Dragons Awakening
CHAPTER NINETEEN: To Wake a Dragon

Whisperer.

Akolo bolted upright, dislodging the oxygen canister. It clattered on the plastic-covered ground beside his cot. Chill air slapped his chest where his Henley undergarment had come unbuttoned.

“Where are you?” Akolo whispered, widening his eyes to look around the dark interior of the tent.

Light from the generator-driven “street lamps” outside illumined the canvas walls. The cot on the back wall cast a dim shadow. Locating the small table on the adjacent wall, Akolo oriented himself to his surroundings.

“The lake. Where the noisy machine lands.”

Akolo rubbed his eyes and grinned. No arguing the helicopter was the noisiest contraption he’d ever ridden in.

“I’ll wake Zi.” The thought of climbing back down to the landing area appealed about as much as being filleted like a fish.

Akolo pushed back the sleeping bag, trying to recall where he’d put his boots. Fabric rustling against fabric announced his jacket sliding off the end of the cot. Eyes adjusting, he avoided stepping on the cannister. The boots were shoved under the end of the cot. When did he have the energy for that?

He shuffled around in the dark, grunting when his toe jammed into a leg of the cot. The side of the tent shook when the cot rammed it. His fingers closed around the straps of a bag. Water sloshed in the nearly empty hydrapack. A semi-magnetized strip held a flashlight in place on the outside of his pack. Solar powered batteries recharged during the day with enough juice to run the light for eight hours straight, a tidbit he learned while Zi ripped through packaging and loaded items into their bags.

Heat activated the flashlight. He pressed his thumb against the smooth oval power switch and counted. Three seconds later the light snapped on, casting a wide beam onto the floor. Putting shoes on proved simple with a little illumination.

He pointed the light toward Zi’s cot. Only the top of her head was visible.

“How long?”

Akolo stopped. Were all dragons so demanding? “Waking Zi up. Maybe fifteen minutes.”

“While you dally, Qwystanak rises to destroy.”

Akolo sighed and wondered if his thoughts betrayed his irritation. “We’re hurrying.”

An overstatement, he supposed. At the moment, Zi wasn’t moving. Akolo leaned over and pulled her cover back. She didn’t flinch, so he shook her shoulder.

“What do you want?”

Akolo opened his mouth to respond. Zi jerked like someone had struck her with a hammer and sat straight up, hear head almost plowing into his chin. He stumbled backwards, shutting his mouth. Apparently, Ezer had decided to wake the girl. Akolo’s eyebrows pulled together, wondering why the dragon’s voice caused her such discomfort.

A few minutes later, they were bundled in all the gear Zi had purchased while in transit. Only their eyes were exposed to the freezing air. Outside the tent, the temperature dropped. Akolo rubbed his gloved hands along his thighs, enjoying the friction. Once the city no longer surrounded them, a gust of wind swirled snow at their feet and cut across them like a scythe. Akolo’s eyes watered.

Akolo’s throat tightened as they started down the path toward the lake. Going down should be easier. Light-headedness stopped Akolo once, and he sucked oxygen from the cylinder, gripping the cannister beneath his arm, his mountaintop life preserver. His surfer’s poise fled. He slid one hand along the icy wall and balanced the flashlight with the other. Weren’t the mini-spikes on the soles of his boots supposed to keep him from slipping? He grunted, catching himself against the wall. Zi, in front of him, twirled at the sound.

“I’m okay,” he said, gasping for breath.

“Climbing Mt. Everest in the dark is a bad idea,” Zi grumbled.

Akolo grinned, watching the reflective stripes lining the back of her pale blue jacket retreat.

Fifteen minutes have passed. Since when did the dragon have a timepiece?

“Almost there. Some of us can’t fly.”

Zi laughed at his outburst. Akolo started at the sudden sound. His smile hid behind the collar covering his lower face. Answering the dragon aloud had been the right move.

Flashlight beams danced across the lake’s icy surfacee. Eerie silence pressed against his eardrums when he stopped beside Zi. Didn’t the wind howl on Mt. Everest?

“Where is he?” Her muffled voice conveyed impatience. Was he supposed to be the only even-tempered one of the bunch?

A blast of wind pushed against them. Akolo grabbed Zi’s arm as they stumbled backward.

“Here,” Akolo said.

