Chapter 16

Sado Island was much farther than it looked, Azuki found. It must be very big indeed. She was tired, so tired. It was deep in the night and she'd been flying for more than twelve hours all together. She was hungry, too, so very hungry, and she couldn't fish until she found shallows to stand in. Still, the island looked nearly as far away as it had when she'd started from the coast at noon.

Then the stars disappeared. Oh, no! The clouds had moved in, and across the water Azuki could see the wind picking up. A storm was coming. How had she missed it?

There was nothing to do but keep flying.

The wind hit Azuki like a blow. She felt herself losing her grip on the air currents. The wind forced her lower and lower. Suddenly, a wave slammed her, catching her wing tip. She tumbled. Azuki realized she was lost to the sea and could only hope for a chance at escape.

The roiling water tossed her. She gasped for breath whenever her beak came to the surface. She was losing strength. How close was that shore? She felt herself scooped up, and suddenly she could breathe again.

Was this drowning?

"You aren't drowning, Toki-girl. You are safe with me." The voice was light and melodious. Azuki found herself cradled in enormous arms scaled in sparkling green tipped with golden claws and started. The arms clasped her tightly.

"Relax, Toki-girl," the melodious voice continued. "Don't fight me. You're safe! You can breathe if you stay with me, in my bubble. I will get you to the beach."

"Butbut," Azuki stammered. "Who are you?"

"My father is the Dragon King. We live in a palace under the sea and bring the rain when it's needed. Let me see if I can"

Azuki glimpsed in her mind's eye a girl about her own age, with hair of rippling spun gold, pale pinkish skin, and eyes of purest, cat-like, green.

"You're a girl? But " Azuki touched the scaled arms with her beak.

"I am a dragon, but I am also a girl, just as you are a girl, but also a toki. That is why I came to get you when you got in trouble we are much alike. I'm not supposed to interfere. Why did you try to fly over to Sado Island with a storm blowing in and when you are tired?" Azuki shook her head, but the Dragon-girl continued, "I can tell you're tired. I've got you. Just relax!"

"I didn't know it was so far. The Oni I met told me I could make it in a day!"

"And so you could," the Dragon Princess said. "From Niigata to Sado. But from the mountains where the Oni live?" Her laugh tinkled over Azuki like coins falling into a jar. "I don't think so. Oni are terrible judges of distance, and so, it seems, are you!"

"I've had little experience, but I know more now," Azuki said grimly. Kukanko had likely meant it would take her a day from the coast. The error, Azuki realized, had been her own.

"Why are you so anxious to go to Sado?"

"I bring only unhappiness to the humans I love. I want to live with my bird-kin. Everyone will be better off if I'm a toki all the time."

"Really?" The Dragon Princess sounded puzzled. "How is being one thing all the time better than being the other?"

"But if I'm a bird, and I'm just a bird "

"You aren't though, any more than I am just a dragon, are you?" The Princess rumbled thoughtfully deep within her dragon chest. "You are doing this out of love for your human family?"

"I destroyed my human family!"

The water rushed past and the Dragon Princess adjusted her arms around Azuki. "Tell me," she said. So Azuki did.

Azuki felt the Dragon Princess's enormous rectangular head shake. "Those people who hurt your family that was their doing, not yours. Even if it was your fault, which it wasn't, what makes you think you would be any better for your bird-kin than your human-kin?"

"I shouldn't have come here at all," Azuki cried desperately. "It's me I'm bad for everyone because I am a bird-child!"

"I don't think that follows," the Dragon Princess said, for she had a very logical turn of mind. "You may be confused, and so, I admit, am I, but there's nothing wrong with you or me. You seem like a nice person. We could be friends, couldn't we? Are you sure you want to be a toki?"

"What happens when you are a girl?" Azuki asked, avoiding the final question. The Dragon Princess had raised fresh doubts about her plan in Azuki's mind, but what else was she to do?

"I have been thinking about the same things you have," the Princess admitted. "I've found I can't be a girl here, because girls here don't look like me and I scare people as much as a girl as I do when I'm a dragon. I do it sometimes when I am with my mother. Mother lives in a place called Europe, in a cave under a mountain. I get my coloring from her, and many of the girls there look like me, but they are not Dragon-girls. I have no friends and no home among the dragons there either, because I look like an Asian dragon! Mother says it doesn't matter, but sometimes I think all she cares about is her jewelry and isn't really paying attention. She has piles of it under her mountain. I don't care much for jewelry, but that's what European dragons like."

"What do you think I should do?"

"I don't know, Toki-girl. I don't know what's right for you, or for me, but I am trying to learn. For now, I live as a dragon, with my father under the sea because I love him, and because it's fun to bring the rain!"

"Did you bring this storm?" Azuki was shocked at the power of this girl who was both Princess and dragon.

"Dragons do. It's our job. I felt badly, seeing you get tossed by the wind I brought, and then I realized you were a bird-girl, so I came to get you. Well," the Dragon Princess said as they whooshed to the surface in a little cove, "here we are." She came abreast of some rocks and helped Azuki clamber to the safety of land, where she shook herself and settled her wings, trying hard to remember the girl within when she saw the fearsome beast that rode the surge below her.

"I don't know if you'll be happier as a toki than you were as a girl," the Princess said, "but I wish you fortune in all your choices."

"Thank you, Princess," Azuki said. "I wish you the same. My name is Azuki, and I will remember your kindness always. I am proud to be your friend."

"We have something in common, Azuki," the Dragon Princess said as she maneuvered away from the rocks. "We are both human and something else. I've never met anybody like me in that way before. I've never been anything but both, and even then, I've mostly been a dragon. You've tried one way, and now you're trying another. I admire you for that. Should you ever need a favor at sea, just call out for me and I will come. I hope, though, that we can also simply meet as friends."

Azuki's beak dropped open in astonishment. "I would be honored," Azuki stammered. She could see at last the full size of the being who had rescued her, and that being's extraordinarily large and ferocious teeth! Once again she felt the tinkling laughter of the girl within the beast cascade over her.

"I'm just like you, Azuki," the melodious voice said. "We are both girls inside! I want to hear what happens to you. Call on me when you have need. You'll never owe me more than the tale of your adventures!" With that, the Dragon Princess slipped beneath the waves and vanished.