Jason Hightman - The Saint of Dragons - Samurai

Simon’s stomach churned that night as he began a new letter.

“I think I’m getting an ulcer,” he muttered and looked over at Fenwick on the floor. “I wish you could talk,” he added, lying in the dim light of his bunk built into the ship’s side. The fox stared back with no particular expression.

Fenwick would have no sympathy for him. Fenwick had no worries. He was strong.

“Never mind, I’m glad you can’t talk,” said Simon, feeling chastised.

Then he heard his father clanging around in his cabin, sparring with no one, brandishing his sword. These days, Aldric never seemed to sleep. He blamed himself for everything and Simon wished things would go back to the way they were in the old days – when Simon got blamed for everything.

After a while, Aldric came out of his cabin and into the passageway where Simon’s bunk was. Simon stood staring, afraid he was in trouble.

Gruffly, Aldric handed Simon a bottle of ginger ale. “Here. Drink with me.”

And that was all he said.

Simon looked at Aldric, holding the warm bottle in his hand.

“I was thinking we might talk,” his father said sharply, sounding angry although he clearly wasn’t.

Simon just stared.

“Well, go on then, open it,” Aldric said, and Simon pried off the bottle cap. He stood there awkwardly.

Time passed like sandpaper over skin, the two of them in the passage, saying nothing, the ship rocking gently.

Aldric was in another world altogether. Staring at his bottle, he didn’t look at Simon. The silence stretched on between them and Simon shifted on his feet. Aldric still wasn’t saying anything. And then finally his father, grunting some indecipherable apology or explanation, pulled out his pipe and just walked away, returning to his cabin. His door clanked shut.

Simon remained unmoving.

He looked at the bottle in his hand, the top of it staring back like the eye of some odd animal.

“OK,” Simon said quietly to himself. He sat on his bunk. Then he lay down and waited for something to happen.

He heard Aldric go up on deck. Maybe the night air would cool him down.

Fenwick padded over and nuzzled Simon’s hand with his snout. He seemed to want to cheer him up. It took a moment to realise the fox wanted him to move.

He got up and followed Fenwick down the passage, past the cold night air streaming from the hatchway above, all the way to the end, to Aldric’s quarters. Simon almost never went in there.

The fox nudged the door open. Feeling a nervous heat in his stomach, Simon hesitated, but Fenwick scurried into the stateroom. Simon figured he could always claim that he was just getting the fox out of there.

The room was a mess, the way it always had been before Alaythia came along. Tunics and coats lay in a pile, old scrolls, spell books and travel guides were splayed out everywhere.

Fenwick climbed on to the bed with its wool blanket and animal pelts – a Viking’s idea of comfort – and poked at a bookshelf. Looking back to be sure Aldric wasn’t coming, Simon moved to examine it.

Fenwick knocked open a small door in the bookshelf, revealing a pile of old photographs. Surprised at this secret cache, Simon took them out and felt a stab of guilt as he stared down at his mother’s face. They were pictures of Maradine and Aldric, a long time ago, stacks of them.

His heart raced with excitement. The past stared back at him. In black and white or faded colour, pictures from all over the world.

Aldric was young, in his twenties or thirties, his face more rounded and less hardened. He looked a lot like Simon and he was handsome. Maradine was smiling, sometimes laughing, bright-eyed and long-haired and strong – and bearing more than a passing resemblance to Alaythia.

Simon had seen pictures of her before, but never so many. He knew she had lived on a ranch and she was often pictured next to a horse, one Simon hadn’t seen before. She was his mother and he felt somehow the images should have told him more , and that he should have felt more. It was strange. What stirred his emotions was the man in the photos.

Aldric. He was the same in many ways. Tough gaze, clenched jaw, ill at ease in front of a camera. Still, in a few pictures he looked calm, satisfied, happy.

Simon looked to Fenwick. Why did the fox want him to see this? Is this how you cheer me up? he thought.

The fox’s eyes flashed and turned black, and then Simon was seeing the animal’s memory. It was the strongest feeling Fenwick had ever sent to him. Simon’s surroundings faded away and he now felt himself on the ship in a different time and place. What he saw amazed him.

In that moment, Aldric St George was a young man; he was on deck with Maradine and they were dancing slowly; he was spinning her around. It was night and there were a thousand stars, and he was singing an Irish tune. Simon couldn’t believe it – his father was actually singing and it was good. He sounded just the way Simon would have expected, but the boy had never heard him before, not ever.

He knew then that his mother had died because of her feelings; that was how the creature had found her. But there was no sadness in the knowing, there was just a bright night before him and his mother spinning, her long hair swinging about.

He smiled, hearing his father sing. He was there, with them both. He wanted to laugh, and then it was gone. Everything vanished.

He was in the creaking ship with Fenwick staring back at him.

It was then he realised the only picture in the room that Aldric had on display was one of Ebony Hollow: he and his father …”and Alaythia.

If they didn’t get her back, he wouldn’t get his father back; not fully, not ever. He stuffed the pictures back where they belonged and got out of the stateroom as quickly as he could.

The Black Dragon of Peking had unleashed a never-before-known hatred among serpentkind. It was well-known that he had helped the dragon killers and been instrumental in burying the Queen of Serpents.

So many had died in the Grand Battle of the Serpent Queen and the remaining dragons were now trying to take over their territories. The entire Serpentine world had been thrown into disarray, the hierarchies demolished; all over the map, serpents were fighting for new turf.

There were new avenues opening up in crime, terrorism, business and military dictatorships, and as always there were some who grasped the opportunities better than others.

One such creature was the Dragon of Bombay.

She was a tiger dragon, a shapely, female, humanesque form with a thin set of huge transparent wings, useless wings. They stretched down her back, pretty and striped, like a fashion accessory, like a mink coat or something wonderful and insolent.

In fact, fashion was her domain. In her human manifestation, she had made herself look like a beautiful East Indian model, so striking she had been on the cover of countless magazines, appearing as a youngish woman with mocha-cinammon skin, a tall frame, high cheekbones, sleepy eyes with long black lashes and a slender body. She had used her looks to earn a small fortune on the catwalk some years back, before an ugly argument with an American model caused her to lose her temper – and she had torched the Manhattan girl in a New York minute.

Several more of these arguments, usually over boys, resulted in more deaths – and dodging the police made the whole thing hardly worthwhile.

She decided to move into manufacturing, using sweatshop labour. Little girls and boys, and incredibly poor men and women, were chained to sewing machines for long hours so that she could make millions selling high fashion at shocking prices.

She had a formula. In the factories there was an ivory sculpture with a giant tiger’s eye painted on it on every floor. The eye hypnotised the workers. The workers never complained.