David started after the woman, who by now had abandoned her colleague and was staggering toward the veterinary center, shielding her smoke-stained face from the heat. She was caught by a slender African man, who pushed her back and told her there was nothing, nothing to be done. As she argued with him, the central portion of the roof collapsed and glass exploded inside the center. The man clutched the woman to his chest and together they fell to the hard-baked earth. Orange flames tipped with angry black crests sailed six feet out of a shattered window. The woman began to scream and sob.
“Work, darn you!”
To David’s right, the white man by the water pumps slapped his hand against the failed machinery, then stood back and kicked one, making it clank. He swept around, eyes as wild as the fire. “Who are you?” he barked, catching sight of David.
“A friend of Sophie Prentice. What happened here? What caused this?”
“What does it matter?” said the man, in a deeply shaken South African accent. Sweat was pouring off his broad, bare shoulders. Smoke streaks were dabbed like war paint on his cheeks. He looked around in an agony of despair. “It’s all gone, man. It’s all gone.”
“Pieter! The tower!” somebody shouted.
The man looked urgently toward the pens. An observation tower, wrapped in high-kicking tendrils of fire, had cracked a wooden stanchion and was keeling toward an enclosure of terrified impala.
Uttering a string of profanities, Pieter dragged a scorched arm across his forehead and sprinted to the enclosure nearest the tower to grapple with the locked mesh gates. Using a swatch of his vest to protect his hands against the heat from the bolt, he rattled the gates open and ran inside, clapping the animals out. Three impala quickly escaped, swerving erratically through the smoke. A fourth animal, a half-blind female zebra named Jinnie, had pressed herself into a corner.
“Jinnie, come on, girl,” Pieter shouted. He raced in and slapped its hindquarters hard. The zebra whinnied and flashed its tail, but planted its juvenile hooves to the ground. All around it in adjoining pens, wild cats and wetland birds voiced their torment. Other volunteers were racing to their aid. Splinters of fizzing timber were all the while falling, sparking where they landed in the grassy enclosures.
“Pieter!” someone shouted. “Get out of there, man!”
A colleague in the adjacent pen pointed to the platform of fire above them. Pieter looked up at the raging timbers, gradually losing their rigidity and structure. He made an assessment and gritted his teeth. “Not without you,” he said to Jinnie and threw a muscular arm around her neck, hoping he could physically pull her clear. She put out a foot. “That’s it,” he shouted. “Come on, girl, you can do this!”
The young zebra bayed in fear.
At that moment, a devastating snap of wood forced Pieter to look up over his shoulder. One of the crossed-beam sections that formed the four walls of the observation platform had broken free and was plummeting toward him. Too committed to dive away from Jinnie, he draped himself over her, protecting her head. The wood hurtled down like a giant branding iron, trailing tails of crackling embers. Pieter filled his lungs with what he knew might be his dying breath. But seconds before impact, something came to save both man and beast — an updraft of air so huge that Pieter felt as if his clothes were being ripped off his skin. The heat was blistering. The sound deafening. Gravity delivered the beams to their target, but the weight of their impact was strangely negligible. The cellulose and lignin that had given the wood its strength appeared to have been sucked right out of its fibers. The timbers broke across Jinnie’s back in a cloud of hot, papery ash. The fire consuming them had been put out.
This time Jinnie bolted, throwing her shaken helper to the ground. Pieter rolled back against the blown mesh fence and looked once more at the observation tower. It was standing like a spent and blackened match, still bent but mostly intact, odd fragments being chipped off in the breeze. Suddenly, there was a scream across the far side of the site. Spitting the taste of charcoal off his tongue, Pieter looked toward the source of the yell and saw something he had only thought possible in dreams or nightmares or comic books or movies. There was a dragon in the middle of the compound. It had just ingested the last of the fires.
