by Otto Schafer
As they continued to bank, the kraken came back into view. “Cerb! Damnit, Cerb!”
Cerb didn’t respond.
Oh god, Cerb! Wake up! The dragon must have passed out after Jack channeled so much energy through it. Cerb! Please! You have to wake up!
Jack… Jack, I…
The roiling ocean raced up at them. Wake up! Wake up! Cerb was going into a roll. Jack held the horns along the side of Cerb’s center head as though his life depended on it. His life did depend on it! If Cerb didn’t wake the hell up, he was going to be crushed beneath him on impact! Cerb, you son of a bitch, open your stupid wings!
Finally, Cerb opened his wings, but it was too late to stop the inevitable. As the dragon righted itself, it plunged into the ocean like a plane making a crash landing. The jolt of impact ripped Jack’s hands from their death grip on Cerb’s horns, throwing him forward, smashing him into the water harder than the time he went knee-boarding with this rich kid at Lake Petersburg. He’d promised to stop kicking the kid’s ass after school if he’d take him. Turned out knee-boarding was stupid, and the kid’s dad wouldn’t even let him drive the boat, so the next day he kicked the kid’s ass anyway. Well, as Jack’s body bounced across the water like a stone being skipped, he realized this hurt a lot more than falling off a knee-board.
Jack bounced a final time hard on his back, forcing the air from his lungs as he finally slowed enough to sink into the cool ocean water.
This was Jack’s first time in salt water. It tasted like crap and stung his eyes. His first trip to the beach involved convincing a race of ancient giants to do what he wanted. His first trip into the ocean involved being thrown from a dragon’s back into the waiting tentacles of a mythical sea monster. He bet no one else could say that.
Around him, the water was in turmoil. He pushed up to the surface and choked out a mouthful of seawater, gasped, and spun around, trying to get his bearings.
Cerb! Cerb, where are you? Something hit him in the back. Jack turned as the flailing arm of a giant came down on his head, pushing him back beneath the churning water. Again, he fought his way to the top, gasping for air as he tried to tread water in the ocean chop. His shoulder ached and he couldn’t see Cerb anywhere. With startling suddenness, something wrapped around his waist! Jack kicked and grabbed at the slimy arm, but it squeezed him with gut-squishing force. He tried to slip out, but then the crushing pain changed as dozens of suction cups lined with small teeth bit into Jack’s leather jacket. Jack screamed as some longer teeth made it through the leather, piercing his stomach and back.
“Cerb! Help! Help!”
The black appendage ripped Jack from the water, lifting him high into the air. Instantly, he was a hundred feet above the mass of thrashing nephilbock making for the shoreline. Jack continued to fight, pushing at the tentacle, trying to free himself as he searched the water for Cerb. The pain in his stomach and back was intense and he couldn’t focus. Around him, tentacles whipped in all directions, some smashing into the water to grab nephilbock while others snatched young dragons from the air. All ended in the same place – the kraken’s massive mouth. Jack looked down, realizing he was about to share the same fate.
The kraken’s mouth made up the center of the enormous creature and from his position directly above it, Jack had a horrifying unimpeded view. The thing’s mouth was a vertical tunnel of spiked teeth that narrowed as it extended deeper and deeper into the monster’s depths. Jack watched as a young dragon missing a wing tumbled downward. Once inside the tooth-lined walls, it roared in a final bout of fiery desperation. But desperation wasn’t enough for the young dragon as spiked teeth constricted inward from all sides. Jack’s eyes went wide as the dragon disappeared with an audible crunch, the spiked walls forcing it downward into the kraken’s bowels like a meat grinder churning sausage.
Jack stared down, dangling over certain death. This wasn’t supposed to be the way it ended for him. This wasn’t supposed to be his destiny! To die now would mean Garrett lived! “I’m sorry, Danny! God, I’m sorry!”
The tentacle let go, and Jack fell. Down and down he dropped, into the meat grinder of gnashing teeth – into the kraken’s throat.
