Jason was just as glad the tree man wouldn’t listen to him. He always looked forward to the stories. He just liked the way the tree man’s voice, even when he whispered like this, would wash over him and make him warm like a blanket.
The tree man smiled and began his story.
“It so happened that the Oomgosh left his valley home and climbed the nearest hill. But beyond that hill he found another, taller than the first, and beyond that hill a third that was taller still. So did the hills grow, each one dwarfing the one before, until they ceased to be hills and became mountains, with their proud heads lost in the clouds.
“Still did the Oomgosh climb, and, as was his custom, he talked to the trees that he passed, for, as much as humans, the trees were his brothers and his sisters.
“‘Joy!’ the trees shouted on the hills. ‘The sun warms us, the rain nourishes us, and the wind allows us to display our fine leaves to every living thing. Truly, it is a wonder to be a tree, that grows from the earth and reaches to the sky.’
“So was the Oomgosh content, until he met another, who walked down from the mountaintop as he was walking up: a strange woman, dressed all in white, with a hood and a veil, so that all the Oomgosh could see was a bit of pale skin about her colorless eyes. And the trees about her shuddered as she passed, their branches whipping about as their leaves turned the colors of flame and fell to the ground.
“ ‘I am Winter,’ the pale woman said when the Oomgosh asked of her business. ‘All listen to Winter’s call. The wind grows swifter, the sun backs away, the rain freezes. Leaves and grass will die, and lie buried beneath the snow.’
“The Oomgosh objected, for he hated to see the end of such joy, but the woman named Winter was unmoved.
“ ‘It is the way of things,’ she replied. ‘Now you must turn around, or you will feel my touch as well.’ And with that, she brushed his hand with her cold fingers and blew her icy breath upon his cheek.
“The Oomgosh backed away at that, for he could feel the flesh of his hand grow hard and brittle beneath her caress, and the tears he cried for the joyless trees froze upon his cheek. He turned, and fled to the warm valley far from the mountainside.
“But once the Oomgosh had left Winter behind, he felt as if he had betrayed the trees on the high hillsides. Surely, there was some way to reason with Winter! But he did not know how.
“So it was that, in coming to his valley at last, he met a second woman, dressed all in green, with wildflowers in her hair, and skin and eyes the color of rich earth. She smiled at the Oomgosh, and a bit of the sun seemed to shine there in that smile.
“‘Where do you travel so quickly?’ the young woman asked. “And although it made the Oomgosh ashamed, he admitted, ‘I am running from Winter.’
“At that the young woman laughed, a sound like a brook after it has rained. ‘I have had some difficulties with Winter, as well,’ she admitted. ‘She does not approve of my arrival. My name is Spring.’
“And Spring brushed against his hand, and her sweet breath blew across his cheek. And the Oomgosh saw that the dead spot on the back of his hand was green again, and once more could tears flow from his eyes.
“ ‘Winter wants to keep me away,’ Spring confided. ‘But you have seen her. Why not turn around and guide me, and we will tell her it is time to go?’
“So the Oomgosh turned about, and guided this young woman through the hills, each one higher than the one before. And, as she passed, the trees gained new buds and the ground sprouted with flowers and new blades of grass. And, while they marched, the Oomgosh could see the veiled Winter just before them, and, while her expression was harsh and her laugh bitter, Winter gave way before them, climbing back to her mountain home.
“The trees grew leaves again, and took joy in the sun, the wind, and the rain.
“ ‘See?’ Spring said, once the Oomgosh had led her as high as there were trees that bloomed. ‘All things have their season, and you and I are no different. But, if we are patient, our season will come again.’
“And with that, Spring fled back to her home in the South. But the Oomgosh no longer worried, for he had the trees and the sun and the rain and the wind and a new woman named Summer, and he knew that Spring would always come again.”
The Oomgosh nodded to say the story was finished.
“A great story!” another voice squawked nearby. “Raven approves!”
