Hip Deep in Dragons

by Christina Westcott

  I looked over Robby’s shoulder at the old man. He didn’t look like a wizard. No pointy hat or long robe. In fact, he looked like the ragged men I sometimes saw picking up aluminum cans along the highway.

  “I just wanted to see a unicorn, sir.”

  The old man squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I was afraid of something like this when I agreed to let you go into Vayron to study, Robert. You know the rules about Vayronii learning about magic. And now I have to clean up the mess you have made.”

  “I will not allow you to hurt her,” Robby declared.

  “Oh, do not be silly. No one is going to get hurt, except perhaps your bottom. Now, you run along to the tower and get my satchel and wait for me at the bridge. And inform Esmeralda that she will not be getting any apples for several weeks for her part in this little misadventure.”

  Robby let go of my hand and sidled around Procyon Bey, but instead of leaving, he stayed to watch. The wizard approached, leaning down to regard me gravely. I’d expected him to smell like the homeless men, but instead his scent reminded me of freshly cut hay and cups of strong tea.

  “I am so sorry about this, my dear.” He sighed.

  “I only wanted to see a unicorn.” My voice was tiny in the echoing vastness.

  “I know. It is so painful when our dreams die.” He raised his hand to my face. Sparks of colored light danced on his fingertips.

  “I will never forget you, Laura,” Robby yelled from behind the wizard.

  I felt a slight sting as the old man’s finger touched my temple, and then hands turning me gently around and urging me forward. I found myself standing in the sunshine under the arch of my father’s newly built arbor. All I could remember was that I hadn’t been able to find Bob the kitten all day, and I was afraid he’d run away.

  Sixteen years later, standing in the same spot, I recognized the worth of the gift Robby had given me, and tears streamed down my cheeks. He’d been true to his promise. He hadn’t forgotten, and he’d given me back a piece of my life I hadn’t known I was missing.

  Chapter Five

  I washed the breakfast dishes, cleaned out the refrigerator, and mopped the kitchen floor, but that didn’t help. The emptiness simmering in my chest kept me moving, looking for one more mindless task to make me forget. I tidied up the chaos on the bedroom floor, but as I slipped the paperbacks into the bookshelf, I spied my old mythology dictionary. Returning to the kitchen table, I leafed through the pages until I came to the listing for dragons and its picture of a knight cowering before a fire-breathing monster.

  In all those fairy tales, the damsel waited in her castle while her man went off to do battle. How many of those stories ended badly because the stupid knight got his head bitten off?

  I considered myself a twenty-first century woman. Women today didn’t sit around and wait for the one they cared about to come home from the fray. We were out there with our follow Marines kicking down doors in Iraq and Afghanistan. We flew fighter jets. I ought to be able to face one little dragon. He did say Shakagwa Dun was a small dragon, but then “small” might be a relative term when it came to dragons.

  I studied the map in the living room, my finger tapping the glass over the spot Robby had indicated. The Federal government put more and more land under its jurisdiction with the Everglades Restoration Project and closed it to recreational vehicle use, but I thought I could slip in there unnoticed and take a look around. The terrain started out primarily pine forests but gave way to sawgrass prairies dotted with cypress hammocks. It might be empty wetlands, but how hard would it be to miss a wizard fighting a dragon?

  I changed into a pair of jeans and pulled a denim shirt on over my tee. The long sleeves would be hotter, but offered protection from scratches, bugs, and sunburn. I laced a pair of sturdy, high-top boots over my pants legs and collected my hair into a twist. In case I could get a picture of the mythical Shakagwa Dun, I grabbed my camera bag—not that anyone would believe it was a real dragon. Only I would know the image hadn’t been computer generated.

  My dad had always stressed the importance of having the right supplies and equipment when we went into the wild, citing the rash of idiots who were rescued from the glades every year. Even in the days before GPS units, he said there was no excuse for getting lost. Just head west and you’re bound to hit civilization. And if you couldn’t find west? Well, then you had no business being out in the swamp. The important thing was not to panic and be prepared for every emergency, and Dan Chambers had a safety checklist as long as an airline pilot’s that he never deviated from before each outing.

