Unfettered

by Terry Brooks

  “All little boys have imaginary friends, Jackie,” his mother told him. “That’s part of growing up. An imaginary friend is someone whom little boys can talk about their troubles when no one else will listen, someone they can tell their secrets to when they don’t want to tell anyone else. Sometimes they can help a little boy get through some difficult times. Pick is your imaginary friend, Jackie. But you have to understand something. A friend like Pick belongs just to you, not to anyone else, and that is the way you should keep it.”

  He looked for Pick all that summer and into the fall, but he never found him. When his father took him into the park, he looked for Wartag under the old stone bridge. He never found him either. He checked the skies for Daniel, but never saw anything bigger than a robin. When he finally persuaded his father to walk all the way back into the darkest part of the woods—an effort that had his father using words Jack had not often heard him use before—there was no sign of the tree that imprisoned Desperado.

  Eventually, Jack gave up looking. School and his friends claimed his immediate attention, Thanksgiving rolled around, and then it was Christmas. He got a new bike that year, a two-wheeler without training wheels, and an electric train. He thought about Pick, Daniel, Wartag, and Desperado from time to time, but the memory of what they looked like began to grow hazy. He forgot many of the particulars of his adventure that summer afternoon in the park, and the adventure itself took on the trappings of one of those fairy tales Pick detested so.

  Soon, Jack pretty much quit thinking about the matter altogether.

  He had not thought about it for months until today.

  He wheeled his bike up the driveway of his house, surprised that he could suddenly remember all the details he had forgotten. They were sharp in his mind again, as sharp as they had been on the afternoon they had happened. If they had happened. If they had really happened. He hadn’t been sure for a long time now. After all, he was only a little kid then. His parents might have been right; he might have imagined it all.

  But then why was he remembering it so clearly now?

  He went up to his room to think, came down long enough to have dinner, and quickly went back up again. His parents had looked at him strangely all during the meal—checking, he felt, to see if he was showing any early signs of expiring. It made him feel weird.

  He found he couldn’t concentrate on his homework, and anyway it was Friday night. He turned off the music on his tape player, closed his books, and sat there. The clock on his nightstand ticked softly as he thought some more about what had happened almost seven years ago. What might have happened, he corrected—although the more he thought about it, the more he was beginning to believe it really had. His common sense told him that he was crazy, but when you’re dying you don’t have much time for common sense.

  Finally he got up, went downstairs to the basement rec room, picked up the phone, and called Waddy. His friend answered on the second ring, they talked about this and that for five minutes or so, and then Jack said, “Waddy, do you believe in magic?”

  Waddy laughed. “Like in the song?”

  “No, like in conjuring. You know, spells and such.”

  “What kind of magic?”

  “What kind?”

  “Yeah, what kind? There’s different kinds, right? Black magic and white magic. Wizard magic. Witches brew. Horrible old New England curses. Fairies and Elves…”

  “That kind. Fairies and Elves. Do you think there might be magic like that somewhere?”

  “Are you asking me if I believe in Fairies and Elves?”

  Jack hesitated. “Well, yeah.”

  “No.”

  “Not at all, huh?”

  “Look, Jack, what’s going on with you? You’re not getting strange because of this dying business, are you? I told you not to worry about it.”

  “I’m not. I was just thinking…” He stopped, unable to tell Waddy exactly what he was thinking because it sounded so bizarre. After all, he’d never told anyone other than his parents about Pick.

  There was a thoughtful silence on the other end of the line. “If you’re asking me whether I think there’s some kind of magic out there that saves people from dying, then I say yes. There is.”

  That wasn’t exactly what Jack was asking, but the answer made him feel good anyway. “Thanks, Waddy. Talk to you later.”

  He hung up and went back upstairs. His father intercepted him on the landing and called him down again. He told Jack he had been talking with Dr. Muller. The doctor wanted him to come into the hospital on Monday for additional tests. He might have to stay for a few days. Jack knew what that meant. He would end up like Uncle Frank. His hair would fall out. He would be sick all the time. He would waste away to nothing. He didn’t want any part of it. He told his father so and without waiting for his response ran back up to his room, shut the door, undressed, turned off the lights, and lay shivering in his bed in the darkness.

