Rake's Story

by LeRoy Clary

  “A Green from Breslau can mean the invasion has already started or will soon, especially if there really were five of them. I don’t think that was the truth. He was excited and exaggerated how many.”

  “I’m going to finish what we started out to do,” Rake said, tired of the conversation and the seemingly endless possibilities. “You are free to do what you think is best for you and your family.”

  He shouldered past her and waded into the river. The water was cold, coming down from the melting snow packs on the mountains off to his right where his home was located. Thanks to the artificial ford created by the boulders, it was only knee deep, his feet didn’t sink into soft mud, but the river was far wider at the ford due to the partial damming from the rocks.

  Halfway across, he hesitated. Unlike hundreds of previous people crossing, he carried no rock to add to the ford and he felt guilty using it without contributing. It was a small thing. It also defined him to an extent. Rake paid his way and always did his share of work and more.

  After reaching the far side with only his lower legs wet thanks to those who’d gone before, he searched along the edge of the road and found three fist-sized rocks almost together. He picked one up and turned to throw it as his first contribution.

  “Not at me,” Cinder interrupted his thoughts as she crossed.

  While tempted to throw a rock and see if the splash would reach her, he waited. After she reached the dry side, he let the first fly. Then the second. She threw the third.

  It was a small incident but told volumes about both. They worked for what was given them and they appreciated what others in the past had done to make their progress easier. The road ahead rose and dipped, instead of the flat expanse of the last day. The river joined another larger one, where the water was muddier, and branches and entire trees flowed downstream.

  Another farmer walked a pair of matched oxen in a wooden yoke. Both animals were young, strong, and moved with power instead of grace. Either the farmer would sell them for a good price, or he had just purchased them. He handled the oxen tentatively, suggesting they were new to him. He noticed them from a distance and moved his animals off the road where they grazed on fresh grass as he warily watched Cinder and Rake approach.

  His actions indicated an innate fear of strangers, which was not personal. Rake thought he might be Dragon Clan because of the way he avoided people, but there were others who didn’t trust strangers, in fact, that was true of most people. They passed without incident.

  A small farm drew their attention a short while later. It had a cabin built on a slight rise to protect it from flooding, a few shabby outbuildings, and a rail fence to contain sheep and another for pigs. A small stream flowed down the center of the pasture; one a person could step across but the flow was more than enough for watering several animals. Vegetables grew close to the cabin, planted fields stretched beyond, and an even orchard.

  The location was beautiful, the ground fertile, the crops lush. However, there existed an impression of overgrowth, decay, and neglect. A few of the rails of the fence had fallen and hadn’t been set back in place. One outbuilding, a storage shed of some sort, leaned so far to one side it wouldn’t withstand another winter. Even the dog that rushed to greet them limped.

  A woman with a child on her hip and a sickle held menacingly in her free hand watched them pass. Rake said, “Not the friendliest people around here.”

  “There may be a reason.”

  Rake, who always seemed hungry, had seen the last of their food disappear inside the wanderer at the river crossing and searched for his next meal. Dried fruit from the orchard would have been nice. The way the woman held the sickle suggested he didn’t want to ask and that she was doing the work on the farm, suggesting her husband was either elsewhere or dead.

  A stretch of road with little of interest to a traveler followed until Cinder said, “Feel it?”

  Rake hadn’t until she mentioned it. At her mention, and at the limits of his abilities to sense the creatures, came the faint tingle of a dragon. He stopped and waited, allowing the sensation to sweep over him as he concentrated. “Off to our right?”

  “I think so. Is it getting stronger?”

  “Maybe.” He closed his eyes and twisted his back to face where it came from as if that would increase his sensitivity. The sensation was different somehow, not wrong, but different.

  Cinder said as if reading his mind again, “Like an echo.”

  She was right. Instead of a steady one, two, three, four, the sensation had a stutter. Rake, with his eyes still closed, allowed the sensation to fill his mind. He said, “Is something wrong with it?”

  “Them,” Cinder said in hushed tones.

  He opened his eyes and found two dragons far ahead, one chasing after the other in the air. The one in the lead, a Red, twisted and turned, left then right. The one following, a Green, stayed with it and seemed to gain on it.

  “Oh, no,” Rake hissed fearfully. “The Green is faster.”

  The Red increased its speed. The Green matched it. The Red tried a new tactic. It beat its wings faster and rose quickly, almost straight up—the Green matched its every move. They flew higher, twisting and turning. The Red shrieked. However, there was no biting or clawing.

  Side by side, they flew so high they were hard to see, their necks now intertwined. They pulled apart and joined together again, the sensations on Rake’s back fading as they flew farther away and the images of them shrank until they were mere dots on a blue background.

  “They are not fighting, they’re mating,” Cinder said with a sense of wonder. “Do you realize what we just witnessed?”

  “The Green was one of ours,” Rake said. “Maybe that’s what my sister saw.”

  “No.” Cinder was still watching the place in the sky where they had disappeared. “I also saw the Green at home. I felt nothing on my back because it was not close enough, but if it had been ours, I would have sensed it easily. Today there were two sets of sensations which is why it felt like an echo.”

