Dragon Lessons

by Eve Paludan

  Wiglaf had said to me, almost daring me, “If the king is not worthy of drinking from a cup of light, then, pray tell, who is?”

  I had said, “How about thee?” and my loyal thane had shaken his head, not wanting to be my cupbearer for the most dangerous Cup that had ever existed. I patted the Cup resting inside my beard, happy that it was in the tangle, safe from enemy eyes.

  Suddenly, a panic came over me as my foggy brain realized what else was amiss here.

  Where is my magic broadsword?

  I had not long to worry on that matter when a panel slid open at the top of the door and I ran to punch the face of the man peeping at me with glee, but instead, ran my fist into impenetrable glass and the bones snapped. My sword hand—smashed up!

  As I crumpled to the floor, howling and clutching it, a brace of burly men came in to subdue me and I howled a-more as they were rough with my useless, throbbing hand. Now, I would not be able to kill the dragon with my magic sword, if ever I even laid hands on it again.

  They forced me into a vest with overlong sleeves that they crossed in front of me and then tied behind me, much to my agony of my broken hand. I again was confined and wrapped tightly, just like a trussed pig, ready for the spit. I tried to explain who I was, but no one understood my language and it was making me frustrated and furious.

  “I am a king!” I told them, but they did not understand.

  I wept from pain as they looked at the drawing on the wall and someone else came and they were all talking about it in their language. A very tall man of some authority over the others wore a long white coat and put a sharp light near my eyes to see into them, as if he were looking for my secrets. As he put his hand on my chin to make me hold still for him, the Cup of Forgiveness fell out of my beard and rolled over and over on the floor, its golden light spilling and spinning across the room as it rolled.

  An underling with a mop in one hand picked it up off the floor, looked at it, put it in his bucket and laughed. Laughed!

  I gasped in horror that they now had the Cup! And in terror at how this fool was committing sacrilege with it. My captors had my finest treasure in their greedy hands. And who knew what would become of it now, let alone what would become of me?

  “Don’t drink from it! It would be death!” I shouted, but of course, no one could understand my warnings.

  I felt another sharp bite of the long narrow blade that did prick my good arm, right through the sleeve, and then, a staggering numbness, a tingle, and all was darkness again…

  Chapter 22

  TAMMY MOON

  Apparently, Beowulf was being a huge pain in the butt while on lockdown in the psych ward. I didn’t have the details, but Detective Sherbet had called and given Mom the scoop. She’d given me the teen-safe version of what had happened, was that he was, yes, being a jerk. Someday, I wanted the full, adult version, but I didn’t read Mom’s mind because she’d really been on my case for doing it.

  So, we had a while before we could see Beowulf and try to track down the Grail, or as Thorn called it, the Cup of Forgiveness. Apparently, Beowulf had to be cleared first after an initial evaluation, to ensure that he wasn’t a danger to any visitors, even “family.” And right now, he was sleeping off a big dose of tranquilizers.

  In the meantime, life went on…

  We had two eating machines in the house—not just Anthony, but now, Thorn, too. Mom needed to go shopping, but was unwilling to leave Anthony and me alone with him, in case we got attacked by who knows what while she was gone. It was embarrassing what a worrywart she was. Beowulf was in custody, locked up in the psych ward, so what could possibly happen now?

  Anyway, we made plans for the four of us to go food shopping. Yeah, who knew we would be taking a dragon-man to get groceries? But that’s the way life works. People gotta eat and so do dragon shifters.

  While Mom made a list of things we needed, Anthony was the one who actually convinced Thorn to take a shower by telling him, “Dude, no offense, but you smell rank. Let’s do something about it or I’m going to hurl on the way to the store!”

  Talk about subtle, Anthony was far from it. But as much as I didn’t want to admit it, Thorn really needed to know that he needed to clean up! I was just glad I wasn’t the one to have to tell him.

