Draka

Flying was, in a word, glorious. I had always loved climbing for the sense of freedom that it gave me, the feeling that I could go anywhere, but this was on a whole other level. I had gone hang gliding once, and it had been brilliant, but the instructor had been the one doing the flying. I'd just hung there enjoying the view. Now I was in complete control, and it was such a completely visceral thing! I changed the angle of my wings slightly, flapped a little harder, and I felt the acceleration in my guts as I climbed. I folded up, plummeting towards the trees with a dizzy joy that beat any rollercoaster, and then opened up and locked, turning all that speed into a racing glide that turned the trees beneath me into green blurs and made my eyes water until I… blinked would be the wrong word, but a membrane slid into place from the corner of each eye, protecting them from the wind.

Circling back the way I had come I looked at the now distant mountains. I had come so far already! I didn’t know how fast I could fly, but it was damned fast. The mountains were a wall of blues and greys stretching roughly from north to south, some of them smooth and others jagged, with low wooded valleys and high naked ones cutting between the peaks and long spits running out into the forest. They were like nothing I’d ever seen, and absolutely breathtaking.

I blasted past a flock of small birds that scattered, chirping indignantly in my wake, and I roared a laugh of pure, unbridled joy. This was worth every moment of horror and every tear I had shed. If death was the price for another few minutes of this glory I would pay it without hesitation.

Or, maybe not. I had to drink. I could see a lake come shimmering out of the trees ahead and slowed down, preparing to land. This proved difficult. Taking off and staying in the air had been instinctive, but landing took more planning and experience. The problem lay in getting close enough to the ground, and staying stable enough, that I could actually land instead of smashing into the dirt. Whenever I got close I was going too fast and got cold feet, and then I'd flap my wings to slow down and either go too high, sideways, or backwards. The solution, I decided, was to let the water cushion my landing.

I pushed myself out over the edge of the lake, not too far, and braked best I could without flapping. Then I folded my wings and dropped. I did not consider that my new body was very different from my old one. It was clearly not adapted to swimming, at least not in the way I was used to. I was much denser, and sank like the proverbial stone, water rushing into my nose as I hit the muck of the bottom. I quickly realised that my limbs couldn't move enough water to propel myself with any speed, and that I was in big trouble. I tried to open my wings, but the water resisted too much and I was too tired from my aerial frolicking.

I realised, very suddenly, that there were worse things than suddenly being a big, flying lizard. Being a big, drowning lizard was one of them.

I desperately dug my claws into the bottom. Success! I was moving, albeit slowly. I could see, dimly, and could tell the bottom sloped towards land, so I started making my way there, stretching my neck towards the surface every so often and hoping to break the surface.

Something moved in the corner of my eye. A huge shadow snaked its way through the murky water, moving fast and coming my way. The fear of drowning was quickly replaced by something deeper, the bone deep terror of knowing that you had a predator's undivided attention, and… anger? No, not mere anger. Full-blown, fiery rage! A wild and bloody fury that this thing would challenge me, that it thought that I, in all my glory, was prey! I stopped thinking. Death and pain held no fear, as long as I showed this bastard what it was messing with!

With a surge of speed and teeth it was on me. A snout long enough to bite me in half tried to catch me, but I caught its nose in one talon and let it push me backward, towards the shore. The maw snapped shut, catching nothing and letting me wrap my forelimbs – arms? – around it, keeping it from opening its jaws. It tried to roll, then to scrape me off against the bottom, but I was strong. Damn, I was strong! As the thing flailed its head I began to kick, clawed feet raking through skin and flesh. The water became black with blood and then, with a powerful jerk with both feet, I tore it open halfway down its abdomen, guts spilling out and floating hideously around it. It still fought, but the outcome was decided the moment I had its jaws closed.

Snorting and gasping I broke the surface, sweet air filling my lungs as I dragged my kill ashore, relishing the taste of its blood in the water. I panted heavily until my heart stopped racing, then roared in triumph, warning everything in range of what would happen if they dared challenge me. The dead thing smelled delicious. I moved in to feast…

Then my conscious mind took over, remembering what had happened and seeing the steaming carcass of the crocodilian creature I had killed. I retched, my empty stomach cramping in futile spasms, and collapsed on the grass.

I lay for a while, collecting myself. My body clearly had drives and reflexes that were completely new to me, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. But I was still desperately thirsty. I heaved myself to my feet and moved away from the mess of torn meat on the shore and the muck I had whipped up, hoping to find some cleaner water. In moments the thirst, so close to water, became overpowering, and I shoved my face in, not caring about how dirty the water must be. I drank, gulping down sweet, cool water until my stomach cramped and I stopped with a pained moan. Then, once the cramp passed, I drank more, and more, until I had filled my stomach to bursting and felt like I might throw it all up again. I sat back on my hindquarters, exulting in the feeling of finally having slaked my thirst. It felt almost as good as flying.

