Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

Do you remember the first chapter of this book? (I certainly hope that you do, since it was only a few pages back.) What did I promise you there? I promised that I was going to stop using cliffhangers and other frustrating storytelling practices. Now, what did I do at the end of that very same chapter? I left you with a frustrating cliffhanger, of course.

That was intended to teach you something: that I’m completely trustworthy and would never dare lie to you. At least not more than, oh, half a dozen times per chapter.

I dangled from the rope ladder, wind whipping at my jacket, heart still pounding from my escape. Flying above me was an enormous glass dragon.

Perhaps you’ve seen a dragon depicted in art or cinema. I certainly have. However, looking up at the thing above me in the air, I knew that the images I’d seen in films were only approximations. Those movies tended to make dragons—even the threatening ones—seem bulbous, with large stomachs and awkward wingspans.

The reptilian form above me was nothing like that. There was an incredible sleekness to it, snakelike but at the same time powerful. It had three sets of wings running down its length, and they flapped in harmony. I could see six legs as well—all tucked up underneath the slender body—and it had a long glass tail whipping behind it in the air.

Its head twisted about—translucent glass sparkling—and looked at me. It was triangular, with sharp lines, like an arrowhead. And there were people standing in its eyeball.

This isn’t a creature at all, I realized, hanging desperately to the ladder, but a vehicle. One crafted completely from glass!

“Alcatraz!” a voice called from above, barely audible over the sound of the wind.

I glanced up. The ladder led into an open section of the dragon’s stomach. A familiar face was poking out of the hole, looking down at me. The same age as I am, Bastille had long, silver hair that whipped in the wind. The last time I’d seen her, she’d gone with two of my cousins into hiding. Grandpa Smedry had worried that keeping us all together was making us easier to track.

She said something, but it was lost in the wind.

“What?” I yelled.

“I said,” she yelled, “are you going to climb up here, or do you intend to hang there looking stupid for the entire trip?”

That’s Bastille for you. She did kind of have a point, though. I climbed up the swinging ladder—which was much harder and much more nerve-racking than you might think.

I forced myself onward. It would have been a pretty stupid end to get lifted to safety at the last moment, then drop off the ladder and squish against the ground below. When I got close enough, Bastille gave me a hand and helped me up into the dragon’s belly. She pulled a glass lever on the wall, and the ladder began to retract.

I watched, curious. At that point in my life, I hadn’t really seen much silimatic technology, and I still considered it all to be “magic.” There was no noise as the ladder came up—no clinking of gears or hum of a motor. The ladder just wound around a turning wheel.

A glass plate slid over the open hole in the floor. Around me, glass walls sparkled in the sunlight, completely transparent. The view was amazing—we’d already moved beyond the fog—and I could see the landscape below, extending in all directions. I almost felt as if I were hovering in the sky, alone, in the dazzling serenity of—

“You done gawking yet?” Bastille snapped, arms folded.

I shot her a glance. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I’m trying to have a beautiful moment here.”

She snorted. “What are you going to do? Write a poem? Come on.” With that, she began to walk along the glass hallway inside the dragon, moving toward the head. I smiled wryly to myself. I hadn’t seen Bastille in over two months, and neither of us had known if the other would even survive long enough to meet up again.

But, where Bastille is concerned, that was actually a nice reception. She didn’t throw anything at me, hit me with anything, or even swear at me. Rather heartwarming.

I rushed to catch up with her. “What happened to your business suit?”

She looked down. Instead of wearing her stylish jacket and slacks, she was dressed in a much more stiff, militaristic costume. Black with silver buttons, it looked kind of like the dress uniforms that military personnel wear on formal occasions. It even had those little metal things on the shoulders that I can never remember how to spell.

“We’re not in the Hushlands anymore, Smedry,” she said. “Or at least we soon won’t be. So why wear their clothing?”

“I thought you liked those clothes.”

She shrugged. “It’s my place to wear this now. Besides, I like wearing a glassweave jacket, and this uniform has one.”