  After the plumbing operations were explained and the hot and cold faucets were clear to him, Thorn took a shower until the hot water ran out and then, he took a cold one, too. And then, he took a bath with all my bath fizzies. I tried not to laugh as I heard him exclaim, first in alarm and then in laughter in his own ancient Danish language as he got in the tub, knocked the container over in the water and got his man parts fizzed pretty good.

  After I heard the tub drain, and we heard Thorn scrounging for towels in the cupboard, Anthony tapped on the door to give him a travel kit of guy things, which made me choke up because some of it was Dad’s stuff—Anthony wouldn’t even let me touch those things, let alone give them away to a stranger. But he did.

  And now, with the door a bit ajar, they both stood at the hall bathroom’s double-sink counter. Both their faces were covered in shaving cream—I didn’t even know Anthony shaved yet—while Anthony demonstrated how to use the business end of a brand-new Mach-5 razor and Thorn shaved his face in the same way with a razor of his own.

  Thorn had wrapped an old kids’ Spiderman towel around his waist like a kilt and that barely covered the essentials. His bare chest and abs were rock-hard muscle and his arms were roped with more muscles, especially his sword arm. Even his leg was bigger on that side from years of wearing a sword.

  He was so freaking beautiful that my throat hurt from looking at him.

  From the hallway, I couldn’t stop staring at the clean-shaven dragon shifter. He looked like a red-haired Scott Eastwood, Clint Eastwood’s son from Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams” video. Now that I could see Thorn’s entire face, shed of the scruffy beard, I knew what people meant when they said about, “love at first sight.”

  Because it hit me suddenly, like: Bam!

  Yes, that powerful. I kept swallowing and this weird but pleasant feeling crept over me as I looked at Thorn in the mirror. And gulped. He was so freaking gorgeous that my knees were knocking together, and my face was hot as I spied on him shaving. I was having drool-worthy feelings about him that were definitely long past bordering on anything that was remotely ladylike and began to approach the dangerous territory of the kind of slut bunnies I wouldn’t associate with at school. I peeked into his mind, and he was just thinking about shaving styles and marveling about the endless hot water.

  Anthony caught my gaze in the mirror and rolled his eyes at me, then slammed the door shut in my face with a mumbled, “Stay out, Tammy! And stay out of his mind, too. You perv!”

  Ha! My brother knew my facial expressions too well. He didn’t have to have mind-reading powers to know what I knew: I was smitten. And falling for Thorn, so hard and fast that I couldn’t believe it myself. This was not me. This was not the sarcastic, rancor-filled teenage ice queen me. This was me on Thorn, like he was a drug. My drug. Holy sheet. And all it took was getting him cleaned up for me to start having these sexy thoughts about him.

  I went to Mom’s bathroom and splashed my face with cold water and dried off. I was blushing like hell. I went into my room to my makeup table to tidy up my own appearance with a curling iron and a bit of mascara. I didn’t need the blush, now that I was thinking all of these unladylike, wild things about Thorn.

  I ransacked my closet until I found something suitable at the back. And by suitable, I meant modest. I changed into my eighth-grade graduation dress, a white cotton peasant dress with long, belled sleeves and a tiered, layered skirt. It was a lot shorter on me now, but I wanted to look pretty, really pretty, for Thorn. I pulled the neck elastic down, so I was wearing it off the shoulders—I hoped that wasn’t going to be too much for Thorn, but I wanted to not look like my usual torn-jeans-and-t-shirted self. After looking at myself in the mirror a
nd being a little horrified that I could see things showing that no one should see peeking through the fabric of my dress, I grabbed Mom’s strapless bra from a drawer in her room. I hoped she wouldn’t freak, but she hardly ever wore the thing. It was decades old, but still functional.

  Even after splashing myself with cold water and strongly admonishing myself to be a lady, my tummy was having butterflies and my upper chest was even getting a little red and blotchy. All I could think about was trying to not to throw myself at this dragon-man from a different world. It might have been my first time I had ever thought about actually “doing it” with a boy. And then I corrected myself. Danger, danger, Tammy. Thorn isn’t a boy. He’s a man.

