Ariel

by Steven R. Boyett

  Well, the food had been good.

  Evie, in plain white nightclothes, gave Ariel a farewell kiss on her lowered brow. George picked her up and hugged her and told her to be good.

  We set out.

  I looked back once when George did. They were still there, just outside the front door. I pictured them watching us walk along the road to the Interstate in the crisp morning air until we were out of sight.

  *

  We were in Greenville by a little after nine. It was a small town and had that kind of dead look that made me wonder if it had been just as lively before the Change. Probably; there were few cars in the middle of the streets, more in the parking lots of small shopping centers and car lots. Bird shit had made small white explosions on the windshields and helped turn the bodies to rust. Their South Carolina plates were red, white, and blue, with a palm tree and a banjo in the center, making me think of Dixie, mint juleps, and Tara. A lot of pickup trucks had a rebel-flag front plate and a shotgun rack holding, more often than not, an axe handle. There were also popular bumper stickers, faded by rain and torn by time: nra; only free men own guns; you can have my gun when you pry my cold, dead fingers from it; if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns; forget, hell! and the like.

  “You say the town’s completely deserted?” I asked George as we walked through the main street.

  “Pretty much. Some people live just outside of town, but I ain’t heard of anybody living in it in a long time. My family never had no problem coming in and getting stuff if we needed to.”

  I stopped in a drugstore—the door was unlocked—and grabbed cigarettes (there were two packs left), new shoelaces (nylon), and a pack of peppermints for Ariel. The store owner had kept a snub-nosed .38 behind the register. I opened the magazine. Six bullets. I spun it and snapped my wrist. It clacked home. I brought the barrel to my temple and pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  But there’d been one heart-speeding second: what if, just this once, a gun went off?

  I threw it to the floor. It clattered to the foot of the magazine section. I turned and left the drugstore.

  “What are you laughing about?” asked Ariel as I joined her in the street.

  “Nothing.” I tossed her the packet of peppermint. She let it fall to the asphalt: what was she supposed to do with it? I opened it, still laughing, and began untwisting the cellophane packets. What a weird world.

  *

  We were back on the open road by ten. I walked on Ariel’s right, George on her left. As we walked I practiced my daily regimen of drawing Fred and trying to return it to the sheath in one smooth motion without looking. I’d already cut my thumb once.

  “Hey, Pete,” George said as I drew the sword once more. “If you’re in such a hurry to get up north, why don’t you ride a bike? Ariel could keep up with you, couldn’t she?”

  I locked my wrist. Yeah, that felt right. Resisting the temptation to look at my left hip I slowly bent my sword arm at the elbow. The back of the blade slid along the top of my left wrist. “Yeah, she could keep up,” I said, pulling the blade back and trying again. “But I won’t ride one.” I pulled the blade up until I felt the tip slide to the top of the scabbard.

  “Why not?”

  Now if I used my left thumb as a guide … yeah! It went into place and I brought right hand close to left. The guard met the scabbard with a small clank. “Because you can’t hide when you’re riding a bicycle.” I drew Fred again. My stride made the blade bob and I missed yet another attempt to return it to the scabbard on the first try. “Besides, I tried to ride one once. It wouldn’t work.” I cheated and looked. The sword went into the sheath. “Shit, I’ll never learn how to do this.” I walked in front of Ariel, who’d been watching me with amusement, then over to George. “Let me see that,” I said, indicating his broadsword.

  “Huh? Oh, sure,” He pulled it from his belt, scabbard and all, and handed it to me.

  I turned it in my hands, then drew it. “George, you couldn’t cut a fart with this thing.”

  He colored. “I’ll learn to use it,” he said defensively.

  I shook my head. “Sir Lancelot couldn’t use this,” I said, and it was true: what I was holding was a sword someone had taken from a gift shop somewhere, more wall decoration than weapon: dull, unbalanced, unwieldy, ill-fitted, wholly impractical. “Where’d your dad get it?”

  “I dunno.” He ducked his head and kicked at the ground. “Found it.”

