Let Sleeping Dragons Lie (The Modern Dragon Chronicles Book 1)

by Ty Burson

  They had some things in common too. They read real books and didn’t watch TV; they had one, but almost never watched it. They ate dolphin-free tuna, grew their own herbs and spices, and were really into Native American knick-knacks. And they wore a lot of blue jeans. In fact, other than swimsuits, Steve wasn’t sure they owned clothes that weren’t made out of denim.

  Steve was sure they had been born too late; they should have been hippies, like some of those people who used to live together in the mountains, grew their own food, and named their kids things like Moon Flower. You could still see some bandana-wearing, guitar-sporting hippies hitchhiking up Hwy 101, occasionally. Steve often imagined his parents climbing aboard an overcrowded VW van headed off to that Grateful Dead concert in the sky. He didn’t actually know who the Grateful Dead were, but his parents sometimes listened to their CDs—yuck!

  Steve tuned back in just in time to hear his dad start talking about a bunch of kids on a field trip who had come down to the shop that day. “Oh man, from the minute the bus stopped, those kids were everywhere.” Roger took a bite of chicken smothered in catsup before he continued, “And then, one of them, this little girl, took off down the metal walkway like she was determined to hit the water and swim all the way to China. One of the parent volunteers caught her before she dove in.”

  Jeanie brightened up, “They spend any money?”

  Roger rolled the steamed broccoli around, as if to determine its worthiness to enter his mouth. “Naw, a couple of parents bought some snacks, that was all.”

  Steve noticed the tension that suddenly descended on the table. Dani took the pause as an invitation to begin rambling about Toni or Joni or somebody Steve didn’t really care about. Dani had no clue that the conversation had kind of sunk for some reason. Or, more likely, she didn’t care. Once Steve thought she had sucked enough of their brain cells away, he tried to change the subject. “Hey, can animals understand us?”

  It was a strange question and it silenced the room—even Dani. “Sure, Steve,” his dad started, “remember that little short-haired poodle your grandma had? I swear that sucker could read her mind. It brought her things before she even had to ask. Why?”

  Steve decided to jump in. “At the river, there was this big dog, and when these teenagers were messing with us—”

  “What do you mean messing with you?” Jeanie asked.

  “You know, like spraying us with water and teasing us,” Steve replied.

  Jeanie’s face flushed, “And where was Joy’s mother?”

  Steve froze. He forgot about that part. His mom would never have let them go if she knew they were going to be dropped off. He chewed on his lower lip.

  “Steve, where was Joy’s mother?” Jeanie asked, slowly emphasizing each and every word.

  “Uh, she went to Brookings, but she wasn’t gone very long.” He hurriedly added, “There were lots of people there and we know not to go out too deep.” He knew he had messed up. No more unsupervised trips to the river; maybe nowhere else either. There was one other thing that sparked Jeanie’s “intensity”, and that was when someone messed with her children.

  Jeanie got up to retrieve her cellphone from her pocket. “Hon,” Roger asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to call that woman and give her a piece of my mind. Leaving three eleven-year-olds alone all day at the river!” she exclaimed. “Are you kidding me?”

  Roger gently laid a hand over hers. “Jeanie, the kids are fine, and there won’t be a next time.”

  “Is she insane? I can’t help how she wants to raise Joy; she was supposed to be responsible for my son. I’d never have let Steve go if I knew she was going to dump them off. That woman is crazy!”

  Roger smiled benignly, “Yup, that’s what it was…crazy.”

  Something unstated passed between them. “That’s no excuse, Roger,” Jeanie pressed.

  “Nope, it’s not,” Roger agreed. “Steve, did you know you were going to be left alone?”

  Oh, here we go, Steve thought, somehow this is going to be my fault. “N-N-No, sh-sh-she said she had to go to Brookings right before she left us.”

  His mom pointed her finger at him, “That’s no excuse either, Steve. You know I wouldn’t have let you go. You should have called me or your dad.”

  “Maybe if I had a cell phone…” Steve mumbled.

