Quick recap: Jot the dragon and Chance the boy have just set off on the start of their journey.
Here There Be Dragons
Chapter Three
Chance was seventeen years old, as I had guessed (we dragons are good at estimating humans’ ages; it’s often a little game we’ll play when bored). He was still smooth-shaven, gangly, and clumsy, though, and it was very interesting to observe his lanky body in contrast to his personality.
If left to his own devices without any infirm old fathers or fiefs to run or a sister to save, perhaps he would have been an amiable, carefree youth skipping around the fields instead of the haggard, stern young man striding beside me now. His eyes were most noticeable; even though they made him seem forever staring in shock at something, they were also tired, sad, and wise beyond their years.
“How old’s your sister, then?” I asked, trying to draw him into some kind of friendly conversation.
“She is fifteen,” he replied seriously. “She turns sixteen in four months.”
“Lovely. And she hasn’t been married off yet?”
Chance shook his head. “There have been none worthy of her hand in marriage.” His voice tightened a bit, and I dropped the subject.
“What about you? Anything worth noting? Any lady-loves of yours, or dreams of knighthood?”
“By rights, I inherit my father’s lands,” he said, a bit dully. “And the rank of knight is automatically bestowed upon me at my coming of age.”
“That’s lucky!” I said encouragingly. “Don’t have to go through the whole rigmarole of questing to become a knight. You’re one of those types who just sit there and get it handed to you all nicely polished, whether you deserve it or not.”
“Yes,” he said dryly. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“And what about ladies?” I added innocently. Any sort of glimpse into the life of the boy I was accompanying would be welcome.
He cast me a glance that would have normally been considered scathing, but with his eyes turned out to look more like a dazed frown.
“That’d be a no, then,” I remarked. He continued on impassively, and I shuffled after him. If he didn’t want to talk, then fine, I wouldn’t force him. Instead, I’d try to think of something besides eating him, because my stomach was beginning to growl. I looked side to side, keeping an eye out for any movement or sign of meat.
The whole countryside of the Westerfold was in the peak of its health and bloom; flowers dotted the terrain and the grass waved in the light breeze. It was a lovely day, just the sort I’d have been rampaging around on.
There—I sensed it at the same moment that my eyes caught the motion. A hare, big and swift and just perfect for an appetizer. I sprang forward, brushing past the boy with inches to spare, and one claw snagged the hare’s haunch as it tried to dash off. Within moments I had swallowed it and hacked back up the bits of fur and bones.
As I turned back, I saw the boy regarding me with an alarmed look, accentuated by his bulging eyeballs.
“Warn me next time,” he said, raising a hand to his pale cheek. I noticed a faint score of red across his face.
“Whoops, was that from me? Sorry, didn’t mean to.”
He sighed. “I wish you weren’t quite so big.” He started off again and I fell in beside him.
“Well I wish you weren’t quite so scrawny. But we can’t have a perfect life now, can we?”
“What am I going to do with you at the villages?” he wondered aloud.
I stayed quiet. A couple of solutions had presented themselves to me a while ago, but I preferred to see what he’d come up with before suggesting them. After all, this was his idea. I was just along for the steel.
He cast me a shrewd look that I didn’t care for and said slowly, “You have powers, don’t you?”
“Depends,” I replied evasively. “What did you have in mind?”
He hesitated. “There have been stories—”
“A dependable source of information!”
“—from creditable knights who are not known for exaggeration,” he looked at me pointedly, “and they told us facts from their encounters with dragons that the dragons could alter the hue of their scales to refract light in such a manner as to render them—the dragons, that is—almost invisible.”
“Fascinating!”
He stared intently at me. “Is this true?”
I yawned, flicking my forked tongue out. “Can’t say.”
Ever so subtly, I began to bend my scales—not quite literally bend them, but change their angles minutely so that they were, indeed, reflecting the light in a different manner. Chance, little idiot, only noticed my gradual disappearance after I was almost completely gone from view. Then he let out a shrill yelp.
“Jot!”
“Yesss?”
“Y-you-I-d-…” He was speechless for a while, and I snapped back to sight in an instant.
“About time you noticed!”
“So it’s true,” he finally managed to breathe. “You can turn invisible!”
“Or close enough.”
“This could make things easier,” he said, half to himself. He turned large eyes on me with an excited gleam in them. “Can you do anything else like that?”
“Perhaps,” I said airily. “You never can tell with dragons.”
“Well can you?” he asked with a hint of impatience.
I fixed him with a warning eye, and he subsided. “We’ll see,” was all I said.
We traveled for the rest of the short afternoon in mutual silence; he was either too shy or too occupied to speak, and I had nothing of importance to say to him.
