“Harry, you are urgently needed elsewhere. Actually, else-when. The mentor Sarah needs lives in a timeline and a country almost a thousand years removed from where you are urgently needed. She also needs extensive training. It’s not easy being a dragon. It is very difficult to be a dragon-rider partner. You can’t train her and educate her in the proper care and training of dragons.” The speaker sword thought privately, And your curse can’t be broken, and you can’t bring Lizzy into being, and I am not going to tell you any of this because it would devastate you. God forgive me.
Harry winced and shook his head, frustrated. His fists were clenched so tight they were white.
The sword in his George Washington manifestation seemed to walk up to Harry and place his hands on his shoulders, and in a quiet voice said, “Harry, you are a soldier, and separation from loved ones is a terrible sacrifice soldiers make. The one whose image I bear understood that terrible truth. Places like Valley Forge are historic reminders of the lot soldiers bear.”
The tension in Harry’s body eased. His hands unclenched, and a single nod confirmed he understood.
The sword stepped back to continue, but Harry beat him to it.
“You were in the process of giving me some gifts, or releasing them, or however you were doing it, and if I recall correctly, you were down to the last one. My curiosity has gotten the best of me, so what is the last gift?”
“Harry, have you ever heard the story of Dr. Dolittle, the animal doctor who learned to talk to the animals?”
“Seriously? That’s a real thing? I’ll be able to talk to animals? How can that happen?”
A toothy grin spread across Sarah’s face. She turned and stared at Harry. “Ah Harry, you already talk to animals.”
“Huh?”
“Harry, you talk to me, and I am a dragon.”
Harry let out a loud breath. “But Sarah, telepathic brain to brain and heart to heart is different.”
Sarah shook her head. “The change has been so subtle that you haven’t noticed. My lips are moving, Harry. And you understand exactly what I am saying.”
“You’re not speaking in English?”
“Nope, you’re hearing in English.”
“Wow.” Then his brow furrowed and he sighed again. “This will be a problem. I mean I love the idea of talking to animals, dogs and cats, birds, et cetera, but I also like meat. It will be very hard to eat meat if I can talk to cows and pigs and chickens. If animals are intelligent and self-aware, then it makes me sick just thinking about eating another drumstick.”
The speaker sword interrupted, “Harry, it’s not like that at all. Not all animals can talk; most are not self-aware. A few can, but it seems to be extremely rare, and their intelligence level is low. You will see what I mean when you try talking with a squirrel, and heaven help you if you address a chicken. Fish don’t talk at all. But certain mammals, usually wild and higher up the food chain, are very conversant.”
Sarah added, “Grandpa and Grandma read me the Narnia books, and in them the author makes the point that animals, kind of like people, either rise above their—what is the word—animalistic, maybe, nature or they slide back into darkness knowing nothing but the need to eat, kill, and breed.”
Harry looked puzzled and said, “Okay, I guess I’ll have to fiddle with this till I figure it out. I mean, I don’t want to eat Flipper.”
At that Sarah’s head dropped. Harry saw it and immediately asked, “Sarah, you didn’t? You ate… Flipper?”
Sarah swallowed hard and stared at the forest floor, seeming to search for a hole big enough to jump in and hide her embarrassment.
“Eh, ah… no. I’m sure I didn’t eat Flipper.” In a small voice she added, “His cousin maybe.”
Harry grimaced, wide-eyed, and then hurriedly turned his head to face Speaker George.
“Okay, Speaker. Thank you. What’s next?”
“Well, Harry… Up till now, you haven’t remembered being here… in this place… at this time.”
Harry tilted his head and rubbed his chin. “I haven’t been in this place at this time? What does that mean?”
The sword continued, “But that is about to change. You must go into the time stream and change things. If events continue as they are, then your world will alter drastically, and for the worse. But when you get to the place and time I am sending you, you will start remembering things because you have been there before. You actually wrote what happened in your diaries.”
“Yeah, the diaries. I told Lizzy about them. When I thought I might not survive the battle with Long and his cult members.”