47
A Shared Memory
Tuesday, May 3 – God Stones Day 27
Southern Arizona
After several days of riding upon El Tule, they finally crossed the border into Mexico, but they had a long way to go. A whole forest of redwood and sequoia trees had merged into their much smaller escort of oak trees, effectively reducing El Tule’s speed with their slower lumbering. Garrett had never seen anything like these trees. They were impossibly tall. Maybe that’s why they moved slower. Maybe they were afraid to lose balance and fall over.
“Have you ever seen trees this tall, Bre?” he asked. She smiled at him, and he felt embarrassed. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, still smiling. “It’s just cute to see you so excited.”
He was excited. He’d never thought he would see real redwoods, and these things weren’t just tall, they were the tallest trees in the world. The one walking next to them right now was as big around as a house. He craned his neck, tipping his head to the sky, but with the cloud cover he couldn’t even see the top of the tree. It just disappeared into the clouds above like Jack’s freaking beanstalk. This was amazing! Was he not supposed to be excited?
Breanne giggled. “I’ve seen them, but you’re right, they are still amazing, and they are walking, so that’s pretty amazing too.”
“Garrett!” David said, running over from the other side of the platform and pointing. “You see the size of that tree?”
“Thank you!” Garrett said.
David looked back over one shoulder and then the other. “Me? For… what?” he asked.
“Never mind. Yes, I see it, and yes – it’s awesome!” Garrett said, turning back to Bre with a gloating smile. “See! It’s totally normal to be in awe right now!” Garrett stood up and shouted at Lenny and Pete to come check out the redwoods off the west side of the platform.
David pulled a face. “You might as well forget Pete. He hasn’t left Governess’s side since we climbed up here.”
“I’m surprised she hasn’t threatened to kill him yet,” Breanne said.
“Oh, she has. Multiple times, but he just keeps talking to her and you know what? I think she is talking back – isn’t she, Gabi?”
Gabi spoke with her mind almost exclusively, unless she was laughing, which turned out to be quite a bit around David. Yeah, I hear them sometimes talking with their minds.
Breanne raised her eyebrows. “Seriously? That’s… well, I guess I don’t know how to feel about that.” But, Gabi, you shouldn’t eavesdrop.
Well, Pete leaves his mind wide open!
Garrett nodded. “I’m worried about him, but like he said, he’s a big boy and can take care of himself. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep an eye on him though, and if he is leaving his mind open, then it might not be a bad idea to check in once in a while and make sure he’s okay.”
“Garrett, don’t encourage her!” Breanne said.
Gabi smiled.
Paul, leaning over some loose pages he acquired from the back of what had been Coach’s and was now Lenny’s journal, looked up, eyes narrowed. “You better keep an eye on him, Garrett. Shit, we all better.” He pointed his pencil at Breanne. “You didn’t see what she did to Ed. She ran that sword through… through his chest with zero shits to give… zero emotion, Bre – zero! She would just as soon kill all of us as look at us, and don’t any of you forget it!” he growled. Then, looking back down, he was lost once again to his battle plan scribblings.
No one said another word, but Garrett thought plenty. Paul was right. She was helping them because she had to. If Governess had it her way, she’d see them all dead and that included Pete.
Later that day, Garrett sat next to Bre, leaning back against the foliage wall of the bathhouse, lost in thought as he stared a
t the trees. He and Bre had been talking for hours, telling each other stories from their childhoods. Now they were just quiet, each thinking. Bre’s head rested on his shoulder, and he could smell the jasmine she’d picked from the bathhouse wall and tucked into her braids. He knew she was scared – scared for her brother Ed, scared for her father, scared for all of them, and scared for the world. Maybe that’s why she was pushing him away. At least that’s what he told himself. Okay, maybe pushing him away wasn’t exactly the right way to describe it. He had tried twice more to tell her he loved her, but each time she had stopped him. It’s not you, Garrett, it’s the world, she had said. We have to stay focused until this is over, she’d said. Focused. A single word that he couldn’t escape. He didn’t try again after that. Loving her was insane, wasn’t it? He didn’t even know her. But it was real. It was as real as anything. He didn’t need to know her to know that.
