Seeking The Dragon

by Sarah J. Stone

  Chapter 8

  Back at the market set up in the center of the village, he was surprised to find that there seemed to be a lot to do here, and it was all within a relatively close distance to the house he had secured for himself. It wasn’t much – little more than a shack, really – but it was enough. There were markets, pubs, and traders galore. He wasn’t sure why he had expected it to be so primitive here, but they seemed to have all the modern conveniences, even if they were on a much smaller scale than he was used to in other places.

  Down the next street, he could smell the most wonderful aroma coming from a small pastry shop on one corner. Stepping inside, he was surprised to find that it appeared to be run solely by one woman. The woman was about his age with a shock of red hair, freckles, and beautiful, emerald green eyes. His heart ground to a halt. Though she looked nothing like his Maggie, she certainly had many of the same similarities.

  It was fairly busy at first, but began to thin out as people made their selection and left. Stepping to the counter, Tio ordered a slice of sweet bread and a cup of tea, which he took to a nearby table and sat to eat as he watched people meander down the street outside.

  “Ah, yer not from around here,” the young woman said as she approached the table to refill his tea.

  “What makes you say that?” Tio asked.

  “Well, fer one you’ve got the southern accent, but mostly because no one ever sits down in here,” the woman laughed.

  “Oh, there are tables. I thought…” Tio began, confused.

  “Oh, no… yer fine. Everyone is just usually stopping by on their way to here or there. They don’t have time to sit a spell,” she said. “My name is Caitlin O’Bannon. I own this place. Pleased to meet ya.”

  “Tio Sheaver. It’s nice to meet you, too.”

  “So, what brings you to town?” Caitlin asked. Tio gave her a brief account of how he ended up here, telling her only that he didn’t know how much longer he would stick around, as he was considering returning south.

  “I’m just yanking yer chain. Let me go check on my other patron.”

  Once he was gone, she returned to the table and they continued with their conversation. Before long, it was as if they were old friends, laughing loudly as they talked. Once Caitlin closed up shop, they walked over to a nearby pub and had dinner together, making plans to get together during the following weekend before parting ways. Content and more than a little tipsy, Tio made his way back to the house.

  He returned home feeling better than he had in a while. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but he felt invigorated. He didn’t feel like his life was all doom and gloom as he had a day before. He faced some choices, however. He could go back to the home he had shared with his father and resume his life there. Alternately, he was now in a new place and could start a whole, new life for himself. Either way, he felt that he had a new lease on life, and could do whatever he set his mind to. Tio no longer considered himself defined by anything that had happened to him in his life, and he was determined never to be miserable again.

  In the coming days, Tio became a fixture around the busy little town. Purchasing a lovely leather-bound journal, he began to write down his thoughts as his father had before him. It gave him peace when he needed to vent and there was no one around to listen. He began to write about the events of the town around him, where the townspeople welcomed him and gave to him freely as if he were one of their own.

  When he wasn’t writing about the humble townspeople of the area, he walked around the area, committing the buildings there to memory.

  From time to time, he watched the counter at the pastry shop for Caitlin, while she ran errands or just took a much-needed break, something she said she hadn’t had the luxury of doing since inheriting the shop several years ago. The two of them became extremely close as their friendship continued to develop, and soon, Tio had more friends among the townspeople than he could ever have envisioned. Life was finally better, and he could no longer imagine returning to the south of Ireland to the lonely cottage he had shared with his father. This felt more like home.

  Things were really looking up for him now. The hardest part of his days were the long nights spent awake, thinking about Maggie. Some nights he slept fine, but others he spent lying in his bed and remembering her touch. He missed her, and thinking of her brought fresh heartbreak, but he knew that she was far beyond his reach now and he would have to let her go.

  In some ways, knowing that she was where she was supposed to be provided him with a certain level of peace. If it had been their fate to be together, then he would be there with her, but, obviously, that was not the cards they had been dealt. They were doomed to love one another from afar for the rest of their lives, and he was oddly content with that now. It simply was what it was. He could say that he had known a great love and felt a fiery passion that few people could ever find in a lifetime of looking. Maybe, in time, he would find someone else, but he currently had no desire to seek them out, and couldn’t believe that he would ever want anyone else. While he was sometimes lonely, his love was only for Maggie, and he didn’t believe that would end until he took his final breaths.

  Tio’s days became very busy. With the work he had done for various people in town, he managed to purchase a dilapidated estate home and fix it up. After a bit of hard work, he finally opened his own inn and began taking in travelers from all over. Now that he had guests to tend to, he couldn’t get into town as much, but he and Caitlin still got together on weekends to just hang out or do something fun. Lately, Caitlin had been telling him about a young man that had been coming into the shop for the past six months, having just moved into town from parts unknown.

  “This guy – wow. He is so perfect and has wavy dark hair… and his eyes! They are an incredible deep green color that just pulls ya into them and makes ya all jelly kneed. He’s very nice, and I tried to flirt with him, but he doesn’t seem interested at all. He just wants to sit and drink his tea as he stares out the window. There is a certain sadness about him, a brooding intensity,” Caitlin told him, obviously a little infatuated with him. “I can’t believe ya have never run into him while ya were in town.”

