Something was about to happen.
Felicia had woken up with the distinct feeling that today wasn’t just another day, and it had intensified from hour to hour.
Having worked half-day, she had tackled a routine check-up at the gynecologist and was now on her way home. On an impulse, she had got off the bus early. Never one for long bus rides, today she found it unnerving. Walking was so much more preferable. Coming to think of it, she should give in to the urge she had been detecting at the back of her mind for a while, and go on a hike the way she had some ten years ago.
Maybe Joshua would enjoy it too? Somehow, he struck her as someone who would like being outdoors, walking and walking until exhaustion turned into a trance-like state of bliss where you felt one with your surroundings, and your legs moved on their own will. Could that be one of the—probably few—things they had in common?
Listen.
The voice, coming from out of nowhere and resonating inside her, brought her to a halt so abruptly that a woman behind her walked right into her. After an exchange of muttered curses and excuses, Felicia’s feet carried her on, but the feeling that something would happen at any moment was stronger than ever.
Listen.
There it was again, a silent command stopping her in her tracks. Instinctively, she knew it had to be the fire dragon. Casting a furtive glance left, right, front and back, and detecting a restaurant with rickety, uncomfortable-looking, green-painted wooden chairs crowded around the entrance, she walked over. She sat down gingerly on the edge of one of the chairs resembling nothing more than a stool with a hard-as-stone backrest, before she took an unsteady breath and looked into herself.
While the dragon spent most days slumbering or preening itself like a giant, featherless bird to keep its scales shiny, it was clearly agitated at the moment. It had risen and was stretching its neck up toward her chest and head, the thorny spikes on its ridged back pointing upward like a cat’s fur raised in alarm. The fiery shape was listening to a distant sound tugging at its attention and making it restless. Was this what had sparked the feeling of foreboding in the morning that was currently so intense she could feel her stomach churning?
Caring little for how it might look to passers-by, she closed her eyes, furrowed her brow and tried to listen with her inner as well as her outer ears for whatever it was that unsettled her dragon. A cacophony of voices, footsteps, vehicles, clattering dishes and doors endlessly opening and closing invaded her. Apart from that, no matter how hard she strained, there was nothing special, nothing worth worrying about.
With a sigh of irritation and frustration, she opened her eyes and prepared to get up.
An image flashed across her vision, overlaying reality for a split second, hardly visibly, but etching itself into her mind.
A bland two-story house surrounded by houses looking like its carbon copies and by a neat garden which could have been anywhere in the town of Fairview, anywhere in the world. The first image was immediately overridden by a second one in stark contrast to it.
The same house, the same non-descript setting. But this time, the building was ablaze with hungry flames painting a picture of horror yet also of invitation.
She swallowed and swayed slightly.
Where was this place? From where did she catch these images? What did they mean?
The dragon inside her flapped its wings impatiently and opened its mouth wide to reveal startlingly sharp, long teeth. It wanted out. It wanted to be where the picture was. Now.
She balled her hands into fists, noticing how hot they had become and how high her body temperature had climbed within this short span of time. Before she could react and attempt to reign the dragon’s desire in, a waitress walked out of the restaurant toward her. With a hint of guilt, she got up, turned and hurried off in the same direction as moments ago. This was not the time to order a spicy snack or a hot drink. This was not the time to be out among unsuspecting people and still so far from home.
The dragon’s need to be out had grown so strong that her body was vibrating with it. Her nails were digging into the palms of her hands in an effort to keep it in, and to avoid any reaction to either the image’s powerful attraction or the still growing sense of something being awfully wrong. She continued walking, her stride so fast and each step so determined to contain the strength hidden in her being that she was sure she looked like somebody gone mad.
It took her a second to realize she was going in the wrong direction. This was not the road she usually took to wind her way home from the doctor’s appointment. In fact, this was nowhere she had ever been before. With mounting anxiety, she stared around wildly.
How had she come here?
Why had she come here?
And why was the dragon flaring its nostrils and stomping its feet and whining soundless to be let out?
As though pushed by an invisible hand, she moved forward, her fists shaking and her senses humming with anticipation. She had to prepare herself for God knew what awaited her. It was useless to fight what escaped her control and understanding.
When she rounded a bend, it was as if she had smacked her head against a brick wall. What she saw halted her steps and sent her heart thumping as though it wanted to join the dragon and flee her body.
She was in a street filled with orderly rows of two-storied houses with three steps leading to the door, a minimum-sized, well-tended pocket of garden at the front, and a garage tucked away beside the entrance. House after house after house of the same sort. The mirror image of the building she had seen flashing in her head.
By now, she felt so hot she was afraid she might be glowing. Strangely enough, not a soul was in sight, as if she had not rounded the bend of a well-travelled road with afternoon traffic, but stepped into a different dimension. Some parallel world where all people looked the same and all houses looked the same—and where something terrible was about to happen.
As she stood there gaping and shaking, fighting the dragon in a battle of wills, there was a whooshing sound that brought a gust of air with it. For an instant, the atmosphere around her changed, a subtle shift in pressure or a ripple through the tightly meshed net of molecules. The whoosh was followed by a crack like a giant branch snapping or lightning searing across the sky on a dry, energy-filled summer evening.
