by David Lubar
“Even?” I asked.
“Even,” he said as he rubbed his side.
I flicked around for a while, slow enough to actually see what was on each channel, but fast enough that I’d have a chance to get through all of them before morning turned into afternoon. I finally found a channel that was showing a cool cartoon.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Never seen it before,” he said.
Me, either. It had a couple cats, the sort who look like cats but walk on two legs like people. They were chasing some mice around. The usual stuff. But it was really violent. That was a plus.
There was plenty of dynamite, giant boulders, chain saws, and vats of acid. The cats and mice seemed to suffer about equally, which I felt was really fair of the people who made the show. At one point, when a cat flattened a mouse under a steam roller, Drury shouted, “Radical!” and slugged me in the shoulder.
I went flying.
Really.
The punch lifted me right off my butt. I flew into the wall, making the whole house shake, then bounced across the room to the opposite wall, and came down on my head.
When I sat up, little chirping bluebirds flew around my head in a circle. On the screen, the steamrolled mouse inflated himself back to normal by sticking his thumb in his mouth and blowing on it. (Yeah, he had thumbs. Hey, if a cat can drive, a mouse can have thumbs.) The mouse ran off, hopped into a tank, and opened fire on the bulldozer. Around my head, the birds turned into stars.
“Whoa, you okay?” Drury asked.
I nodded. I was fine. It hadn’t hurt at all. It had actually felt sort of fun, like a carnival ride that flung you around real fast. I stood up, swung my arm back behind me, and then I swung it forward in a big circle. “Got you back!” I shouted as I thumped Drury on top of his head with my fist, which had grown to the size of a large ham during the windup.
He squished almost flat, then sprung up, making a noise like an accordion. He went up and down a couple times, but finally ended up back the way he’d been before I’d slammed him.
“Awesome,” he said.
We both looked at the screen, where a mouse was shooting a cannon at one of the cats. The cannon ball went right through him. The cat bent down, looked at the hole in his belly, and shook himself hard, like a wet dog. The hole disappeared. I checked my fist. It was back to normal.
Drury turned toward me. I turned toward him. We both grinned. “It’s like we’re in our own cartoon,” he said.
I answered him, but kept my voice low. When he leaned closer to hear what I was saying, I grabbed his hair and yanked. He shot off his feet. I spun around, holding onto his hair. He whipped around me, faster and faster. Finally, I let go, sending him feet-first into a wall.
He crashed into it, rocking the house. His body flattened. Then he slid down to the floor like a human pancake. He stuck his thumb in his mouth, and blew himself back up, just like the mouse had done. I started to wind up for another smack-down punch. Drury dashed at me, grabbing a book as he ran past the couch. Before I could squash him, he swung the book hard, hitting the side of my head like it was a baseball. My head shot off my body and bounced around the room. That was the weirdest, coolest thing I’d ever felt.
I watched my body walk toward my head, staggering with my arms out, until I stumbled across it. When I bent down to pick it up, Drury dived for it like he was trying to recover a fumble.
If he wanted to play football, I’d be happy to help out. I nailed him in the chest with a kick, like I was aiming for a forty-yard field goal. Try doing that when your head is on the floor looking up at your body. I connected perfectly.
Drury shot up, smashing into the ceiling. The whole house bounced up and down, this time. As I stuck my head back on, I tried to figure out what I could do to him next.
That’s when I heard a creak, followed by the shriek of ripping wood. I guess Drury had hit the ceiling so hard, he’d knocked the satellite dish loose. I saw it crash to the ground in the front yard.
The TV went black. The box beneath it flashed a message: No signal.
No signal meant no more cartoon. And no more cartoon physics, I guess. Because Drury fell straight down, hitting the carpet with a sound they don’t use in cartoons. After which, he said a word they definitely don’t use in cartoons.
Drury moaned. I stepped over to see if he needed help. At least, that’s what I tried to do. Everything was so wrong, it took me a moment to even begin to understand what had happened. I could see the large number 37 on my shirt. That number was on the back of my shirt. Just the back. Not the front. That meant either my shirt was on backwards or …
As my brain leaped from puzzled to panicked, I reached up with both hands to touch my face. All I felt was hair.
“Your head is on backwards,” Drury said, echoing my realization.
I turned around so I could face him. Even though I knew I had to put him behind me in order to see him, it felt hugely wrong to move that way.
Drury started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
He pointed at me and shouted, “About face!”
“That’s not funny,” I said.
“Sure it is,” he said. “You’re just looking at it the wrong way.” He paused, as if it took him a second to realize the full meaning of his words. Then he cracked up again.
I backed toward the door.
“Make sure to look both ways when you cross the street,” Drury said.
I left the house and stumbled my way down the stairs.
Behind me, Drury called out, “Don’t worry. I won’t talk behind your back.”
As I reached the sidewalk, a thought hit me. If that was how my best friend acted, I really wasn’t looking forward to how everyone else treated me.
Looking forward …
Great. Even I was doing it to myself. I tried to push those thoughts from my mind as I headed home.
Headed …
Wonderful. I hoped his parents would get the satellite dish fixed. And I hoped I could find that cartoon again. If not, I’d be spending the rest of my life seeing where I’d already been.
