A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga) (50 page)

Will sniffed and nodded, glancing up at the dragons and beyond them to the veil of storm and wind, which shrouded the mountain-top and hid their final destination from them. “Be careful. Tread softly.”

“Hold onto me, and don’t let go.”

“Never.”

Kate adjusted the pack and reached a hand back to touch the haft of the sword. Good. It was there if she needed it, and then, before she could reconsider, she strode out from under their overhang into the open quadrangle made by four giant boulders. The black dragon with its bright yellow eyes turned its head and focused on them immediately. Kate’s heart roared in her chest like a jet engine, screaming at her to take off running. But she didn’t. She kept her pace even, trusting that the dragon had worse vision than she believed; believing that the boots of wind kept her smell from reaching the dragons, despite how rank she knew she must be from her travails and no shower now, for days.

The dragon continued to watch her and Kate returned its stare, studying its eyes. The reptilian pupil kept shrinking and swelling like it was trying to focus, but couldn’t. It cocked its head like a bird sighting prey, reminding Kate of the robins back home.

Soon they had passed the black dragon without incident. She then led Will past the red dragon, which never stirred despite its obvious suspicion. Her feet picked a careful path around the talus littering the slope.

There was only one dragon left. They crept over twisted charred wood, gnarled and knobby like stunted and weathered tree limbs, across large stones and other tripping hazards, and soon they had reached the dark gray dragon, which was also watching them as though confused and unable to focus on them. Kate glanced over her shoulder once, and saw that the majority of the legion of dragons had landed below their hiding place on the unforgiving slope of the mountain. Her foot caught on a twisted root that jutted out from beneath the enormous boulder they were passing and she almost fell on her face, taking Will with her, but she yanked it free and planted it on the ground, catching herself in time.

Will gasped, but managed to bite back the majority of the sound. They continued on without speaking.

Kate wanted to scream with excitement. They’d gotten past the dark gray dragon! It was only fifteen more yards up the steep slope to the curtain of wind.

Her thighs burned.
Stop, stop!
cried her feet. Take a rest, take a breather.
Take a nap,
her body needled her. Her hip-flexors were on fire. They never remembered a time when she’d worked them so hard. She wanted to rest, and she would have, if it hadn’t been for the cursed limitation Cipher put on her and the dragons—she’d fought one, she had no desire to fight another. But she would have crumpled into a heap and taken a long snooze if they’d had time. Lord knew she needed it.

A strangled, shocked reptilian bellow came from just behind them. She jumped uncontrollably, and Will’s hand slipped from her fingers. He fell and began tumbling backwards. Kate spun around and leapt after him as the dark gray dragon dropped from its perch, hurtling toward Will like a missile. Kate stretched her body out like a cat spinning through the air, willing herself to be long and lithe, not caring how badly her move could turn out, acting without thinking. Will tumbled backwards through the air, aloft a surprising amount of time, so angled was the slope of the mountain. Arm-length talons reached for Will as the dragon’s impressive wings jerked him forward. The other dragons watched in rapt attention, ready to dive after the human-creature if needed. Kate contracted and extended her knees like she was pumping herself on a swing and reached for Will’s foot.

Somehow she caught it. Her fingers slipped around and gripped the top of his foot and pulled him back toward her. Of course, that only caused them both to slow and hit the ground hard as they skidded and came to a stop. The dark gray dragon shrieked, pissed off, and swooped around to charge at the spot they were last seen. Kate recovered, rolling to her side, suppressing a groan. She was pretty sure her elbow would have a huge bruise on it, and her ribs felt battered. But she crawled to her knees, untangling herself from Will, yet keeping one hand on him always—his thigh, his shoulder, his hand—and stood. Without a word, she jerked him to his feet and they took off at a run back up the mountain, with the enraged cries of the dragons nipping at their heels, propelling them in ways nothing else could.

