by Scott Meyer
4.
One week later, after another battle with The Dragoneer and his pets had wound down and the last dragons had been dispatched, Martin said, “That was not fun.”
Jeff said, “I disagree.”
Gary said, “Your stupid dragons still ended up dead, Jeff.”
“True, but it was a lot harder to kill them this time.”
Phillip said, “I can’t argue with that. Okay everyone, let’s regroup and discuss what just happened. Please come back to my position.”
Jeff said, “Why don’t we meet by the cage instead?”
Phillip asked, “What cage?”
“Look down, at the clearing. I think you’ll see it.”
“Oh, yeah, I see it. Okay everyone, meet up by the cage.”
The clearing, a broad, flat meadow was bounded by thick, dense forest. A raging torrent of a river curved around like a moat, through the woods and along nearly half of the clearing’s perimeter. On the other half, the woods concealed steep, impassable hills and cliffs, dense thickets of thorn bushes, and large patches of harmless-looking, rash-inducing vegetation. The nearest civilization was a lone sheep pasture more than two miles away. The wizards knew this clearing well. They could gather there knowing that the prying eyes of the local inhabitants could not see them. Which was a good thing, because right now more than half of it was taken up by a huge, domed cage containing seven dragons.
Seven wizards stood outside the cage, watching the dragons, who simply stood around, occasionally taking a few steps, or lying down, or standing back up. One ate some grass. Neither the cage nor the dragons had been there before, and none of them could figure out why they were there now.
Jeff appeared, looked at the caged dragons for a moment, then turned to his friends and said, “I’m sure you all have questions.”
Phillip said, “Yes, I do. Gary, why were you tardy for the fight today?”
“Tardy. What is this, junior high?”
“You’re a time traveler,” Tyler said. “How do you manage to always be late?”
“With effort. Come on, think about it. Nobody wants to be the first person at a party. It’s weird and awkward and boring. You have to wait for everyone else to get there. I avoid all that by not showing up until I’m pretty sure everyone else is here already. That way I never have to waste my time waiting for anybody else.”
“So you avoid an uncomfortable experience by forcing it on everybody else,” Martin said.
“Somebody’s gotta turn up first. I just let everyone else do it. It’s not like you don’t get anything out of it. You all get to spend a few minutes feeling superior to me.”
“And we do,” said Roy.
“That doesn’t bother you?” Gwen asked.
“It might, if I were here to see it, but I never am. Another reason to show up late.”
Brit said, “Everybody, this is pointless. We’re never going to talk Gary into being on time, and even if we do, our reward will just be spending more time with Gary.”
The wizards grumbled agreement and lapsed into a silence.
Jeff said, “I figured you’d all want to know why I’m keeping dragons around when you aren’t fighting them, and why they were so much harder to kill this time.”
Roy said, “They were harder to kill because instead of attacking us they just took off running.”
Martin said, “Flying.”
Gwen said, “Fleeing would be the best word, I think.”
Roy said, “Yeah, fine, whatever. They took off fleeing. They fled. The only reason it was harder was that we had to chase them down. It took me twenty minutes to finally get mine.”
“Yeah,” Brit said. “We’re supposed to be training to defend ourselves. Chasing and attacking something that’s trying to get away is the opposite of self-defense.”
“A valid criticism,” Jeff said, “but you have to admit, they fled and dodged in a realistic yet unpredictable way.”
Roy said, “That’s true.”
Jeff asked, “Don’t you want to know why I’m keeping the dragons around when you aren’t fighting them, and why they were so much harder to kill this time?”
Phillip said, “Oh, we do, but you’re obviously dying to tell us, so there’s really no reason for us to ask. If it makes it easier, I’ll take the bait. Jeff, why are you keeping the dragons around when we aren’t fighting them, and why were they harder to kill this time?”
Jeff said, “The two questions are deeply related.”
Martin said, “Yeah, we kinda figured. You wanna get to it, please?”
Jeff said, “The dragons aren’t real animals. When they spawn at the beginning of a fight, they aren’t being born. Their code exists. I’m just activating it. And, when you defeat them, you aren’t killing them. They’re not alive. They’re just empty, animated, scary-looking shells. Preprogrammed puppets. The only reason any of your spells worked at all is that I watch you all attack the dragons and make them react on the fly.”
“We know,” Brit said. “We’re all computer programmers. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t. The question is, why are they in this cage, and why did they run, I’m sorry, flee from us?”
Jeff said, “I’m getting to that. When you kill them, they don’t die. They just disappear, right? They aren’t destroyed. All this time I’ve just been moving them somewhere you can’t see them. It’s an old game programming trick. You think they’re gone for good, but really they’ve just gone away. Then I’d deactivate them after the match was done. When I programmed the last iteration, I had them teleport into the cage here when you beat them.”
“Okay,” Phillip said, “that explains why the dragons are here, wandering around in a cage. Now would you like to tell us why they’re suddenly so much harder to kill?”
