One of the children moved up front to sit where Sarah usually sat. The old man frowned but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to because the red-haired boy with the persistently blue lips—didn’t his mother ever feed that child anything but lollipops for breakfast? Good thing his father was a dentist—yelled, “Hey, that is Sarah’s seat. You can’t sit there!”
The wayfaring seat-snatcher was about to reply when he looked up and saw the front door open. Sarah’s grandfather was walking through it holding her by the hand. A welcoming torrent of “Hey Sarah’s!” threatened to blow both her and her grandfather back out the door. Sarah smiled, then let go of her grandfather’s hand and ran toward the old man. He was seated in his usual rocker and had bent forward to see who was walking through the front door. When his eyes lit on the little urchin, he sighed, and when she came running toward him, he caught her up in a big hug. He didn’t understand why he was so relieved until she pressed her lips against his ear and said, “The dragon came for me, and then it got Thomas.”
The old man carefully put her on the ground and looked down at her. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and in a wavering voice asked, “What? What did you say?”
Sarah looked around at all the children trying to settle back in, to her grandfather, and then back at the old man, “Oh nothing, I just had a bad night. A lot of bad dreams. I’m okay now, right Grandpa?”
She looked up at the tired face of the grey-haired fire marshal. His back was military straight, but his shoulders stooped with the relentless burdens of time. A brief smile hurried across his face. His eyes had dark rings under them. Peering over the top of his Walmart readers, he put his finger on his nose and said, “I sure hope so, honey, because last night was a booger!” He leaned into the old man who had risen to greet him, took his hand, and said, “She is okay now, but last night was scary. She screamed and cried and yelled. I couldn’t make out the words. It seemed to go on for hours, so when she finally settled down, we let her sleep late. That is why we are coming in now rather than our usual time. Still, she insisted on being here today, said she had to hear the story. By the way, I am Kenneth Linscomb, Sarah’s grandfather.”
“Good to officially meet you Kenneth. I am Hank Ferguson.”
“You have quite a gift, old man. Now get these kids happy, and I’ll treat you to lunch today. Deal?”
“Sounds good to me, sir. I will do my best.” With that he turned back to the children, noticing that his rug-rat queen had taken her rightful place. He began to tell the story, but not before taking a hard look at Sarah’s eyes, which were red and puffy, and her face swollen. It had been a bad night. He also noticed that his invisible book page turner was nowhere to be found.
That’s disturbing, he thought as he shuffled into place and pretended to be opening the great invisible book. “Hey, has anyone seen Thomas? Or know where he is?”
The typical echo of voices replied, “No.”
“Nope.”
“No sir.”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“His mom didn’t drop him off.”
The old man looked at his daughter to see if she had heard any different but only got an I-don’t-know-where-he-is shrug. So, not wanting to have to settle everyone down again, the old man looked at his favored little naglet and said, “Madam, would you like to assist me?”
Sarah smiled a weary smile and said, “No sir, not today. I just want to sit here and re-coop-my-rate...”
“What?” the young woman seated by Sarah looked puzzled. “What do you mean, re-coop-my-rate... is that two words or one?”
Sarah was grumpy and said, “Why four, of course. It’s Re Coop My Rate. It means rest and feel better, right?”
The old man shook his head, amazed at the adaptable imagination of children, and asked another young crayon-gobbler to come and turn the invisible pages.
“Now where...” he tried to begin and was answered by a dozen shrill voices, each with a different version of where he had left off. “Hmmm,” he growled in a low tone to get everyone’s attention. “Maybe I should review things a bit...
“Harry is in a cave. He wants to rescue the princess, but the only way he can talk to her is through his dreams.”
“People can’t talk through dreams,” one of the slightly older children declared to his younger sibling in a sarcastic I-know-better-than-that tone.
The old man was about to let it pass when the weary queen of story time rose to her duty and declared, “Oh yes they can! I did it all night. Now shut up and let the man talk!”
