Chapter 5

Chapter 5

 

One second passed. Then two. Three. Four.
            Andria opened her eyes and found only blackness. The wind whipped around her face. Yuta’s hand was still tight around her waist, so she could at least be sure that she wasn’t dead, though she had no idea where they were or how they got there. All she could see was blackness, not even the stark white of Yuta’s skin.
            He was still flying, though slowing as they progressed. The air felt different, more controlled. Without being able to see, she could almost feel the presence of walls close around them.
            When she thought that Yuta might have been coming to a complete stop, his flying having slowed to almost a crawl, he jerked them both upwards, and into the midst of a large, dimly lighted space with a solid, stone floor. Andria looked back to find a large black hole in the floor, which she assumed they had just entered through.
            Yuta hovered for a brief moment, then brought his feet down on solid ground. He carefully set Andria on her own feet, but her balance by that point had been thrown so completely out of whack that she wasn’t able to keep a stable footing for more than a second.         She fell over, her thighs catching the ground along with a shaky elbow. Without asking permission, Yuta scooped her up again, crossed the room, and deposited her onto a great pile of soft blankets and pillows of every shape and size. His bed, Andria realized.
            Looking around the vast, enclosed empty space, Andria noticed a few key things. The room was cone-shaped, the walls slanting very steeply several hundred feet up. All the light in the room, as well as the air, came from a great hole in the ceiling, what she guessed might have been the very top of the mountain. The walls were craggy stone, as though the room had been hollowed out with a hand trowel. For all of that, however, it looked almost nothing like a cave. The floors were polished granite, one great slab that stretched from wall to wall. There were also furnishings just as one might have found in any human home: a table, chairs, cabinets for storage, even a small, portable television resting on a medium-sized, low coffee table nearby.
            Following her gaze, Yuta frowned slightly when he saw her eyes come to rest on the small TV. “It doesn’t work well,” he half-muttered. The thought seemed to have caused him some considerable frustration in the past. “It’s just that the signal is terrible, and I can’t install cable here.”
            No, Andria thought. No he very well can’t. She almost smiled when the notion of some poor electrician scaling the face of this gargantuan mountain, tools in tow, crossed her mind.
“It’s a shame,” he went on. “I do love summer programming. I have it, cable that is, at my apartment in town.”
            Andria’s face was blank. She stared at the TV, growing more and more troubled with every passing second. She spoke, “When can I go home?”
            “I don’t know,” Yuta replied honestly.
            Her heart sank. “You said something about crows,” she recalled. “What do crows have anything to do with whether or not I can return to my host family?”
            “Everything,” Yuta grunted, falling onto the cushions near her, though not so near as to frighten her. He lay on his back, his fingers entwined across his chest, tail swishing agitatedly across the smooth floor.
            “I don’t understand.” Andria interrupted. “Crows are just birds. Are they going to attack me or something?”
            Yuta thought for a moment. “Possibly.” Andria looked startled. “I’m not entirely sure. All I know is that no Crow’s errand is a favor to me, or you for that matter.”
            “Oh, really,” Andria said sarcastically.
            Yuta nodded. “Remember our friend, the turtle? Miroshi?”
            It was Andria’s turn to nod, a weird sick feeling stirring in her stomach when she thought back to the giant reptile that had almost drowned her.
            “The Crows are employed by the same Dragons that control Miroshi, only they’re far more dangerous and perhaps a thousand times more effective.”

“So you were trying to hide from the Crows, up in the clouds,” she deduced. Again, a nod from Yuta. “But how can they be any more dangerous than any other bird? Crows aren’t even predators.”
            Yuta thought for a moment, and then explained, “Crows are so dangerous because they have the ability to take charge of the mind. Their powers are limited. All they can really do individually is probe the thoughts and memories of other creatures. In large numbers, however, they can emit waves of telepathic power so strong that it can black out the minds of creatures twice as big as I am, even in my largest Form. Once they do that, it’s only a matter of keeping your mind bound, while your body lies motionless, until their Masters arrive to finish the job.”
            Andria listened closely until he had finished his explanation. After a moment’s thought, she spoke. “What made them leave? If they can probe minds, as you say, what was stopping them from reading our thoughts and finding out where we were?”
            “Distance, partly,” Yuta explained casually. “Their range isn’t very far. They need their target to be within at least 50 yards to have any influence over the mind. At first,” he went on, “I was trying to get us well out of reach. The only safe places to hide are either far enough below water or high enough in the air where the oxygen is so diluted that their lungs can’t function.” Andria’s mind flashed back to when they had been flying, her choking, suffocating in open air.           Yuta noted her pained expression and added, “Sorry. I forgot that humans also had a much lower lung capacity, though not quite as frail as Crows’. Anyway,” he continued, “when I couldn’t get us out of reach, I had my own Messenger invade their thought patterns and send them away.”