  “Found it.” I sighed, sheathed it, and handed it back to him. “Step away from Ariel,” I told him. “I want to see you draw that thing.”

  Awkwardly he put it back into his belt. “Okay.” He grabbed the double-handed grip with his right hand and pulled. And kept pulling. His arm was straight out and the sword was still in the sheath. It was longer than his reach.

  “You’re going to have to get a bigger belt and sling it lower,” I told him.

  “It’ll drag the ground.”

  “What can I say? It’s one or the other.”

  Ariel scraped a hoof on the road.

  “Oh, neat,” George exclaimed at the trailing sparks. “Did you see that?”

  I glanced at her. “Yeah. Whoop-tee-doo.”

  She looked over at me, mock hurt in her midnight eyes. “Whatever happened to the Don Quixote you were reading me?” Her voice was pouting.

  “It’s in the pack somewhere.”

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “Jesus Christ, now?”

  “What’s wrong with now? I want to find out what happens. Besides, I like Rosinante.”

  We passed a Ford station wagon turned sideways on the left side of the road. With headlights knocked out and front grille bent it looked like a sleeping drunk. “Rosinante’s just a stupid, worn-out horse,” I commented. “She’s hardly even dealt with.”

  She scraped a hoof. I ignored George’s awed exclamation. “So? Rosinante follows Don Quixote faithfully—no matter how futile the quest.” She looked at me pointedly, to use a bad pun.

  I snorted. “That’s because Rosinante’s too dumb to know any better. ‘A horse is a horse, of course, of course,’” I sang. “R-r-right, Wi-ilbu-u-rrr?”

  “Why, Pete, you sound a little hoarse.”

  I groaned. “You’re making an ass of yourself, kid.”

  She let out a horse-like fricative. “How can a kid make an ass of itself? Besides, I’m an equine unicorn, not a caprine one.

  “So now it’s goats, is it?”

  “Fuck ewe.” She looked smug.

  George looked around, surprised. “Hey, you mean she talks like that?”

  I ignored him. “What happened to your horse puns? They run out on you?”

  “Yeah—they weren’t very stable in the first place.”

  I groaned again. “No more. Please.”

  She shook her head. “Pretty fleece.”

  “You aren’t even being consistent. Fleece is from sheep.”

  “You’re full of sheep. Anything can have fleas.”

  “Stop, you’re killing me.”

  A gleam in the black diamond of her eyes. “Whatever you say, Pete—just quit stallion around and read me some Don Quixote.”

  I made another pained sound. “All right. You win. Anything to stop the offal puns.”

  “I suppose you could try punishment.”

  I threatened not to read if she kept it up. She shut up. I asked George to reach in the lower left pocket of my pack and pull out the thick, dog-eared, paperback copy of Don Quixote. He did, then looked around at the scenery, gaze settling on the power lines ahead that played host to dozens of birds. “Lotta birds around.”

  “Mmmm.” I opened the book where it had been marked, knowing George was bored. I hadn’t asked to play nursemaid; he was going to have to think up his own ways to occupy time. I unfolded the marked page.

  “When do we stop for lunch?” asked George. Ariel shot him an irritated glance.

  “We don’t,” I said. “We
eat while we walk. Only time we stop is to eat late dinner and go to sleep.”

  “What are you in such an all-fired rush about?”

  “I’m trying to get to New York to meet a friend. Now be quiet.” I cleared my throat and began reading. “‘Chapter XVII. Wherein is continued the account of the innumerable troubles that the brave Don Quixote and his good squire Sancho Panza endured in the inn, which, to his sorrow, the knight took to be a castle.’” I glanced up to Ariel. She nodded attentively and I continued.

  *

  I’d begun smoking again when I could find cigarettes, but Ariel hadn’t said anything to me about it. I knew she hated to be around it, but I needed it to keep my nerves calmed. Maybe she knew that.

  That night—our fifth on road—the three of us slept in a motel in Spartanburg. It was deserted but had been broken into at some time. From behind the desk I grabbed a key to a room on the second floor. The room was pale blue, with two narrow beds and a seascape painting on the wall to the right of the door.

