Sarah looked up and smiled when she saw Harry. At first, her dragon smiles sent shivers down Harry’s spine, but he had become accustomed to her and walked right up and sat nose to muzzle.
“I have been expecting you,” Sarah said softly.
Harry noticed her breath had improved remarkably since Lizzy had introduced her to the peppermint plants Grandma Grace had planted around the porch.
“Have you now?” Harry answered, trying not to stall but not doing a very good job of it.
“Yes.”
“Why?” he dodged, not knowing how he should broach the subject.
“You know.”
Harry started to say something and was interrupted by the sword, “Sometimes words are not as powerful as thoughts. I might be able to help out. If you two are agreeable, I can increase your bond temporarily to the point that you can share your thoughts mentally. It might be easier than words, and a great deal more accurate.”
Before either could answer, the sword graciously bridged the gap and even provided a virtual image. Harry blinked and suddenly he was standing in a verdant pasture next to a noisy brook. He heard his name called and turned to look, and there she was walking toward him, not dragon Sarah, or six-year-old Sarah, but mature Princess Sarah. Harry looked at the princess and realized he had only seen her once in the light of day. Even then he hadn’t taken a great deal of time to look at her. But now in the full radiance of the speaker’s artificial day, he treated his eyes to something his spirit had known for ages.
Harry’s heart nearly stopped at the sight of her. Sarah was beautiful. As she drew closer, he began to remember and now added to those memories.
Dressed in the ever-present Lincoln-green skirt that flowed gracefully around her feet, no longer torn or burnt, the dress simply sculptured her tall, slender body, accenting her softly rounded hips. As she drew ever nearer, he noticed her hair, black as a raven’s breast, was cut short, gently covering her ears and teasing her neck. She had high cheekbones and creamy skin, speckled with a light spray of freckles that streamed across her nose, enhancing the youth that had been prematurely stolen from her.
When his brown eyes locked with her haunting green ones, his heartbeat returned with his breath.
As she looked up at him, he noticed how her long gorgeous lashes accented her high arching brows. But as he looked into those brilliant green eyes, he also saw pain like an emerald pool of ancient grief. Her eyes showed her soul and that soul had suffered for a very long time. His own eyes glistened, and tears formed when he saw something else. He saw love and knew it belonged to him.
“Wow,” he gasped. “You’re… you! You’re finally you! I’ve tried to remember you a thousand times through the years. Finally, I began to lose the only memories I had, like a yellowed photograph crumbling beneath light. But now, I see you again, and I don’t know what to say. I missed you, and yet I hardly knew you. Were you a figment of my aging imagination? Or were you real for a moment, then ripped away?”
Sarah laughed back and said, “You need to look in the mirror yourself, Harry!”
Harry stared down at his hands, which had been scarred and spotted with age. They were young again, the working hands of a young man of eighteen. “Wow! I could get used to this.”
The sword interrupted, “I hate to tell you this, but your time here is limited. It takes an awful lot of energy to create these avatars. I am sorry.”
Harry sighed sadly, “Well hell, Speaker, another two-edged sword: sweet and bitter intertwined with barbed heartbreak.”
Sarah reached over and grabbed Harry’s hand. “If there is not much time, use it wisely, Harry.”
He stared back at her and his lips began to tremble. “Those people want to know how the story ends, but I don’t want to tell them. It’s over. It’s done. And you… you have been restored in the most amazing fashion. You wouldn’t be the most amazing and wonderful you that you are now if it weren’t for the other. But I don’t want to… to…”
“Expose me? Tell the truth about me. Make me look bad? Dishonor me?”
Harry tucked his head and held his face in his hands. “Yes, to all the above.”
“How are you going to finish the story without telling the truth? I have had a lot of time to think about this. It is pretty much all I have thought about these last few days, thought and prayed about. Isn’t that funny… a dragon praying? But it’s true.”
Harry laughed with her, then smirked and said, “And what have you concluded?”
“I had a picture come to mind of a woman doing laundry the old-fashioned way. My grandma Grace had an old washtub that had been her great-grandmother’s. She showed me once how it had been used. Well, I saw that tub in my mind with laundry piled next to it that must have been a baby’s because it was awful, if you know what I mean?” Sarah winced and curled her nose as she spoke. Harry got the idea. “In my vision, I saw all that filthy laundry, all those diapers as nasty as they were, and then I saw someone—I’m not sure who—taking them one by one and washing them in that tub. They went in nasty and came out so white they gleamed. I didn’t know why I was seeing that picture until I thought about what I had been praying. It was then that I realized the laundry was me. That filth was mine. And now I, at least for the most part, am clean. Harry, if we don’t tell them about the dirt, they won’t hear about the tub or how to get clean. You know as well as I do some of the people who come to the barn tonight desperately need to hear that story.”
Harry looked across the table from Princess Sarah and thought, Wow! How did you ever get so wise? Then he blinked and opened his eyes to see the big, scaly muzzle of a wonderful lady dragon. He bent over and kissed her gently on her nose. “I love you,” he said.
“Of course you do, silly boy. You’re still under my spell,” she laughed back.
