Behind the Tales

by Aurora Peppermint

  “Oh, really? I lied? That’s really rich coming from you! The people who took your brother were your friends! You probably could have gotten them to give him back days ago, but you never thought to tell anyone that! So don’t take this up with me right now.” Martus tried to keep his voice low to avoid yelling in Elsaben’s ear. With her in his arms, there was no way she was going to miss the argument, but she knew when grown-ups were talking, and he hoped she would tune it out as much as possible.

  “I lied because I knew you wouldn’t trust me if I said I used to work for them! They would never have given my brother back. They wanted me to work for them again, yes, but they care about money more than anything else in the world. They would have gotten their money or killed him unless we all went after them together. I couldn’t have done it by myself. You couldn’t have done it by yourself. I let my mother hire you, and then I came with you.” When Mel saw Martus staring at her with his mouth hanging open, baffled by the fact that she’d apparently planned all of this out, she shook her head, giving him a withering look. “I’m not against you. I just did what I had to do to survive. For my brother to survive. If it’s a comfort, I made sure you and your friend didn’t die either. Can you say the same?”

  “I wouldn’t let him kill you. For all of our sakes. I don’t think he would, but if he even came close, I would keep it from happening. I don’t want you to die either, if you have to hear it.” Martus wouldn’t be telling them to run away now if he truly didn’t care. He would bet his life on the fact that Hal wouldn’t hurt them, but he wouldn’t bet theirs.

  “Mel. Be reasonable.” Fitzy looked over at his sister seriously. For a moment, they seemed to be silently communicating in the way Martus knew siblings were capable of. Fitzy’s eyebrows raised, Mel’s eyes narrowed. Their expressions changed about fifty times each in a matter of a moment or two. Then, finally, Mel turned away from Fitzy with a softened expression.

  “Then we’ll stay with your sister. We’ll take her back to town. You go after your friend, meet us back there if you make it. You know I can take care of her.”

  Martus never wanted to hand Elsaben over to anyone, let alone someone he’d barely known for a week. But he couldn’t take her into the face of possible death with him. It was safer for her to be at home, even if it was without him for a little while. He set her down gently, kneeling in front of her.

  “El, listen, you’re going to go with Fitzy and Mel for a little while. I need to go get Hal and bring him back home, but it isn’t safe for you because of the fire, all right? But you’ll be safe, and you’ll see me and Hal again in a day, two at the most.” Martus had to briefly squeeze his eyes shut to keep tears from falling. Even so, his voice shook on some of the words. He blew out a deep breath, forcing himself to smile when he opened his eyes. Being strong for Elsaben was second nature for him at this point.

  “I’ll miss you. Keep Hal safe, okay?” At her words, a few tears did fall from Martus’s eyes, and he pulled her into a hug so she wouldn’t have to see them. He cried quietly for a few seconds, not wanting to let go of her. What if he didn’t come back? He trusted Hal, but it was always possible that Hal had no control.

  “I’ll miss you too, Els. I love you.” He wiped his eyes on his sleeve when he pulled away from the hug, still holding on to her shoulders gently. She beamed up at him and his heart clenched.

  “I love you! I’ll see you tomorrow. Or the day after.” She hopped up to wrap her arms around Martus’s neck, kissing his cheek. Martus kissed the top of her head in return.

  There was a roar in the distance. He reluctantly let his sister slip from his arms to stand by Mel and Fitzy. He prayed he would see them all again.

  “I love you. Take care of her, please.” For his last sentence, Martus fixed his eyes on Mel’s. She knew what it was like; she had a baby brother. “I’ll meet you all in town. I’ll bring Hal with me.”

  It was hard to convince himself as Mel nodded and they walked in the other direction. In the back of his mind, muffled, he registered the sounds of destruction from Hal in the distance.

  He watched the three of them walk away until he couldn’t see them anymore. Then he spun to face his best friend, to get him back.