  George flopped onto the far bed. “Heck, I don’t know which I want to do first—eat or sleep.” Three minutes later he was snoring.

  *

  Dreams again. They brushed a tickling feather across my nighttime awareness. Muted images of hot, rapid breaths, and softness.

  I awoke to find Ariel pacing restlessly around the room, though that had not wakened me. You couldn’t hear her move. George slept quietly to my left. When I sat up she stopped pacing and turned to face me. A little light came in from the curtained windows, just enough to give her the faint phosphorescence of crashing waves on a dark beach. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “My leg. It’s begun to throb.”

  “Which one?”

  “Right front.”

  Oh. The one that had been broken. “All that walking we’ve been doing, maybe?”

  A faint shift of luminescence as she shook her head. “I think it will get worse as we get closer to New York. The memory gets stronger as the distance lessens.” She paused a few moments, then said, “You moved around a lot in your sleep. You kept … rubbing yourself. You know, on your … crotch. It bothered me.”

  “Bad dreams again.” I felt embarrassed, as if I’d been caught doing something wrong. After another pause I said, “Ariel, if you’d like to quit this whole thing, we will. I don’t want to do this if it means—”

  “We’ve been through this before, Pete. We’ll go.”

  “But—”

  “We’ll go. Now go back to sleep.”

  Twelve

  Behold, the noise of the bruit is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons.

  —Jeremiah, 10:22-23

  Spartanburg turned out to be a lot like Greenville, but bigger. I saw a few people moving in the distance as we walked through what seemed the main drag, and once, on the sidewalk, we passed four men and a woman who stared at us openly, not saying a word. Ariel lectured George as we walked through the north end of town. “Never stand in front of one and swing your sword,” she was saying. I kept looking left and right at buildings on both sides of the street—the presence of people made me nervous.

  “Why not?” asked George. His low-swung broadsword clinked in time with his walk; the metal sheath hit the pavement each time he stepped forward with his left foot.

  “Because it’ll eat you. A dragon’s main defenses are all oriented toward frontal attack. The front claws can swipe forward quickly, but they have difficulty striking to the side. Same with the head. It’s on a long neck and it’ll snap forward and strike like a snake, though not quite as fast. It also breathes fire. But the head has difficulty turning far to the side, close in toward its own body.”

  George took all this in soberly.

  “Never try to stab or cut at the head. It’s bony and the hide’s tough; your sword probably won’t go through. That, and it’s easy to miss their brains, which are not exactly a vital organ where dragons are concerned anyway.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do, then?”

  She looked at the broken glass front of Sam & Sons Laundry and Dry Cleaning, then looked back at the road ahead. “Get it low in the side. You have to try to puncture the gasbag. That’s what allows it to fly and breathe fire. If it gets airborne you’re in trouble.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Gasbag?”

  She nodded. “Most of the body is hollow, filled with hydrogen gas produced by chemical reaction within the body, the same way your body produces gas. Hydrogen gives it lift; without it dragons couldn’t fly. Their wings aren’t large enough. The gas is ignited in the throat and comes out as fiery breath.”

  I wasn’t biting. “Hold on a second. Why the need for complex biochemistry? I thought dragons were magical.”

  “They are.”

  “Then don’t they fly by magic, or breathe fire by magic?”

  She shook her head. The point of her horn flashed as it caught the morning sun. “Magic is a resource, Pete. Waste it and it’s gone. Why do you think I use it so rarely? Sure, dragons live by magical means—so do I. But nature isn’t wasteful, whether it’s labeled ‘natural’ or ‘supernatural.’ The magical power required to lift something as big as a dragon during the course of its lifetime would be tremendous. A dragon uses up magic just by existing, same as me. So rather than waste magic by using it up lifting a heavy mass, nature found an easier way.”

  “I still don’t get it. I always thought of magic as unnatural.”

