by Scott Meyer
“We should all take an interest in Rut’s well-being also. She’ll be needing a father’s hand. Between the three of us, we might almost equal Kyle.”
“It’s kind of you to offer,” Leslie said, “but I feel personally responsible for making sure that Morag has help and comfort in her time of grief.”
Gwen said, “Guys, I’m pretty sure Kyle isn’t hurt that bad.”
“I know, he looks strong as an ox,” Leslie said, “but he’s at death’s door, I tell you.”
Gwen said, “Tell Kyle, because he’s waking up.”
Kyle’s eyelids fluttered, then popped open. He took looked up at the faces of Jock and Mungo, who had dropped to their knees and crowded to see for themselves if their friend would in fact live. Kyle lifted his gaze from the three men around him to the one supporting his head and looking down at him from above.
“Leslie,” Kyle whispered. He reached up with his right hand and grabbed Leslie’s hand. “I heard you, Leslie. I heard all of what you said about me.”
“I meant every word of it Kyle.”
“I know you did, Leslie. I mean it just as much when I say, you stay away from Morag, you back-biting bastard!” Then Kyle used his free hand to punch Leslie in the face.
Kyle and Leslie wrestled on the ground while Jock and Mungo whooped and cheered. Brit and Gwen watched for a couple of minutes, then grew bored.
Gwen said, “Excuse me.”
The men didn’t hear her.
She cleared her throat, and in a louder voice repeated, “Excuse me.”
The men still didn’t hear.
Gwen shrugged at Brit. Brit shrugged back. Gwen stuck out her wand, mumbled some Esperanto, and both Kyle and Leslie flew ten feet into the air and hung there. They continued to try to trade blows at first, but Gwen separated them, and they reverted to hanging in the air sullenly.
“Sorry, guys,” Gwen said, “but time is short. We still have five dragons to kill, so as much fun as it would be to stand here and watch you two beat each other senseless in the name of manly friendship, we really should get to work. Agreed?”
The men mumbled sounds of apologetic agreement.
“Good,” Brit said. “Now, Gwen and I were talking, and we have a question to ask you. It may seem strange, but we were wondering if any of you had ever done any sheepherding.”
All four of the men raised their hands.
28.
He woke to the sound of a man moaning. He was groggy, so groggy that it took a while to realize that he was the one moaning. He opened his eyes, looked around, then quickly squeezed his eyes shut, praying that he had imagined what he saw.
One of the demons said, “We know you’re awake.”
He opened his eyes. He was lying prone on some sort of altar, in a room bathed in red light, being watched by three demons. One demon stood close by, looking up and down his body in a way that made him profoundly uncomfortable. The demon looked female, with glossy red skin, horns, a tail, and a mask to hide her soulless eyes. Behind her stood two more demons: another female, and a male in flowing red robes, a similar set of horns and tail, and a pointed black beard.
“Yes,” the closer demon said, looking into his eyes. “That’s better. How do you feel?”
“I hurt,” the man blurted. “I’m in pain.”
The demon looked down at his body again and said, “I bet you are. What’s your name?”
The male demon, speaking in a deep, gravelly voice, said, “Sylvester! This sinner’s name is Sylvester.”
The other female, who stood beside the male demon cackled. “Ssssylvesssster! The ssssinner’ssss name isss Ssssylvesssster! Ssssplendid!”
The closer demon shook her head.
“He was a candle maker’s apprentice,” the male demon said, dismissively.
“Oh, an apprenticccce,” the second female said, clapping with glee.
“Yes,” the male continued. “His father is dead. His mother still lives, but he didn’t go see her nearly as often as he should have. He had two younger brothers, at least one of whom is on a bad path and could have done with some brotherly guidance, but Sylvester here seemed more interested in candles.”
“I work to make money,” Sylvester whined. “Money I can use to help my family!”
“You could have,” the male demon said, sneering, “but did you?”
“If they ever asked—”
“They shouldn’t have had to ask! They’re your family. And if I were a betting man—”
The she-demon next to the male coughed and elbowed him.
“Uh, which I’m not. A man, I mean. I’m a demon. But if I were a betting demon, I’d wager that your mother and brothers would have gladly done with less money to see you more, not that you shared your money with them anyway.”
Sylvester sobbed. “Yes, you’re right. I was a terrible person. They deserved better.”
The closer demon examined the right side of Sylvester’s body in great detail during all this, then said, “Well, now that that’s all taken care of, let’s get down to business. Tell me, Sylvester, does it hurt when I press here?” The she-demon pressed gently but firmly into the right side of Sylvester’s belly.
“Yes! Ow! Yes, that hurts a lot.”
“That’ssss good to know,” the second female said. “Are you ready, Ssssylvesssster, for a thoussssand yearssss of ussss pressssssssing there?”
The closer demon turned around to the others and said, “That’s not helpful,” then turned back to Sylvester and asked, “Do any plants or animals make you feel sick, or make it hard for you to breathe?”
“No.”
The male demon said, “More’s the pity.”
“Have you been ill recently?” the closer female asked.
“No.”
“Have you chewed any willow bark recently?”
