Heart of a Dragon

Chapter Twenty-Nine

There were more dragons in the sky than Salvatore had ever seen at one time. They dipped in and out of the clouds, dove toward the water and soared over the walls of the dark city. He stepped across damp stones to the wall, and turned right, as he had on his previous visit. This time, something had changed.

Ahead he saw something jutting from the sand, turned perpendicular to the wall. At first he couldn't make it out, but as he approached, he saw that it was an easel. He'd never owned an easel, and he'd only seen them through the windows of art supply stores, but he knew what it was. He stepped closer, and saw that there was a small round-topped table beside it, it's legs embedded in the damp sand.

The moonlight was bright, and the canvas on the easel shone brightly in the silver light. Salvatore stepped closer. The shadow of something immense passed overhead, and he shivered. He glanced up, but was too slow. The very tip of a serpentine tail disappeared into the clouds above, just as they floated across the face of the moon.

He ran his fingers over the canvas. The charcoal outline he'd begun was there. The canvas was stretched tightly over a frame, not nailed to a wall as he'd first seen it, but there was no doubt the basic form was Snake's dragon.

On the table, Salvatore saw the palette, the three tubes of paint, and the small chunk of charcoal. He took the charcoal and turned to the canvas. The shadow returned overhead, but he ignored it. He drew a sweeping line, and the connection between his fingers and the canvas, the painting and the dragon snapped into place.

His hand flew across the canvas, only lightly touching as he filled in the outline and created the course his brush would follow. He heard waves crashing on the beach behind him. It felt and sounded closer than he remembered it. It seemed as if any moment salt spray would drop across his shoulders and dampen the ends of his hair where it brushed his collar in back. He thought it might splash the canvas as well, but that was the only thing he could see clearly, and there were no invading droplets.

Above him, the dragons continued their wild dance through the clouds, but he ignored them. He knew that any one of them could have dropped from the sky and smashed the easel, the canvas, and his small body to the ground. He felt that they would not — or that they could not — that they were in some way bound by the work itself. He also knew that if he pulled back, faltered, or allowed anything to truly distract him, he would forsake that bond, and that protection.

When the outline was complete, he set the charcoal aside. In that instant, just before he took up the brush, there was a violent rush of wind. He stood his ground and dipped the brush into the red paint. The silence was shattered by a scream of rage. The beat of leathery wings vibrated the air overhead, and the sand at Salvatore's feet shifted and sifted over his feet. He stood as still as possible, and pressed the brush to the canvas.

He did not look up to see, but he knew that, in that instant, the dragon soared back into the clouds, and was gone. There was something different about the red paint, something powerful. As he stroked it along the length of the dragon's curling body, heat emanated from the canvas. Sweat beaded on his brow. Even when it trickled into his eyes, burning and blurring his vision, his hand was steady.

He filled in the darker reds, moved through shades of coral and blended bright to dark as the dragon came to life. He knew that he could have stopped, looked up, and caught sight of his subject, but he already knew the dragon, and he sensed that it knew him as well. Something was different this time. Something had disrupted whatever thin cloud he passed through from one world to the next. Whatever it was, the dragons were restless, particularly the giant red one — the dragon he now painted.

As Salvatore worked, lights flickered to life and glowed in the highest windows of the city beyond the walls. The dragons soared in and out of the clouds, and though he felt them dive near again and again, they did not swoop down as they had in the past to lift him. Something prevented it. Something in the red of the paint, he thought. He had thought he would have to highlight with white paint to catch the way moonlight rippled over the great beast's scales, but it came easily. The air of this place lent power to the paint. He worked steadily up the body from the tail, moving toward the head and the eyes. Before he finished, he hesitated. He stepped back, just for an instant.

He studied his work. The dragon was so close…so nearly perfect. It would only take a single stroke of the brush to complete it. As he stared, the sky opened up with a roar of wind and sound that nearly crushed him to his knees. He threw back his head and saw the red dragon. It dove straight at him, dropping at impossible speed with a scream of rage and defiance. Salvatore still clutched the brush. He met that dark gaze, and held it. He reached up and dabbed the final bit of Rojo Fuego onto the canvas.

The action took no more than a second, but in that time Salvatore released himself to the dragon. He knew the dive was too steep. It would crash into him, crush him into the sand, and there would be an end to the visions. The brush dropped from numb fingers and he followed, dropping flat on the sand.

He closed his eyes and waited for the impact that never came. Somehow, as the painting came to life, the creature flattened its dive. It came so close that its wings raised a cloud of damp sand to choke Salvatore's breath and blind his eyes. As it passed, it gripped him tightly in massive talons and lifted him skyward. Its wings beat like huge tents in a high wind, and it screamed. Salvatore rubbed at the grit and sweat in his eyes and fought to regain his site.

He opened his eyes, and the city spread out beneath him. The towers rose so high their uppermost spires brushed the clouds. There were lights in the windows. They glowed, each a different hue. The streets, if there were streets between those massive structures, were lost in vast shadows near the ground. The clouds roiled, caught in the grip of a storm that raged and slashed at the city with wind and rain. The waves far below crashed against the rocky beach and pounded at the sand, as if trying to reach the stone walls.

Salvatore saw all of this in the few seconds it took the red dragon to rise and flatten out its flight beneath the lower edge of the clouds. He looked down from above at the uppermost spire of the city. Red light flickered in the windows. The dragon swept back its wings, and they stopped in the air, just for a second, directly above that tower.

Salvatore opened his mouth, as if he might speak, but in that instant, the dragon released him. His breath was sucked from his lungs by the speed of his fall. He tried to scream, but couldn't force the air from his lungs. He approached the tower so quickly it grew from a tiny speck to a huge, stone edifice in the span of a heartbeat. For the second time in only a few minutes, he closed his eyes. Darkness enfolded him and he fell into it with a choked sob.

~* ~

Snake stepped into the room as he saw Salvatore topple. He moved quickly, arms outstretched. He caught the boy just before he hit the floor and lifted him easily. He saw the brush on the floor and was oddly drawn to a splotch of red paint. Then he raised his gaze to the canvas, and stood very still. He rose, still holding Salvatore in his arms, and stared.

"My God," he said. "My God, Sal, look what you have done…"

He still stood there, staring, when Jake entered, took Salvatore from his arms, and carried the boy to his bed. Without another word, Jake slipped back out of the room. When he closed the door, Snake still stood, one hand outstretched toward the canvas. The air in the room felt uncomfortably warm, and the eyes of the painted dragon glowed like red hot coals.