Beneath the Dragon’s Wing
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Faye summoned them to breakfast the following morning. Eggs, sausages, and rolls with butter and jam.
After the meal the Dragon looked in at them and inquired, “Which of you are still resolved to go? I will fly you to the Outside, as far as is reasonable for me to go.”
Trevor had thought and prayed that night more diligently than he had occasion to before. Faye’s prayer somehow felt like an anchor for him, giving confidence in what he asked. He wasn’t confident that he had an answer, but the yearning for adventure that had ebbed with knowledge of his exile had returned. He had chosen, and he felt he should follow through with his commitment. He also felt this was a chance that would present itself only once, and he didn’t want to miss out.
“I am,” he said.
Trevor looked over at Tasha. She had been watching him. It made Trevor uncomfortable, though he couldn’t pin down why. She also nodded yes.
The eye looked at each of them in turn. “Very well. We will depart once you get your things together. Meet me on the landing.”
The morning sky was clear and bright, and the mountain air was bracing. The dragon lay with one eye back to the entrance, watching for them. Sprawled out in the open under the light of the sun, Faye’s incredible size was laid bare. Trevor guessed she was about the length of three of the largest fishing boats in the village. Her shoulder towered above them as they walked towards her head.
“Climb onto the back of my hand, and I will set you on my back,” she instructed. The scales were hard and slick. Trevor felt quite nervous as they were raised twelve feet or so into the air. Then Faye guided them to sit between the huge dorsal spines in a single row that proceeded down her neck. “Hold on to the one in front of you. I will try not to shift around too much.”
Soon they were settled, and Trevor began to feel the beginnings of apprehension take hold from the delay. “Now, hold tight!” she warned, as she gathered herself. She leapt up and over the edge of the landing, her broad wings unfurling in a majestic downstroke. The wings beat against the air as the dragon began a steady rise into the sky.
It was less jarring than Trevor had expected, and the initial lurch in his stomach gave way to wonder. He looked down, and saw the countryside sprawling out beneath them. He could see the faint footpath they had followed working its way up through the foothills. In the distance he saw the ocean bounded by the cliff edge. His village was obscured there, somewhere.
On the other side of the mountain he saw more foothills, and the great expanse of the plains spreading out in the distance. A few black pillars of smoke rose. Armies attacking villages? He felt for his new spear, and felt it clasped to his belt where it belonged. He had never truly fought, and wondered if it would come to fighting.
Ahead of him, Trevor watched Tasha as she craned her scarred neck to look at the world below them. She had an unnerving toothy smile on her face. He felt grateful for this, thinking about all she had been through the last few days. She caught his eye, and he smiled back.
As they flew, Trevor soon noticed that they were spiraling up around the blur of the almost invisible pillar, higher and higher. “Look out there, and you will start to see the curve of the earth,” Michael told them. Trevor thought maybe he could.
He then looked up into the brilliant blue sky. The pillar seemed to fade away some distance up, and there were patches of colored lights faintly visible through the glamour of the pillar. One green, the other red. As they drew closer, Trevor guessed they might be ring shaped. “What are they?” he asked Michael.
“The portals. We will pass through them soon,” he replied.
They circled up the pillar twice more, and the portals were revealed to be black inside, with little floating lights here and there about the edges. Faye surged up towards the green-rimmed one, folding her wings as she passed inside.
The light swiftly faded behind them, as they surged forward. To Trevor, it seemed like nothing so much as passing swiftly through a long tunnel. Lights flicked by occasionally, and a few will-o’-the-wisps took turns keeping pace with the dragon.
This went on for an uncomfortably long time, until suddenly they burst out into blinding light. Faye’s wings unfurled again, and she began climbing through the air again. Trevor’s eyes took a moment to adjust, and when they did he saw that they were spiraling up another pillar, but this one ascended from a volcanic island. The sea spread out as far as the eye could see.
Trevor thought of last night, and how he had been teleported back to his room. Was this the same sort of thing? How far were they going? He strained his eyes up the pillar, trying to see if there were more portals, but though they were climbing more swiftly now, they were still too low.
Up they flew, until he could see the portals again. Then through another green one, and out above a butte in the midst of arid scrubland. The process repeated itself throughout the day, emerging over fens, hills, deserts, and high mountains. Again and again, such that the novelty wore off as the sun climbed to noon. Trevor drifted off to sleep, awkwardly perched though he was.
He fitfully slept through the flight, and suddenly awoke to Faye lighting on a clear patch of ground. The air was a hot wall of humidity, and a cacophony of sound pressed in at them from all sides through the lush vegetation.
“We will rest here for the night,” Faye informed them as she raised her hand to help them off. “We have nearly as far to go tomorrow.”
They dismounted with some difficulty. Trevor’s limbs felt heavy and awkward from disuse. Tasha, too, looked as though she had not fared well with the long ride. She stumbled a bit before finding a place to sit down.
It soon started to rain big wet drops, and Trevor wondered how they were going to get a fire or any sleep in such a state. The Dragon lifted one of her great wings above them as a vast canopy. They gathered around Faye’s head as she smoldered her breath just enough to provide a flickering light. They lay in their bedrolls listening to the sound of the rain as they fell asleep.