by K. T. Tomb
Finally, they took me seriously.
No one knew these woods the way I did. I’d grown up here and every orifice and crevice had a story to tell or an adventure to share. The men followed me through one detour after another, before we finally lost my father and his blow-torch fiery lungs.
I knew I’d pay for my betrayal when I got home this evening, but I wasn’t going to let him destroy two human beings. I just couldn’t live with that. Although I also knew this decision came with a risk—a risk that Tolbalth would remind me of often over the coming months. These men could leave here with stories to tell and bring more men back with them. I had to figure out a way to quash that now.
Breathless, the wounded hunter managed to say, “What was that? My God, it was huge. What could it have been?” He pressed his hand against the bleeding hole at his shoulder, wincing at the pain.
Piku stepped out from the trees and the hunter with the rifle aimed the weapon at him.
“Don’t!” I lifted my dagger and cocked my arm back, daring him to click the empty chamber.
“So, he’s with you?” the hunter asked.
I nodded.
“Listen, girl, I don’t know what’s going on around here but I’m sure as hell going to find out.”
“No, you’re not!” Before he could say another word, I used my open hand and nailed him in the neck along a pressure point and then spun around and did the same to his friend. Both collapsed in front of us.
Piku stared up at me in chagrin.
“What?”
“You save them, and then you maim them?”
I laughed. “I didn’t maim them. I have an idea on how to stop them from questioning this whole incident.”
“Oh, boy.” The tiger paced from one tree to another. “Your ideas always get us in trouble.”
“Not this time, Piku. Help me carry them back to where Abby is. The small one left his camera there and we’re going to use it.”
Within the next hour, we brought the two unconscious hunters back to where they’d shot the doe and then staged them as if they took pictures with Abby, proud of their conquests. I had Piku pose in the photo behind them, growling and in one photo, he appeared to have sunk his teeth into the one man’s shoulder, which provided the explanation for his wound. We tossed the camera next to the unconscious men and moved Abby’s body to another location where she could stay until I brought back a shovel to bury her.
As we walked back to my place, I saw Father standing outside in human form. He never changed to human form unless he wanted to address me at eye level. “You should go,” I whispered to Piku.
“And leave you alone with Tolbalth in his deadly human form? I think not.”
I laughed. “He would never hurt me, Piku. But he might hurt you. You really should go.”
Piku nodded and started across the field of brown shrubs before he turned and said, “If you need me, just call out.”
I smiled and continued toward my father. The closer I came to him, the more I could tell how angry he really was. The smoke misting from his nose and streaming from his ears was a dead giveaway.
Chapter Five
“Zadie, we need to talk.” Father crossed his arms over his chest. The muscles in his neck moved on their own, rippling with suppressed tension.
As a human, my father was about forty-eight years old. He was an extremely handsome man with brown-and-gray peppered hair and chiseled features. His eyes yellow with flecks of black and at six-feet two inches tall, he towered over my five-foot, seven-inch frame. Not only his height was formidable, but he had the same defined muscles that he carried when he was a dragon.
I stopped in front of him, realizing that I hadn’t seen him this mad in a long time. As a matter of the fact, the only other time he’d been this mad was when Piku and I went into the forbidden cave two miles from our house. I’d only been thirteen years old and we were curious. As if he sensed that I was on my way there, he stopped me before I had made it two feet inside the cave. I’d never understood why that cave was off-limits, but I respected him when he told me to never go near it again.
“You could have hurt them, Father.” I crossed my arms over my chest to match his stance.
“This is not a game, Zadie. Hunters are starting to venture out this far. If we’re discovered out here, it could be dangerous for us both! You should have let me taken care of it.”
“You mean you would kill them.”
“I mean, taken care of it.” He softened his eyes. “Do you think they would have tried to kill me if they had the means?”
“Let’s see.” I tapped my finger across my lips and gazed into the sky. “A huge dragon running toward them with bellowing fire being regurgitated from a mouth full of carnivorous teeth? Um, yeah, Father, I would have tried to kill you, too. If I didn’t know you.”
He inwardly chuckled but quickly grew serious again. “They killed your friend, the doe, didn’t they?”
I glanced at the ground and nodded, kicking at small rocks near my feet. “She didn’t even realize that they were hunting her.”
“That’s a hunter’s job, Zadie. Sneak up when we least expect it and slaughter without thinking about the lives they’re taking.”
“But turning around and killing them doesn’t make us any better, Father. We should be better than that. Better than them.”
My father let his arms fall to his sides. He glanced up toward the sky and ran his hands over his face. “When did this happen?”
“What?” I shot back defensively.
“You’re all grown up.”
“You’re just now noticing?” I asked.
He smirked and nodded repeatedly. Covering his mouth, he cleared his throat. “You’re right, Zadie. About the men. But we will have to prepare for their return. There was a time that these forests were filled with people and dragons alike.”
