The Seadragon's Daughter (Dragon de la Sangre)

by Alan F. Troop

  Halfway through the channel I bank hard to the right, flying between two large mangrove trees, barely managing to avoid clipping my wings on the tree branches that crowd the sides of the narrow channel that leads to Sand Key’s lagoon.

  Chloe, who almost loses me in the turn, grumbles, “It would have been easier to head home.” But in a few moments the trees fall away, the water widens and we find ourselves flying over our own private lagoon.

  I bank toward the wide beach at its eastern end. Slowing my approach, I flare my wings as soon as I reach the exposed sand, settle to the ground and lay my prey out beside me.

  Coming in faster, my wife shoots past me. She banks in a tight turn before the beach ends, flaring her wings so sharply when she comes up beside me that she stalls and settles at the same time, spraying sand as she lands.

  “Whoa!” I mindspeak.

  “You’re not the only one who can fly fancy,” she mindspeaks. “That felt good.”

  I nod, look at my prey, nudge it with my snout.

  “Oh no,” Chloe mindspeaks. “This time we do it right.” She makes a show of examining both carcasses, finally selecting a morsel she knows I’ll like. I take it and eat it slowly. Then we both feed together, her left flank pressed against my right, my tail laid over hers, our mouths only inches apart.

  Afterwards we doze together long enough for our feeding languor to abate. Chloe stirs first. “Peter,” she mindspeaks. “Shouldn’t we get going?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” I mindspeak.

  “Do we have time?”

  I frown. Motherhood has made Chloe much more cautious. Once, she wouldn’t have asked such a question. Looking up I find the cloud-obscured, dull glow of the moon still high in the sky. “We have plenty of time,” I mindspeak, stroking her tail with mine.

  “Here?” she mindspeaks.

  In answer, I rise, flex my wings and mindspeak, “Follow me.”

  This time I lead her out the channel to the ocean, flying far from shore before I veer south. When we pass the Carrysfort Reef light, south of Elliott Key, I begin to spiral skyward. “The attention is all back by Miami. No one’s patrolling near the Keys,” I mindspeak.

  Chloe spirals past me and I’m sure she’s just as relieved as I am to breathe the cold, clear air far above earth, to feel its bite as it passes through her nostrils. I chase after her.

  But she dives and loops, dropping like a stone one moment, shooting toward the stars the next, turning over on her back, displaying herself to me. “I thought you wanted me, Peter?” she mindspeaks, dropping away. “Did you forget how it feels inside me? Have you changed your mind?”

  I remember all too well how it feels to plunge into her warmth. I fold my wings and dive after her. Her laughter rings in my mind when she spirals away from me.

  “I like it best in the air. Don’t you?” Chloe mindspeaks, flying toward me, brushing against me as she passes, dropping away before I can hold her.

  It’s an old game, one we’ve played many times, yet it still makes my heart race. Roaring my frustration into the darkness, I chase her even though I know I won’t catch her until she tires of teasing me.

  Tonight the chase takes us skyward, far from any eyes on land, far above the clouds, into thin, cold air that barely holds up our wings. Chloe lets me catch up to her there and I drive myself into her, gasping at her moist heat, ignoring her claws as she digs them into me and her teeth as she seizes my throat in her jaws, driving claws and teeth deep enough to draw blood.

  I roar at the pain, but rather than disengage, I fold my wings over hers, dig my claws into her scales and draw her close against me. Chloe roars too, bucking against each thrust.

  Locked into our embrace, our bodies tight against each other, we fall through the night, out of the thin, cold air and down through the moist clouds. We only separate when the ground looms too close, breaking free and spiraling skyward again until we’re high enough to engage again. We repeat this three more times until, finally, Chloe bellows and writhes against me in mid-fall, my orgasm coming just seconds after hers.

  We fly close together, our wings almost grazing as we return to Sand Key. Feeding again, we rest just long enough to heal the wounds we’ve inflicted on each other, and then we take the remains of our prey and head back to our island.

