One

  Eddy and the Dragon

  Windston awoke soaked, sword in hand, drifting with waves in the dark. Something had nudged him, rolled him over so that he bobbed face-up. From that position, he blinked at the sky. Stars twinkled in gaps between long silver clouds.

  He was more than five-thousand miles from Ice Mountain, and the arrangement of the stars at least hinted at that. The absence of the red one all but confirmed it.

  Still, he couldn’t be sure just where he was. He could just as easily be on one of the three moons as anywhere else.

  More bumping at his side. It felt like pecking.

  It was a dolphin that had pecked him. Rather, she was a dolphin. She had just breached and peeked at Windston with an eye as shiny and glossy as her skin. Salty foam billowed around her as waves rinsed over her. He looked back at her in wonder.

  Hers was an unusual sight to see. Windston wasn’t altogether sure what a dolphin was. He had heard of them throughout his life, along with sharks and other things he’d never seen, like dragons.

  Whatever she was, she didn’t seem dangerous. She dipped under the water and pressed her head against the small of his back. She was nudging him along, gently, toward a distant shore.

  He rolled over and looked for her and she resurfaced beside him. She was staring at him. They were practically eye to eye.

  “Who are you?” he asked rhetorically, the way one asks a curious squirrel, or a nearby songbird, its name.

  But she said, “I'm Pinky,” all the same, bright and childlike.

  He had glanced up at the sky again, but looked back at her abruptly, his eyes wide, when she spoke.

  “What?” Pinky asked, alarmed.

  “You talk!” Windston exclaimed.

  Pinky laughed. “Duh,” she said. “I'm not a baby.” Her mouth was open in what he guessed was a smile, revealing tiny little teeth like the ridges on saws. “I’m three years old, you know.”

  “I just… didn't know fish could talk,” he said with a shrug.

  “They can?” she asked, looking around. “They never talk to me. They just swim really slow; and then they swim away really fast, like this,” she said; she darted away.

  There was a brief pause. Windston was just bobbing, and then he pulled his sword out of the water and looked at it. It was pale, dull and colorless. If he were to drop it, he’d probably never find it.

  She surfaced beside him with a splash and said, “Wait—are you calling me a fish?”

  Windston chuckled. “Are you not a fish?” he asked back. It was a reasonable question, all things considered.

  “No. I’m a dolphin. See?” she asked, adjusting her position so that she bobbed upright. “See?” she asked again, panting; it looked as though she was struggling to maintain the position, as if she was losing her balance. She fell horizontally in defeat and blew a big spray out of her blowhole. “Can a fish do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Windston admitted. “I guess you would know.”

  “I do. They can't,” she said. “Or, they don’t, so they probably can’t.” She lay supine in the water, kicking her tail up in the air; and now she was circling Windston, her little dorsal fin the only thing visible, and a bit of her shiny back.

  Windston looked around but it was too dark despite the moons, which made themselves known beyond passing clouds, to see much more than the shapes of waves. The waves he heard more than saw; what he did see, or thought he saw, was a large, looming shadow of what he guessed were a cluster of trees on land not too far south, the direction Pinky had pushed him.

  “Where am I?” Windston muttered quietly with a sigh.

  “The middle of nowhere. That’s what Penny says.”

  “Who’s Penny?”

  “My mommy.” The dolphin circled him again, rolled over so that he could see her shiny underbelly. “Well, she’s not really my mommy. But I call her Mommy, because she's like my mommy.”

  Windston shivered at the word, “Mommy;” but it could've been a genuine chill. He had been cold on the mountain, and then colder than that in space. Now he was all wet, and thought it was warmer here, it was gusty. “Is she… like you?” he asked.

  “A dolphin?”

  “I guess.”

  “No,” Pinky said. “She’s not a dolphin like me. She's a mermaid.”

  “What’s that?”

