Dragonsapien (11 page)

Her own touch
too, of course, made her realise and appreciate things about his
body she hadn’t noticed before. The way it was soft here, harder
there, where a muscle or even the edges of bone lay not far beneath
the surface. There was also heat when she ran her fingers over
here, coolness when they drifted this way, more changes when her
touch became firmer, more probing.

And, of course,
it was all so much more than mere touch and being touched. There
was the amazing sight of seeing your loved one trembling beneath
your hands, even beneath the longing gaze itself. There was the
taste, the scents, the slight hints of milk, apple, depending on
where your let your mouth, your tongue, roam. Then there was the
sighs of pleasure, the quivering pleas for more.

How could
knowing so much more of Jake make her so much more aware of
herself?

Why was it that
she felt, at last, as if she truly belonged in the world, as
opposed to always feeling separated, distanced, different, from
it?

How was it
possible to sense the delight he felt in her, to delight in
herself, in her own beauty, in this way?

Why was it so
incredibly pleasing to her, because she knew it was so pleasing to
him?

Everything she
had read had described all this as a discovery, as an exploration –
but no, it was far far more than that. It was a knowing, an
acceptance that rather than being separate, you were now one and
the same, merging one into the other, no longer sure where one
began and the other ended, his touch somehow indistinguishable from
the way she sensed that touch, somehow becoming
her
touch,
making her alive to her own form, her own being. And as she sensed
his form, his beauty, she felt she was a part of it, that it was
also a part of her, at last, finally, completing her own
being.

Suddenly, Jake
pulled back.

He stared up
into the sky.

‘They’re back,’
he said, screwing up his eyes tightly as he tried to focus on a
grouping of bright flashes of silver.

‘No, it’s not
them,’ Celly said, following his gaze. ‘They’re helicopters; and
they’re heading here.’

*

They ran along
the beach towards the straggle of huts.

‘Mrs Frobisher,
Mrs Frobisher!’

The thunderous,
pounding rumble of the oncoming helicopters drowned out their
cries.

Of course, Mrs
Frobisher had already seen and heard the helicopters. She was
calmly walking across the sand, as if she were stepping out to
greet the arrival of Erdwin and Perisa.

The helicopters
came in fast, the smaller ones, mosquito-like in their angry shape,
refusing to land but, rather, swooping around the water’s edge in
great circles.

The largest
slowed, angled, drifted down in a flurry of wind, sand and
spray.

Even before it
touched down, the side doors were thrown open. A soldier leapt out
onto the sand, dropping immediately into a crouch.

As soon as she
saw him prepare to aim and fire his handheld missile launcher, Mrs
Frobisher began to transform.

The ruby skin
flashed in the sunlight.

The missile
flashed on its way.

Mrs Frobisher
flashed in a burst of scarlet flame.

The ruby wings
crumpled, the flames lighting up the skin in an angry,
magically-glistening blaze.

*

1
year later

It was last
year’s computer game.

And it wasn’t
even the best game from that year either. That had been the game he
had been playing with Celly the day they had fled to the
island.

He couldn’t play
that game anymore.

He couldn’t even
look at the cover.

He had most of
the very latest games. The best games. The most highly
rated.

Yet, just like
last year’s best game, he couldn’t play them.

Not because he
wasn’t good at them

But because,
like
that
game, they reminded him too much of things he
didn’t want to be reminded of.

In fact, the
latest games were even worse. They both reminded him, yet also
sickened him.

Sickened him
because of the perverted view of dragons they portrayed.

Dragons that
lived hidden amongst us, unrecognised for what they really
are.

Even the most
innocent looking neighbour could be a veiled killer. Someone who,
when you were least expecting it, could sever you in two with the
simple slash of an abruptly extended talon.

You could be in
the mall. At the bus stop. Even just taking a walk in the
park.

Death was
waiting for you no matter where you were. Death in the form of what
appeared to be a fellow human. Even a child.

And if the
dragonsapien – the name they’d been given, just as evolved,
intelligent man was homo-sapien – fully transformed into the winged
beast lying beneath that deceptively benign exterior, then you and
everyone around you were
really
in trouble.

The dragonsapien
moved swiftly. Acted instinctively. Cruelly.

A beat of its
wings could shatter every bone in your body. A wrench of its arm
could dismember or decapitate you. Even a rock-hard finger, aimed
directly at your forehead or around your heart, could kill
you.

Like the films,
the books, and the TV series that had been spawned from the
discovery of the dragonsapiens, the game played loosely with the
truth.

Who would guess
from the ghoulish descriptions of the murderous actions of the
dragonsapiens that they had, for the most part, gone off peacefully
to live in Hong Kong, an enclave especially set aside for them to
create their own, separate community?

The only cases
Jake had heard of where their removal from society hadn’t been
peaceful was when the watching crowds, unable to control their fear
and disgust, had attacked the families being herded into the
waiting buses or trains. For a brief moment there would be mayhem
until the well-armed troops quickly and ruthlessly moved
in.

Many of the
worst scenes of lynch-mob violence had involved wealthy people
falsely accused of being dragons by those hoping to loot a vacated
house, steal a car, or take over a business.

And the dragons’
reward for allowing themselves to be peaceably stripped of their
belongings and removed from their homes?

To be portrayed
in all the media as fearsome, irredeemably violent
creatures.