  Chapter Nine

  BY THE time Martus got back to the bridge, he’d known for a while that Hal wouldn’t be waiting when he got there. The air was still, calm, almost unsettlingly so. It was possible the silence was because Hal was back to normal, but Martus knew better than to get his hopes up.

  Indeed, when he arrived at the bridge, he couldn’t even cross it because the fire was still burning in little patches. He didn’t want to risk catching on fire like the now charred bodies of the group that had attacked. None of them were even twitching anymore. Martus looked away before he was sick again.

  The best way he could think of to find Hal was to follow the destruction. The tops of trees were knocked down, and the ground was charred, leading off to the side of the bridge. It wasn’t quite the way they’d come, so Martus prayed Hal didn’t end up hitting the town, but it did lead off into the mountains. If Hal flew over them, there was no way Martus could expect to catch up to him.

  He took a deep breath, fighting through the brush to get into the forest. Compared to the bright, if chilly, road he’d been on a moment ago, the woods were dank and black, depressing. Martus supposed it was fitting.

  The only patches of light were where trees were missing leaves or whole branches from Hal burning them or kicking them off from flying too low. Every once in a while, a whole tree was knocked down, or a patch of them was torn clear from the ground. In those spots, there were often chunks of animals, or bloodstains on the dirt. They must have been the reason Hal dipped down into the forest. The smell drove Martus to cover his face with his shirt as he passed.

  It infiltrated more than just the few feet around the bodies, however. The whole forest started to smell like burning death the farther Martus went into it. He stopped a few times, sure he heard roars or crashes not too far off. Every time he stopped for a moment to listen closer, to try to place what direction they’d come from, or how far away they’d been, the eerie silence crept back in.

  The more Martus walked, the colder he got. Eventually he had to button his coat up again to keep from freezing. He hadn’t noticed the ground sloping up, but the only explanation he could find for the sudden change in temperature was that he was getting farther up in the mountains.

  Until he took a turn, still following what must have been Hal’s tracks, and found himself facing another massacre. It wouldn’t have told him anything for sure, except that there were huge walls of ice, flutters of snow blowing past Martus’s face. Perhaps he could have believed it was natural, but the color wasn’t right. The ice was too blue, too shiny, too perfect. Magick had put it there. From the number of bodies lying in the area, Martus guessed defensive magick. Perhaps against someone who fought with fire. Perhaps some hunters or someone else in the forest had encountered Hal. Hal. Either way, it seemed some from both parties had made it away from the scene.

  He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. Hal had done so well for so long. For months he’d kept everyone around him safe; he’d spent every day working to get more and more control over himself. And one job had ruined everything for him. Martus should have been firmer. If he’d insisted Hal stayed at home, none of this would have ever happened. He wouldn’t have been under any stress, and he would have been able to keep himself in check.

  If Martus got Hal back, he was never bringing him along on a job like this again. Getting him back was the priority for the moment, however. Martus walked around all the bodies strewn across the ground, trying not to even glance down at them. Instead he pushed his way back amongst the trees and followed the trail of broken trunks and charred ground.

  IT WAS at least a few hours later before Martus saw anything else. Their horses were gone, making what had seemed like a short trip earlier that same day the walk of his nightmares. It did
n’t help that just following Hal’s destruction was a much longer journey than the path they’d followed before. The burning started to thin out, less was destroyed, trees seemed to be where they were supposed to be, and Martus was ready to give up.

  If Hal had turned back to normal, there was no way for Martus to track where he’d gone. If he was flying too high to damage the forest, he was going too fast for Martus to have any hope of catching up to him even if he hazarded a guess as to which direction he was going. The last thing he wanted to do was go back home without him, but there came a point when there wasn’t anything more he could do.