As I started to doze off in the afternoon sun a sound caught my attention. I’d been getting used to the birds, the wind in the trees and the sloshing of water, but this sounded like a cough. My mind cleared, and I listened carefully. It came again, an unmistakably human sound! I looked towards the trees, in the direction from which the sound had come, but I didn’t see anything. I carefully moved closer, and the wind shifted, bringing a cloying metallic scent to my nose. My sense of smell must have gotten much better, because I could swear that I knew which direction it came from. Then I heard the cough again, and a soft groan, quickly choked off. It came from behind the thick stem of an old tree, something like a fig, and as I approached I saw that the bark and the ground were stained a dark, glistening red. Blood. The dirt was deeply scuffed around the base of the tree, as though something had been dragged around it… or as though someone had dragged themselves.

I was filled with a horrified curiosity. I had to know. Keeping my distance, I circled the tree, climbing over its thick, reaching roots. A leather boot came into view, then a leg and a torso, and then I locked eyes with a man, sitting in a hollow between two buttress roots. I couldn’t place his ethnicity, but that didn’t mean much. If I’d seen him back home I would have guessed that he was from the middle east somewhere. His hair was a deep brown and curly, his skin almost ashen even through his dark tan complexion. His eyes didn’t quite fit, though. They were green, and they were full of fear as they followed me. I kept circling, not getting any closer, and was filled with a sickened sympathy at what I saw. He had a deep gash through his left shoulder, his arm hanging limp and blood trickling down his chest.

Beyond him was carnage. I took it in with stunned silence, seeing everything and wishing I didn’t. A few trampled tents and a still burning campfire were surrounded by still bodies, all stabbed or hacked apart. There was blood and flies everywhere. A little way from the living man lay a dead one, a sword through his chest. I looked back to the survivor, and you didn’t need to be a crime scene investigator to get a good idea of what had happened. There had been a fight – no, a battle. One where people had hacked each other apart with swords and axes. I didn’t need to think about that. The survivor had killed the man in front of him, but had taken a bad wound doing so. A trail of smeared blood and dirt led to the tree. Had he dragged himself there so the lake could be the last thing he saw? I looked at him again and felt a deep, aching sadness.

“How can I help you?” I asked, but the man’s fear didn’t lessen. He was kicking his leg out, trying to reach the sword that had killed him. He was trying to defend himself, even though he was clearly dying, and I realised what this must look like to him. He’d probably seen me crash into the lake, and now instead of peacefully bleeding out he was about to be torn apart by some horrible monster. After a while he stopped struggling. He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and said a few words in a language I’d never heard before. It looked like he was forcing himself to relax. It looked like he was preparing to die.

I didn’t know what to do. I had to help him somehow. I could see, and somehow even feel, that he was dying, but I had to try. I’d taken first aid classes. I knew what to do about a cut, even a deep one. I looked at the guy’s wound again and suppressed the thought that there was no way a bandage could deal with that. ‘You don’t get to make that call’ was what had been drilled into me. You always try.

I needed something to dress his wound. I turned and raced through the camp. Two forlorn horses stood at the edge of the camp and bolted into the trees when they saw me. I ignored them. I was trying not to see the bodies, trying not to think about how good the blood smelled, and started looking in the tents. There were sleeping bags of some sort, boots, helmets, people’s personal things. Lots of bags. I tore them open and found mostly clothes, gear, dried food and keepsakes. No bandages. Then I got to a tent that was untouched. An old man in a robe lay dead outside, his neck hacked through almost completely and his head lolling in a terrible way, but inside I found a bag, and in the bag: bandages! Clearly, obviously bandages, rolls of soft clean cloth. There were other things in the bag as well, so I took the whole thing in my teeth and raced back on all fours to the dying man.

He was still sitting where I’d left him. It wasn’t like he could go anywhere. He had his eyes open again, and there was a hope there that quickly faded as I approached. He looked tired, close to passing out. That was very bad. I got close enough to drop the bag in reach of his good arm and he drew back, pressing himself into the tree to get as far back from me as possible. That hurt, but I couldn’t blame him. I was used to most men enjoying it when I got close to them, and this was a painful reminder of what had happened to me. I was a monster. An awesome monster that could fly and kill crocs, but still.