“No.”
“Do you have any loose teeth?”
“No.”
The demon nodded, gently prodded him in a couple more sensitive regions of his torso, then said, “I have good news for you, Sylvester. You aren’t dead. Not fully. Not yet. You’re going to close your eyes and go to sleep, and when you wake up, you’ll be alive again.”
The other female said, “You’re getting a ssssecond chancccce. Try to be a better man.”
The male said, “Pay more attention to your family. Spend less time at work.”
The closer female said, “Stay off your feet for a few days, and when you do go back to work, take it slow.”
The other female said, “Find a nicccce girl, ssssettle down, and treat her with kindnessssssss and resssspect.”
The male nodded emphatically, then said, “And be sure to tithe generously to your local church.”
Both of the female demons stiffened, as if they’d both smelled something they didn’t like. They turned in unison and stared at the male demon.
“What?” the male asked. “It’s a reasonable request.”
29.
Tyler and Gary hid behind a large tree. Gary laughed at his own cleverness. “This is going to be great!”
Tyler shook his head, but said, “Yup.”
“Oh, changed your mind, have you? Now you think it’ll work?”
“No,” Tyler said. “It’s never going to work, but it’s going to be great watching it not work.”
“It’s a really good plan! It’s so simple it can’t not work! See, when the girl comes—”
Tyler put up a hand. “You don’t have to explain it to me. Believe me, I understand how it’s supposed to work. I just don’t think it’s gonna.”
After his unintentional fully clothed swim, Tyler had briefly considered simply grabbing the girl by the arm and dragging her away from the dragon kicking and screaming. He was still too
angry to come up with a better plan, so Gary stepped up with an idea, and Tyler felt too contemptuous of the idea to dignify it by arguing, or helping.
He watched while Gary followed the path that the girl and the dragon had obviously used to get to the pond. When they were around a bend, out of the girl’s field of vision, Gary used various spells to excavate a huge pit, fifteen feet deep, completely blocking the path. Then he created a goal and placed it facing upward in the bottom of the pit. He used magic to create a patch of false ground that would break under excessive weight. It would hold a small person, but would certainly not support a large animal, like an elephant or a dragon. “It’s foolproof,” Gary said. “The girl will walk right over, because she’s light, but the dragon will fall through, because it’s heavy, and it’ll be so surprised it won’t think to fly until it’s already going into the goal.”
“Maybe,” Tyler said, “you could take the goal out of the pit and just let the girl and the dragon fall in. Then you put the goal over the top of the hole and when the dragon flies out, we’ve got him.”
Gary arched an eyebrow. “You really want to make that little girl fall into that hole?”
Tyler shrugged. “Sometimes there’s a big difference between what I know I should do and what I want to do.”
“My plan’s still the best one we’ve got.”
“But Gary, what if it doesn’t fall through? The dragons aren’t natural. They’re still partly CG. It might not weigh much at all.”
“We’ve seen them fall.”
“But that doesn’t mean that they’re heavy. Light objects fall just as fast as heavy ones.”
Gary shrugged. “Well, if it stands on the trap and doesn’t fall through, I’ll just magic the ground out from under it.”
“Well then why bother with having the ground break under the dragon’s weight at all? Why not just put up a force field across the hole? The girl would walk on it, no problem, but the dragon would fall right through.”
Gary thought about it for a second and said, “No, I’ll stick to covering the trap with a big chunk of fake ground. Sometimes the old ways are best.”
Tyler asked, “The old ways of what? Destroying spontaneously generated CGI dragons?”
Gary said, “Exactly! High-five!”
Tyler held up a clenched fist.
Gary said, “You’re saying you’d rather fist bump?”
“No,” Tyler said, “I’m saying that if you ask me to high-five you again, I’m going to punch you. Look, how do we know she’ll even come this way?”
“It’s the only path to the pond.”
“But what if she didn’t take the path here?”
“Why wouldn’t she? Why walk over the hills and stuff when there’s a perfectly good path? Now you’re just looking for problems.”
“And I’m finding them. Say you’re right, and she did follow this path here, and she will take it when she leaves. When will that be? Are we going to hide behind this tree until dark?”
“I have a plan for that as well. Observe!” Gary stood up from behind the tree, pointed his staff with its three remaining members of KISS at a spot far down the path, and said, “Ventriloquia!” He sat back down behind the rock and smiled at Tyler, looking maddeningly pleased with himself.
Tyler waited, but noticed no change whatsoever in Gary or their surroundings. Finally, he gave up and asked, “What was supposed to happen?”
Gary smiled and said, “This.” His mouth moved, and his tone of voice sounded perfectly normal, but the actual sound came from the spot farther down the path, where Gary had pointed with his staff when he said the magic word.
“A ventriloquism spell. Why would you even make such a thing?”
Gary said, “For fun.” Even over this short distance, the sound took just long enough to reach Tyler that Gary’s lips and his distant voice seemed minutely out of sync. Gary continued, “That’s the same reason I made this spell, too. Sono impostor Tyler!”
