The Other Side

by Joshua McCune

  “Randon and Arabelle will be here in a little bit. We’ll have to fly them out. Grackel can take care of herself. Everything will be okay.”

  “Yeah.”

  He cranks the heater to full and flips on the cabin light. “You wanna talk?”

  I remove his hand from my leg and lean against the window. “No.”

  “I’m always here for you, okay?”

  “I need some time to myself.”

  “I want to help,” he says.

  “I know. I just . . . I’m fine. Please.”

  After a long stretch of silence, he says, “Don’t shut me out, Melissa. I know what you’re going through, I know how—”

  “You have no clue!” I say. “Everybody I care about . . .” Lost. Taken. Gone.

  He reaches for me, and I slap his hand away. There’s hurt in his eyes, but also that stubborn persistence that tells me he won’t back down. He’ll always want to help me, rescue me.

  I know of but one way to convince him that I’m not worth the trouble.

  “I killed your sister, Colin. I killed Claire.”

  I wanted to come off neutral, I’d have settled for cruel, but his bewildered expression starts another bout of tears. I throw open the door, desperate to escape, but Colin catches my arm and jerks me to him. “No you don’t. You don’t get off that easy.”

  “Easy? Fuck you! Let me go. Please, let me go.”

  But he doesn’t. I struggle to break free, but I am weak and he is not. He waits for me to play myself out, then he kisses me. I’m so stunned I respond by impulse alone. My tears come faster, but I don’t stop kissing him.

  He pulls back, leaving a hand on my cheek. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  I cannot bear the way he’s looking at me, the way that kiss shattered the darkness for a few seconds. No, I cannot bear losing that, too.

  I flee.

  Fast as I can. Into the woods. Across a frozen creek. Up a hill. My legs fail me and I land knee-deep in the snow. I push myself up before thought and memory can return, but my arms give, and I get a face full of winter.

  I roll onto my back, hyperventilating, and look past the canopy of shadowed branches into the sky. Even with my vision blurred and my thoughts numb, it doesn’t take long to identify the constellations shining back at me.

  I never showed Draco or Cygnus, or even easy ones like Orion, to Allie. Because I was terrified of what she might see. Evil dragons or evil jets, or maybe nothing at all. So I spent time teaching her math and English and history because I wanted her to feel normal, so on that day when our names and faces became forgotten footnotes, we could merge back into dragon-fearing society without difficulty.

  I should have taught her the stars. I should have taught her something important.

  There is still time, human.

  “I thought you were done with me, Grackel.”

  Your thoughts bleed into mine. Your emotions are a virus.

  I sniffle and wipe at my nose. “If you’re trying to cheer me up, you suck at it.”

  You remind me of her.

  “Her?”

  Your mother.

  “You knew Mom?”

  Why do you think I came to your island, human?

  “Because you were told to,” I say, and croak a laugh. Nobody tells Grackel what to do.

  She was the one person I ever permitted on my back. A most resilient human, but her heart often interfered with her brain.

  “Yeah, I’ve got the emotion part nailed.”

  You have her strength, too. You need to find it.

  “I don’t know how, Grackel.”

  You must stop running away from life.

  I make a snowball and toss it into the darkness. “This isn’t life. I’m not equipped for this.”

  Nobody is. But you have no other option. Be brave or die, human.

  She’s right. Two choices. Lie here and cry forever, waiting for someone to rescue me from reality, or . . .

  I climb out of the snow, glancing skyward. I will find Allie. I will teach her the stars. “Please contact Allie. Tell her you’re okay. Tell her I’ll see her soon.”

  I already did, human.

  I smile. “Thank you, Grackel. Also, have her send us images of where she’s headed.”

  Your boyfriend and Randon are deciphering that.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Perhaps you should reconsider.

  “Don’t you have some rubble you need to dig yourself out of?”

  That is the easy task for the day.

  “And I assume you’ve already finished the hard one?”

  She doesn’t answer, but I’d swear I hear her grin.

