How to Slay a Dragon

by Bill Allen

  “Hey! What are you doing?”

  “Everything’s got to be the same as when you arrived,” Lucky said. “Now, I think you’re ready.”

  Greg pressed his foot on the floor experimentally. Water squished out from his shoe and puddled up on the stone. “Uh, thanks, Lucky, and thanks for all your help. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “I know.”

  Greg shook his head, until Lucky broke down and laughed, saying he was only joking. The two boys embraced and said their good-byes, and then Greg stood awkwardly in the center of the room as the magicians moved in to surround him. Under different circumstances he might have been terrified when the circle of hooded men joined up hands and began chanting, but this was one of the best things that had happened to him in weeks.

  “Wait. I didn’t get to say good-bye to Priscilla,” Greg said, suddenly remembering. She’s supposed to stand on tiptoes to give me a grateful kiss.

  “Don’t worry, Greghart,” King Peter said. “You’ll be seeing her soon enough.”

  Just then the air flashed and split apart, revealing another dimension beyond. In the black void of space rushed dozens, hundreds, thousands of bright spheres, a ceaseless stream of radiant stars. And planets, too. Countless other worlds, each one possibly home to a different Greg Hart—in all, thousands of more fortunate Greg Harts who Lucky had deemed fit to live their lives in peace.

  “Now!” said Lucky, and Greg was jerked through the rift so hard he nearly left his dripping sneakers behind.

  Even though he’d known all along what was about to happen, Greg still found himself screaming the entire way down the long tunnel back to Earth. He was still screaming when he landed in the cool, moist soil of the woods behind his house, his face buried in a blanket of broken sticks and leaves.

  “What a baby. I haven’t even touched you yet.”

  That’s Manny Malice’s voice!

  It took Greg only a moment to realize the magicians must have sent him back to the exact instant he’d left, an instant when his Neanderthal classmate was waiting to crush him for no reason other than the simple joy of the beating.

  Greg felt a branch wedged beneath his palms. He clasped his fingers around the wood and pushed himself to his feet. In an instant Manny charged, the branch whirled, and the underbrush flattened as Greg swept through the spot where a moment ago Manny’s knees had miraculously been supporting the huge boy’s weight.

  Manny was not put off long. He leveraged his way back to his feet and emerged from the brush madder than ever. Greg raised his stick again. It felt small and frail under his grasp, less adequate even than the one he’d used against the troll in the Weird Weald.

  “Stop!” came a panting female voice from down the trail. Kristin Wenslow rushed up and strategically positioned herself between Greg and Manny. “Leave him alone,” she told, to Greg’s relief, Manny.

  But Manny was not one to take orders. His face had gone blood red, and he pushed Kristin aside as if swatting away a fly. With a scream she flew off the path and disappeared into the underbrush.

  Greg was so horrified he nearly missed the older boy’s attack. Manny charged like a raging bull, except that a bull would have surely used more grace. Again Greg’s chikan training took over. He leaned easily out of the way and swept out Manny’s foot with a single stroke of the stick. Manny somersaulted onto what had until then been a large shrub.

  While slower in getting up this time, Manny still came, although more cautiously than before. Greg fell into the rhythm Nathan had taught him, whirling his branch through the intricate pattern of motion that served to put his mind at rest. The branch, though shorter than any Greg had trained with on Myrth, felt perfectly natural in his hands.

  Manny must have sensed Greg’s confidence. He slowed his charge and eventually stopped altogether. The branch coasted to a stop, too, and Greg craned his neck to stare Manny defiantly in the eye.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Greg said, and to his surprise, realized he actually meant it.

  A wise man would have known not to attack. Manny, however, bellowed like a troll and lunged forward.

  Greg didn’t even think about reacting. He didn’t need to. He stepped easily out of the way, and struck Manny flat across the waist, doubling the older boy over as effectively as if he’d extracted Manny’s spine. Manny landed hard on his face and didn’t get up again. If not for the moan, Greg might have thought him dead.

  “That was amazing!” Kristin had pulled herself from the bushes and was staring at Greg as if he’d just yanked her from the jaws of an angry dragon. “How did you do that?”

