Elf Saga: Bloodlines (Part 1: Curse of the Jaguar) Page 4

  Smooth, Gen.

  “In my nightmare, I was buried in meat and I was drowning and I kept trying to eat my way out but I couldn’t and it was crushing me and I was swelling up from eating and eating and I couldn’t move and I thought I was going to burst,” she babbles out so fast I can barely understand her.

  There are tears running down her cheeks, but she’s trying to smile.

  “Well.” I clear my throat. “You’re okay now.”

  I punch her lightly on the shoulder.

  She slams against me in a full-body hug. “Thank you for saving me. You’re like some sort of dark, brooding angel with kitty-cat spots!”

  I pull free of her and keep moving. “Yeah, I’m going to pretend that sentence never happened.”

  I take a few more steps away from her and away from the light of her amber rod. When I look up, the torn and tortured features of my own over-muscled face lunge out of the darkness.

  “Agh!” I jerk back and shove my hatchet toward the face, just as Rajani steps closer and her amber light reveals nothing more than a bumpy rock wall beyond my blade.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” she asks.

  I put my hatchet away and wipe the sweat from my palm. “Nothing.”

  “We can head back if you want,” she offers hopefully.

  “No. We’re getting the ship.”

  “Can we head back if I want?”

  “Sure you can. Alone.”

  “Poo on that.”

  The path continues downward, and the air grows stale and cold. The ground is more broken here, and we often have to jump or climb down from one stone ledge to another. The ravine widens and the floor gets more uneven, but there are no roots down here, no beetles, nothing alive at all except for us, and that has to be a good thing.

  Our light falls on an old, splintered wooden plank. A few paces farther on, we find more old boards, some of them still hanging together on a few rusty nails.

  “Random trash?” I ask.

  We continue forward and find an entire wall panel of boards still nailed together, though the whole thing looks ready to collapse under its own weight.

  “Seriously, what is this?”

  Rajani shakes her head and we keep going. But then she stops short and points her light up at a pair of heavy beams joined by a massive wooden peg at perfect right angles. The beams are all broken, but the joint is still here.

  Rajani gasps. “This is the old windmill!”

  A third windmill sighting? Damn it.

  “This must be it,” she says softly. “It blew down in a storm years ago, back before I was born, and I guess it fell down here. They built the new windmill in the same spot, which seems like a really bad idea now that I think about it. But yeah, this is it.”

  I nod. I have no clever insights about an old windmill. I just really hope this isn’t going to be a running theme… “Or is it a metaphor?”

  “Metaphor?” she asks. “For what?”

  Crap, I didn’t mean to say that out loud. “Uhm. I just… A few weeks ago, I saw some windmills being built, and then the one you live in, which works, and now this one, all busted up. You know, circle of life. Birth, life, death. Nothing. Shut up. Let’s keep going.”

  Rajani pats me on the arm, and then leads on. “Well, hopefully there won’t be any more metaphorical surprises down here.”

  A growl echoes up from the darkness ahead.

  “That’s no metaphor.” I sigh and shake my head. “Screw me sideways.”

  “Excuse me?” Rajani giggles. “I mean, I’m flattered, and you’re really pretty, don’t get me wrong, we could get drunk and make out sometime, but I like boys.”

  “What?” I glance at her, and then peer into the darkness ahead. “You didn’t hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  A second growl ripples up through the air.

  “Oh, that.” She nods. “Dragon?”

  “Dragon.”

  “Okay.” She nods again. “Time to go back?”

  “Nope.” I grip my hatchet tighter, stretch my shoulders, and follow the path onward. If Mother can do it, I can do it. “You’re sure the ship is down here, right?”

  “Oh, it’s definitely down here,” she says. “I barely had time to jump clear as it crashed down into the ravine. I watched it fall in. We’re probably pretty close now.”

  “Good.”

  She stays close behind me. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s so important that you need a crystal ship? I feel like I should have asked that before we came down here.”

  “I need it to find my mother,” I tell her. “She ran off in a crystal ship, and now the only way to track her down is with another crystal ship.”