  11

  Flying a dragon without a saddle is about as fun as riding a roller coaster without a harness. A little bit exhilarating, and a whole lot terrifying. It doesn’t help that Baby’s pissed at me and makes random dips or climbs, brightening at my shouts.

  In the moments when I’m not focused on clinging to her neck, I find myself watching Colin. Bent over Randon like a jockey aboard a racehorse, he guides us between frosted mountains, above snow-gilded treetops, across frozen lakes. It often looks like he’s smiling, though maybe it’s my imagination. But what if he’s thinking about that kiss, too?

  Baby plunges. Wind stings my face, blisters my lips. My hands slip from her neck. As I reach out, shouting for her to settle, she swoops up at a steep angle and coils into a helix, laughing as I struggle to keep my stomach from inverting.

  I tighten my grip. “Knock it off.”

  She arcs into a glide, spins her head around, and fires a cone of ice over my shoulder.

  “Finished?”

  I get another blast of ice.

  After we follow Colin and Randon past more mountains and emerge over an expansive lake, Baby’s wing-flaps ease to their natural beat. I take the chance to rest my eyes, my thoughts drifting back to the kiss. Did that count as my first real one? James kissed me in Georgetown, but that was for the cameras. No, this didn’t count either. It was just a way to calm me down. Stupid, but why else would he do that after I’d confessed about Claire—

  Baby dives hard, then lurches to a near standstill. I smash into her. Pain explodes in my nose, and a warm geyser of blood pours down my lips. My scream gets swallowed by the wind. With a smirky little laugh, Baby levels out and resumes her rhythm.

  I pinch my nose. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you have to stop it.”

  Why don’t you complain to your boyfriend?

  “Is that what this is about? Do I have to block my thoughts from you?”

  Baby darkens, losing the small amount of heat radiated by her glow. He’s a scale chaser!

  “Not anymore. He’s here to help us. He saved my life.”

  She bucks again, almost throwing me off. I smack her as hard as I can. A vibrating sting runs up my arm, and she yowls loud enough to draw Randon’s and Colin’s attention. They circle back and pull up alongside us.

  “Everything okay?” Colin shouts over the wind.

  “We’re fine. Baby just forgot how to fly for a few seconds.”

  “We’ll land shortly.”

  As the first rays of dawn stretch across the darkness, we take shelter in a low mountain cave. Instead of bending down to let me dismount, Baby dips her head forward and bucks her rump, pitching me off. I land hard on my flank. The wind rushes from my lungs. Slivers of ice drip from her nostrils as she stalks to the back of the cave and curls into a ball next to Randon.

  Colin rushes over, but I wave him off. “I’m fine.”

  “The Diocletians made camp about an hour ago.” He shoulders out of his pack and unzips it. “They’re in some destroyed city I didn’t recognize. Canada, maybe. I think it’s a stopover. Allie’s in a good mood, and she told Randon to tell you hi.”

  “Randon’s kept me in the loop,” I say.

  He rummages through his pack and pulls out a pair of MREs. He sits on an outcropping of ro
ck, removes a towelette from one, and hands it to me.

  I wipe crusted blood from beneath my nose. “Thanks.”

  He holds up the MREs. “Meals Rejected by Everyone. We have beef ravioli and cheese tortellini. Pick your poison.”

  “Tortellini.”

  “Excellent choice.” After opening the MRE, he removes the tortellini bag and the flameless ration heater. He tears the top off the FRH and pours some water into it. He seals the FRH, wraps it around the tortellini, and sticks it in a container sleeve.

  After repeating the process with the ravioli, he tosses me a pouch of crackers. “Seriously, might be the most edible thing in the cave.”

  We eat crackers and move on to cobbler while we wait for the main courses to heat up. In between mouthfuls, Colin jokes about the various MRE acronyms (Meals Rejected by the Enemy, Meals Rarely Enjoyed, Meals Refusing to Exit), wonders if cavemen lived here long ago, admires the sunrise and panorama of snow-covered mountains. I’ve never heard him talk so much. Not once does he look at me.

