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“Come on, Amber, we have to run now. If we don’t, the boar is going to get us all!” Thomas yelled. He dragged me away and I almost stumbled again. I tore my gaze away from the boar, leaving William to fend him off. I wanted to do something, I should have done something, but what could I have done? I had no weapons, so I let myself be taken away by Thomas. He kept hold of my hand as we ran through the jungle, sprinting as fast as we could. We raced away from the boar in case it pursued us and ran until I was about to collapse. We followed the path all the way up the incline until the trees thinned and we emerged on one of the sides of the island. I hadn’t realized how far we had ascended for the drop was steep below. My head was groggy, and I had to wipe sweat from my brow. I paced around, careful not to get too close to the edge. There was a sheer drop onto jagged rocks and foreboding water. My head swam just looking at it.
“Are you alright?” Thomas asked, reaching out towards me. I batted his hands away.
“What the hell do you think you were doing?” I yelled. “They needed us! How could you just let your brother die like that?”
“William and I have always been willing to do what is necessary to save each other,” Thomas said icily. “Now come with me. We need to keep moving.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. I can’t. I need time to process this. Vincent…oh my God. This place, this place is cursed. How many people have lost their lives…and all because of me.”
I staggered back and placed my head in my hands. Thomas stepped towards me and tried to grab hold of me again, and again I pushed him away.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t you see? This is all my fault! I should never have come here. I should never have come to this cursed place. They’re all dead because of me, and it’s only a matter of time until we’re dead too. How can you just stand there and be so relaxed? Why did you make us run? Why didn’t you save them?”
“Because I was saving you. Again,” Thomas said, his eyes blazing with fury. I tilted my head and looked at him with confusion. What did he mean by ‘again?’. Before I could ask him, I saw movement behind him and fear seized my heart. I was sure it was the boar, coming to claim our lives as well, and in that fleeting moment I asked myself whether I’d rather die from being speared by a boar’s tusk or from falling onto jagged rocks, just like the plane. Before I had a chance to decide, I realized that the figure coming out from the tree-line wasn’t the boar at all, but William. Somehow, some way he had managed to survive. He was covered in blood and his clothes were torn. He looked dazed, but he was alive. The blood that showered his face was so dark that it made the whites of his eyes stand out even more, and the sight of him startled me so much that I actually staggered back, losing my strength and my balance.
“Your friend has been avenged,” he said, and that was the last thing I heard as I felt the ground give way before me and I plummeted down, the edge of the island crumbling underneath me.
11
A scream left my throat, but I wasn’t aware of it. It sounded like it was a distant echo from another life. I reached out my hands as gravity dragged my body down. My hair splayed around my face and I looked up towards Thomas. Plunging to my death was oddly peaceful. Time seemed to stand still and my mind was clear. I wondered if it was the same for everyone who died, o
r just for people who had time. I tried to think about what my last thought would be, wanting to make it something significant and dramatic but really, I was just filled with disappointment. I had thought I would accomplish something special with my life, that I would do great things, but in the end I was going to die in an accident on a remote deserted island having done nothing of note. I didn’t even get to die in someone else’s arms like my parents.
I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable, waited for the pain. I hoped that it would be over quickly because I really didn’t want to be in excruciating pain. But then, amid the darkness, I heard a strange yet familiar sound, the same sound that had surrounded me when everything had gone black on the plane. Then I felt something grab me. I wrapped my arms and felt scales, and when I opened my eyes, I saw a huge beast. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t possible, but I was being carried by a dragon.
I looked down and saw the sea and the jagged rocks recede from me, the ones that should have spelt my doom. Instead, I was being lifted through the air to safety, and was deposited back on solid ground. I slipped out of the dragon’s grasp and scrambled away, falling to the floor. I reached out with panic for any kind of weapon and ended up gripping a small stick, pointing it to the beast. The dragon was huge and black, its scales as dark as obsidian. It beat its wings and howled, and I heard the same crash of air that I had heard on the plane. Its sharp claws dug into the ground and I froze there in shock and fear. It looked at me and I was almost sure it was going to eat me, but it tilted its head and looked at me as though it recognized me. My mind was a blur and I couldn’t believe that I was looking at a real life dragon. I wondered if really I had died and this was a strange version of the afterlife, but the ground felt real, and as I looked around I saw William sitting there as well, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that there was a dragon standing in front of us. But where had Thomas gone?
