by Alan Marble
Then, as soon as it started, it was over. There was one last grating screech of metal being sheared and then the car came to a rest, on its side. The airbags deflated, leaving his head resting on the window, and as he laid there, dazed, he could do nothing other than listen to the sound of rain dancing against the side of the car, the steady thump-thump of the wipers still going in spite of the crash.
After a moment of staring off into the blackness, he turned his head and looked to his side - up, now that the car had come to a rest - to see Rebekah, looking equally dazed but not obviously hurt. She was dangling a little awkwardly in her seat, held in tightly by the belt, her hair waving lightly above him while she breathed slowly, staring into the same blackness that he had been only a moment before. With something of a groan, he pushed himself up a bit and turned to look to his other side.
The black that he saw from that window confused him at first. There was a faint glimmer in the distance, and it took a moment for his vision to clear and try to resolve that glimmer, a sort of indistinct ribbon of reflected light. Twisting his head some to try and look behind him, he could see an odd sort of structure, straight, like the edge of a building resting right up against the rear door.
It took him a moment to register everything he was seeing. It was not the edge of a building, but the edge of the bridge. Sheared bits of fencing dangled from the edge. The glittering ribbon in the distance was the river below them. Far, far below them. The car had come to a rest on its side, its front protruding through the destroyed fence and hanging over the side of the bridge.
Dangling, precariously.
Panic seized up on him rather abruptly, a ragged sort of half-gasp rattling from his throat as the need to escape, get to safety welled up powerfully inside of him. Fumbling, he reached for the belt buckle so he could get out, when he heard a voice call out sharply. “Jonah! Shit, don’t do that … hold still!”
Her words made sense, he could understand them individually, but somehow his mind failed to comprehend what she was saying. All he really knew is that the only thing separating him from hundreds of feet of free fall was a flimsy pane of glass, and the only thing keeping the car from toppling down to its doom was the way in which it had coincidentally come to a rest. He had to get out.
“Jonah, please, calm down! Look, I can get us out of this but I need you to stay calm, can’t have the car tipping right over … Jonah, please, just try to stay calm and don’t move, whatever you do, don’t move …”
He had to move. He couldn’t just sit there and wait for the car to fall, couldn’t just sit and do nothing and wait for the end to come. His heart throbbed powerfully in his chest, his tongue felt like it was swelling up in his throat, and his vision was blurring. A full panic had set in and his mind was focused on getting out.
Rebekah’s voice, for as calm as she was trying to speak, held an edge of panic to it, as well. “Just stop … don’t move, please, don’t …”
His hand found the latch, and he pushed the button in. It opened with a loud click and the belt let loose. He hadn’t thought beyond undoing the belt and as soon as it no longer held him in place he fell against the door with a loud thud. Briefly the car seemed to shift, an agonizing creak of metal as it wobbled, just long enough for reason to clarify through the panic a little and make him realize that he might have doomed them all.
The car held. The swaying came to a stop, along with the creak of metal and the frightened scream that sounded from above him. Shifting a little, he looked up at Rebekah, her face filled with fear, as she stared back down at him. For another moment silence reigned, the sound of rain splashing against the window and the wipers dominating. “Gods,” she breathed, shuddering. “Just … just stay put.”
Panic still had him. For a moment he just watched, helplessly, as she unrolled the window next to her, opening them up to the chill of the air and the rain that immediately began to run over her hair and drip on him. Unbuckling herself, she reached for the edge of the door and began to extricate herself, slowly, bit by bit. She was escaping, she was getting out.
He had to get out.
Twisting wildly, he looked toward the back of the vehicle, still resting on the bridge. That was it, all he had to do was climb back, squeeze himself between the seats. Flailing as he grasped at the back of the seat he pulled himself up a ways, tried to haul himself to his feet but he slipped, landing heavily upon the door again, setting the car to swaying and creaking on the side of the bridge. Frozen in panic, he watched, helpless again, while Rebekah’s legs dangled inside.
Once again, the car came to a rest without tumbling, but this time there was a new sound, another creak of metal, something groaning under strain, snapping after the abuse of the crash. The door beneath him, no longer able to support his weight, swung open.
Reflexively he grasped for something, anything to grab on to as he felt gravity suddenly clutching at him, tugging him downward. For a brief moment his fingers clasped around the handle to the door, wrapping around it and clinging as hard as he could but he did not have the strength. The bulk of his body dropped out the door and yanked at him, pulled his grip free.
Suddenly he was weightless. Wind whipped past him but the raindrops no longer fell on his face; they fell with him. In a stark contrast to the panic he felt in the car he was strangely calm watching the sight of the bridge, the car dangling over its edge, retreating in his vision. He tumbled through the air and his vision shifted, and this time he saw the ribbon of the river below, rushing up to meet him.