  There was a pause during which Pinky hummed, thinking. “Well, kind of like you, and kind of like me. She has a flat belly with a little tiny button on it, like you do. And her arms are like yours, and her hands. Sometimes, she has feet like you do. But her hair is long, and way prettier than yours is. And sometimes, when she goes swimming, she has a big, beautiful tail, like me.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yeah. See?” She lifted her tail from the water and splashed it about. “Only bigger and prettier. It’s wide and sparkly.” She let out an envious sigh. “She’s so pretty. I wish I was like Penny. But I’m just a little, baby dolphin.”

  Windston chuckled. “I think you’re just fine the way you are.” The truth was that Pinky was adorable, and even Windston, as a fifteen-year-old killer, could admit that.

  “Aw, thanks. But I do wish I could turn my tail into legs sometimes. Did you know that… well, I’ll just show you. Follow me.”

  Windston did. He saw that she was headed toward the island off in the distance and swam the backstroke behind her. She hummed as she went, and Windston thought it was as good a time as any to ask her the one thing he currently wondered most.

  “Hey, Pinky?”

  “What?”

  “Did you see how I got here?”

  Pinky nodded, eyeing him over her fin. “I took you here,” she said.

  “No, before that. How did I get into the water? I can’t remember.”

  “Oh, well, if you really wanna know,” she said, swimming circles around him again. “I think you were on a big pretty boat. And then you fell right off the side. Your family probably cried and cried, because they couldn’t save you. Maybe it was raining. So, you just got tired and fell asleep. While you slept, the waves carried you here. That’s when I found you.”

  Windston shook his head. “I haven't been on a boat in a long time, Pinky. It’s been years, I think.”

  “Oh. Well, then… I bet you fell right out of the sky.” She leaped very high. She seemed to hang in midair, squirming and kicking her tail, before dropping back in on her side in a fairly big splash, all things considered.

  “Why do you think that?” Windston asked when she resurfaced.

  “Because there was a great big splash, and I guess that was you.”

  Windston thought about the madman on Ice Mountain. He remembered being squeezed so tightly he couldn’t breathe. There was a rushing, deafening wind, a wind that ripped at him so intensely he couldn’t hold on. He just flopped in the madman’s iron grip. There was this intense pulling on his hair, clothes and skin as they flew, and he couldn't see where, as he couldn't keep his eyes open in what was a raging heat all around them. All was suddenly still and quiet. And cold. Colder than cold. Colder than Ice Mountain. He drifted weightlessly without breathing until he fell asleep.

  His bottom scraped against the ocean floor, jarring him out of the memory, and he realized he could crawl rather than swim now.

  “Look,” Pinky said. She was further ahead, on the island, half-beached. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t,” she said, squirming. “I can’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Walk,” she said. “See? I’m stuck. No hands, and no… feet.”

  Windston stood. He was suddenly very heavy, and all hollow inside as if starved. “You need help?” he asked anyway.

  “Uh-huh,” she groaned, wiggling side to side.

  As he knelt to help her, he closed his eyes and searched for nearby energies on the island. The only one that stood out gave him a brief scare as it seemed at first to be a tangerine. But it was more coral than orange, and far away, maybe a few hundred paces south. Further analysis revealed that it was all swirly rather than solid, so it couldn’t have belonged to Ember.

  Pinky swam free. She was out in the water doing flips and other tricks to show that she didn’t mind that she couldn’t walk.

  “But I do wish I could sometimes,” she was saying. “Because I wanna be just like her.”

  “Like Penny?” Windston guessed.

  “Uh-huh.”

  He looked up at the sky again. The clouds were clearing, but so were the stars up to the noon-point on the eastern side; though trees were in the way, the rim of the eastern horizon beyond the island was lit and growing brighter as sunrise approached.

  A light breeze whipped about, cooling his drenched body so that he briefly shivered. He suddenly thought of Frem, and then Bombo.

  “Do you want me to call them?” Pinky asked.

  “Who?” Windston asked, thinking she must be psychic.

  “Penny. Eddy. Anyone.”

  “Oh,” Windston said. He shook his head, said, “No. I bet they must be sleeping.”