Ezer’s tail dangled in front of Akolo’s face. He grasped the spines, clenching tightly as he soared above the shadowy bulk. When his boots knocked against the huge back spine, Akolo released his grip, transferring it to the spine digging into his knees.

Before he could settle onto the saddle-like groove, Zi dropped behind him.

“Watch it!” She plowed into his back, almost shoving his mouth against the “saddle horn” spine in front of him.

“Hold on.” Ezer’s warning gave Zi enough time to clench her arms around Akolo’s middle. He hugged the spine he’d nearly bit with equal ferocity.

Air whistled past their faces. Glad not to see what’s beneath us.

“Morning will arrive before we reach our destination.”

And Akolo still had no clue how to waken the dragon. Or convince him to accompany them.

Wrapped head to toe in arctic gear, Akolo felt none of the bite from the wind or dampness from the swirling snow. The hood shading his face deflected most of the glare bouncing off his white surroundings. Morning on the mountain was bright. Sunglasses would be helpful.

Slogging over icy crags proved more difficult than cutting through the Pacific Ocean’s waves. Akolo plowed through the drifts and over jutting boulders, all the while imagining himself on the beach. His stomach ached with hunger, warning him to consume calories or collapse. The grip on his chest begged for air, but breathing offered only the barest sample, and the frostbitten air stung with every inhalation.

Several meters above him, Ezer clung to an icy overhang, his talons clutching the ice with ease. As if they were barren rocks instead of slippery death traps.

“Up here,” the dragon said. “There is a valley between two peaks. The lair is there.”

“How about some air transportation?” Zi said. Out of breath, sure. Out of cutting remarks? Hardly.

“She means we’d like a ride,” Akolo said. Tilting his head back made it swim. He took a slow pull from the oxygen cannister, feeling like an addict taking a hit. How long before it ran out?

The dragon lowered his spiked tail. Akolo reached as high as he could, grabbing the vicious armor, avoiding the mace at the end.

His insulated gloves made grasping the smooth spikes difficult. Below him, Zi said, “What happened to the whole ladies first ideal?”

“The boy was closer,” Ezer said, voice echoing impatiently in Akolo’s mind.

The spikes he grabbed, one in his left hand and the other in his right, radiated heat. Ezer’s metabolism must be burning through calories even faster than Akolo’s. They would both need nourishment soon, and it would be easier for him to unwrap a protein bar than for the monstrous creature to replace jewels to consume.

“Ready,” Akolo said.

Ezer curled his tail upward, arching it over his own back. The ground flew away. Suspended between heaven and earth, Akolo’s empty stomach clenched like a fist, and he gritted his teeth together to keep from crying out. It wouldn’t do for the prophesied Dragon Whisperer to scream like a little girl. Not that anyone other than Zi and Ezer would hear him.

His feet bumped against Ezer’s scaly side. Akolo looked down and swung his feet onto the flat spike that presented itself. It was close to the dragon’s neck and not the one they had ridden on earlier. At the moment, solidness beneath his feet seemed more important than logistics.

Releasing the tail spikes, Akolo slid down the flat side of the spine. The black tail withdrew. He heard Zi’s voice, pitchy with irritation, but he couldn’t make out her words. In a moment, she was deposited on the larger, saddle-shaped spike behind Akolo, who grabbed the shorter spike in front of him. He rested his back against the curved spike, avoiding the jagged tip at shoulder height.

“Let me grab something before you take off,” Zi said.

Zi grunted, fighting against her bulky clothes to situate herself so her legs could grip the dragon. Akolo grinned, hiding his amusement by pulling his scarf higher up on his face. She only seemed to have a sense of humor when she was making the jokes. Not that it’s a great time for joking. Akolo dropped his chin behind the coat’s collar and tried to adjust his frame of mind.

Ezer extended his neck and pushed himself into the air. The crag fell away and every breath became a battle. Akolo focused his attention on the sleek scales in front of him. So much depended on this meeting with the ice dragon, and he felt inadequate for the task. A month ago, he reclined on sunny shores. Dragons never entered into his thoughts. Why would he waste time thinking about long-extinct myths?

Now, he rode on the back of a fabled creature. He flew every higher up the tallest mountain on Earth. Everyone expected him to know how to awaken the Sherpa’s deity, another fearsome dragon. Anticipation pressed against his chest, more painful than the thin atmosphere. Ezer encouraged him to follow his instincts when awakening the formidable drake. Akolo didn’t have any dragon-waking instincts. He could judge when a wave would break, balance on a surfboard through choppy water, and even name the different types of volcanoes. How he wished he could close his eyes and return to the welcoming water in Hawaii, where he knew what to expect and how to respond.