  Under his mother’s disapproving gaze, he decided it was best to not say anything else and look as ashamed as possible—the universal defense mechanism for unruly children.

  With a huff, Jeanie started grabbing empty plates from the table and stacking them into the sink. She didn’t slam any, but more than a few were thunked down with attitude. Steve’s dad quickly finished up and helped clear the rest. “They’re okay, hon,” he soothed.

  “Maybe, but darn it Steve, you know better!” his mom asserted.

  Steve shrugged, “S-s-sorry Mom.”

  “And what about those teenagers? What did they do to you?” his mom demanded.

  “Ah, n-n-nothing, y-y-you know they were just b-b-being stupid,” Steve answered. “You know splashing us and stuff. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  But Jeanie wasn’t to be put off, “What about the dog?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said something about a big dog.”

  “Oh yeah, um, there was a dog,” Steve replied.

  “Great, first you get harassed by a bunch of teenagers and then a giant dog?” His mom threw her hands up in frustration. “You could have all gotten rabies!”

  Steve mentally scrambled as fast as he could, “No, n-n-no. I-I-It w-w-was like this dog came along and, and, and barked at the kids that were bothering us.”

  By now, Steve was starting to get upset so his dad pulled over a chair, “Slow down sport, and breathe. Did the dog hurt anyone?”

  Steve shook his head, but refused to answer any more questions, and his parents knew him well enough to know that when he was this frustrated it was best not to push. After a couple of minutes, Steve continued. “Well,” Steve began slowly, “some teenagers were messing with us and they threw soda on us and this huge, black dog, kind of protected us. It almost attacked them.”

  Steve’s mom started to say something, but his dad got in first, “No one, not you or the other kids, got bit or anything?”

  “No, but, but, it was like I thought about it and the dog showed up. Then, when the other kids left, it went off somewhere,” he didn’t add the part about how the dog had peed on the tires.

  Steve’s mom and dad looked at each other, neither saying anything. It was part of that marriage telepathic thing that they did. Jeanie spoke first, “Stevie, I’m glad you had a friendly animal to protect you. Maybe, it sensed that you kids were in trouble and protected you. Animals do that sometimes.”

  Steve thought about it. It could have been that, couldn’t it? It seemed like a lot more, it seemed like he really had called the dog over somehow. He wanted to say, “No, I made it attack them,” but did he really? And he wanted to confront his dad about what happened when he’d stowed away that morning. But how could he do that without getting in trouble? He was so conflicted, he started to get a headache. “I’m tired; I think I’ll go to bed.”

  His mom hugged him and his dad said goodnight. Steve dropped his glass into the sink and headed down the hall. He heard Dani try to fill the silence in his wake, but his dad told her to go watch television, which, once Steve thought about it, was extremely weird.

  Steve really was tired, he discovered, by the time he made it to his room. He kicked off his sneakers and kind of dribbled them toward the closet before plopping on his bed. He lay there for a moment before remembering that he’d forgotten to mention the waterspout and the birds. Maybe it all wasn’t as crazy as he’d thought; maybe there was a logical reason for all of it. But a gaping hole that breathed and farted noxious fumes? Still, his parents believed in all kinds of crazy stuff, like not crossing a black cat’s path, or that the pyramids were built by ali
ens, or that thing his mother did with the furniture, fung shi or fung shei or whatever that stuff was that made her lose her mind if the couch wasn’t facing a certain way. Maybe they would believe him about all of it, even the voice. He’d tell them tomorrow, he decided, then dozed off without turning off the light. He dreamed of dragons and clouds with fangs.

  Chapter 11

  Today was a special day—the day when the entire family descended on Steve’s grandmother for her birthday. For Steve, this meant a mixture of excitement and dread. Excitement, because his granny’s place was so full of strange and interesting stuff; dread, because large family gatherings meant being thrown into his sea of cousins without so much as a lifejacket. He didn’t really think much about his granny one way or the other; she was kind of a non-entity for Steve. Though she lived only 45 minutes away, his mom and dad seldom made the winding drive into the mountains to visit. Steve thought that was probably because she was crazy.

