The Dark'Un

by Ronald Kelly

  The next thing he knew, the black and gray griffin descended and, hooking its talons gently beneath his armpits, rose into the air with the boy in tow. Fletcher clinched his eyes tightly at first, afraid to look as they gathered speed and altitude. Then he gathered his nerve and opened them. He was surprised to find that they were hundreds of feet above the peak of the mountain. Far below, he saw the Brice cabin. It was so small from that height that it looked no bigger than a matchbox.

  I'm flying! He thought to himself. I'm actually flying!

  If he had tried to make it back home on his injured leg, it would have taken him hours. Instead, he found himself back at the cabin in less than a minute. The dark griffin lowered him to the ground and then took to the air again. The boy watched as it made a sweeping loop in the sky and finally lit atop a large oak a hundred feet from the cabin's front porch. Sitting there, perched on nearly every branch of the gnarled tree, were dozens of snow-white doves.

  With some effort, Fletcher Brice hobbled up onto the porch. He found the discarded broom and used it for a makeshift crutch. When he walked through the doorway, he found his feeble mother sitting up in bed, looking scared half out of her wits.

  "Fletcher! Thank God!" she said in relief. "But…but where is Wesley Scott?"

  "Dead," the boy told her. "But I didn't do it."

  His mother nodded grimly. "Then it was…"

  "Yes, it was."

  Fletcher sighed and fought to keep his balance. "Sit down, son," the woman urged. "You're badly hurt."

  "I will…but first I must do something." He limped over to his small bed in the far corner of the cabin's main room. Fletcher rummaged beneath his goose down mattress until he found what he was looking for. He withdrew a bundle of loose papers, the drawings of foreign places he had sketched from his imagination. Places he had once hoped to see for himself.

  He walked to the potbelly stove and, opening the grate, tossed the drawings into the flames.

  His mother gasped. "What are you doing, son? Those were your hopes…your dreams."

  "I'll never leave this mountain, mama," he told her flatly. Mattie Brice looked into her son's blue eyes and saw a maturity and grim acceptance that hadn't been there before. "I have an obligation to them," he told her, pointing through the cabin's open doorway.

  The ailing woman looked toward the oak and saw that the doves were gone. In their place were dozens of white apes, chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas. They clung to the limbs of the ancient oaks and stared toward the house, almost expectantly.

  "And to it," he added. Amid the pale primates, standing erect and tall at the top of the tree, was a gray-skinned man with long black hair, dressed only a leopard skin loincloth. "To the Dark'Un."

  The magnificent ape-man regarded the twelve-year-old, his black eyes shining with respect. Then, motioning to his colorless minions, he left, leaping lithely from one limb to another. Together the changelings swung, hand over hand, through the trees, heading back toward the upper reaches of PaleDoveMountain.

  It wasn't long before they were out of sight…but certainly not out of mind.