  “Aw, that's so nice that you don’t want to bother them,” she said. “You must be such a sweetie.”

  Windston didn't say anything. He just smiled, though she couldn't necessarily see that about him.

  “Do you like me too?” she asked.

  “I do,” he said, nodding, but also looking around. “You’re a good dolphin.”

  She was waving her tail, and then she started rolling over and back, splashing a bit. “Did you know that if I go up to where you are, and stay there, I'll die?”

  Windston nodded. “I think I knew that.”

  “I'll dry out. Penny told me. And then I'll die because my body will be so thirsty.”

  “I hope that never happens.”

  “I won't let it,” she said. “I'm very careful. Look.” She squirmed her way forward a bit. “See? Doesn't it look like I'm stuck again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I'm not,” she said, grunting. “See, watch.” She slid back into the water.

  “That's good. You're really good at that.”

  “I know. It's because I practice.”

  There was rustling behind Windston coming from the growth of what he could now see in dim light was mostly palms and tall grass. Two figures approached, one around Windston’s height, the other a toddler.

  When she was only a few feet from Windston, the taller one spoke. She said, “Hey, Pink.” And then, “Who's your friend?”

  “I don't know. I found him out there in the water. He was sleeping.”

  “I'm Windston,” Windston said, leaning forward and extending his free hand; the other rested on the pommel of his sword, which stood upright, dim and blue, on its tip.

  “I'm Penny,” the girl said, but she ignored his hand.

  “Windston?” Pinky asked, swimming in circles. “That's a funny name.”

  Windston nodded. “It is,” he said, scratching at his hair with the hand Penny had ignored.

  “So is Pinky,” said Penny. “And so is Juju,” she said playfully to what Windston guessed was a little boy; she had picked him up and ruffled his short curly hair, which he could see clearly now in the rapidly brightening morning.

  “My name isn't funny,” the dolphin said. “It's my name because I'm pink!”

  “That's what makes it funny,” said Penny. She paused, sighed, said in a breath: “I wonder if Eddy knows.” Another pause. “…if he even noticed, brooding by the fire.”

  “Why is Eddy always brooding?” Pinky asked; and then she said, “What does brooding mean?”

  Penny sighed again.

  The sun had started its rise. The shore was lit in a silvery light, and one could really admire the breadth of the daunting expanse of open ocean north.

  Penny set Juju on his feet, and he took a step back to stare up at Windston. She sat on the sand, leaned back and grabbed her legs at the knees, and he climbed into her arms again, or tried to.

  “Were you on a ship?” she asked Windston.

  “No, I was….” But he paused as he didn’t know how to word what happened without sounding ridiculous.

  “He fell out of the sky,” Pinky said for him. “I didn't see him, but I sure did hear him.”

  “Yes,” Windston said, setting his sword beside him on the sand; both Juju and Penny eyed it. “I fell out of the sky somehow.” He shrugged.

  “How?” Pinky asked.

  “It’s a long story,” Windston said, and sighed.

  “Most who drift here have one,” Penny said. “Even little Juju, though we’ll probably never hear it. Where are you from?”

  “Zephyr,” he replied. When no one inquired further he said, “It’s a town in a flower forest in Gorals.”

  Shrugging, Penny said, “I think I've heard the name of Gorals, though I don't know where it is.”

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  “Probably everybody has heard of Gorals,” Windston said.

  “I don't know for sure that I have,” Penny replied coldly. “I only think that I remember the last boy Sassy found mentioned it.” There was a pause, and then Penny asked Pinky if she'd seen Sassy.

  Just then, there was a rustling from behind them. The coral-colored energy source headed their way. He was a boy that looked like he was around Windston's age, maybe a little older. He had something, a long board, under his arm.

  “Hey, Eddy,” Pinky said.

  Eddy waved once at Pinky, and said, “Sassy's out running away from that dragon.”

  Penny stood, alarmed. But Eddy didn't quicken his pace. The board he held was a surfboard, and he had gripped it in both hands and now walked directly under it as he held it overhead on his casual stroll to the beach.