A light so bright she had to shield her eyes appeared not far away from her. When she stared at the spot, blinking rapidly, she saw nothing out of the ordinary.
But she heard something distinctly.
Sizzling flames, their beckoning whisper growing louder with every breath she was taking.
Was this what the dragon had urged her to listen to? But didn’t the flames sound as though a fire had been kindled a moment ago and they were now busy eating their way to more size and more heat and more terror?
While her feet carried her unerringly toward the pull of the flames calling in her head, her eyes waited for the first sign of a fire. Sure enough, the building that stood where a bright spot had nearly blinded her seconds ago sported tongues of flames dancing out of an open window on the ground floor. They looked like banners waving in the wind to lead a guest to a party, like arms waving to catch her attention.
Something tugged at her heart, and the dragon leapt free of its confines and soared ahead to join the flames. Before giving in to the inevitable and following it, she cast a frantic look around. There was nobody in sight. It was deadly quiet but for the hiss of the fire probably only audible to her. The shrill sound of glass bursting rang out, and flames licked their way out of a second, now damaged, window.
She was running, her feet in sneakers thumping on the pavement and her curls flying in the wind, a glowing replica of the fire’s snake-like arms.
Finally, she stood right in front of the burning house, from which smoke was rising in tendrils and wisps and from which the fire’s invitation sounded loud and clear in her ears.
How to get inside? And should she do this? In broad daylight, where she could be caught?
r /> While she hesitated, her pulse racing and the dragon out of sight where it had magically melted into the body of flames biting their way through the building, fate decided for her.
A high-pitched scream pierced her trance and the fire’s song.
“Help! Help me!”
Somebody was shouting, and the sound, so eloquent of a terror she couldn’t feel in the presence of fire, came from inside the burning house.
It turned into a wailing that cut at her and brought her to her senses despite tingling to forget the world and become one with the fire.
Felicia couldn’t think anymore, but at the same time, she acted more rationally than she would have if she had been in command of her thoughts and actions.
Before she knew it, she was yanking at the knob of the front door. Of course it was locked. She stepped back and threw herself against the hard, hot door with all her might. Her body ached with the impact of flesh and bone against unyielding wood—and the ache of not being interlocked in a frenzied dance with the flames—but the door wouldn’t budge. Wheeling around, she ran toward the window which had been open from the start. She stared at the flames fanning out from it. With a whoop of joy or maybe determination, she pulled herself upward with a firm grip on the smoldering window ledge, and hefted one leg over. Nearly falling into the room awash with flames, she felt no pain, only ecstasy and a surge of energy.
The continuous wailing and screaming and crying, sounding like a child afraid for its dear life, kept her from succumbing to the overpowering wish of standing amid the fire and feeling it press in on her, possess her, please her. Reluctantly, she waded through the knee-high flames as if through water, ploughing her way out of the room and deeper into the house. The sounds of distress came from upstairs, so she raced up the stairs that were riddled with flames and barely supported her weight.
As the screams grew more frantic and her desire to purge herself in the fire grew so strong she could barely put a foot after the other to reach the sound, a door in front of her was blown out and into blazing smithereens. She stumbled toward it and into a children’s room with ravenous flames yapping at her heels, but not taking the place over. A huddled shape pressed into the farthest corner, wailing and wailing, caught her eye. Without thinking, she sprinted to the child, scooped it up in her arms and turned to leave the way she had come.
There was a wall of fire blocking her exit.
She knew she could escape it unharmed, but what about the child clinging to her, coughing and crying, choking and trembling so hard her own body shook along with the movement?
Felicia turned to the window, biting her lip.
To jump or not to jump?
By now, the air was filled with dense, coiling smoke and unrelenting heat melting the wallpaper. The child’s screams had stopped, leaving behind a frightening silence, cloaking the fire’s rage and for the first time making her afraid.
What happened next was a blur, a succession of movement that seemed to involve somebody else and not her.
Shielding the child, a lifeless lump with its weight doubled, she faced the flames. All of a sudden, she knew what to do.
Raising herself to her full height and thinking of her dragon, she stared into the fire and whispered a fierce command.
“Let me through.”
For a moment, there was no reaction, and she bit her lip again, so hard that the salty, metallic taste of blood mingled with the smoke. She squared her shoulders, exerted pressure to radiate her own wild heat, drew a deep breath and shouted, “Let me through!”
The impossible happened.
The flames withdrew on themselves ever so slightly, parting with obvious reluctance to create a small opening in the curtain of fire. Within moments, she had hurled herself through and along the passage, nearly tripping while navigating the half-burned-away staircase. To her right and left, flames touched her arms and legs, but no other wall of fire blocked her way. She shot out of the gaping, fire-filled hole that had once been a solid, locked front door, like a bullet from the mouth of a (more than) smoking gun.
Her legs carried her farther and farther, and then no more.
Everything went blissfully blank.