The Dragon and the Witch (3 page)

Chapter Four

I watched the men glance around, trying to figure out what could possibly make the ground shake to that magnitude. Their lack of real concern made me fear for their lives. The way they stood, casually leaning against the tree to brace themselves as they scanned the forest, alarmed me.

“Run! Run!” I yelled repeatedly toward the hunters who were staring into the trees with a confused, scared expression across their faces. I hated them for killing Abby and for hunting my other friends, but Tolbalth wasn’t called the destroyer of men because he wanted to invite them over for tea.

The wounded hunter pulled out my dagger from his shoulder and tossed it to the ground. He stood up, holding his arm to stop the bleeding. “What is that?” He glared at me.

Tightening my hands into fists, I yelled at the top of my lungs. It was so aggressive that it sounded more like a predatory growl. “Run! Now!”

Both men took off in the direction where I had pointed. At the exact moment, they took off in flight, my enormous father glared down at me over the tops of the trees, his yellow slanted eyes flushed with angry red. I stepped in front of him. “Please, Father, just let them go. Or be prepared for a flood of dragon hunters to come and avenge their deaths.”

He ignored me and took off in their direction. His heavy feet slammed into the earth, shaking my entire body. I knew my request would fall on deaf ears as my father hated all humans, except me.

Piku ran toward me and stood at my side, panting desperately.

“What did you do, Piku?” I ran my hand through his fur, letting him know that although I was upset, I still loved him.

“He heard me, Zadie. He heard me calling to my pack. I didn’t go get Tolbalth. Do you think I’m that crazy?”

“Those men. Father will kill them.”

“That is the good fate they deserve. They shot Rounili and killed Abby. Do you think I care about them? When would the killing have stopped?”

“He’ll fry them to a crisp, Piku. Are you okay with that?”

“Absolutely.” Piku turned his back to me.

“Well, I’m not.” I ran toward poor Abby and grabbed my dagger from the ground. I used my shirt to wipe the hunter’s blood from my blade. Sprinting in the direction of the screaming men, I heard Piku running behind me, trying to keep up.

The closer we found ourselves to Tolbalth, the more the ground shook and the warmth of the air grew hotter. From behind and between my father’s scaly legs, I could see the two hunters running. One held onto his hat while the other swung his rifle back, clicking his empty weapon.

Piku tried to run me off the path to stop this madness before Tolbalth or the men accidentally hurt me, but in this moment—in my desperate need to save the hunters’ lives—I was faster than Piku.

I managed to run past Father, his movements harsh but slower than mine. And when I made it to the men, their breathing labored and their faces wet with tears, I pushed ahead and yelled back, “Follow me or die.”

Finally, they took me seriously.

No one knew these woods the way I did. I’d grown up here and every orifice and crevice had a story to tell or an adventure to share. The men followed me through one detour after another, before we finally lost my father and his blow-torch fiery lungs.

I knew I’d pay for my betrayal when I got home this evening, but I wasn’t going to let him destroy two human beings. I just couldn’t live with that. Although I also knew this decision came with a risk—a risk that Tolbalth would remind me of often over the coming months. These men could leave here with stories to tell and bring more men back with them. I had to figure out a way to quash that now.

Breathless, the wounded hunter managed to say, “What was that? My God, it was huge. What could it have been?” He pressed his hand against the bleeding hole at his shoulder, wincing at the pain.

Piku stepped out from the trees and the hunter with the rifle aimed the weapon at him.

“Don’t!” I lifted my dagger and cocked my arm back, daring him to click the empty chamber.

“So, he’s with you?” the hunter asked.

I nodded.

“Listen, girl, I don’t know what’s going on around here but I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

“No, you’re not!” Before he could say another word, I used my open hand and nailed him in the neck along a pressure point and then spun around and did the same to his friend. Both collapsed in front of us.

Piku stared up at me in chagrin.

“What?”

“You save them, and then you maim them?”

