Trampolining with Dragons

by S. W. Clarke

  That must be the guru.

  I glanced back at Yaroz. “I take it you’re going to that.”

  “Yes, young human.” She shifted forward, her glittering black chest coming into view. “Would you care to join us?”

  “Ah.” I twirled a finger in the air, trying to find the best arrangement of words to say the equivalent of hell no. “I’m not very good at keeping quiet. I imagine that’s a prerequisite of such things.”

  She snorted. “As you wish. Find me afterward, and we shall speak on whatever subject your heart desires.”

  Well, color me surprised. Yaroz really had become a different dragon.

  Chapter 7

  I did end up following Yaroz and her children into the main part of the compound, where the meditation would take place.

  I figured it wouldn’t hurt to sit at the back of the class and see the Guru Lakshima himself.

  The disciples arranged themselves in rows in front of a large stone pedestal, some taking knees, others sitting cross-legged. As for Yaroz, she and her younglings hunched low like a cat and her kittens sitting bread-loaf style.

  Meanwhile, I hovered far behind as a shiva used one of its six arms to strike a big gong with a mallet over and over again, summoning everyone. Seemed like a waste of the other five arms to me.

  Once the disciples had settled, a small shadow appeared from behind a tree. And out walked …

  “Is that a wolpertinger?” I whispered.

  It certainly looked like one: a rabbit’s body, feathered wings, little horns coming from the head, fangs—and it hopped along on bird’s feet.

  And here I’d thought those things were only in storybooks and tall tales.

  The wolpertinger bounced up to the pedestal and onto the center of it. The wings went out, and a shrill, tiny voice sounded through the compound. “Welcome, my children!”

  The disciples greeted him, all bowing their heads.

  “As the sun begins its descent, so too do we lower our heads on this day, as on all days, to consider the wonder of the world around us.” His wings retracted as he squatted to a seat. “And, too, to consider what we hold inside us. It is always with humility and folded hands that we may find love and peace.”

  Can a wolpertinger even fold its hands?

  I wasn’t sure if this was transcendental meditation or some strange woo-woo business the guru had cooked up, but everyone present—including the shiva, who’d set down his mallet and folded three sets of hands—was completely into it.

  When they started ohming, my watch vibrated on my wrist.

  It was Erik texting me.

  VIP dinner at six, he’d written. Percy will be there. No Lust.

  Six. That was three hours from now. Which meant I had to get Yaroz’s help and get going ASAP. A pre-party dinner with Percy and without Lust would be my best chance at freeing him from her spell before midnight.

  I texted back. You coming?

  Can’t, he replied at once. But I’ve called reinforcements.

  Reinforcements? When I texted back to ask who he was talking about, he just sent a mysterious smiley face and said, You’ll be happy.

  I liked surprises when they came in small boxes, not when they came in the form of mysterious reinforcements. But I could tell Erik wasn’t going to tell me anything else. So I texted Frank and Grunt about the dinner. Two more sets of reinforcements.

  When the meditation session ended a half hour later, Yaroz found me sitting on a bench by the koi pond. She had sent her children back to their cave, and so it was just her and me.

  “Refreshing?” I asked.

  “The meditations are not about refreshment, human.” Her eyes tracked the koi in the pond as she stood nearby, and I wondered if she was ever tempted to stick a talon in and spear one. “Plumbing the depths of one’s soul, seeking love and peace, can be an exhausting journey.”

  I set both hands on the bench. “And have you completed your journey?”

  “Yes,” she said at once. Too quickly. “I no longer harbor dark desires.”

  Maybe there was a way in with Yaroz. “I came to tell you that Percy’s in danger.”

  Her golden eyes shifted to me. “I wondered why he was not with you.”

  “He’s been taken.” My fingers squeezed together. “By a mortal sin. Lust. She has him shackled and under her spell.”

  “Lust.” She exhaled over the pond, and the fish scattered. “I am not well acquainted with this sin—mine was always pride, but I do know the power she holds over many.”