By eventide, I was getting a bit tired. I mean, come on, I had been shuffling along for miles at the boy’s pace; my muscles were cramped and my paw pads were sore. So it was a welcome relief when we came upon a town.
Chance and I stood atop the crest of the small hill, hidden by a few scraggly trees. I sighed at the sight; such a cozy little village, nestled snugly in a nice gathering of trees, with high walls and a minimum of guards. I could easily set it ablaze and chase or devour all the inhabitants in a night. In fact, I was sorely tempted to try it, but Chance’s presence kept me from doing so.
“Well?” I said expectantly, nudging the boy with my tail’s side. It nearly knocked him over, so preoccupied was he with his thoughts. He shot me a disgusted look.
“Don’t shove me like that,” he said petulantly.
“Temper, temper!” I admonished.
He ignored me and turned back to the town, frowning. “I would avoid it, save for the fact that I need supplies, and this is the closest I’m going to get for a while.”
“So go get it. I’ll wait for you here.”
“No.” He now turned to me, his large blue orbs regarding me steadily. “What if something happens and I need to depart swiftly? You won’t know. I can’t communicate long-distance with you.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I’d say turn invisible, but I know that you’d flatten everyone in the street by just blundering your way through.”
“This is true,” I mused.
“I wish you were smaller,” he sighed.
“How much smaller?” I asked, inspecting a claw.
“Oh, small enough that you could fit inside my pack or something.” He gave a short bark of laughter. “As if that would do any good.”
I continued testing my claws, watching proudly as they glinted in the setting sun’s rays. Chance was still talking, mostly to himself, and I politely coughed.
He glanced over—then did a double-take, stared at the ground, and gaped. I blinked up at him. “What’s your problem? Staring at someone’s rude, you know.”
“Y-you-”
(I’ll save you from the usual blubbering and stuttering that left his mouth. All of it amounted to the following):
“You can change size?”
“It would appear so.”
“Bu-but that’s perfect!”
“I rather thought so myself.” I was the size of a small cat, easily able to fit in his pack.
“Brilliant!”
“Thank you. Now, let’s get a move on before it gets too late, eh?”
“Right! Absolutely!” He seemed to recollect himself and scrambled with taking off the straps, setting it on the ground and opening the flap. I jumped in; he let out a cry.
“Squishy,” I commented, looking down into the dark recesses of the leather bag.
“That’s my food,” he whined, extracting a flattened loaf of bread and two ruined pears.
“Really? Why would you want to eat that? Looks awful.”
Chance sat back on his heels and sighed. “Don’t ruin anything else while you’re in there. And keep still; people are going to notice a moving pack.”
“And on your part, don’t bang me around, don’t suffocate me, and don’t forget about me for the first pretty face you see.”
He let out a mumbled protest and closed the flap; I was submerged in darkness, and waited while he hefted the bag onto his back.
“This won’t do,” I muttered, and poked my snout up through the little opening between the flap and the rest of the pack. Now I had a nice view from slightly behind and over his right shoulder, and could whisper comfortably in his ear if I wanted.
“Don’t do that when we’re there,” Chance said, starting to walk down the hill.
“We’re not there yet,” I replied, looking around with interest. “So, this is what it’s like for you humans? Funny; you’re awfully short. And slow.”
“Compared to dragons, any creature is,” he replied impatiently.
“Not when it comes to unicorns. You should see them run. Especially when they’re mad. They come at you with that horn of theirs, and you’ve only got a short time to move. And then those slinky little weasel-like things—can’t remember what they’re called. The ones that sneak into your beds at night and bite a finger or toe off?”
“Deevlicks?”
“That’s it. Those are pretty quick; though I caught one once. Tasted awful, like stale meat.”
“I don’t want to know about this.”
“Well, too late.”
“Shush. We’re here.”
His long, lanky legs had covered the terrain fairly quickly, despite my comments on his pace, and we were at the town’s gates; I accordingly changed my scales so I was near-invisible, and hunkered a little lower down into the pack.
I needn’t have worried; there was only one guard at the gate, and after giving Chance a once-over, he nodded the boy through without a second glance.
“That was easy,” I observed softly, peeking up a little.
“Sh!” was the response. “I’m going to find an inn.”
)
I want to see the characters suffer, to have to have them struggle to overcome difficulties thrown in their path. It makes it so much more worthwhile when they do overcome their problems. I also can’t shake the feeling that maybe Jot can do more stuff and we have no clue. That when it comes to the climax of your story, Jot will defeat the wizard by using some convenient power we never knew he had. I know you wouldn’t do that to us, but I can’t help being wary of what else Jot has up his sleeve (if he has one).