  Neither Chloe nor I say anything. We know what the next day will bring. Words won’t lessen the pain of separating. For the time being we content ourselves with each others’ presence and the delight Henri and Lizzie show when we wake them to feast with us.

  12

  The drum of helicopter rotors far too close to our house wakes us shortly after dawn. Chloe stretches in bed next to me, yawns out her words, “I told you they’d be upset.”

  I breathe deep, stretch too, wishing the helicopter gone, wishing we could loll in bed. Moving closer to Chloe, I lay my head on her bare breast, smell the sweet aroma of her skin. I marvel at how soft she is in her human form, and how much effort it took to drive my claws into her scales during our lovemaking in the night.

  The helicopter passes overhead again.

  “We might as well get up,” Chloe says. “They’ll be searching all day.”

  “Screw them,” I say. “I’m sick of all their searches and patrols. I hate that you and the kids are going and I have to stay.”

  Chloe places a finger over my lips. “This time we did cause this, you know. They’re just doing what they think they have to do. It’ll all settle down once they find what’s causing all the other disappearances. I’m sure Arturo and Ian will find a way for you to come join us in Jamaica soon.”

  “I hope so,” I grumble.

  By eleven I have all of Chloe’s and the children’s luggage secured on the Grady White. Chloe boards with Elizabeth and sits next to me. Ordinarily she’d ask to take the wheel, but today she voices no objection to my having the helm. I turn the ignition key, fire up both outboards and wait for Henri to cast off our lines and jump onboard.

  As usual my son goes to the stern seat. I glance back at him as we motor out of our harbor. The boy’s eyes are fastened on the retreating view of our island.

  The disappearance of the two marine patrolmen has brought out a new swarm of patrol boats. By the time I reach the end of our channel, I’ve counted at least a dozen in view on the bay alone. Two planes and three helicopters patrol overhead.

  We’re stopped just yards from our channel entrance and stopped again on the other side of the bay near the approach to Dinner Key. I let out a breath as we finally glide toward our dock at Monty’s. “At least they won’t be bothering us here,” I say.

  Chloe nods.

  “Papa, she’s back!” Henri says. “Look!”

  Chloe and I both turn, watch the dolphin as it swims toward our stern and then angles away from the outboards, passing the boat on my side, then diving out of sight. “Strange,” Chloe says.

  “Very,” I say, turning my attention from the water, concentrating on pulling into our slip.

  The dolphin reappears once I’ve docked and killed the engines. It swims past us and returns as I unload the baggage and help Chloe and Lizzie up onto the dock. It swims past again when Henri and I get off, then dives out of sight.

  “Maybe she came to say good-bye to you,” Chloe says to Henri as we walk to the car. The boy shrugs.

  Because Ian chartered a private jet, a Lear, to take Chloe and the kids to Jamaica we don’t have to brave the congestion and confusion of Miami International Airport. We drive instead to Tamiami, an executive airport on the southwest side of the county.

  As soon as Henri sees the plane, and the pilot invites him to ride in the cockpit, he’s ready to go. But Chloe and I linger, repeat our good-byes. We haven’t spent more than a few hours apart since we’ve settled onto our island.

  It takes all my self-control not to ask her to stay. I know going is best for the children, but I dread the thought of returning to empty rooms and empty halls. After Father died, before
I left in search of my first wife, Elizabeth, I had more than my fill of loneliness, learned all I could bear of the emptiness of an unshared life.

  I sit by the runway for a long time after the plane takes off, then drive to Dadeland Mall. Wandering its walkways, I can at least listen to snippets of conversation, feel the press of bodies, the closeness of other living, sentient beings.

  “But we’re too different, Peter,” my father explained to me long ago. “Humans can never provide the companionship we need. At best they can be favored pets. It’s a pity there are so few of our kind. But somehow we manage to find each other.”

