. Neither Ram nor Nia looks at all interested in investigating inside the volcano. And why should they? They have each other. They don’t need to find another dragon. They don’t have any incentive to risk their lives in the fiery hole.

And right now, I don’t want to go down there, either, what with the likelihood of death by fire down there.

But here’s the catch: we came all this way on a mission to find out what’s inside this volcano. We battled yagi and endured cold and hunger, and even sewed our own boots out of elk skin just so we could get to this place. We’ve come a long way, nearly halfway around the world, depending on how you figure it, all so we could see whether there’s a dragon in this volcano.

So it doesn’t seem right to turn tail and run without actually checking to see whether there’s a dragon in the volcano or not.

“We need to go,” Ram says again, his voice firmer this time.

The volcano, apparently siding with my brother, flings up another spurt of glowing applesauce rock. But this time, instead of going straight up and then down again, it comes up at a bit of an angle, landing about twenty feet away from us and oozing down the side of the cone.

In between ducking to avoid being hit by molten rock, Nia has been looking out to sea. Now she speaks with a dreadful hollowness in her voice. “They’re coming.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

We’re on the northwest side of the volcano, and the yagi are approaching from the same direction we approached the island—the northeast. So while we’re not exactly on the approaching side, neither is the smoke from the volcano between us and them. We can see them clearly, a dark stain glinting in the distance, spreading like spilled blood in the light of the rising sun.

“That’s it. We’ve got to go,” Ram pronounces.

“Go where?” I ask before he’s quite finished speaking. “This is our destination.”

“We can’t stay here!” Nia sounds appalled.

“We’ll go on to Australia, maybe circle back up to China, search for more dragons there.” Ram throws his hands up in a gesture that says it doesn’t matter.

But it does matter. “I didn’t come all this way just to leave without ever finding out if there’s a dragon here.”

A much larger spurt of molten rock spews out as I’m speaking. It’s like the surface of whatever’s down there is bubbling up, but since this blob was thicker and heavier as the previous splatters, it doesn’t fly as high. It barely breaches the surface of the cone before sinking back down again with a sigh.

“You can’t go in the volcano,” Ram argues, grabbing me roughly by the arm like I’m a petulant child who needs to be dragged away before I throw a public tantrum or do something to hurt myself.

He and Nia change into dragons and leap into the air. He’s towing me by the arm behind him. As he lifts off, his beating wings clear the smoke from the cone, and we hover almost exactly above it while he tries to fly with my added deadweight pulling against him.

I look down into the volcano and see a ring of fire. It’s as though the heat of the rising magma is incinerating the very rock of the wall of the volcano, forming a ring of fire with flames that leap and curl inside the volcano’s walls.

It’s like my dream, and yet, not like my dream at all. I’m not amidst the fire, lost in it, running from it. I’m above it, watching like an objective observer.

And my conversation with Nia replays in my head.

You are a phoenix. You were born of fire.

I didn’t choose to be.

Is that how it works? You have to choose the fire?

The way I understand the myth of the phoenix, it can only be reborn after giving selflessly. After dying selflessly.

A sacrificial death?

Exactly.

Another bubble of hot lava explodes upward, propelled by burning gases, exploding beneath me in a flash of light.

It’s like the fire in my dream, the fire I could never escape from, only now I know why. The reason I could never find a way out of the fire, is that the only way out is to go through the fire.

The only escape is through the fire.

And suddenly, I know. I get it. This is why I’m here, right? I don’t serve a purpose, otherwise. I’m superfluous. I always have been.

Which is exactly why I’m the only one who can fulfill this mission. There is something inside that volcano, and suddenly I know, with a burning intensity every bit as strong as the consuming fire beneath me, that I need to find out what it is.

But in order to do that, I have to get away from Ram and get back to the volcano that is already growing smaller behind us.

Instantly, I morph into a dragon. My sudden increase in size catches Ram off guard, and his hold slips from around my arm.

I whip around in the air and jet back toward the island.

Just as quickly, Ram spins and follows, grabbing me by my tail as though he can literally pull me backwards through the air.