  How did this happen to me? That I would cave to even admitting I had this sudden, surging physical desire for someone? I wracked my brain and couldn’t think of a single boy who had set my heart pounding and my extremities tingling like Thorn did. I put on some vanilla-scented hand lotion. I wanted my hands to be soft, in case he wanted to hold mine. Yeah, I had it bad!

  Anthony tapped on my door and it swung open. “Stop primping. And don’t put any goop on your face or he’ll be as disgusted as any other guy to see that stuff caked on like every day is Halloween.”

  “I’m fine. It’s just mascara and not a lot of it.” I paused, hairbrush in hand. “Why are you helping me, Anthony?”

  “Because he told me stuff when we were alone. I can’t tell you the details because it’s guy talk and destiny stuff and… just get your bubble butt to his noble side. We can’t leave our company alone. It would be rude as all get out. And we don’t want him wandering off to go chasing after something interesting passing by.”

  My heart leapt into my throat in fear at the thought of Thorn leaving us. “Where is he?”

  “He’s in the backyard. I have to clean out the minivan before we get in it. Mom said so—so you don’t have to get your lily-white hands dirty or get sweaty. Go keep him company while I go wrestle with a Dustbuster and throw away the fast-food wrappers and empty Starbucks cups.”

  “Thanks, Anthony.”

  “Yeah, yeah. That’s a cute dress, by the way, if a little short, but I’m just warning you that if you hurt this guy in any way, you’re toast, sister. Toast. If you play him and mind-stab him in any way—”

  “Shut up, Anthony. Why would I do that?”

  “You’ve left a trail of broken hearts of guys you led on and ditched before the first kiss. My friends, for example.”

  “Oh, shut up, those pervs deserved what they got, and you know it.”

  “Well, Thorn is special. He’s already my friend, so don’t—”

  “Begone!” I said and mock-threw a spell, as if.

  Anthony got pushed back against the hall wall and nearly fell.

  “What the hell did you just do!”

  “Nothing.”

  “That nothing was something. Don’t play with your gifts like that, Tammy.”

  “Anthony, are you messing with me right now?” I asked, scared.

  “No, you pushed me away with a ‘begone,’ and your hand waved at me with attitude and intent!” He paused. “File that away in your twisted little brain. You might have a new power, bee-atch. And I’m saying that as an alchemist-in-training. You did something just now. Believe it!”

  He left me standing there with my mouth open. I unplugged my curling iron and put it away. I huffed into my hand and sniffed my breath. It was icky, so I brushed my teeth and went into the backyard to find Thorn.

  With that scruffy red beard gone—I didn’t miss it one bit, to be honest—Thorn washed his clothes in a five-gallon plastic bucket in the backyard with cold water and some Woolite that Mom must have given him.

  I told him we could wash them in a machine, but there was apparently no convincing him to use the washing machine, which he was sure would destroy his hand-woven clothes that his mother had made.

  I gave him a hand with the clothespins. He didn’t know how they worked, of course. He marveled at every little thing and I could tell without reading his mind that he was sucking in all that modern life had to offer. And filing away all the information for future reference.

  “Where’s your sword? I’ve never seen you without it when you’re in your man form.”

  “Your mother convinced me to lock it in her gun safe. She said that I would be arrested for carrying it in public.”

  “That’s probably true.” I said, “You trust my mom. I’m glad.”

  “She’s a dragon, as well as a vampire. So, she is the only other dragon I know of in your world.”

  “She’s the only—oh, wait a minute.” I thought back to when I had once dug up stuff from my mom’s brain while she was asleep. “There’s another dragon-vampire. I think he lives in a castle in Romania. It’s a country in Eastern Europe.”

  “Romania. Vlad Tepes still exists?” he asked, frowning.

  “Is that Dracula’s real name?”

  He nodded. “Ah, so Dracul took the name of the dragon as his own?”

  “I guess so. My mom knows him. But he lives across the ocean.”

  Thorn shuddered. “He is good or evil in this world?”

  “Both. I know that’s weird to say, but it is what it is. Wrap your head around that one, right? Let’s call him a frenemy.”