“Yes,” the speaker agreed, “and that is going to create a problem when she realizes who she is and where she came from.”
Harry’s face reddened as the speaker continued, “The reason you have no memory of some events, Harry, as Sarah has already realized, may be because they have yet to happen. Right now, you don’t have access to memories of certain events because you are in a timeless place, and you haven’t done those things. But when you enter the time stream, and they occur or you discover yourself in a familiar place, you will start to recognize things. And you will be able to change some of them.”
“Mercy,” Harry whispered.
“Yes, always, Harry,” the sword answered. “Now I think you should say your goodbyes and prepare to travel.”
Harry turned to Sarah. Her great eyes glistened. He felt his heart break in his chest but forced a withered smile. He hoped it didn’t look as pained as he felt. “Sarah, these few days spent with you have been the sweetest of my life.” Big tears welled in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks as he tried to continue. Sarah tenderly reached out with a claw tip and caught one of his tears. As it stood on the tip of her nail, the firefly lights that had swirled around Harry when his armor changed back in the barn returned and slowly circled the tiny tear caught on her great claw. They changed from gold to silver and then slowly, like smoke on the wind, danced away. Harry blinked and saw a beautiful gem necklace. Harry’s and Sarah’s eyes grew wide.
The speaker said, “That is an alexandrite gem. It changes colors based on what type of light it is in. I call it dragon tears.”
Sarah placed the necklace around her huge neck; the chain that seemed frail at first fit perfectly. The speaker continued, “It is made from metal found in meteorites, and it is twice as hard as diamond. Now let me give you another gift, a parting moment. Remember, I can’t hold it long, but I will give you as much as I have in me.”
Suddenly Sarah was no longer a dragon. She was back in her womanly form, dressed in the beautiful green dress she had worn when Harry first rescued her. Harry was clothed in a tuxedo that could have been straight out of a James Bond movie. He looked at himself and laughed.
Sarah said, “You are so handsome.”
Harry sighed as he looked in her eyes. He didn’t know what to say. It was like they were always apart, and even when they weren’t, the threat of separation hung over them like a sword dangling from a spider web.
“There is so much I want to say, and no time to say it. I already miss you, and you’re not even gone.”
Sarah leaned her head against his chest and said, “I know.” Heartbroken, they stood, and then they heard music.
The music was faint at first and had a 1950ish feel to it. As it grew louder, Harry recognized a young man’s voice, a smooth, clear tenor. It was sad and yet held promise. He couldn’t make out the lyrics but knew it was perfect. Slowly he moved with Sarah, dancing in an unhurried, beautiful sync. He held her slim body close, relishing the touch of her warm, soft skin. He wished it would never end but decided not to waste the moment on futility. The music was sweet like honey, yet grief and sadness laced the words. The melody was hauntingly familiar; then Harry remembered.
“Oh my gosh!” he whispered. “‘Unchained Melody’ by the Righteous Brothers! That is one of my favorite songs! Do you know it?”
Sarah laughed. “Sure do. My grandmother loved it, and
my grandfather used to sing it to her.”
She placed her head on Harry’s chest and sniffled as they continued to dance, their hearts speaking what their words couldn’t frame. The song echoed in their spirits and, as they swayed gracefully across an imaginary dance floor, stars lit the sky, and a soft wind swept over them. Fireflies that seemed to show up at every transition encircled them. Harry knew the time had come. He bent his head to kiss Sarah. She looked up at him and moved her lips toward his. Then he was gone. She fell to her knees, tears streaming from her eyes pooling on the floor.
Chapter Three
Lizzy Ferguson, the city librarian of Moab, Texas, took a deep breath as she sat down in the ancient rocker her dad had sat in a year earlier when they first launched summer story time. A lot of incredible things had shaken that small community over the past year. In many ways, the town was a much better place. People were closer. They visited each other in their homes; they shared a bond, a common secret. But Lizzy wasn’t worried about the community right now. She was concerned about the children who sat in front of her. Many were seeing grief counselors, and a few still wore bandages from the fire, and a couple still had casts.