But I beat my wings harder and strain against him, hauling him, instead, back toward the island.

He snaps a blast of fire after me, not so much in a strategic move to get me to turn around, but like a shout of reprimand, or possibly frustration.

I ignore his fire, but I can’t disregard him completely. My mission may be to find out what’s inside that volcano, but I’m not about to take my brother down with me. He has a very different duty, to marry Nia and make dragon babies. I whip my tail—hard—from side to side, hoping to fling him off so I can fly into the volcano and he can stay away and be safe.

Instead of appreciating my generous efforts for his protection, and flying off with Nia to live happily ever after, Ram beats his wings and launches himself forward, essentially leapfrogging me, landing in front of my face, pushing me back through the air.

Sometimes he is just too stubborn.

The volcano is breathing fire not more than a hundred feet from us, not straight down, but below and somewhat west.

Ram and I lock horns and talons, wrestling through the air.

Suddenly Nia whips in front of us in a streak of gold, alarm on her face. She points eastward. Without loosening my grip on my brother, I glance that direction.

The yagi are getting closer. Much closer. They’re less than a mile from the island, and closing in quickly.

Stupid yagi.

I really hate them, but never so much as right now, when I’ve got my brother to fight, a mountain to conquer, and a destiny to fulfill. Now is the worst time for untold thousands of cyborg mercenaries to get in my way.

But there’s no reasoning with the yagi.

Unlike my brother. I’ve got to reason with my brother, and quickly, or I’ll have to go through both him and the yagi at the same time, which doesn’t bode well since I have yet to manage to overcome either independently, no matter how hard I try.

Vulnerability.

I haven’t tried vulnerability, not since the very first night when we met Nia in the Siberian woods. It’s worth a try, since sheer force hasn’t worked and I don’t have any other strategies.

With no warning, I change from a dragon into a human.

Ram is caught completely off guard, largely because we never, ever, ever change from dragon form into human form until we’re standing on solid ground, or mid-stride about to land on it.

I’m a couple hundred feet in the air above the open ocean. My suddenly smaller body slips out of Ram’s stunned grasp, and I plummet toward the earth.

Knowing I have only seconds before I’ll hit the ocean’s surface, and not wishing to have every bone in my body broken on impact, I arc into a graceful dive, hands together high above my head, pointing downward like an arrow toward the earth.

I hit the ocean’s surface at just a bit of an angle, and curve my body even more, so that, instead of shooting straight downward to the ocean’s floor (which isn’t so deep below me, this close to the island) I transfer the speed of my fall into a jet of power that propels me through the water in the direction of the island.

But the island is made of rough rocks and the water is uncomfortably warm here (probably super-heated from the magma so close to the surface of the earth) and I don’t have time to climb up the rough rocks in human form.

As I breach the surface of the water, I change again, back into a dragon this time, and rise, flying, from the sea.

Halfway up the side of the volcano, Ram barrels into me, throwing me hard against the hot rock wall.

I’m not going to fight him. Vulnerability worked before. It will just have to work again. I turn into a human, hoping to evade his grasp once more. But this time, I no longer have surprise on my side. He’s seen this trick before.

Ram changes, too—apparently so he can yell at me. “What do you think you’re doing?” He’s got hold of me by my shoulders and is shoving me against the side of the volcano, which is steeply-sloped, but not completely vertical, so as long as we stay braced against it, we don’t slide down. “We have to get out of here!”

“Not without checking inside the volcano first!”

Nia grabs an outcropping near our heads and turns into a human, shouting, “The yagi are closing in. They’ll make landfall in less than two minutes. Whatever you boys are fighting about, get over it and let’s get going.”

“I have to check out the volcano,” I yell, turning a slightly pleading look on Nia. If she takes my side, even if she only considers that my plan isn’t entirely stupid, it could tip the scales enough to get me out of Ram’s grasp and down the hole.

“It’s full of fire.” Nia looks at me like I’m crazy stupid.

“So? You were born of fire.”