“I’m trying to help you,” I told him, knowing that he wouldn’t understand. I opened the bag, showing him the bandages, and his eyes opened a little wider. I took out one of the bandages, but my hands – I didn’t like to think of them as ‘talons’ – were not nearly as dexterous as my human hands had been and I fumbled when I tried to unroll it to show him. Now a growing comprehension, tinged with wonder and disbelief, was growing on his face. He whispered a question to me, but I didn’t understand. He seemed reluctant to take his eyes off me, but pointed to the bag and repeated his question. Not sure what he wanted I pushed the bag closer and he dug his hand in, rooting around, then froze with a look of cautious hope on his face as he found something. Very slowly, as though it was the most precious thing in the world, he took out a green glass bottle, corked and sealed with wax. I couldn't see the colour of the liquid but there was a distinct shimmer to it, almost a glow. My best guess was that it was some kind of fancy alcohol.

Liquor? Was that what he was looking for? I felt a little annoyed, then looked at his injury and decided that if he wanted to take the edge off the pain and the fear then he could do whatever he wanted. Carefully he brought the bottle to his mouth, using his teeth to tear the wax. He slipped and almost dropped it, then became very, very still when I brought my hand up to steady it. After a few breaths he continued, and after some jiggling he got the cork out. He very carefully brought the bottle to his lips and drank in tiny sips, making sure not to spill anything. When about half of the bottle was gone, he poured the last of the liquid over his wound, hissed with pain, gasped once, and slumped against the tree.

When the guy collapsed it felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I genuinely thought that he’d died. Maybe the liquor sent him into shock, or maybe the liquid was actually a quick-acting poison, meant to put a permanent end to his pain. I was surprised, and more than a little relieved, to see that he was still breathing. It was slow and shallow, but he was definitely still alive, and the bleeding seemed to have slowed enough that I didn’t think he’d die as soon as I turned my back.

I got a small pot I’d seen in the same tent as the bag and filled it in the lake. It wasn’t clean at all, but it would have to do. I put it straight on the coals, and an eternity later it had boiled for long enough.

The guy was wearing something like a thick jacket of hard leather – armour, I guessed – and I needed to be able to see the wound. I really didn’t want to move his left arm, but I didn’t have much choice, so I boiled a bandage, let it drain and cool a bit, and then pressed it on the wound while I used my other hand to clumsily get his armour and shirt out of the way. The armour was held together with straps and my messed up fingers couldn't work them, but I quickly found out that my teeth were sharp enough to cut through them with some effort. Desperation makes you try desperate things, sometimes. There was no way I was getting the shirt over his head and I had to tear it, scratching him more than once with my claws in the process, but I didn't cause any real damage that I could see.

Once I had his armour open, more than off, and his shoulder free I took another boiled and wadded up bandage and started wiping off the blood so I could see the wound. To my surprise it was much less deep than I’d thought, and when I had a third bandage prepared to act as a compress I was shocked to see that it was shallower still. I looked at the wound, red and ragged, and almost didn’t believe my eyes as I saw the flesh slowly, ever so slowly, pulling itself together.

“What the fuck?” I whispered to myself. “What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck…” I stared at the wound as it closed before my eyes, and before long there was nothing left but a centimetre-wide strip of smooth scar tissue. I picked up the empty bottle and stared at it. No wonder Guy had been so happy to find it. An actual, real-life healing potion? If I hadn’t already been half convinced that this was all a coma dream I’d have doubted my own sanity.

Guy’s breathing had gotten better, as had his colour. He still looked like hell, but behind that I could tell that he was pretty, well… pretty. Nice chin bones, a strong jaw, light brown skin and rich, curly hair. The strong, slightly soft build of someone who does a lot of exercise because he has to. Not my type at all, but I could recognise an objectively good-looking guy when I saw one.

Being this close to him, and having a moment to relax, I also realised that he was bigger than I thought. And not only him. Everybody has an average size that most people are relative to themselves, and everyone here was bigger than I expected. I wondered about that for a while, and then the most likely explanation struck me. They weren’t bigger. I was smaller!

That caught me completely by surprise. I got close to Guy again and compared myself to him. He didn’t seem much taller than any of the other dead men, so if he was average… I’d always been happy that I was a bit taller than most girls. I could look most guys level in the eye. Now my best guess was that I was a bit bigger than something like a German Shepard, which hardly seemed fair. Sure, if you included my longer neck and tail I could stretch to a bit less than two metres, and my wingspan was impressive, but I still obviously wasn’t the awe inspiring apex predator that my new instincts told me that I was.