THE HEART OF A DRAGON
To live forever, one must capture the heart of a dragon.
—An old saying of the village
Only five of us escaped the village when the dragon attacked. It was a small male. I could tell that from his size and color. Though even a small dragon is huge and fearsome. Most of the younger men and women ran toward the dragon, bravely trying to defeat him. They failed. Most of the elderly and all of the children ran into the woods to the north. But other creatures in league with the dragon awaited them. The ground grew red with slaughter, and the air grew heavy with screams as the fierce and hungry creatures pounced. I’d also raced for the woods, but I saw the carnage in time to swerve aside, follow the tree line, and head for the grain fields to the east. So, as I soon learned, did four others.
We escaped the village.
But we did not escape the dragon.
He herded us, moving through the air with a swiftness that seemed impossible for a creature that size. We ran, in blind terror, straight into the pit he had dug for us. It wasn’t a deep pit, but it was lined with netting. Before we could scramble out, the dragon seized the edges of the netting and lifted us into the sky, like we were a rich harvest of wriggling fish plucked from the river.
We tried to untangle our limbs. It was difficult, at first. The jostle of powerful wing flaps shook us as the dragon gained height. Then, he leveled off, gliding across the sky, and our passage became smoother. As I pushed myself to a free area of the netting, I took note of who was with me. Three boys: Emeric, Asher, and Destrian. And one other girl, Marissa. We were all born the same year, and old enough now to help with chores but not yet old enough to be put in charge of anything.
Marissa was crying. So were Asher and Destrian. Only Emeric seemed to be showing any spine.
“We have to escape,” I said.
He reached for the knife at his belt. “I could cut the net.”
I looked down, and felt a new stab of fear join the terror that was already surging through my body. “I’d rather not escape capture by falling to my death,” I said. A spine and a brain rarely grow in the same body.
“Falling?” Marissa forced the word past her sobs.
“Quiet,” I said. “Go back to weeping. We don’t need your interruptions.”
I kicked Asher to get his attention. “Do you have any thoughts?”
He shook his head.
Destrian had his eyes closed tight. I kicked at him, too, but that just made him turn away and whimper.
We failed to find a plan.
The dragon brought us to his aerie, on the flattened top of a mountain. And then he flew off, leaving us to wriggle free of the net and explore our prison. Or, perhaps, our tomb.
“Too steep,” Emeric said, kneeling so he could peer over the edge without danger of falling.
“Goats can climb this,” Destrian said. He wiped at his runny nose with the back of his hand. “Maybe we can, too.”
“Then give it a try,” Emeric said. He gave Destrian a slight push, though not enough to move him far. Still, Destrian let out a yelp.
I stepped away from them and went to see how Marissa was faring. She’d curled into a ball, arms clutching her knees. I wanted to tell her something comforting. But nothing I could think of would serve that purpose.
I moved past her, toward one of the treasure piles scattered across the mountain top. At least we wouldn’t starve. Assuming we lived long enough for that to happen. The dragon had looted all manner of things. There were sacks of grain, bundles of dried meat, and other provisions. Past that, a depression on the surface of a large rock held rainwater. So we wouldn’t suffer thirst, either.
“What do we know about dragons?” Emeric said.
He was addressing all of us.
“They’re immortal,” Marissa said.
We’d all heard the old sayings. Some said dragons were immortal. Others said dragons could grant immortality to those who had captured the dragon’s heart. Yet others claimed an elixir of immortality could be made from that very same heart, if it was pulled while still beating from the chest of a living dragon. They did not say how to accomplish this without being burned all the way down to the bone.
“What do we know that might help us,” Emeric said. “And might be true.”
“They’re sly and treacherous,” I said. That was easy to see. Our captor had led us into a trap he’d set. That took more than natural animal cunning. That took thought and planning. Even many people weren’t capable of that.
“This one might want to keep us alive,” Asher said, kicking at a bag of grain. “That’s not dragon food.”
“But why?” Emeric asked.
The answer seemed simple. And horrifying. “To fatten us up,” I said.
Marissa let out a sound somewhere between a howl and a whimper. I shuddered, myself, at the idea that I was now livestock.
No!
I wouldn’t accept that. I was not born to be a dragon’s meal.
The dragon returned, but paid no attention to us. The same couldn’t be said for us. We paid a lot of attention to it, hoping to discover anything that might help us escape, or give us a clue to our fate.
Dragons, we soon learned, lived much of their lives in stillness. Our captor would lie on his belly, with his head at the edge of the cliff, staring off. Not moving. Not blinking.
As the hours of our captivity became days, we talked among ourselves, but we had no idea what to do, or what the dragon planned to do to us.
On the fifth day, he flew off again. When he returned, I saw blood seeping from his shoulder, just above the wing joint. That gave me an idea. But I didn’t want to share it, or any benefit it brought me, so I waited for the others to fall asleep.
Among the sacks of treasures and provisions, there were several bags stuffed with roots and herbs. I recognized most of the plants, and knew their properties. I took valderspawn, mixed it with comsprey, added a few drops of water, and crushed it into a paste between two rocks. Then I approached the dragon, walking toward his injured side.