  “Oh, I see. Clever.” Rajani pauses. “Why did your mom run off?”

  “She has issues.”

  “Ah.” She pauses again. “And why are you trying to find her now?”

  “I have issues, too.”

  She nods. “I’m starting to pick up on that, yes.”

  We take another dozen steps or so and a pale golden light blossoms out of the shadows above us, a huge gleaming jewel hanging above our heads in the darkness. I squint up at the thing, and then I smile. “Found it.”

  The crystal ship is much smaller than the Pride of Garabad. More of a big crystal boat, if you ask me. But it’s got a hull and a deck, and lots of sharp little spokes and fins and sails sticking out of it, all wedged against the ravine walls, and it’s all made of one seamless piece of bright, glassy crystal. It’s reflecting the light of Rajani’s amber rod, and we take a moment to walk under it, inspecting it.

  It’s pretty in its own way, but not as elegant as one of my canoes, and much too angular for my taste. And the more I stare at it, the more it feels like something that wasn’t made by elves, something that doesn’t quite belong in the real world.

  “Well, the good news is that it can still fly, I think,” Rajani says. “Most of the fins are still there. So with enough light, it should be good to go.”

  “Light?”

  “It sails on light, not wind.”

  “Oh.”

  I shrug and grab a couple of handholds on the rock wall. “Well, let’s go check it out.”

  As soon as I lift my feet off the ground, we hear a third growl from the darkness out beyond the crystal ship.

  “That was louder than before,” Rajani whispers.

  “Yep.” I lower myself back down to the ground.

  “Time to run?” she whispers.

  “Nope.” I crack my knuckles. We’re too close to the finish line now. “You stay here while I deal with our growling friend.”

  “Can and will do.” She nods emphatically, her wide eyes fixed on the shadows. “Please don’t get killed.”

  “I won’t get killed,” I tell her. “Didn’t you know? I’m the hero, and the hero always lives. So don’t worry about me.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I’m going to worry anyway, especially since I’m not a hero. But you go be a hero. I believe in you, Gen. Good luck!”

  I stalk silently toward the shadows, muttering, “Hear that, Mother? I’m a big damn hero now, just like you. Aren’t you proud?”

  Beyond the light of Rajani’s amber rod, my jaguar eyes can still see the faint outlines of the rock walls. The ravine is wide enough for a half dozen bears to wander through shoulder to shoulder, so it’s large enough for a pretty big dragon. Too big for me, actually. But it can’t be that big because there’s nothing down here to feed a beast that big. Right?

  The shadows move, and growl, and move again.

  Damn. It is that big.

  I freeze for a moment, watching the shadows shift and slide, trying to gauge the head and neck, the wings and tail. I don’t know if it can see me, but it can definitely smell me. I can hear it sniffing and snorting. It growls a long, gravelly, rumbling growl. And then it comes.

  I feel the hot breath on my face an instant before the head strikes, and I roll across the ground. The dragon’
s skull crashes against the rock wall, and the monster shrieks and thrashes the walls with its tail. I grab my hatchet and leap into the air, and a moment later I crash down on the dragon’s neck and I smash the steel blade into the small soft scales on the side of the throat.

  Blood spills out over my hand, but not much. Not enough.

  I wrench the hatchet out, but I’m too slow. The dragon is already whipping its head to the side to throw me off, and my back slams into the rock wall so hard that my lungs deflate and my ears fill with a high-pitched whine. I fall to the ground, blind and stumbling, gasping for air. Something as big and hard as a boulder smashes me in the chest, crushing me back against the wall. The dragon’s head is covered in sharp ridges like saw blades, and as it yanks away, the scales shred my hands raw and tear my shirt open.

  I hit the ground, still struggling to breathe, still blinking stupidly in the darkness.

  Need to get up.

  Need to run.

  And then the pain comes, roaring out of nowhere to set my skull on fire from the inside. The pain lances through my head right behind my eyes and the shadows start to swim. My brain pounds on my skull, my ears fill with watery noise, and the entire universe begins to turn and shake and shiver around me.

