Dragon Island Read Free

life.
    The ground begins to tremor as the thing chasing us closes in. Dust rains down on me from the rock ceiling above with its every step. I sink to the ground and wrap my arms around my body, shaking uncontrollably with fear.
    The cave’s shudders abruptly stop. The black man screams. A moment later, this sound, too, stops, and I know he’s no more.
    The earth begins to shake again. I hear trees splinter and a noise that sounds like the world’s biggest suction hose starting and stopping, starting and stopping, starting and stopping. For some reason, it makes me think of Bear sniffing around in our backyard, on the hunt for an old bone he has buried.
    Then the giant eye appears before the cave opening, eclipsing my view of the world outside. The serpentine pupil dividing its red cornea shrinks in size as it focuses on me. The roar sounds, causing my rocky hiding place to shudder around me. Overwhelmed with terror, I lose consciousness.

Chapter 3
     
    The samurai were fierce warriors comprised of feudal Japan ’s noble class. Like their European counterparts, the medieval knights, the samurai’s main purpose in life was to serve their daimyo, or liege lord, and their greatest honor, to die fighting for him in battle. It is said that a samurai so associated his or her self with war that they considered the swords they carried to be the outward incarnation of their very own souls...
     
    —Excerpt from The Samurai Way , by Evan Newton (2003)
     
    I wake from a nightmare and scream at the snarling monster facing me. I scramble backward on my hands and feet until my back hits the cave wall. After a moment, I calm down. By the sunlight drifting in through the cave entrance, I can see it’s not a monster before me, but a dead man. A dead man dressed in what once would’ve been a suit of samurai armor, to be exact. It was the skull inside the remains of the helmet that frightened me so.
    Ha!
    Frightened.
    With my plane crashing and a giant monster chasing after me, I’ve been nothing but frightened!
    At least it’s daytime, now. I must have slept through the night after passing out.
    Anyway, I’m sure the dead samurai’s helmet has a proper name, but I’ve no clue what it is, and frankly, at this moment, I don’t care. It’s the sword pressed against his body that holds my rapt attention.
    I rise into a crouch and creep forward, my every step slow, cautious, and deliberate. Suddenly, I remember everything, including the thing with the monstrous eye that was outside last night, and I jerk my head toward the cave entrance, expecting to see it engulf the exit and blot out the sun at any second.
    I relax a little when it fails to appear.
    I turn away, noticing for the first time the crude paintings that cover the cave interior.
    No.
    To say the paintings are crude isn’t right. The word I’m searching for is...minimalist. My art teacher, Mrs. Fox, explained that the word minimalist means to purposefully take the simplest route to create art. In other words, less is more. That’s definitely the case in regard to the cave paintings.
    The samurai warrior is depicted in each one, fighting hordes of grotesque monsters that defy description and range in size from mouse-like to gargantuan. In the paintings, the samurai’s armor is made of a bright yellow wood lacquered to such a high sheen that it shines like gold.
    Here and now, the remnants of the cobweb-covered uniform are so rotted with time that they don’t even hold a suggestion of yellow, much less gold.
    All but the sword, that is.
    I reach down and brush away the dust and cobwebs from it. The warrior holds the sword in his hands, the hilt turned downward so that the tip of its wooden scabbard touches his feet.
    I take hold of the sword and tug gently, not wishing to disturb the body any more than I have to. The sword doesn’t move. I reposition my hands to get a better grip, and pull. I doubt the sword would do any good against whatever owns that giant red eye,