Chapter 8 Liz #2
In that moment, another water blessed opens its mouth and dumps four or five flopping fish on the riverbank beside Plumeria.
I’ve always wondered how they taste, the deep, navy blue dragon says.
It’s a male—fewer facial horns that are larger—but he’s still beautiful, even with the larger, less delicate face.
He has strange sort of dangly flippers hanging off him around his face and legs, but they’re shiny and interesting.
I always have so many questions and not nearly enough time to ask them all.
The water blessed don’t come around me much, but maybe they will now, since I’m not bonded to the terrifying Azar anymore. I think they were scared of me before. It’s nice to have a friend amongst their group.
I’m hoping so hard for Candi and Plumeria that I’m a nervous wreck as she approaches the flopping fish.
Should I eat them like this? Live?
“They’re better roasted,” Candi says. “But since you’re in a rush. . .sushi’s not bad.”
Sushi? Plumeria blinks.
“Humans sometimes take the gross parts out of the inside of fish and slice them into pieces,” I say. “Sometimes we add rice or other things, but we eat the fish raw. That’s Candi’s way of saying ‘bottoms up.’”
Bottoms up?
Just grab it with your mouth and swallow it, Azar says.
Plumeria nods, and then she ducks down low, opens her mouth, and snaps it closed on one of the striped river fish.
It takes some bobbing and shifting, but she manages to gobble the other three up as well, along with more sand than I’d personally care to eat, but I know nothing about dragon gastrointestinal systems. Hopefully that’s fine.
She grimaces a little, and then she burps, loudly.
The rest of us watch her intently, waiting to see what happens.
I can’t stop seeing Gaia’s puddle of neon-green puke.
Without meaning to, I find myself praying that she’ll be okay.
I pray for Candi too, that she’ll be healthy right along with Plumeria.
I really want them all to be happy together—and I hope that all the dorky, fantasy-nerd semi-brights can bond their dragons and live happily ever after in the fantasy world they always wanted.
Will you be sad you can’t fly? Plumeria asks. Since you’ve always dreamed of being a dragon rider?
Candi’s smile is sweet as she shakes her head.
“I was moving quickly in those dreams, but I might not have even been flying.” She bites her lip, and then she turns fully toward Plumeria.
“I think I might have always been zooming through the water. I was just moving so fast, I couldn’t understand where I was. ”
It’s been a few moments—does that mean we’re safe?
Before I can ask out loud, Plumeria begins writhing, her entire face contorted, her body collapsing inward, her claws spasming and digging large, long furrows in the sand. When she heaves forward, puking something back up, I struggle to suppress my tears. This isn’t about me.
But the puke—as nasty as it smells and looks—isn’t neon green.
It’s not green at all.
In fact, she vomited up an entire fish, the biggest one, and it looks only partially chewed.
That one was nasty, Plumeria says. But I think the others are fine.
What’s going on? Hyperion asks. Did it not work?
“I think that’s a Greenland shark,” Andre says. Thank goodness we’re surrounded by nerds. They’re exactly the kind of people who would know all about sharks.
“Care to elaborate?” I creep closer to the puke-fish. “Is the fact that it’s a Greenland shark meaningful in some way?”
“I’ve read about them,” he says. “When I was a kid, I was kind of obsessed with sharks.”
“You’re kidding.” Since LARPing and playing D&D in every spare second of life is also a little obsessive, I’m thinking that makes sense.
“All I ever asked for my mom to get me for Christmas or birthdays were books about sharks, and the Greenland shark is a really weird one. It’s actually the reason the first people in Iceland survived the winter.”
“How?” I ask.
“The Greenland shark’s basically the most toxic shark—maybe even fish—on the planet,” he says.
“The Icelandic people had basically thrown a lot of them away because they made them sick, but the sharks sort of fermented for a few months, so when they were about to die, they realized the fermentation had somehow sucked all the toxins out and while it tasted nasty, it was edible. They still eat it today—I think it’s called hakarl or something. ”
“Does that mean she threw it up. . .because it’s gross?” I ask.
He shrugs.
I feel fine otherwise, Plumeria says.
After consuming a second round of fish, she stays fine. No more sharks puked up, no neon-vomit at all. “I’m ready to call it,” I say. “It was just the stupid poison shark. Otherwise, our semi-bright pioneer, Candi, was a success.”
The water blessed start spreading the word. The lumpish, splotchy, slow-swimming fish with almost no pectoral fins are not good to eat. Avoid them.
“They’re the dog-poop of the fish world,” Andre says.
“But the semi-bright humans?” I can’t help my smile. “Definitely not dog poop.”
Not dog poop at all. Plumeria looks happy, her body practically curling around her newly ensnared human.
Within the next thirty minutes, all twenty-five of the remaining semi-brights, and all ten of the regular brights, are bonded.
Six strike blessed.
Nineteen earth blessed.
Ten water blessed.
It’s a start, Hyperion says. But you only have two more days, and we have thousands and thousands of blessed to save. Unless you were thinking most of us could just die.
