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

by Ty Burson

  “No dear, you didn’t. We all get angry with fleeting thoughts entering our heads. But if you can directly call the dragon’s magic, then it could be a very dangerous thing.”

  Steve thought about it and asked, “Granny, how come it doesn’t talk to every kid who stutters?”

  “That’s a good question, Steve,” Granny replied, mussing his hair a bit. “But not all kids who stutter come from people who take care of dragons.”

  “That makes sense,” Steve agreed. “You said that old man went into the dragon’s cave and from then on had a stutter. Does that mean all caretakers stutter? My dad doesn’t.”

  “No, he doesn’t and, he can’t make ants do what he wants either. That’s what makes this all so dangerous.”

  “Why do you keep saying it’s dangerous?”

  “One of the reasons adults become protectors is because by the time they grow up, the dragon can tell if they are good and worthy people, and not someone who would try and abuse the powers; not someone who wants to get rich. The dragon is wrong sometimes, but not often. But with children? There’s no way to know how they’ll turn out—or how having that responsibility might change them.”

  “But why is that dangerous? Couldn’t the dragon pick a new person?”

  “It would, eventually. But in the meantime, a lot of damage could be done. More importantly, the protector himself would be in danger.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Granny struggled for words, “Steve, this is the hardest part to understand and explain. Everything has its opposite: day and night, man and woman, up and down—and good and evil. The dragon brings luck to this town because your father unselfishly takes care of it. We have not lost a single sailor in a very long time. If your father used the luck for himself, then something else, something bad, would happen. Someone’s boat might break down, or, God forbid, someone could get hurt.”

  “You mean because I got those ants to bite Joey and Alphonse, someone’s going to get hurt?” Steve interrupted.

  “No, no, boy. You didn’t mean to hurt anybody, and you didn’t try and use magic selfishly. More like…have you ever had a doctor check your reflexes?”

  “Oh, that thing where he hits you and you kick him?”

  Granny grinned a little, “Yes. It’s like that. A reaction. You weren’t in control. But I’m afraid you have caught the attention of something, something looking for the dragon’s magic.”

  Steve looked worried, “The wind, and the waterspout, you mean?”

  Granny nodded. “Whatever it was, it sensed when you used the magic, and must have come looking for you.”

  “But you stopped it Granny. You made it go away,” Steve asserted. “How can you do that?” Steve answered his own question before she could reply, “You used the book, a spell from the book, didn’t you?”

  “That’s a whole other story,” Granny took a deep breath, “Listen, Stevie, I’ve given you a lot to think about tonight, and it’s getting late. I’m not going to let anything hurt you and you know now that this place is protected. You don’t have to be afraid of anything—”

  “I’m not afraid, Granny. You made whatever it was go away.”

  “Yes, I did. For now,” Granny replied, but smiled when Steve looked worried. “Go grab the blankets out of the cupboard.”

  Steve did as she asked, convinced he’d lay awake worrying all night, but he didn’t. Maybe it was something his granny put in his tea—some herbal something or other—or maybe it was knowing that his grandmother was reading on the lumpy leather chair right next to him. Whatever it was, he slept, dreamlessly.

  While Steve slept behind a magic protective barrier of porcelain statues, two young men were speeding north out of Los Angeles on Interstate 5. They had black hair, black sunglasses, and drove a black Mercedes. One was young, college-aged and chubby, the other older by maybe a decade, with a long torso and sloped shoulders. Still, there was no missing the family resemblance: the trim of their jaws, the slope of their noses. The older brother drove, speeding recklessly, ignoring stop signs and street lights alike. Occasionally, they would blow past a highway patrolman, but in each instance, something would happen: one cop spilled her drink as they careened past, another flipped on his lights, but immediately blew a tire—one even swallowed a bug; the brothers were making excellent time.

