Read Online The Dragon Delasangre by Alan F. Troop - Free Book Online Page B

our grief.
    A few of them have fallen and I place them back, on top of the pile, and sit and try to remember my mother.
    Funny, I think, when I realize all my images of her are of her human shape. I try to remember her in her natural state . . . but nothing comes. Even when we found Mother on this island, she had changed her shape back to human before she died, bleeding and gasping in the sand.
    â€œShe wanted to be human,” Father told me. “She preferred to live in that form.”
    I wish now she hadn’t. Our people keep no paintings, no photographs of ourselves in our natural forms and I have nowhere to turn, to know exactly what one of our women looks like.
    Father had laughed at me when I told him of this worry.
    â€œPeter,” he said. “Trust your blood. You’ll recognize her as soon as you see her. And believe me” —he chuckled— “you’ll know just what to do.”
    I hope so. My sigh seems louder to me than the ocean sounds filling the island air. Mother had insisted on me being schooled with humans, just as she was, and what did it get me? I’m not even sure how to pursue one of my own women.
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    I dig the grave without tools, using my strong rear legs and clawed feet to shovel the earth. Then I lay Father’s carcass at the bottom of the hole and cover him with dirt. I say no words, sing no prayers. What is buried below is a deserted carcass, skin and bones.
    My father once ruled kingdoms. He defeated whole armies singlehandedly. For over a century he commanded a pirate fleet that terrorized the Caribbean. I shake my head at the disturbed soil I’ve pushed over him, the final resting place of Don Henri DelaSangre, and hope his spirit’s gone elsewhere.
    Afterward I search for rocks and build a marker for him, just a little higher than my mother’s. Then I sit at the foot of their graves, stare at the stone piles, the surrounding land and the restless sea beyond it. Far north, on the horizon, the sky glows faintly from the lights on Bimini Island. Otherwise, there’s no sign of man anywhere in sight.
    A good thing, I decide. A good place for them both to be buried. Don Henri’s last kingdom is perhaps his smallest, but his to rule over in perpetuity.

6
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    With Father gone, I’m left with no company but the wind, the waves and the island’s roving pack of dogs. I go days without eating, wandering from empty room to empty room. The solitude torments me, disrupts my sleep. Father said she wouldn’t come to term again until July and I wonder if I can wait that long.
    Just to have voices and noises in the house I turn on the television in my room and let it play twenty-four hours a day. I do the same with the FM stereo radio in the great room on the third floor. But rather than allow it to comfort me, I ignore the cacophony and stare into the shadows for hours.
    I take to inspecting each room of the house each day, dusting furniture, refolding linens. When nothing’s left to be done, I turn my attention to the closets, sobbing when I open the door to Father’s and find his and Mother’s musty and mildewed clothes. It takes days for me to carry all of it to the third floor and burn it in the open hearth.
    More days pass and I finally take myself outside, working for the first time in years in Mother’s garden, removing weeds, pruning growth, admiring the exotic herbs she planted—the yellow-green flowers of the Dragon’s Tear plant, the deep purple shade of the Death’s Rose. If I can’t find the girl, I think, I can always crush the purple petals of the rose and brew a tea from it. Father told me the death that comes from it is very peaceful.
    The sun’s rays and the ocean breezes seem to have asalutary effect on me and, after a day’s work outside, my stomach reminds me how long it’s been since I’ve eaten. I’ve no desire to change shape and fly off on a hunt but,