The Seadragon's Daughter (Dragon de la Sangre)

by Alan F. Troop

  I look up from my food.

  Claudia shrugs. “You asked me to check. He has six registered, all nine millimeters—a SigSauer, two Lugers, a Walther PPK and an HP and a Mauser. He must like German stuff. The boys will have to be careful when they go in.”

  “And my father’s journal?” I say, returning to my food.

  “I don’t know. He writes that he has an idea, but the rest of it is about leaving. I don’t think he had any grand design. He just planned to fly away one night. That’s the last thing he wrote. I’ve gone back and started at the front of the journal to see if I can find anything else,” she says.

  I groan and she stares at me, her forehead furrowed. “Sorry,” I say. “I was sure that we’d find the answer in the journal. Now I feel like a fool for making you come out to pick it up offshore in the dark.”

  “Hey. You know me. I like it on the water in the dark. I didn’t mind at all.”

  “I mind,” I say, thinking how little time remains before the antidote runs out. “Forget the journal. Try going back to his log books. Maybe he mentioned something in them.”

  After I finish eating I make another steak and bring it downstairs to Lizzie’s room. As I expected, I find Derek still asleep in my daughter’s bed. The warm aroma of the blood puddled on the plate wakes him, saving me from a few frustrating minutes of prodding. As he gulps down his food, I remind him of his promise to help.

  “No problem, old man, I told you I would,” he says.

  We spend the day together, going from one arms room to the next, hauling the cannons out, loading them with powder and grapeshot and rolling them into the cannon ports spaced out along the veranda’s wall. Aiming each as low as possible, so each cannon shot can rake just above the ground, I frown when I find that no matter how we try, we can’t depress any cannon low enough to fire into the harbor.

  “We can use some of the rail guns,” Derek says.

  I nod and go along with cleaning and then loading six of the huge flintlock blunderbusses with as much as they can handle and putting them in place along the wall facing the harbor. But while their barrels are large enough to handle a lead ball the size of a golf ball, I fear the shot they throw will do far too little harm to the Pelk.

  With as much accomplished as we can do for the day and the sun starting to settle in the west, Derek goes inside. I stay outside and study the harbor. Wandering from the veranda, down the steps, out to the dock and then back, my eyes always on the far end of the harbor, I rack my brain for new ideas.

  Claudia has promised to bring out a few machine guns and two twelve-gauge semiautomatic shotguns the next day, but even with that firepower I still don’t feel secure.

  Something splashes in the harbor and I flinch. I stare at the water until I see the fluke of a manatee, and I let out a sigh. I wonder where the Pelk are now, wish they would attack and be done with it already. If a mere seacow can make my heart race, the wait has already gone on too long.

  I stay outside until the sun settles out of sight and the dark takes over the sky. Then I go in through Henri’s door and walk up the spiral staircase to the great room. I find Derek, Chloe and Claudia all sitting at the table, staring at one of my father’s log books.

  Claudia looks up. “Hi boss. Good news—I think. I found something at the beginning of one of the log books. Here. . . .”

  She points to the second paragraph on the first page of the leatherbound book.

  I walk over and stand behind her as she moves her finger from one Spanish word to the next, translating, halting to construct sentences. “Yo no creo . . . I don’t think . . . I’ve ever dealt with a more . . . irritating race of creatures than the Thryll. I spent . . . months flattering and threatening one after another until they finally . . . brought me to their leader, an old . . . discolored thing who swore the—unica razon—only reason he offered help was because of his hatred for the Pelk. He made me swear . . . I would come back . . . to destroy them. After I made my oath he told me—el antidoto—the antidote to the Pelk poison was a simple tea. All I had to do was boil a broth from un arbol rojo.”

  Claudia pauses and looks up. “I think he means a red mangrove tree.”

  Turning her gaze back to the log book she reads, “Yo le pregunte . . . I asked him . . . what part of the tree to use and he said todo—all of it. I asked him, how do I boil a whole tree? He laughed at me and said, ‘It doesn’t have to be a big one.’ I left that night, and by the time I came home I realized what he probably meant was un arbolillo.”