  Chapter 14

  The next morning Steve woke to the smell of coffee wafting through the house. As he lay on the couch, Steve could see the dust moving through the morning streams of light. The faint sounds of tinkling wind chimes and chirping birds drifting through the open window. It was nice. He might have drifted back to sleep, but he heard something else, or rather someone else—his father. He listened a little harder and could hear his dad and Granny talking quietly on the porch. His first thought was that he was glad to hear his dad’s voice. His second was what if Granny was telling him about his hiding in the truck that night? Would he be in trouble? With a slightly queasy feeling in his stomach, he got up and went out on the porch.

  “Hey champ, you’re awake!” his dad exclaimed.

  “Hi, Dad. I guess. Hi Granny,” greeted Steve.

  “Hey boy. How’d you sleep? Any more dreams?” she inquired.

  Steve hesitated—obviously they had been talking about him. “No, nothing. I was out.”

  “Mom,” Steve’s dad said, “I think Steve and I need to get back…”

  “You boys want me to fix you up something to eat? Steve’s not had breakfast, and I bet you haven’t either,” Granny replied, ignoring Roger’s suggestion.

  “No Mom, really, we need to go. But thanks anyways,” Roger replied. “Steve, go fold up your blankets and kiss your Granny bye.”

  Afterwards, Roger sent his son on to the truck, but lingered on the porch. Steve hated this about all adults; they got you all ready to go and then took forever before they were actually ready to leave, which usually meant you could have played for another half hour instead of waiting in the car. Even from a distance, he could tell his granny was upset about something. He couldn’t hear them, but Granny was standing in a way that suggested she wasn’t happy, plus she kept pointing, jabbing her finger in the air like a knife. It must have been all right, though, because his dad gave her a kiss on the cheek before heading to the truck.

  The ride home started off a little uncomfortably. Steve wasn’t sure how to begin with his father and his dad seemed to have his mind elsewhere. “So, um,” Steve began, “did Granny tell you everything we talked about?”

  “Yeah,” Roger replied, “and I’m sorry you didn’t have anybody to talk to about it.”

  Steve felt relieved, suddenly. He realized he probably wasn’t going to get in trouble for spying on his dad, if nothing else. “I had Joy, and Justin,” Steve answered. “I told them, but they don’t know about what happened yesterday. Dad, how come you never told me about the dragon?”

  Roger sighed, “I planned on it, especially if you were to take over for me someday. But like Granny told you, this sort of thing doesn’t really happen. You shouldn’t have started showing any signs for quite a while.”

  “But you still could have told me,” Steve insisted.

  “Steve,” his dad put both hands on the wheel as they rounded a particularly sharp turn, “what if I’d told you, but then you got your hopes up to be chosen and you weren’t? How would you feel?”

  “Bad, I guess,” Steve admitted.

  “Besides,” his dad continued, “it’s still a choice. If you didn’t want to stay here, or maybe you had other plans for yourself when you grew up, to be something else, or live somewhere else, I didn’t want you to feel…trapped.”

  Steve watched his dad play with the radio tuner knob. Did his dad feel trapped, he wondered? How could he feel like that? He thought his dad loved it here. “Is that what happened to you? Are you stuck here because you have to take care of the dragon?”

  “No Steve, I love this place, always have. But sometimes it’s hard here; the
re’s not a lot of work. Your mom, for instance, cleaning offices. I know she doesn’t mind, but she’s smart enough to do whatever she wants. She was a straight-A student at Humboldt State, where we met. And I sure didn’t picture myself working on that dock like my dad did. I wanted you to have more choices.”

  “I like it here too, Dad. I don’t want to live anywhere else either.”

  “But you might, someday,” his dad insisted. “And now you will feel obligated to stay—”

  “But Granny says it’s important,” Steve interrupted.

  “I used to think so. I still do, I guess, but so’s making a decent living for your family.” Roger shifted his weight in his seat, “But that’s my problem. We need to figure out what’s going on with you”

  “She thinks it’s because of the stuttering. Do you think she’s right?” Steve asked.

  “It seems to make sense,” Roger admitted.

  “Dad, how long have you been taking care of the dragon. You know feeding it and stuff?”