“I was inside an egg.”

“I have to look. There is something inside the volcano.”

Ram interrupts. “There’s nothing but fire and lava. It’s too dangerous to go in there.”

How can I make them understand? If I thought I could convince my brother that I can be careful, if I believed I could promise him I’d come back out alive, and keep that promise, I’d do it.

But I can’t promise him that.

What does he care, anyway? He’s been ready to kill me this whole trip, fighting me for supremacy and the right to call Nia his own.

Fighting me. Over Nia.

It’s his strongest instinct, and right now, that makes it my best hope.

“A duel!” I shout, just as it appears my brother is about to change into a dragon and fly off with me again.

“What?” Ram looks at me as though he’s not sure he heard correctly.

“A duel, for Nia’s hand.”

“No. You two are not fighting over me,” Nia protests.

But Ram has already leapt to his feet, challenge sparking in his eyes.

We dragons are notoriously competitive, especially the males.

Especially when there’s the love of a female at stake.

Ram can’t resist the challenge. “A duel? With swords?”

“With swords.” I draw mine (yes, we still have them with us, even after all this time). “We need a flat place to stand.”

Ram looks down. The yagi are already scrambling up the beach.

They are so ugly.

“To the ledge!” I point with my sword and rise up on dragon wings, clearing the lip of the cone and then landing on the flat spot where Ram and Nia and I stood when we first saw the volcano spurting molten rock.

Speaking of which, it’s spurting more now. What was it Nia said about the signs of impending eruption? Increased activity? Yeah, I think this counts.

Ram lands opposite me on the ledge. He folds his wings and they meld back into his human self. “We have to hurry. Winner takes all.” He glances at Nia, who’s hovering nearby in dragon form, glaring at us disapprovingly, away from the fiery volcano.

I snap my sword into position wordlessly, my lifted eyebrow telling him I’m ready. Ram and I have practiced sparring so many countless times over the years. We know exactly what we’re doing. Except this time, we’re not just practicing.

Ram is going to win. I know this. I want him to. But I can’t just drop my sword and dive into the volcano, or he might dive in after me, and that’s not want I want. Ram needs to think he won fair and square, so he’ll fly away with Nia, into the sunset or wherever they can escape the yagi.

I’m going into the volcano alone.

As if impatient and hungry, the ground beneath our feet rumbles like a growling stomach.

I hold my sword at ready. The rising sun glares at me through the smoke and steam, but it’s not terribly blinding to me, fighting an opponent against the backdrop of sunlight. It’s got to be just as irksome to Ram, fighting a sword that glints with streaks of reflected light.

Ram makes the first move, a quick slice toward my hand. I shuffle backward to avoid his blade, deflecting his sword with my own, though I don’t have much room to maneuver. We’re on a narrow spit of land here.

I flick my wrist as though to swing toward his head, but I’m not really trying to hit his head. Mostly I just want to push him back and give myself a little more room.

Nia’s been hovering this whole time. Now she lands just west of our ledge, on a tinier ledge that’s hardly a lip of earth at all. She turns human so she can shout at us. “The yagi are climbing the mountain!”

“I can smell them,” I admit, half under my breath. Yagi exude a horrible stench under the best circumstances. When there are thousands of them climbing up a hot mountain, they stink even worse.

Ram takes advantage of my momentary distraction and flicks his sword again, catching the hilt of my sword just behind the cross guard, tugging it from my hand.

I let it go. It flies wide of the volcano and clatters to the ground somewhere far below, among the yagi.

I should draw another sword. I still have one at my back, similar to the one I just lost, plus two shorter sabers at my thighs.

“The yagi are halfway up the mountain and the volcano looks ready to explode,” Nia warns us. “We should go.”

I’m panting slightly, not just from the effort of fighting Ram, but from fighting myself, as well. Deep down, I know Nia loves Ram, not me. But at the same time, I want so much for her to love me. I’ve been holding on to the possibility that maybe she secretly cares about me, that she’s only been cozying up to Ram because she’s intimidated by her true feelings for me, or something.