Jeff looked at Phillip, then he looked at the other wizards, then he looked at the dragons, then, finally, he turned back to Phillip and explained, “Because I improved them.”
Phillip thought a moment and said, “Fair enough. That is your job in this, I suppose.”
Brit asked, “Is it because they’re persistent? Because you gave them some memory, and now, since the dragons exist continually, they are able to remember and learn from their experiences in a way the temporary ones couldn’t?”
Jeff said, “Maybe. Sure. Yeah, that, what Brit said.”
“Or,” Tyler said, “did you just alter random bits of their programming through trial and error to change their behavior, and you’re keeping them around between fights because you like the idea of having pet dragons?”
Roy said, “Hold on, now, Jeff’s an engineer. He wouldn’t have changed random stuff and relied on trial and error. He’d have changed very specific things, methodically applying trial and error.”
“And what’s wrong with wanting a pet dragon?” Jeff added. “They’re so cool, and we’re wizards. What’s the point of having me make dragons if I can’t keep them?”
Gwen said, “You’ve already named them, haven’t you?”
Jeff started to deny it, but admitted. “This one here is Preston. That one’s James. The red-faced one’s Wilson, and that one at the back there with the bluish wings is Lucy.”
Phillip said, “I don’t know, Jeff. This seems like weird for weirdness’s sake. It’ll just freak out the locals.”
Jeff said, “I’d like to point out that Gary lives in a cave shaped like a skull, Brit lives in the same town as a future version of herself, and Martin’s front parlor contains a statue of Grimace.”
Martin said, “Not just Grimace. There are other statues. Optimus Prime. The Stig. Boba Fett.”
“And I don’t live in the same town as Brit the Elder,” Brit said. “She lives in the same town as me!”
Phillip said, “Despite their cogent arguments, I concede t
hat you have a point, Jeff.”
“Thanks. Besides, they’re perfectly safe. Heck, I’m going to have to spend the next week trying to figure out how to coax them into attacking you at all instead of just fleeing.”
5.
Honor sat in the pasture, tending to the sheep.
This morning, tending to the sheep meant sitting with her back against a tree on a pleasant, if overcast, day, watching the sheep eat and Runt play in the tall grass.
Blackie and Harry, the two larger dogs that Sonny, and their father before him, had officially recognized as sheepdogs, stood near the sheep, watching their every move, freeing Honor to simply glance at the sheep occasionally and listen for the dogs’ barking.
Runt sat with her head in Honor’s lap. Honor scratched behind Runt’s ears absent-mindedly.
Runt wagged her tail and pushed her head up harder into Honor’s scratching fingers.
Honor reached into her pocket and pulled out a bit of folded cloth that, when opened, revealed something she might have mistaken for a large rock, if she hadn’t made it herself out of oats.
She broke off a piece of her scone, grimacing from the effort needed. She gave the piece to Runt, and smiled as the dog crunched it up and swallowed it. “Glad you like it,” Honor said. “The sheep do, too. I know Momma’s were better.”
Honor looked at the working dogs and the sheep just in time to see one of the sheep vanish. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and looked again, clearly seeing the empty space where the sheep was not.
Honor stood up and walked to the spot where the sheep had been standing. She counted the remaining sheep. She ended up one sheep short, exactly as she expected.
The sheep disappeared, she thought. This has to be magic. Either a wizard took my sheep, or the sheep learned magic on its own, which I doubt.
She looked to the horizon, out over the forest, where she’d occasionally seen the wizards, far off in the distance, doing weird, inexplicable things in the sky. She saw red light reflecting off of the bottoms of the clouds. Bishop Galbraith said I should get to know the wizards better. Asking them why they took my sheep and why they’ve got a bonfire going is as good a chance as any.
She turned to Blackie and Harry and said, “Keep an eye on the flock. I’ll be right back.” She knew it was just for show. Blackie and Harry would keep an eye on the flock no matter what she said. She looked down at Runt and said, “You stay here.” This was also for show. Runt would follow her no matter what she said.
Honor looked at the reddish flashes on the clouds again to get a clear fix on the wizards’ location, then set off into the forest. Runt followed without hesitation.
The conventional wisdom among adults was that the woods were impassable, but Honor didn’t know the meaning of the word, one of the few real advantages of being mostly illiterate.
“Runt, the wizards seem to be to the west, beyond the thickest, darkest part of the woods. We could go around to the north, but that part of the forest is full of those tall plants with the white flowers and spotted leaves. You know, the ones that make you feel like you’re on fire. We could go around to the south, but that’s where the river is, and the riverbank will crumble away and drop us in the rapids with no warning. No, we’re going to have to go through the heart of the forest.”
She looked down at Runt, whose tail was wagging because she didn’t understand a word Honor had said.
“I agree,” Honor said. “This is a nice chance to see what’s there.”
She mostly saw hills and thorns.