  “Since before you were born, after my older brother, Manuel, died. Why?”

  Steve risked talking about his nighttime adventure. “The other night, it seemed like you were using magic.”

  “It wasn’t magic. I know enough to take care of the dragon, and even that sort of just happens. That’s all there it to it, really.”

  Steve felt disappointed. “Granny said that taking care of the dragon brings you luck. She said it makes you healthy and sort of takes care of you and your family. But if that was true, then what happened to your brother?”

  Roger didn’t look at Steve for a moment, but when he did, it was with the sort of expression he usually reserved for really sad things they heard on the news, or when he had to tell Steve or Dani they couldn’t buy something because it was too expensive. Steve almost wished he hadn’t asked.

  “Sometimes I forget how smart you are,” his dad said. “He had an accident. He worked felling trees with one of the lumber companies, which was dangerous work—but that’s not what killed him. He worked for years in an industry where people got killed or maimed all the time and never got a scratch. But then he went on vacation and, well, it turned out that he and his wife had won a free trip somewhere, and on the way back home…they had an accident.”

  Steve considered before asking, “How could he be lucky then?”

  “I guess he wasn’t,” Roger admitted. “Even those people who take care of the dragon have to die sometime. Part of me wonders if the free trip had something to do with it. Maybe it upset the balance, who knows?”

  Steve didn’t want to dwell too much on that, and his dad only seemed to be getting more upset, so he asked the obvious question, “Dad, is Granny right? Is there something after me?”

  While Steve’s dad considered his answer, a large black Mercedes came up on them from behind. He was going the speed limit, so the car had to have been flying along the coastal highway to get right on their bumper so quickly. Roger glanced into his rearview mirror, but all he could see was the dark windshield of the expensive sedan. “Looks like they’re in a hurry,” he stated. “Idiots, this road is dangerous.”

  Roger had nowhere to go; the road was a narrow two-lane highway with a rugged rock wall on his right and a precipitous drop down the canyon gorge to the Smith River on the other side of the left lane. At the first turnout, Steve’s dad maneuvered the battered truck over so the speeding tourist could pass. As he did so, he motioned for the car to go safely by, which it did. “He keeps driving like that and he’ll end up going over the gorge,” he remarked.

  Inside the car, the passenger, a seemingly younger edition of the driver, was livid. “That was him! I know it! Mammon’s screaming in my head right now!”

  The older brother gritted his teeth, “Don’t you think I know that?” His tan face was glowing red and his knuckles were almost white from gripping the steering wheel so hard.

  “What are you doing then?” the younger asked. “Why didn’t you ram them off the road? Slow down, and when they get close again—”

  “Shut up! I tried to ram them as soon as Mammon lost his mind. But when I got too close my front end started jumping around. If I’d tried any harder, we would have ended up over the edge, or we’d have sideswiped the mountain, and guess who is sitting on that side?” The older one glared at his brother from beneath his sunglasses.

  In the back seat, a gray tentacle of smoke swirled around. It whipped back and forth like it was agitated. At one point, it looked like it would transform into something, perhaps a vaguely human shape, but it stopped short, and where the head should have been there hovered two slits—eyes that shifted from black to red to yellow and finally back to black. The driver cursed when he glanced at his rearview mirror. The younger brother peaked at the mirror as well, but knew better than to turn around. Two tentacles made out of smoke snaked around the brothers’ necks. The smoke contracted, letting the brothers feel the iron grip on their unprotected throats, pressing into the hollow beneath their Adam’s apples, before disappearing.

  The younger brother gasped first, sucking in air, “Agh, I hate that thing! Did you see it, Frank? He looked really angry,” the passenger stated.

  Frank wrapped his hand around his own throat and felt at it, gingerly, “Yeah, John, I saw it.” He slammed his hand down on the fine leather of the center console, “Look, he can get as angry as he wants, dragon magic was all over that truck. What does it matter if we don’t do what it wants, if we end up dead?”