  Claudia stops. She looks at me. “On the next page he says it worked and then he doesn’t mention it again. I’m not sure about the word arbolillo. I can ask Pops about it—but I think Don Henri meant a very small tree. We’re going to need a really big pot, a hundred quart or so. Do you have one?”

  “Nothing that large,” Chloe says.

  “No problem, I can come back with one tomorrow. We can yank up one of the smaller mangroves and boil it until it makes a tea. . . . It’s worth a try.”

  Derek nods in agreement. “As long as Peter’s the one to try it.”

  I smile at my brother-in-law. At least with Derek, when things are bad, I can count on knowing I can’t count on him. I turn to Chloe. “You’re the one whose mother taught her how to make potions. What do you think?”

  Chloe stares at the log book for what feels like minutes, slowly shaking her head as she does so. Finally she says, “I don’t like the idea at all. I was taught to be very careful when I mixed any potion. Mum made me memorize all the properties and uses of every plant in our garden. Some work differently depending on how long they’ve grown. Some have to be dried. Mum warned me to be very careful with anything new.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugs. “We don’t even know what dose you should take. I don’t think it will harm you. If it was poisonous Mum would have taught me about it. But I bet it will taste terrible.”

  She looks at me, her eyes troubled. “But it could work. Peter, I don’t think we have any choice. Your father’s words are all we have to go on.”

  I take the journal from Claudia and study my father’s handwriting. I want to believe that the tea will work. But I wish I could be more confident of Claudia’s translation. I hand the log book back to her. “Bring this to your father,” I say. “If he agrees with your translation, bring the pot back with you.”

  “Sure,” she says, checking her watch. “It’s early enough for me to take it to him tonight. I wanted to leave soon anyway. Just—I was going to gas up at my marina, and Pop’s house is the other way. If I’m going to go directly to him, I need to bother you for some gas, if you can spare it.”

  “Don’t worry, we have plenty,” Chloe says. “Peter always keeps an extra drum filled. Don’t you, Peter?”

  I nod, picturing the spare drum full of fifty-five gallons of gasoline and beginning to smile. “Claudia, tell your dad I want him to send someone to Amazon Hose first thing in the morning. I need him to pick up three lengths of two-inch fuel hose—each one hundred feet long, with couplings and connectors,” I say, my smile now stretching across my face. “I want you to have them load it all on your boat so you can bring it out when you come.”

  Eyes wide, both women look at me. “That’s a lot to expect Claudia to carry on her boat,” Chloe says.

  “I’m sure she can handle it,” I say. “Oh, I need twelve Zippo lighters too, and lighter fuel.”

  My wife frowns at me. “And you want all this for?” she says.

  I try to stop grinning but can’t. “You’ll see tomorrow,” I say.

  37

  I wake shortly before dawn, dress and go out on the veranda to wait for the sun come up. Max pads along beside me. I pat him, grateful for his company. With Chloe still refusing to let me sleep beside her, he’s become my companion in bed too. I look out at the ocean, the band of light starting to spread at the horizon, and think through the plans I’ve set in motion.

  For the first time, I smile as I do so. If everythin
g comes together as I hope, things just may work out. I know if Father were here he’d shake his head. “The best plans are simple ones,” he’d say. “Grand thinkers most often end up with grand failures.” Still, now that the last piece has fallen into place, I think he’d approve.

  Beyond the surf line, a dorsal fin breaks the water and my heart speeds up. Another fin shows and then a third, the dolphins humping their backs as they swim north, parallel to the shore. Too soon, I think, for a Pelk attack. But my heart continues to race until they pass out of sight.

  I shake my head. I know it’s most likely just a few dolphin out looking for their morning meal of fish. But if the Pelk attack before I put everything in place, all of my plans will have been for nothing. And worse, if the red mangrove tea doesn’t work and they attack after my antidote runs out, all of my planning won’t help Chloe one bit.

  She’ll have to flee to Jamaica, I think, rubbing my midriff, picturing my painful death. I sigh and walk toward the nearest cannon. I inspect it, check that we’ve aimed it correctly, check that the cover over the powder in the touchhole has worked and that the powder’s remained dry. As the sun continues its ascent, I check each of the other cannons and then each of the deck guns.