His heart seemed to slow in his chest, a languid thud, thud that he could almost count. Inertia carried him, whipped him around, and again he was falling backward, watching the bridge slipping away, watching as the car’s luck ran out, tipping over the edge and moving to follow him on his way down. There was no sign of Rebekah. He wondered if she had escaped.
Again he twisted and found himself facing the river rushing to greet him. He knew only seconds had passed - three, four, maybe five - but it seemed like an eternity. He knew from this height even landing in water would not save him. The river would break him, so fast that it probably wouldn’t hurt, carry his body downstream. They might never find him. His parents back home, his friends in Florida would never know what became of him. As sad as it all seemed, he continued to feel strangely calm in his resigned state of mind.
But then there was a strange sensation. A weird kind of resistance to his fall, as if the air were suddenly growing thick, clutching at him more eagerly, tugging at him to slow him down. It was strangely insistent just behind his shoulders, clutching, tugging, pulling, as if he were being pulled back by cables.
He felt an urge, a powerful urge to flex muscles that he was only vaguely aware of, the rush of air resisting him for a moment. Something in the darkness caught his eye, something stretched out at his side, something moving just there at the corner of his vision. Something flapping on the left, and then there on the right, too.
A pair of wings?
As alien as the thought was to his mind, his fall had slowed rapidly. Again he flexed his muscles, gave in to the urge that was running through his body, and he felt himself pick up a little, soaring, gliding through the air. The rush of the river beneath him slowed, shifted directions, the surface beginning to spool out beneath him as he took on a more horizontal motion.
He was no longer falling; he was flying.
The sensation, as well as the immense confusion that it caused in his head, was short lived. Where once the river was rushing to meet him, now it was a solid and monolithic wall of sandstone in front of him as the river turned in its course. Panic gripped him again and he flailed, not sure what to do, not sure if there was anything he could do.
Abruptly the soaring came to an end and he found himself tumbling wildly through the air. He hardly had enough time to suck in a lungful of air before crashing into the surface of the river, slapping him hard and wet, enough to tear that precious gasp of air right out of him.
&nbs
p; Jonah was only in the river just long enough for the water to seep through his clothing but it was enough. The water that issued from beneath the dam was icy cold and instantly gripped him in a bone-chilling vise. He found himself unable to move, his muscles stiff and unwilling as the water pulled him down and along.
Before he could resign himself to this new and unexpected fate, he was plucked out of the water and back into the air. His lungs seized upon the opportunity, drawing in a gasping breath. The wind whipped him angrily in the face, raindrops smacking with enough force to sting, but he didn’t care. He could breathe, he was alive. By no effort of his own - he was limp and motionless, carried along by some unseen force - but he was alive.
For a moment he tried to turn, twist his head, get a look at his benefactor, who had plucked him from the river, but his body refused. The panic had left him bereft of energy, the cold of the river having sapped what was left. All he could do was let his consciousness collapse deep into his body and let the night take him.
NINE
In the daylight, the river winding its way through the hills far beneath him was not such a frightening sight. It was a distant ribbon of blue that cut its way through the verdant hills, meandering lazily through the little valleys. Unhurried, it cast little glints of silver and gold back up at him at times where it caught the sunlight just right, reflected it back up to him; in a way, it almost felt like the river was winking up at him, glad to have him overhead.
Jonah, too, was unhurried. He had no real destination, at least none that required his immediate attention. There was no timetable to be met, no deadlines, nothing to do other than enjoy the warmth of the summer sun at his back contrasting with the chill of the wind in his face. The sky was an inviting cerulean blue, marked only by the occasional puff of cloud drifting along the wind beneath him, white and pillowy, serene as could be.
Vaguely, he understood that he was dreaming. It was like the brief nightmare that he had endured before, minus the fear pounding in his chest. He was a spectator in his own body, unable to control his own actions, unable to choose his own destiny, but somehow it did not seem so jarring and confining in such a scene. It only seemed to put him more at ease, as if it freed him up to indulge in the vision without having to act; free to dream without worry.
More than a spectator in his own body, however, he was a dragon. Though there was no part of him that he could see he knew it instinctively. The way he moved through the air, the way he could feel his muscles as if he were rowing through the sky. Sensations that he had not felt before, not that he could remember, yet felt so natural to him.
Besides, he thought to himself - what better place for a dragon than to soar high in the sky?
A hint of movement below caught his eye, and he could make out a dark silhouette against the tops of a nearby cloud, the black outline of a dragon against the puffy white. A shadow, it wasn’t his; craning his neck to look above and behind him he saw the owner of the shade. A graceful figure clad in scales of white, soaring high above him, approaching with a speed that he knew he could never match. The sight was awesome to behold, and his heart soared in his chest.
All at once the dragon in white dove out of the sky and beyond him, her tail flapping out behind her in an almost mocking fashion. Letting out a sort of yelp, Jonah forgot that he was dreaming and gave pursuit, trying his best to follow the graceful creature cutting through the air in front of him. He knew it was futile, knew that he had no hope of catching her, but he also knew that he could not help himself. He had to try.
