Dragon! Book Two: "Revenge"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Gareth stood, wrapping his blanket around his shoulders, ready to greet the day. Ann was right. Today they might find answers to the hundreds of questions that forced them to cross the mountains. Suddenly he was not hungry. A sour taste filled his mouth as he remembered the old adage about getting what you wish for. The idea was central to dozens of folktales and children’s stories, but nonetheless, the truths were bound in each tale and story.

Tad woke with a start. He sat and looked around as if confused, fear evident in his expression, his eyes wide. “He touched me.”

Gareth dropped the blanket, and his hand went to the blade at his waist as he searched the area. “Who?”

“Belcher.”

Gareth swiveled and faced Tad. It only took an instant to find his umbrella of protection was in place and secure. “Tell me about it.”

“I was asleep when he found me. He laughed and was gone.”

“How do you know it was him?”

Tad cast the look children give adults when asking silly questions. “Because I’ve heard him when he talks to you.”

Ann’s hands were held to her mouth in fear, but she said nothing. Her eyes darted from Tad to Gareth and back again.

Gareth said, “He laughed? That’s all?”

“It was the way he laughed. Mean. Like he knows a secret that’s going to hurt and won’t tell me.”

The explanation sounded as precise as if Tad was an adult speaking to equals. The change took Gareth by surprise, as had most of the knowledge learned about Tad on the trip. If he didn’t know better, he’d think the boy was twice his age. The idea gave Gareth pause, but the fear of Belcher now increased. If Tad was right, Belcher knew of him.

Ann said, “We don’t know where we’re going or what we’ll find, but we need to go if we want to get it done today.”

To her surprise, Gareth hesitated. He both feared and wished to learn what lay ahead. They gathered their few belongings and were soon walking again, Tad not only kept up but rushed ahead. The snow diminished, and green sprouts spread leaves. The ground felt soft from the retained water but firm enough to offer a firm grip to their feet.

Gareth followed the other two as if by trailing them he could protect them from an attack from the rear. His mind was cold, reviewing each fact he knew about Belcher and searching for a way to exploit it. At the very least, how to protect Tad.

Tad set a pace fast enough for him and Ann to stretch their strides to keep even. Gareth kept them shielded from Belcher but suspected that now that Belcher knew of Tad he would try contacting him again. Belcher should not have been able to learn of Tad, let alone contact him, and Gareth withheld that information until he could determine what had happened.

“Are you listening to me?” Gareth asked Tad.

“I can’t help it,” Tad said as he swung a branch in front of him pretending is was a sword but not listening.

Gareth could lock him out completely, but then he wouldn’t be able to provide his protection. As his father had once told him, you cannot both look up and down at the same time. Your mind is only capable of so much.

The saying from his father caused Gareth to think of the body of Cinder rotting in that clearing. No, after Blackie had coated him with acid the body would break down very fast, bones and all, not rotting, but disintegrating. Within hours he suspected, there was little left, nothing recognizable, although neither Blackie nor Gareth wished to check on it.

After a day of rain or two, the great dragon would be returned to basic elements the same as all that dies no matter how hard they fight against it. Soon, those same elements would feed the grass, trees, and all that grazed upon them. An apple growing from that ground would have some of the elements of Cinder in it. The thought was not morbid for Gareth, but almost pleasing. Cinder would like knowing his dead body helped others as it grew fruit.

Gareth caught Tad’s laugh even as he chuckled to himself. No, Cinder wouldn’t like it because Cinder had a brain the size of a cow, only using it more for flying. The small portion of the dragon mind dedicated to thinking was probably smaller than that of a squirrel. Dragons felt, reacted, and acted on outside stimulus. Treating them like intelligent beings was wrong, no matter how much he felt attached to the beast.

Tad said, “If Blackie died you’d feel sad.”

“But if I died, would Blackie feel sad?”

Tad poked his stick at a tree beside the road as if it was fighting back and shouted, “Take that!” Then he turned and said, “I think so. Maybe lonely.”

The insight tended to make Gareth feel better, even if he disagreed with it. They walked in silence along the trail that would take them back over the pass. While no larger or wider, the ground was less steep and as the vegetation changed it did not become the familiar lush green of the other side of the mountains. Instead, the trees thinned and were almost all pine, tall and straight.

Dryness in the air made itself known as their sinuses reacted to the heat and to unfamiliar pollens. The grass under the pines had turned brown indicating the lack of rain. Each of them sneezed more than once.

But the day had turned warm, the sun bright, and the sky a shade of blue Gareth had never seen. He considered having Blackie fly high overhead so he could watch through the dragon’s eyes, but held off for selfish reasons. He enjoyed the discovery of a new land, one that grew different plants. Each twist and turn of the trail revealed a newness that held his interest.

When they came to a stream Ann knelt and drank, saying, “We should all fill up on water. This is the first stream since we broke camp. No telling when we reach the next one.”

Gareth was used to an abundance of streams and rivers. Even Bitters Island had a small river beside their settlement. The remembrance of the peaceful life there tainted his mind. Being forced to leave there was another reason to hunt down Belcher. His whole family had been affected and were now in a temporary home.

But again, it was Ramos that made him most angry when he thought of Belcher. Belcher had tried to make Ramos walk off a cliff to die because he “liked” Gareth. Then Belcher had made him freeze to death. Belcher had no regrets, no conscious. No feelings of others. Everything that happened was only about Belcher, in his warped mind.

