Dances With My Dragon

by William David Ellis

  “Oh thank God you smell better.” He looked the great wet animal in the eyes and shook his finger at him. “Stay… I am going in the house and getting dishwashing detergent.” As soon as Harry turned his back and rushed into his house, the dog ran toward the mulch pile.

  “Oh boy! Man gone, me headed for the doo-doo pile and dead leaves.”

  The screen door slammed behind him as Harry rushed back outside.

  “No! No! What in the Sam Hill have you done, you stupid dog… Now your wet, matted fur is covered with leaves and sticks and crap. Oh gosh, you stink something awful and you’re wet besides.”

  “Oh, me love the smell of fresh nature and the texture of old leaves. Them make me hide from man, he not see me…”

  “Get out of that wood pile and come here, you stupid animal. I’m going to pour soap on your big head, you filthy beast.” Harry had forgotten the strength and power of the dog and his large teeth and just gripped the huge pup by his mane and held him. They were both soaked and neither one of them was enjoying it. Harry poured the Ivory soap all over the dog and scrubbed it in.

  “Yikes. What man do, him hurt me nose… yep yep, oh bad smell hurt Raleigh. Now him squirt Raleigh with green snake and water come out.”

  “Be still, dang it. No, don’t shake… Oh my gosh, I poured too much soap on you and bubbles are coming off you as you shake. Oh gosh, they smell like crap.”

  “Oh my, look at birdies… them float, yeah me pop them with nose. Birdies smell like nature. Me love birdies…”

  “I am done. I’m going inside; I don’t care what you smell like… bubbles floating off your mangy hide smelling like poopoo. You just roll in that stuff all you want.”

  The dog looked up at Harry, fell on the ground, rolled over on his back, and swirled. He kept looking back at Harry like he wanted him to come over and scratch his belly. Harry heard the dog whimper and then heard, “Please, good man, come scratch Raleigh’s belly. Raleigh smell good now, man smell better too.”

  Harry shook his head and saw he was covered with grass and dog poo and soap bubbles. His brow furrowed, he folded his arms over his chest and nodded and then stripped off his clothes. In a wet flash he was down to his skivvies and running toward the dog with the hose squirting. He dove and slid into the beast, laughing and scrubbing. “I got you now. You are not getting away from me now!”

  Raleigh was also grinning a huge doggy grin. “Raleigh like wet man, he all right.”

  Harry had just finished rinsing the last drop of soap out of the great dog when he heard a familiar voice. “I leave you alone for a few hours and the next thing I know you are stripped, naked, soaked to the skin, and covered in leaves and dog doo.” The sword had appeared as the avatar Washington and was looking at Harry in all his grass-covered glory.

  “Well hello to you too, Sword. I thought you had left me and gone into one of your dormant stages or just sulled up somewhere reading old encyclopedias.”

  “Missed you too, Harry. Sometimes when you get busy I back off and leave you alone so you can focus. If I were to hang around, it would tempt me to coach you, and you rarely like that.”

  “Coach me? Sword, did you say coach me? Because I was expecting a different word, like nag or gripe or harass or constantly tell me what to do. I really wasn’t expecting to hear the word coach.”

  “Sticks and stones, Harry, sticks and stones. But I am back now and was about to give you a message from Sarah, but hey, if you don’t want me around then I will just—how did you say it—sull up? And go back to my old encyclopedias. See ya ’round, Harry.”

  “Sword! Quit it! You know as well as I…” He thought about what he was saying and realized the sword was a talking lie detector embedded in his head. “Ha, well yes, I meant every word of that and you know it! But come on, what is Sarah doing, how is she? And how come I can’t just talk to her through you? I thought you said we could talk to each other… ?”

  “You can, Harry, as soon as you finish your training. You are in different times and even more different time realities, so it requires a lot of power. Power I don’t have at the moment.” Oh, if I had fingers I would cross them, the sword thought privately. But it is for their own good. I have to keep telling myself that they will get through this, but it will be painful and if I can’t ease that pain…

  “Sooo what did she say? On second thought, can you rig something up so I can just read it like a letter or an email?”