Jason turned, surprised to see the black bird by his side. “I didn’t hear you arrive.”
“You would have if Raven had fluttered his wings. But Raven knows when to be quiet, too.” The bird proudly fluffed his feathers. “Sometimes even Raven walks.”
“Sometimes all the best things will,” the Oomgosh agreed. “Now I think it is time we all went back to sleep.”
Jason returned to the pile of leaves he was using for a bed. He wished that this entire place were as pure and clear as the Oomgosh’s stories.
He ran a hand through his hair as he settled back down to sleep. A leaf had gotten caught up there. He grabbed the small piece of green between a couple of his fingers and plucked it free.
“Ow!” he cried.
He looked at the leaf. It was a tiny thing, with an equally tiny branch attached. It must have really been tangled in his hair. The way it hurt when he pulled it free, it felt like this little branch had been growing right out of his head.
Fifty-Seven
“It was as simple as that?” Mills asked.
“Nothing is ever simple here,” the cloud replied. “We have alerted Nunn to our presence. Now, of course, he plans to betray us.” The cloud snorted. “Can you imagine that? We are in his head! What kind of wizard would I be if I couldn’t read his thoughts?” The cloud’s tone shifted, becoming so soft as to sound conspiratorial. “But I do believe I can get us outside.”
“Outside?” Zachs piped up. “Zachs prefers outside.” The light-creature flashed crimson. “Except—if we get outside, Zachs may eat you.” The crimson light shifted to blue. “Sometimes Zachs gets hungry. Sometimes Zachs can’t help itself.”
“Very nice of you to tell us,” the cloud remarked.
The light-creature flashed yellow. “Zachs tries to be honest with friends.”
“As, no doubt, does Mr. Mills,” the cloud remarked reassuringly. “And myself, of course. But I don’t think we’re going to leave here in the same way we arrived. We have reinvented ourselves once. We will do so again.”
Mills realized he hadn’t seen his other neighbor since Nunn tried to kill him. “Is Leo all right?”
“I don’t think he’s any worse off than he was before,” the cloud answered.
“Can Leo join us?” Mills asked. “I mean, outside?”
The thunderhead considered his reply for a moment before speaking. “Well, at the moment, Leo Furlong is not quite as independent as the rest of us. I think it might be best if we leave him here for safekeeping. Once we are more sure of ourselves, we will come and fetch him.”
The creature of light did a little dance in front of the cloud. “Zachs is ready! When do we leave?”
“I believe we will give Nunn a little time to mull us over before springing our final demands,” the cloud replied. “After all, I do know what he is thinking.”
With that, the thunderhead closed its eyes. They vanished in the shadowed oval mass.
Maybe, Mills thought, this was more than a cloud. This was the first time he realized how much the thunderhead looked like a brain.
Nick didn’t want to open his eyes. It was morning, and he had to decide who he was going to be.
It seemed like he was two people now. One was the high school student who got along, who lived a rich fantasy life to keep him away from a reality that included a father who was long gone.
But the other Nick had been taken over by the fantasy. And a certain enchanted sword. At first, the sword had scared him, especially the way it liked the blood of his enemies. Actually, that still frightened him some. But he also found tha
t the sword made him more than he was before.
In the beginning, he had been jerked around from one place to another as the sword guided his moves. Now he was starting to anticipate the swing of his blade, when he should step forward, when he should shuffle to the side, when he needed to raise his hand in defense. This sword was training him to be a swordsman. And Nick was a little frightened to realize that he liked it.
At first, Nick wanted to get rid of this sword. Now he was afraid someone would ask him to get rid of it.
He opened his eyes and looked up at the too-green morning sky. No one was going to take his sword until all this was over. He sat up and looked around.
“Hey, Nick!” Todd called. “Nice of you to join the living!”
Nick gave the other boy a sickly smile, the high school kid all over. Todd was always going to be a wiseass. But the day before, they had fought side by side. Todd had been pretty good with that knife. Of course, Nick could have taken him in a minute with his sword. Nick could take most anybody with that sword.