I narrowed my eyes and followed my father as we started to walk. “Out here? Where we live?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “Long ago. But humans and dragons couldn’t get along, so the dragons had to make a choice. Stand up and fight in order to live a free life or concede to men and be their slaves.”
“Well, I’m guessing they fought, right?”
Tolbalth’s eyes seemed so distant. I could tell he was remembering a time he would rather have forgotten. But in this rare moment when my father stood before me as a human man, I knew that he had something important to share with me. Something that he could only share, if he stepped out of being a dragon and stood beside me as my equal.
“Not at first, Zadie. We’d heard stories of men being fierce and deadly. Not respecting nature or other creatures. Almost like those hunters. My kind feared men and in that fear, we sometimes forget how powerful we actually are.”
“So, what happened?”
“We conceded and we were enslaved.”
“But a dragon is so much larger than a man. You could have crushed them with one foot.”
“It doesn’t matter, child.” He glanced at me. “If the spirit concedes, then the rest follows. The thought of regaining freedom had been crushed from our souls.”
I glanced around, noticing that we were walking toward a huge gully not far from our cave. The sun shone down, halfway between the horizon and the sky. It was moving into late afternoon.
My father continued, “But, once in a lifetime, there will be one who will renew the faith in another. An unlikely creature, might I add.”
“Who was it?”
“A witch doctor befriended a baby dragon and he taught this dragon all he could. But,” he put up his finger, “in dragon form, he couldn’t get the youngling to pay attention, so he gave him the ability to shapeshift. The boy sat for hours listening to the witch doctor, learning spells and understanding more than he ever would have, if not for his friend.”
“Wow, you’ve never told me this story before, Father.”
“I’ve never needed to, Zadie. And up until now, you were always too young to unde
rstand.”
“What happened to the baby dragon or the boy?”
“He grew up and led an army of dragons into battle with men. Together, the dragons won. Their freedom restored, for a century, they flourished. Until…”
“Until?” My hands were clasped in front of me and the dagger Tolbalth had given me as a birthday gift bounced against my thigh.
He sighed. It was a heavy, burdened sigh. We stopped and he nodded toward a ravine. My eyes moved from him to the hundred-foot slope before me.
I cupped my hands over my mouth and took a step back. Dragon skeletons littered the entire area, filling it with the death of yesteryears. My throat constricted and my heart sank. So many. Piled on top of each other, so many skeletons in this one spot. “This is the forbidden zone. I remember you told me that the place carried bad omens in the same way that the cave near our house is forbidden.”
He nodded, staring out at the gully.
“What happened here?” I asked.
“We were attacked. And slaughtered. I couldn’t save them. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
“Did any survive?”
“Yes. Those who survived fled. I never knew what happened to the survivors. Never knew where they went or if they lived after the attack.”
“What about you?” I asked, tears running down my face. I wanted to hug him, to tell my father that I loved him, but we’d never had that kind of relationship. So, I hung on to every word.
“I found the witch doctor and asked for his help. My wife was injured. So we stayed and he hid us for hundreds of years until the land grew barren and the people moved on.”
“You were the boy—the boy who befriended the witch doctor?” I asked.
“Yes, I was the boy. I absorbed everything he taught me and while we stayed hidden from the world, I learned from him.”
“What happened to your wife?”
He turned to stare into my eyes, a pool of tears rested at the rims. “She died.”
“Because of her wounds?”
“No, because of her blood.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but the pain in his eyes kept me from asking too many questions about his deceased wife. “And this is why you hate men—you hate shifting into a man form. Because of this.” I moved my gaze back out to the skeletons in front of us.
“You’ll be eighteen tomorrow,” he said. “And there is so much that I need to tell you. I’ve waited to tell you.”
We stood side by side for what felt like an eternity, staring out at the gully. A time for silent prayer or soul-searching for us both. I’d grown up in these forests and had never strayed to this side of the land just five miles east. This side had always been forbidden. And I had obeyed.
I tried to picture the thousands of dragons that now lay in this gully as alive and thriving. I tried to imagine Tolbalth with a wife and a life before me. And while my mind traversed a million different thoughts, I had to ask my father the one question that had been bugging me for a lifetime—the question that nagged at me the older I became. “Father, what am I?”
Chapter Six
It didn’t take me long to understand that he wasn’t ready to discuss everything at once. The revelation of what he’d just told me took an emotional toll on him. But when he answered my question with, “Today, you’re my daughter but tomorrow, we will talk about your heritage.” I knew that he’d told me enough stories for one day.
He turned and took my hands into his. “You see, Zadie, if those hunters that you saved happen to return, there will be no way for you to stop them. They murder first and think about it later.”
“But I think Piku and I took care of that. I’m hoping they’ll use their camera footage to help them remember what happened out here.”
“You are my daughter,” his eyes narrowed and he gripped my hands firmly. “But, don’t defy me again. I won’t lose you the way I lost all of them.” He pointed toward the ravine. “I will not concede to man, nor will I let them enslave me again.”