  The old Jeep had been my father’s passion. Many a night, I’d lie awake in bed and listen to him and his buddies out in the garage, tinkering, getting ready for the next weekend’s excursion. Keeping the Jeep in tip-top shape was my tribute to my father.

  I grabbed a case of bottled water, filled a tote bag with energy bars, apples, and junk food, and then headed for the garage. Circling the Jeep, I confirmed each item on that mental checklist I inherited from my father. All the fluid levels were topped off, the battery charged up. In the back, a toolbox held spare fan belts and radiator hoses, a box of matches and a flare gun—just in case the worse happened and I needed to signal a rescue aircraft. An extra can of gas and the spare tire completed my list of necessities.

  Like many southern children, I’d been taught proper respect and usage of firearms, but I hadn’t touched one since before I left home for college. If my anemic checking account could stand the shock, I’d be able to pick up a rifle from any sporting goods store or big box discounter, but in some ways, Naples is still a small town. My neighbors would wonder why the quiet, young veterinarian next door needed a weapon capable of bringing down an elephant—if even that would stop a dragon.

  As a vet, I’d devoted my life to saving animals. Could I kill one—even a dragon? Robby was right. Out there in the glades, my presence would only be a liability to him. I’d given him my word that I’d stay here and wait. I picked up the tote bag and started out of the garage, but a disturbing image flashed across my mind, jolting me to a stop.

  Robby injured, perhaps bleeding, alone out there in the wild, miles away from my help.

  The thought sent my pulse thudding against the inside of my skull. Would he have enough magic left to heal his wounds after battling the dragon? He’d sought me out last night when he needed help, so I had to be there for him. Be it as a man or a cat, he would need my healing skills. I tossed the tote into the back of the Jeep and clambered behind the steering wheel. Half an hour later, I rolled off the Interstate and turned inland, the oversized, knobby tires singing on the pavement. I stopped at a convenience store, topped off the tank and the spare can, and got ice for my cooler.

  Each time I passed someone walking with a knapsack, I slowed to see if he had a staff and silver-striped hair, but none of them were Robby. The path he traveled was not one I’d find in this world.

  The area bounding Naples on the east had been laid out as a development in the sixties by speculators who’d carved miles of roads into the land, brought in uninformed buyers, and pressured them to purchase property that was little more than swampland. It was a pattern repeated often in the history of Florida, and like the others, this area had been caught up in one of the cycles of boom and bust so common to the state. Eventually it had grown into a prosperous bedroom community for the city, a curious mixture of suburban and rural, where McMansions rubbed shoulders with modest tract homes.

  As I continued eastward, the houses grew sparser, finally disappearing altogether. Cypress trees dotted the upland forest of slash pine and sable palm, signaling the land was growing lower and wetter. Soon the pavement ended, and I continued onto a graded road of hard-packed shell, following it until I found a track that led off to the northeast. I splashed through flooded ruts left by last night’s rain, veering toward the north and east at each fork. Often they curved around, leading me in the wrong direction, forcing me to backtrack and seek a
nother route.

  By mid-afternoon, the temperature hovered in the mid-nineties, and the humidity wrapped around me like a parka in a steam room. The trail meandered into a thick stand of melaleuca trees. Grateful for the shade, I stopped to drink a bottle of cold water, leaving a little to pour on a bandana to mop the sweat trickling down my face. I started on a second water and reached for an apple. Closing my eyes, I let the quiet of the forest unravel the knot of tension in my neck and shoulders.

  I stiffened.

  Too quiet.

  Attuned to its sounds, the land was never silent to me. Squirrels chattered in the pines or songbirds called, but now there was nothing. Even the omnipresent drone of insects had disappeared. No breeze stirred the leaves overhead. Only the occasional ping of the Jeep’s cooling engine broke the silence. The world held its breath, waiting. Waiting for what?

  Doubt crept into my thoughts. What was I doing out here in the wetlands alone? I hadn’t even thought to tell anyone where I was going. I could well imagine my father’s reaction to that bone-headed maneuver. And if I told him I was trying to locate a dragon? And a wizard?

  My fingertips brushed my mouth as I remembered the touch of Robby’s lips and the taste of him as his tenderness turned to passion.

