We were soon standing right in front of the platform and the lecterns at which the three Driars of the Council of Three – Yila, Lonamm and Brigel – stood in their usual positions. They all had their staffs raised, feeding energy into the crystal. But their gazes were firmly fixed on me.
There came a murmur from the crowd, until Driar Yila raised her free arm and shouted out, “Quiet!” in a voice nearly as loud as a demon dragon’s. Then she turned her head sharply toward me and her harsh gaze latched on to mine.
“I hear you’ve caused quite a commotion, Freshcat,” she said. “What do you have to say for yourself?” She banged her staff down against the ground, and I backed up against someone’s leg, and hid behind it, remembering what had happened the last time that she’d used that staff’s power on me.
Driar Brigel bellowed out a loud and deep laugh from the other side of the platform. “Oh, don’t be so cruel to him, Yila,” he said. “This pussycat is a hero.”
“Indeed, he is,” Driar Lonamm said. “Come forward, little one. Don’t worry, we won’t eat you.”
What? Why would they think of eating cats? They didn’t do that where I was from. Although I’d heard rumours in my clowder, that they did eat cats on the other side of the world.
I peered out from my hiding place. Driar Lonamm was hunched over her stocky frame and she beckoned me forward. “You’ll need to come up to our level if you’re to claim your prize,” she said, and she tapped on her lectern. “Here, up here.”
Well, if I didn’t do what they said, they’d probably fry me with their magic. I leaped up, and Driar Lonamm reached out and took something from her pouch. It was a small round disc, connected to some kind of thin chain. It looked just like a cat toy meant for batting around in the air, and I can’t imagine it served any kind of functional purpose.
“This is your medal,” she said, and she reached out and she placed the thing over my neck.
Yeuch. Collars were bad enough, but this thing felt horrible. I tried to claw it off with my back paws, until Salanraja protested about it in my mind. “What are you doing, you fool?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Leave it there. It’s an honour. You don’t want to insult the Council of Three.”
“Fine,” I replied, and I calmed myself down and tried to get used to how wearing this impractical thing impeded my flexibility. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to wear it forever.
Driar Brigel stepped forward, and he stopped the light flowing from his staff to the crystal for a moment, by turning the staff around. He lifted the base and tapped me on each shoulder with it. I flinched, expecting it to hurt. But this man was a lot gentler than he looked.
“Congratulations, Ben,” he said. “From this day, you shall be known as Initiate Ben and you will enjoy the full privileges of a student at Dragonsbond Academy. Also, for your heroic deeds, a feast will be made in your honour. Now, let us give our young hero a round of applause.”
The humans did that weird thing where they clapped their hands together as if they had suddenly decided they wanted to eliminate a scourge of flies. Some of them even whooped out. Then all went quiet as Driar Yila approached me.
“Much as I hate to do this,” she said, not showing any emotion on that cold face, “I am going to give you a grand privilege for your heroic deeds. You, Initiate Ben, shall choose the dish of the day for our feast. Choose wisely, mind, because you can only choose one dish.”
Wow. I had never thought I’d have such an honour. Today, I actually got to choose what I had for dinner. I don’t think that had ever happened in my life. Of course, the answer was easy.
“I choose salmon,” I said.
Driar Yila frowned, and then she looked at Driar Lonamm. “Uh…” she said.
“Gracious demons,” Salanraja said. “Trust you to choose something that doesn’t even exist in this world.”
“What? You don’t have salmon?” My heart sank, and I suddenly remembered home.
“And what is a salmon?”
“It’s a fish, a big one that’s pink.”
There must have been some communication that went on between Salanraja and Great Driar Brigel’s dragon, because he immediately boomed out. “I’m sorry, Initiate Ben. But we don’t have salmon in this world, and we can’t summon one from another dimension.”
With that, my heart sank even more. If they couldn’t pluck a salmon out of my world, they probably wouldn’t be prepared to send me home either. “So, what do you have?” I asked.
“Well, we can offer a rather magical fish,” Driar Brigel said. “Something you’ve never tried before.”
My ears perked up. “Really?”
“Yes, it’s called Invisible Fish,” Lonamm said, raising an eyebrow. “It’s quite a delicacy.”
“And what’s it like?”
Driar Lonamm shook his head with a grin. “I don’t know,” he said. “In all honesty I’ve never seen one.”
He turned to the crowd and lifted up his arms. The crowd responded with a round of laughter, followed by another round of applause.
Epilogue
In the end, we settled on roasted duck as the dish of the day. I had a lot of it, and I even asked Matron Canda to take some over for Ta’ra too, which she did. That night, I slept with contentment. For the first time, I slept in Salanraja’s chamber as a celebration for reaching a new rank. I lay curled up next to her chest, where her dragonfire kept me as warm as if I was lying next to the fireplace back in South Wales.