  Mumbling about “three lies for the price of one,” he sets my tortellini in front of me and offers me a plastic fork. “Guess it beats canned beans.”

  I grab his wrist and wait until he lifts his eyes from the fork. “I’m sorry I sprang Claire on you like that.”

  He shakes his head and shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. Eat up now. We got to get some chow in us and some shut-eye—”

  “I’m sorry, Colin. I should have told you earlier.”

  He rubs at the fork tines and stares out the cave opening. “You know, at first, I thought you were making it up so I’d leave you alone. Then I realized you weren’t.” He looks at me. “I know you blame yourself for a lot of things. Don’t blame yourself for Claire.”

  “You don’t even know what happened,” I whisper.

  “In A-B boot camp, they load you up with this hundred-pound pack and run you up hills and through sand and swamp. You want to up and die with every step. After dinner, it was an effort to get outta your seat and crawl into bed. Hit the pillow and the next thing you know, reveille’s ringing in your head and it’s hump time again.”

  He traces a line down my cheek, following the path of a wayward tear. “The first time you see one of your friends die, you learn the difference between a hard day and a bad day. You can’t look back on bad days, because you can’t get over that question. What could I have done? ’Cause there’s gotta be something. And while you’re thinking about how you should have saved him, your next friend goes down.”

  He thumbs away another tear. “You have to learn to look forward.”

  “You don’t even know what happened.”

  He cups my face and kisses my eyes. “Claire was already dead in spirit. Whatever happened doesn’t matter.”

  But it does to me. So I tell him. First about Claire, but once I start, more pours out. He’s seen some of Preston’s videos, so he knows what they did to us in Georgetown, but I need him to know how it felt.

  The hopelessness inspired by CENSIRs and an endless world of frozen tundra interspersed with scientists and soldiers who’d shock you as soon as look at you. The terror of not knowing your day’s assignment, whether or not you’d have to participate in dragon torture or battle-room operations that killed innocent people, knowing if you failed to comply, they might hurt your family.

  The oppressive guilt. No matter what you did, somebody got hurt.

  He holds my hand as I recount slaying half-dead dragons for TV and an audience of soldiers. How their catcalls and jeers faded into the background because James was there, a victim of reconditioning.

  Colin slips his fingers from mine. “I didn’t know you two were . . . involved. He never mentioned you.”

  His words sting, and I hate that they do. “We weren’t. But there was a time when we were friends, I guess. Then we both were reconditioned. Rescue came before they were finished with me. I got lucky. I’m only half crazy.”

  “I wasn’t with the group long enough to know James. He always struck me as distant, but his heart seemed in the right place.”

  I snort. “You’re defending him?”

  “I don’t want to step on any toes.”

  Heat rises in my cheeks. “What are you talking about? He’s a Diocletian now. I don’t even know who he is anymore.” Did I ever know?

  Colin stands. “After I . . . in the ambulance . . . I saw something in your eyes.” He stares at the ceiling for a good minute. “Why did you run?”

  I burst to my feet, livid. “Not because of him.”

  “When you talk about him, I hear something in your voice. . . .” He shrugs. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m tired. We need to sleep.”

  Colin tries to step past me, but I don’t let him. I take his face between my hands, stand on my tiptoes, and kiss him. His lips linger on mine for a moment before he retreats. “It’s okay, Melissa, you don’t have to convince—”

  I kiss him harder. And this time he kisses me back.

  12

  Perhaps it’s the fact I slept without nightmares, but when Colin wakes me, I feel light of body and mind.

  “I’ve never seen you smile in your sleep before,” Colin says as I sit up and stretch.

  I ignore the kicking urgency in my bladder and lean back onto my elbows. “I didn’t know you watched me sleep. That’s a bit creepy.”

  He laughs. “You should smile more. You’re beautiful.”

  “When was the last time you saw an optometrist?”

  “Got a physical every six months.”

  “Drop your socks and grab your . . .” I arch my eyebrows.

  “Your dad teach you that?”

