A warm breeze rushed over the top of the ridge sending the women’s hair flying in a tangle around their faces. The wind rushed down the slope, rippling through the grass in waves and crashing into the dark cloud in the lemon grove. The whistling wind tore the dust and smoke away from the trees in brown and black streams of filth to reveal the broken trunks, shredded leaves, and smashed lemons of the grove.
And in the center of the devastation coiled an enormous golden dragon.
Asha stared.
The creature slithered like a viper, its body as thick as a horse’s, its flesh armored in golden scales, its back bristling with red spines, and it dashed over the earth on four powerful legs, each planted upon four crimson claws. Its head was twice the length of a horse’s with eyes flashing like rubies, its silvery fangs shining behind thick white whiskers, and its skull crowned with two long golden antlers tipped with bloody horns.
Asha’s eye traveled the length of the monster from its steaming nostrils to its flailing tail, following the curves of its body around shattered trees and over motionless bodies from one side of the grove to the other, the length of two dozen horses, at least.
The dragon nosed through the field of death, snorting and hissing as the black vultures swarmed around it. Two men were crawling away toward the grass and a lone horse was gasping and screaming as it lay on its side, kicking and thrashing. The golden beast slithered forward to crush the men beneath its claws and with its shining fangs it tore the head from the panicking horse. Then the dragon lifted its head and roared at the first pale stars in the night sky.
3
Asha lashed her horse into a frenzied gallop up the road to the top of the ridge, and all the while she watched the golden demon writhing through the splintered trees and crushed corpses as the faint scent of lemons filled the night air. At the top of the slope she paused to be certain the beast wasn’t following them, and then looked out across the darkened plain to the pale gray walls of Damascus. But before she set out, her gaze fell on the little village nearby among the olive trees.
“It wasn’t a machine, was it?” Priya clung to Asha’s waist.
“It’s a dragon. A real live dragon. A huge golden dragon.”Asha blinked. “We have to warn those people down there.”
The dragon roared again and Asha turned to see the serpentine demon gazing up at her, its bright ruby eyes glinting in the starlight. It coiled its tail beneath its lithe haunches, and then it sprang up the hillside.
“Hya!” Asha whipped the horse into a gallop and they dashed off of the road, racing along the peak of the ridge running south into the wilderness, away from Damascus and away from the village among the olives.
They had barely traveled a hundred paces before the dragon slithered up to the crest of the ridge and screamed as an eagle screams before it strikes. Over her shoulder Asha saw the beast gathering the length of its body, scrambling with its small clawed legs to climb up the road.
The deep thrumming sound in her right ear roared louder, a sound so penetrating and inescapable that she clutched her hand to the side of her head, pressing hard against her ear, hoping beyond reason to shield herself from the elemental vibration of the dragon’s soul. But it was everywhere. It shook the earth and hummed through the air and thundered in her skull.
For a moment the dragon gazed down on the flickering yellow lights of the village, and Asha felt a sharp pain seize her breath as she watched. “I’m sorry, Priya,” she whispered. She reined the horse in a circle and shouted, “I’m right here, you filthy snake!”
The dragon’s huge head spun to face her, its brilliant red eyes wide and staring.
“Here he comes!” Asha turned the terrified horse back around and raced off into the darkness along the hilltop ridge as the golden beast hissed and leapt after them. Its long scaled bulk slipped and slid as it surged along the sharp ridge crest, slowing its progress, but the horse had only a short lead and Asha could feel the dragon’s soul drawing closer with every beat of her heart.
The peak of the hilltop began to level out and slope down again, so Asha turned left through the tall grass and plunged into the darkness of the valley. Ahead she could see a field of boulders and a moment later she heard the crunch and clatter of gravel beneath her horse’s hooves.
And then the horse slipped.
Its rear hoof shot out from under them on the loose stones and the animal dropped to the ground. But even as it began to roll onto its side, whinnying and screaming with its other three legs thrashing the earth, Asha pulled her legs up, clasped her hand over Priya’s arms around her waist, and jumped. She lifted both of them free of the horse as it crashed and slid down the slick grass and loose pebbles, vanishing into the darkness. The women landed on the hard earth on a thin bed of grass, and instantly Asha was scrambling to stand up. Priya groaned and Jagdish squeaked in the darkness. And high on the ridge above them, silhouetted by the stars, rose the golden dragon’s head.
Asha yanked Priya to her feet and they ran together into the boulders, ducking and sliding and feeling through the shadows with outstretched hands to find their way in the dark. Shadows and starlight conspired to paint the world in grays and silvers, twisting the shapes and outlines of everything nearby. But Asha spotted a sliver of darkness deeper and blacker than the others and she pushed the nun into it.
“Is this a cave?” Priya scrambled forward on her hands and knees. “Maybe you should go first.”
“It’s a very dark cave, so you can see as well as I can in there.” Asha knelt at the entrance to the hole listening to her horse snorting and crying and kicking somewhere below them. But beneath those noises boomed the deeper sound of the dragon’s soul and the endless shushing noise of the dragon’s belly sliding down the hill after them.
When Priya had disappeared into the cave, Asha ducked in after her and crawled back along the cold earthen floor. She could hear the nun’s labored breathing echoing just ahead of her, and she occasionally encountered a well-worn sandal with her fingers.
“Asha, there’s an open space here,” Priya said. “I can stand up.”
The herbalist crawled down the last little bit of the tunnel and found Priya’s hands waiting for her. She stood up beside her friend in utter darkness and quickly explored their new shelter with her hands. It was a small chamber, but it appeared to be solid stone on all sides. “Good. Hopefully, we’ll be safe in here for a while.”
“Do you think the dragon will go back toward the city?”
“It might if it… Oh. Oh no. It’s not going anywhere.” Asha flattened out on the floor of the cave and squinted back up the tunnel, trying to spot a glimpse of the starry sky. “I’m sorry, Priya. I shouldn’t have come in here with you. I only just realized it.”
“Realized what?”
A violent shudder ran through the earth and the stone cavern crackled and groaned all around them.
“The dragon out there.” Asha pressed her hand to her right ear, but the booming and ringing carried on, filling her head with a terrible wet scratching sound that felt like a talon clawing at her brain. “That dragon is the same one that bit me when I was a girl. It’s no accident that it’s here now. It’s been following us, following me, hunting me all the way from Ming.”
“It still wants you? After all this time?”
Asha shook her head in the darkness. “It doesn’t want me. It wants the drop of its soul that it left in my ear.”
4
The cave walls and floor continued to rumble and quake from time to time, and gradually the air in the chamber warmed and stank of dead horse.
“It’s up there at the mouth of the cave,” Asha said. “It knows I’m here now. It must be lying out there, watching the exit, breathing its stench into the tunnel.”