  The sun already rides low in the sky by the time I return to the docks. I search the water, see no sign of the dolphin as I motor out of the marina. But just as I pass the NO WAKE sign, the creature breaks through the surface a dozen yards to my side. It reminds me too much of my son, and I jam my throttles forward and race away from it.

  This time the patrol boats ignore me. I shoot across the bay at full speed. Letting the wind tear at me, the boat carom from wave to wave, I ignore the wet salt spray that coats me at each impact, try to think of nothing but steering the boat. When I reach my island’s channel, I race through it too, seeing how close I can get to the jagged chunks of coral and stone that I know lurk beneath the water.

  Max sits waiting on the dock. He neither barks nor wags his tail as I approach and dock. But he comes over to me when I get off the boat and stands close to my side. Though I’ve rarely ever touched him before, I stroke his massive head now. I understand how the beast feels.

  Unwilling to venture yet into my empty house, I walk up to the garden and to Elizabeth’s resting place. Max follows me and together we stand on the grass under the gumbo limbo tree and watch the sun begin to settle over the mainland.

  After a few minutes, Max stiffens and looks away, toward the north end of the island. I follow his gaze, try to make out what has captured his attention. The dog gives out an almost inaudible woof and takes off running. I run after him, both of us scrambling through bushes, clambering up and down dunes.

  When we break free of the brush, on the flat sand near the Wayward Channel, I finally see what interests the dog. She’s sitting on the flat rock jutting into the water, only her dark silhouette visible in the dying light of the sun. Max bays out in triumph as he draws near to her, and before he can reach her she slips away into the water.

  The dog is busy sniffing where she sat on the stone by the time I arrive. I study the water, look for bubbles and see nothing. “It makes no sense,” I say aloud, looking further out for any signs of a swimmer. But the water reveals nothing.

  Max sniffs his way back to the shore, stops by the sand, his snuffling coming louder, his tail lashing from side to side. I go over and kneel beside him. Pushing his snout away, I search around in the sand with my hand, touching something metallic and round. I pick it up, brush it off and examine it. Even in the waning light, I can see it’s a thin gold ring.

  Running my finger over the surface I feel the faint resistance of something scratched or etched in the gold. But as much as I stare at the ring, I can’t make out anything in the gloom. I head for the house, Max following behind me.

  I throw on the lights as soon as I enter my room. Holding the ring up to the light I try to fit it on my small finger and smile when I find it too small even for that. I move closer to the light, study the ring again and gasp when I see the letters etched in the gold—Delasangre.

  Holding the ring in the palm of my hand, I stare at it. I know the lettering all too well. I saw it every day until my mother died—on the ring she wore on her wedding finger whenever she was in her human form.

  I make a fist around the ring and rush from the room. Dashing down the spiral staircase, taking stairs two at a time, I try to think why such a ring would be lying in the sand on that part of the island. I make my way to the small cell, yank up on the cot and rush down the steps without bothering to pull the cot back down.

  At the bottom, I feel for the light switch, throw it on and walk over to the steel-plated treasure-room door. Thick chains fastened by a modern, stainless steel combination padlock secure the door. I transfer the ring to my pocket, grasp the padlock in one hand and dial the combination with the other. But I miss the combination on my first two tries, only getting it right the third time, after I stand still a few moments, thinking only of my breathing and the combination.

  After the padlock snaps open I rip the chains out of the way, throw the door open, click on the light and rush to the jewelry box my father stored in the far corner of the room, near the stacks of silver and gold bullion. After we buried my mother, he’d brought me to this room so I could see where he placed her jewelry. “I don’t want to bury it with her, Henri,” he’d said. “I want it where I can look at it when I want. After I die, save it for your daughter or your son’s daughter. That’s what would please your mother best.”

  I breathe deep as I undo the box’s hasp. I can’t open the jewelry box without thinking of my mother’s touch, feeling her presence. Inside are compartments holding gold and silver chains, and diamond, ruby and emerald earrings, but the ring sits alone in one velvet compartment at the top.

  Taking the other ring out of my pocket, I pick up my mother’s. Hers is larger and less delicate, but the lettering of Delasangre looks as though it were etched by the same hand.