  Martus was sure it was time for him to turn around and go back home, or find somewhere to sleep for the night. He really didn’t want to be stuck in the forest without any of his bags or any food. His coin purse was still attached to his belt, so at the very least, he could buy a loaf of bread and a room for the night. Before that, he’d have to find somewhere with an inn and a store. Even if all his maps hadn’t been left with his bags, he had no idea where he was in relation to everything else. His best guess was that he must have been getting close to the town again, but there was no way to be sure. The distance seemed the same, but Martus wasn’t the best with directions, and especially not when he was panicked.

  As he considered his options, Martus almost missed the distant sound of screaming. When the sharp smell of smoke hit his nostrils, however, there was no way for him to stay consumed by his thoughts. Taking a moment to wipe his eyes, Martus focused on the sounds of screaming and crashing. They were certainly faint, but with enough concentration, Martus was able to pinpoint which general direction they were coming from. Maybe he could stop Hal from hurting anyone else if he could get there and calm him down.

  The people he was attacking probably weren’t being too kind to him either. Martus wasn’t sure whether they’d be able to kill him or not, but if enough people ganged up on him, it would certainly be dangerous. He understood their need to defend themselves, but he didn’t want to come across his friend’s corpse.

  The thought was enough to drive him off in the direction of the screams at breakneck speed. He held his arms out in front of him to push right through the bushes and trees. The branches cut into his arms, and there were prickly leaves on some of the bushes that stuck to his arms, but honestly, he’d had a lot worse over the course of the past few days. They barely even made him glance down.

  As his feet pounded against the ground, the screams got louder and louder, the sound of wood breaking was more distinctive, and most telling of all, Martus could hear roars that he could now recognize as belonging to Hal. He only sped up at the realization that his friend was so close.

  Finally, he broke through the tree line and was almost deafened by the sounds of chaos around him. The forest ended on the top of a hill looking right over the town they’d stayed in the night before. Only it didn’t look the same. Not even close.

  The entire 125-person population seemed to have flooded the streets. Martus could see them all from his vantage point. Some were running toward the woods and screaming, clutching babies or small children. Others were carrying bags of valuables. Some were running in the opposite direction. A few were even fleeing into the mountains. The inn they’d been staying in the night before was nothing more than an ashy skeleton of the original building. Trees were on fire too. Other buildings and their roofs catching fire from embers off the trees.

  Then in the center of the town, Hal. And surrounding him on all sides, the people who had been too courageous to flee the town. A few young men, some who looked to be soldiers, or ex-soldiers, at least. Some women with swords and other weapons. Hal was spitting fire at them, kicking his feet against the ground, but they seemed to have already hit him with their weapons a few times. He was bleeding in more than one spot, and as Martus watched, one of the women swung out a huge board and hit him right across the face.

  Martus was in such a rush to get down the hill and stop them from hurting Hal that he lost his footing, sliding down on his back. He could feel the skin tearing open as it scraped against rocks. He swore when he finally skidded to a stop and couldn’t force himself to stand up right away. Then a pained roar came from Hal, and he jumped to his feet again in an instant.

  “Stop! Stop!” Martus wasn’t going to be able to convince them Hal wasn’t a danger, not with the state of their village. So he decided to try the very opposite. “You’re all putting yourself in danger. I’ve been… I’ve been hunting this dragon for months. He is much stronger than you would guess, and you’ll be dead in moments if you stay here. Go with your families, your friends, find somewhere else to stay. Come back in a few days and start to rebuild. This will be handled by then.”

  They had paused in their attacks, but no one dropped their weapons. Martus wondered if he had underestimated how badly they wanted to defend their own village. Perhaps it wasn’t very believable that he could single-handedly defeat a dragon either.

  Then after a second of them staring blankly at Martus, one of the women lowered her sword.

  “The man’s right. If we die, the village stays burned down. If we leave it for now, we can come back and rebuild it together. Especially you boys, your mothers don’t want to see you dying over this.” The young men looked ready to argue for a moment, but after exchanging nervous glances with each other, they, too, lowered their weapons.

  “He’s a tough bastard. He’s destroyed half our homes. Make him pay.” The men and women ran off into the woods after their families, but as they did so, they cast looks over their shoulders to make sure Martus was keeping his word.