  “Don’t be stupid. If it’s unnatural it can’t happen within nature. Magic is just a different set of physics laws than the one you’re used to.” She blinked and struck sparks. “But it still has to be consistent with itself, Pete; otherwise it won’t work. There’s no such thing as complete chaos.”

  I nodded, reminded of our first conversation with Malachi. The memory caused a sudden cold tingle at the small of my back.

  “Anyway,” Ariel said, dipping her horn at George, “you’ll probably get off one poke, two if you’re lucky. After that your sword will be pretty much useless. Dragon blood is pretty corrosive.”

  George accepted everything she said as gospel, but since she was in a mood for explanations I demanded to know why that was, also.

  “Hydrochloric acid,” she said patiently. “It causes the chemical reaction that produces the hydrogen and doubles as a defense mechanism.”

  “Oh.” Until then I’d assumed she was bullshitting George on his dragon-slaying technique and that we were speaking academically; now I realized she was serious as a heart attack. Sometimes it surprised me to hear her speaking knowledgeably about something like biochemistry; she apparently remembered everything she’d read.

  “Never look a dragon in the eyes,” she continued.

  It was George’s turn to question. “Why not?”

  “Just don’t.”

  A couple hundred yards ahead was a road sign. SPARTANBURG CITY LIMIT. Though the city proper continued a few miles past that, it made me feel better.

  I looked up from the road atlas. “We’re going to have to pick up our pace. We either walk faster, longer, or both.” I had traced our route with a finger, only moderately pleased. Five days out from Atlanta, a little better than a hundred fifty miles. We could do better. I should have brought a skateboard. With my luck, though, it would be as workable as a bicycle.

  “Faster,” said Ariel.

  “Longer,” said George.

  “It’s unanimous, then—faster and longer.”

  Neither of them seemed too happy with that.

  Our projected route would put us in Charlotte in two days. I didn’t like that. Small towns were one thing; cities were a whole ‘nother mess. I wanted to avoid them but I-85 went straight through Charlotte. Skirting around the city would just take up more time. Damn. But at least Charlotte would have places where I could pick up hiking boots—mine were nearly worn out. I also needed a change of clothes. I’d been wearing my ugly
green army shirt and black cords for six days. I tried not to think about what my underwear and socks smelled like by now; I even had to sleep in them. I’d also have to pick up cigarettes. I’d run out that day; I’d be having nicotine fits tomorrow. Peppermint for Ariel, too, to keep her from bitching about my smoking.

  Hell, I might even pick up a skateboard. Purely out of curiosity, of course.

  *

  Ariel asked me to rub her right foreleg after we made camp. Nothing felt wrong, but she gasped when my kneading hands circled the ankle joint. “I’m sorry!” I said.

  “It isn’t you, Pete.” She lay on her left side and I was beside her on my knees. George had run behind a group of trees to go to the bathroom. I had told him to be careful; it was dark and something might grab him while he was in an impossible position.

  I bent forward, resting my weight on my left arm, and stroked her mane. It looked like moonlit fog in the early morning just before the sun rises. “Is there something I can do?”

  She bent her head up and nuzzled my arm. “I’ll be okay, Pete. Really. It’s remembered pain, that’s all. It’s in my mind.”

  I followed the curve round her shoulder, along the length of her once-injured leg with my fingertips. My throat felt full. I wanted to clear it.

  Suddenly I was holding her tightly, arms around her neck. My eyes stung; tears slid down my cheeks and onto her hair, beading like dew on a spider web, and somewhere in the back of my mind I thought, God, I look stupid. But I didn’t care. I just felt scared, very scared.

  “I wish … .” I said, sniffling. My nose had plugged up. “It isn’t fair!”

  “What isn’t fair, Pete?” Her voice was gentle; none of the underlying pain that had been there before was present.

  I couldn’t answer. I just cried harder.

  “Tell me.”

  “I just … . I wish so much that you were a woman!”

  She was quiet a long time. I think George came back but respectfully kept himself scarce. After a while she spoke, and her voice sounded far away, as it had the time she’d brought me back from death and I hadn’t wanted to come.