A million questions ran through my mind and I was still reeling from having been moments from dying when something happened to the dragon. It twisted its head and stretched out its wings. The rush of air blew strands of hair away from my face. There was a cracking of bone as the dragon transformed before my eyes. Its wings receded into its back and the dragon shrunk. Its scales grew paler and morphed into flesh and then, standing there suddenly, was Thomas. I blinked and scrunched my eyes together, unable to comprehend what I had just seen.
“Can you please stop trying to die,” he said. My mouth was agog and I felt light-headed. I had just seen a dragon change into a man. No, it was impossible, I told myself, and yet he had plucked me out of the air as I had been falling to my death. He had saved me. There was a sharp pain in my mind, and I closed my eyes hard, rubbing my temples to try and make it go away. I thought back to the crash and what had happened as we had been caught in the storm. I had been looking out of the window and then I was losing my balance. I heard a sound and I remembered now that I had felt a wing coming around me, gathering me up, and I remember flying through the air, seeing the plane fall behind me. I remembered the dark savior settling me down on the beach and then flying away again before I rested. And now I realized that he must have been the dark shape I saw on the beach as well, the one I had seen flying through the air.
And yet, even though I thought of all this and it seemed entirely rational, I was still having a hard time admitting that I had just been saved by a dragon.
“What…what’s happening?” I asked. William looked at me, still recovering from his battle with the boar. Thomas stood there with his hands on his hips. He moved towards me and reached out a hand, intending to help me up, but I wasn’t ready to be touched by him again. I pushed myself back, my face lined with fear, and he seemed to understand. He held his palms up and spoke low and clear.
“I’m sorry you had to see that without any warning, but I didn’t really have any choice. It was either that or let you die, and we’ve already seen too much death here,” he said, and then went on to confirm that it was indeed him who had saved me from the plane crash.
I gulped and ran my hands through my hair. He tossed me a bottle of water and I was glad of the refreshment. “This isn’t possible,” I said.
“Seeing is believing. I know it seems like a lot to take in, but it’s true. William and I are dragons. We have the ability to transform, think of it like werewolves just…a little more exciting,” he said, sharing a look with his brother. I didn’t happen to think it was exciting at all.
“But…but how? I have…I have so many questions.”
“I know you do. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to reveal this side to you, at least not yet, but as I said, I didn’t really have a choice.”
In all the confusion one thing was abundantly clear. If Thomas saved me, he could have saved the others. When I told him this it was with venom in my voice, and he bowed his head.
“I know it might seem that way,” he explained, “but we’re not gods. I saved you, but by the time I went back it was too late. We managed to salvage a crate, but that was it.”
“And Vincent? You could have just changed into a dragon and killed that boar! All this time I was thinking that we didn’t have enough weapons when you are a weapon.”
“I truly am sorry for your friend Amber. I wish that things could have been different. To be honest, I don’t think either of us realized that the boar would have been able to survive the gunshots. William avenged him, and I saved you. You have to understand that we’re a very private people. We’ve had to keep this secret all our lives, and our ancestors all of theirs. We aren’t used to appearing in our true forms in front of normal people. It takes a lot for us to reveal ourselves.”
I nodded, understanding, although it was still taking me some time to process everything. I took another sip of water and slowly rose, using a nearby tree as leverage. I looked past Thomas at the island edge and made sure to keep my distance from it. It was easy for me to get lost in all my questions, to be humbled and awed by the supernatural, impossible sight I had seen, so I composed myself and told myself that impossible was part of the job. I was an archaeologist and my father had always told me that we had to be prepared for the unexpected because we never knew what we might find in an ancient ruin.
I always used to wonder what he meant by that because it seemed like an oxymoron. How could anyone prepare for the unexpected? But as I looked at the man who could turn into a dragon, I knew what my father meant; being prepared was an attitude rather than having the right equipment. It meant being able to look at things rationally and put aside prejudice and bias, to accept the evidence and the truth no matter how impossible it seemed, and to always keep an open-mind. I made sure to keep my breaths measured and tried to think about this logically.
“So you’ve had an agenda all this time,” I said. I knew something had been up from the instant I had met them. At the time I hadn’t questioned it because I wanted to go on this expedition more than anything, but it was convenient that these wealthy men just so happened to be interested in archaeology enough to want to fund the expedition and join me.
