“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Fantastic!” I said. “But I’ve felt that way ever since we’ve been back together. Just being able to talk to you again is more magical than dragon’s blood.”
“Maybe you won’t notice any changes to your body until we get back to the real world,” she said, studying my bruised frame with a critical eye.
“That’s probably how it works,” I said, hoping it was true.
She sat down on the she-dragon’s log-like foot and began to cut the lower edges of my cape into strips with the knife. She wrapped her feet in the thick velvet, forming what could have passed as ballerina slippers. They looked surprisingly functional; Infidel had a lot of experience improvising with clothing. She took what remained of my shirt, tore off the shredded sleeves, and wore it like a tunic, cinching it at the waist with a belt made from the braided sleeve rags.
I dressed while she worked, slipping my boots back on. Since I was shirtless, I decided I’d wear what was left of the cape. I brushed off the twigs and leaves, and noticed a snarl of long, tangled hair. I looked at it closer, unable to tell if it had come out of my scalp or hers, and finally decided it was a little of both. Inspired by the intertwined fibers, I began to wrap the long strands around my little finger, tucking and twisting them until I formed a small braided ring. It barely fit on my little finger. I braided another, slightly larger. I finished my efforts just as she jumped down from the log.
I dropped to one knee before her and took her hand.
“I don’t know if this counts, since there’s no church, no priest, and, alas, no wedding cake. But, my parents never got married, and I want our daughter to grow up respectable. So, Infidel, with this ring, I thee wed, if you’ll have me.”
I paused before I slipped the smaller hair ring onto her finger, looking into her face. Her eyes were wet as she nodded and said, “I do.”
The ring fit perfectly; the silver in her hair and the gray in mine even gave it a bit of sparkle. “It’s not exactly gold and glorystone,” I said.
“It’s far more precious,” she whispered, pulling me close. I handed her the larger ring. She slipped it onto my finger.
At this point, I should probably switch to another interlude in the material world, but, alas, there really wasn’t anything interesting going on there. So I’ll just skip ahead to the part where we got dressed again.
She finished binding up her slippers as I finished fixing the clasp on my cape. She tossed me the bone-handled knife, which I stuck in my belt, then went to grab the Jagged Heart.
“Wow,” she said, lifting it, a bit off balance. “It’s kind of heavy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I should probably carry it. You carry the knife.”
“Nah. Even if I don’t have supernatural strength, I still have more experience jabbing holes in things than you do.”
“Conceded.”
She looked toward the caldera. “You’re certain the world will be destroyed if we don’t do this?”
“I’m not certain of anything. But Zetetic thinks it’s a real possibility.”
“Yeah, but he’s, you know, a Deceiver. He’s got the tattoo on his forehead and everything. What if he’s tricking us into doing something awful?”
“I don’t have an answer for that. But what’s our alternative?”
She shrugged, but still didn’t look eager to tramp up the slope.
“We have the best reason of all for doing this,” I said. “Assuming you’re pregnant, I don’t want my daughter being born in the land of the dead. For her sake, we have to get you home safely, and we have to make sure that there’s still a world left for us to raise her in.”
Infidel nodded as she pressed her lips together in a look of grim determination.
“Let’s go find this oversized iguana and get out of here,” she said, marching up the slope, the harpoon resting on her shoulder like a soldier’s pike.
The peculiar geography of this corner of the afterlife meant we didn’t have far to go. Barely a hundred yards passed before we pushed through a wall of thorny brush onto a steep rocky ridge that led to the caldera. We advanced arm in arm, in part because it’s the way lovers like to walk, and in part because we were each having trouble walking individually. My ankle still hurt like hell and Infidel was leaving bloody footprints from where thorns had punched through her satin shoes. Not to mention, we were both tender and chaffed and raw. In places.
As we limped our way past the lip of the caldera, we looked down over a field of black rock, dotted with vents of steam. In the center of this barren landscape there was what looked to be the remains of the world’s largest bonfire, a half-mile-long hill of soot-covered coals and glowing embers wreathed in a skin of pale blue flames.
The bonfire crackled with sparks as we approached. There was a peculiar rumble, low and rhythmic, that I had difficulty identifying. Then, Infidel grabbed my shoulder and pulled my ear down to lip level. She whispered, softly, “Is that fire snoring?”
I nodded. Of course it was snoring. This was Greatshadow’s spirit and it was asleep. Infidel always crashed into a corpse-like slumber after a tough battle. Greatshadow probably did the same.
Our eyes locked. Would it really be this easy? Did we just have to sneak up on an exhausted dragon and punch the Jagged Heart between his eyes?
Infidel placed her hand on the back of my neck. She tilted her face to meet mine and gave me a long, lingering kiss. In the aftermath I stared at her, moon-eyed. There was frost in her long platinum locks. Her breath came out as mist. And her eyes, her eyes glistened like deep and mysterious pools in a cavern as she said, softly, “Trust me.”
I nodded. There was never any doubt. My fate, her fate, the fate of our daughter, the fate of all mankind: I surrendered them willingly into her hands.
She motioned for me to wait where we stood, a good fifty yards from the smoldering flames, as she lowered the harpoon to attack position and crept forward. I held my breath as she inched closer, my eyes flickering from her to the slumbering dragon. Now that I understood the true nature of the flaming hill before us, it was easy to make out the dragon’s long neck and ship-sized head. Infidel was marching straight toward his mouth.
Thirty feet away, she knelt, placing the harpoon on the ground before her.
“Greatshadow,” she said, in a very loud voice. “Wake up.”
She didn’t reach for the Jagged Heart as enormous eyes flickered open, great orbs glowing like furnaces, to focus on her with a hate-filled stare.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“You’ve been sent to kill me,” said Greatshadow, smoke rising from his jaws. His teeth looked like ash-covered logs glowing with internal fires.
“Yes,” said Infidel, still kneeling, her head bowed low. “But I’m not going to. I don’t wish to hurt you.”
“Yet you’ve brought the accursed Heart to my elemental realm. Merely looking upon it causes my soul to weaken. You must know the agony it brings me.”
Infidel shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t personally bring the harpoon here, though I was told it could hurt you. I confess, however, I don’t really understand why.”
The ashen heap that was once the most feared dragon in the world turned his enormous head away, so that the Jagged Heart was no longer within his line of sight.
“It’s a part of her,” he sighed, his voice crackling like a campfire stirred by a breeze. “Long ago, before we dragons entangled our souls with the elements, we were mortal creatures. Like all beasts, the most important goal of our lives was to mate. Unlike other beasts, we dragons prided ourselves on the spiritual nature of our relationships. We weren’t mere animals, puppets of our instincts and lusts. We based our coupling on refined courtships that ensured that we were perfectly paired: mentally, spiritually, magically, and physically.”
“I was told that you and Hush were lovers?”