'Flame of the Ocean' - Chapter IX
The room of ever winter was a frozen lake, not much larger than the one by Satoshi’s village. A snow-covered plain lay along its shore, and an ill-shaped mountain lay beyond that. It was night in the room, with the moonlight shining off the snow giving everything in sight a silver-blue glow. Spinning, swirling mists of snow picked up by a strong north wind blew across the plain. Atop the mountain, a small shimmer blinked in and out under the light of the moon. There were no beasts or birds to be seen. The room was as empty as death.
Satoshi rubbed his mouth and shook his head. He hadn’t been afraid before now. There had been nothing to fear in the first two rooms. Even in the room of ever autumn, Satoshi hadn’t faced much worse than the spills he took on Mama’s farm horse. But he had never liked the snow, and he liked less the way Kasumi’s father and mother kept searching for ways to say he failed. There was something about the dragon king in particular that made Satoshi hesitate to enter the last room. It was as if he wanted…
No. He wouldn’t hurt Kasumi’s friend – not really. She would tell me if I were in danger. But if she wouldn’t or couldn’t, that wasn’t any escape from the last room. Without the last pearl, Satoshi really would fail, and the dragon king might do anything to him then. He pulled his yukata tight around his chest and stepped into the room.
The doorway opened directly onto the lake. The shore on either side of the frame was too far for Satoshi to reach, and so was the far shore. When Satoshi tested the ice with his foot, cracks and breaks echoed through the room, and spidery white lines appeared well under the surface. But when he made it all the way out onto the ice, it held him.
Go slow, he told himself. He had never been good with ice on the lake in winter back home. With each step he took, a snap sounded, and new cracks appeared. The nearer he came to the shore, the thinner the ice below him. Between the sight of the cracks and the chill of the wind, it was hard not to fall into shakes. But Satoshi inched as slowly as he dared, like a duck, until he could sink his foot into the snowbanks on the far lake shore. They were so deep that he sank up to his knees. Satoshi looked back over the lake, and the cracks he had left in the ice, and fell back into the snow with a great gasp.
The wind picked up, cutting raw across Satoshi’s face. No time to rest yet, he told himself. He still needed to make it back to the throne before sunrise. He pushed himself upright and looked up at the mountain. The shimmer was still there, and Satoshi could guess what caused it.
They could have at least given me a hanten, Satoshi thought as he trudged through the drifts. Some dipped down to his ankles, others came up to his chest, and all started to melt as soon as they touched his skin. Then the wind would pick up and blow his arms dry and frozen until the next deep bank. By the time Satoshi reached the base of the mountain, his hands were red from the cold and he was sure his face was the same. He could feel the frost caked into his hair, and he couldn’t feel his fingers or toes.
The peak loomed high above, mighty and silver, with no path to the top. Satoshi had never been near a mountain in his life, had never climbed any stones other than the ones by the lake. It’s a tree, he told himself as he gripped the side of the mountain. It’s just a big tree. He climbed trees all the time; not very well, but he did it.
Most of the mountainside was clear of snow and ice, but for how cold they were under Satoshi’s hands, it made no difference. Where there was ice, it melted under his fingers and toes, and more than once Satoshi slipped, caught himself on dry stones, and had to start again. The first time he fell and recovered his place, he saw a dark purplish-red smear on the rocks that hadn’t been there before. It was warm to the touch, and the same sort of smear was on his palm. The mountain is cutting me, he realized, and found he was too tired to be shocked. His hands were too cold to feel hurt. He kept climbing.
Satoshi couldn’t guess how long it took for him to reach the mountaintop. The moon of the room didn’t move like the moon of the surface, so there was no way to measure the time. When he did reach the top, his clothes were stiff with frost and his hands were warm and wet with seeping blood. He couldn’t tell if his skin was going blue from the cold or if it was just a trick of the moonlight. But the pearl was there, unbound and unguarded, so it didn’t seem right to stop to rest. Satoshi swept the pearl into his yukata and jumped off the mountain without a thought.
He landed on a long, flat plane of snow that ran down a long stretch of the mountain. He slid down it until the snow began to run out. He jumped again, over a rocky ledge and onto another snow plane. He kept sliding and jumping all the way down the mountainside, until the rocks were behind him and he could reach the path he’d cut through the plain on his way to the mountain. Once he reached that track through the snow, he could follow his own trail, with no more drifts to break through. The wind was at his back now, helping to speed him along. What time I lost in the climb, I can make up going back. His limbs were still too numb from the cold to be sore, and the cuts on his hands had stopped bleeding. He was tired, but the wild sort of tired that drives a person to go and go until their work is done. Satoshi gave himself over to that drive. He wouldn’t let Kasumi down. He wouldn’t let that old lady and that dragon king beat him.
The wind kept growing stronger, as if it wanted to knock him over and never let him back up, but Satoshi kept his feet. He was through the plain now. He was at the lakeshore, at the edge of the ice, on the ice – too quick onto the ice, it cracked open beneath him, and the ink-black water gurgled up from below. The stiffness of the frost in his clothes and hair gave way to a stinging wetness, like a cold bath filled with needles. Satoshi tried to drag himself onto a large piece of ice, but it wouldn’t take his grip. It was sharp at the edges, and Satoshi watched long streaks of red form as he slid down the ice. The stinging began to crawl inside him too, most of all in his chest. Under the water, there was nothing but cold, and black, and cold. And it wasn’t like the sea outside the room; Satoshi had no breath in this water.
“A terrible challenge,” she called it. I guess it was, in the end. I did find all the pearls fairly. That old king can’t say I didn’t. I know you’ll tell him so, Kasumi. Sorry I couldn’t show you were right about me. Take care of Denko, and look in on Mama if you can…
Through the constant din of the water, there was a muffled sound somewhere nearby, something like a splash. A lower, firmer sound followed, a slow roaring thing. In the black, somewhere in the black, was a light – not a sliver of moonlight cutting through the ice, or the spot of light that the village priest said came before the next life, but a snake of warm light writhing through the water. It was a dragon, a beautiful red dragon with golden horns and a jade underbelly. Satoshi saw its big green eyes shine with quicksilver tears that melted away into the water, and he made no attempt to swim away as it caught him in its jaws.
Together they broke the surface. Satoshi knew they were swimming, could feel the slithering motion, but he looked nowhere except up, at the dragon’s ivory teeth. Its breath was ginger tea and hot spring baths and a winter’s fire all together, driving the cold out and away. His clothes and his hair dried, and even the pearl against his chest felt warm on his skin.
They stopped, bumped against something. The bump slumped Satoshi to one side, and he saw that they were at the doorway. The dragon shook its head, and Satoshi jostled about in its mouth.
“Yes,” he said. “Through there.” He closed his eyes and lay back, but the dragon shook him up again. It seemed to want him to go through the doorway alone.
The warmth of the dragon’s breath hadn’t closed the wounds on Satoshi’s hands. Now that he was warm, he could feel the pain of the cuts, the ache of so many steps. There was no fresh strength in his arms and legs either, which felt like useless sacks he wanted to throw off. But without strength, without feeling, Satoshi pulled himself to his knees, crawled from the dragon’s mouth, and fell face first from the room of ever winter into the waters of the dragon king’s palace.
He was suspended in a dead man’s float when a hand settled on his shoulder and turned him face up. Through half-shut eyes, Satoshi saw Denko, tittering inside a bubble. And he saw Kasumi, puffy-eyed and smiling, with the smallest trace of a dragon’s whiskers fading away around the corners of her mouth.