The Volunteers had gotten a fire going and were roasting some sort of small animal over a spit. Nick could hardly believe it. They were actually going to have breakfast.
He stood up and stretched. His mother waved at him from over by the cooking fire, where she was talking with Maggie. Nick stumbled in her general direction, doing his best to wake up.
“A long way from our backyard barbecue, huh, Nick?” his mother called. “No charcoal briquettes here!”
“And nobody wearing a ‘Dad’s the Chef!’ apron,” Nick agreed.
He was sorry as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Why did he have to remind himself about his father?
“You surely come from a different part of the country,” Maggie said. “What in heaven’s a backyard barbecue?”
Nick’s mother laughed at that. “Oh, you have to have done that! Instead of cooking the steaks on the electric stove, where they’d get done in no time at all, you take them out to a grill on the patio. That’s where you’ve got the briquettes burning, which take forever, and you can never get them started without lighter fluid. And of course, if you use too much lighter fluid, the whole thing will blow up—”
His mother stopped abruptly when she realized all four Volunteers were staring at her.
“Maybe they don’t come from the same place, after all,” Thomas murmured.
“Well, maybe they just come from the big city is all,” Wilbert added. “We’re just a bunch of country folks from the wilds of New Jersey.”
“There aren’t any wilds in New Jersey,” Todd said. “My grandparents live there. Well, the Pine Barrens, maybe. And there’s some farmland in the west.”
“That’s Newton,” Wilbert agreed.
“One of the bedroom communities,” Todd said.
“What the hell is a bedroom community?” Stanley demanded.
The Volunteers didn’t seem to understand half of what the neighbors were saying this morning. It really was like they came from two different worlds.
Nick had an idea. “You say the dragon snatched you in western New Jersey?”
Wilbert nodded. “That’s right. In the woods ten miles outside of Newton.”
“When did the dragon take you?”
“December,” Wilbert answered. “Cold day, too.”
That still wasn’t what Nick wanted to know. “What year?”
“Why, 1906, of course.”
Nick exhaled. Even though he had suspected this, he still didn’t want to hear it.
“You’re kidding!” Mrs. Dafoe burst out. “You’ve got to be. That’s crazy.”
Nick looked over at Mary Lou’s mother. “What isn’t crazy around here?”
The Volunteers were looking at each other as if they might want to get out of this place before somebody else went crazy.
“What?” Maggie asked for all of them. “What’s the matter here?”
“We come from 1967,” Nick’s mother told them. “Mid-August 1967.”
The Volunteers all stared for another moment.
“Yep,” Thomas said after a moment. “That’s crazy, all right.”
“None of us are getting home, are we?” Todd asked, his voice a little strained. “Why are we stuck here? I never asked to be here! Who the fuck has the right to put me here?”
Nick moved over to the other boy. Todd was getting hysterical. “Hey, Todd, cool down,” Nick cautioned. “Yelling isn’t going to solve anything.”
Todd turned on him. “How would you know? Nicky Blake, the Goody Two-shoes of the neighborhood, always following your mother’s skirts. You can’t yell, Nicky. You gotta get your mother’s permission!”
“C’mon, Todd,” Nick replied. God, this guy could be an asshole. “Come on where?” Todd was suddenly in his face. “You want to fight? Goody Nicky always ran away. You need your mother’s permission to fight, too?”
Now this guy had gone too far.
“I don’t need my mother’s permission to do anything.”
“Nick!” his mother called. Nick turned away from her. He had to handle this himself.
“Hurry up, Nicky,” Todd called in a high, affected voice. “Run to your mother, Nicky.”
“Get off my case!” Nick yelled.
Todd shoved him. “You got no case to get on.” Nick almost fell. He’d show this asshole.
“Oh-ho,” Todd said softly. “We’re getting serious now.” It was only then Nick realized he had drawn his sword.
