The Dark Shadow of Spring

by G. L. Breedon

  “And I’ll walk beside you, Alex,” Clark said. “Just in case there’s something else.”

  “Thanks, Clark,” Alex said and headed for the narrow ledge at the side of the tunnel. The others waited until Alex was safely past the illusion-covered pit before following him. Daphne came first and marked the ground near the pit again. After the others had joined them, Alex took a deep breath and let it out before heading into the darkness of the tunnel once more.

  The tunnel curved two more times before Alex found himself standing in front of a large circular stone door blocking the whole width of the tunnel. He could tell it was a door because of the seam between it and the rock wall and the foot-wide hole bored through its center. As he examined the hole with his glow-wand, he could see that the stone door looked to be nearly six feet thick.

  “What does a dragon need a door for?” Alex asked in frustration.

  “You’d think it wouldn’t mind if snacks showed up,” Rafael said.

  “Don’t refer to us as snacks,” Daphne said with a glare in Rafael’s direction.

  “Treats?” Rafael said. Daphne glared harder as a response.

  “Past,” Ben said. "How do we get past it?”

  “Can you smell anything magical about it, Clark?” Alex asked.

  “Hmm, nothing,” Clark said. “But I think I know why the hole is there. It’s for the dragon’s tail.”

  “Oh, that makes sense,” Nina said, looking up at the hole.

  Alex hated to ask, because he loathed not seeing something so obvious that his sister had grasped it, but he couldn’t figure out a way not to ask. “Dragon’s tail?”

  “Yeah, to trip the catch on the door,” Clark said.

  “There must be a latch on the other side of the door,” Nina added.

  “The dragon slides its tail in and flips the catch and then…” Daphne paused. “Then the door opens somehow.”

  “So how do we reach inside?” Alex wondered aloud.

  “I can do it,” Rafael said, stepping up to the massive stone door and peering up at the narrow hole bored into the center some ten feet above the ground.

  “What animal do you think will work?” Alex asked Rafael. “That hole is pretty small.” Alex knew that, while Rafael could take on the shape of nearly any animal, it had to be a creature of approximately his own size. He could become something a little bigger than himself, to transform into a kangaroo, for instance, but he couldn’t take the form of something too much smaller, like a mouse or a tiny bird.

  “Boa constrictor,” Rafael said, his skin beginning to glow a deep red.

  “I hate snakes,” Daphne said with a shiver.

  “I know,” Rafael said with a wicked laugh as his skin began to shimmer and warp. He shook violently and then collapsed to the floor, writhing and twisting as the glow of his skin became brighter. As the glow suddenly ended, a large, eight-foot boa constrictor lay tangled in Rafael’s clothes. The great snake slithered out of the clothes and across the floor toward the stone door. Daphne yelped and jumped back in spite of herself. It sounded to Alex like the snake giggled.

  “We’ll lift you up, Rafa,” Alex said, motioning to Clark. They each grabbed an end of the huge snake and held it up near the door, Clark holding the head near the hole in the center of the stone. The snake wriggled in their hands, extending itself up and into the hole of the door. A few helpful pushes from Alex and Clark and the snake’s tail disappeared through the small portal.

  Alex heard a muffled thump as Rafael, in snake form, fell to the floor on the other side of the door.

  “Ouch,” came Rafael’s voice through the stone.

  “Are you okay?” Alex shouted up to the hole in the stone.

  “I fell on my head,” Rafael replied.

  “At least he didn’t injure something he uses,” Daphne said.

  “I heard that,” Rafael said from the other side of the stone.

  “Can you see the latch to unlock the door?” Alex shouted, as he gave Daphne a reprimanding look. Daphne smiled back at him innocently.

  “I think I see it,” Rafael said. After a few moments of silence, the stone door began to rotate and roll sideways into the wall of the tunnel with a deafening rumble.

  “Louder?” Ben asked with his hands over his ears. “Could that door be any louder?”

  “Hopefully it’s not loud enough to wake dragons,” Alex said.

  “Hopefully that wasn’t the idea,” Rafael said from the shadows.