Kate pumped her free arm, lifting her knees nearly to her nose as she jumped up the side of the mountain—
crunch, whoosh, crunch
—her wind-boots churned across the ground. Behind her she sensed rather than felt the rush of wind from the approaching dragons. They shrieked and roared, delivering every prehistoric, primeval sound Kate could conjure. Her skin pebbled into gooseflesh. Her heart stuttered and threatened to give out.

And just like that, they crashed through the curtain of wind and all was silent.

***

The silence wasn’t silence. It was a roar of sound that drowned out all other noise. Her ears were full with the song of storm and wind. It howled and beat against her body like millions of tiny fists. She stopped and looked back the way they’d come, pulling Will to her side. Together they stared at the threshold where the wind began but they could see nothing. Only the thick, blinding gray of the wind storm.

“We’re safe!” Will shouted. “From the dragons at least!” His voice came to her as though through water. She remembered swimming with him in dreams and how the water was like air to them. But here, the air was stifling and suffocating like water.

“Let’s go! Keep hold of me. I think the boots stop us from being blown away,” Kate said, turning and tugging at his hand.

She couldn’t tell what she stepped on—it too was colored by the wind. It seemed to merely be crisscrossing patterns of wind. Her boots reacted against it and held her aloft as though on the loamy ground of a forest. Visibility was less than twenty feet, but they could make out large, looming objects that might have been rocks and cliffs. These too seemed to be made entirely of wind. As they hiked up the slope of wind, Kate reached down and touched her stomach and wondered if it was also just wind.
Am I real? Or am I just a stream of air?

Speaking to Will was difficult—she checked her Timex and saw that they had less than thirty minutes to get off Chthonos. Could Cipher stop them here, on the mountain of wind? The dragons hadn’t come beyond the boundary where the winds began. How else could Kate and Will be stopped? Twenty minutes, and that was with factoring in the padding she’d intentionally dialed in when setting the timer. She wanted to talk to Will, to point out the fantastical nature of the mountain and how everything seemed to be made of the swirling gusts pounding at them. Breathing was even difficult. Everything smelled of ozone, which she noticed through her quick pants that let in too much because of how the air pummeled her. She glanced sideways at Will to shout to him about the odd odor. She gasped—or tried to. He looked horrendous. Worse than the hideous form Cipher’s sour mood gave him. His body was curving in on itself, his shoulders were hunched and his brow seemed to be melting into his eyes.

“Will!” she shouted, “Are you OK?”

He lifted his chin high to gaze at her from beneath that drooping brow. “I’m sorry, Kate. I don’t know what’s happening.” He struggled to climb, but the battle didn’t seem to be with the mountain. Rather, he fought his fading body.

Kate panicked. “Let me carry you!”

“Not a chance!” he shouted, continuing to fight his way up the mountain. “If I can’t make it, I won’t make it! That will be that!”

“All this way and you’d give up? Your pride is that insurmountable?”

They both shouted. Speaking was a battle. Everything on Chthonos was just one big war all the time.

“Yes, you could say that,” he fell to his knees. His entire form had shrunk. It was like looking at Yoda. “Go on without me, Kate. I’m a monster!” His fingers felt like they were crumbling between her fingers. She crouched beside him and curved herself around him, sheltering him from the wind. Dust and debris scored her cheeks as the wind whipped around her. “Leave me!” He shouted again.

His words penetrated the noise and exploded into Kate’s heart like a harpoon. She wanted to scream at him for giving up. Instead she used her indignation at his words to unlock a hidden reservoir of strength within herself. She bent down and slipped her arms beneath his shoulders and legs and lifted him. He protested and shook his head, but he was too weak to fight much beyond that. Kate’s cheeks were wet with tears, but for less than a second before the wind dried them.

She plodded up the hill of wind, ignoring Will’s weak protestations. She could barely hear him through the noise. With each step toward the top, his murky flesh faded and dissolved in a grotesque display like a wax creature left out in the desert sun. Kate squinted against the wind and her tears and lumbered on, surprised at how light Will was.