I laughed. “I didn’t maim them. I have an idea on how to stop them from questioning this whole incident.”

“Oh, boy.” The tiger paced from one tree to another. “Your ideas always get us in trouble.”

“Not this time, Piku. Help me carry them back to where Abby is. The small one left his camera there and we’re going to use it.”

Within the next hour, we brought the two unconscious hunters back to where they’d shot the doe and then staged them as if they took pictures with Abby, proud of their conquests. I had Piku pose in the photo behind them, growling and in one photo, he appeared to have sunk his teeth into the one man’s shoulder, which provided the explanation for his wound. We tossed the camera next to the unconscious men and moved Abby’s body to another location where she could stay until I brought back a shovel to bury her.

As we walked back to my place, I saw Father standing outside in human form. He never changed to human form unless he wanted to address me at eye level. “You should go,” I whispered to Piku.

“And leave you alone with Tolbalth in his deadly human form? I think not.”

I laughed. “He would never hurt me, Piku. But he might hurt you. You really should go.”

Piku nodded and started across the field of brown shrubs before he turned and said, “If you need me, just call out.”

I smiled and continued toward my father. The closer I came to him, the more I could tell how angry he really was. The smoke misting from his nose and streaming from his ears was a dead giveaway.

Chapter Five

“Zadie, we need to talk.” Father crossed his arms over his chest. The muscles in his neck moved on their own, rippling with suppressed tension.

As a human, my father was about forty-eight years old. He was an extremely handsome man with brown-and-gray peppered hair and chiseled features. His eyes yellow with flecks of black and at six-feet two inches tall, he towered over my five-foot, seven-inch frame. Not only his height was formidable, but he had the same defined muscles that he carried when he was a dragon.

I stopped in front of him, realizing that I hadn’t seen him this mad in a long time. As a matter of the fact, the only other time he’d been this mad was when Piku and I went into the forbidden cave two miles from our house. I’d only been thirteen years old and we were curious. As if he sensed that I was on my way there, he stopped me before I had made it two feet inside the cave. I’d never understood why that cave was off-limits, but I respected him when he told me to never go near it again.

“You could have hurt them, Father.” I crossed my arms over my chest to match his stance.

“This is not a game, Zadie. Hunters are starting to venture out this far. If we’re discovered out here, it could be dangerous for us both! You should have let me taken care of it.”

“You mean you would kill them.”

“I mean, taken care of it.” He softened his eyes. “Do you think they would have tried to kill me if they had the means?”

“Let’s see.” I tapped my finger across my lips and gazed into the sky. “A huge dragon running toward them with bellowing fire being regurgitated from a mouth full of carnivorous teeth? Um, yeah, Father,
I
would have tried to kill you, too. If I didn’t know you.”

He inwardly chuckled but quickly grew serious again. “They killed your friend, the doe, didn’t they?”

I glanced at the ground and nodded, kicking at small rocks near my feet. “She didn’t even realize that they were hunting her.”

“That’s a hunter’s job, Zadie. Sneak up when we least expect it and slaughter without thinking about the lives they’re taking.”

“But turning around and killing them doesn’t make us any better, Father. We should be better than that. Better than them.”

My father let his arms fall to his sides. He glanced up toward the sky and ran his hands over his face. “When did this happen?”

“What?” I shot back defensively.

“You’re all grown up.”

“You’re just now noticing?” I asked.

He smirked and nodded repeatedly. Covering his mouth, he cleared his throat. “You’re right, Zadie. About the men. But we will have to prepare for their return. There was a time that these forests were filled with people and dragons alike.”

I narrowed my eyes and followed my father as we started to walk. “Out here? Where we live?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “Long ago. But humans and dragons couldn’t get along, so the dragons had to make a choice. Stand up and fight in order to live a free life or concede to men and be their slaves.”

“Well, I’m guessing they fought, right?”