  “She’s trying to take over the world,” I said bluntly. “Her power stems from adoration, and she’s getting the whole world to tune in when the ball drops in Times Square tonight.”

  “Hm. Clever.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “What else would you like me to say, human?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, ‘Let’s break Percy out?’ Or how about, ‘That’s my son she’s got in her clutches. We need to take that bitch down.’ ”

  My words hit the air, settled in the silence that followed. Finally, Yaroz shifted to look at me. “I have changed. I no longer seek violence.”

  “Listen, I’m not one to beg.” I stood, set my hand over my chest. “But I am begging for your help. Those shackles are supposed to be unbreakable, and the only possibility of getting Percy free is a full-grown dragon’s fire. I need you, Yaroz.”

  She contemplated this for a time, her great chest rumbling as she sat with lidded eyes. When the silence went on long enough, I realized she had given me her answer.

  “All right, then.” I turned away. “I don’t have any more time to waste staring at fish. I have to go save my dragon.”

  “Wait.”

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  “Taunt me,” Yaroz said, her tail rustling the grass as she swung it behind her.

  I turned back around. “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Fine.” I pointed at her foot, still missing a scale. “Shame your scale never grew back. Can’t say I didn’t enjoy prying it off, though.”

  She growled, but didn’t otherwise move. “Taunt me a second time.”

  “How did it feel,” I said with folded arms, “to be defeated by a pathetic human and a bunch of tiny gnomes?”

  Her eyes narrowed, but that was her only response.

  This was pointless.

  I gave a dismissive wave and turned away. “Screw this.”

  The ground under me rumbled as Yaroz came around, planted herself directly in my path. I could see up her enormous nostrils as she stared me down. “Taunt me a third time.”

  I blew out air. “Why? All you do is sit there.”

  She lowered her chin, her voice going low and steely. “Taunt me one more time.”

  If she wasn’t going to let me pass until I did this once more, then I would give her my very best bruiser of a taunt. At this point, I wanted to say it anyway.

  I pointed up at her, touching the tip of her nose. “If you thought I was turning Percy into a worthless weakling of a lizard, just imagine what Lust is doing to him with all her moaning and crooning and laces. She feeds him cake pops and calls him ‘Basil.’ ”

  “Basil?” Yaroz’s head rose up high, high above me, arching imperiously on her long neck. “That’s it,” she roared. “I shall kill her!”

  Ten minutes later, we stood before the Guru Lakshima, who remained on his stone pedestal with his tiny rabbit’s hands pressed together.

  Yaroz was broiling with anger. “I must break these shackles of peacefulness. It is time, Guru, for me to maim, eat and kill.”

  Lakshima gazed up at the dragon, his tiny horns glinting in the sunlight. “But you have renounced your ways.”

  Yaroz chuckled, long and low. “Have you ever eaten a kill after a battle, small creature?”

  “I have not.”

  Her wings trembled with pleasure. “It is most delicious on the tongue and for the soul.”

  The guru
looked between Yaroz and me. “Do you know, Disciple Yaroz, that the gods have spoken to me of this moment?”

  Have they now? I thought but didn’t say.

  “What have they said, Great One?” Yaroz asked.

  I side-eyed her. Was this the same murderous dragon I’d met in New Orleans?

  The wolpertinger’s nose shifted as though he were scenting the air. “They told me exactly one year ago that a short human would come to this compound and request the aid of the fire-breather. And that when she did, I must aid the fire-breather on this quest.”

  Yaroz sucked in air. “It has been foretold.”

  “Yes.” The guru stared at me as though evaluating my shortness. He stood, summoned the shiva. The two of them exchanged whispers for a few minutes, and finally, the guru pressed his hands together. “It is decided.”

  “Ahh.” I glanced between them. “What’s decided?”

  The guru hopped off his pedestal, his little wings flapping as he did. “We shall join you.”

  I stared down at him. “You’re going to help us?”