  Hiouchi was the name of the village where his granny lived. Steve thought the name probably meant something in Native American, like “place to stop for gas and chips.” If Steve was being honest with himself, though, it did have something more than a country store and gas station; it also had a Tastee-Freez, a convenient place in which tourists going to the coast and back could grab an ice cream right off the highway.

  It was this crooked highway that their family took. The perpetual chill that hovered around Crescent City quickly dissipated as the family headed inland. Stuffed in the back of the skinny club-cab, Steve felt every twist and turn of the road. The only reason he got stuck there instead of Dani was that she got car sick; if she didn’t face forward and watch the road the entire time, she’d puke all the way to his grandmother’s.

  His dad had the radio up real loud so he could hear it over the sound of the wind through the open windows. It seemed to Steve that the air got a little bit warmer with each passing mile. It was early, though, so the truck wouldn’t be stiflingly hot until the trip home. As Steve rode along, he got bored and pretended that he was riding a dirt bike along the side of the road. His imaginary self zipped through trees and jumped stumps. He could practically feel the knobby tires shredding the delicate ferns that grew everywhere. He was so engrossed, in fact, that he didn’t notice the truck leave the main highway. It wasn’t until Steve’s dad turned down the radio, however, that Steve realized how close they were.

  As always, Steve heard his granny’s house before he saw it—in every pine tree, on every bush, and dangling all around her wrap-around porch were hundreds of wind chimes. Some tinkled like glass, some clapped like wooden clogs, and some whistled through metal tubes. Even a slight breeze was enough to stir half a dozen of the things to life. On a windy day, like today, it was almost as if the chimes were putting on a concert.

  “It’s Granny! It’s Granny!” Dani began, before they even stopped. Steve scooched up in his seat so he could see. His grandmother was on her hands and knees, wiping the dried mud off one of the ceramic and plaster figurines that surrounded her yard. There were hundreds of them—frogs, snails, gnomes, little girls holding hands, mushrooms, you name it. It looked to Steve like Granny was talking to one of them. Maybe, Steve thought, that’s what you do when you’re old and live alone, especially without a television. Or maybe she was crazy.

  Granny straightened right up and waved. Then she leaned back like she was cracking her back and dusted off the front of her overalls. Steve had never seen her in anything but overalls. In this, Steve thought she was a lot like his mom, even though she was his dad’s mother. Granny lifted her straw gardening hat to wipe the sweat from her forehead and her wiry, silver hair exploded out from beneath it.

  She was still pulling it back and tying it with the hat’s ribbon when Steve’s dad let Dani out. Dani bolted and jumped up into the old woman’s arms. Roger started to admonish her to be careful, but his mom waved it off and swung the girl around and around.

  “Hey, Mom,” Roger said, “we the first ones here?”

  “Your sister came over last night. She’s in the kitchen getting things ready. Everyone else is supposed to start arriving any time.”

  Dani began to talk about how her swim lessons were going, and how she could ride her bike with one hand, and half a dozen other topics, until Granny put her down and whispered into her ear, “Run inside and see if Aunt Lucille will give you a Popsicle.”

  Granny held her arms wide to the rest of them as soon as Dani launched toward the door, “You better come give me some sugar.”

  Steve approached with a little less exuberance, but if his grandmother felt slighted, she did not show it. She reached out and pulled him in to a sturdy hug and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She smelled like lilacs and dirt. Overall, a much better smell than the perfume bombs most old ladies seemed to bathe in. Granny held him out and studied him with that intense stare of hers. This was what honestly bothered Steve about his grandmother—she always seemed to see what was in your head. He looked back, smiling nervously. “Hmm,” she mused, “you growing taller, boy? Something’s different about you.”

  He shrugged, and she released him, the warmth returning back to her brown eyes. Steve felt like she had something she wanted to say, but instead she ruffled his hair, “Yup, he’s growing up.” Steve felt strangely disappointed.

