“Sarah,” she heard a voice in her mind say. It startled her and she quickly drew back, which also unnerved Barry and Jamie. “It’s okay, Sarah. It’s me, Harry’s invisible friend, the speaker sword. You can hear me because now you are linked to Harry, and so also to me. In your present form you are more sensitive to my voice than you would be in human form, so I can speak to you. By the way, Harry is in a healing sleep. His armor will repair the damage of his wounds, similar to the way your flesh can heal you, but he has to sleep, and this might be for a day or two. You need to move him to a safe place. In a few minutes the people here are going to start moving, giving orders, and looking around. You need to be gone by the time they do. I need you to pick Harry up and fly off with him. You understand?”
Sarah spoke out loud, “Yes, sir, I do. But, where do I take him? Wait! I don’t know how to fly!”
Jamie placed a gentle hand on Sarah’s large claw. “Honey, I don’t think that’s goin’ to be a problem. Seems to come natural to you folk, so just grab up the old man, spread your wings, and take a running start and jump. I bet you don’t come stumbling back down. Keep flapping those big ol’ wings, and you just see what happens from there. Looks to me like you ought to hurry though because there is a group of people starting to move this way, and they might not be able to tell the difference between a good dragon and a bad one. You know what I mean, hon?”
Dragon Sarah nodded her great head, then picked Harry up and held him to her chest like a mother would a sleeping child. Nodding toward Barry and Jamie, she took off running down the parking lot and leaped into the air. Just as Jamie had said, her instincts took over, and her wings moved naturally. She lifted up into the sky and was soon out of sight.
***
Harry awoke to the smell of cut grass and manure. He was extremely sore. When he moved, he hurt. When he lay still, he hurt. He tried opening his eyes a few times and finally realized his eyes were open, he just couldn’t see. Then he remembered he still had his armor on, so slowly, aching with every inch, he reached his hand to his helmet and pushed back the visor. A blast of light jolted his sleepy eyes, causing him to cry out. He heard a large shuffle a few feet away and raised his head to find himself face to face with the huge jaws of a dragon. “Ah! Not again!” he cried as his head fell back into the hay. “Just eat me; get this over. I am too tired to care, and my body hurts too much to fight you.”
He felt a claw touch his armor and braced himself for the pain he expected to follow. Nothing happened. The claw just shook him in a gentle attempt to nudge him awake. Coming from a fifteen-thousand-pound newbie dragon that was as clumsy as a toddler trying to learn to walk, the nudge felt like a bad roller coaster ride.
Harry’s head jostled, and his armor banged against the back of the horse stable. “Ow! Dang it!” He reached for his sword and couldn’t find it, but was so weak he collapsed again.
He was conscious enough to hear a familiar small voice coming from the large beast. It was crying, “Oh, oh. I’m sorry, sorry… oh. I hurt you again. I’m just a big, stupid, clumsy oaf.” And then the words crumbled into sobs.
Harry opened his eyes, staring at the roughhewn timbered ceiling of the old barn. After a moment of thought, he whispered, “Sarah? Sarah? Is that you?” He forced himself to sit up, pushing against every stomach and back muscle that would listen to him. Once he sat up, he found himself staring at a great big seven-ton dragon that was curled into a ball like a German shepherd. A closer look revealed the eyes of a 1,244-year-old princess staring back at him, whimpering like a six-year-old child.
“Oooooh, Sarah,” he sympathized. “Are you okay?”
She crawled toward him and was now just a couple of feet away. Her huge head lay in the hay at his feet. “No, I am not okay! I am a dragon and have been for four days! I have been worried sick about you, even though the speaker assures me you are fine and will just be sore until you start eating again. I have worried and worried, and when I wasn’t worried about you, I was worried about me. I can’t figure out how to turn back into a person. The sword has been trying to help me, but nothing is working. Then I got hungry, and I…”
She started sobbing again; great big, big dragon tears streamed down her face, pooling into large puddles that muddied up the barn floor. She continued, “I ate two of Grandpa’s cows! And a couple of the stray cats! I didn’t mean to, but they ran, and I raced after them, and before I knew what I was doing, I ate the cats! Oh!” She moaned, her tears streaming down her face again, soaking Harry’s armor as they seeped through the seams. Their saltiness touched his scars and stung. He winced. Sarah saw it and bawled even louder.