  “No need to worry,” he said. “She's faster than that thing. She's just scared.”

  Penny said, “I hope you'll do more than just scare it off this time.”

  Eddy shrugged as he stepped into the water, a wave rising up to meet his ankles.

  “If you'd just kill it,” Penny continued, but she stopped when Eddy stopped and stared at her.

  “Kill it?” he asked. “Because it's hungry?”

  “Because it's a dragon that won’t go away.”

  He set his board down in front of him. “I don’t just kill things,” he said, sitting down on the board. With that, he slid chest-first further up the board and paddled out into the waves.

  Penny watched him speed off, and Pinky had gone out after him, only she couldn't keep up.

  “Where's Eddy going?” Juju asked.

  “To save Sassy,” she said.

  “Sassy?”

  She nodded, staring.

  Windston stared at her in the morning light. Now that he actually took the time to look at her, he noticed she was utterly beautiful. She had pink lips, alabaster skin and sparkling green eyes. Her hair was a sea-green color, and it flowed about her shoulders in what were light waves.

  “Up,” she said to Juju, helping him to his feet. “Come on,” she said to Windston. “I’m sure you’re hungry.”

  “I am,” Windston said. “And thirsty.”

  “There's water back home. And I'm making fish.”

  “Thank you,” he said, following her further into the sand. Beyond the hardened sand at the shore’s edge, powdery sand sank beneath his weight in ways he hadn't experienced before. There were beaches around Zephyr Lake, and they were sandy; but they were littered with sticks, petals, seeds, acorns and pinecones. This sand was softer, cleaner, and reacted as such.

  The sun hung over the eastern horizon now, a bright orange center in a rich pink sky streaked with purple clouds. Shadows stretched west so that, beneath the palms overhead and beyond, it was still dark.

  Deeper into the lush jungle covering the island, they found an expanse of open air. Little bamboo shacks stood along the perimeter, covered in grass and palm fronds. Most had reed curtains over the doorways, but one gaped open, its curtains parted, and Penny stepped inside for a bit. She returned with a flask in one hand, and a covered bowl in another.

  She handed Windston the flask and he drank like he hadn't drunk in days. With the bowl, she headed to the center of the expanse. Fronds lay draping the sand there at the very center. She removed them and smoke came billowing out in a swirling puff. After wrapping the fish in what looked like packages of grass, she lay them down atop smoldering stones and covered the hole again. When she uncovered the hole again some minutes later, and removed the contents with wooden tongs, a savory, salty aroma filled the air, further hollowing the pit of Windston’s empty stomach. What she plated up for him and the others was a fish based in tart sauce and wrapped in a stringy green vegetable. About it were chunky, starchy roots. They were a bit like potatoes, only sweeter, and then tart.

  There was enough for everyone.

  After they ate, she gave Windston a towel and told him to shut himself into one of the shacks to undress. He was to hang his clothes on a rack in there and sleep alone under a blanket he'd find with a pillow on a mat. He did as she suggested and dreamed peacefully past noon.

  When he awoke, it was warmer out, as the sun beat down from overhead and a bit to the west. Cool breezes came through the gaping windows and whistled through gaps in the ceiling grass. He hadn't realized how soaked with cold he'd been the days prior, but now that he was warm and cozy, it was obvious.

  Penny wasn't anywhere to be found around the shack. There were several groups of kids playing, all much younger than Windston. Adults milled about as well, with bundles and pots, or sat and focused on various projects. One woman smashed up roots while another wove a blanket. A man was there cracking open coconuts, and another several were toting a giant barrel he’d filled away from him. The adults were nothing like any of the children Windston had seen. They were short, black-headed, and with brown skin. They seemed none too interested in Windston, and when he noticed that he reciprocated the feeling.

  One of the kids scurrying about was Juju. He ran off for the beach and Windston followed him there.

  Penny was there, standing at the edge of the water, draped in a sheer white cloth. Under it was what looked like underwear. But as Windston headed closer, he noticed, to his shock, that it wasn’t—it was tan lines.