Right now, her father was trying to get to Mexico. Bre had tried to reach him but couldn’t, and no one knew what that meant. Her brother was being held hostage by a tree queen with every reason to hate humanity. And they still didn’t know if this Sarah lady was okay. He shook his head at his own stupidity. Bre was worried sick, and he wanted her to exchange I-love-yous. You’re a selfish idiot, Garrett. Garrett breathed her in as she exhaled steadily against his neck. Beyond the platform, the forest hypnotized him with its steady swaying back and forth as they pushed and pulled themselves ever forward. As his own eyes became heavy, he thought instead of how lucky he was to have found her and to be with his friends. However bad the road ahead, at least they were all together.
As Garrett continued to watch the giant redwoods, oaks, and other trees he couldn’t identify moving in one enormous mass for a single epic cause, he felt suddenly insignificant. Then, without warning, the trees stopped moving and rooted to the ground. Garrett’s eyes opened fully and his brow creased. “What’s happening?”
Breanne gasped and sat forward. What? Gabi?
They’re rooting. They must have stopped to communicate, Gabi said.
All the trees became suddenly and eerily quiet, like a winter forest frozen in absolute stillness. After days of creaking and bending, with roots churning, the stillness felt oddly wrong to Garrett, leaving him with an uneasy feeling.
After only a moment, Pete and Governess approached the group. “We have some bad news,” Pete said.
Lenny, David, and Paul crowded around.
“What’s happened?” Paul asked.
“Three million trees were just incinerated in Central America!” Pete announced.
“What do you mean? How?” Garrett asked.
Governess stepped forward. “We had a plan to hold the nephilbock in Central America at the Panama Canal. The plan was to build a dense mass that would burn so hot it would block the giants from moving forward for days. In the meantime, our forests of Panama would destroy as many nephilbock as possible while buying us the time we needed to get our army of redwoods fully in place at the portal. We need to make sure that when that portal opens, it does not stay open once Apep steps through.”
“If they leave the gate open, it will destroy the world,” Pete added.
“And you believe Apep wants that?” Paul asked.
“Oh, he wants it!” Pete said.
“Yeah, he’s right,” Breanne said. “Apep hates this world. He looks at it as the prison we forced him to stay in for the past twelve thousand years. He will destroy the entire planet on purpose if he can.”
Governess nodded. “We packed the largest guanacaste trees in Central America bark-to-bark along the canal. When we realized the nephilbock were going to cross at the west side of Panama, we moved even more trees west to crowd in, stacking row upon row. Because of the size and density of our force, we expected the fires would burn for days, forcing the nephilbock to stay off the coast and drown,” Jurupa said, evenly.
Lenny shook his head. “You planned to sacrifice yourselves, knowing the dragons would burn you anyway?”
“Yes, Lennard Wade. We understand the need to sacrifice the few for the many. Sadly, this is a concept humans have failed to grasp.”
“Well, yeah, we don’t kill millions of people to save billions of others if that’s what you mean! Not without considering it genocide, anyway,” Lenny said.
Governess spun on him. “It is unfortunate your mind is so limited! Perhaps the world would not be dying if your kind were—”
“Stop!” Garrett interrupted. “This isn’t helpful. What happened, Governess? What went wrong with your plan?”
Governess held Lenny’s gaze a moment longer, then turned to Garrett and answered, “We did not expect a three-headed dragon with a human rider to draw a power so great that its fire could reduce millions to ash in a single exhalation of dragon breath.”
“Jack,” Garrett said, rubbing a hand across his face. “Dear God, what has he done?”
“Draw power?” Paul asked. “What does that mean, ‘draw power’?”
“The oldest living creature on this planet is my queen. However, the second oldest living being is a sea monster. She goes by many names to many different creatures of the world. However, humans throughout time have called her the kraki, krake, and most recently—”
“Kraken,” David gasped, his own eyes going wide.
“Yes. Kraken.”
“Holy shit!” Lenny said.