Tolbalth’s eyes seemed so distant. I could tell he was remembering a time he would rather have forgotten. But in this rare moment when my father stood before me as a human man, I knew that he had something important to share with me. Something that he could only share, if he stepped out of being a dragon and stood beside me as my equal.

“Not at first, Zadie. We’d heard stories of men being fierce and deadly. Not respecting nature or other creatures. Almost like those hunters. My kind feared men and in that fear, we sometimes forget how powerful we actually are.”

“So, what happened?”

“We conceded and we were enslaved.”

“But a dragon is so much larger than a man. You could have crushed them with one foot.”

“It doesn’t matter, child.” He glanced at me. “If the spirit concedes, then the rest follows. The thought of regaining freedom had been crushed from our souls.”

I glanced around, noticing that we were walking toward a huge gully not far from our cave. The sun shone down, halfway between the horizon and the sky. It was moving into late afternoon.

My father continued, “But, once in a lifetime, there will be one who will renew the faith in another. An unlikely creature, might I add.”

“Who was it?”

“A witch doctor befriended a baby dragon and he taught this dragon all he could. But,” he put up his finger, “in dragon form, he couldn’t get the youngling to pay attention, so he gave him the ability to shapeshift. The boy sat for hours listening to the witch doctor, learning spells and understanding more than he ever would have, if not for his friend.”

“Wow, you’ve never told me this story before, Father.”

“I’ve never needed to, Zadie. And up until now, you were always too young to understand.”

“What happened to the baby dragon or the boy?”

“He grew up and led an army of dragons into battle with men. Together, the dragons won. Their freedom restored, for a century, they flourished. Until…”

“Until?” My hands were clasped in front of me and the dagger Tolbalth had given me as a birthday gift bounced against my thigh.

He sighed. It was a heavy, burdened sigh. We stopped and he nodded toward a ravine. My eyes moved from him to the hundred-foot slope before me.

I cupped my hands over my mouth and took a step back. Dragon skeletons littered the entire area, filling it with the death of yesteryears. My throat constricted and my heart sank. So many. Piled on top of each other, so many skeletons in this one spot. “This is the forbidden zone. I remember you told me that the place carried bad omens in the same way that the cave near our house is forbidden.”

He nodded, staring out at the gully.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“We were attacked. And slaughtered. I couldn’t save them. I tried, but I couldn’t.”

“Did any survive?”

“Yes. Those who survived fled. I never knew what happened to the survivors. Never knew where they went or if they lived after the attack.”

“What about you?” I asked, tears running down my face. I wanted to hug him, to tell my father that I loved him, but we’d never had that kind of relationship. So, I hung on to every word.

“I found the witch doctor and asked for his help. My wife was injured. So we stayed and he hid us for hundreds of years until the land grew barren and the people moved on.”

“You were the boy—the boy who befriended the witch doctor?” I asked.

“Yes, I was the boy. I absorbed everything he taught me and while we stayed hidden from the world, I learned from him.”

“What happened to your wife?”

He turned to stare into my eyes, a pool of tears rested at the rims. “She died.”

“Because of her wounds?”

“No, because of her blood.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but the pain in his eyes kept me from asking too many questions about his deceased wife. “And this is why you hate men—you hate shifting into a man form. Because of this.” I moved my gaze back out to the skeletons in front of us.

“You’ll be eighteen tomorrow,” he said. “And there is so much that I need to tell you. I’ve waited to tell you.”

We stood side by side for what felt like an eternity, staring out at the gully. A time for silent prayer or soul-searching for us both. I’d grown up in these forests and had never strayed to this side of the land just five miles east. This side had always been forbidden. And I had obeyed.

I tried to picture the thousands of dragons that now lay in this gully as alive and thriving. I tried to imagine Tolbalth with a wife and a life before me. And while my mind traversed a million different thoughts, I had to ask my father the one question that had been bugging me for a lifetime—the question that nagged at me the older I became. “Father, what am I?”