  As she released him to go hug her son and daughter-in-law, Steve in turn studied his grandmother. She was kind of a mystery to him. Outwardly, she looked like any other person over 30—old, but not like, really old, like when people started looking like cartoon versions of themselves. Granny’s face was still normal and her skin didn’t sag at her neck. Steve once asked his mom why old people’s ears and noses looked so big. She said noses and ears were made of cartilage, which never stopped growing. As for the droopy skin, she said we all lose elasticity as we get older. Steve decided that his Granny was avoiding that pretty well.

  In fact, if he really thought about it, old wasn’t even a word he would use to describe her. For one thing, she never seemed tired; she had some kind of limitless energy source. And she moved around like a kid, nothing like the older folks who hung out at the marina to feed the birds and watch the sun sink. And she was strong, like super strong—when she hugged him, she squeezed the breath out of him. He thought it was probably because of all the work she did in her yard.

  Granny was putting her hat back on and caught him looking. She smiled. That was another thing, Steve realized, that made her seem a little odd: she did not go around smiling all the time. When she did, it was always for a good reason. He liked her smile, though. It made her seem less crazy.

  Before long, the rest of the family started arriving. His granny had a couple of sisters who brought their husbands and kids, but who weren’t really kids because they were already grown. Mostly, they ignored Steve and his sister, except for Aunt Lucille’s evil offspring—Joey and Alfonse. The brothers had been tormenting Steve for as long as he could remember. Of course, it didn’t help that Steve had a stuttering problem, even if it was mostly under control. He could grow up to be a T.V. anchorman and his cousins would probably still make fun of the way he spoke. Joey, who was in the same grade despite being a year older and a head taller than Steve, was the bigger jerk, but Alfonse, the younger by two years, was always there to back him up.

  Despite starting school a year later than everyone else, Joey wasn’t dumb. He wasn’t even particularly bad at school. In fact—and this was something Steve couldn’t understand—he actually got along pretty well with his teachers, with everyone it seemed, except Steve. School administrators had separated them in the second grade because they were constantly fighting—the family feud spilling over into school. Alfonse used to terrorize Dani, but it hadn’t taken her long to master the little girl scream. Now no one in their right mind would threaten Dani, not with that piercing screech of hers. Unfortunately for Steve, that meant he was the sole focus of their bullying.

  It was late afternoon and Steve was teete
ring on the edge of a food coma, visions of hotdogs and hamburgers dancing before his eyes. Occasionally, a great uncle would adjust his belt a little looser and step up to one of the beautiful redwood tables, with their thick, glass-like layers of polyurethane, or one of the long foldable plastic ones added to hold all the food. Most of the main dishes were gone—even Steve’s mother’s meatless lasagna had been devoured. There were still a lot of side dishes though, including potato salad, baked beans, and desserts just waiting for round two.

  Steve was kicking back on one of Granny’s patio recliners made from curved sticks. Through heavy eyelids, he noticed first one, and then a couple more of the women get up and start taking empty dishes to the kitchen. One by one, he saw the men rouse themselves with herculean effort and sneak off somewhere to avoid helping. His dad was the sole exception. He stretched himself out of his food funk and joined the clean-up. For a guilty second, Steve thought about lending a hand, but decided to indulge his selfish digestive system instead.

  He was about to give in to the pull of sleep when something plopped right into his fourth cup of strawberry soda. He looked around for any sign of Joey and Alfonse, but he didn’t see them anywhere. He looked at his soda and found a peanut swimming in the red fizz. He plucked it out and pitched it off the porch. Unsure if it was his cousins or not, he sat back down, though now he was fully awake. Trying to appear as if nothing was wrong, he glanced around all the clutter on the wrap-around porch, panning his gaze left and then right. If his cousins were there, they had lots of excellent camouflage.

  Another nut, this time a cashew, smacked Steve right in the temple. The giggles gave his cousins away. Steve caught the pair of them hiding behind a big old wine barrel where Granny kept some of her yard tools. Before he even realized what he was doing, Steve flung the entire contents of his soda at his cousins. The two crouching boys were taken completely by surprise. It seemed to Steve, especially as he thought about it later, that time slowed way down, slow enough that he could see his cousin’s expressions warp through a series of emotions—from shock, to confusion, and finally to anger.