Terror, incredulity, or blind astonishment — something hauled Pieter Montgomery to his feet. His hands went through the motions of dusting down his clothing, but his eyes never left the shape of the beast. It was incredible, well over twelve feet tall. Bronzed. Powerful. Irresistibly primeval. He glanced at one of the animals it had saved and the team had been unable to free: Kanga, the arthritic lion. The so-called king of the beasts was standing transfixed at the front of its pen, its muscles so locked that it appeared to have entered the shock of rigor mortis. But Pieter could see the improbable wonder in Kanga’s eyes. And when the dragon spread its wings and took to the sky, scattering shattered debris in its wake, Kanga’s eyes followed it in slow, slow motion and continued to stare at the yellow horizon long after the creature was out of sight.
Through the cloud of the dragon’s departure, David Rain appeared.
“Who are you?” Pieter hissed.
Before they could make any further exchanges, their attention was drawn by a torrent of deep, heart-wrenching sobs. Over by the hospital entrance, one of the women was weeping inconsolably into the arms of two of her colleagues. The African man was trying to shepherd a small gathering away from a body, laid out under a sheet by the steps.
“Oh, no,” said Pieter, checking the faces, looking at the sheet. “No, no, no!” He ran past David, past the man, and dropped to his knees beside the body. He pulled the sheet back, exposing the face of a serene young woman. Despite the superficial burns to her skin and the wreckage clinging to her close-cropped hair, her grace and beauty were easy to see.
“No,” moaned Pieter. His shaking fingers settled on her lips. “No. Oh, no.” He sank into a deeper, anguished heap as David came to kneel beside him.
The dead woman was Sophie Prentice, David Rain’s first girlfriend.
19 DAVID’S WARNING
I couldn’t stop her.”
Just behind David, another young woman with dark brown hair in a stunted ponytail brought her hands together in prayer. Tears were rolling down her chubby, red face. Her fingers crumpled inward as she spoke. “She insisted on going back into her hut. I told her it was stupid but she wouldn’t listen.” The woman sobbed and pressed her hands to her head. “Please, someone tell me. What was that monster?” She looked around in vacant distress. “Am I going crazy? We all saw it, didn’t we?”
David stood up intending to explain. But as he reached out to take the woman’s arm, she let out a squeal of fright and stepped back, pointing at the body on the earth. A small green dragon with fragile ears had appeared as if from nowhere on Sophie’s chest. Pieter gasped and drew back his hand to strike it.
“No,” said David, clamping his wrist. The two men exchanged sharp looks. “That’s what she went back for, Pieter. She wouldn’t thank you for harming it. Look carefully. You know this dragon, don’t you?”
“Grace,” he muttered. “She called it Grace.” His gaze fell again on Sophie. “But how did it get here?”
By now, the beautiful listening dragon was on Sophie’s shoulder, close to her chin. She had abandoned all the rules and was moving freely. Only David could really see her stroking Sophie’s cheek and whimpering in dragontongue into Sophie’s ear, but the shocked woman said, “It looks upset. And its eyes have changed color. Is it … alive?”
David knelt down again. “Grace,” he said, in soft dragontongue, running a finger down her spine. The dragon would not take its gaze off Sophie. By now the first hint of moisture was present in the scalene duct in the corner of its eyes.
“I want everyone to leave here,” David said. “There may be great danger present.”
“There is.” The clack of a rifle bolt brought a slice of cold reality to David’s words. The African man had a gun at his waist.
He was tilting the barrel upward a little.
“Mutu, what are you doing?” Pieter followed the man’s hardened gaze. On the stripped, scorched walls of the hospital building sat a dark and ugly shape. For a moment, it appeared to be nothing more than a hideous artifact of the blaze. But with a nauseating crack of bones, it unlatched its wings and turned its grisly head toward the humans.
One of the women screamed. The rest of the crowd backed away in fear.
Not Mutu. “I saw this beast begin the fire,” he said, his words thickened by thirty years of dust. “It is a spirit of darkness.”
“Don’t try to shoot it,” David warned.
But Mutu, with slow and calculated malice, raised the gun to his shoulder and fired.
