'This dragon you will paint,' Snake said softly. 'You have seen it? You already know what it will look like, the colors?'
Salvatore swallowed, and nodded.
'You've known you had to paint him all along, haven't you?' Snake asked.
'When they come into my dreams,' Salvatore said, 'I have no choice. I think if I don't draw them, or paint them, that I will go mad. They call out to me. They have been leading me to another place — a city by an ocean, but not the ocean that I know. I think one day the dragons will take me inside that city, and then I will know why they come to me, and why I must set them free.'
'I've dreamed too,' Snake said. 'I didn't see a city, but in those dreams, I could fly. Give me my wings, Sal. Make it all real.'
Then, without another word, Snake turned and left the room.
'Come on Sally,' Jake said. 'Martinez went to get your paints. We'd better get you set up.'
Salvatore followed Jake down a hallway toward the other end of the building. Jake didn't look back, but as he opened a door at the end of that hall and ushered Salvatore inside, he spoke.
'That man isn't one you want to cross,' he said. 'If you give him everything you have, he'll stand by you through anything. You paint that dragon, Sally. You paint like you've never painted before. I have the feeling we're going to need all the help we can get.'
He left then, and Salvatore stood alone in a small bedroom. There was a shelf on the wall, a small cot with clean sheets, a blanket, and a pillow, a table and two straight-backed chairs. There were no leaks in the walls; it was warm and dry. Salvatore stood still in the very center, and let his tears flow freely.
Then he sat at the table and waited for Martinez, already planning where he'd hang the flag while he worked.
~* ~
The next time the door opened, Snake led Martinez and Jake into the room. Jake had a bundle under one arm, and Martinez carried the paints and supplies from Salvatore's shack. They trooped solemnly into the small room, and Salvatore stood, eyes downcast. He wasn't sure what to say, or what to do. Luckily, Jake had no such problem.
'Hey, Sally,' he said. 'Help me hang this up, will you?'
Salvatore glanced up. Jake held what at first looked like an old sheet folded over his arm. When he shook it out, Salvatore saw that it was a piece of white canvas — the kind of canvas he'd seen in art shops from the street. The kind he'd dreamed of painting on one day.
'Over here,' Snake said, stepping to a bit of wall where there was no furniture to impeded them. 'We'll pull the table over for the paints.'
Jake walked to the wall, and Salvatore followed. The big man turned, and held the bit of canvas up against the wall.
'How high is good?' he asked.
Salvatore took a step closer and held up his right arm, as if he had a brush in it. He let his finger fall against the center of the canvas.
'It is perfect,' he said.
Jake nodded. He held one corner of the canvas to the wall. Snake stepped up and placed a nail against the canvas, then drove it home with shiny metal hammer. Jake moved to the other side and lifted the canvas until it lay flat against the wall, and Snake pounded in a second nail. Then he did the same for the two bottom corners. The canvas was nearly four feet wide and another three tall.
Salvatore stood in front of it and stared at the white empty space. He closed his eyes, and summoned that other place…that dark place with its impossibly tall walls, the ocean waves crashing, and the moon silver gray behind banks of clouds. The sound of the table's legs squeaking on the floor brought him back, but his mind remained in a fog.
'It's time,' Martinez said.
'Time?' Salvatore answered. 'Time for what?'
Martinez unrolled the tube of red paint. He turned to Salvatore.
'It will be red. Is that not true?'
Salvatore nodded.
'This is special paint,' Martinez went on. 'All of the colors that I mixed for you are special but this…'
He turned and stroked the tube of paint, gazing at it thoughtfully.
'This is something more,' he said at last. 'This is a very special hue, a color named for one of the elements. They call it the Rojo Fuego.'
'Fire red,' Jake said softly. 'That means Fire Red.'
Martinez nodded. 'Exactly.' He turned to Snake. 'We should leave him now. There isn't much time left.
Salvatore was about to protest, to tell them that he had plenty of time, and that he didn't mind them being there, but he couldn't quite drag his mind out of that other, darker place. He heard a sound, like the steady beating of great wings. He thought, maybe, that Snake had said something more, or possibly Jake…but he could make out none of the words.
He turned back to the canvas, and a moment later he had a piece of charcoal in his hand. He made the first stroke of dark black outline on the pristine white, maybe the second, and then it faded. The walls stretched up before him, endless and unbroken, and the tide rushed in at his back. There were no stars.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There were more dragons in the sky than Salvatore had ever seen at one time. They dipped in and out of the clouds, dove toward the water and soared over the walls of the dark city. He stepped across damp stones to the wall, and turned right, as he had on his previous visit. This time, something had changed.
Ahead he saw something jutting from the sand, turned perpendicular to the wall. At first he couldn't make it out, but as he approached, he saw that it was an easel. He'd never owned an easel, and he'd only seen them through the windows of art supply stores, but he knew what it was. He stepped closer, and saw that there was a small round-topped table beside it, it's legs embedded in the damp sand.
The moonlight was bright, and the canvas on the easel shone brightly in the silver light. Salvatore stepped closer. The shadow of something immense passed overhead, and he shivered. He glanced up, but was too slow. The very tip of a serpentine tail disappeared into the clouds above, just as they floated across the face of the moon.
He ran his fingers over the canvas. The charcoal outline he'd begun was there. The canvas was stretched tightly over a frame, not nailed to a wall as he'd first seen it, but there was no doubt the basic form was Snake's dragon.
On the table, Salvatore saw the palette, the three tubes of paint, and the small chunk of charcoal. He took the charcoal and turned to the canvas. The shadow returned overhead, but he ignored it. He drew a sweeping line, and the connection between his fingers and the canvas, the painting and the dragon snapped into place.
His hand flew across the canvas, only lightly touching as he filled in the outline and created the course his brush would follow. He heard waves crashing on the beach behind him. It felt and sounded closer than he remembered it. It seemed as if any moment salt spray would drop across his shoulders and dampen the ends of his hair where it brushed his collar in back. He thought it might splash the canvas as well, but that was the only thing he could see clearly, and there were no invading droplets.
Above him, the dragons continued their wild dance through the clouds, but he ignored them. He knew that any one of them could have dropped from the sky and smashed the easel, the canvas, and his small body to the ground. He felt that they would not — or that they could not — that they were in some way bound by the work itself. He also knew that if he pulled back, faltered, or allowed anything to truly distract him, he would forsake that bond, and that protection.
When the outline was complete, he set the charcoal aside. In that instant, just before he took up the brush, there was a violent rush of wind. He stood his ground and dipped the brush into the red paint. The silence was