  “Sure I can. You want it on parchment or a PDF?”

  “Whatever works,” Harry answered.

  “It’s easier if you close your eyes and kinda read it off the back of your eyelids,” the speaker sword replied.

  Harry stood dripping wet and closed his eyes. Raleigh nuzzled his cold nose against his leg. Instantly a letter began to unfold, scrolling across the dark of his mind like a Star Wars introduction.

  Dear Harry, I miss you so much my heart feels like a great weight is on it and sometimes it is hard to breathe. I know this is not forever, but I can’t see an end to it and it just seems to go on and on… anyway, I will stop there because it just occurred to me that this is not exactly a private letter… and, well, that’s just awkward. So I will stop feeling sorry for myself and fill you in on what is happening with me now… I had a vision; in it I met with my grandparents. Harry, I think it was more than a vision—

  “It was, Harry,” the sword interrupted. “She was actually blessed with something few people get to do. She got to visit with those who had gone on.”

  Harry looked confused. “Speaker, I thought that was forbidden. Séances and stuff are wrong. People dial up but always get the wrong person, and I use the word person very lightly.”

  “You are right, Harry.” The George Washington avatar began to pace and assumed a professorial lecture tone. “But the issue is dialing up, seeking the dead rather than the living God for counsel. That is not what happened here. She didn’t dial up, as you say. They appeared to her… She was shocked and, well, dragon people operate under a different dispensation. Sarah is going to have to battle demons, dragons, shape-shifters, blood-suckers, and a host of evil that you have no idea exists. Most people do not have to do that. At least not consciously. And history, including biblical history, has precedents for this kind of visitation.”

  “Uh, Speaker, are we reading the same Bible? Where is there any mention of ghosts of dead people talking to living ones?”

  George Washington stopped pacing and looked square at Harry, who had sat back down on the grass and was rubbing Raleigh’s tummy. “Oh, Harry! You do remember I have immediate access to every verse of every version that has ever seen the printer’s press?”

  “Yeah and I have a photographic memory thanks to you, and I cannot think of a time… ah hmmm, well, ah, yeah maybe one…”

  “Like Moses and Elijah, perhaps?”

  “That was Jesus, Speaker; He doesn’t count.”

  “Okay then, how about Matthew 27:52; after His resurrection many of the saints who had fallen asleep came out of their graves and appeared to many?”

  “Oh yeah!” Harry smirked, then smiled, then started laughing. “Can you imagine? You hear a knock at the door. You send your kid to answer it, it gets quiet. The silence bothers you. So you go to the door and he is talking to your grandmother who died a year ago! Oh man! The screams and fainting and, gosh, it must have been terrible… ! Yet amazing at the same time.”

  George chuckled and shook his finger. “You have a very sick sense of humor. But the point, Harry, is they didn’t seek those conversations or visions God sent them. This is the same thing. You want to read the rest of her note or are you done?”

  “Of course I want to read what she is sharing, but it’s like reading a love letter over the phone with your father listening at the door.”

  “Harry, I am in your head. I see everything you do. Have access to everything you think. I am not like a computer you can just turn off. It’s like your mother always told you: I’ve seen everythi
ng you got and I am not impressed. So you want—”

  “My mother, Speaker dear, never said that… never.”

  “Harry?”

  “Okay yes, what else did Sarah say?”

  The speaker got quiet. Harry closed his eyes again and the credits rolled…

  Harry, they were really there… it was wonderful and sad all at once. It gave me strength. I look forward to telling you about it in person soon. As for everything else going on here, I went for a swim in the woods between the worlds, and when I came out I was standing on a beach. Not sure what else to tell you. Been here about an hour. Waiting. I will talk to you again soon. I love you—Sarah.

  Harry sighed. He didn’t think hearing from her would make him sad. But it did; it reminded him of how far away she was and caused him to wonder if he would ever be with her.

  The speaker sensed his mood and said, “Harry, everything has a way of working out for people who aren’t centered on themselves and who give themselves away doing the right thing.”