  He blinked tiny eyes up at me. “Yes. The gods have foreseen my involvement.”

  All six of the shiva’s hands had begun to rub together, fingers over palms, in anticipation. “I’ve always wanted to ride a dragon into battle.”

  Yaroz broke into tremendous, maniacal laughter, wings extending. “So it shall be!”

  Well, turned out I would have more reinforcements than I’d ever expected. And two of them would be in the form of mythical creatures I hadn’t even known existed.

  “Listen,” I said as an aside to Yaroz, “all I need you to do is break those shackles tonight. Do that and I’ll leave you to your peace and koi now and forevermore.”

  “So it shall be,” Yaroz promised me. “The shackles will be broken, and Lust will be defeated.”

  Twenty minutes later, I left the compound with a bottle of Yaroz’s urine in my possession. The “pacifists” told me they would join the fight in Times Square after they’d prepared themselves for battle … whatever that meant. They wouldn’t tell me when they would show, or even let me in on how they planned to fight Lust.

  According to the guru, plans were made to be broken. They would be there when they were needed most, and not a moment before or after. So the gods had foreseen.

  He sounded like a visionary CEO who wore the same black turtleneck every day. Something told me all his prophecies came to him while he was stoned on the throne. But I wasn’t complaining.

  I drove the RV back to New York City alone, deep in thought as I followed the highway back. Was I really counting on a murderous matriarch, a wolpertinger and a shiva who couldn’t even commit to a specific time to save my dragon?

  That was when Mariana spoke to me for the first time all day.

  “I’ve noticed something.” She paused. “You have focused entirely on Percival in your thoughts and speech.”

  I avoided rolling my eyes. “Are you surprised by that?”

  “A little. I had hoped you carried more feeling in you for my own child—the one who will become Lust’s slave. Her vessel for all eternity.”

  So often when she and I engaged in conversations like this, we occupied a spot in my mind’s eye. It was a small room, the two of us sitting in chairs across from one another. She wore a beautiful, regal old dress, her blond hair in ringlets over one shoulder, her hands clasped.

  I wore a leather jacket, boots, and jeans. I sat with legs apart, one arm slung over the back of the chair.

  “I carry feeling.” I shrugged one shoulder. “I’m going to stop Lust. I’m going to save Ariadne. What else do you want?”

  She lowered her chin, eyes fixing on mine. “I want you to swear that you will not abandon the mission after you’ve rescued Percival. You and I both know he’ll be freed before Ariadne.”

  That was true. Between Yaroz’s pee and undoing those shackles, I could very well ride Percy into the sunset without ever stopping Lust. Mariana knew the thought had crossed my mind.

  She knew I was a runner. She knew I liked to keep on the move. She knew I had plans for it to be just Percy and me.

  I met her gaze. “I never make promises.”

  “Because you know you have trouble keeping them.”

  GoneGodDamn, why did she have to be me? That made this infinitely harder.

  “What else can I say?” I threw my hands out. “I’ll rescue her. I will.”

  But Mariana felt my lack of conviction. She stood from her chair, crossed to me. Before I could slip out from under her imperious glare, she had raised a hand and set her thumb to my forehead.

  When she touched me, the room around us evaporated. I was transported without my consent into one of her memories.

  I stood in the castle she had inhabited, the sunset slanting through the windows, and before me sat the child Ariadne had once been, maybe ten or eleven years old. She shook. Her golden hair splayed over an animal in her lap, and she crouched over the creature as she sobbed. I caught a glimpse of a furry leg; it was a little white dog.

  I knew, as Mariana knew, that the animal was dying. It wasn’t dying of anything in particular except old age.

  Her whispers to the creature were what you would say to a dying loved one—a human being. “You and I will be together again. The pain won’t be great, and then the eternity of the heavens will be yours. We shall see each other there.”

  It was the first time I’d heard Ariadne speak. It was so easy to see a person only as they were in the moment you encountered them, and not as who they once were. To me, Ariadne had always been mute. And now that I’d heard her voice, I could never unhear it.