  Windston’s cheeks reddened, and he looked anywhere but at her as he approached her.

  She shaded her eyes, gazing out at sea, and paid him no heed.

  Nervously, he squatted next to her. She had been looking at Eddy, who paddled in on his board between Pinky and another dolphin, this one gray. Gulls hung all about, still against the wind. Their squawks were jarring, but the breeze they fought was nice.

  Juju was with two other children from the village. They were unusually tinted like Frem, and their skin matched their hair; the boy was pink with pink hair while the girl was blue with blue.

  Penny sighed and shut her eyes. Her hair, which was full and shiny and wavy and green, blew in a gust, and a flower she had picked and set in it flew out in the breeze, leaving only half a dozen more, all white, in the same spot over her left ear.

  “I guess Sassy is okay,” Windston said to break the silence.

  “For now,” Penny said. Her face was grim as she spoke, and she didn’t look at him.

  Windston wondered about the dragon but didn’t mention it. Instead, he stood silently with her and watched as the three approached.

  Eddy was a little shorter than Windston, but a little thicker too, with muscular limbs and a well-barreled chest. His hair was orange, short in the front, long in the back. And he was bronzed all over, somewhere between Windston and Bombo in terms of skin tone and wearing nothing but long green shorts.

  Sassy was a little bigger than Pinky, around four feet long, and a gray that was almost blue. She had a big gash over her right eye, a fresh one that leaked.

  “She's hurt,” Penny said.

  Eddy didn't say anything. He picked up his board and carried it at his side. The two dolphins came up to shore and parked there, looking up at Penny, who knelt down and examined Sassy's head.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Sassy started to cry, though it was hard to tell if any tears came out. “I was going home when the dragonfish started chasing me. It swam up from the weeds by Coral Reef. Before I could even do anything, it scratched me, so I swam as fast as I could. I was trying to get home but it got in my way everywhere. And then Eddy found me.”

  “What did he do to the dragon?”

  “He scared it.”

  Penny rolled her eyes.

  Sassy shook her head and continued. “I'm scared. I don't want to be here anymore. I wanna swim away, somewhere without dragonfishes.”

  “I know,” Penny said. “But there really isn't anywhere better to go. There are sharks, and orcas, and other dangers everywhere.”

  Sassy didn't say anything. She just bobbed there looking glum.

  Pinky didn't. She was smiling up at Windston.

  He looked at her and smiled back.

  “I like you,” she said. “You're my boy.”

  He didn't know what to say to that. Both Penny and Sassy looked at him, and he just sort of scratched his head.

  Windston hadn't noticed but Eddy was not too far behind him. He said, “You can't have a boy,” to Pinky. “You're a dolphin. You'll always be a dolphin.”

  “I don't want to be a dolphin anymore,” Pinky said. “I want to be a girl and marry Windston.”

  Eddy didn't look at Windston. He looked at Penny, who had been staring at him since he spoke. It looked like she was saying something without saying it. Her eyes were dense and steady, and Eddy averted his gaze soon after looking at her.

  “Windston,” he said.

  Windston looked at him.

  “You know how to use that thing?” he asked, gesturing at Windston's sword, which lay beside him.

  Windston nodded. “A little.”

  “Can you swim?”

  “I can,” Windston said.

  “Wanna come with me tomorrow morning?”

  “Okay.”

  “I didn't even say where.”

  Windston shrugged. “I don't care where.”

  Eddy nodded. “Kay,” he said, and he headed onto the trail in the brush toward their little village.

  The rest of the day, they swam and ate, talked, swam and ate. Penny did this thing where she went into the water and became covered in fish scales from the waist down. Her legs merged, and then she had a long dazzling fish tail where her feet had been. She swam much faster that way and could do tricks up and out of the water, like the dolphins. She seemed more at home in the water. She smiled a lot more and even laughed.

