Dragon Green

by Macy Babineaux

He could not move, not with the power the voice held over him. The burn in his massive chest grew. Maybe they will feast on me, he thought. Or pick me apart to use in magical elixirs.

  He heard a tinkling laughter fill his ears. We want none of those things, my lord.

  He looked back down toward the city and saw two merfolk swimming towards him. They were so alike they might have been twins, petite with short blue hair and eyes like splintered emeralds.

  Change, the voice said. Take your human form.

  He did not trust the voice, but did it really matter if he died as dragon or man? Besides, he could not disobey.

  Vander folded his wings and began to shift, all of his body collapsing in upon itself as the merfolk women swam up to meet him. Transforming did not give him more air to breath, so as he became fully human his chest burned hot, the pain like a spear slid neatly into his breastbone.

  I have failed, he thought. This is the day I die.

  No, the voice said. Not yet. Not today.

  The merfolk glided up to him on either side, enigmatic smiles upon their dark green lips. Spots began to form before his eyes, but he could see each of them reach out with razor-sharp fingernails, extending them up to the tip of his chin.

  What are they doing? he thought, wondering if it would perhaps be the last thing he would think. He felt as if he were about to cough, letting the ocean water dump itself into his lungs. And then he would surely die.

  He flinched as he felt them puncture the skin under his jaw. It felt like two small knives slicing the flesh under his jaw, curling up to the back of each ear.

  They mean to bleed me out, as well as drown me?

  One of them drifted backwards, but the other leaned into him, putting her scaly lips upon his and kissing deeply.

  He wondered if this were all part of some bizarre ritual. Perhaps they lured men out this way to steal their souls.

  But as the merfolk pulled back, staring at him with her green jeweled eyes, he felt the two gashes under his jaw tingle. Blood was flowing from the two wounds, but something was growing under his jaws.

  He coughed now, unable to hold it in any longer. The cold, salty water flooded into his mouth. But to his surprise, he did not die. He felt the water gush out of the slits below his jaw, and the sensation was like taking a sweet deep breath.

  What have they done to me? Vander thought.

  That powerful voice laughed inside his head again. A gift, it said. For a most honored guest. Come, follow my daughters. Let me look upon you.

  The two merfolk turned back down toward the city, kicked their fins with a plume of bubbles, and began to swim.

  Vander took in another mouthful of water, amazed at the feeling of the water rushing through the bottom of his face, invigorating him. He reached up under his jaw and felt several rows of soft, feathery tissue. But he did not have time to reflect upon the strangeness of it all. The voice compelled him.

  He turned as well, diving deeper instead of heading to the surface, following the swishing tails of the merfolk.

  They led him deep into the city center. The curious jeweled eyes of hundreds of merfolk women watched him swim past before going along their way. Some wore armor. Others carried netted bags of oysters. And all of them looked upon him as if he were an oddity from another world.

  As he swam, he felt as such. A man who was a dragon who was now a fish. And now he was far, far from home, lured here for what reason he did not know. He longed more than ever for the woman he had left on Earth, wishing he had urged her to step through with him. Perhaps if Brynn were here, this would not have happened. Perhaps his love for her would have helped him resist the source of that voice.

  They swam to a coral grating, which opened on its own. The daughters held up on either side, beckoning him to enter.

  Vander swam through, the gate closing behind him. He found himself in a chamber not unlike the one he had been in only days before, though it now seemed like years. The spherical chamber where he had met with the oracle seemed almost the same.

  And with a sudden shock he remembered the last thing she had said. I could hear my sister. I could hear her song.

  The wall across from him melted away, and through the newly-formed door floated a merfolk unlike any he had ever seen.

  Her skin was a dark cobalt blue, black spines tipped with red splayed from her back, her forearms, and the top of her head. Like a scorpion fish. Just like her sister. Her eyes were a light, crystal blue, studying him with perverse glee. Her lips were blue, but so dark they were nearly black.