Tyler knew Esperanto as well as Gary did, and couldn’t help but recognize his own name, so he wasn’t surprised when Gary said, “There, now we’re ready to begin,” and instead of Gary’s voice, he heard a fair approximation of his own voice drift to them from the distant spot Gary had chosen. Gary continued in his fake Tyler voice, “And don’t even try to say that you don’t really sound like this, because you totally do.”
“How long have you been able to imitate my voice?” Tyler asked.
“Remember that time we went to Norway to visit the Magnuses, and that blonde girl slapped you for no reason?” the distant voice said.
“They were all blonde girls, but yeah, I remember.”
“Since just before that. And she had a reason. A pretty good one.”
“So you can imitate my voice and throw it somewhere else. How’s that supposed to get the dragon in the trap?”
Gary held up a single finger, looked in the general direction of the dragon and the little girl, and shouted, “Aw! Ow! Oh no! This is so embarrassing! I am humiliated! I’m just glad that that little girl and her dragon aren’t here to see me embarrassed and humiliated, right now!”
Tyler said, “That’s never going to work.”
Gary shushed him and pointed up the path, where he saw the little girl tentatively peeking around the corner.
Tyler sighed heavily, but said nothing.
Gary, using Tyler’s voice, said, “Ngaaah! This is even worse! I must look so silly! Yes, quite silly indeed! I’m so glad nobody’s here, as they would find my predicament quite laughable!”
The girl made a quick beckoning motion to the dragon, which still hadn’t entered the wizard’s field of view, then ran down the path, directly onto the dragon trap. Tyler held his breath. He intended to intervene to make sure the girl didn’t fall through and into the goal if he had to. He might not like the girl, but he didn’t want her dead.
She didn’t seem to notice any difference between the cover over Gary’s trap and solid ground. She made it to the far end of the trap and kept running, not stopping until she reached the far bend of the path that would again take her out of the wizard’s sight. There, she stopped, turned, and looked at the dragon, which had taken a step or two forward, but remained pretty much where the girl had left it, nowhere near stepping on the trap.
The girl said, “Kelly? Aren’t you coming?”
The dragon didn’t move.
“Come here, Kelly. Come here!”
Tyler whispered, “She’s far enough away! I could just appear behind it and take it out butterfly-net style!” He grabbed his staff and started to say the teleportation spell, but Gary put a hand on his shoulder and said, “No, don’t.” Then he realized that his voice was still Tyler’s, and was coming from around the corner, and also that the little girl had heard them. “Uh, erm, no, don’t get worse,” he said, covering for his mistake. “Oh, it is getting worse! Much worse! I look even more foolish now than I did before!”
The girl craned her neck to look as far down the path as she could, then turned one last time and said, “Come on, Kelly! This is gonna be great!”
The girl ran down the path and out of sight.
The dragon watched her go, waited five seconds, then followed her by flying over the trap, rejoining the girl much faster than it would have on foot.
Gary ran out from behind the rock, into the middle of the path, looking in the direction the girl and the dragon had gone.
He shouted, “Damn!” Of course, his mouth made no discernable sound, and in the distance, Tyler’s voice cursed instead, causing the girl to shout, “Where is he Kelly? We have to find him, and laugh at him.”
Tyler stood up from behind the rock and said, “You forgot that the dragon could fly, didn’t you?”
Gary stomped his foot in frustration, then flailed his arms
in panic as the false surface beneath him gave way. The leg he’d stomped with dropped right through fake ground. He fell smoothly until he reached his pelvis. His crotch and other leg stopped the fall briefly and painfully, creating a radiating pattern of jagged cracks and fissures around the site of impact. He rolled on his side, mouth open, contorted in pain. In the distance, Tyler’s voice let out a squeal, then a moan. Gary’s torso rolled to the side, the ground supporting his weight shattered, and he fell into his own dragon trap.
Tyler quickly flew over the trap and looked straight down the hole.
Happily, Gary had not fallen into the goal and been killed. Instead, he had managed to hold on to his staff, which was longer than the hole was wide, and stretched across the opening like a bridge. He hung, dangling by his hands over the deadly blue field of the goal.
Gary’s mouth moved, and in the distance, Tyler’s voice said, “Help me up?”
Barely audible, the little girl said, “No. Where are you?”
Tyler looked down at Gary, smiled, and said, “And, once again, you forgot that you can fly, too, didn’t you?”
30.
They hadn’t taken the time to discuss it. They didn’t have to. Roy and Jeff knew each other well enough to know that they were in complete agreement: things were not going well.
Jeff’s effort to implement Roy’s idea of impressing the locals by leading the dragons around with fake apples had fallen apart as soon as the dragons saw real apples. Now, instead of demonstrating their total control of the animals, they instead demonstrated their total lack of control.
All of the fruit, vegetables, and gourds had been neatly displayed in piles on carts or tables before the dragons came, but now the dragons had reduced the apple stand to a splintered wreck, and the apples themselves rolled around on the ground. The dragons hungrily scarfed as many as they could, as quickly as they could, but they were having some difficulty. Their mouths seemed better adapted for pushing the apples around the ground than for actually picking them up.