  Clark brought Rafael his clothes and the others waited as he changed in the shadows beyond the light of their wands. When he was finished, Alex stepped forward to join him.

  “I think we’re almost there,” Alex said, wrinkling his nose. “Even I can smell it now.”

  “If this is what dragons smell like,” Nina said, “no wonder they hide underground.”

  “Quietly,” Alex whispered, walking down the tunnel, Clark at his side. The others fell in silently behind.

  The tunnel curved only once more and then they stepped into a large space, a gasp of surprise sliding past each of their lips as the light of their glow-wands revealed the heart of the dragon’s lair. Alex could feel excitement fighting fear as his eyes drank in the sight before him.

  The chamber was immense, hundreds of feet wide, the ceiling reaching nearly a hundred feet above. No simple cave, it looked like an elaborate palace temple carved out of the mountain rock. The walls were smooth and curved gently around the circular room. Large double pillars rose up from the floor every twenty feet around the walls, seeming to support the ornately decorated domed ceiling over their heads. The walls were painted with murals depicting dragons in various states of battle and the domed ceiling was painted to resemble a cloud-filled sky.

  Most awe inspiring of all was the dragon itself, lying on a pile of furs. He was nearly a hundred feet long, even curled up as he was, his tail wrapped around his chest, wings folded down around his shoulders, the deep crimson scales glittering in the pale light of the crystal wands. His breath was slow, rustling scraps of dried fur and bones that littered the floor around it.

  “He’s really gorping here,” Daphne said, her voice a horse whisper.

  “Of course he is,” Alex said, swallowing on a dry throat as he struggled to ignore the voice in his head shouting, RUN! RUN! RUN!

  “Gold,” Ben said with a creak, looking more closely around the chamber. “Where’s the gold?”

  “I told you that was an old wives’ tale,” Rafael mumbled.

  “Whoa, he’s big,” Clark said in a hushed tone.

  “Maybe we should go back,” Nina offered. “Before anything can go wrong.”

  “What can go wrong?” Alex asked, afraid the fear might show in his voice. “All we have to do is wake him up a little bit and ask him what our destinies are.”

  “You always ask what can go wrong right before something goes wrong,” Rafael said, looking back over his shoulder and squinting back into the darkness.

  “Nothing will go wrong,” Alex said firmly. “I have a plan.”

  “How surprising,” Daphne said, rolling her eyes.

  “I feel better already,” Rafael said, shaking his head and facing the dragon.

  “Come on,” Alex said, walking quietly toward the head of the dragon, picking his way slowly between the mess of bones and fur from his long ago meals. He forced himself not to look back and make sure the others were behind him. Mostly for fear that, if they weren’t, he might lose his nerve and turn back himself. He loved the tingling feel of excitement that came with a dangerous adventure, but he wasn’t bone-headed stupid. Alex was fully aware that he was walking right up to a dragon’s mouth. How could he not be? It smelled like a carcass left rotting in the sun for a week.

  The others stepped up beside him in a tightly massed huddle. Alex looked at them, but they said nothing. He could see the terror in each of their eyes. He gave them his best wild grin of wicked confidence and hoped that it was enough to brace their fears. He hoped i
t was enough to brace his own.

  His plan was simple. So simple it might actually work.

  Chapter 4: Destiny Via Dragon

  Alex faced the dragon, stepping closer to his enormous scaled head, making sure to avoid getting too close to the long snake-like tail that wrapped up and around his body. Alex could feel heat radiating off the dragon like a red-hot coal fresh from a furnace fire. His head was nearly ten feet long and ridged with large bones beneath scaled skin. The heat became more intense as Alex leaned close to the ears. He warily eyed the four tusk-like ebony teeth protruding from the sleeping dragon’s leathery lips.

  “Gall’Adon,” Alex said, his voice cracking. He tried to swallow, but his mouth felt dry as weathered bark. He tried again, keeping his voice low and not too loud. He tried to imagine that he was waking his neighbor’s dog, Julep, from an afternoon nap beneath the holly tree in the back yard. “Gall’Adon,” he repeated, “we have come to hear our destinies.” The dragon lay still, his house-wide chest expanding and contracting slowly as he slumbered.