  It only took one moment, one memory, but I knew—as Mariana knew—that Ariadne was kind. She was good. Somehow the daughter of a vicious vampire had turned out a saint.

  Mariana appeared, knelt beside Ariadne and stroked her hair and back, kissed her head.

  Ariadne glanced up at her through the veil of her hair, her face red and puffy. “Must he die?”

  “Oh, child.” Pain lanced through Mariana’s chest so well I could feel it in my own. “We all must. But so few of us know the love you have shown to this creature. And so he is among the most fortunate to ever exist.”

  I could feel Mariana’s emotions in this memory, the deep well of admiration she had for her child’s empathy. Her wonder at how much Ariadne cared for a little dog who held no power and could do nothing for her.

  My dad had once told me that was the truest indication of a person’s character.

  Mariana turned her face up to me, her hand still on Ariadne’s back, her gaze laden with meaning.

  Looking down on the two of them, this memory felt as natural as my own memories. It was one of Mariana’s deepest, most closely held treasures, and I knew what she was doing.

  She was trying to make me love this girl.

  And the truth of it was … it was working. The memory put Ariadne’s voice in my head, and it endeared her to me in a way I hadn’t felt before.

  But I still loved my own child more.

  In the RV, I gripped the steering wheel harder, ripping myself out of Mariana’s story. “If you want to play with heartfelt memories,” I whispered, “two can play at that game.”

  In the room of my mind’s eye, I reached out and grabbed Mariana’s hand. I stood and led her out of the room and into the alley behind a small pizzeria in Amarillo, Texas. It was so late at night the world was otherwise dead—except for me.

  Mariana stood in the alley and watched as I climbed into the pizzeria’s kitchen through a back window.

  It wasn’t easy; I held a dragon’s egg in my arms.

  Chapter 8

  Imagine a fifteen-year-old girl who’s never broken any laws standing in the darkness of a pizzeria, gripping a black dragon’s egg larger than her own head. That was me, and I stood with all the uncertainty of a child who’d stolen that egg from a local circus and run away with it.

  I had cared for i
t for weeks, but I couldn’t hatch it—

  Until I arrived in Amarillo, Texas and spotted the pizza parlor. They’d advertised “900 degrees of scorching heat.”

  That ought to be enough.

  It took five minutes before I thought of using flour to balance the egg on a long metal serving table so it wouldn’t roll off and hit the floor. And then to find the lights to activate all the machinery.

  When I approached one of the ovens and managed to turn it on, the flames had kicked up, lighting my face in red and orange.

  It was then I sensed that this was a pivotal moment, that everything would change from that day onward. I don’t know how I knew, but as I set the egg on a long wooden platter and slid it into the oven, I knew this was it.

  The egg would hatch or it would cook. Either way, my circumstances would be different once I left this pizza place.

  I left the oven door open, watching the stubbly ebony shell gleam as the flames flickered beneath. How many nights had I held that egg close to me as I’d hidden in people’s sheds and their barns? It was my comfort. My constant.

  I was almost afraid for things to change.

  After twenty minutes and a thread of despair setting in, I turned away from the oven. Squeezed my eyes shut and balled my fists—

  How stupid. How useless this idea had been.

  That was when I heard the tapping.

  I turned slowly around, staring at the egg. The tapping continued for twenty, thirty seconds, until one part of the shell distended for a moment.

  I grabbed up the wooden serving platter, slid it in to retrieve the egg. When it came out into the fluorescent light, a crack had already formed. And from it, a tiny talon’s edge emerged. It was no bigger than my thumbnail.

  I dropped to my knees, unable to move. Unable to breathe. My whole world existed in this pizzeria in Amarillo, Texas.

  “That’s it,” I whispered. “You’re doing it.”

  The talon disappeared, and for a moment, all went still.

  “Keep going.” I swallowed. “Keep trying, little egg.”

  That had been my nickname for it for months: little egg.