  That’s why I’m here, Dad. You always told me I could have anything I wanted—if I was willing to go after it. Well, that’s what I’m doing; I’m going after Robby, and that overgrown lizard isn’t going to get in my way.

  What would my life have been like if I’d remembered my summer with Robby? Would I have been a different person, or would it all have played out just the same with a few bittersweet memories? I had a second chance now, an opportunity to bring magic back into my life. And I was damn well going to take it.

  As I reached to start the Jeep, an odd noise shivered in the air, a sound that felt wrong for this time, this place.

  Whoosh. Whoosh. It was faint, distant, and followed only by silence. I puzzled over it, almost dismissing it, when it sounded again, this time louder and closer, moving toward me. From the northeast. The cadence of the sound reminded me of great turkey buzzards riding the thermals, flapping their wings and gliding. Flap, flap, glide.

  Whoosh. Whoosh. Silence. Much closer now. An unreasonable yearning to cower beneath the Jeep’s dashboard seized me. My gaze darted around, seeking safety. I noticed a rabbit in the shadows beneath the trees, all but invisible against the fallen leaves, frozen in place, waiting for death to pass it by. I could taste the tiny creature’s fear in the back of my throat. Or was it my own?

  The thrum of the wings pounded against my eardrums. A wave of reptilian musk swept over me carrying an undertone of death and rotting flesh. Bile burned my throat.

  A shadow the size of a small corporate jet soared overhead, so low its wings stirred the tops of the trees. The primitive voice at the back of my brain yammered at me to run, but I chose the rabbit’s tactics and froze, the air going still in my lungs. I had only enough time to judge its size before it was gone, and yet the wings had seemed to hover over me for an eternity in an odd, fear-induced time distortion. The bottle fell from my fingers and water splashed onto my thighs. The coldness freed my mind from the dark cave where it cowered. My breath exploded in a ragged cough.

  This morning, in my familiar home, safely nestled in a bustling town, talk of a dragon had been an intellectual exercise, but out here, miles from civilization, alone and unarmed, it was a frightening reality. I’d smelled the dragon’s carrion stench and felt the fear it pushed before it like a psychic bow wave. If I had one functioning brain cell left in my head, I’d turn around and race back the way I’d come.

  But that was the way the dragon had gone. I remembered crossing several patches of open land and tried not to think of what would happen if the creature came across me in the open Jeep as I crossed one of those exposed areas.

  If retreating wasn’t an option, neither was cowering here until night fell. The thought of sharing the darkness with that thing sent a new spasm of shivers rattling through me. I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel, and waited for the shaking to subside. As crazy as it sounded, continuing on toward the spot Robby had pointed out on the map appeared to be the wisest decision.

  As if the word wisdom could be applied to any of my recent actions.

  I’d embarked on this ill-conceived mission to help Robby and my best chance to find him was to continue. A moment of terror slithered into my mind. Oh, God—or Bast or whoever watches out for him—let him be safe.

  The sounds of life flowed back across the wetlands. Insects droned and birds warbled. The rabbit dashed for the safety of its den in a rustle of grass. I started the Jeep, jammed it into gear, and bounced along the muddy ruts. From the way nature had crept back into the edges on the trail, it seemed this part wasn’t traveled much. After a few miles, I discovered why. A large pine had fallen, blocking the way, downed by one of the hurricanes that ripped through this area several years ago. If I wanted to continue, I’d have to go the rest of the way on foot.

  Camera draped across my chest, I scrambled over the log. Once beyond that obstruction, the path soon deteriorated to a single lane, hardly more than a game trail through an expanse of knee-deep grass. Alert for the sound of returning wings, I pressed on, the exposure spawning an unscratchable itch between my shoulder blades.

  The rank stench of a predator’s den guided me to the nest, an odor so oppressive I could taste it in the humid air. Pushing through a line of palmettoes, I stepped into an open vista of sawgrass prairie, a shallow marsh of razor-edged grasses bordered on the north by a large, cattail-ringed pond. Several hundred feet out into the slough, a hammock rose out of the water, providing a dry spot for a few sable palms and cypress trees to put down roots. Something about its hunch-backed shape looked odd. A mound of dirt and twigs easily twice my height stood at the water’s edge, the sawgrass and cypress seedlings around it broken and trampled.