  Alex rubbed his face. This had to work. How else could you gently wake a dragon just enough so that it would tell you your destiny and not eat you as a mid-hibernation snack? Alex licked his lips and tried once more. “Great Gall’Adon, mighty dragon of the Black Bone Mountains, King of the Air above the Rune Valley, Lord of Dragons, we come seeking our destinies, which only you can reveal. Awaken from your century slumber and share with us the wisdom you hold. Disclose our destinies, one and all.”

  Alex held his breath. Maybe it had been too much. Too flowery? He had hoped a little flattery might help. Nothing. The dragon’s sleep did not alter. He glanced back over his shoulder to the others, giving them a hopeful look that almost begged for further ideas.

  “Very poetic,” Rafael whispered.

  “Maybe try more,” Daphne said. “More sweet talk.”

  “Yeah, butter him up like a dinner roll,” Clark intoned.

  Alex nodded his head and looked back to the dragon just as a puff of smoke rolled out of his wide nostrils. Gall’Adon shook his head slightly and his eyes fluttered. Alex froze, unable to breathe or blink or think. The dragon’s eyes slid open just a crack, like someone trying not to wake up, but hoping to see what had disturbed their sleep.

  “Destiny,” Gall’Adon rumbled, the dragon’s voice deeper than any sound Alex had ever heard, the vibrations shaking the clothes against his skin, reverberating through his heart within his chest. “Destiny is not fate. Who asks to hear his destiny?”

  Still frozen with fear, his heart pounding in his ears, excitement welling up from the base of his stomach, Alex shook himself to unlock his joints and mind. This was his moment. The moment he had been planning for the last two weeks, the moment he realized now that he had always been longing for, the moment when his true purpose in life would be revealed. With the dragon’s words, the world of his future would open up like the pages of a book being turned toward its end. He would get a glimpse of what his life would become and a hint as to how it would unfold.

  “Alex Ravenstar comes to hear his destiny,” Alex said, his voice stronger and louder than he had hoped, but still just above a crackled whisper.

  “You have fought the Dark Beast in all your lives,” Gall’Adon rumbled. “The Dark Beast marks you again. Always and forever.” Gall’Adon’s eyes fluttered slightly and then slid closed once more.

  Alex wasn’t sure what to do. Was that it? Was that his destiny? Who or what was the Dark Beast? How was he supposed to fight it and why? “What does that mean?” he asked out loud.

  “It means you’re toast,” a voice shouted from somewhere far behind him. Alex knew the voice. But how could he be here? An icy rock of fear dropped into the pit of his stomach as he spun to face the voice.

  The others also looked to see where the voice came from. Alex looked past their shoulders to see his fears confirmed. The voice belonged to just who he had thought it did: Dillon McClint, leader of the Mad Mages Club, son of the mayor, and all-around nemesis to Alex and the Guild.

  Dillon stood at the entrance of the dragon’s inner sanctum, a wolfish look spread across his long, pale face. The rest of his gang, his club, were standing beside him, all of them trying to look triumphant, but showing the fear of facing a dragon nonetheless. They were all slightly older than the members of the Guild. There was Earl, the lanky African boy who was Dillon’s best friend; Koji, the Japanese boy with the hot temper, always starting fights; Anna, the Russian girl, new to town and with a wicked mean streak concealed behind a genteel facade of politeness; and Mei, a small Chinese girl who was oddly sweet-natured for the Mad Mages, and who, Alex suspected, was only a member because she had a crush on Dillon.

  “I knew I heard something behind us,” Rafael said, his voice struggling between satisfaction and annoyance.

  “What are you doing here?” Alex demanded, the ball of icy fear in his belly turning to a hot coal of anger. He hadn’t raised his voice, but it echoed throughout the ornate stone chamber nonetheless.

  “Well, we’re not here to whisper sweet nothings in the dragon’s ear,” Anna said with a cloying smile.

  “We’re here to see the dragon,” Dillon shouted. Alex couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder, but Gall’Adon did not stir.

  “Yeah,” Earl said in a thuggish drawl. “We’re here to see some fire.”

  “Yeah, fire,” Mei said rather weakly. Alex doubted that she had expected the dragon to be quite as large as he was.