  He fell asleep for a time, and it was after midnight when he came awake again. He had been dreaming, but he couldn’t remember what the dreams were about. As he lay there, he thought he heard someone calling for him. He propped himself up on one arm and listened to the silence. He stayed that way for a long time, thinking.

  Then he rose; dressed in jeans, pullover, and sneakers; and crept downstairs, trying hard not to make any noise. He got as far as the back porch. Sam was asleep on the threshold, and Jack didn’t see him. He tripped over the dog and went down hard, striking his head on the edge of a table. He blacked out momentarily, then his eyes blinked open. Sam was cowering in one corner, frightened half to death. Jack was surprised and grateful that the old dog wasn’t barking like crazy. That would have brought his parents awake in a minute. He patted Sam’s head reassuringly, pulled on his windbreaker, and slipped out through the screen door.

  Silence enveloped him. Jack crossed the damp green carpet of the backyard on cat’s feet, pushed through the bushes at its end, and went into the park. It was a warm, windless night, and the moon shone full and white out of a cloudless sky, its silver light streaming down through breaks in the leafy trees to chase the shadows. Jack breathed the air and smelled pine needles and lilacs. He didn’t know what he would tell his parents if they found him out there. He just knew he had to find Pick. Something inside whispered that he must.

  He reached the old pine and peered beneath its spiky boughs. There was no sign of Pick. He backed out and looked about the park. Crickets chirped in the distance. The baseball diamonds stretched away before him east to the wall of the trees where the deep woods began. He could see the edge of the river bluff south, a ragged tear across the night sky. The cemetery was invisible beyond the rise of the park west. Nothing moved anywhere.

  Jack came forward to the edge of the nearest ball diamond, anxious now, vaguely uneasy. Maybe this was a mistake.

  Then a screech shattered the silence, and Jack caught sight of a shadow wheeling across the moonlight overhead.

  “Daniel!” he shouted.

  Excitement coursed through him. He began to run. Daniel was circling ahead, somewhere over the edge of the bluff. Jack watched him dive and soar skyward again. Daniel was directly over the old stone bridge where Wartag lived.

  As he came up to the bridge he slowed warily, remembering anew the Troll’s mean-looking eyes. Then he heard his name called, and he charged recklessly ahead. He skidded down the dampened slope by the bridge’s west support and peered into the shadows.

  “Jack Andrew McCall, where have you been, Boy?” he heard Pick demand without so much as a perfunctory hello. “I have been waiting for you for hours!”

  Jack couldn’t see him at first and groped his way through the blackness.

  “Over here, Boy!”

  His eyes began to adjust, and he caught sight of something hanging from the underside of the bridge on a hook, close against the support. It was a cage made out of stone. He reached for it and tilted it slightly so he could look inside.

  There was
Pick. He looked exactly the same as he had those seven years past—a tiny man with a reddish beard, green trousers and shirt, black belt and boots, and the peculiar hat of woven pine needles. It was too dark to be certain whether or not his face was flushed, but he was so excited that Jack was certain that it must be. He was dancing about on first one foot and then the other, hopping up and down as if his boots were on fire.

  “What are you doing in there?” Jack asked him.

  “What does it look like I’m doing in here—taking a bath?” Pick’s temper hadn’t improved any. “Now listen to me, Jack Andrew, and listen carefully because I haven’t the time to say this more than once!” Pick was animated, his tiny voice shrill. “Wartag set a snare for me and I blundered into it. He sets such snares constantly, but I am usually too clever to get trapped in them. This time he caught me napping. He locked me in this cage earlier tonight and abandoned me to my fate. He has gone into the deep woods to unbalance the magic. He intends to set Desperado free!”

  He jabbed at Jack with his finger. “You have to stop him!”

  Jack started. “Me?”

