A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga)

by Grotepas, Nicole

  “The dragons, it’s like they’re trying to stop us from getting there,” Will mumbled, studying the scene. The black dragon opened its mouth as though yawning, and hobbled around to position its head near a path that could take Will and Kate into the veil of storm.

  “But could the wind kill us?” Kate questioned, resting one hand on the underside of their stone shelter, the other gripped the final disc.

  “Perhaps. But which death would be preferable? By dragon, Cipher, or a windstorm?” Will’s voice gave away which death he’d opt for. The wind. A fighting death. A death of glory, of trying to overcome, the unsinkable choice, the one that showed off who he’d become—a warrior, one who did not kneel at the feet of his captor weakly, begging for mercy. No. That would not do. Kate studied him. His fading eyes flickered and sparked fiercely as he told her with his expression what he wanted to do.

  “So you want to go for it?” Kate asked calmly. Did he know that it might kill her too? He hesitated, and that told her that he did. He must believe it would be better for them to perish together fighting through the trap of dragons and the storm of wind than to languish in Necropolis, answering to Cipher’s whims. She didn’t blame him. That’s what she’d come for. To free him. There was risk in that and there always had been. Somehow she’d known. And still she chose it.

  In her dreams she’d fallen for the playful, quick-witted, and lovely man with beautiful eyes and a touch that knew her better than anyone else. Here, now, because of trial after trial—a curse of his own hideousness, the brutal and dangerous battles—all pretense had been stripped away and Kate saw what and who Will was. Gone was any flowery language about being in love and enamored with each other. What was left was reality, and it was stone cold on this hard, unforgiving planet of dragons, demons, death, and insurmountable obstacles. Kate could see who he was through the only thing that remained of the William Hawke she knew—those blue eyes, windows into the eternal nature of his soul. And he was beautiful. Self-sacrificing. Courageous even in the moments where his strength wavered. Brave even when he didn’t know if he could really do what he knew he must. He did it. Without faltering. He pushed ahead into the unknown, trusting in the blind, the invisible possibilities.

  I could love him. Even if he came back to Earth and was a ninety-year-old man, and me, barely twenty-four. The flesh was a cloak, a costume, a distraction that prevented a person from seeing clearly what lay beneath it. It could even fool the person who wore it. Kate saw herself as a not-too-bad girl, physically speaking. She had complaints about her appearance. But like everyone else, she saw herself as the person looking back from the mirror. It was a lie. What was true was in her eyes. What was in her eyes was her soul. And it was old. As old as Will’s soul.

  Will touched her cheek with his gnarled cool fingers. “It’s dangerous. But . . . yes. I’m sorry it’s come down to this, Kate.”

  “I’d do it again,” she paused, collecting herself. “I would, to answer your earlier question.”

  “Which?” Will asked, his heavy brow furrowing.

  “Even if you were an old man, and me, young, I would still pick you. Will pick you,” she amended. He would live. He would come back with her. She had to believe in that.

  His expression lightened and the corner of his mouth lifted. With his purplish lips, the expression was somewhat gruesome, but her heart still responded. “I’m so glad. That makes me happy. You have no idea.” He frowned a little, as though considering something unpleasant. Maybe remembering that he still wore the ugly body Cipher had given him. She hoped that was it.

  “The disc? The last one?” he asked.

  Kate lifted and inspected the thing again. She’d almost forgotten she had it.

  “How do we make it work? It’s not like the others,” Will mused aloud.

  “I have no idea. Let’s try just putting it down,” Kate said. One of the dragons screeched, startling them. They both jumped nervously and looked around. “Is it just me or are they getting restless?” The red dragon had changed positions—moved to a perch along the path to the veil of wind near the dark gray dragon.

  Will clicked his tongue. “They seem anxious. Let’s hurry up with this.”

  “Right. So, Leonardo said put it down between my feet,” Kate said.

  “That’s it?”

  She shrugged. “Yes. Cryptic, I know, but that was all.”

  “Go for it,” Will urged from where he rested on his haunches like an ape.

