CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Cyrus surveys me over folded arms. “I have to warn you; the medication makes him loopy.”
I hoist up my pants so I don’t trip over them on my way down to the riverbank. “When is he not a little loopy?”
“I heard that!” Everest calls. He’s sitting on the rocks facing away from me, but he bends his neck backwards to give me a goofy upside-down smile.
I resist the urge to grin back at him. Cyrus mutters something about “pay grade” and “vacation”, which I ignore, leaping down the path until I land on the bank, right next to Calliope’s head.
“You’re going to pull something,” Valentin chides, straightening his back for him. “And I’m still not convinced you’re dressed appropriately for this. It’s going to be cold up there.”
“It’s not him you need to worry about,” Ender says.
Everest nods. “It’s true. I’m hot.”
“You’re unbearable,” Cyrus says.
“Finally, someone who agrees with me,” I say, throwing the bag I’ve lugged all the way from my tent to the side.
Down here, it’s cold enough to frost the tips of my wet hair, so I can only imagine the conditions the mountains are churning up for us tonight.
The sun sulks behind the clouds. “And I packed enough blankets and coats for the both of us.”
“I could have kept you warm,” Everest says.
“I thought the medication made him loopy, not turn him into a philanderer,” I say, trying to carefully strap our supplies to Calliope. Cyrus watches me from the other side of the dragon, conducting his own inspection of the saddle straps we’ve put on her.
“I bet that he propositions you at least six times on your way over,” Ender says.
Geneva barks a laugh. “Oh, it’ll be in the double digits. I’d bet my favorite wig on it.”
My cheeks are burning, but there’s no use in trying to turn the faucet off.
“You have to pick an actual number,” Beam protests. “‘Double digits’ is cheating. I say twelve.”
“Fine.” Geneva rolls her eyes. “Fifteen.”
Ender scowls. “I want to change my bet now.”
“I say four,” Valentin says calmly.
I whirl towards her, betrayal etched across my face. She shrugs apologetically.
“Four? You’re clearly new here,” Geneva says. “The thought crosses Everest’s mind at least four times a–”
“Alright, it’s time we set off!” I say in a high-pitched voice.
They all laugh as I stomp towards Calliope, avoiding eye contact with any of them.
Everest gets up so sluggishly that I’m not sure Cyrus’s medicine has done much, but at least he hasn’t heard a word of what just took place.
He sways lightly on his feet, but Cyrus and Valentin are there to help him over to where I’m standing.
He makes a move to get on the farther end of the saddle, but I put a hand out.
“You’re sitting in front of me,” I tell him, pointing to his place. “You’re in no condition to ride a dragon.”
He wraps a remarkably steady hand around my finger and gently pushes it away. “I’ve actually ridden a dragon before, my love.”
My brain short-circuits at “my love”, and I’m still sputtering when he hops onto Calliope’s back with ease, as if he wasn’t just about to fall over while sunbathing on a rock. He gestures to the too-small space in front of him.
“This is reckless,” I tell him.
“Just get on,” Cyrus says. “This farewell has already taken far too long.”
“They’re going up to the mountains, not to another dimension,” Geneva mutters.
I give up, raising a stiff leg up and onto Calliope’s hind leg.
He’s right, I’ve barely been near Calliope, let alone climbed her.
I’m surprised at how warm and slippery her scales are, and Everest braces my elbow when my foot loses its grip, catching me before my face is sliced open on one of her spines.
“I thought I was loopy,” Everest comments, the muscle of his arm bulging as he pulls me up and over Calliope, settling my body in front of him. Okay, so maybe the medicine did work. His thighs are hot, pressing into my sides, and his chest is sturdy against my back. I can feel his heart beat.
“You’re a menace,” I tell him, trying not to shiver as his fingertips graze my hips.
He laughs in my ear. “You’re cute when you’re angry.”
“See, we’re already up to two,” Geneva says to Valentin, who’s trying desperately to hold in her laughter.
“You can all go to hell–”
But my admonishment is cut off when Calliope gets to her feet and launches into the sky.
Several minutes later, I think I’m still screaming.
“You know, if you let go of the death grip you have on her back and put your arms out to the side, we could perform Titanic on a dragon,” Everest says.
The comment is nearly enough to knock my terror away. “Who taught you about the Titanic?!”
“I’m a god,” he says, sounding affronted. “I know things.”
“I will not hesitate to push you off of her,” I threaten, dead serious, but his laugh melts into the roaring wind.