  “Indeed. Friend and enemy. So, castles still exist?”

  “Some of them do. In that part of the world. You are in North America right now, in the United States. And in the grand scope of time, it’s still considered the New World. Or so my history teacher says. We never had a king who ruled here, after a big war to get our independence from the British. So, any American castles you see are fairly modern, just built to emulate the Old World.”

  “The Old World. That is what you call my times. Oh, if only I could see if the castle in Heorot still exists, the one that Beowulf took from King Hrothgar and made it his own.”

  “I’ll find out for you. If I remember right from my Beowulf studies, Roskilde, Denmark, is the approximate location.”

  “How can you know without traveling there?”

  “I can use my phone to look for it on Google Earth. It’s a mapping and photography technology program to record the locations of places.”

  “Please show me the map. Is it parchment or cloth?”

  “No, it’s on this glass screen.” I got out my phone and zoomed right in to the cathedral at Roskilde, Denmark.

  Thorn gasped. “That’s the church roof where I used to perch like a gargoyle and listen to the monks sing their songs of woe.”

  That gave me pause. “How old are you, Thorn?”

  “Well, what year is it?”

  I told him, and he looked disconcerted.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Sure, I’m sure. Everyone knows what year it is.”

  “Answer me this, then. Has anyone ever changed the date of the march of civilization?”

  “Of course. The Romans had a ten-month calendar. Israel had another calendar. China has another calendar. And most of the world today has the twelve-month calendar that says it’s the twenty-first century.”

  He breathed easier then. “I begin to understand. How old do you say is the cathedral, which, by the way, has changed some since I saw it being constructed.”

  I did a quick Wiki search and I said, “I see what you’re really asking. I think you’re somewhere around fourteen hundred years old. But don’t worry, you don’t look a day over twenty-one years old.”

  He looked up at the sky and nearly roared, “Oh, my dear Creator. How could this happen? I am ancient!”

  I said, “Time is relative. Don’t worry about it, Thorn.”

  “I must worry about it. How long have I been searching for the Cup of Forgiveness? I thought it was taken fifty years ago by Beowulf. But no, it was taken centuries ago! I must hurry and find it before it is too late.”

  “What if you don’t?” I asked.

  “The world will end as you know i
t, as I know it, as everyone knows it.”

  “That would be bad.”

  “Exceedingly bad.”

  I sighed. “Let’s look for the castle on Google Earth. Just so you can see it again.” I paused. “You must feel a little lost in time. But things are still there in some way, I’m sure.”

  He was looking at the screen and said, “Stop. I see the ruins of the castle.”

  “Where?”

  “Can I touch the device as you do?”

  I handed it to him. “Don’t drop it or it’ll break.”

  “I’ll be careful.” He took it from me. “Look at this dragon’s-eye view! You are sure it is not sorcery in my hand?”

  “Positive. It’s a machine, and it stores information and allows the user to access that information.”

  “Does evil incarnate have a device like this?”

  “I’m sure he does. Hundreds of millions of people have this device. If you have enough money, you can buy almost any technology, legal or not.”

  He blew through his lips. “Time has marched so far into the future that I fear it is almost too late to save it with the Cup.”

  “Don’t panic. There’s nothing you can do to slow down time, so you just have to deal with today for there will be a tomorrow,” I said.

  “That is a tall order.” He swiped the screen here and there and then showed me a photo of some standing stones in Denmark. “The castle was once here. I recognize the arrangement of the stones in front of it that were used for many purposes, but mostly to study the heavens and for special ceremonies. Now, there is just grass and hills and a few rocks left of the castle half buried in the hills.” He looked at me, excited. “If only I knew how to travel there. I would love to show you my home, even if it is what is only left of it.”

  I smiled. “I would love that, if we could, but the Cup of Forgiveness is here. As much as I would love to go there with you, I also don’t want to mess up your mission. It’s hard to admit it because I am usually all about me, so my family says, but the Cup is far more important than my needs and wants.”