  “He sounds like a dream guy,” Tio responded. “Are you sure he is real? I mean, you’re right. I’ve never seen him out and about, and I’ve been in your shop a lot in the last six months, even tending it at times. I’ve never laid eyes on this mystery man, but I doubt that I would have noticed him in the same way,” he said with a laugh.

  “Oh, he’s real alright. All man, this one,” she said with a wink and laughed.

  “You’re incorrigible, Caitlin,” Tio responded.

  “I know. I really need to find a man of my own. Closest thing I have to a sweetheart is you,” Caitlin grumbled.

  “Hey, now. You make me sound unappealing,” he complained.

  “Hardly. More like unattainable. Any woman only has to be around you for a matter of minutes to know your interests lie elsewhere,” she told him.

  “True,” he replied with a frown before changing the subject. “I need someone to help me out around the inn. Do you know anyone in town that needs some part-time work? It would just be here and there, tending the place, while I run errands or work on the books,” he told her.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Lauren Kelley’s husband is a real piece of work. He’s good natured enough, but lazy as a fat dog on a knoll and slave to the whiskey at times. She would be glad to get whatever hours you can give her, that one. She’s honest and a hard worker. I’ll have her stop by,” she said.

  “That would be great. Listen, I have to get going, but I will stop by to see you next week when I come back to pick up some things I had Ciaran, down the street, finding for me,” Tio said, standing to exit the shop.

  “I’ll see ya then,” Caitlin called back even as Tio disappeared out the front door and down the sidewalk.

  Chapter 9

  The next few days were uneventful as Tio tended to the inn and the smatte
ring of guests that inhabited it from time to time. Even when he had guests, they spent little time there, instead choosing to venture out into the town and through the countryside to sightsee as he had done in what had felt like not so long ago. He sometimes sat and talked with them by the large, open hearth in the great room at the entryway of the inn. They would sip brandy or wine and talk about their own homes, across the land and what had brought them to his inn.

  “What brought you here?” one elderly gentleman asked.

  “Love,” Tio replied simply, and it was the truth. Tio’s love for the dragon mother was what had brought him here, and then he had found another love. Though she was gone, he remained very much, still in love with her.

  “Ah, I loved a woman once. Her name was Meaghan, and she was the most beautiful angel you would ever want to see. It broke my heart when she passed away only a few years ago,” he said, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “How do you deal with such a great loss?” Tio asked softly, trying not to become choked up.

  “I just believe that one day I will see her again. Until that day, I will put one foot in front of the other and go wherever life takes me. I’m no longer afraid of what might happen to me, because I know that at the end of the journey she will be there waiting for me with open arms, and it will be like we never spent a day apart,” he said with a smile.

  Tio feigned a smile of his own. He had hoped that he might impart some words of wisdom to him that might soothe his own pain, but instead his words were a harsh reminder that he would not be so lucky. Maggie was in a different place, perhaps even already moving on with another by now. There was nowhere that he would go that he would find her ever again. And that was a bite that sank in all the way to the bone.

  Later, after everyone had gone down for the night, he went to bed and cried again for the first time in a while. In the beginning, he had cried all the time, but then it had tapered off. There were no more tears to cry. Now, a fresh batch had somehow welled up inside him as he sobbed pitifully into his pillow. It was hardly manly, but he didn’t seem to be able to stop it when the night fell and he was all alone.

  The next morning, he checked his well-meaning guest out, along with several others that were departing. He looked around at the now empty inn and knew it was going to be a long week with no guests on the books before the weekend and nothing planned to take his mind off what felt like fresh wounds. After busying himself for a while with getting the house back in order and washing the sheets and towels, he made his way down to the stream where he normally bathed in the warmer months. It was beginning to cool, but the brisk water was invigorating.

  When he returned, he was surprised to find Ciaran there waiting for him.

  “Ciaran! I thought I was coming over to get those!” he told him.

  “I was coming past and had some of them, so thought I’d drop them off my wagon. I’ve some more for you to pick up when you come into town,” Ciaran told him, already unloading the goods.

  “Great. My new help, Lauren, will be here in a bit, and I’ll come on up and get them,” Tio told him.

  “Sounds good. I need to get back now. See you soon,” Ciaran told him, unloading the last of the burlap bags filled with rice, beans, and other staples.

  An hour later, Lauren arrived. Tio was glad for the relief. He needed to get out before the walls closed in on him. She seemed agitated as she came in, her face red and blotchy, but that wasn’t unusual based on what Caitlin had told him.

  “Good to be out of my own house for a while. The mister is roaring drunk, and it’s still early morning. He came in from the evening like this, he did, and hasn’t slowed down a lick. If he doesn’t stop singing at the top of his lungs, I’m liable to bring harm to the old boy, so it’s best I be here instead,” she said.