My face is icy cold, eyes drawn shut against the sheer pace of Calliope’s flight.
Everest’s arms close around my waist, and I process his words.
The Titanic isn’t the first unexpected comment he’s made recently – there were his questions about West Bengal, his conversation with that realtor about schools, his persistent curiosity.
When you’ve known someone as long as I’ve known Everest, changes can creep up on you slowly. I wonder what else I’ve missed.
“Aren’t you glad I sat behind you?” he asks, interrupting my thoughts.
“I’m not glad about anything right now.”
He squeezes my leg. “Hold on.”
“Wait, what–”
We drop, sudden and sharp, and I swear I’ve left my stomach up in the clouds. Maybe my voice, and definitely my thoughts. Those can stay up there.
“Air pocket,” Everest explains with unbridled amusement.
“I’m pretty sure she’s trying to kill me.” Then I yell into the biting cold. “You’d better take us to the right place, because I’m not going to check for directions!”
Her refuting snort is the draconian equivalent of a scoff. She’s ascending again, rapidly, and I bite down on my tongue to keep from exerting my raw throat.
“Open your eyes,” Everest murmurs in my ear.
Absolutely not.
I might have said that out loud, because he coaxes me again. “She’s about to bank, so no more unexpected rising and falling for now. Trust me.”
“I don’t like heights,” I yell angrily.
“Since when?”
“Since always!” It’s a miracle that I can get any words out when breaths are hard to come by.
“We’re always on the ground at the fair, and you’re usually not with us during trips when we have to jump off buildings or tightropes or any manner of tall structure that the carousel forces me to leap from. ”
Everest lets out a low whistle. “What if I promise that you won’t fall?”
“I’d say that you’re drugged and ill and I can’t hold you to any promises made under these conditions.”
His arms thread between mine, and his hands close around my wrists. “I’m bound to you,” he says. “If you fall, I fall. And if I fall, I promise Calliope will catch us.”
As he says it, Calliope settles onto the draft.
The pressure no longer threatens to squash me into a two-dimensional figure against Everest’s chest, and the feeling in my gut levels into something bearable.
Every part of me that’s cold as ice warms against his touch, and slowly, steadily, I open one eye.
The view is breathtaking. From up here, the blanket of snow that settles on the forest floor glistens blue and white, a million shimmering crystals catching a spare ray that peeks through the cloud cover.
The evergreen trees that would tower over me are, to my eye, nothing but a sheet of emerald, polished anew.
The rugged mountains are more defined, revealing cracks and crevices that cradle pockets of winter bark and shrubbery.
“This is…” I’m at a loss for words. Hollow emotion bottles my neck.
This is what I live for, these moments of marvel and delight.
They’re rapidly followed by gut-wrenching nostalgia.
I miss my parents, who could spend hours on our porch staring at the hummingbirds zipping around my mom’s bird feeders.
I miss Nova, who I’d force on countless hikes all over the Bay Area.
But being with Everest transforms the feeling.
It’s still a bittersweet ache, but it makes the loss feel less deep.
Like the pits of my sorrow have been filled with the softest snow.
“I know,” he says gently. “Look at the lake there.”
My heart soars at the sight of the glistening silver lake that lies beyond the boundaries of the fair.
I’ve never seen it until now, the surface so still it could be ice.
He continues showing me patches of his favorite spots, and I could do this forever, share his world with him, and give him parts of mine.
We’ve been doing it all along, and whether it’s behind a telescope or in the archives or up on a dragon’s back, this never dulls.
By the time we land, I’m so high on the adrenaline of flight that I forget to panic.
Calliope lands with a gentle thud, her wings fanning as she catches herself on the ledge of an alcove.
It’s small and fairly indistinct from afar, with a cluster of snow-covered brush sticking out of sparse patches of soil. Dread threatens to submerge me whole.
“I don’t think we’re in the right place,” I say.
I know clock vines from my trips to India, but there’s no sign of them, let alone any flowers from Mother Time’s famous garden, anywhere.
The alcove is cast in a chilling dark, which deepens when the sun dips behind the mountains.
Night is steadily creeping over us, and I’m painfully aware of how isolated we are up here, at the whims of the mountains’ savage beauty.
“Her garden doesn’t appear at all times,” Everest says, leaping off Calliope’s back. He surveys the thatch of wilderness we’re in but doesn’t seem nearly as concerned by the lack of shelter. “Just wait until the full moon is out.”