  “You’re sure about the Green?”

  She said, “About the sensations? Yes. But there is something else that may be true—or not. The one I saw at home was slightly different. It was larger but also heavier. More muscular. Its tail was shorter and so was its neck. Our Green we just saw was longer, more graceful.”

  Rake gave that a few moments to sink in. He said, “Maybe just two different dragons. Or a male and a female. Or, maybe two different species? But you may have found out something important.”

  “Maybe. Who cares? We can already identify them because we can feel our dragons at a distance and not the ones from Breslau.”

  “The two we just watched, you really think they were breeding?”

  “If not then, soon,” Cinder said. “I’ve seen geese and other birds acting a lot like we just observed. Snakes, too.”

  Rake looked off to his right and a little beyond the horizon. Dragons preferred rugged, high cliffs to build their nests, and they needed warmth from the ground for the eggs, a rare combination. The sides of volcanoes provided the perfect circumstances, and the altitude provided protection from most predators. Nothing indicated those things would be there.

  In the old stories, the Dragon Clan often knew the favorite locations and protected the beasts from predators on the ground. North of where his family settled in the valley stood a small volcano, he’d heard about. Less than two days travel from the cabin, the stories said. Nobody had ever mentioned dragons nesting there, but a longing urged him to change directions and go there.

  He said, “I feel a tug to protect the eggs and nest. That’s never happened before.”

  “I feel it too. But there is no way to know where they will nest that I know of. But my intuition tells me it wants us to go that way,” she pointed in the direction he watched.

  They stood quietly, sorting out their feelings.

  It was not a compulsion, but a vague pull. He could ignore it. Or not. Rake said, �
��Have you heard of such a thing happening before?”

  “Only that Dragon Clan sometimes care for dragon rookeries. Not the compulsion to follow a dragon.”

  “Maybe because they feel compelled to help us? Similar to the compulsions we feel for helping them? Think about it. They are a mating pair and they are very near us so the feelings sensed by all of us may be greater. Is that possible?”

  Cinder said, “Another question for you to worry about, one that has no answer right now. Besides, if there are others of the Dragon Clan nearby, like Sadie for instance, do they feel the same things as us? Or is it happening to us because of our meeting with the red yesterday?”

  Rake glanced at her from the corner of his eye. He couldn’t help himself. “Cinder did you bond with that Red? Is that what’s going on?”

  He ignored the scowl aimed in his direction.

  She had said us while omitting the meeting had been with him. He considered correcting her and let it slide. Rake shuffled along the road, not really watching where he walked. Cinder stayed up with him, just as quiet and introspective as he felt. After a while, he said, “There might be, and probably are, other Dragon Clan within sight of their mating. It must have happened before. We don’t know them or where they are, so we can’t ask them, but you’re right, Sadie will be behind us and when we see her again, this is a question we’ll ask and maybe she can follow up on it.”

  They continued until after midday when hunger forced a stop beside another stream since neither carried canteens. Their meal would have to wait since the traveler had eaten all they had. Rake pulled his bow and strung it. He searched for a suitable target and found none. Firing the barbed arrows into a tree promised he’d never get them out in condition to use again. The stone tips were a worse choice because they would break on impact.

  Cinder watched him but said nothing. No criticisms, or suggestions. He appreciated that.

  He hefted the bow into position and drew the string. He held it. His muscles tightened and a fire flared in his arm and shoulder. He held on. The bowstring returned to a standing position as if by itself. Rake felt pain in the muscles under his shoulder, his underarm, and his forearm on the right side. His left shoulder bore the brunt of the pain from holding the bow.

  He pulled the string again, relaxing before the shaking began. Then again.

  Cinder said, “I should do the same. As big and strong as you are, the problem is that we never use the muscles needed to be an archer—unless you are an archer and practice daily, of course. I can’t think of another activity that requires the same strength, so despite how strong the rest of you is, it does not help.”

  Rake understood what she said, but as he pulled the string back again, he also felt it in his chest and the tightening of his stomach. It wasn’t all about the arms, but Cinder had a point.

  She added, “If you do that too much, you’ll be sore. Better to do a little several times a day.”

  “How did you become such an expert?” he asked as he drew the string once more to make his point.

  She laughed. “I decided I’m an expert, that’s how. If you keep on, you’ll wish you’d listened to me.”

  He drew the string again and felt the pains in his arms begin quicker sooner. His left arm shook, his right upper arm burned.

  She kept talking, “And that exercise is not increasing your accuracy at all.”

  Rake ignored her as he placed the bow back in the sheath after unstringing it. He agreed with her on the last statement. He needed a target from which he could recover his arrows. A thought occurred. “I wonder if anyone sells soft targets I could carry?”

  Cinder said, “Come on, we’d better get on our way. As for your question, we should find a small canvas bag and fill it with something light we can carry with us. Maybe wood chips?”

  “Right. If the chips are pine or another softwood, and maybe some straw, too.” Rake found himself smiling.