  I sigh and put both rings in my mother’s jewelry box. Max pads up behind me, shakes his head and lets out a snort. I turn, laugh and grab his head, scratch him behind his ears. “I don’t know, boy,” I say. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  In the evening, when Chloe calls, I listen as she tells me about the flight and their drive into the interior to Bartlet House. “Oh, and I tried to call Mum but there was no answer,” she says and giggles. “I think she made good on her promise to throw out the satellite phone.”

  Toward the end of the conversation, I say, “I saw the girl again. This time on the side of the island, on the rock at the Wayward Channel. But she was gone before I could get to her or really see what she looked like.” Then I tell her about the ring.

  “How strange,” Chloe says. “Do you think your mother or father lost it there?”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” I say.

  13

  Chloe and I talk by phone every evening and every morning. While we discuss most things, I say nothing about my new habit of wandering from room to room, touching her things and the kids’, sleeping sometimes in Henri’s bed and sometimes in Lizzie’s. I do tell her that Max has become my constant companion.

  Not surprisingly, Henri and Lizzie seem to be adjusting to life in Jamaica with hardly any problems. “They miss you, dear,” Chloe says. “But between horseback riding and fishing with Granny and visiting Cockpit Country, their days are pretty full.”

  With my first deposition still a month away, I’ve little desire to visit the mainland. I busy myself tending Chloe’s garden and doing the routine maintenance the house and its machines can always use. Another boater disappears, but no more after that. Soon the number of patrol boats lessens again.

  I look in the harbor every day to see if Henri’s dolphin has chosen to make an appearance. But it never does. I always make sure to check the rock jutting into Wayward Channel and the sandbar at the end of our channel for any sign of the girl. But I never see her either.

  Ian calls me three weeks after Chloe’s departure. “We need you to come in for a practice deposition, Peter,” he says.

  I sigh and say, “Weren’t you supposed to have the damn suit quashed?”

  “We’re working on it. And Arturo and Claudia are working on Pepe Santos too,” he says before I can ask. “Toba’s dating the guy now, for Christ’s sake. We couldn’t get any closer to him unless you adopted him.”

  “So what good is it doing?” I say.

  “He’s a stubborn guy. Relax. We just need to find the right leverage.”

  Frowning, I say, “Well, find it
already.”

  But I smile when it’s time to leave the island for the practice deposition. I’ve lived alone too long already and done too little with my time. Besides, Chloe’s informed me that she and the kids are leaving to spend the next week with her parents at their home in Morgan’s Hole in Cockpit Country. Knowing I won’t be able to talk on the phone with her magnifies my loneliness.

  Just kicking the motors alive on my Grady White makes my grin widen. Max barks as I pull away from the dock, and for a moment I consider going back and bringing him along. I shake my head, thinking what Ian Tindall’s reaction would be if I brought the beast to our office.

  Besides, I know the poor dog would be miserable in the boat on a day like this. While the sky is mostly clear and a brilliant blue, a brisk north wind blows over the bay, churning up waves and white froth.

  A blast of wind hits the Grady White as soon as I motor out of the harbor. I welcome the challenge after my weeks of inactivity, steer the boat through the chop as it tries to throw me out of the channel and crash me into the rocks.

  I’m so intent on helming the boat I don’t notice the dolphin until I’m almost on top of it. It shoots a breath out of its blowhole and kicks away from me. I laugh when it returns, cresting a wave just a few yards to the side of the boat. Like it or not, I know it will be my companion as long as it wants. As rough as the water is, I’ve little chance of outrunning it.

  The dolphin stays with me all the way across the bay, disappearing from sight one moment, reappearing dozens of yards away the next. But when I get to Monty’s marina, it dives out of sight. As much as I search the water, I can’t find any sign of it.

  If anything can make someone hate lawyers a deposition can. Ian starts as soon as I sit in his office. “Remember. Just answer the questions. Never volunteer anything.”