  Tio chuckled to himself as he prepared to leave. Lauren seemed to have the worst marriage on the planet to anyone you ask, except Lauren herself. Despite her husband’s drinking and loud ways, she was head over heels in love with the man. He never harmed her or said a bad word about her, even when out of earshot. In fact, he would give a swift beating to any man that dared say a bad word about his wife. They were in the most dysfunctionally, happy marriage two people could ever hope to achieve and thrived in the carnage that they brought to one another’s lives. Love really was a mystery, Tio thought to himself.

  He changed into some warmer clothes and began the trek into town to retrieve the rest of his things from Ciaran. It was a beautiful day outside, with hardly a cloud in the sky. The packages proved to be much larger than he had imagined they would be, and he wasn’t going to be able to get them all into the large pack he carried on his back. Ciaran would be closing shortly, so he couldn’t leave them and pick them up later unless he wanted to wait until tomorrow.

  He struggled to get them all into his arms and make his way over to Caitlin’s place. He would leave what he couldn’t carry there in Caitlin’s storage room and pick them up after he had dropped off the first ones at the inn. If he didn’t make it back before Caitlin closed, he had the key he had been given for locking up on occasion, so he could get in after hours to take them. That would be the perfect solution, as he was excited to get the things he had purchased back to the inn to tinker with them.

  It was actually a good thing that they had arrived when they did, for now he wouldn’t be relegated all week to traveling around in search of new adventures to keep his mind off of things that seemed to be haunting him more than usual lately. He was feeling good about everything as he made his way down the sidewalk from Ciaran’s small business toward the pastry shop. Several people stopped to say hello and offer assistance, but he declined, telling them he wasn’t going far and would be fine.

  Despite the way last night had ended with the melancholy, brought forth by his chat with the old man at the guest house, he felt increasingly calm. His mood began to shift to an even more light-hearted state. Rounding the corner toward Caitlin’s shop, he decided that he would sit with her for a bit and have a pastry and some coffee before returning home. He hadn’t seen her in a few days and had told her he would come by and spend time with her anyway.

  Tio was loaded down with all of the packages as he made his way into Caitlin’s pastry shop and dropped them onto a nearby table. He noticed a young woman sitting at a table near the back of the room, his back turned away from the windows. There was something eerily familiar about her, which made him think he knew her from somewhere. Perhaps he had met her in town and just couldn’t place her. Of course, he could see little of her anyway with the large hat she was wearing. It covered her hair and most of her shoulders, but something about the way she sat still seemed familiar.

  “Oh, hey!” Caitlin called out to him. “I was wondering when ya were going to stop in again.”

  Caitlin’s voice was a little higher than usual, and as she walked toward Tio, she nodded her head back toward the gentleman in a chair not far from the woman that had caught Tio’s attention, making funny faces with her eyebrows bopping up and down. She mouthed the words ‘that’s him’ and stopped halfway across the floor by the woman.

  “Hey, Tio? I want you to meet my very good friend,” she began to say as she turned back toward him.

  The mysterious woman sat her cup down and stood up, turning toward him. He dropped the remaining bags in his hand at his feet and stared at her. Was he seeing things? It was Maggie, his precious Maggie, her red hair bound up tightly under the hat and her freckles calling to him from her perfect face. As he walked toward her with a confused look on his face, he looked toward Caitlin. Caitlin, too, was looking at him as if something was wrong with him.

  “Tio? Are ya okay, honey? Ya just went white as a sheet!” was the last thing Tio heard. Then, there was nothing, but the sound of his heart thumping out of his chest and the feeling that he might faint. It was as if he could literally feel his heart breaking open in his chest as he turned and ran from the shop, leaving his packages behind and racing toward hom
e. Barreling in through the side door, he told Lauren that she could go home, and he made his way to his office. There were currently no guests to tend to, and he had a bell that would alert him if any arrived.

  He sat staring at the opposite wall, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Why was Maggie here? He had been in tears when they had parted, having accepted that she didn’t want to be with him now that he had revealed what he truly was to her. It had hurt, but it was something that had to be done. He couldn’t have spent his life lying to her about everything – his name, his true nature. He had owed it to her to be honest. It wasn’t her fault that it was too much for her to accept.

  Chapter 10

  Tio was startled from his thoughts by the bell on the front door. He wasn’t expecting anyone to check in. Sometimes he got a post or a request from a relative regarding incoming visitors that would want to stay but there were none just then. It was probably a walk-in or a delivery. Perhaps even Caitlin coming to check on him after the way he had dropped everything and fled her shop in such a hurry. Tio took a deep breath and smoothed his clothes before stepping out to greet the visitor. There stood Maggie with her bags in her hands, looking at him as she walked toward him. He was suddenly speechless again.

  “What are you doing here, Maggie?” he asked her quietly, once he could manage words again.

  “Tio, I came to see you,” she said softly.

  “After all this time? I’ve accepted that you don’t want someone like me, but why come to just renew the hurt I feel?” he snapped at her, feeling the hurt and anger he had been suppressing well up to the surface.

  “If you will calm down and listen to me, then I can tell you what you want to know,” she said, still calm in spite of his obviously increasing rage. He wasn’t angry at her; he knew that. He could never be. His anger was just a matter of not being able to cope with what was happening, and the frustration over his lack of control over the situation.