  Eddy had gone out for a surf just before evening. Penny swam out with him, and they argued for a bit as the sun set behind them. As she was coming in, she walked onto shore naked from the waist down. Windston saw her every line and curve in the suddenly bright light that shone from his sword behind him, and his cheeks were so flushed he thought she'd notice. But she didn't even look at him. She was visibly upset, and didn't seem to care who saw her.

  Later that night, the children and Penny sang around the fire. Windston was there too, but he didn't say much. The fire reminded him of the Wandman. He thought about the tricks he'd done at the Twins and wondered what they’d meant. Whereas the Heath’s had been obvious, his were more cryptic. He was a man of tricks and had perhaps used those tricks to misguide them into stumbling into the second Wandman. But more than anything else Windston wondered about the first Wandman, he wondered whether Clement had been the Wandman all along.

  He thought about Frem and Bombo. Whether they were okay or not wasn’t an easy riddle to solve. Clement had been there with them when Windston had been abducted. But that alone didn’t mean they were safe. In fact, it could very well mean they weren’t.

  Though by now they had met many a dangerous person, for whatever reason, Windston was convinced Clement from the tower, not the Heath, was the most dangerous person he’d ever met. There was something haunting about the calm in his eyes, the way he had so serenely looked at even the Madman, that led him to believe his power must surely dwarf even Agnessa Iadora’s.

  He looked up at the stars and sighed. There were so many out here, probably even more than out in the woods. At least, it was easier to see them all without a canopy of towering trees in the way. Still, there was no red star. Where could it be? And where was he?

  Penny started telling the children stories. She told them about the dinosaurs on Dino Island, reminded them that they must never go there, even when they grew up. She told them about the Great Current, how it sucks ships in and smashes them into rocks.

  “That's how we got you, and you, and you, and you, and you,” she said, smiling at each of them.

  “How did you get here?” Windston asked her in a blurt.

  She looked interrupted, and more or less had been. “What do you mean?”

  “You and Eddy. When did you come here?”

  “We've always been here,” she said. “We're from Coral City.”

  “Eddy too?” Windston asked. He suddenly felt weird prying and wondered why he had.

  She looked at him suspiciously. “Not originally. But he's spent so much time there he might as well be.”

  An edge in her voice told Windston to stop prying, and though he oddly felt the urge to do otherwise, he didn't say anything else.

  He forced himself to get up and lumbered back to the hut to sleep. He dreamed about dinosaurs. When he awoke, he wondered if there really were dinosaurs nearby. He thought he had heard grunting, wailing and moaning a few times throughout the day. From way off in the distance. But he figured it must have been some sort of sea animal, maybe a giant seal or a whale or something.

  Eddy was awake. The sun hadn't yet risen, but he was out by what had been the roaring fire. It was a pit of smoldering coals and embers by now.

  He sat at its edge, roping up a hook. It was a heavy hook and razor sharp where it was serrated on the inner side, all the way down to its wooden handle.

  When he was done with the hook, he roped another. After he was done with that one, he did another.

  “We're going hunting today,” he said, finally breaking the silence.

  “Oh yeah?”

  He nodded. He finished roping and started sharpening one of the hooks with a stone.

  “What are we hunting?” Windston asked, hoping he wouldn't say dinosaurs.

  “Dinosaurs,” Eddy said. But then he smiled. “Kidding,” he said. He narrowed his eyes and looked at Windston. “You know anything about dragons?”

  Windston hesitated. He thought of Frem’s stones. “Not really,” he admitted.

  Eddy nodded. “We're going after one today. But don’t worry. This guy’s just a baby.”

  “Is that what's been messing with the dolphins? A dragon?”

  He nodded, said, “Yep.”

  He didn't say much more after that.

  They ate that way, with neither one talking much beyond small talk and murmurs. It was just a quick snack, a bit of fish and bread, and then they were off.

  “I'm gonna let you lie on the board,” Eddy said. “There at the front. I want you to paddle it where I tell you to. Okay?”

  Windston nodded.

  “I'll be at the back end, doing a lot of kicking. So, there's no need for you to kick. You’d only serve to splash my eyes.”