Zi squeezed his shoulders, the pressure neither uncomfortable nor unwelcome. It drew his mind away from wishful thinking. Hadn’t he had enough of that in the past five years? Wishes hadn’t brought his mother back to him, and they wouldn’t help him now. If he believed in prayer, he’d try it. Maybe he should, even though he was clueless about who to petition. Weren’t there as many deities as nations on the planet?

A few weeks ago, he had been teaching tourists to surf and trying to figure out how to rescue his dad from alcohol and women. Traveling to the European Union with his father sounded like it could offer a solution. He found the seismic lab fascinating. Increasing tremors from the destroyer of ancient Pompeii kept everyone on edge. An eruption of unimaginable magnitude seemed imminent. Enter a pretty Chinese girl with strange blue eyes spouting apocalyptic visions, and life morphed from scary to insane. Not to mention meeting a dragon face-to-face.

Akolo shook his head, hoping to dislodge the panic clawing for freedom from his subconsciousness. No such luck, of course. He couldn’t be the beach bum with the “hang loose” attitude anymore. The Earth and all her inhabitants would be destroyed in a matter of days if he couldn’t convince a sleeping dragon to wake up and help them. The enormity of it stole his hunger pangs. Bile pressed against his esophagus.

Ezer settled into an expansive fissure between two frozen peaks. The dragon tucked his wings closer to his body to keep his sides from scraping the icy walls. A narrow pathway of snow lay at the bottom of the crevasse, which stretched thirty yards ending abruptly in a solid wall of ice.

“Seems like a dead end,” Akolo said.

“It’s an illusion,” Ezer told him.

“This is the right place,” Zi said, using Akolo’s shoulders to steady herself while she stood up. “I had a vision, remember?”

She gestured toward Ezer’s head and Akolo nodded, unfolding himself with ease into a standing position. He walked down the spikes on the dragon’s neck, a strange staircase, and jumped over the huge head, resting inches above the snow. Bending his knees for balance, he landed on the slick ground. He stepped away from the dragon, leaving space for Zi behind him. She wobbled on the neck spine, taking too much time to descend, over-thinking it. The grunt she made when she toppled to her knees behind him wasn’t very lady-like.

Akolo started to smile at her sprawled form when foreboding strangled him. He turned to face the holographic wall of ice, magically upheld by the ice dragon. With effort, he put one foot in front of the other until he was only yards away from the glacier-like mirage. Tipping his head back, he could not see the sky beyond the wall of ice. Frigid temperatures leached the world of color. Rock, ice, sky, ground: all white.

In the relative shelter of the fissure, the shrieking wind had stopped. The silence sounded even more ominous.

“Mighty Everest, I have come to parley with you,” Akolo said, pulling his hood off. He chose to vocalize his intentions rather than reach out with telepathy. Hopefully, the dragon would see this as a sign of respect.

His words bounced back at him. Nothing moved.

“I don’t know if your voice will be enough to wake him up.” Zi’s voice was muffled. “Are your kind heavy sleepers, Ezer?”

“He is the whisperer,” Ezer said. “His instincts will lead him to say and do what is necessary.”

Akolo studied the solid wall before him. “Maybe if I could see him,” he said, “I would have better luck.”

“Luck mocks our Maker,” the dragon said.

Akolo wiped a bead of sweat that rolled down his nose.

Ezer growled, and the echo resounded through the enclosed space.“Perhaps you should use telepathy. After all if a human could wake Jokul without it, why would a whisperer be named in the prophecy?” Trust the dragon to make perfect sense.

Akolo closed his eyes, reaching his thoughts toward an unseen entity. They slammed against an icy wall, and he almost lurched backward from the impact. Rather than the quicksand he had encountered in Ezer’s mind, this was impenetrable rock. He imagined his brain waves were ice picks. He hammered one toward the wall, then another, chipping away.

Zi’s gripped his hand, ripping Akolo from his trance-like state. Gone was the wall of ice. A black crater yawned, threatening to swallow them. Akolo stumbled backward until Zi’s shoulder pressed into his back. Stale air flooded his senses, nearly gagging him.

His thoughts must have broken through. Now or never, surfer boy.

Without a backward glance, Akolo stepped into the shadowy abyss.