Her brothers would never believe she’d flown past the end of the world.
Not that Etsuko would actually tell them.
She’d borrowed one of her engineer father’s airships, and although she was only fifteen, neither of her parents had asked a single question. With four older Zhang brothers, what she did was of little concern to her parents, unless she inconvenienced them by bringing dishonor to their family.
But this, sailing in the sky above the Pacific Ocean on the back of a dragon, smelling something other than the fish-gut stench of Suji Japan’s fish market neighborhood where they lived, and where no one cared that her skin was as dark as a dockworker’s shoulders…this wasn’t trouble at all.
This was freedom. A fantastical journey to world’s end and then to whatever lie beyond it. And something was out there—she’d first glimpsed land on the horizon only an hour ago.
She lifted her arms and closed her eyes, inhaling the breezy ocean air that raised bumps on her arms and blew into the golden, yellow skin of her dragon’s left wing and into the smooth leather, wooden framework, and gears of Nina’s right wing.
She glanced back at Shiro, her closest-in-age brother who sat behind her on Nina, and smiled. He’d finally settled in and gotten used to the gentle undulations of Nina’s flight, for his face was deep in one of his books. Robotics, of course. Shiro didn’t go anywhere without his braniac stash.
And Etsuko never went anywhere without her compass and watch.
*I thought he’d never stop whimpering*, Sei the dragon said into Etsuko’s and the other dragons' minds, shifting her balance on Etsuko’s shoulder.
Grinning, Etsuko ran her hand from the pint-sized creature’s head to tail like she would pet a cat. A reddish purple cat. “Just be grateful he didn’t get motion sickness.”
“Oh, I certainly am,” Madara spoke up this time, her voice a clipped purr as she unhooked herself from the airship she’d been pulling along, making sure the sails were aloft to catch the eastern air current. She flew next to Nina, her eyes smiling at Etsuko, blue-silver scales glittering in the midday sun. “Human regurgitation does wretched things to dragon scales,” she said, pushing smoke out of her nose in huff. “And the stench lingers for daaaays. Days! It’s quite embarrassing for a dragon to be smelling like human vomit amongst genteel company.”
Sei, who had lost her voice due to a war injury in the Japanese army, laughed soundlessly, her tiny shoulders shaking. *We’re genteel?*
Nina sighed, lifting her regal head wearily. “We dragons are not dainty, graceful roses. The three of us are repaired warriors, reconstructed for glory yet to be.”
Rolling her large silvery eyes, Madara picked a fish chunk out of her teeth with a talon. “Yes, yes, we know, Nina,” Madara said, turning and swishing her mechanical tail just above Nina’s head.
Nina’s body twisted as she dove to avoid it, unseating Shiro and Etsuko from their saddles.
Alarmed, Shiro clung to Nina’s back, his finger trembling as it held the place in his book. “What was that?” He adjusted his glasses and looked at his sister. “Did I offend them?”
Etsuko smiled and tightened her legs around the refurbished warrior dragon’s torso and shook her head. “They’re just glad you’ve gotten used to riding a dragon, is all.” It took time to get used to dragon dialect, and for the past week, she’d been translating for him. “Ready to eat?”
Shiro closed his book and tucked it into his armpit. “I’m famished,” he said, voice dipping. His adam’s apple bobbed. He never was a brave kind of boy. Maybe that’s why he and Etsuko had become close: someone in their family actually needed her, depended on her. Shiro needed her to be bold and plucky when he wasn’t, which was pretty much all the time. About everything.
She pat his hand. “Relax, brother,” she said, reining Nina toward the airship, where Tatsuo and Ann Droid anticipated them on deck. Etsuko glanced again at her compass, which now pointed north as they prepared to board the ship.
Nina clutched the netting strapped to the sides of the boat to stabilize herself for her riders to climb up.
The sort-of-captain who kept the airship from tipping over midflight, Tatsuo, a kitsune, leaned over the rail and shouted down to them, but his earthy baritone was ripped away by a shift in the wind. With wide eyes, he gestured with a bright orange paw toward land, his ears tipping backward.
Sei’s talons gripped Etsuko’s shoulder tight; tense, she peered around the back of Etsuko’s head as though suddenly hunting prey. *No,* Sei countered. *Do not relax.*
Sei could see seven times better than any of them could.
Etsuko looked, as did Shiro, to the rocky cliffs towering over the sandy shores, where Tatsuo had pointed.
Humans, on the sand, on the cliffs.
Madara, who had flown a loop over the ship and back to them, positioned herself in next to Nina, backstroking in the air current. “Whyever not, Sei Sei?”
A spear zinged past Madara’s wing and thunked against the airship’s hull.
“We’re being attacked!” Shiro screamed.