            “You have a Messenger?” Andria asked.
            Yuta grunted in confirmation, “Mhm. Yenko.”
            “Is he a Dragon, too?” the girl inquired.
            “No,” Yuta responded. “He’s a Turtle.” Another look of distaste crossed Andria’s brow as she recalled her run-in with Miroshi that afternoon. “He’s a small Turtle, though,” Yuta went on. “Very loyal and remarkably useful.”
            “So is he like a slave, or a servant, or what?”

Yuta took a long moment to choose his words. He had never really confronted the notion of what exactly Yenko was to him. He had always just considered him a friend, though technically, the Turtle was indeed bound to him. Did that make him a slave? Surely not, and if indeed so, was he really that terrible of a Master? “For technicality’s sake, little human, I am going to say that yes, Yenko is a slave; though I would venture to say that your connotations and stereotypes of the term do not match my own definition. Yenko is bound to me as my Messenger, and has been such since my birth. He has powers that benefit me, and I possess abilities that benefit him, as well. It’s a give and take relationship, though many Dragons, most of the Lords, for example, exploit the bonds between Master and Messenger and do treat them very much like your definition of a slave.”
            “So every Dragon has a Messenger?” Andria prodded.
            “Yes,” Yuta replied. “Every Dragon is given one at birth. Turtles are traditional, though many have turned to enlisting Crows for the benefit of flight and speed. Turtles, however, possess greater power and can, of course, swim. I find this more practical as most Dragons live in water, anyway.”
            “What kind of power do Turtles have?”
            “Well,” Yuta began, “For starters, they can do everything a Crow can do telepathically, such as probe memories, read thoughts, adopt perspectives, cause black outs-,"
            “Adopt perspectives?” Andria interrupted.
            “Oh,” Yuta responded matter-of-factly. “Yes. What that means is that they can adopt the senses of other creatures. I guess you could call it a form of possession. They can make themselves see, hear, smell, feel anything another creature is sensing. It’s very invasive,” Yuta recalled with disgust.
            “I see,” said Andria, lying down to make herself more comfortable on the mountain of soft fabric. “Go on.”
            Yuta waited until she seemed pretty well settled, and then continued, “Well, Turtles possess all of that, but to a much more powerful extent. What might take five, ten, or even twenty plus Crows to accomplish, Yenko could easily manage on his own. He also possesses the ability to implant memories, or even remove them, if he so desired. He can choose to bind cognitive abilities, whereas Crows can only cause a victim to black out, which leaves them both motionless and unaware. It comes in handy.”
            “How so?” she pressed.
            “Like today,” Yuta reminded her gently. “I told Yenko to scatter them, which means he implanted memories in their thoughts which caused them to pursue something else. It wears off fairly quickly, though. A day, at most.”
            “Was he with you?” Andria asked, confusion tightening her facial features. “I didn’t hear or see any Turtle while all that was happening. How could you have told him what to do?”
            “We have a mental link,” Yuta explained simply. “I can’t read his thoughts, only the ones that he wishes to relay, though he could easily read all of mine. He refrains, though, out of respect for our friendship. Anyway, that mental link is how we communicate most often, unless we’re face-to-face.”
            “So Dragons can’t read minds?”
            Yuta shook his head. “No. Our telepathic abilities are limited strictly to communicating with Messengers and Mates, and only our own. Yenko, however,” Yuta mused, “might be the exception. Because he can implant thoughts, it’s very possible that he’s able to communicate back and forth with other Dragons, though I doubt that he does. Like I said, he’s very loyal to me.”
            Andria nodded lazily. Her eyes had drifted shut, though he could see that her brow was still furrowed in thought.
            “What is it?” he asked after a couple minutes when she said nothing but still continued to think, absently chewing on her bottom lip.
            “Nothing,” she muttered. “Just trying to absorb all this.” She melted back into silence, as did Yuta.
            The two lay in silence for several more minutes before Andria spoke again, “This may sound silly,” she began, “but how was it that we got here?” Her eyes were opened, but staring up at the evening sky through the hole in the ceiling.
            “What do you mean?” the Dragon mumbled, his tail swishing lazily back and forth across the floor.
            “Well, we were flying,” she recalled, “and you looked as though you were going to fly headlong into the side of the mountain. What happened after that?”