“It’s okay. It’s really okay... This is just a story.” He looked at the scolded children and the sullen little scolder who silently mouthed back at him, “No, it’s not!”
His eyes widened, and he knew he was going to have to have a talk with that young woman, but not yet. Now he had a story to tell. He continued on, pushing through, “Harry had discovered a ring that was shaped like a boar’s head and a large coin-shaped disc. Both seemed to be very, very old. He stuffed them in his pocket, picked up his torch, and walked down the tunnel into the darkness. It had started to get cold, and the cave was very wet. He didn’t really know where he was going or what waited for him. A subconscious whisper reminded him that the last time he heard the dragon scream it was coming from the direction he was now walking.
“Harry held his small torch in front of him and eased down the dark tunnel. A fleeting thought struck him, If this torch goes out, I will be in absolute darkness with no hope of getting out of here. Panic threatened to paralyze him, but then he thought, If I don’t go forward, the princess will be trapped in darkness forever. So, he pulled up his sagging pants, tucked his cowardly heart in them, stuck out his chin, and fell forward into a hole in the tunnel floor. He screamed and thought he heard a laugh, but was too frightened to concentrate, as the hole became a slide of small rocks and hard bumps. His feet acted as brakes, and his rear end anchored him from tumbling head-over-heels out of control. He only fell a few yards and even managed to keep the torch lit, but he was cut and bruised and sore and angry. He stood up in the pile of gravel he had brought with him, dusted off the small pieces of rock covering his clothes and embedded in his arms. As he reached around back to brush off his pants, he discovered a huge hole where his britches’ bottom used to be.”
A stream of giggles and snorts reminded the old man to be careful. He had a room full of impressionable kindergarteners and didn’t want to focus them too much on a bare-tailed warrior, so he quickly added, “and was glad his mother couldn’t see him now. She would complain about how he was always ripping up his clothes, that they didn’t grow on trees, and couldn’t he be more careful.”
A small voice replied, “Isn’t that the truth? I wonder if his mom was kin to mine!”
“That sounds just like my mom too, ‘Take off your shoes. Don’t bring in dirt,’” another little pigpen echoed mimicking his mother’s squeaky nasal tone.
“Anywaaay...” the old man growled, forcing down his own temptation to comment on the nature of mothers, and increased his voice volume for just a moment till things quieted. “Those thoughts quickly vanished as Harry finally noticed where he had landed. He looked around, stilled by what he saw. He blinked wildly for a few seconds and backed up, actually falling on the rock pile he had just slid down. He finally stood up and held his torch in front of him as high as he could. The dim torch light reflected off small pieces of crystal that lined the cavern walls. In front of him Harry saw a huge cavern, and on the floor of this room lay a very large pile of…”
“Gold!”
“Human bones?!”
“Treasure?”
The brigade of story-riveted children, who ate boogers like adults ate popcorn, stood wild-eyed, shouting out guesses.
The old man laughed and answered calmly, facing each one and each guess. “No, it wasn’t gold.”
“Hmmph.”
“No, it wasn’t human bones.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m positive,” the old man answered quickly then added, “and it wasn’t treasure.”
“It has to be treasure!” a little girl on the back row insisted, “because everyone knows that a dragon has treasure.”
“You’re right, he does, but it’s not in this room. Anybody else?”
Sarah slowly raised her hand.
The old man looked at her. Suddenly, a cold chill surrounded him, raising the hair on his neck. He gulped and then goaded the little girl’s name out of his mouth, “Sarah,” he finally squeezed from his lips.
“They were dragon bones, piles and piles of dragon bones.”
The old man sucked in his breath, forgot to breathe for a moment, then exhaled in a long, slow breath... “Yes, they were.” He knew immediately he had to cover the revelation from the rest of the unwary children who would be quick to ask the wrong questions and repeat the wrong answers. He didn’t understand what was going on but was absolutely certain he had to hide it.