  “Man, do you think it was a good idea to come up here?” John asked.

  Frank smirked, “Like we had a choice. What else were we going to do?”

  “I think he’s weaker here,” John remarked. “Did you see? He couldn’t even hold a form.”

  Frank nodded, “Maybe. It wouldn’t surprise me; we’re probably close to the dragon’s lair.”

  “What do we do now?” the other asked.

  “Right now? We go find a comfortable hotel. With an ice machine.” Frank winced as he probed his neck once more.

  Chapter 15

  It was a terrible morning, even by northern California standards; the heavy rain had slackened overnight, but the drizzle had no intention of going away and left a dismal, colorless sky in its wake. John watched the owner of the fishing shack, who was alone in his shop, busy himself with the first few tasks of his day: getting fishing gear around and washing down the short ramp to his fishing shack. This was the third day in a row of unabated rain in Crescent City, and the weatherman didn’t hold out much hope for a change. Without some sunlight, there was no way the guy would get any business.

  The owner turned on the radio and stepped out front to unlock the padlock that secured the metal door, which served as both a window and an awning—a lot like a concession stand at a ballfield. In fact, the fishing shack had probably started out as that very thing. Once the heavy metal lid was secured, and the radio tuned to the only good oldies station in town, he put on some coffee.

  The owner was on his second cup, flipping through a five-month-old National Geographic, when John headed toward the shack wearing a pair of shorts that could hardly keep out the chilly 60-degree weather, sandals that were already soaked from the various puddles one encountered everywhere after days like these, and an expensive looking golf jacket that was already sticking to him because of the rain.

  “Definitely a tourist,” the owner mumbled to himself as John approached. “You look like you need a place to dry out!” the owner hailed. “You drink coffee?”

  John stepped under the metal overhang and tried unsuccessfully to shake off some of the rain.

  “Oh yeah, coffee would be great,” John answered, happily. “Are you the fella who rents out fishing gear? The hotel said there was someone down at the marina.”

  “That’d be me. Did you walk all the way from the hotel in this soup?”

  John wiped his dark, drenched hair from his eyes, “I know, I know, it was a bad idea. My brother needed the car for
some business and it was either walk or stay put in the hotel. I would’ve taken an umbrella, but it didn’t look that bad when I started out.” He held out his hand, “I’m John.”

  The owner clasped the extended hand, “Nice to meet you, I’m Roger. You ready for that coffee yet?”

  “Absolutely,” John replied.

  Roger poured some into a Styrofoam cup. “Sugar? I don’t have any creamer.”

  “Naw, black is good.” John took a few swigs of the strong brew before looking around, “So, I guess there isn’t much action here with the weather like this, huh?”

  “No,” Roger sighed, “and to tell you the truth it’s been a bad season. Tourists, busses…they still stop and take a few pictures of the lighthouse and what not, but nobody’s fishing or renting a crab pot when it’s like this,” Roger admitted, waving his hand in the sky’s general direction.

  “How can you make any money?” John asked.

  Roger frowned, “You can’t, but hopefully we’ll get some better weather in before the kids start back to school. After that, the summer’s over and the only real business is on the weekends.”

  John took it all in and nodded in agreement, “Hard times; tough to make ends meets. You got any side gigs, or is this it?”

  Roger sighed, “Oh, sometimes I get a little work doing odds and ends here on the marina: unloading boats, maybe some maintenance, or sprucing one up.” Roger poured himself another small cup of coffee and smiled, “But, hey, we’ve been doing this a long time; I usually make it up when the weather turns. And my wife’s got pretty steady work, so we make due.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear. Still…” John peered over the top of his cup as he took a long sip of his coffee. “Well, listen, I don’t mean to put you on the spot or anything, but my brother and I are on our way to Portland. Our family recently bought a big fishing boat, and we’re putting together a crew. I think we could use someone who knows what they’re doing, and if you don’t have much going on here, at least at the moment…” John trailed off, meaningfully, as he looked around at the lack of customers.