  No, not now!

  I kick and claw at the dusty ground, leaning drunkenly as I get to my feet, but in the darkness there’s nothing to see, nothing to focus on, no way to tell my screaming brain which way is up and which is down, so I topple and fall, even as my legs try to outrun my dizziness. I fall on my side as bright flowers of color blossom across my field of vision and an unsteady whine fills my ears.

  This is a bad one. Worse than when I fell out of the saddle. Much worse.

  The shadows move again and I can’t even begin to stand up, let alone run or fight. Through the bright blurs in my eyes, I don’t see so much as feel the dragon’s open maw plunging down toward me. So I kick, and I kick some more, and I get lucky.

  I kick my legs up and somehow my boots catch on the dragon’s mouth, my right foot braced against its upper lip, my left boot on its jaw, and I scream every shred of jaguar strength I have left into my legs, pushing them apart with every burning thread of my soul as my brain peels itself apart like an onion on fire and the acrid taste of vomit fills my mouth.

  The sound that follows is horrific. Cracking, popping, tearing, splattering. For a second I think it’s me, my body tearing apart, but it’s not. Suddenly the resistance on my feet collapses. The dragon’s jaw snaps and breaks. The monster pulls back, wailing and gurgling and wheezing. As it thrashes and flails, I feel the ground under me shudder and groan, and I wait for the creature to stomp on me in its panic, but it doesn’t.

  The monster screams and the ground shakes, but all I care about is the pain in my head. I wish I could just make myself black out and get it over with, but I’m still awake, still moaning and shaking, still clawing at the sides of my head, still shivering…

  I see the fire swirl in the dragon’s throat, behind its broken jaw full of white daggers and a tongue forked like a tree shattered by lightning. The fire swirls, turning lazily in the darkness, and then it comes at me, flies at me, roars at me, and darkness becomes light, and the pain in my head becomes a new pain in my skin, just for a second, and then the pain is gone.

  The fire is gone.

  Everything is dark and still.

  I’m still. Numb and hard and empty.

  I can hear the dragon thundering and smashing its way back down into the darkness of the deeper ravine, and a moment later it’s gone and I’m alone.

  I shiver. And shiver. I can’t stop shivering.

  My vision begins to fade into a white haze as the whine in my ears grows louder, and I inhale slowly and scream with dry, papery lungs, “Rajani!”

  It takes a minute, but she comes running and she brings her light, so as she kneels beside me I get a brief glimpse of my scorched clothes and something that is red and black where brown skin used to be.

  “Oh no, oh no, oh no!” She’s crying and shaking.

  I claw at her with a hand that doesn’t look like my hand. “Healing now… please.”

  She covers her mouth. “I’ve never… never this bad… never like this… I don’t know…”

  I grab her wrist and squeeze it as tight as I can. “You. Can. Do. This.”

  “I can heal, I can, I can heal, but this it just… so much blood…”

  “Rajani! Now!” I’m fading. I can feel myself slipping away, sliding down into the darkness.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that this is my first time healing something this bad.”

  “Just get it right,” I bark at her as my vision goes.

  And she wails back, “No one gets it right the first time!”

  And I’m gone.

  And…

  And…?

  And I’m back. I open my eyes, not sure what sort of dream I was just having.

  I see my hands on my belly, and I move them, and touch them. They’re both fine. Skin brown and smooth, spotted like a jaguar. So maybe I just dreamed that I…

  I see the blood on the ground.

  No. It was real.

  I prop myself up on one elbow and frown at the shirt draped over my chest. It’s Rajani’s shirt. I see my own shirt balled up nearby, blackened and shredded. The borrowed shirt lying on my chest slips down as I sit up, and I see the scars, the twisted and bubbled white flesh on my left shoulder and arm and breast and belly. I touch it gingerly, but it feels firm and strong, and strangely smooth.