  “What is this about us carrying it? You will carry the thing.” She laughed. “It’s your idea.”

  Rake silently agreed as he scanned the sky again. The dragons were not in sight and he felt nothing on his back to indicate they were nearby. However, when he returned home, he might have to take a trip to the rumored volcano where he suspected they were headed.

  Late in the afternoon, they encountered two more people on the road, both of whom continued walking past without talking, and both avoided direct eye contact with them. Not exactly rude, but close. Maybe wary was a better description because they didn’t seem to intend being rude. Later an older man approached. He displayed the butt of a knife at his waist as a warning. Rake would have liked to talk to him but understood his reluctance. Well, he understood part of it.

  Their reactions were not at all like those around the trading post back home. He thought about living in a world where everyone was considered a threat until proven otherwise. In his valley, encountering anyone was a pleasure—if he excluded acorn-throwing women perched in trees—and all were greeted as friends. Since leaving his home valley, most of the people had been either wary or aggressive.

  “Not very friendly, are they?” Cinder asked as if reading his thoughts. Either she had powers never heard of, or they were thinking alike more often than not.

  As the sun sank lower and tinged the sky red, they climbed to the crest of a long hill and paused at the top. Before them spread an entire city, the first either had ever seen. Hundreds of buildings and dozens of streets flanked both sides of the wide river. Many were built of granite, a dark gray variety of stone common to the entire area. Even those buildings with wood siding had darkened to gray over the years from the pall of smoke that hung like a black cloud in the small valley, giving the city a dreary appearance.

  The city straddled the river with bridges crossing it several times. On the far side were warehouses, docks, and industrial buildings. The near side contained smaller buildings, some commercial. Most were obviously homes and small shops. The city backed up to a granite wall of a mountain and sat in what amounted to a giant bowl. The location probably protected the residents in winter from the fierce winds that would blow over the top of them because of the looming mountain. Now, the stagnant air was filled with smoke and probably seldom cleared. The situation provided a boon and adverse reaction.

  People filled the wide main street where one side of it had been designated for selling goods. It was the only paved street they’d seen. Iron rimmed wheels of wagons rumbled over the pavestones, animals milled with foot traffic, and an air of business permeated everything. The noise was constant.

  “I don’t want to go down there,” Rake said while pulling to a stop and watching.

  “Lots of pretty girls live in those buildings, I’ll bet.” She nudged him with her elbow, missing the sore spot.

  “Probably, but they’ll all be covered with black soot like the buildings so you can’t tell which are pretty and which have faces like horses, like you.”

  She managed to strike his sore ribs with the next jab. “We’ll find food there. You’re always hungry and we have not eaten all afternoon. And there are probably several inns. This is a place where we might find what we’re looking for and we’re wasting time listening to you tell a few more lies. With that many people talking, there must be a lot to overhear.”

  Rake reluctantly walked down the slope with her at his side, although he’d managed to shift to the other side of her and the sharp elbow. As they neared the first of the buildings, he noticed the walls were streaked with soot that ran down the sides from the roofs and windows like dirty tears from the rain. Where rainwater didn’t reach, up under the eaves and below porch roofs, the walls were stained almost black. He reached out and touched one. His fingertip turned black and refused to wipe off no matter how many times he wiped it on his pants.

  He said, “Where are we going first? Any ideas?”

  “That market up ahead will probably close at dark. We’ll start there but we don’t have too long to find an in
n so that will be a priority.”

  “I prefer to sleep outside,” Rake said as he gazed at the frenetic activity and cold soulless buildings. “And when we do find an inn, I hope it has nicer people than the last one.”

  As they moved nearer to the market, the noise level increased with each step. Hundreds of people were in sight, more people than Rake had seen in his entire life were milling, shopping, talking, selling and lounging. His estimate included all those at the farms and villages on the way to where they now stood. It was impossible to comprehend the vast numbers ahead. The idea that there were that many people in one place stupefied him.

  A man wearing a pale green shirt appeared from nowhere at their side. He fell into step with them, and immediately acted as if they were old friends. He patted Rake on his shoulder and said, “Welcome to Mercippio, friends. I can personally direct you to whatever you want, or wherever you want to go.”

  “Why would you do that?” Rake asked as he pulled his shoulder away.

  The stranger didn’t react to Rake’s rudeness or tone. Instead, he said with a phony smile, “I always welcome visitors and show them around. I’m like an unofficial ambassador.”

  Cinder said, “What if my friend here wants to spend time tonight with a comely woman who has flaming red hair, could you help him find such a woman?”

  A wider smile revealed two broken teeth, not together so it gave the impression of a fence missing a few slats. “That is my personal specialty. No extra cost to you, of course. None at all. Now, what other attributes are you interested in? Tall? Plump?”

  Cinder said, “I'm interested for you to go away and don’t come back.”

  “Now wait a short moment,” his face took on a sly leer. “You look like you might be looking for some intimate work to earn a little money where you don’t have to stay on your feet all day if you understand my meaning. Again, I can help.”