Others. That single word brought to the forefront of his thinking the fact that there were only ten others ahead that he could sense. Gareth admitted to himself he didn’t use Blackie because of fear of what he would find. As long as they walked along the path, almost as a happy family on an outing, he didn’t have to face the probable scene ahead.

Images of deserted cities, whole towns and villages burned and destroyed leaped to mind. Gareth tried to shut out the images of raven pecking at the bones of the dead, wild dogs tearing apart corpses, and the stench of death.

He didn’t bother asking himself if Belcher was capable of such mass destruction. A single touch of Belcher’s mind told it was not only capable of such things but in his perverse way, Belcher could enjoy them. When he ran out of targets for his insanity, he would seek other victims, and he’d found them in Gareth’s homeland.

Ann said, “I feel like walking on ahead so I don’t do something to rouse you.”

Gareth flashed her a confused glance.

“Your face. I see hate, and it is ugly.”

Tad said, “That’s because he’s mad at Belcher.”

Again Tad had been listening again, without any awareness by Gareth. Would there be no privacy for him? Ever?

Tad spoke again, “If you feel for me, you can tell when I hear you. You can also tell me not to listen and I won’t.”

“Feel you?”

“Here, let me show you.”

Gareth felt a slight tickle in his mind. Not the kind to make him laugh, but a tiny tingle or tickle well in the background of his mind.

“That’s me,” Tad said. “I’m making it stronger so you know me.”

“Can you go back to regular listening without making it stronger?” The ticklish tingle instantly diminished but was still present now that he knew what to look for. “Now, stop listening to my mind.”

The sensation disappeared. They walked a few more steps while Gareth tried to sort out the idea that Tad was teaching him instead of the other way around.

A deer bolted from one side of the road and bounded to the other. A hawk circled overhead, and a ground squirrel spotted them, darted from a pile of boulders into the open, then raced away. The hawk dropped lower, watching where the squirrel had been playing.

The ground was rising slightly, but only a little more than level. The ground was more rock than dirt. Tad investigated the first cactus, but after Ann had pulled three spines from his small hand, he lost interest in the later ones. Trees shrank, then disappeared in a sea of brown grass, dotted with silver-green sage, dark green juniper, and gnarled cedar.

Near mid-day they reached the crest of the long, low hill they climbed. From there the trail split into two. A smaller one wound off to the north, having the signs that mostly animals used it. The main trail continued over the crest and fell away.

They paused at the top of the ridge. Ahead was a wide, flat, dry valley as far as they could see. Looking to the left and right revealed the same. Not a tree in sight. Just a rolling plain of brown grass and bare rock. No green. No abandoned cities. No water.

Nothing was out there but the trail they followed until it disappeared from sight in the wavering distance.

“Three Gods above and four below!” Ann murmured, slashing her fingers in the ancient hand sign to ward off evil. “What is this place?”

Tad said, “Do we have to go down there?”

Gareth glanced around for shade and found none. He said, “I want to stop here.”

“Me too,” Ann added, her voice as ashen as her face.

Without water the trek into the emptiness ahead was impossible, and they carried no canteens or water bottles. Other than the path they followed, he saw no reason for anyone to enter the dry lands in front of them. But the trail they followed was there because it had been made by people, and it had to go somewhere.

He sat on the hard ground and reached out for Blackie. The dragon responded instantly. It was clinging to a steep side of a rocky mountain, it’s preferred perch. Gareth looked through the eyes of the dragon and determined the pines and lack of underbrush indicated it was near where the three of them had spent the night.

Blackie welcomed his touch and returned it. Gareth ordered, “Fly to me.”

The dragon leaped off the side of the mountain before fully extending his wings. It fell until the first powerful stroke lifted it and sent it forward. Gareth gulped and fought vertigo as the ground began to fall away. Blackie flew higher and ahead with each long, lazy flap of his wings, and as if pleased the two of them were joined as it flew, Blackie tossed back his head and let out a scream of pure joy.

Any animals within hearing range surely cringed and huddled deeper in their caves, nests, and burrows. Blackie had announced to the world below he was supreme, and none had better dare challenge him. Gareth chuckled as he shared Blackie’s enthusiasm.

He used Blackie’s eyes to watch the ground below. Spread out in all directions was the beginning of the dry lands. The pine trees were smaller, there was less green, and the air was hotter and dry. He saw the trail they’d walked and recognized a few landmarks despite seeing them from above.

And then, in the distance, he saw a ridge with three figures sitting, two of them looking up at him. On impulse, Gareth ordered Blackie to fly lower, so low he would barely skim the edge of the crest.

Turning the dragons head on the serpentine neck, he watched Tad and Ann throw up their arms to protect their eyes from the dust and small rocks they’d thrown in the air. He didn’t miss the concerned expression Ann wore, nor the laugh of delight from Tad.

Looking to the front again, Gareth watched the trail below. A dozen strokes of the dragon’s wings carried him further ahead than them walking a quarter of a day, or it seemed like it. One last look behind found the ridge, but it was already so far away he couldn’t see the people he knew were there.

Then, as his attention focused ahead again, he saw that beyond a small rolling hill lay buildings. The trail went directly to them.