She glanced up at him, her eyes deep wells of hurt, and he wanted to say something, to tell her he was sorry, that he loved her for all the things that she was, but the words were all knitted into the pain and he held silence.
A grim smile twisted her lips. “It appears to be the way of things,” she said. “Neither of us can argue with fate.”
A glimmer of hope lit Weston’s eyes. “I thought you couldn’t shift.”
“I can shift. The question is whether I will remember that you all are my friends and allow you to ride.”
“Or try to roast us,” Weston said.
“The question really is,” Zee said, speaking the truth they were all avoiding, “whether the shift will kill you.”
“There’s no other option. This goes so far beyond my life, or yours, that they don’t even weigh in the balance. We need to reach the Gates. We need to stop her. You saw what the dream stuff does—I don’t even want to think about what will happen if that leaks into Wakeworld somehow. Grab Poe, somebody, and step back. There’s not a lot of room for the shift.”
Zee needed to say something, to hold her, to press his lips against hers, but was blocked by memory of his betrayals. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and keep her there, safe and sheltered. But he couldn’t protect her from what faced them, and much as he loved her, she deserved the right to choose the manner of her death.
“Weston, stuff my clothes in your pack, will you, so I’m not naked on the other side?”
“Vivian, there must be another way—”
“There’s not. You know there’s not. Please don’t make this harder than it is.”
She turned her back on them then and began to undress. Zee meant to look away, but his eyes lingered on the smooth curve of her back, the fall of her hair, the long lean legs; he had painted her so many times from dream that he knew the curves intimately. He had always hoped there would come a day when he would be given leave to explore them in the real world, but that was not to be.
Folding the clothes in a neat little pile, she turned and retraced her steps up the path, her white body almost like flame in the gloom. She stopped in a wide space, spread her arms wide, and closed her eyes.
This too, Zee had seen in dream, the shift from woman into dragon. It had hurt him every time, but he had earned the pain, it was all he deserved, and he forced himself to watch as her body bulged and changed and transformed at last into the green-gold dragon.
“Vivian,” Zee called out to her, remembering that she must be named to be held to herself. He had no right to name her, to hold her, and yet it must be done.
“Vivian,” he said again, softer now, noticing the blood that gushed from an unhealed wound between foreleg and belly.
“Vivian,” he whispered, because his voice was breaking, but she must be called three times.
Weston came to stand beside him. “It won’t heal. Not ever. We’ll need to hurry before she grows too weak to fly.”
Zee wanted to protest, to insist that she change back now, at once. But her words came back to him—this goes beyond my life, or yours. And so he said only, “How shall we climb aboard? I think the tail, yes?”
“If we can get there—we’ll have to climb those rocks to reach it . . .”
But the dragon lowered its head to the ground, making a small flameless snort. Vivian, Zee reminded himself, not some stupid beast. She could hear and understand. “Or, we get up this way.” He scooped up Poe and stepped onto the broad skull, holding to one of her horns for balance. The head lifted like an elevator until her long neck was level with her body, and Zee walked it like a plank and settled himself at its base. The scales were smooth and hard as stone, sharp edged. They could cut you if you weren’t careful, but he was taken aback by the jewel-like brilliance of their color. He’d been too busy killing dragons to much notice the beauty of their scales.
Weston settled beside him, the raven on his shoulder. The dragon wings unfurled and beat once, twice. A thrust into the air as she pushed off with all four feet, and then the wings were lifting them all, carrying them out and above the river, heading for the dim light that offered hope of an exit.
Zee felt the pull of the river at once. It sucked them down in a sickening plunge, like a glider on a downdraft. The dragon beat her wings harder to gain altitude and carry them back aloft. A foot she gained, two, but no matter how hard she labored she could do no more.
They flew about a stone’s throw above jagged rocks thrusting up out of the water, spray tossing so high into the air that he could feel it against his face. It slicked the scales beneath him, so that between the slipperiness and the pull of the river it was a battle to hold to Poe and keep his place.
Out of the corner of his eye Zee saw Weston begin to slide. The old man scrabbled with both hands on the dragon’s back, trying to find purchase. There was nothing else to hold on to, no friction. Zee flung out a hand, but he was too late and too far. With a cry, the old Dreamshifter slid away into empty air.
An answering cry from the dragon echoed through the cavern. Her wings stopped beating and folded back, and she plunged downward after the falling man. The river rushed up toward them, rock spikes reaching, seeking. Weston was going to crash, and the rest of them immediately after.
Zee braced himself, wondering if it was possible to survive that foaming stretch of water without being impaled or beaten to death on the rocks. A small jolt, and then the wings were working again, faster and harder, straining to lift up and away from the rocks. Cautiously peering downward, Zee saw Weston dangling just above the water, his backpack snagged in a dragon claw.
One of the straps snapped, and the Dreamshifter’s body jolted again toward the long fall. He flipped around and grabbed hold of the pack with both arms, clinging.
Zee stared, horrified, at what lay ahead.
There was no way they were going to make it.
The river dropped off in a falls that plunged a thousand feet into a swirling cauldron of foam and spray. Glimpses of stone teeth emerged and vanished again in the ever-shifting waves and white water. Beyond the falls, at the far side of the cauldron, a narrow ledge intersected the cliff. A faint light filtered in through a small opening in the stone—just big enough that a man might crawl through it flat on his belly.
No dragon would ever fit through that gap, nor was there room for her to land on the ledge. There was nowhere else for her to go, except back, and she would never make it. She was weakening, each wing beat more difficult and desperate than the last.
The cliff came at them with dizzying speed, and Zee knew they were too low to catch the ledge. He felt her intensify the effort, the great wings straining, beating harder and faster, gaining a few inches at a time. She had to see it, had to know there was no way there was room for her to set down there. Maybe the switches between human and dragon had disoriented her and she couldn’t see.
Zee braced himself as well as he could for the crash, clutching Poe, ready to roll or leap or whatever had the slightest chance of bringing them to safety. But at the last instant the wings curved and checked. The dragon swerved. Momentum pushed Zee sideways with too much force for his tentative hold on the slick scales. Across the wide back, into the air over the wing, fingernails scraping for an instant at the last hope of gaining a hold. Then he was flying, the tumultuous water reaching up for him from below, on an arc that carried him onto the ledge with a crushing jolt that squeezed the air from his lungs and left him dizzy and winded.
Unable to draw a breath or so much as lift a finger to intervene, he saw the dragon roll in the air so that her talons were extended upward, still grasping Weston by the strap of his pack. He clung to it with both arms, embracing it as salvation, his beard and hair wild and windblown. Another roll, a twist of dragon legs, and Weston was dislodged and barrel rolling through the air toward the ledge, still clutching the pack to his chest.