Should Jake put
things straight?

Should he use
his experience of actually living amongst a family of dragons to
show what they were really like?

Should he write
a book, as his avaricious parents had continually urged him to
do?

He had tried,
unsuccessfully, a number of times to transfer the confused memories
whirling around inside his head to a word processor.

Publishers had
offered him the aid of ghost writers to tell his tale. Yet as soon
as he began to even talk about his experiences, it all felt too
personal for him, like he was revealing more than he wanted to
about himself, about Celly. Besides, even when he managed to avoid
revealing the more personal elements, he found that the ghost
writers were already twisting what he had to say, bending the
reality until it conformed to ‘more interesting structures’, or
literary theories of ‘character arcs’ and ‘narrative
peaks’.

Did Napoleon
undergo a ‘character arc’? Did he, towards the end of his life,
mumble something along the lines of, ‘Well whaddya know, I was
wrong all along’? Did he–

A massive,
deafening on-screen explosion shook Jake out of his meandering
thoughts.

Damn! I’ve just been wiped out!

He jumped as
another, louder explosion made the whole room shake. Another
immediately followed, Jake ducking instinctively behind his chair
as the apartment’s outside wall disintegrated in a burst of stone,
brick, timber and furnishings.

What
the?

He whirled
around, peering through the rolling clouds of dust, the rain of
smaller, lighter particles that still had to fall to the
floor.

Where a large
window had been, there was now an immense, roughly hewn
hole.

And standing in
its very centre, studiously observing the room, was the gloriously
glowing figure of an amber-skinned dragon.

*

The dragon’s
eyes locked on Jake’s.

He grinned
triumphantly.

With a deftly
controlled flick of his wings, he swooped across the room towards
the cowering Jake – then abruptly jerked backwards in an explosion
of orange flame.

Jake spin around
again, this time looking back towards the door. At some point it
had been blasted off its hinges, and a heavily armoured soldier was
now crouching in its frame, the smoking residue of a launched
missile still rising from his levelled gun.

It was as if he
were back on the island once more, bathed in the glow of the fire
that only a moment before had been Mrs Frobisher, shielding Celly
from the oncoming soldiers, wrapping himself tightly around her as
he begged her not to change, to remain human, pleading to the
soldiers not to attack her, that she was injured, that she wasn’t a
danger to them.

Rising from his
crouch, the soldier loped across the room, followed by another,
equally well armed and armoured soldier. As they took up positions
by the hole in the outside wall, as if guarding it from any further
attack, a third solider entered behind them.

‘It’s me kid,’
the third solider growled confidently. ‘Here to rescue you
again!’

*

Jake had held
onto Celly as tightly as he could, hoping, bizarrely, that his
enwrapping arms would somehow prevent her wings from unfurling,
prevent her from transforming.

‘They’ll kill
you Celly, they’ll kill you!’ he whispered urgently. ‘There’s too
many of them!’

He felt her
struggle in his arms. But she wasn’t fighting him, he realised; she
was at war with herself, one part instinctively seeking vengeance
for the murder of Mrs Frobisher, another listening to Jake’s
heartfelt pleading, trying to quickly work out if taking his advice
was the more sensible course.

He sensed the
easing of her body, the resignation. She remained in her human
form. Whether that was because she was worried that he might be
harmed if she changed, or because she recognised that Jake was
right and knew she stood no chance, he wasn’t sure.

The main thing
was, it gave Jake time to plead for her life.

‘We won’t hurt
you!’ he screamed nervously at the soldiers edgily, warily
surrounding them, their guns constantly aimed at Celly’s head. ‘We
surrender!’

‘We know
you
won’t hurt us, kid,’ a soldier assuredly striding
towards them declared with a hash growl. ‘We’re here to rescue you.
As for the girl; she’d better come quietly – or else.’

*

Lieutenant
Rodgers; the soldier had introduced himself as soon as they had
boarded the helicopter that would take Jake off the
island.

Celly wasn’t
with them. She had been escorted to another helicopter, the guns of
the surrounding soldiers still unerringly aimed at her
head.

He had never
seen her again.

Never heard from
her.

The Volances,
Lieutenant Rodgers had informed him, had been captured. A boy
amongst their party had told them where Jake was being
held.

‘You’ve got to
come with us!’ Lieutenant Rodgers said now, helping Jake up off the
rubble strewn floor. ‘The dragons are out to get you!’

As if to confirm
the Lieutenant’s claim, a scream alerted them to a rapidly moving
sparkle of gemstones at the hole in the wall as one of the soldiers
was snatched at and carried away by a swooping dragon. The other
soldier turned, fired.

Jake couldn’t
see the resulting explosion, which took place out of his view, but
the screams stopped. With a rhythmic booming and the clatter of
nearby windows, a military helicopter hurtled past, the bright
flash of pursuing dragons closely following it. Sweeping in beneath
the chattering rotors, they latched onto its sides, wrenching the
gunner and his large machine gun out through the open doors,
tearing holes in the metal.

Jake ran for the
door, Lieutenant Rodgers just on his heels, the soldier backing
away from the holed wall covering their retreat. Jake heard the
soldier fire, the boom of an explosion outside the apartment. Then
they were outside in the hall, Lieutenant Rodgers directing him
towards the stairwell.