  “Get out of here, you gorp-gobbling goons!” Daphne said, her voice filled with imperious anger. “This isn’t a game.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Dillon laughed. “It’s a game of wake the dragon.”

  Alex knew what Dillon was about to do. In a small town, everyone knows how everyone else will behave. When he was young, Dillon had behaved like the spoiled child that he was, but as he got older, he became more and more violent and more and more reckless with his violence. He didn’t crave the thrill of adventure the way Alex did, he craved the thrill of destruction.

  “Run!” Alex shouted to his friends, grabbing Nina by the hand and pulling her to the side as Dillon conjured a blue-white fireball above his head. The other four Mad Mages created fireballs as well, throwing them toward the dragon as the members of the Guild leapt out of the way, following Alex to one of the tall stone pillars along the wall of the chamber.

  As Alex reached the wall, he spun in time to see the five fireballs strike Gall’Adon’s head. There was no chance the dragon would be harmed; the creature’s hide was impervious to flame, but that did not mean he would sleep through the assault. In a heartbeat, the dragon’s eyes flashed open and he raised himself up on his tree-like legs, his tail whipping out around defensively as he swung his head from side-to-side, scanning the room. Spotting Dillon and the Mad Mages at the entrance first, the dragon threw back his head in a bellow of rage and spit forth a cloud of orange-ivory fire that reached up to the ceiling and curved down around the walls.

  Alex and his friends ducked down and dove away from the wall of the chamber as the fire curved, like some living thing, down the walls, finally exhausting itself near the floor.

  “Who dares to enter my lair while I sleep?” Gall’Adon roared.

  Alex looked to Dillon and his cohorts at the entrance of the chamber. They were transfixed by the dragon, frozen in place with fear. Alex could see that the dragon was preparing to spit forth a storm of flame again right at the Mad Mages.

  “Run, you idiots!” Alex shouted at Dillon and his gang as the dragon’s flame rushed past his long, black teeth. “Jenu-Ka!” Alex said, breathing the rune-tongue word for wind as he drew the magical energy of the mountain and the land of the Rune Valley into himself, focusing his mind on the air of the room, willing it to do as he bid, exploding like an invisible balloon between the Mad Mages and the dragon.

  The wall of bursting air tossed the Mad Mages back on their feet even as it deflected the fire from the d
ragon’s mouth. Dillon and his gang stumbled backward, their terror twisting their faces as they screamed and ran down the tunnel, back toward the entrance above.

  “Why save them?” Rafael muttered beside Alex.

  “Because I didn’t stop to think about it,” Alex said, realizing it was true. He probably would have tried to save them if he had thought about it, but he probably would have had to think about it really hard.

  “I think we should save ourselves!” Daphne yelled as the dragon shifted quickly on his taloned feet toward them. “Run!”

  They ran, dashing across the chamber as the dragon bellowed and belched fire in their direction. Alex held tight to Nina’s hand, knowing she would be fast enough to follow. He looked over to see that Clark had swept Ben up in his arms and was running with him like he was carrying a football. Ben did not seem at all humiliated by the experience and was screaming at the top of his lungs for Clark to run faster.

  A stream of fire spewed from the dragon’s mouth, swirling to follow them as they ran for the entrance.

  “Jenu-Ka!” Alex shouted, using the rune-word for wind again even as he heard Daphne and Rafael yelling something similar beside him. A burst of air erupted behind them as they crossed the threshold of the entrance. They could feel the heat of the diverted flame as though a bonfire were chasing them, singeing their clothes and hair. But they did not look back. They kept running. They could hear the dragon’s deep-throated growl ringing in their ears and feel the mountain shake with G’allAdon’s movement as he lumbered through the chamber.

  “I think he’s following us!” Alex shouted, glancing over his shoulder as they ran around a curve in the tunnel.

  “Faster,” Ben shouted. “Run faster!”

  “I thought you liked fire,” Rafael yelled, eyes wide with fright.

  “Not when I’m in it!” Ben cried.

  “Just keep running,” Alex said, trying to fill his voice with enough authority to instill in them his confidence of their survival.