of his meager weight. He slid into his boat.
For a few moments, both regarded each other warily, she from the safety of the water and he crouched behind the thin hull of his boat.
Chorael finally turned to move away when the shivering man rose from his squat and said in a shaky voice, 'You saved me.'
'Yes,' Chorael finally answered.
'But I thought that-' he started and she cut him off.
'That we are monsters?' she asked. 'I could say the same about you. It's what I heard.'
She turned some more but the human called out to her, 'Gregoire. My name is Gregoire. Do you have a name?'
Chorael was growing a bit exasperated and started to reevaluate her decision to help him. Having found his voice, the human seemed determined to use it. She realized it had been better when he had been retching water and silent.
'You couldn't pronounce it even if I told you,' she said. 'Now, you have enough to tell your tavern cronies tonight. I wish you good fortune and good even.'
'Is there any way I can thank you?' he asked.
Chorael looked him over, from his tunic and pants, which upon closer inspection were of a finer weave than many fishermen sported, to his small boat that also looked slightly sturdier and more solid the most fishing vessels on the lake.
'You have nothing that I would desire in payment.'
She started to swim away from the tiny boat slowly, so as not to capsize it and dump the hapless human into the water for a second time. He called out to her again.
'Are you sure?' he asked.
Chorael was torn between entering the soothing darkness of the depths and her growing curiosity with the man who didn't seem to want her to leave. Her curiosity finally overcame her desire to leave and she circled back to him. She could see that he was carefully coiling up a line from the water. A sharp tug from that line might have been why he'd found himself in the lake.
'There is one thing,' she told him.
'Anything,' he replied eagerly, excited she had returned.
'Tell your brothers to leave us in peace,' she replied and hoped that her request, coupled with the fact that she had saved him, would negate any desire he or his friends might have to capture one of her kind in the future.
'Of course,' he agreed and continued to coil up his line.
Chorael cocked her head some at the sight of it. It struck her as odd that the line was thicker than most she had seen and realized it was almost like rope.
Too heavy for fishing, she thought.
Then it struck her that he seemed slightly out of place as a fisherman, clothes and gear just a bit too fine. And he had been so eager to talk to her when most might have been just too stunned by their near-death to say a word. Almost as if he was distracting her.
She quickly scanned the waters for any other vessels, fearing a trap. But she couldn't see any other boats anywhere else on the water. With a sinking dread she realized that she was not the prey that night, but something else was: her eggs.
Without another word, she plunged into the water and swam furiously back to where she had laid her clutch. Chorael once again pulled her lumbering body across the sandy bank. She didn't need to go much farther. In the bright moonlight, there was no mistaking the desecration that lay in front of her.
Her carefully buried mound had been haphazardly dug up and her eggs unearthed. All but one was gone and the one that remained was hopelessly ruined. Whoever had dug them up had been careless and crushed part of the egg underfoot. Nutritional fluid bled over the sand and Chorael could see the undeveloped head of her child peek through the broken shell. She crawled over slowly, her body shaking of its own volition.
With a trembling claw, she reached out as though to caress the skull of her only remaining child. As she did so, Chorael realized that the human had been a decoy, meant to lure her away from her eggs. That was why he had the line, so that he could pull himself out of the water as she had approached him. Maybe he had figured that she would attack him, but had been caught unaware by her actions. Or maybe the cold had simply affected him more than he had anticipated. She didn't know and she didn't care. All she knew was that he had stolen her future from her.
With one final glance at her baby, Chorael hissed, 'And I helped him!'
She scrambled back into the water and tore after Gregoire like something possessed. And as she bore down on his tiny vessel, Chorael felt something alien grow inside of her. Her white-hot anger burned even brighter and seemed to be stoked by an other-worldly force. Vaguely, she wondered if it was the Rage that she had heard of and realized if it was, she no longer cared.
Chorael saw the outline of the human's small boat above her and she pushed straight up toward it, building momentum with each stroke. First her head and her upper body burst through the bottom of the vessel and she briefly saw Gregoire. She thrashed her head and torso from side to side, and the tiny ship was torn asunder as though an explosion had ripped through it. Chorael, diving back under, swam in a slow, deliberate arc, sweeping her clawed hands through the dark water. With measured strokes, she circled back to the boat and her fate.
Little remained of the vessel after her fierce onslaught. Rising up from the depths, she easily pushed her way through the flotsam that bobbed and bounced along the lake's surface. Like fallen leaves, the splintered timbers and planks were simply an annoyance to her and not even noticeable as they slapped and smashed against her blue- green carapace. Her keen eyes were fixed on one target alone and it filled her vision, bounced back and forth, echoing off of her lenses until it was all that she could see. Swimming in a broken fashion, Gregoire was not even a league away. Chorael smelled his blood in the water and nothing had ever seemed as sweet to her as that moment did. She savored it, reveled in it and she felt the Rage grow stronger. Every stroke she made pushed her old life farther and farther away. She no longer resisted it, but let the fires grow, burning her up from within, melting her cold heart and finally consuming it.
The dragon turtle bore down on the hapless hunter like an avenging angel. He turned in her direction and Chorael could see that he knew he was doomed. All else was lost to her but the single man floating in front of her, leading the way like some glowing beacon. Chorael cut through the waves deftly and she imagined what sounds he would gurgle when she sank her sharp, beaklike mouth into his vulnerable torso. They would be music to her, no matter what. She sped forward.
As she neared the betrayer, the man who raided her nest, Chorael did not see that his comrades-inarms, those who had actually removed her eggs, had — launched boats of their own and had circled back around. Moving quickly in two separate vessels, they flanked the dragon turtle. Normally, her sharp vision would have picked them out easily even if the moonlight hadn't have been so bright. The double lenses in her eyes allowed light and images to bounce back and forth within the occipital chamber and grow more intense. But the Rage had gripped Chorael and the only other image she saw besides the hunter barely treading water was the image of her defiled nest; the broken shells and shattered dreams. She had no idea that her own death was so near at hand.
Unlike his boat, the ships of his cohorts were well equipped for dragon hunting. As Chorael bore down on Gregoire, his assistants launched spears and harpoons into the air. Chorael, consumed with vengeance, didn't see them and made no move to dodge them. One after another of the iron tipped lances struck her carapace, piercing the tough shell. Somehow, the hunters managed to pull her back and stop her inches from Gregoire.
Chorael, denied her vengeance, reared up and thrashed madly against the tethers. Chorael released a spew of burning steam but disorientated and lost in her bloodlust, struck no one. She screamed out and the sound echoed off the lake for miles and miles around. Every other living thing grew silent at the sound of her death throes. The water grew slick with her blood and Chorael grew weaker and weaker. As her outer lids grew heavy, she turned to face Gregoire. The last sight she saw was his fearful face bathed in a red haze. Then her eyes closed forever and her lifeless body bobbed between the two boats like a marionette.
Dargo's eyes were not made for tears. Even if he had been capable, they would have been dwarfed by the lake itself and lost all meaning. Still, in his heart, he wept for Chorael and the final fate that had been served so undeservedly to her. She had merited better, though even he had warned her of the folly of aiding the damned