  “Got it,” Windston said, awkwardly climbing onto the board.

  “You won't need that,” Eddy said.

  “Oh,” Windston said, holding up his sword. It flashed brightly and crackled when he looked at it, as if to acknowledge his glance. “That's okay. I take it everywhere with me.”

  Eddy just stared at him. When it became apparent Windston wouldn’t budge, he said, “It’s fine if you leave it behind. No one will mess with it here.”

  “But do I have to?” Windston asked, and he hated how defensive he sounded.

  “You don’t have to do anything. But we're gonna use these hooks I have here,” Eddy said. “We'll both need both hands to use them.”

  “So, what—just leave it right here?”

  “Toss it right back there,” Eddy said, nodding toward the beach.

  “Wouldn’t that be dangerous? To just leave it there.”

  Eddy shrugged. “It would be if someone touched it. No one will.”

  Windston reluctantly tossed his sword in the sand. He threw it harder than he'd thought, and it slid into tall grass, where it was barely visible as a white glow. That was probably for the best.

  “Cool. Now just straddle the board. Yeah. Go ahead and start scooping. Do it like this: one here, one there, one here, one there—at that pace. Yeah, that's good.”

  They were off. Eddy kicked hard and fast, and they scooted. They must have been going around thirty miles an hour, maybe faster; and then Eddy kicked it up a notch.

  After a while, Eddy told him to scoop only with his left hand. He did, while Eddy dipped his head under and peered about. He directed Windston to go back to scooping with both hands. “I have a feeling he's gonna be around here, now.”

  “I don't see anything,” Windston said. There was nothing but water and sky on all sides as far as the eye could see.

  Eddy smiled. “He's underwater,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “Here,” he said. “Go ahead and slide off. I'm gonna anchor the board.”

  Windston slid off, and Eddy started tying up one of the hooks to the board. He let the hook fall, and it sank to what Windston saw as the bottom once he dunked his head under.

  The water was crystal clear, beautiful, and the sand below sparkled as rays of light in waves ran over it. There were bedazzling shells down below as well, and coral reefs here and there. Little bug-like creatures were everywhere at the bottom, and there was the odd school swimming about as well. Further off to the west, Windston saw what looked like a very steep drop. In it, way off, there was an array of bright twinkling lights. All throughout that area were energy colors of blue, pink and green—people, essentially—swimming about or walking. He assumed it must be the Coral City Penny had mentioned.

  Eddy swam deeper and Windston followed him.

  It was weird how long Windston could hold his breath. He hadn't really ever tried before, but it didn't seem like he needed to breathe at all. Despite that, he could just go and go and go. Eddy was the same way. They headed southwest away from the board, following a scurrying shrimp colony.

  After a while, Eddy tapped Windston's shoulder and held his finger to his mouth as if to shush him. Next, he pointed north, and Windston saw, much to his horror, something that looked more like a fish than a dragon. It was terrifying, nonetheless. At easily twenty-five feet long from mouth to tail, its size could be perceived clearly, even at a distance. Rather than wings, it had three ugly fins; and its feet were stuck together like a mermaid's.

  It didn't seem to notice them as Eddy led Windston to a coral shelf, where they hid and watched.

  Warily, the creature squirmed over like a dark shadow; and then it launched itself down on the troupe. Sand flew everywhere, fish scattered, and there was a great shriek and a ruckus from the dragonfish as a swarm of bubbles erupted from the tip of its mouth. The water boiled there and burning hot even where they hid.

  Eddy grabbed Windston's shoulder and leaned on him. Windston looked at Eddy as he nodded at him and handed him a hook and its wound rope. He held one of his own up, and then he slowly crept out toward the mighty fish.

  Windston did the same. Slowly they moved, ever creeping on the monster, whose back was turned to them as it pecked again and again at the sand and what were now its boiled shrimp.

  Eddy held up a hand as if to stop Windston. Next, he headed to the fish's right while pointing left. He swam faster, and Windston tried his best to keep up. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest like a beating drum.