  My fingers travel up my neck, feeling the smooth scar tissue, up to my cheek…

  Wait. Something’s… I close my right eye and everything goes black.

  Oh shit.

  My left eye is blind. It’s still there, rolling around behind my eyelids, but it’s completely blind.

  Oh shit.

  I’m half blind.

  But I’m alive. Still alive. I shouldn’t be. Because I’m an idiot. But I am, and that’s something.

  Deep breath.

  “Rajani?” I look around and discover her lying on the ground a short distance away from the dried blood, curled up in a ball, watching me. “Rajani?”

  She nods. She looks like shit, like she’s been crying for three days straight. “Gen? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” I sit up all the way, letting her shirt fall off me completely and running my hands over the burn scars. “You did good. Really good. Thank you. I guess I owe you one, huh?”

  She smiles an awkward, sickly smile. “Barely.”

  “Nothing barely about it. I should be dead. Thanks to you, I’m not.” I hold up her flowery shirt and then pull it on. The cool silk feels like water on my aching back. Looking up, I see that the jagged shape of the sky above the ravine is now a dark purplish color. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  We hike back up to the crystal ship and I get my first practice walking with one eye, which isn’t too hard, except the ravine walls seem to move strangely as I turn my head. And after a brief argument, I carry Rajani on my back as I climb the rock wall to get us on board. There’s just no other way to get us both up there, and I’m strong enough to do it, end of discussion. But then she makes me lie down on a glassy crystal bench while she messes around with the ship’s controls, and I’m happy to let her.

  “Can I ask you something?” she asks as she slides the crystal levers up and down the center console, making the ship hum beneath my back.

  “What?”

  “What’s so important about finding your mom that you would do all this? Go through all this?”

  “I… I need to find her, to find a way to get rid of this jaguar curse.” I exhale slowly. “It killed my brother Andrei. And my brother Necalli is probably dead now too.”

  “Oh no. I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “How? Why?”

  “We all inherited this jaguar thing from Mother.” I hold up my hand to look at my spots. “And it made us stronger and faster, but it
made us sicker too. Andrei had a bad heart, and he died right after he got married. His wife is pregnant. We think it’s going to be a girl.”

  “Oh, I love babies. That poor little thing.”

  “Necalli had trouble breathing. Coughing and wheezing, all day, all night.” I stare up at the darkening sky, which looks exactly the same through one eye as it did through two. “After Andrei got married, Necalli sailed away to join the Alcani, and I haven’t heard from him since. I hope he’s still alive, but I don’t have much hope anymore.”

  “What about you, Gen? Are you sick?”

  “Yeah. I get these headaches. Blackouts. Bad ones.”

  She nods.

  “So I need to find Mother, or Raven. Raven did the cursing. Either way, I need to know what’s happening to me, and what’s going to happen to Andrei’s little girl.” I swallow hard. “I don’t want to die like he did, eaten away from the inside for no good reason. Never even getting to see his baby girl. So if I can help her, if I can save her...”

  The tears are coming, so I stop. I look at her, and she’s crying like a river.

  Rajani nods. “Then we’ll find your mom. You and me. Together. I promise.”

  I close my eyes as the crystal ship begins to hum and shiver slightly beneath me. A moment later I feel the ship scrape free of the ravine walls and we begin to rise slowly into the air. “Thank you, Raj. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to sleep for a week.”

  “Sure, honey.” A pause. “Gen? I think I remember where I’ve heard the name Yas Yagaroth before.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. From a book Big Mom used to read to me when I was little,” she says. “Old stories. Scary stories. Ghosts and monsters. Yas Yagaroth… it’s a dark and dangerous place. A city all alone in the middle of the sea. A city of the dead.”

  I exhale, too exhausted to process this anymore. “Of course it is.”

  Episode 2

  I’m sitting in a flying crystal ship, staring at the backdoor of a windmill, waiting. I’ve been waiting for half an hour. I hate waiting. “Raj, let’s go already! My ass is falling asleep. Seriously, these seats are incredibly uncomfortable. Don’t you people believe in cushions?”