owner hidden from view.
“Nethys!” Asha shouted over the swooping, swooshing noises of the wings and the flying dust. “Nethys, stop!”
But she didn’t stop. Nethys screamed a single word that sounded like “No!” and she raised her winged arms above her head in a great v-shaped salute. For a moment, the dust drifted apart, revealing the body of the immortal woman draped in a filthy, stained dress. Her face was thin with a small nose and thin lips and narrow eyes, making everything about her expression seem angry and cruel.
Asha pushed off the wall and straightened up, curling her ruby claws into a fist. “Nethys! Go back! Leave now! I don’t wish to hurt you!”
The Aegyptian woman looked at her for a moment, and then swept her feathered arms down in one great stroke, hurling herself into the air and across the room toward the work table beside Asha. Nethys landed with a crash, sweeping her massive wings once for balance and showering Asha with dust and tiny pebbles that clattered against her armored skin and the wall behind her like a hail storm.
Asha raised both arms to shield her face and through the narrow crack between her golden hands she saw Nethys hook her bare feet around the bar of sun-steel on the table, and leap into the air.
“No!” Asha dashed across the table and leapt after her. With the power of the golden dragon in her legs, she shot upwards and grabbed Nethys by the ankles as the immortal winged her way above the roofs. Asha grabbed the bar of sun-steel in one clawed hand and strained against the winged woman’s legs, but she couldn’t break Nethys’s hold on the bar.
The immortal Aegyptian beat the air with powerful strokes, and Asha had to cling with both hands to keep from being blown free as they both rose higher and higher above the houses, above the harbor, and soon above the bright sparkling waves of the Middle Sea. Each time Asha reached out for the bar of sun-steel, Nethys would twist and flap and shake, threatening to drop the golden woman into the water far below.
Asha glanced down once at the distant waves and felt a faint vertigo. She had been in many high places in her life. Fortress towers, royal pagodas, and even tiny shrines high in the mountains. But always with her feet flat on the ground. Now she hung in empty space, staring down past her useless, swinging legs, and felt the yawning void between herself and the world below. The emptiness of that space, the alien sensation of having nothing at all below her, sent a cold shudder down her spine.
In that moment, all traces of her self-righteous or vengeful anger evaporated and her dragon skin vanished, leaving her soft and brown and weak. Her calloused fingers slipped off Nethys’s ankles and Asha fell. At first, there was nothing, no sense of movement, and she almost thought she was floating on the breeze. Then the wind began to tear at her thin yellow sari and her long black hair, whipping upward and beating her face as she tumbled end over end toward the sea.
The air roared in her ears as her clothes and hair buffeted her skin. She caught one brief glimpse of Nethys high above her, already so high that she almost looked like a bird gliding among the clouds, and then she was gone, lost in the glare of the sun.
Asha saw the earth and the water tumbling upward to meet her, flashing blue and green and blue, over and over again. The sunlight shone on the waves, and the city appeared as a white blur of stone walls and dusty roads. Only the massive lighthouse had any real shape to her, and even it was distorted by the wind and her dizzying fall.
I’m going to die. The moment I hit the water, I will die. Like a turtle dropped by an eagle, I will crack open and be no more. In just a moment now.
She clawed at the air, trying to stop the spinning and tumbling, trying to focus on either the earth or the sky, but they went on flying round and round her.
The tiny specks became tiny boats, and they became larger still, crewed by ants, and then by men. The wrinkled sheet of the ocean resolved into waves and foam.
Here it is.
Now.
Asha closed her eyes.
Death.
The dragon in her breast roared.
Asha arched her back in midair as a horrible burning sensation lashed across her skin from head to toe and she caught a brief glimpse of her skin shining with gold before her body struck the water. She crashed into the sea as immovable and as unfeeling as a stone, smashing through the surface with arms and legs outstretched, feeling almost nothing of the transition from air to water. Instantly the world was dark and cold, but muted and muffled as though she were locked inside a prison with thick stone walls, far from the light and heat of the sun, trapped in frigid shadows.
Above her, the tiny white sun shuddered and wavered beyond the surface of the sea, and huge columns of white bubbles swaddled her as they fluttered up toward the air. But the sky was not blue. It was red. Everything was red, except for the hot white sun and white fish, and the white men on the boats above her. She bent her arms and legs, feeling the heat in her armored skin, feeling the angry swishing of her tail behind her, feeling the weight of her horns on her head.
What passed through her mind was not as complex as thought, and barely as coherent as emotion. It was instinct. Rage at the flying creature that had escaped, rage at the cold sea that dragged down her limbs, hunger for the countless flashing fishes around her, and a wild joy at being free.
The dragon is free.
Asha swam with powerful strokes, her golden arms and ruby claws biting into the sea and sending her slicing through the cold water. She crashed into a school of silvery fish and torn them to pieces with her blazing claws, and then she darted up toward the sun. She burst through the surface and flashed through the empty air to crash back down on the pebbled beach at the edge of the harbor in the shadow of the great lighthouse. She looked up at the strange mountain of flat stone and saw the bright flashing jewel at its summit, and she longed to destroy it.
“Asha!”
The sound was familiar. Asha turned and saw a small white figure running toward her. A girl.
A morsel.
“Asha!”
Asha roared and turned toward the girl. The golden woman hunched forward, tightening the dense muscles of her arms and legs, twisting inward and bearing down with all of her power, feeling herself wound for the spring, for the strike, for the kill. She crooked her scaled fingers and felt the scorching heat in her claws, longing to sink them deep into hot flesh, to feel the blood flowing, to see the steam rising, to taste the burnt meat.
“Asha!”
That sound again.
Sound.
Word.
Name.
Tiny nascent thoughts began to form in Asha’s mind.
Things have names. I have a name. The girl has a name.
She straightened up and relaxed her hands, letting them fall to her sides.
The girl is not food. The girl is Bastet.
Bastet ran across the street and onto the narrow stone path that led down the side of the huge jetty on which stood the lighthouse. She waved and shouted, “Asha! Are you all right?”
Asha inhaled and exhaled, and tasted the hot stench of her own breath.
The dragon is everywhere. I must bottle it again. I must take refuge in the mountains and the sea. I take refuge in the forests and the rivers.
I take refuge-
“Asha, behind you!”
Asha spun, only partly guided by her understanding of the girl’s words and still fueled by the dragon’s hunger, and she saw the huge bird-woman race down toward her from around the side of the lighthouse.
Enemy. Kill.
The dragon sprang into the air and sank her burning claws into the bird-thing’s flesh. As she clung to the