  Going down the steps from the veranda, I walk the length of the dock, studying the harbor. Then, starting at the fuel drums, I walk along the harbor shore, pacing off steps, nodding when I come to a good point.

  I scuff out a line in the sand with my heel to mark it and continue on to the clump of red mangroves at the far end of the harbor. Wading in the water next to them, I examine the younger trees—some small bushes no higher than my waist, and others just twigs with leaves barely reaching my knees. Green seedlings, really just the torpedo-shaped seeds of the tree freshly rooted into the sand, sprouting only a single green stem and a few green leaves, grow interspersed around their arched roots.

  Grabbing the trunk of a waist-high specimen, I tug on it. When it doesn’t give, I pull as hard as I can. It still doesn’t move.

  “Hi, you.”

  I release the tree, turn, look at the shore and smile at Chloe. Dressed in an oversize red tank top that hangs down, covering almost all of her short white shorts, she looks more like a teen than a twenty-one-year-old mother of two. “Hi,” I say. “What brings you out here so early?”

  She shrugs and the left tank strap falls from her left shoulder, leaving it bare. I yearn to kiss her there, to put my lips to her smooth brown skin. If only she’d let me. Chloe tugs the strap back in place. “My guess is, same thing as you. I couldn’t sleep. There’s too much going on.” She looks down at her feet and frowns. “It’s strange being in our bed without you. It screws up my sleep too.”

  “We can fix that.”

  “No.” Chloe shakes her head. “Not yet.” She points at the mangrove. “Any reason you decided on that one?”

  “I don’t know. I really didn’t decide. I just wanted to see how hard it would be to yank out.” I smile. “Maybe a smaller one will be easier.”

  “Maybe you should wait for Claudia to come out and tell us what arbolillo means,” Chloe says. “Come on in for now. I’m making breakfast. No reason I can’t cook for both of us.”

  Once again, Derek sleeps until I come down to wake him. But I really can’t fault him. He has proven to be far more help than I expected. Together we open up all the arms rooms and take out wood torches, which we place in torch brackets on the coral stone walls of the house—one near each cannon emplacement, two by the rail guns and four down by the docks.

  He does prove almost useless, though, when it comes to installing the spare fuel pump on the second fifty-five gallon drum of gasoline. “Sorry, old man,” he says when I tell him to splice two red wires together. “You know we didn’t dither with anything electric back at Morgan’s Hole.”

  Chloe joins us toward the end of our preparations. She shakes her head.

  “Aren’t you worried about the attention all this could bring, if you use it?”

  “I’m more worried about the Pelk.” I point across the bay. Nothing on the mainland shows above the horizon. “Anyway, we’re too far from the mainland to be seen. We’ve fired cannon here before. No one’s ever reacted.”

  I look at the lines leading from the fuel drums. “True. If we have to use these, they will see the glow from the fire.” I shrug. “We can always claim it was an accident.”

  It’s almost noon before Claudia’s boat cruises into the harbor, three large rolls of hose crowding her cockpit. As I help her tie the boat off, Claudia begins to offload the rest of her cargo, handing me two shotguns first, then three Uzi machine guns—each weapon wrapped in towels. Passing them to Derek and Chloe, who lay them down on the dock, I say, “And ammo?”

  Claudia rolls her eyes. “Of course, boss.” She hands me a wood case marked ARMY SURPLUS. “Nine millimeter, steel-jacketed, for the Uzis,” she says, picking up a large cardboard carton next. “And solid slugs for the shotguns. Each one has over an ounce of lead in it. Neil, the guy I got them from, says they can take down a charging rhino.”

  “Good,” I say, still unsure just what it will take to stop a Pelk. I know it would take more than a few bullets to slow one of my own kind.

  At the end, Claudia passes up a small box of Zippo lighters and then holds up a very large stainless steel cooking pot and says, “For the tea.”

  “It’s huge,” Chloe says.