He kissed her again and whispered, “Always.”
***
Cars began to arrive early for the “fellowship,” as Harry had started calling it for lack of a better name. Most of the people invited knew what a fellowship was since they were mostly churchgoers. While some churches weren’t as prone to worship demonized dragons as others, they all knew what a fellowship was. They also knew that if they wanted a good seat, they had better get there early. Many came nearly an hour early, yet there were still folks trickling in fifteen minutes after the scheduled starting time. Lizzy, the preeminent organizer, was not surprised that the early-birds and the later-comers were true to their nature and had planned accordingly. She had considered having music and ice cream, but Harry and Sarah both vetoed the idea. Harry complained the event was a closure event, much like a memorial service, and that they shouldn’t turn it into a circus. Besides, he argued, weren’t they trying to keep this huge event a secret meeting? Lizzy assured her dad that Jamie, the mouth of Moab, had a unique ability to screen people and dissuade them from attending. Harry wasn’t convinced but had faith in Barry.
Sarah suggested security guards, but when they tried to decide who to ask, they realized no one would want to do it for fear of missing out on the story. Everyone who had been involved in the incident wanted closure. Some had come from fresh graves where tears of grief conflicted with tears of anger, even over the same graves. There were a lot of whys and hows gathering, but not a single what, for everyone invited was an eyewitness.
Harry wondered if Jamie had cast some sort of cultic spell on the property, and even went so far as to ask her, in his armor, of course. Her response was, “Hell no! Barry’d whip my ass if I tried that.” Harry’s respect for Barry’s absolute courage, in the face of a maelstrom of fury, skyrocketed, as did his confidence that the closure event would be protected and secret.
Finally, everyone who was anyone connected with the event that had troubled and almost destroyed their town was gathered.
The old man’s natural shyness had caught up with him. Lizzy, on the other hand, was born to please a crowd and so, quite naturally, started the meeting.
“I am
glad you have come. As we all know, we have endured a great deal in these last few weeks. There is nothing I can say to comfort the loss of so many. We were seduced, deceived, and many paid a terrible price for that deception. Now we are like a broken person who has had the bleeding of a terrible wound stopped. But the injury needs to be closed. Most of you know some of what happened. Many of you know much, but only two know it all. My father is one of those who know all of it, and Sarah is the second person. I need to caution you here not to be afraid. Sarah, the little six-year-old, the adopted daughter of Kenneth and Grace Linscomb, well, Sarah has changed a little…”
The old man snorted and started coughing at Lizzy’s “little.” Lizzy looked at him with her “Dad!” look that had been honed sharp enough to make a razor blush. And he quieted. Lizzy continued. “Sarah was and is the dragon that you saw attack the evil dragon. How she became that dragon is a mystery to all of us, especially her. The truth is, Sarah is stuck in that form and cannot change back. We did not want to startle you, so consider yourself warned. Please remember not all dragons are evil. Sarah is still one of us. I am going to have Sarah fly in slowly to give you a chance to see her gradually, and then she is going to land right here. Please, please do not be frightened. Remember, she is the one who saved us all.”
Lizzy looked around the crowd, watching their faces intently. There was a little unease, but no one screamed or tried to run away… at least not yet. “If you will look toward the west, you can see what appears to be a large bird. That is Sarah. She is flying in from about a mile out.”
At Lizzy’s mile out remark, a few people gasped. They realized how big she must be if she looked like a large bird at that distance. The crowd watched, hands shielding their eyes, some pointing, murmurs and gasps continuing, but no outcries, no screams. Finally, Sarah lit on the ground. There was an awkward moment of silence and then someone started to clap. Immediately others joined in. People began to shout and yell. One of Sarah’s little girlfriends recognized her friend, and with the courage only a child could have, ran toward the great dragon.
“Maggie!” her frightened mother cried.
Sarah, seeing the child running toward her, bowed to the ground with her head and nose resting on the grass. She did not reach for the child but stayed extremely still and smiled, trying not to show her great teeth. Maggie’s mother was a heartbeat behind her daughter and grabbed her right as the little girl slid to a dusty stop in front of the lady dragon. Sarah crinkled her nose as Maggie screeched to a halt and was caught up in her mother’s arms.
“Mom! It’s just Sarah,” Maggie said gently to her frightened mother. “It’s just Sarah.”
Sarah couldn’t help herself. A large tear welled up in her eye and slowly trickled down her scaled face. She didn’t want her friends to fear her but knew some did. At least her friends’ parents did. Maggie’s mom had known Sarah since Grandma Grace had brought her home. Sarah and Maggie had grown up together, had sleepovers, and played slippy slide in her backyard. Maggie’s mom had tucked Sarah into bed many times and read her and Maggie bedtime stories. So, when she heard Maggie’s gentle rebuke and saw the tears in Sarah’s eyes, she fell to her knees around the great muzzle of the weeping dragon and hugged her. “Oh, Sarah… oh, baby girl. I am so sorry I couldn’t see. I really couldn’t.”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Loup. It’s okay,” Sarah whispered as she nuzzled into the embrace of Maggie’s mom.