He realized that his body language clearly hinted at something troubling him, and the children might be little, but they were extremely perceptive, so he was going to have to do something quickly, unexpected, and that would misdirect the kid’s attention, but Sarah beat him to it.
She stood up and started laughing. Everybody looked at her and grinned, but were also a bit puzzled.
“What ya doing, Sarah?”
“What’s so funny, Sarah?”
“How come you’re laughing?”
“I finally figured it out!” she giggled. “This story is from the Cartoon program association. I saw it several weeks ago at my grandfather’s. You guys didn’t see it?”
The children said, “No, we didn’t know it was on TV.”
“Ahh, that’s not right,” a disappointed little munchkin complained.
“No fun. We thought this was a real story.”
The old man was relieved and also caught between a rock and hard place. He didn’t want to lie to the children, but sometimes a white lie in the right place covered a dark truth in a bad place. So, he started laughing too.
“Yep, Sarah’s got me. This is an old, old story, and it didn’t start with me. It is actually in more than one place in cartoons and books and movies. I’m surprised it took you this long to figure it out. I’ve just changed some things around to make it interesting. I hope that doesn’t disappoint you?”
“Nah, no,” an obviously disappointed child whispered compliantly.
“Uh...”
“We like the story,” Sarah commanded, gathering her childish comrade’s disappointment, and kicking it down the hall.
She looked back at the old man and hid behind her six-year-old countenance. She didn’t give him time to think, but did give him permission, “Carry on please.”
Without skipping more than a couple of heartbeats, the old man resumed, “All around Harry, and as far as his torch light reached, were piles and piles of huge dragon bones. Some were large enough that he could easily walk through them. Others were smaller but still larger than a cow. He was confused and unsure of what to think about this dragon graveyard. A hundred questions ran through his mind and out just as quick.
“Finally, after a few minutes of walking among them, he sat down on a large boulder and thought, Some of these are ancient. They have almost turned to stone, others not so much. A few even have bits and pieces of armor and great golden decorative harnesses around their heads. In the process of looking, he also found better torches attached to the cave walls. After a little experimentation, he found they still worked. They were much larger and cast much better light than the small torch he had been carrying.
“Harry walked around the old dragon bones taking note of everything he saw, looking close at the great bands of gold and silver that wrapped around the legs and arms of the dry skeletons. Finally, he got to the very center of the graveyard. He noticed the bones were actually laid out in lines and squares like a human cemetery might be, only they had no caskets and were not buried. All the lanes among the bones seemed to lead to a center aisle, kind of like a grocery store leads to the cashiers, you understand?”
They all nodded expectantly, waiting to hear what happened next.
“He followed the lanes, which ended in front of a huge dragon skeleton that had literally turned to stone. It must have been the oldest skeleton in the dragon graveyard. He looked at it closely and noticed on top and at the back of the skull was another skeleton, a smaller one, a human one! He had to climb on top of the skeleton to get to it, but did so quickly, like climbing a small hill. Finally, Harry stood atop the huge dragon bones and looked down on the skeleton of an ancient knight. The armor on this one was far older than the first skeleton he had found in the tunnel. It had the tattered remains of a banner wrapped around it and a leather pouch at its side. It also had a sword in its hand, and as he examined it closer, he saw it also had a ring on its finger, the same kind of ring that he had found on the first knight’s skeleton, his own family ring.
“He gently picked up the sword that the ancient knight had sheathed on his side. The sword was lighter than any Harry had ever held. When he picked it up, it seemed to cast a pale blue light, and the longer he held it, the brighter the light grew. This scared him. He wanted to put the sword down but was afraid to, and he didn’t want to hold it because it was glowing blue. He finally decided to put it back in the sheath of the old knight, but when he tried, it kept sticking and wouldn’t fit in it. So finally, he gently unhooked the sheath from the knight and pried open the sheath’s end with his fingers so he could get the sword to go in. It slid all the way in except for the last bit, so holding the sheath tightly with one hand, Harry tried to ram the sword the rest of the way. He strained as hard as he could and pushed with all his might. The sheath gave; the sword slipped and, in the process, cut him right across his index finger. Harry dropped the sword and yelled, which echoed through the cavern. He immediately stopped screaming and cringed.”
