The Fire God

Chapter Five

I led them back to the dragon oasis. I should have offered to carry the female's backpack, but the wapiti was cumbersome. I gauged its weight to be approximately 150 kilograms.

The flora was different here. Thick with trees, amur maple, Siberian elm, and grass, silver spike, spreading bedstraw, to the knees. Green all around. In May, my oasis was vibrant with purple and white blooms, rims of pink and yellow. Pea shrub, Mongolian thistle, trout lily. Deliciously alive and awake. Animals sifted through the brush, ate their fill.

In front of my house was a large pool. A lone Mongolian swan had claimed it, its feathers brown with beige on its breast and white on its tail. It had the obligatory bump on its beak. The house was two stories. The house was more fortified because I had used the dragon cemetery to harvest my materials, dragon bones for the base supports, the decayed bodies of dragons enriching the earth that I'd made into the mortar. The house had dried a pale cream. I'd used tiles on the veranda and had an outside twin staircase winding up to the balcony of the second floor. The house was open the way they were in Rome when I was alive. As freely as in the oasis, all manner of deer, elk and goat were roaming the first floor veranda.

Aditi's music was carrying outside to us. Walking on Sunshine was blaring from the electronic little toy Mu had gotten for her. Aditi also favored Girls Just Want to Have Fun, though her English was broken and she didn't really understand the lyrics.

The male nephilim hesitated as I strode across the main floor, but the female swept over to an under-sized elk. She put her hands to its jowls, then brushed her fingers over its coat.

Aditi came running into the foyer screaming, "Papa," her arms open wide for me. Then she saw the pair behind me and shrank, drew her arms to her body.

The female nephilim broke from her coos, observed Aditi, minced across the hall. I dumped the wapiti onto the floor, went directly opposite my darling, said in the mother tongue, "Qunz adla zul," and kissed her forehead. I love you. "I'm going to hang the wapiti in the cellar." I nodded my head toward the animal. "Direct our guests to the study. I'll clean myself up, then join them. Provide them with some wine and nourishment."

"Yes, Papa." She stood on tiptoe and kissed my cheek, then slipped off to her own room.

I shook my head to myself, but hefted the wapiti over my shoulder again.

"I'm sorry for her," I said. "She's not used to guests. Please allow me to deal with this," indicating the carcass. I abandoned the pair in the main hall, took the wapiti to the slaughter room, hung it from a hook, slashed its torso so it'd cool. I walked back through the central hall to get to the main staircase.

The pair had abandoned their coats and backpacks. The female's chest was plastic. I'd seen other women alter themselves in that way, but it struck me as odd, especially in a nephilim. The Great Light was on the steps, stood, opened his arms. All he needed was the stigmata to make the image complete. "Mricul, please tell us where we are."

I ignored him, but nodded to the female, continued up the steps to the second floor. My clothes were tatters. I tore the remains from my body, discarded them. In the mirror, the length of my black hair was visible. Not as bad as it could have been, but I took the dragon blade, hacked off a couple of centimeters, shaved myself, as I hadn't even paused to tame my beard. The cut was much more proper, more like a modern man.

I found a tunic and trousers, slipped those on, latched my dragon blade and unicorn horn to my belt. I kept dragon claws and talons near my chest as throwing knives. I observed myself one more time in the mirror. Clean and presentable.

Aditi was in the hall at the top of the stairs. She had switched from her shorts and halter top to a sari. She was quiet, but watched the pair from our vantage point on the second floor. Her hands were folded in front of her.