            Yuta chuckled to himself, proud of his own cunning. “It’s my way of keeping my home a secret, and if not a secret, pretty much impenetrable,” he explained. When it was obvious that Yuta was not going to divulge much more on the subject, Andria resigned to not knowing. After all, he had already shared so much about himself and his Race, and he still knew very little about her to show for it.
            They both succumbed to silence once more, Andria contented to stare at the stars until after a while, she felt her eyelids begin to droop, and then close. Her final conscious thoughts were of her father, her tiny house in Tennessee, before dreams of Dragons, Turtles, and Crows seized her.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

            Yuta silently navigated the familiar, wooded path, each calculated footfall causing no more noise than a single beat of a butterfly’s wing. He had to be careful in his human Form. Bears were notorious in that part of Japan, and he was very much vulnerable without the protection of his powerful claws, sharpened fangs, and thick, diamond-hard scales; however, he had already risked any number of sightings that day as they fled the shelter of the lake cavern while being pursued by the Crows. Had any other option been available at the time, he never would have revealed himself so plainly. Hopefully, however, no humans had been able to capture him on camera in the one or two seconds it had taken him to become lost in the stratosphere, far out of their range of perception.
            The path was mostly downhill, snaking like some hellish maze among the trees and brush. He went shirtless and shoeless, so as to keep the noise he stirred as controlled as possible. He did wear a pair of knee-length trousers, though, as uncomfortable as he found them. Why humans chose such ill-fitting attire to drape their hides with was far beyond his reach of understanding.
            He always took his human Form whenever meeting with Yenko, day or night, unless they were both well below water. Tonight, especially, the need to remain undetected was imperative. Not only was it likely that suspicions about his existence had been unnecessarily roused that day, but a foreign girl, Andria, had also gone missing. From across the lake, in random patches along the water’s edge, he could distinctly see the glows of forty or so flashlights. Search parties, he deduced. He did have remorse for the heartache he was causing Andria’s family by keeping her away, but it was the only way to keep her safe.
            Why am I doing this? he thought as he walked. She was only a girl, a silly one at that. Why hadn’t he let her drown, let Miroshi take her? Now, he was tangled up in Kazi’s business, a position that he was in no amount eager to be in. Not again. His compassion was his downfall. There was no turning back now that he had her. Soon, Kazi would figure out that it was he who was hiding her. He was the only Dragon who lived within forty miles of the area, and surely Miroshi would have mentioned Yuta when he reported his failure back to the Lords. It was a no-win situation. His only option was to keep hiding her, which could only lead to an eventual fight, one he wasn’t very willing to engage in. It was either a fight between him and the Lords, or he could turn her in now and hope that whatever they had wanted her for was nothing too dangerous or malicious. Knowing Kazi, however, this was not very likely.
            Yuta found the water’s edge. The entire lake shone black as night, flecked and spotted with the reflection of an explosion of luminous stars overhead. Not a soul, not a stray gust of wind dared stir the calmness of the lake’s glassy surface. The only disruptions that spoiled the night’s utter stillness were the occasional, distant shouts from humans across the lake, undoubtedly reporting failure in their quest for the missing girl; that, and the noisy chirping of cicadas.
            Yuta crouched low to the water’s edge, noting his somber human reflection in the polished surface. Closing his eyes, he reached out to Yenko.
            I’m here, thought Yuta.
            Immediately, he felt the Turtle’s consciousness stir. A few, lazy moments later, the mirror-like face of the water broke close to where Yuta crouched, and Yenko slowly fumbled onto dry land. Yuta had not been exaggerating when he told Andria that Yenko was small. His entire body could fit in one of Yuta’s human hands. Yenko’s coarse, lumpy shell was muddy brown, closely matching the green-tinged brown of his leathery skin. He was a typical garden variety turtle to anyone who didn’t know better, though nothing outside of the Turtle’s appearance was in any way common.
            “So a human, eh?” the little Turtle asked, peering with quizzical slyness into Yuta’s somber face.
            Yuta responded by plopping down in the dirt and emitting a great, troubled sigh. He kept his knees tucked close to his chest, and ran both hands through his nest of black hair. He took a long moment to scratch his scalp, muddling through some hidden torment. He raised his eyes to meet Yenko’s waiting gaze.
            “I don’t know what to do,” he said simply, after a long moment’s pause.
            Yenko cocked his head smartly and stated, “Looks like you’ve already decided, friend. You’ve made enemies with Kazi.” He paused. “Again.”