  Harry tried hard not to scoff, but the centuries had taken their toll. “You know, Speaker, I think it is better never to have known hope or love or the hope of love than to have a whisper of it hover near your heart like a small flame, and then like smoke bent by a night breeze, disappear forever, leaving nothing but ash. I had given up on the princess after I woke up in this century.”

  The speaker’s avatar’s eyes widened at Harry’s remark, but he kept quiet.

  Harry exhaled deeply and continued, “We never knew each other really. I just met her in the marketplace, and then rescued her from a dragon; we never shared life or hopes. I don’t know if she squeezes the toothpaste from the middle or the bottom. She could be a controlling micromanager who thinks the world was made for her amusement and treats everyone like they were born to serve her. But you know what? I need to get my head out of a dark, stinky place and focus on the task ahead; otherwise I might possibly lose my head, in a terrible literal fashion.”

  The sword looked beyond Harry’s words at the sadness he was trying to bury beneath them. “You know, Harry, for many people, what you are saying is true. But you are a dragon rider, and for them things are sometimes different. Sometimes those differences are painful. The dragon riders bear burdens and know sorrows that the rest of the world is shielded from. Because they carry those weights, the King grants them gifts. Often a gift he grants is a special bonding with the loves of their lives. In your case…”

  Harry laughed and picked some grass off Raleigh’s coat. “Speaker, you have access to all my memories, and now, thanks to the gifts that came with this job, so do I, and I remember one now. My father and I were discussing the idea of there being a soul mate. I was just noticing girls and had heard that there was only one woman that could truly satisfy a man’s heart and he had to find her or else he would be unhappy all his days. When I asked my father about it, he laughed and said, ‘Harry, your soul mate was run over by a carriage when she was three.’ His callousness shocked me. It took me a long time to understand what he meant. I have realized his intent was to enable me to see what was in front of me rather than focus on dreams that are as fleeting as morning dew.”

  The speaker, in the avatar of Washington, somewhere in the conversation reached out his arm and put his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “I think it is time you visited with the King, Harry.”

  Chapter Nine

  Lizzy walked into her dark house and flipped on the switch. The lights came on, but the dark didn’t leave her heart. She knew better than to allow herself to think about Thomas. Before her fiancé died and a few times afterward, she had caught herself daydreaming about being Mrs. Ford… Her dad had always told her if you don’t love a man enough to take his name, do not marry him. In this day and time she knew it was not required, but she also understood what a gift it was to a man. She knew Tom wouldn’t ask her to, and that was what made it so special for her. She wanted to honor him with it. He was a real man, a warrior, but what had won her heart was how he treated people.

  She had met him at church. He was escorting an elderly woman down the aisle to her seat. The petite woman talked like a rainstorm, pelting the air with words, while shuffling down the aisle. Tom had answered yes ma’am and no ma’am and even let her hug him. He was so gentle and yet Lizzy had seen the scars on his chest and knew he had shed blood. He was so much like her father. Damn! She had lost them both… She forced herself to stop sniffling and get busy. She couldn’t think about him now and wouldn’t allow herself to feel pain anymore; it was time to move on. She had been telling herself that for three years.

  She moved into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, saw the take-home box she had brought back from a restaurant the night before, and thought, Perfect. After supper she got ready for bed, then looked beneath her bed and pulled out the old spiral notebooks her dad had used for his diaries. She had started reading them months ago. They covered almost fifty years of his life. When she had first started reading she couldn’t believe what she read. But then she checked names and places and times and discovered over and over that the towns existed and the names were real. Her dad really had been British secret service, and that was just a cover. He was a dragon rider. Amazing! She could still barely believe it. She had gotten to the part in the diaries where he had gone to England. She wasn’t sure how he got there; the diary was strangely quiet about that and then where he had trained. There was no mention in the yellowed pages of the old books of a dragon yet. She was eager to see how that worked out. The diaries were like puzzles, old riddles, and she loved a mystery. The night before, she had stopped reading right around the time he had discovered his gift of talking to animals.