It was that moment, when I was flat on my belly on the ground trying to stretch as much as possible, that Guy chose to wake up. First a cough, then a groan. I quickly got to my feet and hoped that he hadn’t seen me. Then his hand went to his wound, and when he found nothing he tried his left arm. He winced, but it seemed to work fine. He looked at me, gave me a tired smile, and said something, hopefully expressing his thanks. Then he got halfway to his feet and promptly keeled over again, falling to his hands and knees. I started forwards to help, but stopped when he crawled forward to the dead man. My breath caught and a knot of dreadful anticipation grew in my stomach when he grasped the hilt of the sword impaling the man, braced with his foot, and pulled the thing out with a wet, meaty sound.

I’d helped him. He would have died if not for me, and he’d thanked me, hadn’t he? Surely he wouldn’t…? But my fears were unfounded. Using some of the spent bandages Guy cleaned the sword, and then sheathed it in the scabbard on his belt. After that effort his reserves were apparently spent, and he sat back heavily, arms hugging his knees.

He spoke to me. I told him that I didn’t understand, and he smiled wryly. Then he mimed eating and drinking and looked at me hopefully, and I understood that easily enough. Apparently coming back from the dead takes it out of you. I remembered seeing dried food and bottles in the tents, so I went off to fetch some. In one tent I emptied a bag and collected what I could in the way of food and drink, carrying it in my mouth.

I was getting ready to go back when I decided to check the untouched tent. When I got there I smelled something. It must have been there before, but I was too distracted then. It was absolutely wonderful, sweet and savoury and metallic all at once, to an almost intoxicating degree. I sniffed the air, hunting around the tent until I found a small, locked box under a neatly folded pile of clothes. I had to have it. Since I couldn’t get it open I put it in the bottom of the bag, and then headed back to Guy.

My patient gratefully tucked into the bread, dried meat and cheese that I had found, and opened a bottle of what smelled like sweet wine to wash it all down. Seeing him eat made me realise that I was hungry as well. I hadn’t eaten at all since I had woken up like this, and now that water had expanded my shrunken stomach I was ravenous. The bread didn’t smell appetising at all, but I started bolting down meat and cheese at such a rate that Guy began to look worried. At one point he reached for a hunk of cheese at the same time as I went for it, and a warning rumble came unbidden from deep in my chest. Guy wisely chose a heel of bread instead. I felt slightly embarrassed, but I’d already saved his life, fed him, and brought him booze. He could damn well let me eat my fill.

Once we’d eaten, and he’d finished off a whole bottle of wine and half of another, the sun was starting to get close to the mountains. Guy had found a shirt and put some more wood on the fire, but I could see that he was avoiding looking at the dead people. Many of them had probably been his companions, or even friends. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his head. I didn’t even know anyone here and I felt almost sick with grief just knowing that they were all dead. Guy… well. I’d lost my nan to cancer. That was the only person I knew that had ever died. I couldn’t imagine.

Guy didn’t want to sleep in the tents, I guess, because he had found a sleeping bag somewhere and brought it out near the fire. He had long since accepted that I was intelligent and seemed more comfortable around me, if pretty confused as to why I was helping him. We weren’t talking, of course. No point, unless it was just to hear a voice. But it was thanks to that silence that I heard the rumble of hooves before the literal cavalry arrived.

Guy got unsteadily to his feet, hand on his sword, and I was ready as well on the opposite side of the fire when a large group of men, riding horses and carrying spears, thundered into the camp along a path which presumably led to a larger road. Well, mostly men. One of them called out in a bright feminine voice, full of mixed pain and relief. She rode almost all the way up to Guy, vaulting off her horse and throwing herself at him, almost knocking him off his feet. He caught her best he could and they embraced so warmly that I started to feel embarrassed. Then the newcomers saw me.

There was pandemonium. The woman had discarded her spear, but her sword hissed out of its sheath. Guy was shouting, trying to hold the woman back and calm the others down. The men still on their horses were yelling and one, deciding to take the initiative, lowered his spear and charged with a yell.

I’d had a second to think, and thank God for that. From the moment I’d heard the horses I’d been wary and focused. While my body roiled with fury and wanted to stay, to fight and kill all of these fools that dared come against me, my human side knew that fleeing was the only option. I threw myself to the side, saving myself from getting pinned to the ground. Without thinking I grabbed the bag of food in my teeth, then exploded into a sprint – a gallop, really – and launched myself into the air. Even later I would remember that as one of the smoothest and most graceful take-offs I’d ever made.

I was half-way back to the cave by the time I started to process what had happened. Grief and loss and a sense of extreme injustice kicked in, and silent tears began to flow.