  Kate shuffled in her crouching position further beneath their overhang in case what happened alerted the dragons. “Here goes.” She put the marbled blue and white disc down between her boots and waited. Nothing happened at first. She nudged it with the side of her foot. Haltingly at first, it began to dissolve with a soft hiss, like a steam pipe venting. The clouds of mist coming off the disc swirled in a sinuous line outward in both directions, heading for her feet. She almost jumped away, but bit her bottom lip and held still. The white vaporous threads snuck outward like a snake and wrapped around her ankles, coiling about her boots in serpentine motions that made her heart stutter as though she were about to be yanked down into a vat of venomous reptiles. It continued like this until the entire disc had vanished, and what remained were clouds of white enveloping her feet.

  Boots of wind.

  31: Boots of Wind

  “I guess they’ll do,” Kate said, touching one of the boots. They were cold and swirling like a tempest trapped in a mason jar. It reminded her of putting her hand out the window while driving ninety miles an hour in the winter—the snappish cold that bit and stung. She drew her hand back and lifted her gaze to Will. “What?” she asked when she saw the expression in his eyes.

  “Kate?” His voice was alarmed.

  “Will? What’s wrong?”

  “Kate, are you there? I can barely see you, let alone hear you. Are you saying something?”

  Kate’s eyes widened and she looked back down at her feet. What was going on? Had the boots done something to her? If Will couldn’t see her, well . . . they couldn’t keep going like that. She had a sudden thought and touched her leg just above the boots. It was cold. In fact, now that she was paying attention, she realized she felt cooler than she had since coming to Chthonos. She held her breath a moment and waited, concentrating on the way her body felt during the interval between when she inhaled and when she would exhale. Will would just have to wait a minute. Yes, yes. As she closed her eyes and focused, she felt her body-temperature lowering in tiny increments. With a gasp she let her lungs deflate and took a breath. The boots were changing her. Somehow. Cooling her. But evidently also making her hard to see.

  As though she were wind.

  She was wind! she thought, exulting in the idea, wondering if it was true.

  And what if she touched Will? Could that bring him into the sheath of protection? He was only two feet away. She reached out and took hold of his arm, hesitating at first, seeing that the spot she would touch was covered in brown wartlike protrusions. When their gazes locked, she caught a glimpse of the wounded look in his blue eyes. So he had seen it, and it hurt. She plunged on and gripped his arm tightly, in rebellion to the fear that made her pause before doing so.

  Will’s eyes widened. “Kate! What happened? You were turning into just a haze, like a ghost. It was like you were being brushed away, like sand on the wind. Can you hear me?”

  “I always could. But you couldn’t hear me. Can you now?” She brushed her fingertips across the toe of the boots.

  “So is it the boots? Is that what’s making you invisible, or nearly invisible?”

  “I would say yes, the boots, unless you found a way to work magic.” She grinned deliriously.

  “I wouldn’t still be living here if I had. I have no idea what keeps Leonardo here if he can make things like these boots.”

  “Beatrice. We already discussed it. You wouldn’t stay for love?”

  He turned and peered up the mountain at the dragons guarding the way. />
  “You would, wouldn’t you? Will?”

  “For you, I would,” he said, turning to look at her, a glow beginning in his eyes. “But no one else. Not a chance.”

  Kate sighed in relief. For a second there she worried that he would say not for her or anyone. She glanced at her Timex. “We have to go. We’ve less than an hour to make it to the top.”

  “Do you think we’ll be able to sneak past the dragons?” Will asked, struggling to his feet. Kate helped him, sliding her hand down his arm and pulling him up. He mumbled a begrudging “thank you.”

  “As long as we keep a hold of each other.”

  “That should be easy,” he laughed softly. “I’ll never let you go.”

  “Oh really? I should say I’ll never let you go even if you try,” Kate joked. They were tense, both of them. Worried about making it to the top, but even more, making it past the dragons. Even if it was hard for the dragons to see them, perhaps the huge beasts could smell Will and Kate. She whispered a prayer that the boots of wind prevented her odor from wafting to the knobby noses of the dragons.