  “I know. It holds a bunch. I asked my parents about that word, arbolillo, like you asked me to. Mom said I should ask her cousin Raoul—he teaches advanced Spanish at the U of M. He wasn’t home so I left a message. But Pops insisted it means sapling. So I figured, if we chopped one up, it would fit in this.”

  “Fine,” Chloe says. “But how will it fit on the stove?”

  Claudia flashes a smile. “You’re talking to a former Girl Scout here. We’ll heat it in the fireplace.”

  “That will take a while to get ready,” Chloe says. She looks at me. “Do you mind if we pick out which mangrove sapling to use?”

  I shrug. “Go ahead. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Derek and I offload the hose. Attaching a hundred-foot length to the first fuel drum pump, we run it to the far end of the dock and leave its end hanging off over the water, facing the harbor’s entrance. We attach the other two hundred feet to the second drum and run it down the harbor’s shore to the line I scuffed in the sand.

  Returning to the dock, we fill all the Zippo lighters and place each one on the deck near a torch. I point to the weapons and the ammo next, and Derek nods and says, “Okay, old man, I understand these and the cannons and the rail guns. But do you really think Mowdar and his men are just going to sit in the water while you pump petrol around them?”

  Smiling, I shake my head. “They have a safehold under the island. One exit is over there.” I point to the water by the mangroves. “It’s the only one the guns don’t really cover. Fortunately, if they do attack from there, they can only come out one or two at a time. A fire could slow them down.”

  “If you light it on time. Seems a bit dodgy, old man.”

  I pick up the three Uzis and nod. “It’s all a bit dodgy,” I say.

  It takes us two trips to bring all the Uzis, shotguns and ammunition to Henri’s room. Though I ache to go up to the great room to see how the mangrove tea is coming along, I stay and we load all the weapons first. When we finally do go upstairs, I carry one of the loaded Uzis with me.

  A hot, swampy smell hits my nostrils as soon as I reach the third-floor landing. Derek wrinkles his nose and says, “Bloody hell, if it tastes as bad as it smells you’ll be upchucking all night!”

  The smell gets worse the closer we get to the great room—as does the heat. Inside we find the pot sitting on a metal grate over a pile of burning logs in the fireplace. Flames dance all around the pot, clouds of smoke and water vapor swirling above it and streaming up into the chimney.

  Chloe and Claudia give us wan smiles from the kitc
hen, the coolest spot in the room. Their clothes stick to their bodies with sweat. A wet sheen of perspiration coats their skin wherever it’s exposed.

  “It’s been boiling for over a half hour,” Chloe says. “We chopped the whole tree up, branches, roots, bark and leaves.”

  Claudia nods. “It was such a cute little tree. I feel like a murderer.”

  I nod and look out the window. During the worst of winters, we rarely use the fireplace more than a few times, and even then the grand room usually gets too hot. The air conditioning certainly can’t handle a large fire now, with the sun bright outside and the temperature in the high eighties. The whole room feels like the inside of a blast furnace.

  The heat and the smell and the worry that it may all be in vain make me want to bolt from the room. I sigh, wish it were all done with already. “When can I try it?” I say.

  Chloe shrugs, takes a long ladle and walks over to the pot. She stirs it a few times, beads of sweat forming on her forehead, running down her cheeks. Lifting a ladleful of the brew to her nose, she smells it and grimaces. “I guess now would be as good a time as any,” she says.

  Picking up an empty coffee mug, Claudia joins her and holds it out. Chloe empties one ladleful into it and then another. She looks toward me. “We don’t really know what the dosage should be. My guess is, this should be fine.”

  Claudia brings the cup back and puts it on the countertop in front of me. “Let it cool a little before you try it,” she says.

  I nod and stare at the cup. Thick, dark brown liquid fills it to the top, giving off a rank, sulfuric aroma, as if a hundred cups of tea had been brewed too long and then intermixed with rotting vegetation. Stifling a gag, I back away.

  Chloe, who’s come back from the fireplace, puts her hand on my forearm. “Not very pleasant, is it?” she says.

  “Not at all. But if it works, it will be worth it.”