“This will heal your wound,” I said.
He regarded me with an intelligent eye.
“Do you understand?”
The head moved slowly up and down. I took that for a nod.
Then, the head turned toward me and the mouth moved. I braced for a crackling wave of fire, but instead heard a rumbling sound. No. Not a sound. I realized it was words.
“Yes. I understand.”
So he could speak.
I rubbed the salve on the wound and sang the healing song, keeping my voice low so it wouldn’t carry to the others. The dragon seemed to sigh, but said nothing more.
As I returned to the bed I’d made from cloth sacks and the pelts of sheep, I realized I finally had a plan, though not necessarily one of escape. It was more about survival. I would win the dragon’s heart. Whatever it took, however long I had to work toward my goal, I’d win his heart for my own. I had everything I needed, here, on this mountaintop, and nothing left for me back at what remained of the village. I looked at the others, who slept nearby. It would be vital not to let them know what I intended, lest one of them try to best my efforts and win the dragon’s heart in my place. Marissa would do that, for sure. As might Emeric.
So I tended the dragon and cared for him in every way I could. I sang to him, softly, when the others slept, and baked treats for him in the crude oven we had constructed, hiding them among the loaves I made for our own meals. Nobody seemed to mind that I did all the baking.
One night, as I was waiting for the others to fall asleep, Emeric crept up to me, moving with the silence of a thief or assassin. “Ssssshhh,” he said, placing his hand over my mouth. “I have something to show you.”
I got up and followed him across the flat ground as he roused the others. When we’d all gathered behind a treasure pile, out of view of the dragon, Emeric lifted a deer skin and revealed three swords and two pikes.
“I’ve been searching quietly, all this time. I finally found a weapon for each of us.” He pointed toward the dragon. “He sleeps. If we all rush at him and attack the head, we can kill him. He might be powerful, but so is a thrust through the eye into the brain.”
“And then what?” Destrian asked.
“There is cloth. Plenty of cloth,” Emeric said. “We can make a rope long enough to reach a spot where the slope is less steep. And then, we can climb safely to the bottom.”
“We can’t kill a dragon,” Marissa said.
“We have to try. We have no other choice,” Emeric said. “Who is ready to fight for our freedom?”
He stared at us, one by one. Each of us nodded, including me.
“The eyes,” he said as he handed us our weapons. “Strike hard, straight, and true. Strike deep with a pike on each side. Strike the neck with swords, or plunge the point toward the heart, if you can.”
We crept across the ground, three on one side of the sleeping dragon, and two on the other. Emeric raised his pike high above one eye, Asher raised his above the other. Destrian and Marissa readied their swords in trembling hands. I remained near the center of the dragon’s body, close to the heart. Not to strike, but to avoid a strike.
“Wake up!” I screamed as I threw down my sword hard, letting it strike the stones at my feet like a warning bell.
The dragon woke. In a move too swift for me to follow, he struck Emeric with his head, flinging him high in the air and off the mountain top. The scream took a long time to fade. By then, the others had followed him in his fate, flung to their deaths.
I stood, panting, Marissa’s last pitiful wail ringing in my ears. I would miss her least of all. That thought made me smile. As did the image of the dragon seizing her head and shoulders in his jaws before flinging her far off.
“I’m sorry,” the dragon said.
“Don’t be. They mean nothing to me.” Though this was true, I was startled by the coldness in my voice. And I was puzzled by his apology. “We had no need of them.”
“I am immortal,” the dragon said, rising.
I was surprised he told me that without being asked. “What is your secret?” I knew he’d share it with me. And I’d live forever. Here, with him, it would be a perfect life. Anyone could capture the heart of a duke or a prince. Who else could say she’d tamed a dragon, and won his heart?
“This is our secret.” He moved closer, and lowered his head so it was a whisker’s width away from mine.
“Tell me,” I said. I’d bake a special cake for him, tonight.
“We are born with the weakest of hearts,” he said. “We are pathetic creatures.”
He raised a front limb and raked one claw down his chest, opening himself like he was slicing a ripe fruit.
“Many of us do not even live long enough to see the end of our first year. We are sad little worms. But there is a way to grow strong. A way, even, to live forever.”
I clenched my fists, eager for the next words, hardly believing I was about to learn the deepest of all secrets.
He put a claw behind me and pulled me forward to his gaping chest. I saw something small and shriveled inside, quivering with a barely visible beat. My hands dropped to my sides.
“We can take the heart of another,” he said. He raised the other claw and punctured me just below my throat. “But for the heart to be strong enough, for the heart to last more than a few years, it must be filled with love.”
He slit me open and pulled me against himself. I felt my heart push through the gap in my chest, as if eager to find a stronger home.
“Thank you, my love,” the dragon said.
As my pain gave way to darkness and my screams gave way to silence, I gave my heart to the dragon.
SEARCHING FOR A FART OF GOLD
“I’m not in the mood for this,” Julian said. He nodded to the left. We were sitting on my front steps, catching our breath after an attempt to replicate the highlights of the Mixed Martial Arts bout we’d watched last night.