  “Welcome to my home,” she said. “I am Kalypsa.”

  14

  BRYNN

  She woke up on the floor of her apartment. For a moment she didn’t remember where she was. Then it all came rushing back: Vander, Xandakar, the trident, the portal, the song, and then the doors. So many doors they made her mind ache.

  Brynn sat up and held her head in her hands. Get ahold of yourself, girl, she thought. He needs your help. And like he would say, time is short.

  That made her remember the most important little nugget from her vision, The Fifth Street Tobacco Shoppe. She felt like her mind had been hit by a freight train, but it didn’t matter how she felt. She had a long drive to make.

  Austin was about six hours away. God, she wanted another shower, even another glass of wine. But what she wanted didn’t matter any more than how she felt. She still didn’t know what the hell she was going to do once she made it to Xandakar, but now she at least had an idea of how to get there.

  She pulled herself up, her head throbbing. She pulled on her sneakers, grabbed her keys from the hook by the front door, and headed for the jeep.

  The morning air cleared her mind as she drove, the wind blowing back her hair. She was supposed to be in class, teaching a room full of freshman the basics of flint knapping and pottery shards. But right now that all seemed unreal and insignificant. Vander was real. His world was real. And what she felt for him was the most real thing she had ever known.

  She took a swig of hot black coffee from a paper cup, her one indulgence before getting onto the highway. Actually, it was probably a necessity. She wouldn’t be able to help anyone if she fell asleep and ran the jeep off the road. The hot liquid scalded her throat just a little, but that was fine. The burning sensation and the caffeine would keep her awake on the road. She passed a green sign with white letters: Austin 189.

  Less than two hundred miles. She took another swig and pushed down on the gas.

  Traffic was heavy as she entered the Austin city limits, even though it wasn’t yet three in the afternoon. It hadn’t always been this crowded, but now the city had well overgrown its size. The exit for Fifth Street was right off the highway, and once she turned into downtown proper, there was no traffic at all.

  She saw the Capital building as she headed down the one-way street, glancing at the storefronts for that sign she’d seen in her vision. A panic gripped her so suddenly that her forearms bristled in gooseflesh.

  What if there was no Fifth Street Tobacco Shoppe? She hadn’t even bothered to look it up. What if she’d finally gone stark raving mad and this, all of this, was her mind breaking from putting too much pressure on herself? What if—

  Then she saw it, a faded wooden sign hanging from a shingle, the words curved in chipped black paint. For a moment she almost didn’t believe it. She’d almost convinced herself that she’d lost her marbles.

  Someone honked behind her, and she nearly jumped out of her seat. She realized she’d stopped in the middle of the road, just sitting there in her jeep staring at the sign from a fever dream she’d had hundreds of miles away.

  “Sorry,” she said, though the car had already pulled around her and sped away.

  She pulled into to a metered parking spot. She had no change, but if this was the place, if there really was a nexus to a billion different doorways then she really didn’t care if she got a parking ticket.

  Brynn turned off the ignition and too
k a deep breath. She’d been driving for over three hours straight. As she took her hands off the wheel, she realized they were shaking.

  “It’s okay,” she said to herself. “You’re not crazy.” Or rather, she wasn’t completely crazy. There was a difference. She let out a ragged little laugh, which undermined her reassurance. Because to her own ears, she sounded crazy.

  She closed her eyes, and just for a moment she could feel him again. She could feel the water all around him, though he was able to breathe, which was strange. But just as enveloping as the pressure of the depths, she could sense a danger as well, a sick darkness that threatened not only the man she loved, but everything around him.

  She opened her eyes to the city street and the bright Texas sun. There was the shop, just waiting for her. She got out of the car and walked to the door. The windows were painted black, giving the place the feeling of being permanently out of business. But when she turned the rusty brass doorknob, the door squeaked inward and a little bell chimed overhead.

