Dragons Awakening

Behind her, the door to the jet’s bathroom ricocheted, jarring itself open. Zi pushed it closed, covering an enormous yawn with her opposite hand. An overnight flight back to Italy was a logical choice since time was against them. Still her itchy scalp would have enjoyed enough time at a hotel to shower and shampoo.

Thinking about the itch made it worse. The same thing happened when someone mentioned lice. The gnawing sensation on her head screamed for relief beneath her fingernails. Zi twisted her fingers into the belt loops on her relaxed-fit cargoes. Ignore it and it will go away. So what if it felt like a thousand spiders crawled beneath her hair. She knew it wasn’t true.

Her tablet buzzed, rattling along the table. Incoming communication. Bet she could guess the originator without thinking.

With cautious steps, Zi returned to her swivel chair by the table. She groaned, flopping into the chair, facing the large media monitor on the wall. Satellite feed from an international news channel danced silently across the screen. If the vengeful red dragon made his appearance, she wanted to know about it. The tablet danced again. May as well get it over with.

She slid her finger over the tablet’s screen, opening the video communication with a single swipe.

“The middle of the night, Mr. Oohara?”

“Why are you jaunting up Everest?”

So, the helpful contact wasn’t happy to take money for his silence. He’d contacted her father, anyway. Not that it mattered now that their business there was finished.

“You’re not the only one who likes physical challenges.”

“My climbs were about business.” Everything is about business with you. “And your business is with Eastern Preparatory Academy.”

The plane banked slightly. Zi opened the flight calculator program in an extra window on the media screen. “New Destination” flashed in red letters across the bottom of the feed.

“What have you done?”

Her father leaned closer to his camera, blotting out his surroundings. His voice was a hiss. “I thought you were done gallivanting all over the globe during school months. Your pilot is returning you to China.”

“It’s my pilot. I pay him from my inheritance.”

“He knows who holds true power over his future.”

ZI clenched the sides of the tablet until her knuckles turned white. Why was her father meddling in her business? The need to tell him about the world-altering vision itched along her tongue. No. He would only ask how it could benefit his financial portfolio.

“Climbing Everest is tiring. Good-”

“It’s your last escapade. I’m recalling the jet to the hangar in Beijing. Where it will stay until you’ve finished finals at the end of the month.”

Fire crept into her cheeks. If she were a dragon, she’d let her father have it in the face. Through the screen? Don’t let him get the upper hand.

“Good night.” She pushed the end button, and stormed toward the closed door to the cock pit.

She jerked the door open and dropped into the co-pilot’s chair. The smooth leather conformed to her body, embracing her.

“Manning, I am your employer.”

“Miss Oohara, Mr. Oohara could ruin me.”

“Which doesn’t matter as long as you’re in my employ, does it?”

“There could be investigations.” So, her father threatened to remove the pilot’s license. Even if he knew someone, it would take months.

“I need you to return to Naples. My passenger is expected.”

The pilot shook his head, clutching the control stick as if his life depended upon it.

“The boy has been reported missing.” A lie, but there wasn’t any way to verify it at the moment. “You don’t wish to be responsible for a kidnapping, do you?”

“Kidnapping?” The Israeli’s bronze features paled. He glanced toward her; she nodded. “I knew nothing about that.”

“Yet you are the only person of majority on this plane.”

He raked a hand through his stiff hair. His bobbing Adam’s apple jutted from his thin neck.

“If Mr. Oohara-”

“I’ll take care of my father. Besides, we will be back on the Tibetan Plateau before he even realizes we didn’t immediately return.” Her throat constricted at that falsehood, but she raised her eyebrows and forced herself to maintain eye contact.

“I would be nothing if I couldn’t fly.”

ZI stood, patting the pilot’s sinewy shoulder. Heat poured off him. “Trust me, Manning. I can handle this.”

He nodded. The door snapped shit behind her. She collapsed into her chair. Another bank. The screen recorded their destination as Naples, Italy, once again. Crisis averted. For the moment.

Twirling her chair toward the sofa, she watched Akolo, stretched out and sleeping. His bronze face had a milky hue. Climbing Everest hadn’t agreed with him. She had lived at a high elevation in Tibet for eight months, so it didn’t tax her in the same way it did the sea-level dweller. She wrapped her hand around the water bottle and took several deep chugs.

Akolo groaned, turning onto his side. Zi swallowed more water. What happened in the dragon’s cave? He had to relive something horrible. His mother’s death?

Memories of her mother rolled in with the clarity of a hazy day. Nearly ten years had passed since she held her mother’s slender hand. So much forgotten. Her mother faced death with stoic certainty. Knowing it was coming didn’t alter her attitude or actions. A few vague moments from their last week dissolved into view: visions of the past seemed fuzzier than premonitions of the future.

On that fateful day, her mother knelt on the floor in front of young Zi. Serenity painted her beautiful face. Thumbs, smooth as a silk kerchief, pushed the tears off Zi’s cheeks. Kisses from those soft lips followed the thumbs. Honeysuckle and rose embraced her.