There was a thud as the bullet struck home. The creature’s chest muscles buckled inward and it was slammed back against a blackened timber. The lids that protected its blueberry eyes closed for a second, then half-opened. Its beak parted and it shook its neck as though about to choke on a knot of mucus. From its throat came a hostile gurgling sound and a substance, as thick and black as molasses, pooled around its swollen, retracted tongue.
Mutu lowered his gun.
But the bird was far from dead. Lifting a foot, it steered a demonic claw into the hole the bullet had made. Someone was sick behind David as the tip of the claw was heard scraping the base of the shell. Then, in one movement, the muscles around the wound contracted and the bullet appeared to be sucked farther in. The bird withdrew the claw, leaving a trail of grotesque fluid stringing between its tip and the hole. Its eyelids opened fully.
“What in Our Lord’s name is that?” said Mutu. He cocked the rifle again.
“Stop,” hissed David. “You can’t kill it with lead. You’ll only make it stronger. Get back, all of you.”
“I’m not leaving Sophie to that thing,” said Pieter.
But as he tried to push forward, David rapped an arm across the middle of his chest. “It’s not Sophie it wants,” he growled. He glanced at Grace. She was going through the motions of final closure, about to shed her fire tear. And just like the birds on North Walk, the black creature was beginning to mimic her shape, cruelly elongating its ears.
“If that fiend began the fire, it killed my fiancée,” Pieter insisted. “And it can take me as well, but not before it’s tasted this.” From his belt, he produced a hunting knife. Forcing David aside, he stepped forward, shouting at the thing to come on.
The half-darkling flared its teeth. In one peculiar grinding movement, it raised itself up and rippled its chest in a vertical flow of muscle. Its wings went out to their maximum extent and it brought them down with a single rapid beat, creating a thrust of air in its windpipe.
With a cry of pain, Pieter was knocked forcefully onto his back. His hand went to a wound in his chest. A red stain was spreading through the cotton of his vest.
“It’s shot him,” someone gasped.
With the same bullet Mutu had used, spat out of the mouth at speed.
Once more, the dark wings lifted. With a cry that lay somewhere between triumph and death, the creature turned its gaze on the only other quarry between itself and Grace.
David calmly put a hand into his pocket and drew out the piece of obsidian. He held it aloft for the bird to see. The black spiders of light inside it dashed themselves against the outer walls.
The creature let out a vile snarl. Its eyes swiveled greedily between the obsidian and Grace. A tear glittered on the young dragon’s eye and slowly tipped over onto her snout.
“Come on,” whispered David. “Make your decision.” The darkling was swaying in angry confusion. Dark fire or undefiled tear?
With a roar it launched itself at the obsidian.
David stood his ground. When the bird was just an arm’s length in front of his face, he raised an almost preternatural hand and took the creature by the throat. The speed of the catch made everyone gasp. The darkling raven flashed its claws and struggled to discharge whatever bile it could muster. A bubble of foul-smelling vitriolic filth popped at the hinge of its cracking beak and dribbled pathetically down its neck. David’s grip, as strong as a bear’s, deadened any chance of it spewing further.
“Struggle and you choke,” he told it. Wisely, the creature calmed. Then, drawing it so close to his face that its wild eyes bulged as it read the power inherent in his, David continued, “I ought to turn you to dust for what you’ve done.” He looked down at Sophie’s body and shuddered. Grace, head lowered, wings folded, was still. “But I won’t be responsible for giving the Ix more grief to chew on. So listen to me, bird, and I’ll let you live. Go back to your masters and tell them to halt the raven inversion or the Fain will wipe the mutation out. My dragon will be following your auma trail. Don’t fly away thinking you’ve escaped me. Oh, and one last thing.” He tightened his fist again, forcing another squawk higher up the register and turning the darkling’s head pure white. “Tell them they’ll get nothing from the Pennykettle dragons.”
With that, he attempted to throw the bird into the sky. But at the moment he released his grip, Pieter leaped up and drove his knife deep into the darkling’s belly. The creature screamed and twisted against the blade, oozing hot black juice down Pieter’s arm. Enraged beyond all hope of redemption, it razored its claws against his chest. It had torn his skin into hanging shreds before David, with one swift blow, could turn the bird to exploding ice.
