Excerpt:
Chapter Two
(…We were flying! The exhilaration of that breathtaking venture was tempered by the grim urgency of our purpose. We didn’t bother circling the dragon’s holding as courtesy demanded. We came straight in, using the upper edge of the forest canopy to shield us until the last possible moment.
We grounded and I was off her shoulders, running before Elsbeth skidded to a stop. Rùnach was already in my hand as the first of the raider’s filth-tipped arrows snapped out of the trees by the bathing pool…)
“Are you waking, Gordan?” the familiar voice in my head asked.
“U’m tryin,” I mumbled back sluggishly, my mind futilely trying to hold on to the unraveling tatters of the dream.
“This is too soon for you to be awake, Dear. Go back to sleep.”
It’s going to be a strange day. Normally, I only hear her voice when the day’s hours begin to pass slowly. It’s that quiet time before the flimsy escape that sleep promises but rarely provides. Those are the hours when loneliness batters against my barriers with its most obstinate force. That’s when I hear her voice most clearly and I’ve been hearing her voice like that for over a month, ever since the death of my wife.
Okay, I know it’s troubling that I’m hearing her voice anytime at all. And yes, I know enough about the basics of psychology to recognize that hearing voices in my head is somewhat less than a stellar sign. But this morning, I was more worried about how crappy I felt than the voice in my head. I ached everywhere. My head hurt and mouth felt like I’d spent the last month licking up the spills from a road house floor. I felt horribly hung-over but that simply wasn’t possible. Hell, I hadn’t had a drink in forty-five years. It’s not that I’m a zealot or a one man temperance movement, I’ve just never cared for the loss of brain function that inevitably afflicts the drinkers of grain alcohol. As a result, I don‘t use the stuff. So how could I be hung-over?
I staggered into the bathroom, fumbled the lid of the toilet open, just in time to throw up. Feeling even worse than before, I groped my way to the sink, washed my face and made the mistake of looking into the mirror. What looked back at me opened my throbbing eyes and had me gasping in surprise. When, and more importantly, why the hell had I gotten a full-body dragon tattoo? I stared at the strange old man in the mirror and tried to keep a trembling grip on the cool sink while the beautiful voice in my head laughed with delight!
Alright, I admit it. There have been times in my mildly rebellious youth when I’ve seriously considered getting a tattoo but I’ve never wanted anything too elaborate. I’ve always fantasized that one of those Celtic tribal braids, wrapping around my upper calf, would look cool. This dragon tattoo was definitely more than I’d ever dared to envision.
My amazing wife, Elsbeth, had always laughed at me whenever I’d broached the tattoo idea. She laughed in a very sweet way that showed me she thought tattoos were silly, and then she would slowly, and very seductively, wink at me with her left eye, wordlessly letting me know that I was sexy enough without the additional decoration. That seductive wink had always been subtle enough to discourage all of my tattoo aspirations. Finally, by the time she’d passed away last month, after forty-five years of mystery, devotion, and unconditional love, there was no place on my old body canvas worthy of such coolness. I looked into the bleary eyes of the old man in the mirror and tried to remember him when he had looked good enough for skin art. Yes, there had been a time when I had the ability to turn some women’s heads. I was especially grateful for that ability when I first laid eyes on Elsbeth.
She was sitting on the grass while I was walking through the university on a spectacular autumn afternoon. She was beautiful beyond words but there was something else too. There was a sense of, for the lack of a better word, wisdom about her that was in direct contrast to her obvious youth and beauty. Both of those impressions placed her above every other woman I’d ever seen. It seemed to me that she was perfection in its most inspiring form, to perfect for this earth.
A trick of the warm September sun had turned her thick hair, tumbling well past the middle of her back, into a dazzling vision. In spite of flashing incredible gold and red hi-lights, it defied my ability to identify a basic color. To me, it seemed as if it were every color in the world, all shining out at the same time. I swallowed, wanting to say something, anything to her, but before I could speak, she looked up at me with the most intense sky-blue eyes I’d ever seen. I stared into those amazing eyes for an infinite time before a guy’s voice from behind my left shoulder broke the spell.
“Hey Babe, is this boy botherin you? Want me to chase him away?”
I turned to find a grinning fraternity jock ready to take me on. Normally I would have just ignored him, but somehow, that day was different. Her eyes had made it different.
“Has that stupid line ever worked on anyone?” I threw the words at him like javelins. “Do you keep using it because you hope that someday you’ll find a woman stupid enough to think it’s clever?”
