R. MacAvoy - Tea with the Black Dragon

“Ah, Martha,” he whispered. “I can’t believe three days was enough.”

He stroked the sad, mottled face. “I had a question to ask. I’d saved it for centuries. When I met you I wasted my time with play, and I did not ask it. No matter.” He swallowed painfully. “The play was more important.”

The Caroline dipped into a wave as it left the shelter of the Bay and cut into the Pacific. Long raised himself up and peered west, into the wind.

So this was the rapprochement with the sea he had avoided for so long. Waves slapped the wood, sullenly. Long still did not understand water.

He’d traded his future for the chance to say good-bye to a woman who was already dead. That farewell had been important. But why?

Was anything important, here on the edge of the irremedial loss? Cold air filled his lungs. His breath steamed. He heard the two men moving about in the bow of the boat, but he did not take his eyes from the sea.

The horizon to the right and behind him was streaked with brilliance. The near side of each wave glistened. He sat in a quiet which was divorced from both pain and joy. Even his curiosity had left him.

Gaunt black rocks broke through the waves in the distance ahead. A few ships dotted the water far from shore.

He took one of Martha’s cold hands in his own and looked again at her face.

Suddenly he started, held his breath, and leaned toward her. Again he saw the small cloud of white fog dissolve against the green tarpaulin. He lifted her head on his hand and whispered, “Martha?”

Blue eyes opened, brighter than the dawn sky. They wandered unfocused. “Who?”

“M-Mayland Long,” he whispered, stumbling over his own name.

Her hands floundered in the tarp, like those of a baby in swaddling. “Oh!” Like a baby, her eyes were blue and vague. “I’ve… I’ve been so worried. About you.”

He stripped away the oilcloth, shaking her gently to keep her awake. “There is something I must ask you,” he began.

With great effort, she raised her head. “About Liz? My daughter. Did you call the police?”

She lifted herself further, grimacing. “What’s wrong with your hands?” Martha blinked and began to look around her.

“Your daughter is safe, I trust.” He spoke eagerly, his voice unsteady. “I left her in a bush. I haven’t called the police, although Fred may have. Must have, by now.

“But hear me, Martha. What I want to say, is that I love you. Is that all right with you?”

Martha Macnamara took in all this without blinking. Her smile was a painful, cracked thing. “Of course, Mayland. I’m delighted to hear it, because I love you.” She tried to laugh and collapsed to the deck in dizziness. “Couldn’t you tell?”

He closed his eyes and gave a sigh that was half a growl. In one fluid motion he got to his feet. The wire around his ankles restrained him, and he suddenly remembered their perilous situation. Carelessly, he reached down and snapped the wire.

Mayland Long smiled, and the red sun broke over the hills to the southeast. His lips drew back from his teeth and he held his bound arms out before him. White tape caught the new light and his bronze skin glowed. He threw back his head and laughed—a laugh neither English nor Chinese, but filled with glad thunder. The tape gleamed ruddy in the sunlight, and as he strained against it it fell away like charred paper.

His injured arm fell to his side. The right hand he extended, impossible fingers spread wide, as though he would grab the sun. All pain and weakness were gone, drowned in a flood of simple joy.

He heard running footsteps and turned. “He sure ain’t dead!” shouted Douglas Threve, who stood before Long holding a heavy steel wrench. “I’ll fix that!”

Long dodged the blow smoothly and struck Threve’s arm. The wrench clattered on the deck.

Long struck again. His fingers closed around Threve’s neck, thumb pressed under the chin. He lifted Threve quickly, and with the motion one makes to flick open a cigarette lighter. Long snapped the man’s neck. He tossed the body aside.

Floyd Rasmussen stood before him, braced against the cabin wall. The barrel of the pistol that he held was shaking.

Long caught his eye. “You know better than that.” He spoke gently, chiding. He heard behind him Martha crawl out of her rutch of oilcloth.

Rasmussen licked his lips and slid down against the wall. “God! Can’t you be killed?”

“Oh yes,” answered Long. “But not disposed of. If you kill me you will have me with you forever.”

“Hypnosis,” stated Rasmussen without conviction.

“No one has been killed, here, except this man. Who is my responsibility.” Long’s voice was measured and reasonable. It held the blond man pinned against the wall. “Now you have the opportunity you thought was lost forever. No past murder forces you to shoot. If you do, it will be a fresh decision, and will seal your future once again.”

Waves slapped against the pilotless craft, turning it out of its course. Wind whistled in the rigging.

“No one is dead? The mother…” Rasmussen looked wildly about. Long stepped aside to reveal the empty wrappings. “She is risen. She is not here,” he whispered.

Rasmussen dropped the gun and put both hands to his head. Instantly Long dived for the cabin wall and brought Rasmussen down. The big man clawed ineffectually against the single lean brown hand which closed upon his throat. He gasped and choked. Long’s face was set and deliberate. He reached his thumb under Rasmussen’s jaw.

“Oolong. No.” Martha Macnamara spoke with authority. “All you said to him is true. I don’t want you to carry him as a burden for the rest of your life.”

He raised his face to hers. His eyes flared yellow: feral, merciless. Her own eyes were half closed in a puffy face.

“It’ll be nothing new to me.”

“No!” she repeated, unwavering. Blue eyes and gold eyes met: two colors of flame. “Everything is new, forever,” she stated. “It is always the first time.”

The gold eyes dropped and the black head bowed. Martha’s hands went gingerly to her head. She winced, groaning.

Mayland Long cleared his throat. “Then, Martha, I suggest you search Mr. Rasmussen’s pockets for the adhesive tape he carries… And there will be a small hunting knife by it. Be careful.”

She bound Rasmussen while Long held him down by the neck, feeling panic pulse beneath his hand. When Martha was done they both stood and walked to the stem.

“Can you handle a boat?” inquired Martha.

“Not at all,” was the prompt answer.

Her broken lips tried to smile. “I can’t believe there is something you can’t do.” Her hands sought out a tangled, fallen braid and began to work it free.

“I have avoided travel by water,” answered Long, as a swell pitched the Caroline sideways.

“Because of another prophecy?”

“Because I get sick,” he replied. Only a narrow band of dark iris was visible as a smile spread from his eyes to his mouth. “And because I’m afraid of water. Can you, Martha? Handle a boat? The question is of more than academic interest.”

She shrugged. Her blue dress was creased and stained. It had lost half its buttons. “I can turn the wheel.”

Liz Macnamara sat at the sergeants desk as the officers of the day patrol came on duty. She was acutely aware of her dishabille. The sergeant himself sat in another room, behind a glass door, talking on the phone. He had been in there for the last ten minutes.

She heard that door open. “Miss Macnamara,” he began. “That’s M-a-c-n-a-m-a-r-a?”

“Yes, yes! You have all that.”

“Don’t get excited. Miss.” He picked up a pencil and bounced the eraser end a few times against the desk blotter.