  “I hope you don’t, ever,” Will said, turning his brilliant gaze to her.

  “Let me lead,” Kate said, avoiding the subject, though noticing that her heart skipped like a needle on a scratched record. If they didn’t get on with it, none of this would matter. They’d be trapped on Chthonos forever. For a split second, she thought of her friends back on Earth—Audra, Ty, and yes, even Malcolm, realizing for the first time that perhaps he wasn’t so bad and maybe he did care for her, in his own strange way—wondering where she’d gone. Were they searching for her? She felt a pang of guilt for whatever she was putting them through. “If we have to run, can you?” She glanced down at his feet. They continued to decay. It was worse now. Kate bit her lip and averted her eyes. Whatever was happening to him, she pled with God, the universe, whoever, that it would stop once he had his body back. The body of Earth. The Will she knew.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, reassuringly. “I’ll keep up with you Kate. I’ll probably end up being faster than you. And yes, to answer your unspoken question, I will definitely pick you up and carry you when you lose all your steam. No problem.” He winked. “By the way, I’m sorry my hand is so—so gross,” he said, lifting their interlocked hands to indicate what he meant.

  “I’ve always had a thing for amphibians. It’s no big deal. It’s strangely comforting.” She knew their levity came from apprehension. So much rested on the next hour. Too much. Joking and being light about things alleviated some of the pressure. Kate released a hefty breath between her clenched teeth. “Ready?”

  Will sniffed and nodded, glancing up at the dragons and beyond them to the veil of storm and wind, which shrouded the mountain-top and hid their final destination from them. “Be careful. Tread softly.”

  “Hold onto me, and don’t let go.”

  “Never.”

  Kate adjusted the pack and reached a hand back to touch the haft of the sword. Good. It was there if she needed it, and then, before she could reconsider, she strode out from under their overhang into the open quadrangle made by four giant boulders. The black dragon with its bright yellow eyes turned its head and focused on them immediately. Kate’s heart roared in her chest like a jet engine, screaming at her to take off running. But she didn’t. She kept her pace even, trusting that the dragon had worse vision than she believed; believing that the boots of wind kept her smell from reaching the dragons, despite how rank she knew she must be from her travails and no shower now, for days.

  The dragon continued to watch her and Kate returned its stare, studying its eyes. The reptilian pupil kept shrinking and swelling like it was trying to focus, but couldn’t. It cocked its head like a bird sighting prey, reminding Kate of the robins back home.

  Soon they had passed the black dragon without incident. She then led Will past the red dragon, which never stirred despite its obvious suspicion. Her feet picked a careful path around the talus littering the slope.

  There was only one dragon left. They crept over twisted charred wood, gnarled and knobby like stunted and weathered tree limbs, across large stones and other tripping hazards, and soon they had reached the dark gray dragon, which was also watching them as though confused and unable to focus on them. Kate glanced over her shoulder once, and saw that the majority of the legion of dragons had landed below their hiding place on the unforgiving slope of the mountain. Her foot caught on a twisted root that jutted out from beneath the enormous boulder they were passing and she almost fell on her face, taking Will with her, but she yanked it free and planted it on the ground, catching herself in time.

  Will gasped, but managed to bite back the majority of the sound. They continued on without speaking.

  Kate wanted to scream with excitement. They’d gotten past the dark gray dragon! It was only fifteen more yards up the steep slope to the curtain of wind.

  Her thighs burned. Stop, stop! cried her feet. Take a rest, take a breather. Take a nap, her body needled her. Her hip-flexors were on fire. They never remembered a time when she’d worked them so hard. She wanted to rest, and she would have, if it hadn’t been for the cursed limitation Cipher put on her and the dragons—she’d fought one, she had no desire to fight another. But she would have crumpled into a heap and taken a long snooze if they’d had time. Lord knew she needed it.