  He wouldn’t make Hal pay, but Hal would suffer enough when he was himself again. No one could make him feel worse than his own guilt would.

  “Hal.” Once the villagers were out of earshot, Martus started speaking softly to Hal. There was a deep cut in one of his wings, the membrane torn, and another on his leg, causing him to wobble as he tried to approach Martus. It was probably lucky for him, since there was no fear in Hal’s eyes now, no confusion. Just pure black anger. Still, Martus would try to get through to him. If he could bring Hal back without hurting him, he would.

  “Listen, you’re going to be—” Before Martus could finish soothing, Hal swiped out with his good leg and knocked Martus back a few feet. His already injured back felt like it was being torn open to the bone. So Hal wasn’t listening to him for the moment, but Martus wasn’t going to blindly attack like those villagers had. Hal was in there somewhere, and he would never try to hurt anyone. If he could see what was happening, he was suffering as much as anyone else. Martus would get him to put a stop to this. He’d done it before.

  That being said, Martus wouldn’t be getting anyone back if he was dead himself, so he cast a barrier around Hal. He stumbled backward slightly with the force the magick sent forth. Already, he was feeling dizzy from the energy being drained every second he kept the barrier up. He’d never cast one large enough to cover anyone or anything Hal’s size.

  “I’m not trying to hurt you. If you keep trying to attack me, you’re going to hurt yourself, though.” Martus caught his breath as Hal slammed his head and feet into the edges of the barrier over and over again. Every time he snarled and hissed. Martus hadn’t made the barrier one that would cause pain if someone ran into it, but it was still as solid as a wall would have been. “Hal, I know you’re in there. Come on, you don’t want to hurt these people. Look what you did to this village.”

  Martus pressed his hand up against one edge of the barrier gently. He let a small hole form in it, just enough to push more magick through. Once the entire orb surrounding Hal was filled with calming magick, he sealed the hole again quickly. Already, Hal stumbled from side to side inside the barrier. His eyelids started to droop, his head lolling downward.

  Martus took a few steps back, letting out a huge sigh of relief. If Hal just fell asleep in the barrier, he would surely turn back to normal, and Martus was ready for this to be over. This was mo
re magick than he’d ever used at one time, and he had to sit down on the ground just so he didn’t fall over.

  Hal almost stumbled right to the ground himself, but then he let out a huge roar and barreled his head forward into the barrier with his full strength. Martus hadn’t been concentrating enough, and he didn’t have enough energy left to keep it closed against the huge amount of energy Hal was able to put against it. He burst right past it and landed with his foot an inch away from where Martus was sitting.

  Hal’s head was coming at Martus like a horse at full speed. He didn’t want to cause him harm, but he panicked, threw his hands out in front of him, and used whatever little energy was left in his body to protect himself.

  It ended up striking Hal’s head with huge force that, combined with his other wounds, sent him right to the ground.

  “No, no, I’m sorry!” Martus was on his feet before Hal’s body even fully made contact with the ground. It was difficult to breathe, and he stumbled to the side when he stepped toward Hal, but he would recover. Hal was in much more trouble.

  Martus was kneeling at Hal’s side by the time he started shrinking back down to his human size, awkward limbs transforming slowly; perhaps the magick inside him was sluggish from his wounds. As soon as his head was recognizable as human, Martus had it cradled in his hands, lifting it onto his lap. He fumbled at Hal’s neck, searching for a pulse. His fingers were shaking, and he’d never done it before, but he knew what his heartbeat was supposed to feel like.

  A long moment passed when he was sure he couldn’t find it.

  “No, no, no, you cannot be dead. You aren’t. You’re fine. You’re stronger than I am. You would have killed me before you died. Come on, come on.” Martus couldn’t breathe. Tears stung his eyes, falling down his cheeks when they burned so badly he had to blink. “You’re okay. Where is it? Where is it?”