“Jack drew power from her?” Garrett asked.
Governess nodded. “He has done this twice now. The first time, he pulled from ancient alerce trees. This time, he diseased the great kraken herself. Somehow, after drawing part of her life force into his own, he channeled his power into the dragon, who then released it through black dragon fire.”
David shook his head in disbelief. “Jack attacked a freaking kraken and blew up millions of trees with a three-headed dragon! Where did that shitstain get a three-headed dragon?”
“We do not know,” Governess said evenly, only one of her emerald eyes visible, the other covered by auburn bangs spilling out from under the hood of her cloak.
“Don’t know? I thought trees could see everything!” David said.
“All the dragons were hidden in Peru, in an area where nothing grows.” Governess made a tight fist. “All this time, thousands of dragon eggs were hidden only a handful of miles from our greatest army, practically right under our canopy. If they had hidden them where there was vegetation, we would have attacked sooner and destroyed them before they hatched.”
“Garrett, how are we going to defeat Jack with a three-headed dragon?” David asked.
But before Garrett could say anything, Governess spoke again. “You will not have to, David Leigh. Jack is dead.”
“What? Are you sure?” Garrett asked.
“Yes. Our reports say that after he released the power, his dragon fell to the ocean. The kraken captured him and consumed him.”
No one spoke.
Garrett looked at Lenny, then Breanne. Both of them were looking at their feet. “Governess, you’re sure he’s dead?”
There was a pause as Governess seemed to go somewhere else. Her single uncovered emerald eye fixed on him again. “We have the ability to share memories, Garrett Turek. Would you like to see for yourself?”
Garrett thought about it, then nodded. He didn’t want to watch Jack die, but he had to be sure.
“If you would all like to see, join hands.”
Garrett held Governess’s hand in his left and Breanne’s in his right. On the other side of Governess, Pete smiled and took her hand.
Lenny frowned disapprovingly at Pete, then hesitantly clasped hands with the others, completing the circle.
“Close your eyes,” Governess said.
They did. And then they watched.
Suddenly Garrett was over a hundred feet tall, standing at the ocean’s edge. Several trees were in front of him, but none were as tall as he was, so he could see over them. In front, above and below, the sky was full of dragons flying
in every direction. A tree in front of him fell forward, crashing into the water, and that’s when he noticed the ocean in front of him and to his left and right was full of creatures that looked like slightly smaller versions of the giant from the tombs. Jesus, they were everywhere, thousands of them. They fought through the water as tree after tree fell, trying to crush them.
Then Garrett looked farther out into the water and saw the biggest thing he had ever seen. A colossal monster! Bigger than a baseball field. Heck, bigger across than a football field, even bigger still! Maybe two football fields! It had a hundred tentacles, each a hundred feet long or longer.
High above the monster, he saw a dragon that looked different from the others. It was bigger and had three heads, and a person sat atop. As the dragon flew by, Garrett saw Jack’s curly hair. He was wearing a black leather jacket with red stripes. Beside Garrett, another tree fell toward the water and giants screamed below him. But the vision stayed with Jack as he flew back toward the kraken… too close.
Then suddenly the kraken seemed to turn all its attention on Jack. Several dozen tentacles launched toward them, but as they got close, the tentacles shriveled up and fell into the ocean. A moment later, Jack and the dragon let out an agonized scream; a moment after that came fire unlike anything Garrett had ever seen. The fire was impossibly black as it poured all down the coast before erupting in an explosive inferno. Garrett felt a sudden pain that only lasted for a second as his vision blurred. When his vision cleared, he was seeing things from a different tree’s perspective.
He was farther back now. In front of him, giants were flooding onto the charred beach. Beyond the beach, the three-headed dragon fell from the ocean sky with Jack still clinging to its back. Garrett watched the water, searching for the dragon or for Jack, but he couldn’t see either. The water was roiling all around the kraken as its tentacles thrashed in and out of the ocean, lifting the fallen dragons and fleeing nephilbock to its mouth with insatiable determination. One after another they were dropped, vanishing into its massive mouth.