  I zoomed in with my camera to get a closer look. The accumulation of reeds, twigs, and mud reminded me of an alligator’s nest, although much, much larger. Like the native reptile, the dragon probably used the heat generated by the decay of vegetation to incubate its eggs.

  Through the lens, the pallid fragments strewn across the base of the nest resolved into a scattering of bones. I picked out the long sinuous curve of vertebra and ribs of a large snake, and then the camera swept past a pale, rounded dome. I jerked back to it.

  A human skull.

  An icy blade of fear pierced my chest. I staggered, almost dropping the camera. It couldn’t be him. Not Robby.

  I steeled myself for a second look. Picked clean, and weathered to a dirty ivory, the skull appeared weeks old. I noticed scraps of faded, checkered cloth, like a flannel shirt, and recalled a story of a hiker reported missing north of Alligator Alley.

  A hawk’s sharp whistle cut off, and the buzzing gossip of insects vanished. Into that stillness came the faint sound of immense wings, beating and gliding. I scampered back among the palmettoes and crouched, my lungs laboring in quick, shallow breaths. The dark shape soared overhead and I got my first look at a real dragon.

  Shakagwa Dun was no friendly, animated beast or the jerky stop-motion monster of a Ray Harryhausen film. It was the spawn of the Loch Ness monster and a vampire bat, a nightmare H. P. Lovecraft might have dreamed up after an all-night bender. Thick, bony ridges covered its back, colored a blotchy green and black for camouflage in a marshland. The sides and belly looked no less impervious, armored in thick gray-green scales. A pair of powerful hind legs, tucked up under the body, clutched a large python in obsidian claws.

  At first, I thought the dragon’s front limbs had evolved into wings, like a bird, but as it landed and began to move about the nest, I noticed clawed hands midway down the appendages. The scientist in me analyzed this adaption almost dispassionately. The outside digit had elongated to provide support for the wing, much in the fashion of some of the flying dinosaurs, the pterosau
rs.

  I wondered if that’s what dragons were—dinosaurs that hadn’t gone extinct. Perhaps Mycon hadn’t been struck by the meteorite that had brought the Cretaceous Era to such a thunderous close in this world. I could be looking at a living dinosaur. I remembered I had a camera, rose, and began snapping pictures.

  The dragon shuffled about on all four limbs, its shorter front legs forcing it to move in an odd, hopping gait that parodied a kangaroo. Folded up, its wings rose behind its back in twin spires. It settled on it haunches, tearing the snake into chunks and bolting them down with a quick toss of its head.

  Through the lens, I locked gazes with Shakagwa Dun. In my excitement to get a better picture, I’d crept into the open, in full sight of the dragon. The cold yellow eyes studied me and then narrowed in hunger. It crouched, sliding first one foot and then the other forward, stalking me like a cinematic velociraptor, but this was all too real. I staggered, and the movement triggered the dragon’s hunting instinct. It opened its bloody maw to reveal a set of serrated teeth that would look at home in a great white’s mouth. It hissed with the sound of a thousand tea kettles boiling at once, and a cloud of greenish vapor sprayed from its mouth.

  The dragon attacked, throwing itself into a graceless charge across the marsh, spraying muck and broken vegetation in geysers behind its powerful hind limbs. I whirled and lurched toward the low palms, more in instinct than any real hope of attaining safety. The Jeep lay too far away to reach before that nightmare overtook me, and nothing in the way of cover lay between me and there. Flight seemed useless, but I still ran.

  A hand clamped down on my mouth before I could let out a scream. A strong arm wrapped around my waist, lifted me, and pulled me against a warm, hard body.

  “Do not move, milady, and make nary a sound,” Robby whispered, his lips next to my ear.

  I wanted to scream his name, but against his restraining hand, it came out as a whimper. He shushed me again and began a mumbled litany that I felt against my skin as much as heard. The singsong words meant nothing at first. I thought he was trying to comfort me, but the air around us began to change, to thicken until it was like breathing pudding. He muttered an incantation. A flash of hope filled me, only to be dashed in the next instant as I realized we were out of time. The dragon would reach us in seconds, long before he could complete his spell.