She knew he would try, too, and seemed only to encourage it. With an ease of movement that all but drove him crazy she banked to the side and pulled up into a climb, an acrobatic maneuver that slowed her down and brought her ever so close, almost within grasp. But as he pushed through the air in her direction she kept just out of reach, the teasing flick of her tail cracking at the air behind her as she changed directions too quickly, leaving him abruptly far behind.
Letting loose another shout, half in complaint and half in a sort of laughter, Jonah did his best to stay in pursuit. The dragon in white flitted her way in front of a cloud and became lost as she blended into it. He was forced to circle high above the cloud, darting in and around it to try and find where she had gone before he heard her call echoing in the air.
Glancing to his side, he could see that she had already put even more distance between them, dipping downward toward the green earth below, toward the lazy meandering of the river. Tucking his wings in and diving down as fast as he could Jonah did his best to close the gap. The lyrical sound of her laughter filtered up through the air, teasing at him the whole way, reminding him that he would always be one step behind.
Not that he minded. She’d let him chase her around for a while, and eventually let him catch her. It was always the way it went and would always be how it happened, and he loved it every time.
She did not pick a direct path toward the ground, instead spiraling about in wide arcs, occasionally flitting her wings just right to change directions and zip away at an angle that he could not have predicted. It was all a part of the game, all a part of the tease, meant to give him the impression that he might catch up before he fell behind once again. He shouted out eagerly after her, and again heard the faint echoes of her laughter wafting up through the air behind her.
Then, a bit abruptly, she shifted course and arrowed straight downward, in the direction of the river. He followed behind as close as he could, but when she lit upon a rocky outcropping that crowned one of the larger hills the river nestled up against it caught him off guard; he had to circle overhead once before coming back around and landing next to her.
“Caught you,” he said, stepping up and expecting a reaction, but once more to his surprise he got none. The dragon in white had her attention turned elsewhere, gazing down into the river valley. Leaning to crane his neck around her, he asked quietly, “What is it?”
“Look,” she responded, gesturing downward. The hill itself was studded with a thick, pleasant stand of trees, a part of the forest that blanketed most of the landscape and was replete with game, a favored hunting ground of his. At the foot of the hills and nearer the river was a large break in the trees, open grassland that stretched along toward the horizon, and it was in this direction she was looking. He peered down at the river, squinting, momentarily confused before he finally saw it.
The movement caught his eye first. A dozen shapes arrayed near the banks of the river, some of them moving back and forth along the edge of the water. The creatures were strange by any standard - not overly large but they stood tall on two legs. Though they were mostly hairless they had the strange habit of covering themselves in the hides of other animals. He’d heard of them before but never seen them. “Humans?”
“Yes,” she answered, her voice rather curious. “I’ve heard rumors that they had been moving further up the river but did not think it was this far.”
He could not tell what the humans were doing from this distance, milling around at the edge of the river the way they were. They all looked the same to his eyes, dull and uninteresting, the only real difference in their size. “What do we do about them?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said, mildly confused. “Do we eat them?”
“No!” The vehemence of her response took him aback, stepping away a little and turning to look at her with even more confusion. “I heard that one of the other clans has been taking a closer look at them. They speak, they have language, they have music … look, look at what they create!”
Some ways away from the river were a pair of odd blemishes on the hillside that he could not immediately identify. Unusual collections of bits of trees and stone and grass, built up into roughly rectangular shapes, each one with an opening in them. As he watched a pair of the humans broke away from the others gathered at the river. One was small, a child perhaps, and the larger one carried it up through a rough path that had been wo
rn in the grass to one of the rectangular constructs, vanishing into the opening. “They’ve created homes?”
The white dragon nodded, her voice growing thick with curiosity and excitement. “Yes, yes, it’s just as I’ve heard! They’re intelligent, like us!”
“Bees build their own homes,” he said a little dismissively. “That doesn’t mean they are intelligent.”
“That’s different,” his companion responded with a hint of irritation. “Besides, bees do not speak to one another, they don’t create music. These … humans. They are more like us. Don’t you see what it would mean?”
Jonah peered down at the humans again, scowling at the sight of their hide-clad bodies. “Yes, it means there’s going to be competition for game. I don’t like it.”
Turning to scowl at him in turn, the dragon shook her head. “There’s more than enough game in these woods to go around. Well, there would be, if it weren’t for that appetite of yours …”
“Hey!”
Laughing softly, she leaned in and butted her head affectionately against his shoulder before turning her attention back down to the valley. “Still. I think it should be wonderful if we could be friends. I … I think I want to go and try speaking with them …”
The idea seemed simply ludicrous to him. These humans, for as strange and helpless as they looked, still had some means of felling beasts larger than themselves, and whether they could pose a threat to a dragon or not was a question he did not know the answer to. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“No. I’m going to try,” she said, and without any hesitation she took off into the air and started to glide down the hillside.