“Even death is not to be feared,” she said, “by one who has lived wisely.” How could her voice be tender and strong at once? Eight-year-old Zi blinked to clear her watery vision.

The beatific smile - no teeth, just red lips- stretched across her mother’s slender face. “I have traveled well, daughter, and so it’s time to arrive at that higher place.”

Another moan shook Zi out of the fading memory. That was her final private conversation with her mother. Even now, the calm acceptance seemed incomprehensible.

And she’d been left in the care of a nanny. Her father’s only interactions with her involved suggestions of countries and companies, hoping she would see something useful. She snorted, shaking her head. That’s all she was to him - a diviner of business deals.

Akolo stirred, drawing Zi out of her dark ruminations. He sat up, rubbing his hands over his face. The blanket slipped from his shoulders, drifting halfway to the floor. He stumbled toward the lavatory, the blanket twisting around his shins until he kicked it away.

While he was in the restroom, Zi picked the blanket up, folding it and tossing it onto the arm of the sofa. She opened the refrigeration unit at the back of the cabin, pulling out two water bottles.

Several minutes later - after the sound of flushing and sink water running for a minute - Akolo emerged, face ruddy from a scrubbing. Zi held the bottles of water, waiting as he drained the first one in several gulps. She took the empty bottle, pushing it into the recycling bin beneath the small sink. Akolo stumbled back to the couch, the bathroom door chattering in the wake of his retreat.

Zi secured the door and paced back to her chair.

“Feeling better?” she asked, glancing toward the media screen where a group of diplomats shook hands in front of Big Ben.

“Remind me never to go mountain climbing again,” he said. “A wipeout and riptide couldn’t make me feel this bad.”

Surfing terms, Zi discovered when she typed them into her tablet’s querying application. He gulped more water while she shoved open three window shades.

“What happened in that ice cave?”

Akolo narrowed his eyes at her.

“He made you relive your mother’s death, didn’t he?”

Akolo sat straighter, looking past her. “Why does it matter?”

ZI shrugged, twirling her water bottle. “It must have been terrible. You were really shaken up.”

Akolo studied her face and drained the second bottle of water. “It was like being there again. I never expected it to feel so real.”

“Those dragons have some mind bending skills, don’t they?”

Akolo nodded. “It’s nothing like being inside the mind of any other animal.”

“Did they tell you what happens now?”

Akolo shook his head. “Wait for the red dragon, I guess.”

ZI glanced toward the screen, leaning toward it when she read the banner across the news report. She hit the volume button.

“…disregarded reports early in the week of a strange winged creature, but these new photographs captured by freighters on the Caspian Sea are raising speculation from several governments.” The picture showed a black shadow silhouetted against the white canvas of clouds. Ezer. Why was he flying so low? Didn’t he realize how much it would complicate things if people began to investigate reported sightings?

“I thought they flew above the clouds.”

“Or in the clouds.” Zi hit the mute button. “Just the sort of attention we don’t need.”

“But how are we going to hide their existence when the red one emerges from Vesuvius?”

“Hopefully, everyone will have evacuated a safe distance.”

“But the scientists will want research drones flying over.” Akolo met her gaze. “They’ll want as much documentation of the eruption as possible.”

ZI shrugged. “Something to worry about when the time comes. But I could slap Ezer for being so careless right now.”

The plane dropped into an air pocket, sending a jolt through Zi’s seat. She scrambled to keep her tablet from sliding to the floor. Her empty water bottle rolled toward the back of the plane.

Akolo grinned at her. “You could slap Ezer? You realize he’s a dragon, right?”

ZI narrowed her eyes. “A dragon who needs me - us.”

“Holy macaroni.” Akolo pointed toward the media screen.“Turn that up.”

Zi pressed the appropriate button. Pictures of a cloud of ash spewing from a mountain filled the screen.

A British announcer’s voice-over proclaimed, “-Austrian officials have evacuated the area. Rumblings in the Alps brought seismologists on the European continent to full alert last month.”

Trees slid down the side of the mountain. The aerial view turned the mud flow into a river of sludge. Logs, a roof, an animal corpse, and the metal side of a vehicle bobbed and lurched in the brown torrent.

“Scientists at the European Union Seismic Center in Herculeaneum, Italy, report a stream of minor quakes have rocked the boot-shaped peninsula, spurring debate about initiating a precautionary evacuation.”

A woman’s face filled the screen. The observatory loomed behind her.

“Dr. Blunk!” Akolo leaned toward the screen, elbows on his knees.

“Vesuvius is a time bomb. Its lava dome grows, expanding ever closer to the surface,” the woman said.

“So an eruption is imminent?” An off-screen voice asked.

“Predicting volcanic eruptions is still an inexact science-”

“I wonder if dad was interviewed,” Akolo said.

Zi stared at the carnage as the video footage of the enormous mud slide returned. Inexact science or not, an evacuation needed to happen. And soon.