“Sarah, Sarah, hush.” He tried to soothe her, stroking her long muzzle. “Hey, we made it through the hard part. We’re still alive, at least for the moment, unless you sneeze and wrap me around a post in here,” he teased. She sniffled and sighed, which caused Harry to gag because it was rather pungent. He tried to smile through it, but it was like trying to say grace over roasted skunk, and his grimace gave it away.
She apologized again, “I’m sorry. I even have bad breath! I think I have a piece of meat stuck in my back tooth, and I can’t get it out. I’ve been trying.”
Harry, ever the caregiver, said, “Let me see. Open up.”
Sarah opened her massive jaws, flashing a terrifying array of razor-sharp teeth that would have made a great white jealous. Just as Harry was about to reach in and pull out the piece of meat he saw stuck between two back teeth, he thought better of it and said, “Give me a minute.” He walked to the back of the barn and picked up a pitchfork. “Now open.”
Sarah complied but kept trying to give instructions, “Dooon sttttticc y toungne.”
He laughed and answered, “It’s not your tongue I am concerned about. It’s my head. One small bite, and you’re on your own. So, hold still!” Harry poked and yanked until finally the putrid flesh pried loose. Holding it up by what was left of a tail, he grimaced. “It’s the cat.” He pulled back the pitchfork with the bit of furry flesh, and Sarah swallowed, grateful. “See, that wasn’t too bad. We can fix this. Just give me a moment, and we’ll figure it out.”
He plopped down on a stool in the barn and started taking off his armored boots. He stopped, paused, and looked at dragon Sarah, then asked, “Ah, we did kill the reverend and his followers, right? I realize after…” He paused again, remembering what caused the explosion. His face paled, and his heart ached as he remembered. “I hate crying,” he whispered. “The pain I push back, just to be able to function, rips my heart apart and burns through my eyes.”
Sarah began to weep again. Harry stood up, hugged her massive neck, and whispered, “He loved you, honey. He loved you so much he wouldn’t die till he knew you were safe. I couldn’t take out the dragon. You couldn’t take him down, but your grandpa… your grandpa…” Harry began to sob and his defenses gave way. “He was… he was the fire marshal. A beast was trying to take his granddaughter, and he took it out. He blew that damn thing’s head off!” And with that statement, they both laughed and wept again.
“Well, I’m glad to see you’re up, and Sarah is feeling better,” a familiar voice in Harry’s head declared.
Harry went back to taking his boots off, stopped, sat down on the stool, and thought, I was wondering when you were going to show back up. And hey, did Sarah just tell me you were speaking to her too?
“Yes, sir, that is exactly what she said.”
Huh… well, how does that work? And can she hear you right now?
Dragon Sarah scooted over to the stool where Harry sat in his bare feet talking to the sword in his head. She smiled at the scene and answered, “I sure can! And that is just fine with me. You two have had way too many conversations that I wasn’t allowed to hear. The era of the woman has come!” she declared.
“Or not,” the sword whispered to Harry. “She can’t hear me if I don’t want her to. You and I have a blood bond. Her bond is filtered through you. But hey, I’m not telling her
that, ’cause you know as well as I do, what she doesn’t know…”
Harry finished the sentence out loud, “…ain’t going to hurt us!”
Dragon Sarah looked down her long nose and raised an imperial eyebrow. A shiver ran down Harry’s spine. He gave Sarah a cautious glance and thought, Maybe I’ll keep this armor on for a little while longer.
Sarah laughed and said, “You know I am a lean, mean, fire-breathing machine. You do see that, don’t you?”
Harry looked back at her and said, “Nope, I don’t. I see a little snaggle-toothed, ragamuffin, story time princess that I still need to rescue. So, Speaker, you were saying?”
“I was pointing out something that you have already realized: Sarah cannot shift back into a human.” Harry sighed and Sarah moaned, but the speaker continued, “I know why. I have gone back over everything I have ever heard or read about this problem. You are not the first dragon and dragon rider to face it. From what I have read, there are ways around it.”
Sarah’s natural feminine dragon curiosity aroused at the word it. “What is ‘it’?”