“Yes, Father.” I stared into his wise eyes marked with wisdom lines around the outer corners. He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. A foreign emotion he’d rarely used.
Out of nowhere, his hand swung toward my neck and I ducked. “Now, we train.” He spun into a fighting stance and I naturally squatted into mine.
“A little warning would be nice.” My heart raced.
“Hunters don’t give warnings when they shoot. Neither do witches.”
“Neither do witches what?” I narrowed my eyes as we circled each other. The statement was so bizarre and yet, I knew that my father would have a story about that as well. He was reflective today and when he felt reflective, he fed me with the knowledge of his elder soul.
“They don’t give warnings, Zadie. They just act upon their desires and take what they think is theirs.”
My father and I had never talked much about witches, although he had once mentioned that they ruled our part of the forest. But to entangle a conversation about witches with hunters into a single sentence made little sense to me. I was confused. Disoriented even. That wouldn’t stop me from practicing with my massive guardian. “A little random. Don’t ya think?”
“No, Zadie.” He kicked his leg out, sweeping it counterclockwise to take my legs out from under me. I jumped over his feet. “Tomorrow, on your birthday, you’ll understand everything.”
“I’m understanding more, now that you showed me this.” I ran toward him and jumped through the air with a thrust punch that flew past his head and missed his face. Falling forward, he pushed at my back and I stumbled toward the ground. “Damn it.”
“Think, Zadie. Take your time and think. Protecting yourself isn’t a race. It’s about concentration and anticipating your attacker’s next move.”
Father came at me with his fist flying toward my face one after another. I dodged them repeatedly, using my hands to help thwart his punches into opposite directions of my face. Then I ducked and slammed my open palms into his diaphragm, causing him to lose balance and stumble backward.
He chuckled. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. You’re quite the fighter, my darling. It pleases me to know that you can take care of yourself.”
I smiled and bowed. “Thank you. Thank you. You’ve been quite the teacher.”
He bowed back at me. “Remember, expect the unexpected and don’t rely on your eyes. Your eyes will play tricks on you. You must use all your senses as one.”
“Of course.” I hesitated and glanced back at the gully.
“What is it?” he asked.
I reached into my pocket and rolled the bullet from the lion around in my pocket. There was a desperate need to tell him how I’d been changing, but I remembered how he acted when I’d told him about my dream earlier that morning and I wasn’t in the mood to defend myself again.
“Well?” he asked.
“It’s nothing, really.”
“Zadie?” he crossed his arms over his chest. “We don’t keep secrets from each other, right?”
I pulled out the bullet from my pocket and opened my hand to show him. “Somehow, I was able to remove this from a lion just by resting my hand over his wound.”
Tolbalth took the bullet from my hand and studied it. “You pulled this out of the lion?”
“No, I mean, it kind of worked itself out into my hand and I healed him. Do you know how I could do such a thing?”
“I’m not sure,” he said quickly.
Again, I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach that he was keeping something very important from me.
“What are we having for dinner?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Rabbit with wild grains and beans. And berry pie. Piku and I picked berries earlier.”
“Tomorrow, I will do the cooking for you, since it’s your birthday.”
“My dragon father is going to cook for me? I can’t wait.” I half-smiled, trying to get that heaviness away from my heart. For as long as I could remember, Tolba
lth preached that we wouldn’t keep secrets from each other, but lately, it felt like that was all we’d done.
“Want a ride back?”
I hesitated to leave as I scanned over the gully filled with dragon bones, feeling a sense of dread for the dragons who had died so close to our home. My heart ached for my father to have suffered so much.
Tomorrow is my birthday. At eighteen, my life should change. I wasn’t sure how, but I’d always heard from Tolbalth that at eighteen years old, a child becomes an adult. Maybe then, my father would share more about who I am and what he knew of my birth. Maybe.
My father transformed into his massive dragon form and as he kneeled down so I could climb my way to his shoulders, I had a feeling I hadn’t felt since I was five years old. I held on as he ran and took off in flight. The wind smacked me in the face and the beauty of seeing the land from the vantage point of being high above the trees made me want to scream out in absolute excitement. I threw my hands in the air as I rode on the back of my father’s neck, feeling a child-like joy that had a way of healing what I’d just witnessed in the gully. For a short time, nothing mattered except this one moment with my father—this bonding time that we rarely shared except while riding high in the sky.
Chapter Seven
She came again in a silky white dress, her golden hair blowing from the breeze coming in from my carved, rock window. It was chilly in my room, so I pulled the covers up to my neck and shivered beneath them. Part fear, part cold.
“Mother?”
She stood at my window inside my room, staring at me with those intense golden eyes.
“Are you my mom?” I asked.
She nodded, her hair cascading from her shoulder over the front of her body.
I realized at that moment, she couldn’t talk to me, at least, I didn’t think she could. I pulled the covers up a little further, uncertain as to why she was standing in my room and how she’d gotten there. This was the first time ever that she’d ventured inside our home. “Why are you here?”