  “Yes, you! I don’t have the means, locked away in here!”

  “Well, I’ll set you free then!”

  Pick shook his head. “I’m afraid not. There’s no locks or keys to a Troll cage. You just have to wait until it falls apart. Doesn’t take long. Day or two at most. Wouldn’t matter if you did free me, anyway. An Elf locked in a stone cage loses his magic for a moonrise. Everyone knows that!”

  Jack gulped. “But, Pick, I can’t…”

  “Quit arguing with me!” the Elf stormed. “Take this!” He thrust something through the bars of the cage. It was a tiny silver pin. “Fasten it to your jacket. As long as you wear it, I can see what you see and tell you what to do. It will be the same as if I were with you. Now, hurry! Get after that confounded Troll!”

  “But what about you?” Jack asked anxiously.

  “Don’t bother yourself about me! I’ll be fine!”

  “But…”

  “Confound it, Jack! Get going!”

  Jack did as he was told, spurred on by the urgency he heard in the other’s voice. He forgot momentarily what had brought him to the park in the first place. Hurriedly, he stuck the silver pin through the collar of his jacket and wheeled away. He scrambled out of the ravine beneath the bridge, darted through the fringe of trees screening the ball diamonds, and sprinted across the outfields toward the dark wall of the woods east. He looked skyward once or twice for Daniel, but the owl had disappeared. Jack could feel his heart pounding in his chest and hear the rasp of his breathing. Pick was chattering from somewhere inside his left ear, urging him on, warning that he must hurry. When he tried to ask something of the Elf, Pick cut him off with an admonition to concentrate on the task at hand.

  He reached the woods at the east end of the park and disappeared into the trees. Moonlight fragmented into shards of light that scattered through the heavy canopy of limbs. Jack charged up and down hills, skittered through leaf-strewn gullies, and watched the timber begin to thicken steadily about him.

  Finally, he tripped over a tree root and dropped wearily to his knees, gasping for breath. When he lifted his head again, he was aware of two things. First, the woods about him had gone completely silent. Second, there was a strange greenish light that swirled like mist in the darkness ahead.

  “We are too late, Jack Andrew,” he heard Pick say softly. “That bubble-headed Troll has done his work! Desperado’s free!”

  Jack scrambled up quickly. “What do I do now, Pick?”

  Pick’s voice was calm. “Do, Jack? Why, you do what you must. You lock the Dragon away again!”

  “Me?” Jack was aghast. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t know anything about Dragons!”

  “Stuff and nonsense! It’s never too late to learn and there’s not much to learn in any case. Let’s have a look, Boy. Go on! Now!”

  Jack moved ahead, his feet operating independently of his brain, which was screaming at him to get the heck out of there. The misted green light began to close about him, enveloping him, filling the whole of the woods about him with a pungent smell like burning rubber. There was a deadness to the night air, and the whisper of something old and evil that echoed from far back in the woods. Jack swallowed hard against his fear.

  Then he pushed through a mass of brush into a clearing ringed with pine and stopped. There was something moving aimlessly on the ground a dozen yards ahead, something small and black and hairy, something that steamed like breath exhaled on a winter’s morning.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” murmured an invisible Pick.

  “What is it?” Jack demanded anxiously.

  Pick clucked his tongue. “It would appear that Wartag has learned the hard way what happens when you fool around with Dragons.”

  “That’s Wartag?”

  “More or less. Keep moving, Jack. Don’t worry about the Troll.”

  But Jack’s brain had finally regained control of his feet. “Pick, I don’t want anything more to do with this. I can’t fight a Dragon! I only came because I…because I found out that…”

  “You were dying.”

  Jack stared. “Yes, but how…?”

  “Did I know?” Pick finished. “Tut and posh, boy! Why do you think you’re here? Now listen up. Time to face a rather unpleasant truth. You have to fight the Dragon whether you want to or not. He knows that you’re here now, and he will come for you if you try to run. He needs to be locked away, Jack. You can do it. Believe me, you can.”