She reminded herself she had to put all that out of her mind and concentrate on the task before her. It was story time at the library. The children loved it, or at least they did last year when her dad was the storyteller. But he was gone now, and she didn’t know whether to buy a gravestone or leave the porch light on. He had been gone for almost a year. Sarah had disappeared with him. The fire at the barn, the flames, the cries of the people had haunted her for months. Even now, she would wake up screaming. She shook her head. It was time to focus. The children deserved the best she could give them.
She had no illusion that she could tell a story as well as the last storyteller, but she didn’t have to. She had picked out a wonderful little book she knew they would love. It was called Sweet Little Dragons. For a moment Lizzy thought of her dad; then she looked around the room just like he had, making eye contact with every child. They smiled back, gazing at her with their charming, serpentine slitted eyes.
She laughed. It is really, really good that I know not all dragons are evil, she thought. Sarah cleared that up for sure.
In one devastating moment Sarah undid what that despicable reverend—reverend? What a horrible word to call that monster—reverend? Maybe anti-Christ, but not reverend anything. Okay, stop! It was a fact that he had marked the kids. Their little slitted eyes that phased in and out from human to dragon left no doubt of the dark clergy’s touch. While the children might or might not develop dragon-shifting abilities, her job was to see that if they did, they used those abilities for good and not evil. They must learn to keep their little mouths shut and not tell all their neighbors, especially the new people who had moved into town in the last year and knew nothing about what really happened.
It was time…
“Children, I am going to read a story.”
“Ahhhhh… read a story?” The disappointment dripped from a little boy’s freckled face.
“How come you just can’t tell one?” a frowning little girl whined.
“You’ll like this one. It’s about dragons.”
A ripple ran through the room, and they looked at each other, eyes widening. Several looked around the room. One little boy even got up to make sure no strangers were in the library. Lizzy laughed as she watched their serious secret keeping.
“Would you like for me to read you a story about dragons?”
That is when the top blew off the pot.
“Oh yeah! My mom keeps telling me to stop playing with fire. The other day I huffed and puffed and lit a piece of paper on fire,” a proud dragon wannabe bragged.
The little boy’s friends snickered. “Wow! Ew-wee, nice!”
He continued, “The only problem was my dad was reading it. My mom reached over, whacked me, and put the fire out. She scolded me, so I told her I learned it in Sunday school. She said we didn’t go to that church anymore.”
“Yeah, my mom told me we were good dragons, I even got baptized. I thought maybe it would make me stop being dragony, but nope,” a little girl agreed. Then she lowered her voice and in a conspiratorial tone whispered, “Now I see angels, and they tell me it is okay to be a dragon, that God made ’em.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“And me.”
“Yep, me too!”
Lizzy’s eyes popped out of her head. “You see angels?”
“Uh-huh.” Several little heads nodded in choreographed rhythm.
“Wow! How do you know they are angels?” Lizzy asked, probing her crayon-chewing, newly minted theologians.
The room fell silent for a moment. Little faces scrunched up in a diligent effort to answer Lizzy’s question.
Finally, one little munchkinette, new to the group but aware of the dragon secret, raised her hand shyly. Her older brother had been the boy Harry had run into the barn to try to save, but couldn’t.
“Yes, Maggie?”
“Well, one night I was missing my brother really badly, and a man all dressed in bright armor—it looked a lot like what Mr. Hank wore the day of the barn fire—stood at my bedside and said, ‘Maggie, your brother is okay. He’s growing up, and has made friends, and one of his friends is Thomas. I took care of Thomas, and I also make sure your brother is doing well. It’s going to be all right, Maggie.’ Then I just fell asleep. When I told my mama the next day, she cried and told me it was a wonderful dream, and the man was right, my brother is okay.”
“Wow!” Lizzy rasped, her eyes tearing up at the mention of her dad and the little boy they lost.