  That sound was welcoming, but the darkness inside was not. With the windows blackened and no lights on inside, the place was like a cave, albeit one that smelled of a myriad of rich, hearty tobaccos. She hated smoke, but loved the smell of tobacco.

  Still, the place gave her the willies. She very nearly turned to head back to her jeep.

  But then a voice spoke from the darkness, a rasp almost like the rustling of dry tobacco leaves itself. “Come in.” It was a man’s voice, soft and low. Then a row of neon lights flickered on along the wall, signs advertising old tobacco brands she didn’t recognize, like Old Nick and Red Dot. She did see one she recognized: King Edward. Those were the cigars her grandfather used to smoke.

  The signs were mostly red, filling the interior of the store with a hypnotic crimson glow. The man was hunched over the counter, and now she could see why he hadn’t bothered with the lights. His eyes were a milky white, useless in the light. His face was as wrinkled and weathered as his voice, his skin somewhere between black and white. He wore a duckbill cap on his bald head, and a short-sleeved button down shirt, the color hard to tell in the light. Everything looked red.

  “You gonna come in or ain’t you?” he asked.

  She figured she would. Audentis fortuna iuvat, right? What was an old blind man going to do to her anyway? Yet the place creeped her out.

  In the end, she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. With the last bit of sunlight gone, the room felt like a dream, with its long glass counter filled with cigar boxes and pipes, and the carved wooden cabinets along the walls.

  “Can I help you?” the man said, not looking in any particular direction.

  Brynn cleared her throat. This was crazy. “I’m, uh…I’m looking for a door.”

  The man had a little smile on his lips, but once she mentioned a door, the smile disappeared. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

  Was that a recurring little joke of his? He certainly didn’t seem like he was joking.

  “Do you know where this door you’re looking for leads?” he asked, his brow furrowed earnestly now.

  “Yes,” she said. “I need to go to—”

  “No,” he said, holding up a hand. “I don’t need to know. In fact, I shouldn’t. All that’s important is that you know.”

  This is ridiculous, Brynn thought. All her life she’d either studied towards being a scientist or worked as one. And now she was standing in some stupid cigar shop speaking in riddles with a blind old man who was probably just as nuts as she was.

  Still, she took a step closer to the counter. She’d come this far, and she wasn’t going back. Not yet. Not until she’d run the crazy trail as far as it could go.

  He reached down under the counter and she froze. Was he going for some kind of weapon? But when his hands came up again, she could see he was holding, what else? A pipe. She breathed a little sigh of relief, then immediately tried to stifle it.

  “Thought I was gonna whip out a pistol?” he said, laughing. His laugh was more of a soft wheeze than anything.

  Brynn took another step closer and was stunned to realize what she was looking at. It was a clay pipe, the features looked distinctively pre-Columbian Mayan. A replica? If not, the thing belonged in a museum.

  “Oh, it’s real,” he said. “And you’re going to need it to get where you’re going.” The man got down off his stool and shuffled over to a small wooden cabinet. He opened it and took out a beat-up cigar box, returning to the counter. From the box he took a small zip-lock bag with black shreds, opened it, and tapped the contents into the bowl of the pipe.

  He wanted her to smoke that? Was he serious?

  “Your heart knows where you need to go,” he said. “But sometimes the head gets in the way. This will help.”

  She laughed nervously. She’s smoked pot a couple of times as an undergrad, but whatever was in that bowl definitely wasn’t marijuana. “I don’t think I can—”

  “Then the only door you need is that one,” he said, pointing to the front.

  She took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “Fine.” She picked up the pipe, nearly as long as her forearm and much heavier than it looked. “Got a light?”

  The man chuckled and reached into his shirt pocket. She expected a lighter, but he produced a single wooden match, striking it alight with his thumb. He touched the flame to the pile of dried leaves in the bowl and they immediately began to curl into bright orange, smoke rising up through the center of the pipe.