I don’t even bother answering that.
As I wing my way back to the Hotel Selfoss where my siblings are probably getting ready for bed with Gordon, Asteria, and Rufus, I call with my satellite phone and start coordinating plans.
I hope, as I get closer, that the kids aren’t already asleep.
It’s nearly ten o’clock, but I want to see them before I collapse.
Two days without sleep is not good for Liz. Instead of becoming dull, when I’m all work and no play, I get ragey. When I reach the hotel, Sammy’s asleep, but Coral and Jade are still awake. They’re all fine—none of them were forcibly bonded.
Though a few blessed had stupid ideas, Asteria says. So it’s good we were here.
“I’m very grateful,” I say. “Thank you for being willing to watch them while I went to look for humans who wanted to be ensnared.”
You’re hard to hate, Asteria says. I’ve tried—even without his memories, even without being able to take a human form, he still chooses you.
“I’m so sorry your wedding was ruined,” I lie.
The only good thing about Gaia’s death, and I feel horrible thinking this, is that it ruined the mating plans. Standing there, pretending I was fine with it, felt like someone was carving out my heart and dicing it into little pieces to be thrown into a bowl of citric acid.
Their mating ritual was turning my heart into ceviche.
You aren’t sorry. Asteria doesn’t even sound angry—she sounds resigned. Sometimes I think Asteria understands humans better than any other blessed. She seems to share almost all our good and bad traits. “I wasn’t sorry, but I wanted to be sorry.”
Her laugh’s a little bitter, but also real. Yes, just as I wanted to be sorry when Azar returned. . .and didn’t remember you. But I also was not.
At least we understand one another.
I really do love him, Asteria says.
That’s what makes it hard. She’s a good—person isn’t the right word—but she’s got a good soul. Like me, she’s fierce. Like me, she cares for him. Like me, they feel cosmically love-crossed.
His soul yearns for yours, but your bodies are wrong, she says.
“And he’s perfect for you,” I say. “In virtually every way.”
Except that even without his memories, he’s pining for you without even realizing it.
I wish that was true. He mostly just seems to despise me. “That must be why he tossed me in that cage and shot out of the volcano like a bat—”
Sometimes I wish we could cry, you know. It looks like it makes you hurt less.
Maybe it does. I’m not sure. “I try to avoid it whenever I can, but it’s probably cathartic.”
I’ll let you spend time with the small ones, but I’ll return early tomorrow so you can leave with Azar to try again.
She pauses before launching from the giant hole Azar created.
Back when he cared about us, he’d placed a large red bubble over it, but it’s gone now, probably just another casualty of his death.
I hope you succeed, but I fear you’re just wasting precious time.
I’m afraid of the very same thing.
She’s like the silver-scaled sister I love to hate.
I finally walk through the door into the next room, the frozen air gusting around me as I close it.
The kids are bundled up in the same bed, extra blankets piled on top, even though the hotel generator has blessedly kept working.
Having one not-very-well-insulated wall that’s shared with the blasted-open area hasn’t been great.
I might need to move them further inside the poor hotel.
“I can’t sleep,” Coral says. “Can you tell us a story?”
“Yeah.” Jade shivers. “Please?”
Mom used to tell them stories every night.
Stories about dragons.
Fairies.
About princesses saving poor, pathetic princes.
And about tiny princes who could slay the demons who were hunting the light. Sammy loved those best, since he’s still so small. It’s good to tell children that everything will be okay, especially when it might not be.
I lean over and stroke his face.
He stirs a little, then he opens his eyes. He does that a lot, when I come in to hug him after he’s gone to sleep. I’ve never seen another kid more pleasant when you wake him up. Coral would bite my head off if I could even wake her up, and Jade would sometimes fall into an epic tantrum.
Never Sammy.
“I want a story too,” he says.
He must have been half-awake before, probably from the sounds of Asteria leaving, even though it was on the other side of the wall.
“A quick story.” I yawn. “I’m exhausted.”
Instead of making one up, I tell them about the bonding of Plumeria, Agrippa, and Phileas.
Real life’s at least as strange as any of the stories we used to make up.
Unlike all the humans who just joined us voluntarily, I’m not sure what I’d say if you offered me the chance to go back to a time before the dragons.
I might lunge at a trip to Disney if I could avoid all the misery.
Let someone else fight the fight.
But even as I contemplate that, a life that’s so different than mine, I can’t help feeling that no matter how much I ran, the blessed would have found me.
Once the kids are asleep, I change into pajamas and prepare to sleep on my stomach.
Maybe one day I’ll learn to sleep on my wings, but for now, they’re so bulky and sensitive that I’m forced to lie facedown.
As a back sleeper for almost twenty-three years, this feels horrible.
My boobs hate it, for one thing.
Eventually, though, I do fall asleep, hoping against hope that all the new brights we found are doing their best to locate others like them. I really hope there are more humans willing to try and help the blessed find what they need without destroying our little planet in the process.