  “What . . . ?” said Greg. “Oh, that . . . I don’t know, I just . . . hi, Kristin.”

  “You’re Greg Hart, right?”

  Greg felt his face flush. He couldn’t believe she knew his name. But then, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  “I thought you were . . . shorter,” she said, raising her chin slightly to look him in the eye. Greg froze in place, afraid to move. “And . . . I don’t know . . . skinnier.”

  “I guess I sprouted up over the summer,” he said hoarsely.

  A feeble groan drew away Kristin’s attention.

  Manny looked like he was debating getting up. Fortunately he wasn’t good at deliberation, so it would probably be a while.

  Kristin turned back to Greg. “You should probably get out of here.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “But I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

  Greg looked back at her, confused.

  “School starts, remember?”

  “Oh, right,” said Greg. “I-I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She flashed him a smile that weakened his knees even more than a grin from Ruuan, then stooped to check on Manny while Greg reluctantly turned and headed down the path toward his house.

  Greg’s muscles ached beyond belief, and he wanted nothing more than to sleep for the next two weeks, but still he had a spring in his step that hadn’t been there since early that summer. First he had rescued a princess from a fire-breathing dragon, and now, even more miraculously, Kristin Wenslow had actually talked to him!

  It had to be a dream, all of it. The trip to Myrth, the dragon Ruuan, the Witch Hazel, and now Kristin Wenslow. All just a fabrication of his overactive imagination.

  Even so, Greg’s heart beat so hard he thought it might explode. In fact, he actually felt his skin squirm under his shirt. He nearly fainted when his buttons popped open and something sprang from his chest.

  With the lightest of thumps, a small, furry creature landed on all fours on the path by Greg’s feet.

  “Rake!”

  The shadowcat shook off the indignity of having fallen and then rubbed up against Greg’s shins, his tail stretched high. No, it wasn’t a dream at all, Greg admitted to himself. He’d been faced with an adventure bigger than any he’d faced in his own journal, and now here he was, home, alive, and Kristin Wenslow was expecting to see him tomorrow. It was just possible this year wouldn’t be nearly as bad as he’d been dreading.

  Greg scooped up Rake and placed him gently on his shoulder, where the shadowcat happily curled up behind his neck, its soft fur comfortably familiar on Greg’s skin. He began walking again, uncertainly at first, his sneakers squishing rhythmically. A part of him wanted to go back and continue his talk with Kristin, but an even bigger part was dying to get home.

  Soon he began to trot. Rake crawled beneath his shirt so he wouldn’t be flung off, and for the first time in what seemed an eternity, Greg found himself sprinting joyously along the winding path toward his house.

  He couldn’t wait to get a new journal, to jot down everything that had happened to him on Myrth these past months.

  No. He would buy a tablet, a memo book, even an address book before he got another journal. Never again did he want to confuse his made-up adventures with real life. A moment later he broke from the woods and sprinted across the green lawn toward his house. The
day was hot for this late in summer, but Greg couldn’t remember when a summer’s day had ever felt as good.

  The Adventure Continues!

  Coming Soon

  Journals of Myrth: Book Two

  The Hero Who Slayed Ruuan

  A Hart Day at School

  Short of a valley full of purring shadowcats, nothing could drain away a boy’s consciousness faster than one of Mrs. Beasley’s excruciatingly long algebra lectures.

  “Did you not get enough sleep last night, Mr. Hart?”

  “Wha-huh?” Greg’s head snapped up and tottered about in a fair imitation of a bobblehead doll. Eventually the snickering of his classmates managed to reach Greg’s ears. He ran his fingers through his hair, but the unruly nest, now bent further backward from resting his head in his arms, refused to lie flat. “Oh, no ma’am . . . I mean, yes . . . er, I’m fine.”

  Mrs. Beasley peered at him over her spectacles, her lips scrunched up smaller than a dime. Rumor was the woman possessed no sense of humor, but before it could be proved she would have to listen to at least one thing a student had to say. Her cold stare never wavered as she spoke, and her voice dug under Greg’s skin like a rusty knife.