  Lizzy turned the brittle pages of the old notebooks. Here it is… She began to read:

  I heard from Sarah today. I miss her so much. Lizzy’s eyes popped out of her head. “Where did that come from… he suddenly mentions Sarah? Up to now he has said nothing about her, and then she is here. This was written seventy-five years ago… no, no, that can’t be true… this is not true.” Lizzy frantically flipped back in the diary to a few weeks before. And read… I am writing this now that I have settled in England. I hate that Sarah and I have been separated. The sword says it is not forever. I miss Lizzy, and story time children… Lizzy shook her head. “That can’t be. That was not there a few days ago. I read this diary and it wasn’t there.” She turned the notebook over, checking to make sure it was the same book she had read… it was.

  “How can this be? One minute he is on his own stuck in England… I read through that and then the words changed. They changed! What does that mean?” Lizzy’s heart was racing, her face was flushed. Her hands were clammy. “Am I losing my mind?” Goosebumps popped up. “I am sick. I have to be sick… wait. Wait… Dad wrote this… it changed since last night. That means… either I am hallucinating, dreaming even, or he went back in time… I mean, why not? He rides dragons; he fights them; little girls are 1,244-year-old princesses. A preacher is a demon dragon. He has a magic or maybe just incredibly advanced sword he talks to… I don’t know! It doesn’t matter.”

  She kept talking rapid-fire, switching from whispers to screams, from laughter to tears. “Dad wrote this… he wrote it. Last night… seventy-five years ago… oh my gosh… that’s nuts… but it happened… okay, okay, I am panting… I need to calm down and breathe deep just like yoga class. Deep breaths… oh my gosh, I have to keep reading… but Dad is alive. Or was and Sarah is with him and I am not even born yet and he is missing me… oh my gosh, oh my gosh… okay, keep reading, keep reading…” And then the thought occurred to her, “What am I going to tell the kids at story time? Should I tell them this? What do I do? Is there anyone I trust to help me through this?” Lizzy frowned, searching memories like a chicken scratching the dust for a bug. Finally, she asked the right question, “Who did Dad trust?” and the answer came.

  ****

  The next morning Lizzy arrived before the Moab, Texas, café, otherwise
known as Jamie’s, opened its doors. Through the years her dad had frequented this place, coming every morning. Sam, the elderly cook who had outlived two commercial ovens and who probably had more bacon grease in his lungs than half the wild hogs in Smith County, knew to the moment when her dad would walk in the door, and, depending on the day, knew what he would order before he got there. The elderly cook swore that her dad had sat at the same table so many times that his shadow had rubbed a groove in the wall. So, when Lizzy walked through the door, everyone was glad to see her and acted like it was a family reunion. Lizzy said her obligatory hellos, gave her order, and waited. She knew both Jamie and her husband, Barry, were keenly observant. Nothing happened in Moab that they didn’t know about. No one new walked in that they didn’t find out about, and if they had known you long they could tell by looking how you were doing. So it wasn’t a great surprise when Jamie and Barry both pulled up a chair beside Lizzy.

  Jamie began the conversation. “Lizzybeth, I know you lost both your best friends, and your heart’s been lying about it for a while, but your face is still mourning. What’s a bothering you today?”

  Lizzy laughed at Jamie’s East Texas dialect. It wasn’t grammatically correct, but it was colorful and comforting, and this morning Lizzy needed both the clarity and the comfort of a wise friend’s counsel.

  “Well, Jamie… I, ah, I’ve been reading my dad’s journals. They were written when he was a young man, and they record his adventures as a special forces soldier working for the British in World War Two.”

  At the mention of the word British, Barry’s eyes widened and his mouth gaped. He laughed. “Eh? That dag. That stinking dag, he argued with me many times on the superiority of American anything… and he worked for Winston? That sorry old dag…” Barry was smiling and shaking his head. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “Well, no use going to the long drop over it.” He shook his head again, smirking. “I just can’t believe it… he worked for the Brits!”