  Jack’s heart was pounding. “How?”

  “Oh, it’s simple enough. You just push him from sight, back him into his cage, and that’s that! Now, let’s see. There! To your left!”

  Jack moved over a few steps and reached down. It was a battered old metal garbage can lid. “A shield!” declared Pick’s voice in his ear. “And there!” Jack moved to his right and reached down again. It was a heavy stick that some hiker had discarded. “A sword!” Pick announced.

  Jack stared at the garbage can lid and the stick in turn and then shook his head hopelessly. “This is ridiculous! I’m supposed to fight a Dragon with these?”

  “These and what’s inside you,” Pick replied softly.

  “But I can’t…”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “But…”

  “Jack! You have to! You must!” Pick’s words were harsh and clipped, the tiny voice insistent. “Don’t you understand? Haven’t you been listening to me? This fight isn’t simply to save me or this park! This fight is to save you!”

  Jack was confused. Why was this a fight to save him? It didn’t make any sense. But something deep inside him whispered that the Elf was telling him the truth. He swallowed his fear, choked down his self-doubt, hefted his makeshift sword and shield, and started forward. He went quickly, afraid that if he slowed he would give it up altogether. He knew somehow that he couldn’t do that. He eased his way warily ahead through the trees, searching the greenish mist. Maybe the Dragon wasn’t as scary as he imagined. Maybe it wasn’t like the Dragons in the fairy tales. After all, would Pick send him into battle against something like that, something he wouldn’t have a chance against?

  There was movement ahead.

  “Pick?” he whispered anxiously.

  A shadow heaved upward suddenly out of the mist, huge and baleful, blocking out the light. Jack whirled and stumbled back.

  There was Desperado. The Dragon rose against the night like a wall, weaving and swaying, a thing of scales and armor plates, a creature of limbs and claws, a being that was born of Jack’s foulest nightmare. It had shape and no shape, formed of bits and pieces of fears and doubts that were drawn from a dozen memories best forgotten. It filled the pathway ahead with its bulk, as massive as the crooked, shaggy tree from which it had been freed.

  Jack lurched to an unsteady halt, gasping. Eyes as hard as polished stone pinned him where he stood. He could feel the heat of the Dragon against
his skin and at the same time an intense cold in the pit of his stomach. He was sweating and shivering all at once, and his breath threatened to seize up within his chest. He was no longer thinking; he was only reacting. Desperado’s hiss sounded in the pit of his stomach. It told him he carried no shield, no sword. It told him he had no one to help him. It told him that he was going to die.

  Fear spread quickly through Jack, filling him with its vile taste, leaving him momentarily helpless. He heard Pick’s voice shriek wildly within his ear, “Quick, Jack, quick! Push the Dragon away!”

  But Jack was already running. He bolted through the mist and trees as if catapulted, fleeing from Desperado. He was unable to help himself. He could no longer hear Pick; he could no longer reason. All he could think to do was to run as fast and as far from what confronted him as he could manage. He was only thirteen! He was only a boy! He didn’t want to die!

  He broke free of the dark woods and tore across the ball diamonds toward the bridge where Pick was caged. The sky was all funny, filled with swirling clouds and glints of greenish light. Everything was a mass of shadows and mist. He screamed for Pick to help him. But as he neared the bridge, its stone span seemed to yawn open like some giant’s mouth, and the Dragon rose up before him, blocking his way. He turned and ran toward the Indian burial mounds, where the ghosts of the Sinnissippi danced through the shadows to a drumbeat only they could hear. But again the Dragon was waiting. It was waiting as well at the cemetery, slithering through the even rows of tombstones and markers like a snake. It was waiting amid the shrub-lined houses of Woodlawn, wherever Jack turned, wherever he fled. Jack ran from one end of the park to the other, and everywhere, the Dragon Desperado was waiting.

  “Pick!” he screamed over and over, but there was no answer. When he finally thought to look down for the silver pin, he discovered that he had lost it.

  “Oh, Pick!” he sobbed.