Three hands went up. The old man stopped, and they whispered, “What’s cringed mean?”
“Oh …it means, ah...” the old man thought, How do I explain cringe? Then it hit him. “Okay, has anyone in here ever gotten a spanking?” That question brought the house down.
“Of course, we have.”
“Nope,” then laughter, “but I should have!”
“Yes, lots of times.”
“Most of the time it’s my brother. I do something bad, blame it on him, and...”
“Ok, ok. You get my point. And for those of you who have never gotten a spanking, you have my dearest sympathy. But the point is, right before your parents spatted you across your little rears, you tensed up.”
“Oh yeah! That’s when I start screaming like I’m on fire. My mom starts hollering, and my dad leaves the room with my brothers, laughing.”
“Ok, let me try that again. Have you ever had someone throw you a baseball or a football, and you’re afraid to catch the ball, so you close your eyes and get hit?”
A little girl sitting by Princess Sarah sheepishly nodded her head, “Yeah, it hurt too.”
“Well that, my dears, is cringing. It means you get ready to get hit.”
“Harry was afraid his scream would bring the dragon down upon him. He jumped off the great dragon’s bones, looked quickly around him, and ran down the lane. Suddenly, as he drew near, he saw another small path through the dragon graveyard veer away from the main path. He had the strong impression he should run that way, so he did. And then the paths split again, and he felt like he should take the one on his left. He took it, and soon he was out of the ancient dragon graveyard and back in the narrow tunnel of the cave. He stopped panting like one of his great big wolf-shepherds back home. His breath finally eased as he listened. He closed his eyes, focused all his attention on listening, and then jumped as a thunderous roar of the dragon shook the cavern and echoed throughout. Then Harry heard the heavy steam-engine-puffing of the dragon and felt the air around him turn ho
t. The flames could not get to him, but the dragon had followed his scent and pushed its huge snout right up against the tunnel as far as it could and was now spraying dragon flame. Thankfully, Harry had run a long way down the tunnel, which turned this way then that and back again, but just to be safe, he kept moving until the air in the cave tunnel became cool again. He could still hear the dragon’s angry roars and steam engine spray, but he was safe. It could not touch him. He sat there a moment, and then it occurred to him. How had he known which way to run? Just as he was wondering how he could have known, he heard a voice in his head. It said, ‘I told you.’
“Harry laughed, and thought, Great now I am talking to myself, asking questions, and giving answers.
‘‘‘No, you’re not. I told you,’ the voice repeated.
‘‘‘No, I told myself, and that is all there is to it,’ Harry said out loud. ‘I told myself!’ he repeated stubbornly.
‘‘‘Ok fine,” the voice said. ‘Be that way if you want to, but one question... if you told yourself, how did you know which way to go?’
“Harry stood up, holding the torch preparing to move down the cave tunnel, but when he heard the voice ask, ‘How did you know which way to go?’ he slowly slid down the damp cave wall, drew his legs up, wrapped his arms around them, and started to shake. ‘Now, now. There is nothing to be afraid of... I don’t want to hurt you, and I can’t hurt you, and why would I want to hurt my new partner?’
“Harry didn’t answer but just sat there, still shivering.
“The voice continued in his head. ‘Harry? You still there? I asked you a question. Please be courteous enough to answer me. Harry?’
“Harry wanted to run down the tunnel screaming like a pack of blithering monkeys being chased by an angry mom for stealing her homemade chocolate fudge.”
The Princess Who Forgot She Was Beautiful (The Harry Ferguson Chronicles Book 1) Page 6