  “Why don’t you come to the board, Mr. Hart, show us all how to solve this equation?”

  Greg’s stomach knotted even tighter than Mrs. Beasley’s lips. The laughs took up again, which was bad enough, but one booming chortle lingered long after all others died away. Greg turned to see Manny Malestino, or Manny Malice, as he was better known, sneering one row over and two seats back.

  Slouched as deep in his chair as he could go, his knees propped high into the air, Manny looked as though he had needed to lie on his back and suck in his stomach to strap on his desk. He was an anomaly, way more mass than any one boy ought to have, or any two men for that matter, and all of it seemingly bent on making each day of Greg’s life more miserable than the last.

  “What are you laughing about, Mr. Malestino?” Mrs. Beasley’s shrill voice rang out. “Perhaps you’d like to demonstrate your keen wit for us instead?”

  The usual murmuring ceased, as not a single boy or girl in class dared make fun of Manny Malice. Manny’s eyes darted toward Greg for an instant, but Greg wisely chose that moment to wipe up the large puddle of drool on his notes.

  “I’m waiting,” said Mrs. Beasley.

  “Uh, no ma’am,” said Manny.

  “I mean, I’m waiting for you to come to the board.”

  Throughout the room students threw hands over their mouths or raised books in front of their noses. It was the type of silence that could make ears bleed.

  With a grunt, Manny slid upright in his chair and screeched around the hardwood floor, struggling to pry himself loose from his desk. By the time he broke free, the unnatural silence had grown so thick it was a wonder Manny managed to wade through it. Greg was afraid to smile for fear Manny might somehow hear him. Still, it was all he could do not to stab out a foot as Manny passed.

  Mrs. Beasley’s voice pushed past Greg’s smugness. “And you can help him, please, Mr. Hart.”

  As if a floodgate had been opened, the entire class erupted. Greg winced. He glanced across the room to see if Kristin Wenslow was among those laughing. As crushes went, the one he had on Kristin could have flattened just about anything, maybe even a brute like Manny. She caught his eye and swept a strand of light brown hair from in front of her face. A vision. That’s how he would have described her—mostly because a sound just didn’t seem appropriate, he’d never touched or tasted her, and a smell would have been just plain rude.

  “We don’t have all day, Mr. Hart.”

  “Sure seemed like it when you were lecturing,” Greg said too softly for anyone to hear.

  “What was that?” Mrs. Beasley’s voice rang out. The woman could hear a feather drop at fifty paces.

  “I said, I’m coming.”

  Greg glanced one last time at Kristin, climbed out of his chair with un-Manny-like grace, and trudged toward the front of the room, where Manny stood staring dumbly at the whiteboard. The mutant boy’s frame rose like a mountain, growing higher and higher the nearer Greg approached, until finally Greg reached the board and Manny’s navel turned to greet him.

  “I’ll get you for this, Hart.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “I don’t see any writing,” observed Mrs. Beasley.

  Manny stared at the board as if it were covered with hieroglyphics. Greg watched him struggle a few seconds, then snatched up a marker and scribbled the answer to the problem Mrs. Beasley had posed the class.

  “Not bad, Mr. Hart,” said Mrs. Beasley. It was possibly the nicest thing she’d ever said to him. She turned then and asked if everyone understood Greg’s solution. Greg suspected she was hoping they didn’t.

  “You tryin’ to make me look stupid, Hart?” whispered Manny.

  “No need for that.”

  Manny couldn’t have possibly picked up the insult, yet his single brow bent itself into a vee. “After school,” he growled. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

  Mrs. Beasley whipped around and glared over her spectacles at the two of them, her eyes wide and calculating. Greg stared back, afraid to move. He’d once faced an ogre in an enchanted forest, a mysterious witch in the gloom of her decrepit shack, and a dragon at the center of its white-hot lair. None offered the same level of intimidation Mrs. Beasley could muster. Finally her frown began to straighten. Soon Greg barely recognized her.

  “You may sit down,” she informed them both. She then walked to the board, scratched out another problem, and directed her wrath at another student.