His taunting grin morphed into a menacing grimace. He closed his fists and took a threatening step toward me. Before he could do anything else, the beautiful young woman with flashing eyes that mirrored the brilliance of the autumn sky, stood up gracefully and linked her arm through mine.
“This boy has killed five men in single combat,” she said with a voice that radiated authority, “will you be the sixth?”
The earth didn’t tremble with the power of her words but I think it should have. He might have thought so too. As it was, he could only stand and stare at us as if we’d both lost the our minds. After a moment, and without another word, he turned and quickly walked away. I don’t fault him for his confusion. At that moment, even though I was pretty sure I’d never killed anybody, I was ready for him to be number six.
With our arms still linked, we walked the other way in a comfortable silence for a few timeless moments before she finally stopped and looked at me.
“After all this time, here you are.” Her voice was a rich contralto that, at the moment, was thick with emotion. “My name is Elsbeth and I’m going to call you Gordan.”
She had the tiniest touch of an accent I couldn’t place and yet I found it to be incredibly sexy. For a moment, looking into her amazing eyes, I had the most powerful episode of deja-vu I’d ever experienced. It was if I’d been staring into her eyes for an eternity that bonded both the future and the past into that one incredible moment. I was incurably in love with her instantly and even though my name is Paul, she called me Gordan for the next forty-five years.
I’ve always been grateful for whatever it was about me that had attracted her but whatever it had been at the time, I’m sure that age had slowly stolen it. Lately, all I have going for me is that I can still walk without mechanical assistance. What hair I have left is white. I am over-weight, out of shape and what body parts aren’t sagging are held in place by wrinkles. Simply put, my body is no longer cool enough for tattoos.
I leaned in closer to examine the beautiful dragon’s head coming over my left shoulder. It was the most elegant and brilliant tattoo I’d ever witnessed. I’ve never seen skin dyes this intense. In particular, the silver was a shimmering metallic that flashed the reflected light from the bathroom fixture into my throbbing eyes. The tattoo also appeared to be completely three-dimensional with the dragon’s sky blue eyes following mine no matter how I moved my head. I was staggered by the resemblance to my wife’s beautiful eyes of that same shade.
Without conscious thought on my part, my hand lifted up to touch the dragon’s mysterious face in the hollow of my shoulder. I’m not completely sure why I stopped. Was I afraid the tattoo would be real, or maybe, that it wouldn’t be?
I twisted my protesting head over my shoulder, turning my back to the mirror in a painful effort to see the rest of the tattoo. The astonishment of it just kept building. The dragon’s neck and sinuous body continued over my shoulder, down and diagonally across most of my back. The beast’s elegant wings were folded tightly, but it looked as if it were ready to leap into the sky at the slightest provocation. four graceful legs stretched out on either side of its body in a very possessive embrace that ended with the dragon’s talons giving the impression of digging into the skin above my hips. Then the gleaming and sinuous tail wrapped itself around my waist, across my lower abdomen, continuing around and down over the left side of my butt.
I turned back around and tried to steady myself by grabbing the towel rack. It was loose and I almost fell.
Every time I’ve considered getting a tattoo, I found myself reading every tattoo publication I could lay my hands on. In all of my research on the subject, I’d never seen a more intricate tattoo than the one now smiling at me from the mirror. The detail and colors were beyond even the elaborate Japanese tattoos I’ve studied. Those tattoos take many weeks of painful effort to complete. The work for this tattoo should have taken at least that long but it hadn‘t been here the last time I’d looked. When had that been? I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out of it, but I’d have bet the entire bank account it hadn’t been long enough to complete this masterpiece.
I leaned further into the mirror. There was something strange and familiar about the expression of the face, and the realism of the eyes. Then it hit me. The tattoo was female. Like the mysterious voice in my head, this was a girl dragon. This was a girl dragon with eyes like my dead wife’s!
The sardonic smile she was giving me had an almost Mona Lisa like quality of timelessness. Whoever the artist was that had created her was beyond a master but the greatest tattooist who had ever lived could not have completed this art overnight. Hell, the eyes themselves would have taken…
I leaned my face even closer to the reflection. The pale blue eyes just looked so real, and they still appeared to be staring into mine.
“Hello Gorgeous,” I said softly. “Where the hell did you come from?”
Then the dragon’s left eye slowly closed in a very sensuous and familiar wink.
In utter astonishment, I stared into the reflection of her smiling eyes, as the bathroom sink lifted up and slammed me in the face.http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ean=2940012106179