Maggie continued, “The next time we went to Sunday school, my teacher told us about how Joseph had been warned in a dream by angels. She said that angels appeared in lots of dreams in the Bible, so I just figured it was an angel.”
“You are absolutely right, Maggie!” Lizzy agreed.
Another little boy rubbed his head with his cast. The cast had become a mobile mural of the last summer’s events. Lizzy was pretty sure it was about time to get the cast off because it had accumulated a layer or two of dried boogers. She understood the child had to scratch his nose, but she would hate to have been his mother. Goodness.
“Easton?” she queried. “Why do you still have a cast on your arm? I thought your arm had healed up?”
The little booger mason sheepishly hung his head. “It was.”
“So why do you still have a cast?”
“Well ah… once I saw Sarah fly, I figured dragons could fly, so I, ahh… well… I jumped off the house. I found out I couldn’t fly… yet, but it was too late. I am pretty good at falling though.”
The dignified city librarian turned her head and tried not to shame the child by laughing, but it was too late.
“It’s okay, Miss Lizzy, I’ll get better, and my dad thought it was funny too, so I am going to keep this cast on as long as I can.”
Lizzy frowned, puzzled. “Why do you want to keep the cast, Easton?”
The little girl next to him with braided pigtails and a bridge of freckles across her nose blurted out, “Cause his momma is going to beat his tail for jumping off the house when he gets it off.”
That brought the house down. Children started laughing, and Lizzy couldn’t help herself. She laughed till her sides hurt. “Oh, oh! Easton, I’ll talk with your mother. Surely she doesn’t mean that.”
The little boy shook his head adamantly. “I know she does. My dad said my mom has always been a dragon and that…”
“Well, you know what? It is time for me to read! Here we go… Once upon a time long, long ago…”
“I’ve heard this one. Yep, we watch it a lot. ‘In a galaxy far away.’ And then the big spaceship, that is really, really long, slides across the screen,” the miniature move critic began.
“Ahem! This is not a Star Wars book! It is a true story.”
“Star Wars isn’t true?” a little girl on the fr
ont row shrieked. “But it says it is! It says long, long ago.”
The little girl was about to cry, and Lizzy thought, How did Dad do it? He just held these urchins in the palm of his hand, and they marched like little ducks right behind him. Lizzy paused for just a second, changed directions like a railway switch, and began. Raising her voice, she said, “This story is about my dad.” She needn’t have raised her voice; every little ear in the house perked up, every little bottom found a seat, and every eye fastened on her.
“Your dad? Mr. Hank? Do you know what happened to him and Sarah?”
Lizzy answered quietly, “You know what happened. The barn fell on them when they raced back in to… well, you know,” she whispered, casting a glance at Maggie, whose older brother her dad had rushed in to save.
“But Miss Ferguson, fire can’t hurt dragons, and my daddy told me he saw Sarah dragon covering Mr. Hank, and then the roof fell in. When the fire was out, they were gone!”
“I don’t know what happened to my dad and Sarah.”
“Well, what is this story about then?” another pestery little boy piped up. “How can you tell us a story about Mr. Hank if you don’t know where he is?”
“Levi, this story is not about what happened to my dad and Sarah. This story is about when my father was a young man and was recruited by the British secret service to fight against an evil witch.”
“What’s a secret service?” shy little Maggie asked.
Lizzy exhaled and thought, What is a secret service? Well, this one was super-secret. It monitored timelines and fought monsters. But I don’t think I am going to tell that to this bunch of booger-bears. “Well, Maggie, I am glad you asked.” Forgive me, Lord, for lying to children, she prayed silently. “The British secret service, at least according to my dad’s records, were police officers who fought bad things that scared people.”
“Oh, like those nice men and woman who came by the house and told my mom and dad that there was no such things as dragons that breathe fire. They said that what really happened was that bad man, Mr. Long, poisoned everybody’s food and that made them so sick that they saw and heard things that were not true, right?”
Dances With My Dragon Page 3