Both Harry and dragon Sarah sensed the hesitation in the speaker’s voice. Harry was first to address the “it.” “Speaker, what’s the problem? The only time I have ever sensed hesitation in you before was when you didn’t want to tell me something and, most of the time, I found out anyway, or we were able to deal with it. So, out with it. What is ‘it’?”
Had the sword had lungs, it would have sighed. “It’s the curse, Harry, the dragon’s death curse from the time you rode it into the ground and killed it, or almost killed it: Your love will never leave you, but neither will you have it till it does.”
Sarah spit in disgust. The phlegm sizzled as it burned into the hay. Smoke quickly started to curl from the straw, and she stepped over to stomp it out. “You said an undeserved curse does not come to rest. You said there are ways to defeat it. I remember very clearly. If that is true, what is this?”
“You are right. An undeserved curse does not come to rest… and there are ways to defeat this. It just takes time, research, and to be honest, prayer.”
Harry listened to the speaker and sensed he had not said all he knew. “And? And?”
Dragon Sarah tilted her head. “What are you holding back, Speaker?”
“I have been too close to you for too long, Harold Ferguson. You know me too well. If this keeps up, I will have no secrets.”
“Out with it, you iron-pigmented piece of remelted horseshoe!” Sarah demanded.
“Okay already. Here’s the thing. I think your predicament is purposeful. I believe, and that belief is growing stronger, especially now that I am processing it in front of you, that the reason Sarah cannot shift back is not solely because of any curse. It is because this story is not over. There, I said it.”
“What!” Harry yelled. “What story are you talking about? You’re talking about a stupid sequel? A larger picture? But I’m tired! I have rescued the princess twice now. Good people have died in the process, and you’re telling me it’s not over! Uh-uh! No, no! I am done. I am through!”
“I can understand how you feel, Harry, but your life is not your own anymore. You know that. And truth be told, you really… have just had one adventure, although a very, very long one. All I know is this: when a person’s story is over, things reconcile. They work together for good, you might say, especially for dragon riders. And, well, obviously your story is not done. There is something else for you to do.”
“Yeah, I got that. I have to teach a seven-and-a-half-ton dragon to shift back into a six-year-old girl, and then back into a 1,244-year-old princess.”
Sarah added, “And a seventy-year-old man back into an eighteen-year-old handsome dragon rider.”
Chapter Twenty
A knock at the barn door caused Harry to jump. Sarah panicked and tried to find a place to hide in the huge barn, but hiding places are limited when you are a seven-and-a-half-ton dragon. Harry finally realized there was nothing he could do but answer the door, while Sarah jostled through the large haystack, futilely trying to keep her long tail hidden. She might have succeeded, except for her need to breathe. When she exhaled, small smoke rings curled up and drifted into the upper sections of the barn, hovering like fog. Harry rolled his eyes, shrugged his shoulders, and walked toward the barn door. He pulled back the bolts that held it shut and cautiously slid the barn door back an inch, far enough to see who was knocking, but not far enough to give them access.
“Hey, Dad!” his daughter said in greeting. She stood at the door with both arms folded across her chest. She was trying to decide if she was madder than she was glad at that moment. Harry’s bright smile decided the issue for her, and she grabbed him into a big hug. For a few minutes, they hugged and sighed and then hugged some more, but when the relief began to subside, Lizzy’s ire began to rise. “Dad, you’ve been missing for four days!” Her head and neck stretched forward doing a poor imitation of Madea. “Why haven’t you called me? Why have you been hiding? Are you hurt?” Her eyes looked past her father and scanned the barn, coming to rest on two huge eyes blinking through a pile of straw. “Dad!” she shrieked.
“It’s okay. Lizzy, calm down! It’s just Sarah, the new version, or maybe she is the old version, or the dragon version. I don’t know, but she’s not going to hurt anyone. Are you?” he asked, directing the question toward dragon Sarah and beckoning her to shuffle out from hiding. Harry, accustomed to seeing dragons, especially Sarah, forgot how a close-up first encounter might intimidate somebody else, especially somebody who was already distraught and worn out from stress and worry. Sarah lumbered out from her makeshift hiding spot, moving a huge pile of hay like a ship does water in its wake. Lizzy took one look and collapsed in Harry’s arms.