  The great fish's tail swung wildly left and right, and then, like a rock from a sling, Eddy lunged at it, hook forward. Windston couldn’t see what he was doing; the fish had stirred clouds of sand, and bubbles rose everywhere within it. Regardless, he moved forward and launched an attack of his own. At first, he hit the dragon on its side. The dragon was hard as a rock, and the hook did little to it, if anything. He felt about its scales; there were ridges in places that were less hard and pliable. He wrenched a finger between one and the fish, and then another.

  The ridges were ropes.

  Oh! he thought; this really is a dragon! And it was a dragon; it was a dragon caught in fishing line, bound up so tightly it resembled a fish.

  Without hesitation, he slipped the hook under the rope and tugged. The rope broke in two without much of a fight. He did another. And then another. And then another.

  The dragon didn't seem to notice. It squirmed here and there, gobbling little mouthfuls as it went. Windston held on tight to a rope he hadn't yet cut with one hand, and assumed Eddy must be doing the same.

  The process kept on like that for a while, until, suddenly, the final rope snapped. Windston found himself bobbing alone with a broken rope in his hand as the dragon, whose hind legs had just been freed, kicked what must have been its first free kicks in weeks. It let out a mighty yelp and turned around and eyeballed Windston.

  Its eyes were fierce and burned with rage, a blue like a cat's with slits for pupils, only now those slits were broadening, blackening the entire eye. It opened its mouth, but only a little, and the breath that came out was minimal, a mess of hot bubbles.

  Windston held out a hand to it, as if to steady it. He could see, once the bubbles dispersed and the sand fell, Eddy on the dragon's back. He was cutting away at ropes bound around the upper fins.

  Slowly, Windston moved toward the great dragon, which he now realized was much longer than twenty-five feet—maybe ten feet longer. Its hind legs kicked slowly, to keep it in place. But its front fins, which Windston now saw as more and more of it was freed, were actually elbow and a bit of wing. They were crippled in their bindings, and didn’t do much more than pulsate as the dragon tried and failed to spread them.

  As Windston neared, the dragon gave one more spray of bubbles to his face. It nipped at him, but it couldn’t open its mouth wide enough to get a decent bite.

  Windston stared the dragon in the eyes, reached out and grabbed it by the snoot and wedged his hook in.

  “Snap,” he said as one of the ropes broke. Eddy's work was coming along nicely: one massive wing stretched out like a sail as the clawed foot below it stretched, and the dragon wailed.

  “Snap,” he said again, pulling another bit of rope off and tossing it. It had bitten into the great beast's face as it must have grown around it.

  “Snip,” he said. “Snap,” he said. “Snop,” he said, making things up now. Still there was more to go, and Eddy was hard at work.

  “Snip, snip,” he was saying. “Snip, snap, snip,” he continued, snipping at what was a dozen cords.

  Finally, just after Eddy finished the last bit on the right wing, Windston cut the last bit wrapped around the mouth. The dragon, in a sudden display of power, rose up, stood on the ocean floor and let out a massive roar, both wings outstretched. Fire burned despite the water, boiling the water, heating the rescuers so much they almost cooked as they fled.

  Eddy immediately flew for his board, and Windston followed as best he could. They moved like fish. Well, Eddy did at least. Windston was more like a sea tortoise.

  Once on the board, Eddy pulled in the line and anchor, and they made off.

  He kicked much harder and faster this time. And he was laughing and muttering in ways Windston found uncharacteristic of him. He even let out a yahoo as the dragon lunged up and out of the water and, with only a few powerful beats of the wing, flew up over and past them. It circled back, rising higher and higher, and wailed at them at the top of its lungs. The sky was scorched orange in the blaze. It was a dazzling, humbling, display. After what seemed like enough of a thanks, it headed off southeast.

  “Amazing,” Eddy said.

  “Wow,” Windston agreed. “I wonder where he's going, now? Now that he can fly.”

  “Where else?” Eddy said. “Back home, to Dino Island, to feast.”