  A strangled, shocked reptilian bellow came from just behind them. She jumped uncontrollably, and Will’s hand slipped from her fingers. He fell and began tumbling backwards. Kate spun around and leapt after him as the dark gray dragon dropped from its perch, hurtling toward Will like a missile. Kate stretched her body out like a cat spinning through the air, willing herself to be long and lithe, not caring how badly her move could turn out, acting without thinking. Will tumbled backwards through the air, aloft a surprising amount of time, so angled was the slope of the mountain. Arm-length talons reached for Will as the dragon’s impressive wings jerked him forward. The other dragons watched in rapt attention, ready to dive after the human-creature if needed. Kate contracted and extended her knees like she was pumping herself on a swing and reached for Will’s foot.

  Somehow she caught it. Her fingers slipped around and gripped the top of his foot and pulled him back toward her. Of course, that only caused them both to slow and hit the ground hard as they skidded and came to a stop. The dark gray dragon shrieked, pissed off, and swooped around to charge at the spot they were last seen. Kate recovered, rolling to her side, suppressing a groan. She was pretty sure her elbow would have a huge bruise on it, and her ribs felt battered. But she crawled to her knees, untangling herself from Will, yet keeping one hand on him always—his thigh, his shoulder, his hand—and stood. Without a word, she jerked him to his feet and they took off at a run back up the mountain, with the enraged cries of the dragons nipping at their heels, propelling them in ways nothing else could.

  Kate pumped her free arm, lifting her knees nearly to her nose as she jumped up the side of the mountain—crunch, whoosh, crunch—her wind-boots churned across the ground. Behind her she sensed rather than felt the rush of wind from the approaching dragons. They shrieked and roared, delivering every prehistoric, primeval sound Kate could conjure. Her skin pebbled into gooseflesh. Her heart stuttered and threatened to give out.

  And just like that, they crashed through the curtain of wind and all was silent.

  ***

  The silence wasn’t silence. It was a roar of sound that drowned out all other noise. Her ears were full with the song of storm and wind. It howled and beat against her body like millions of tiny fists. She stopped and looked back the way they’d come, pulling Will to her side. Together they stared at the threshold where the wind began but they could see nothing. Only the thick, blinding gray of the wind storm.

  “We’re safe!” Will shouted. “From the dragons at least!” His voice came to her as though through water. She remembered swimming with him in dreams and how the water was like air to th
em. But here, the air was stifling and suffocating like water.

  “Let’s go! Keep hold of me. I think the boots stop us from being blown away,” Kate said, turning and tugging at his hand.

  She couldn’t tell what she stepped on—it too was colored by the wind. It seemed to merely be crisscrossing patterns of wind. Her boots reacted against it and held her aloft as though on the loamy ground of a forest. Visibility was less than twenty feet, but they could make out large, looming objects that might have been rocks and cliffs. These too seemed to be made entirely of wind. As they hiked up the slope of wind, Kate reached down and touched her stomach and wondered if it was also just wind. Am I real? Or am I just a stream of air?

  Speaking to Will was difficult—she checked her Timex and saw that they had less than thirty minutes to get off Chthonos. Could Cipher stop them here, on the mountain of wind? The dragons hadn’t come beyond the boundary where the winds began. How else could Kate and Will be stopped? Twenty minutes, and that was with factoring in the padding she’d intentionally dialed in when setting the timer. She wanted to talk to Will, to point out the fantastical nature of the mountain and how everything seemed to be made of the swirling gusts pounding at them. Breathing was even difficult. Everything smelled of ozone, which she noticed through her quick pants that let in too much because of how the air pummeled her. She glanced sideways at Will to shout to him about the odd odor. She gasped—or tried to. He looked horrendous. Worse than the hideous form Cipher’s sour mood gave him. His body was curving in on itself, his shoulders were hunched and his brow seemed to be melting into his eyes.

  “Will!” she shouted, “Are you OK?”

  He lifted his chin high to gaze at her from beneath that drooping brow. “I’m sorry, Kate. I don’t know what’s happening.” He struggled to climb, but the battle didn’t seem to be with the mountain. Rather, he fought his fading body.

  Kate panicked. “Let me carry you!”

  “Not a chance!” he shouted, continuing to fight his way up the mountain. “If I can’t make it, I won’t make it! That will be that!”