At last she crested the mountain. Will hadn’t said anything for at least five minutes. She walked along what felt like a flat surface, passing through the roughest part of the storm. Lightning flashed around her and thunderclaps shook her bones. She bent against the fury, holding onto Will tightly. Her feet remained anchored firmly even against the fiercest gusts as they blasted against her. She began to think of the mountain as a vortex—a pinnacle composed entirely of wind.

“It’s no use!” Will yelled against the rage, startling her. “Let me go, Kate! The storm can have me! Cipher can have me!”

“No!” she roared. “I’ll never let you go! We’re almost there!”

Finally, when it seemed she could take no more, when it seemed the roar of wind assaulting her ears would surely deafen her for good, she took a step and all was quiet. Truly quiet this time.

32: Ascension

She stood there, stunned at the silence. It hit her like the wall of sound the wind had been at first, only the quiet stole her breath and nearly knocked her over. She fell to her knees.

“Is this it? Did we make it?” she asked, her voice sounded still and small like a cricket. Will was quiet.

She bent her gaze to study his face. He had become smaller than ever, his body like clay and torn away almost entirely by the wind. She gently set him down and glanced about herself quickly to get her bearings. They were standing upon the dome of the storm, the floor like glass, while around them walls of madness and wind shot up toward the heavens.

“The eye of the storm,” she whispered, feeling reverent for some reason, like she had entered a cathedral. 

Will didn’t respond. His eyes were closed beneath that drooping, decaying forehead. She touched what should have been his remaining arm, but it had melted into the pile that was his body.

“Will,” Kate coughed out, feeling a sob rising.
After everything, after everything, after all of that. He is gone.
The thoughts repeated themselves hysterically. “No, no, no.” She plunged her hands into the ooze that remained of him, searching for something in there, something that was Will. Perhaps he’d gotten so small that he was just a pebble of a man. It was hysterical, she knew, but she couldn’t stop.

“Will!” she screamed, a whisper no longer appropriate. “Don’t leave me like this! Will!”

She swept her arms wide through the muck, desperate, no longer believing that she’d find him in there. This continued for a minute, until she collapsed, her face in her hands, her body bent double over her knees, her forehead touching the glass-like floor.

Kate finally let herself cry, alone, abandoned and on a faraway planet with no hope of return to her home. What she’d come for was gone. And the way back home wasn’t presenting itself. Besides, she’d lost him. Lost the man who she’d only known in dreams.

“Kate.” His voice broke through her emotional turmoil and she quieted.

She lifted her eyes, swollen from crying and sore from days without sleep. Will stood ten feet away, glowing like the sun. His blue eyes burned with a light that singed Kate’s gaze. He smiled.

“Will?” she asked, uncertain, climbing to her feet. She scrubbed the tears from her cheeks and swallowed, moving toward him slowly, stepping over the mess of ooze that once contained him.

“It worked,” he said, and held out his hands—two hands. He had his arm back!

“You look amazing,” she breathed, relief cascading over her like the glow from Will’s eyes. She reached for him, but he pulled away.

“I don’t have a body anymore, Kate. You can’t touch me.”

“Yet. You don’t have a body
yet
. But why on earth can’t I touch you?”

“I—I just don’t think it’d be wise.”

“Well, so, when do you get your new body? The one you’ll wear on Earth?” She felt her bottom lip quiver when she said it, as though she had a feeling that he wouldn’t be joining her. 

He didn’t answer right away. Instead he arched his back and looked up. Kate followed his gaze, gasping in quiet awe. The eye of the storm reached into the heavens, never darkening, becoming brighter until it was brighter than the sun. She blinked and lowered her eyes, seeing black spots where the brilliance had burned her retinas.

“Kate, I’m sorry, but I think I’m supposed to go up there.”

“Why are you sorry? You’ll go up there, get your body, and come back, and we’ll return to Earth. No biggie. Go on, go get it and let’s go. I have so much to show you. It’s going to be awesome. I’ll take you rock climbing. I’ll take you around the neighborhood and you can stay at my place till you get your new life set up. Heck, why not just stay with me indefinitely? There’s no rush. You don’t have to move out yet,” she rattled on until his gentle laugh stopped her.