  “Among other things. Like not trusting All-Blacks. Especially when they tell you you’re beautiful.”

  “Fine then, you’re hideous. So hideous I can’t stop looking at you.”

  Smiling through a yawn, I push myself to my feet. “Be right back, Romeo.”

  After relieving myself in a dark corner of the cave, I decide to confront Baby. She’s coiled against the side wall, facing away from me. Her glow goes dim at my approach. The last time I saw her so dark, she was on the Georgetown slaughter slab, awaiting execution.

  “I know you’re upset.” I glide my hand along the scales of her rump. She used to brighten at my touch. I take in her faint smell and think of Allie. “We’ll get her back.”

  No response.

  “If you need to yell at me, that’s fine. Don’t hold it in.”

  No response.

  “We’ll get her back. I promise. I know you don’t like Colin, but—”

  She leaps to her feet and whirls on me, baring her teeth, her glow going supernova. Squinting, I see a ball of frost pulsating at the back of her throat, in rhythm with her breaths.

  He’s a scale chaser!

  I step forward, inches from her lower lip. Ice crystals sprinkle my sweatshirt and face. Footsteps sound behind me, and I raise my hand as Baby’s eyes narrow to black slits and the ball pulses bigger, colder.

  “Make us breakfast,” I say without looking back.

  Always sneaking around, Baby says as Colin retreats. He tried to needle me.

  “He should have asked you. It was a mistake, but he wanted to make sure you were safe. He’s not a bad person, Baby.”

  He’s the same as the rest of them. And you are blind to it. The joy leaks from you when you are near him. He is a scale chaser!

  The ball of ice slips from her throat into her mouth. I don’t know if she’s losing control or threatening me, but I don’t budge.

  “He didn’t join the army to kill dragons. He did it to protect his family. He knows he made a mistake.”

  She gives a frantic shake of her head. I saved your life first.

  “What are you talking about?”

  In the mountains with the metal monsters where men like him killed that Red.

  “I know you did, but I don’t understand what that has to do—”

  Everything! The
ball rolls to the spot behind her teeth. If she opens a few inches wider, it will tumble out and crush me.

  “Whatever I did to upset you, it wasn’t intentional. I could never hurt you, Baby. You know that, don’t you?”

  She turns aside, spits out her anger, then slumps down, her brilliance fading to nothing. She ducks her head into her tail. Soon, I hear an odd sound, something between a snort and wheeze. She’s crying.

  I clamber atop her and wiggle my way headlong into the tight gap between her tail and body until I reach her snout. If not for her tears, bright and warm, my head would be locked inside a dark freezer.

  “You know what got me through Georgetown?” I pause to compose myself. “You. Knowing that you still glowed kept me going. The day I discovered I was supposed to kill you, that was the worst day of my life. When rescue came, and I learned you were alive . . . that was the best. Hands down.”

  She opens an eye, as large as my head. The tears stop, and her glow intensifies enough that I don’t crystallize. You never remember me. You’re always thinking of the scale chaser.

  “Look into my heart, listen to my thoughts, do whatever you must, but know that you are my family. I would give my life for you.”

  And him?

  “Him? Maybe a finger. He is a distraction that keeps my thoughts off Allie.”

  She brightens. He kisses well?

  I laugh. “Not as well as you, but a good deal warmer.”

  I want you to be warm, Melissa.

  “Not too warm.” I wriggle forward and kiss her frosty muzzle.

  She goes blinding again, but in a good way. Sisters?

  “You, me, and Allie. Forever.”

  We fly east over the ruins of a city Colin tells me is Calgary, then turn south into Montana as the sun sets. To avoid radar and the automated anti-dragon artillery hidden across the countryside, we change altitude every half hour.

  Besides the fierce accelerations when she dives to near ground level or climbs toward the clouds, Baby maintains a steady gait. Randon refuses to relay any “noncritical” messages to Colin, and Baby’s following strict no-talk orders to conserve energy, which leaves me with nothing to do but mull over the train wreck of my life.