Pieter dropped to the ground. His colleagues, dedicated coworkers and friends, rushed to his aid. His final act was to raise an arm and let it fall against Sophie’s body. He was dead before he could whisper good-bye.
Half an hour after the cleanup had started, Mutu came to seek David out. David was sitting in the shade of a spreading acacia tree, staring across the great green flood plain. The dragon known as Grace was between his feet.
“What should I tell them?” Mutu asked. “The newspapers and the police are here. They are asking what happened. They wish to know if Pieter was mauled by a lion. No one is willing to talk about the wonders or the horrors they saw.”
David flicked a piece of grass aside. “Let the police believe what they will. Right now, they won’t believe anything else.”
Mutu crouched down and picked up a piece of broken acacia. “I need to show you something.” He started scratching in the dust. “Just after the blaze began I thought I saw a spirit, dancing in the heat. She was flowing, like this.”
“She?” said David. Mutu had drawn a snake.
“It might have been a woman,” the African said.
A fly landed on David’s knee. He watched it change position three times before he swatted it away. “Can you tell me anything more about her? Was she old? Long-haired perhaps?”
“Someone called out to me,” Mutu continued. “I looked away and looked back and the figure was gone. I’m sorry I cannot help you further.” He wiped his scratchings out, then gestured a tender brown hand toward Grace. “What will you do with this object, David Rain?”
David turned his head to look at the man. “How do you know my name?”
Mutu gave a bucktoothed smile. Rocking back and forth on his haunches he said, “Sophie spoke of you fondly. She told me once that this … creation reminded her of home. Of a loving family. Of a garden. Of you. Will you weep for her, David?”
David turned his face to the sky. That was the one thing he couldn’t do: weep. Right now, that thought was breaking his heart.
Mutu tossed the branch aside and stood up, dusting his palms. He placed a warm hand on the mysterious man’s shoulder, then started on the short walk back to the center.
“Mutu, wait.”
He turned.
“I didn’t tell you what I would do with the dragon.”
Somewhere in the distance an egret called. Mutu looked toward the sound, pulling a piece of thatching grass through his fingers. “And what will you do with the dragon?”
“Give her this.” A few inches above David’s open palm,
something tiny, like a flashing star, hovered.
“What is it?”
“Life, Mutu.”
A slightly high-pitched hum escaped from the gap between Mutu’s lips. “The greatest gift of all,” he said. “Good-bye, David Rain.” And this time, when he turned toward the ruined buildings, his journey was not interrupted.
When Mutu was out of sight, David said quietly in dragontongue, “Show.”
Groyne materialized on his palm. He was holding Grace’s sparkling fire tear.
“You did well,” said David. “Did she sense you beside her?”
Groyne shook his head. What now? he hurred, looking at the wondrous treasure he had caught.
David pulled the obsidian from his pocket. He spiraled it close to the tear, watching the dark fire splash against its walls like an angry wave. “We take Grace back to the Crescent,” he said, “and we see what we can do about this …”
20 HOME
David came in to find Liz and Alexa at the kitchen table, busy with clay and modeling paints. Alexa ran to her father at once, wearing a smock that Liz had made for her. She clamped her arms around him in a misshapen hug, leaving clay smears clinging to the sides of his jacket.
“Hello, baby,” he said, mussing her shining wavy black hair.
“Aunty Liz is going to let me make a dragon, Daddy.”
“Is that right?”
Alexa grinned like a fish. “Shall I make a listener — like yours?” She pointed at Grace. “She’s very pretty.”
“She’s not mine,” he said quietly. “You should make what you see in here.” He tapped the crown of Alexa’s head. “Isn’t that right, ‘Aunty’?”
“Yes,” Liz muttered, alarmed to see Grace, quite lifeless, in his hands. “Why is Grace with you? Lucy said you went to Africa. Is everything all right?”