I dreamed strange dreams that night. At the start, I stood peering into a fast-flowing brook. I was looking for fish, as the spray off the water tickled my nostrils, and cooled me against the warmth of the sun. But after a while of finding nothing, I decided that it would be better to dive into the water and find the fish for myself.
So, I plunged into the depths of the river, and the next thing I knew I was swimming upstream, my tail and fins propelling me at great speed. Because I wasn’t a cat anymore, I was a fish. In fact, I believe I was a massive salmon swimming my way from the Atlantic Ocean towards our breeding grounds. I had joined a school, and we stayed in close formation. There was safety in numbers should a badger try to fish us out of the water.
But soon, we came to a tributary, and I felt a tug in my head – something telling me to swim in another direction. The rest of the school turned left, but I turned the other way and arrived at a quiet lake, away from the roar and the rush of survival. There was a waterfall in the distance, and I swam towards the bubbles pushing down into the water. Then, once I was close enough, I leapt up into the cascade.
I landed on my feet in a cave behind the waterfall, now a cat again. I shook the water off, then I went on to see what might be inside. There came the squeals of bats, and the cave was lit by a floating light that hovered close to my head, pushing away the darkness. It led me into a chamber, hot like an inferno. Streams of lava seeped down the cave walls, and a white crystal stood at the centre of the chamber.
It glowed brighter as I approached, and I rubbed myself against it to thank it for its help fighting the demon dragon. For a while, my fur brushed against something solid, until the crystal suddenly changed.
I stepped back in alarm, because the crystal had vanished, and Astravar’s head instead hovered where it had been. “So, there you are, Dragoncat,” he said. “I’ve been trying to find a way through to you all night.”
“What do you want?” I asked. “I defeated you.”
“Correction. You sent one of my minions back home. But you will never defeat me, because you are worthless. And you fail to understand now that we warlocks have summoned one demon dragon, we can summon many more.”
I tried to ignore him. I didn’t want him to ruin my warm feeling of victory. “Salanraja,” I tried calling out. “Salanraja, where are you?”
“She won’t help you,” Astravar replied. “Not in this dream. Because you chose to come here yourself.”
I considered running. But I knew that wh
erever I fled to, Astravar would find a way to follow me. What I needed to do was wake up, but I had no idea how. “What do you want with me?” I asked Astravar again. “Why are you here?”
“Because I underestimated you,” Astravar said. “You can control demons, and that’s an incredibly powerful gift. Join me, and we can rule this world together.”
The vision that I’d seen of my owners flashed back into my mind. All three of them lying as skeletons on the bed. I could never let that come to pass. “No,” I said. “You are our enemy, and we will find a way to thwart your plans.”
Astravar frowned. “I thought you’d say that. Well, it doesn’t matter, because I’ll find a way through to you one way or another. Believe me, Dragoncat, I will hunt you down and I will make you join me whether you want to or not.”
I didn’t run. I turned slowly around to send a message to Astravar that I was now in control and could move as I wished. I could hear the roaring of the waterfall somewhere in this cave, and I had to get out from this place – to wake from this dream.
But first, I wanted to return to swimming in the stream, because for a while I could go where I wanted and pretend that I was free.
THE END
But Wait, Not Really…
The story continues in A Cat’s Guide to Meddling with Magic, this time with more chimeras than hippopotami.
READ BOOK TWO
If you wish also to learn more about why Astravar summoned Ben into this world, the short story, A Cat’s Guide to Serving a Warlock, goes into a little more detail.
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Acknowledgments
The journey to becoming a professional author is a long one, and I wouldn’t have travelled so far along it without all the help and the kindness from readers, professionals, friends, and family alike along the way.
Firstly, I’d like to thank Wayne M. Scace for his excellent work editing the manuscript, and Carol Brandon also for her scrupulous proofreading work. Both of you did a wonderful job, and you helped me identify errors that I’d become blind to through being so close to the manuscript.
I’d also like to thank my family, particularly my wife Ola for all the help she gave me working through plot holes and inconsistencies. I’d also like to thank my mother and father for the support they continue to give me through my writing career.
A massive shout out for my ARC team, and all the help that you’ve given me on this book and my previous works. And finally, I want to express my gratitude for readers and everything that you do to help the publishing and reading communities and the world of literature at large.
About the Author
When Chris Behrsin isn’t out exploring the world, he’s behind a keyboard writing tales of dragons and magical lands. He was born into the genre through a steady diet of Terry Pratchett. His fiction fuses a love for fantasy and whimsical plots with philosophy and voyages into the worlds of dreams.
A Cat’s Guide to Bonding with Dragons Copyright © 2020 by Chris Behrsin.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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