  This is so stupid, she thought, pushing her lips against the round clay hole at the top of the pipe. She breathed in deeply, and the hazy red light of the shop grew just a little brighter.

  “What is this?” she asked, realizing it was probably a little late to ask.

  “I don’t know,” he said, an answer that did little to reassure her. “It came through one of those doors.”

  Great, she thought. Interdimensional ganja. She almost laughed.

  “Go on,” he said. “You’ll need more than one little puff.”

  She put her lips on the pipe once more and took a deeper breath this time, holding it in. As she exhaled, she coughed, closing her eyes. When she opened them, the shop was three shades brighter. Every line of the counter, the furniture, and the neon signs was crisp and clear. She thought she could feel the individual synapses firing in her brain.

  The man smiled at her, each wrinkle in his craggy face seeming like a valley in some mountainous landscape she could easily get lost in.

  “You’re ready,” he said.

  That was too bad. This stuff, whatever it was, was fucking amazing. She thought she might just be able to stand here all day puffing on this ancient Mayan pipe. But then she remembered Vander. He needed her help.

  “What do I do?” she asked. Her lips buzzed like bee wings as she spoke, making them tickle.

  “Just walk through there,” the man said, pointing at a curtain of darkly-stained wood beads. Had that been there before?

  “Then what?”

  He put his palms up, as if the answer would have been obvious to a child. “You find your door, sugar.”

  Some distant part of her wanted to give him crap for calling her “sugar”. She had a PhD, and hadn’t he figured out this was the twenty-first century? Actually, maybe he hadn’t. Time seemed slippery in this place. So instead of arguing the finer points of how to properly address a woman, she put the pipe down on the counter with both hands, just to make sure she didn’t drop it or send it crashing through the glass top. Then she nodded and headed for the bead curtain.

  As her fingers touched the small wooden balls, she felt every groove and nub on their surface. Just before she parted them, a thought occurred to her. She turned back to the man.

  “How will I know which door is mine?”

  “You’ll know,” he said, temporarily filling her with confidence. She started to turn back to the curtain, when he followed up with: “Or you won’t.”

  Wow, she thought. Real hel
pful, pal. She stepped through the clattering beads and wasn’t really surprised by what she saw.

  It was a hallway, just like the one in her vision, just like the one in that old barber shop. It was like some infinitely-extending hotel floor, the walls on either side lined with white, unmarked doors. The carpet was maroon, with some weird gold glyphs sewn into the fabric.

  She began to walk, keeping her eyes down. Looking down that infinite hallyway, she thought she might get dizzy and fall over. That, or go mad.

  Brynn held her hands out so that her fingertips nearly touched the doors on either side. She was hoping for some kind of sign, a tingle in her hands that would signal the right door.

  But as she walked, and kept on walking, she felt nothing. The stuff she’d smoked still had her brain buzzing. The heart knows, the man had said. But sometimes the head gets in the way. Was her head still too much in the way?

  She began to count the doors as she walked, hoping the effect might be like counting sheep. She didn’t want to fall asleep, just keep her thoughts from intruding on whatever part of her needed to be listening.

  But when she reached five hundred, she was beginning to lose some of the ultra-relaxation she’d been feeling back in the shop. She was starting to panic. There was no need for that, though, right? She could always just turn around. How could you get lost in hall with only two directions? She stopped walking to look back over her shoulder, and her breath locked in her throat, the hair on the back of her neck standing up.

  There was no way back. As she looked back down the way she had come, the hall truly had become the infinite reflections of the facing mirrors, stretching endlessly in both directions.

  Fuck, she thought, trying to swallow. Her mouth had gone dry. She faced forward again, hoping that was the way she had been going. She was starting to get disoriented. Or maybe she’d been disoriented the whole time.

  She took a deep breath. Just calm down, she told herself. The only way back is forward. What was that from? A movie? She couldn’t remember where she’d heard it, but it was the only thing she could latch onto right now, the only thing that made any sense.