  Greg exhaled slowly and returned to his seat, preoccupied now with the clock. Time passed so slowly, he half expected to witness the hands creeping backward, but in the end the bell rang and Mrs. Beasley granted everyone permission to leave. Even so, Greg stayed put while the others packed up their books and spilled out of the room. Math was the last period of the day, and Manny was sure to be waiting outside.

  “Aren’t you going home?”

  Greg’s eyes snapped forward, where Kristin Wenslow’s freckled face hovered high above him. His heart lifted. For a second he forgot Manny was waiting to pulverize him. “Kristin?”

  “The bell rang. Didn’t you hear?”

  “Yeah, I . . . uh . . . just wanted to finish jotting down some notes before I left.”

  “But your books are all packed up.”

  “Huh? Oh, right. I’m done now.”

  Kristin continued to stare down at him, the overhead lights framing her soft hair like a halo. Greg considered reaching out and touching her, but stopped when he imagined her shrieking and knocking over desks trying to lurch out of his reach.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well what?”

  “Are you going to leave or what?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Greg. “I mean no! I just remembered I need to jot down a few more notes first. Don’t worry. I’ll make the bus.”

  Kristin bit her lip in the cutest way. “If you say so. I . . . um . . . guess I’ll see you later.” And just like that, she wriggled her shoulders to center her backpack, offered a confused smile, and ambled out of the room.

  Greg stared dumbfounded at the door. He’d have given anything to go with her—anything at all—but if he had to be flattened by Manny Malice, he could at least do it without Kristin watching. Again he checked the clock. Three forty. He’d need to leave soon or miss his bus and have to walk home. On the other hand, if he stayed put, at least he’d be able to walk . . . .

  Finally he arrived at a decision. He reached behind his chair for his backpack and jumped when something coarse and wet streaked across his knuckles.

  “Rake! You scared me.”

  Displaying the same reluctance Greg had been feeling, a small creature never before seen in Mrs. Beasley’s classroom peered out from the pack and gradually emerged to explore Greg’s fingers with its tiny pink tongue. Greg nearly smiled in
spite of his impending doom.

  Roughly the size of a squirrel, but with shimmering blue-black fur and a long tail that could easily wrap twice around its body, Rake was a shadowcat, the only one of its kind on Earth. More importantly, he was Greg’s closest friend. The two had spent nearly every moment together since they first met six months ago on the distant world of Myrth, a land of monsters and magic where Greg had once gone to slay a dragon.

  Okay, technically Greg didn’t go to Myrth to slay a dragon. He went because he was too slow to react when the magicians there opened a rift between worlds and snatched him out of the woods behind his house. But they had done so with the intention of having him slay a dragon, so Greg felt that should count for something. If nothing else, it made for a better story—or at least it would have, if he could have ever risked telling anyone. He’d tiptoed around the subject with Kristin once, but quit when she felt his forehead and asked him to lie down until she could bring the school nurse. Still, it was the only time she’d ever touched him, and Greg wanted more than anything to touch her back. Telling her more about Rake just didn’t seem the best way to go about it.

  “Come on, Rake,” Greg said with a sigh, “get in the pack. We don’t want to be late for our beating.”

  The shadowcat stared at him quizzically, leaned forward, and smashed a furry cheek into Greg’s hand.

  “Not now. We’re going to miss our bus.”

  As if understanding, Rake crawled obediently into the pack. Greg quickly cinched up the straps. If anyone were to ever see Rake . . . well, Greg didn’t know what he’d do. Then again, if he didn’t figure out a way to slip past Manny Malice and onto his bus, what difference did it make? Just because he was going to die didn’t mean the secret of the shadowcat had to die with him.

  After a few whispered reassurances to his backpack, Greg headed for the side exit, slipped outside, and scurried along the wall toward the front of the building, all the while thinking about that one miraculous day last fall, when he had actually fought Manny Malice and won. Using his skill in chikan, an ancient martial art he’d learned on Myrth, Greg had used a stick to trip up Manny and send him cartwheeling into the bushes. For months Greg had viewed that as the happiest moment of his life. Today it seemed the stupidest. Manny would be ready this time, and Greg didn’t have a stick.