Beautiful Blood

Cursing, Arthur descended a few feet and planted a boot on what Rosacher had presumed to be the shattered scale, knocking loose several of the broken pieces—against all expectation they did not fall but hovered beside Arthur, fluttering as though weightless and borne aloft on an updraft. The remainder of the pieces also fluttered up about the giant, laying bare an undamaged scale beneath. They swarmed about him like a leaf storm, almost obscuring him from sight. He screamed; his pistol discharged and he screamed a second time, his legs poking out from the mass of golden fragments that sheathed his upper body, kicking madly, presenting an image that might have been engendered by the brain of a drug-addled artist. Whatever their nature—be they insects or something more obscure—they settled on his hands, neck and face, affixing themselves to the bare skin, so that he came to resemble a man with huge golden mittens and a misshapen golden head thrice normal size that changed shape subtly, now shrinking, now growing distended. Spasms racked his body, yet he screamed no more. He hung there for a second, some reflex permitting him to maintain a grip on the vine that supported him, and then he tumbled away, spinning down against the lights of the town. The insects (Rosacher had determined they were such) came scattering back up from the falling corpse and formed into a cloud that drifted off around the curve of the dragon’s ribs—once again Rosacher entertained the conceit that he was looking off along the curve of a golden planet and observing the curious astronomical object that orbited it.

Silence and stillness closed in around him and he realized he was trembling. His breath came quick and shallow, and though the night was fairly warm he felt chilled to the bone. He squeezed his eyes shut, attempting to control his body, and heard a thin keening, like a teakettle beginning to boil. Curious, he opened his eyes. An insect like those that had attacked Arthur danced before his face—a long, dark, drooping body suspended between papery gold wings. In panic, he swatted at it and it fluttered off, going out of view. He no longer heard the whining, but as he twisted about in his cage of vines, hoping to catch sight of the insect, it fluttered up from behind his back and battened onto his jaw. He made to knock it away, but did not complete the gesture—a second insect, its wings folded, perched on his middle knuckle. A sting, a pinprick attended by a cold, burning sensation, and his hand cramped, knotted into a fist. Another sting seared his neck. Cold fire spread down into his throat and across his cheek. More stings followed, how many he could not be certain. They blended into a red wash of agony, fire poison acid, a distillate of each combined to produce a fourth and commensurately greater effect. The pain had a noise, a crackling scream that he realized was issuing from his throat. He seemed to be riding atop the noise as if it were a wave, one carrying him toward a black coast that came to cast a shadow across him so deep, he could no longer distinguish movement or color or anything at all. Even his pain was subsumed, although it seemed he brought its memory with him into the blessed dark.

9

 Ruddy light pried under his eyelids and he heard somebody humming a snatch of a familiar song. A confusion of memories crowded his brain—he could make no sense of them—and a hazy figure moved across his field of vision, clarifying into a lovely Raphaelesque woman clad in breeches and a low-cut blouse. She passed into an adjoining room. He made to call out and that set off a paroxysm of coughing. Once the coughing subsided he felt dazed and out of his depth. Something partially covered his face, interfering with his breathing—he pawed at it and found that the lower half of his face and both hands were bandaged. He sank back into the mattress and wondered where he was. The room was Spartan, a few sticks of furniture, an oil lamp, unadorned walls of newly cut boards, a window covered by an orange shade—yet it had a pleasing aesthetic and the blond color of the unfinished wood glowed with a raw vitality. The bed was not much larger than a cot, though comfortable. As he grew increasingly alert he felt pain in the areas that were bandaged and called out again, cautiously this time, producing a feeble grating noise that initiated another bout of coughing. There was no response, but several minutes later the woman re-entered and he attracted her notice with a hand signal. She sat on the edge of the bed and laid a hand on his forehead, peering at him with a worried look. She asked if he needed anything and he shaped the word “water” with his lips.