A half a second later, a deluge of shouting little urchins swarmed over the newbie dragon. Before Sarah could move, three little boys were on her back and two little girls were working their way up her long tail. One adventuresome child had even gone so far as to try and push up Sarah’s lip in order to see her great teeth.
“Easton! Stop that!” A loud whack of a human hand collided with a small human bottom.
“Youch!”
“Leave Sarah alone, Easton! I am so sorry, Sarah.”
“It’s okay, Miss Katie. He’s just being a boy.”
“Mom, Mom! When I grow up, will I be a dragon? Can I, please? Can I, Mom?” Easton squealed.
“I don’t know. Probably not. You need to ask your dad.”
Lizzy realized that introductions were over and more time with Sarah would only lead to more problems, so she yelled over the shouts and laughter of the children, “Okay, okay! Everybody have a seat or there will be no ice cream at the end of this meeting.”
Hank looked at Sarah, who shrugged guiltily. Lizzy had slipped the ice cream past him. Too late now, and he wasn’t happy about it. He mumbled something about the dignity of the event and then got quiet.
“My dad is going to speak now… Okay, Dad, it’s all yours.”
The old man storyteller rose slowly, more from shyness rather than stiffness. He walked to the middle of the barn and looked around the room. Children had climbed up into the loft. People sat on bales of hay. Lizzy had tried to provide everyone chairs, but more people came than expected. Hank gulped and began.
“I think most of you have figured out that I am not just an old man who has lived among you for a long time. I wasn’t born here. I guess the best way to explain it is to tell you and hope you believe me… and you probably will now that I have undeniable evidence seated in front of you.” He pointed to Sarah and laughed. The crowd politely laughed with him. He was addressing adults now and had changed his approach. It was clear he wasn’t near as comfortable with it as he had been telling the children a story.
He continued, “I am the young man of the story. The events of the story I have been telling all summer at the library are true. I lived them. I know you probably have a lot of questions. I may be able to answer most of those if you allow me to finally finish the story I began.”
He didn’t wait for permission but simply began where he had left off. “I am going to continue to refer to myself as Harry and tell the rest of this story in the third person. Now, where was I… oh yes…
“Harry felt the cave floor give way. His screams were cut off as he plunged beneath ice-cold water. He sank quickly, feet first, facing upward, the weight of his armor pulling him down. Finally, his feet touched the bottom of the dark lake, and he pushed upward when suddenly, steaming water erupted in dragon flames a few feet above him, forcing him back down. The ice-cold water instantly grew hot. The closer to the surface he swam, the hotter the water became. It was now hot enough to scald. Harry heard the sword screaming in his head, ‘Put the helmet on, Harry! Put it on now!’
“Harry lifted the helmet onto his head. Even in the confusion of the moment, he had not let go of the helmet. His hand had tightened around it, frozen in a finger-breaking hold.
“He was surprised to feel the helmet strap on and extend a covering over his entire face. A blast of cool air filled the helmet, and he could breathe. The visor opened, and he could see. A light shone out a short distance from the visor, and the bottom of the dark lake lit in a dim blue cast. Harry looked up and could see the flames of the dragon burning on the lake surface.”
“He’s got a diving mask on, doesn’t he? My mom got me one last year at Walmart, but my sister sat on it and broke it.”
“Shussh!” an angry flock of irritated little magpies croaked. “Be quiet!”
“Would you like to see the helmet?” the old man asked, now that the story had been interrupted. “I’m wearing it now.”
“Really!? No, you aren’t.”
“I can’t see it. Why can’t I see it?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course!” The old man smiled, his eyes twinkling.
“Show us!” the eager children clamored curiously, and a few adults joined in, too.
Speaker, if you would, please, the old man thought to his invisible assistant.
The children, and the adults, and even a cute dragon were all staring at the old man when a bright haze, like a thousand lightning bugs on a July night, swirled around his head for a few seconds, and then just as quickly disappeared. When the swirling l
ights died away, the old man’s head was covered with a bronze helmet that resembled concentric circles of a honeycomb. The visor projected from his head like a beak, and where his eyes should have been, small polished mirrors sat.
“Can you see us?” the little freckle-faced boy asked as he gingerly reached his hand forward to touch the beak.
“As good as ever,” the old man responded. After a few minutes of show-and-tell, everyone settled back down. Harry thought, Okay, Speaker, if you would, please, make the helmet go away now.
The old man’s whole body began to glow, and the lightning bugs were back, swirling in a bright cloud that brought a shower of “Ohs” and “Ahs” and a few isolated claps. The lights then quietly disappeared and left the old man clothed in the armor, minus the helmet. That is not what I meant, and you know it, Speaker.
“Yeah, but Harry, it adds mysticism to the whole story if you tell it while you are dressed in your armor.”
Harry looked over at Sarah, who had children seated on her back and between her outstretched claws. She smiled a subdued but extremely toothy dragon smile back at him. With the speaker’s help, Harry heard Sarah think, “Harry, if I have to sit here as a dragon coupe, full of little munchkins hanging on me, you can sit there in your armor and tell the story.”
The Harry Ferguson Chronicles Box Set Page 21