“Oh my! Oh my!” he said as he held her and kept her from falling to the ground. Easing her down he thought, Now what? Is she okay? He gently slapped her face. “Lizzy, Lizzy! Hey, it’s okay. You okay, honey?” After a few minutes, Lizzy groaned and came to. Sarah had stepped back into the shadows, trying to keep a low profile, which for a dragon person larger than an African bush elephant, was difficult.
“Dad, are you okay? There was a dragon in here. I saw a dragon!” she said in a near panic.
“You saw her at the library, Lizzy. She fought the evil dragon. Don’t you remember?”
Lizzy was still groggy and struggling with all the trauma of the last few days. “Yes, I do… I just didn’t see it up close. And then people began saying it wasn’t a dragon but some drug-induced hallucination caused by the cultists. The media came from around the world, and the FBI showed up, and now, even those of us who were there aren’t sure what happened. The city police are being hailed as heroes, as well as those local folks who were involved in the shootout. It has been quite an uproar. The mayor resigned and Barry Dinker, who was assistant mayor, has replaced him. While things are starting to simmer down a bit, people, of course, are asking questions.” Lizzy sat up and brushed the hay from her pants. She looked around cautiously and fearfully. Her eyes stopped on Sarah. Lizzy gasped. Her eyes grew wide, and her face paled as white as chalk. Sarah, for lack of knowing what else to do, raised a claw and shyly waved at Lizzy. Lizzy, also for lack of knowing what to do, waved back.
Sarah cleared her throat, which probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do, since it sounded like a cross between a sick lion and angry walrus, and Lizzy startled and stepped back.
Harry said, “It’s okay. It’s okay. She just has some phlegm in her throat. Happens when you eat a cat.”
Lizzy stared back, disgusted at her dad, like she’d been asked to stick her finger in something the cat drug up and the dogs wouldn’t touch. “She ate a cat?”
Sarah, embarrassed, squeaked in a voice extremely out of place for a fifteen-thousand-pound dragon, “I didn’t mean to, Miss Lizzy. I really didn’t. I’m not used to being a dragon, and I have urges and habits that I didn’t know I had. The cat ran, and something in me had
to chase it, and then I caught it, and before I knew it, I ate it like those animal crackers you bring to the library. Then your dad laughed at me and hurt my feelings.”
Lizzy grew more sympathetic as Sarah spoke, and when Sarah mentioned that Harry had hurt her poor dragonish heart, well, mama bear came out and the scolding began. “Dad! I can’t believe you. This poor girl,” Lizzy said, pointing at the seven-and-a-half-ton dragon in the room, “has been traumatized out of her mind, kidnapped, and forced to fight off a deranged… deranged… whatever he was! She saved your life, has had to huddle in a barn for four days while you sleep off some type of… of… of… hangover… and you mock her?” Lizzy’s voice had risen in intensity as her lecture continued, barely avoiding scalding. Had she been a dragon herself, steam would have certainly shot out her nose.
Harry leaned back, knowing that most of what was discharging from Lizzy wasn’t really intended for him as much as she simply needed to erupt, like a volcano, deadly but not intentional. Finally, Mount Lizzy sizzled to a slow grumble, looked at her father, and sighed, “Sorry, Dad, once it started, I couldn’t stop.”
The old man looked back at her and nodded knowingly. “Well, honey, it didn’t bother me a bit, and seemed to do you a world of good.”
Lizzy turned toward Sarah, raised an inviting eyebrow, and nodded toward her father. Then she bent down, grabbed an armful of hay, and threw it at him. Sarah followed suit, but slightly more forceful, causing a tsunami of hay to sweep over Lizzy and Harry as they tumbled out the barn door in a flood of mown pasture grass.
After everyone had picked the hay out of their hair, pants, armor, and from between the scales on their backside, and after both Lizzy and Sarah insisted Harry shower and change into some of Grandpa Kenneth’s old clothes, they sat down for a talk. Lizzy moved some lawn chairs and a table into the barn so Sarah could easily contribute rather than having to look through a window of the house to participate in the conversation. Lizzy, unlike her father, liked things planned out, scheduled, and calendared. Harry kept telling her that he had been asleep the whole time he was missing, and since he just woke up, he had not had time to think too far ahead. Lizzy replied, “Well then, you should be rested now, and we have to discuss some things and make some plans.”
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