The hills were steep, but she had strong legs and plenty of time, so that didn’t bother her. There were places where the bushes were so thick that she had to climb over them, carefully choosing each foot and handhold, carrying Runt along with her in a sack on her back. In other places the gaps between the thorn bushes were so narrow that only Runt could squeeze through. The little dog would stand on the other side of the obstacle, waiting for Honor to clamber over the bushes and catch up.
Honor heard the wizard long before she saw him. Or, more accurately, she heard the things that were with the wizard. Occasional loud animal roars at first then, as she drew closer, snorts and grunts between the roars. Then she started seeing flashes of orange light filtering through the woods. When she heard a man’s voice and the braying of the sheep he had stolen, she knew she was getting close.
Runt had walked along beside her since they passed the thorn barrier, but Honor thought it would be good to hide from the wizard, at least until she knew what he was up to, and she certainly didn’t want Runt running out to him, looking to get her belly rubbed. Honor picked the dog up, put her back in the sack with her head sticking out, and slung the dog over her back. Runt peeked out over Honor’s shoulder like a second head, seeing everything Honor saw, and occasionally licking Honor’s ear, just to remind her she was there.
Honor crept closer to the edge of the woods, moving slowly because she didn’t want to be seen, and because she couldn’t believe what she saw.
It was a cage, larger than any building in town. She thought the church would fit inside with room to spare. It was the most impressive and, in its way, the most terrifying thing she’d ever seen, save for what was in the cage.
They were dragons. She’d never seen a dragon before, but she knew that they were dragons. Even for a novice, dragons were pretty easy to identify. Looking at them, listening to them roar, feeling the radiated heat as they breathed fire at one another, watching them eat grass from the floor of their cage, she had no doubt in her mind that these were dragons.
Between her and the dragon cage she saw a pen, also made of metal, somehow spun like thread and woven in a loose but regular diamond pattern, supported by metal posts. Normally it would have been a marvel to her, but with the cage and the dragons in the background, it paled in comparison.
In the pen, a male wizard in dark gray robes chased the stolen ewe. It ran around the outer edge of the pen while the wizard ran behind, shouting, “Come on! Come on! Fight me! I won’t really hurt you, but you gotta show some backbone.”
The sheep reached the corner and turned to face the wizard, who stood toward the middle of the pen, spreading his arms to take up more space. If the sheep made a break for it, he’d only need to lurch in that direction to block her escape.
“All right,” the wizard panted, severely out of breath. “You’re cornered. You can’t run. Now, come at me, bro!”
The terrified ewe took two quick steps to her right, then darted hard to her left while the wizard leapt to block the route she did not take. The wizard lost his footing and fell to the dirt while the sheep ran past him in the unguarded space and retreated to the far corner of the pen. The wizard rolled over to look at the sheep and shouted, “Coward!”
Bishop Galbraith had told Honor, “I don’t trust wizards. I trust my friend Phillip.”
This wizard isn’t Phillip, she thought, and I don’t trust him one bit. He means to feed my ewe to his dragons. Honor bit her lip in anger and concentration. I could wait until his back is turned and rush him. I might knock him over into the mud. Then, he’d be angry. An angry full-grown man, with magical powers and hungry dragons to feed. What do I have? Runt, and a couple of scones in my bag. So all I have to fight him off with is more dragon food. No, I have to go tell Sonny. Then we’ll go tell the bishop. Then he’ll talk to his friend, Phillip, and we’ll see if he’s really worthy of the bishop’s friendship. It’s not a good plan, but I might not get eaten in it, so it’s the best plan I have.
Honor turned her back on the wizard and his dragons and plunged back into the forest.
* * *
Jeff rose to his feet and approached the sheep. “Come on. I’m not that tough. You can totally take me. I won’t even fight back.” He put his hands behind his back, to appear harmless. “I’m not really going to hurt you, I just need you
to make some kind of attempt to fight me. Something—a bite, a kick, anything.”
He took another step toward the sheep, which feinted to one side, then darted to the other again. Jeff fell for it again, literally. He rolled over on his back, looked at the sky, and said, “This is why nobody ever says as brave as a sheep.”
He sat up and shook his head. “I’m going to have to rethink this whole thing. I’ve got another five days. There’s still time.” He smiled at the sheep and told it, “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
He extended a hand, muttered some words in Esperanto, and the sheep disappeared, returning to where it had come from. Then he muttered some more Esperanto, and disappeared as well.
* * *
Hiking to where the wizard had his dragons and her ewe, Honor had walked through unfamiliar territory, driven by curiosity. Hiking back, she covered now-familiar territory, driven by righteous anger, so she made much better time.
Honor and Runt emerged from the woods exactly where she’d entered a few hours earlier. Harry and Blackie were still standing guard over the flock, just as she’d left them. She decided to count the sheep one more time before going to Sonny, just in case the wizard had stolen another while she walked back.
She counted three times, and got the same answer each time. There were exactly as many sheep as there were supposed to be, as if the wizard had never stolen a sheep at all. She chalked this up to magical trickery, but it would make it harder to convince her brother and the bishop that a sheep had been stolen.