            “What else is new,” Yuta mumbled under his breath. His feud with Kazi had long been old news. “So he knows, then,” Yuta more-or-less stated to the Turtle. He doubted there was any real need to ask.
            Yenko nodded somberly. “Miroshi,” the Turtle said flatly. “I found it in a few of the Crow’s thoughts.”
            Yuta leaned back on one arm, his mind a swirl of distracting thoughts. He let his eyes wander to the flashing, searching lights across the lake, watching them waste their time and energy on a futile mission to recover a lost girl that wouldn’t be found. “What else did you find?” Yuta asked, still staring into the distance.
            “Nothing good, I’m afraid,” whispered Yenko ominously. Starlight caught the Turtle’s deep, brown, intelligent eyes, illuminating the fear that shone within. He continued, “Kazi wants her. That much is certain. I didn’t catch why, but he is ravenous, desperate to retrieve her. He won’t come searching himself, though,” the Turtle mused.
            At this, Yuta’s spirits perked up. As long as Kazi and the Lords stayed at a safe distance, he could have Yenko keep scattering the thoughts of their Messengers. This was at least a short-term relief, he thought.
            “He won’t come,” Yenko went on, “until he feels he must.” Yuta’s spirits sank again. If Kazi was already ravenous and desperate, what was keeping him? What kept him feeling as though he mustn’t yet? “In the meantime, it looks as though our friends, the Crows, are going to be keeping us on our toes.”
            Yuta looked pleadingly into the reptile’s russet brown eyes. “Can you keep them away?” Yuta asked. It pained him ask so much from his friend, knowing that to achieve what Yenko had that day had cost him extreme amounts of energy, which he had later spent hours regaining.
“Anything, friend,” the Turtle nodded respectfully. “But you know this will not end well. You should have known that the moment you chose to get involved. Eventually Kazi and the Lords will come, and you will have a war on your hands.” He paused to ensure that Yuta’s full attention was on him. “I will fight proudly at your side, till death, my friend, or worse; however, you need to decide whether this girl, this human child is worth your own life.” The Turtle’s words held the full strength of a serious warning, one Yuta could not ignore. He was right.
            “There has to be another way,” Yuta pleaded to no one in particular. “If I only knew what it was that Kazi wanted with her, perhaps a compromise could be reached.”
            “So find out,” the Turtle said sharply, adjusting his footing in the black sand.
            “And what?” Yuta began, frustration mounting in his voice. “Waltz into Kazi’s lair, Andria in tow, and demand to know what his motives are?”
            “Ooh, so it’s Andria, is it?” The Turtle looked smug.
            “Yes,” the Dragon sighed.
            “What does she look like,” he prodded.
            Yuta paused, his mind wandering to the image of the sleeping girl he had left in his lair, her hair tossed gracefully across the blankets of his bed, arms clenched in sleep around a separate blanket he had draped over her before he left.
            “Foreign,” he replied. His eyes wandered back to the moving lights in the distance. “Blonde.”
            The Turtle seemed surprised, but said nothing more. Tentatively, he spoke. “I could find out,” Yenko offered.
            “No,” Yuta spat, not offering the notion a second thought. Kazi made his den on the outskirts of Tokyo, much too far a distance for Yenko to try to probe from. Yuta believed that perhaps it was possible. The Turtle had exceeded his expectations many times in the past, but he knew that the effort to pull off something like the feat Yenko was suggesting would drain days’ worth of the Turtle’s energy. Not only was Yuta unwilling to do that to a trusted companion, but frankly, he could not afford to have his strongest defense against the Crows out of commission for days at a time, not when it was already confirmed that they would keep returning.
Yenko didn’t argue, but merely said, “Alright. In that case, your choice is clear. Do what you feel you must do.”
            Yuta nodded, then sighed. So many regrets were spinning around his head, inhibiting his ability to think clearly. He was in way over his head, and part of him wasn’t entirely sure that this girl, this expendable, needy human was really worth risking the lives of both he and his Messenger. He could only pray that it never came to that. In the meantime, he would talk to Kazi.
            At the very thought, Yuta’s stomach began to twist in painful knots. Could he really confront him? Could he really stand face-to-face with the Dragon who had caused him so much physical, mental, and emotional torment over the years? Yuta’s mind flitted to the smirking, playful face of Yenko, then to the serene, graceful form of the girl he had pulled from Miroshi’s jowls. Like an iron, the image of her terrified, searing, sapphire eyes the first time he had seen them burned his conscience.
            Yes. Yes, he would talk to Kazi.
            Eventually.