Fifty-Eight
Nunn considered the King of the Wolves. The wolf was coming along nicely, a tiny bit of the dragon’s power festering inside that would make the wolf ten times stronger than before. The King would make a fine servant in the battle to come.
But the King was still untested. Nunn would rather use someone whom he had seen in battle, someone with a will of iron.
The King paced in the room where Nunn had placed him, impatient to be free. When the creature looked up at the wizard, Nunn could see the first traces of green fire in its eyes.
“You will have your chance at battle soon enough,” Nunn said quietly. “I have a group of humans that you will enjoy tearing into little pieces.”
The King reared on its hind legs. Already, it was almost twice the size of its former self.
“Ennnjoy!” the King agreed.
The wizard removed himself from the room, passing through the wall into the adjoining chamber.
“Mr. Sayre?” he asked gently.
Sayre rapidly turned his head, which bobbed as if his neck muscles weren’t all they used to be.
Sayre shook a finger at Nunn, a finger that had lost a good part of its skin. “What do you want now? This dark is no good. My lawn needs light!”
Nunn smiled like a father. “Oh, Mr. Sayre, you’ll get all the light you want. And you can do whatever you want with your lawn. I only need you to do one job for me.”
Sayre looked at Nunn warily. “Job? Who are you to tell me I have to do a job?”
“Only someone who can give you a better lawn, a bigger lawn, than you ever dreamed of. Look here.”
He let both of his dragon’s eyes glow. Sayre’s frown vanished as the light filled the room.
“Green,” Sayre murmured as if mesmerized.
“And this green can be yours. Here, let it touch you.”
“Green,” Sayre agreed as the light poured into him. He grunted as the light shook him, forcing his decimated body to stand straight and tall.
Sayre coughed, expelling a couple of small, flying things. “Haven’t felt this good in days.”
He looked far better, too. Almost human. It was unfortunate how wisps of green seemed to leak out of the hole in his stomach.
“Now can I work on my lawn?” Sayre asked in a tone that said he did not like to request permission.
“Would you like more?” Nunn held his hands up, palms forward, so Sayre could see the glowing gems.
“Green!” Sayre agreed. “Green for my lawn!”
Sayre blinked. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I always like a man who appreciates a good lawn.” He made a small, hiccupping sound as a salamander slithered from his nostril. “But those who defile my lawn will still have to pay!”
“Oh, they will, my dear Sayre,” Nunn replied. “They’ll pay deeply.”
Mrs. Smith had been many of these places before. She had to have passed through here to do those things she had accomplished back on the island. It was only now, though, that she really opened her eyes to see them.
One of the places was filled with light, as if fire and lightning and the stars above all vied with each other to see which could be the brightest. Another seemed to hold all the sounds in the world, perhaps all the worlds: bells rang; engines grumbled, birds sang, creatures cried and screamed; a cacophony one instant, the sweetest blend of melody the next.
The place Garo led them through now seemed defined by darkness. Not that Mrs. Smith couldn’t see. The dragon’s eyes took care of that. Perhaps the dragon provided its own kind of light, everywhere it went. But her real eyes saw nothing, so that she had to let the dragon gem lead the way.
“This is more like it,” Garo whispered.
She wondered what he meant by that. There was another sound, a deep rumbling, very far away. Was that what Garo had been searching for?
She had begun to wonder why she was here. Oh, she had a certain power, and she had wanted to free Mary Lou. When this youngster had suggested flying to fight the dragon, she agreed, caught up in the spirit of the moment.
But this rescue was not taking mere moments. In fact, Mrs. Smith seemed to be losing all track of time. They had left the neighbors behind, defenseless against an attack by Nunn.
In fact, this course of action seemed even less well conceived than their fight against Nunn. It was as if, as soon as these magicians were confronted by some magic, they immediately took leave of their senses, gallivanting off on one adventure after another. And she was no better than the rest of them, blindly following, never raising her voice. This would have to stop now.
Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) Page 38