Snapdragon Book II: In the Land of the Dragon

by Brandon Berntson

  Seth looked to his left and noticed another gray wolf with black markings across its face and back. Eddie jogged up closer to the rest of them.

  “Do wolves attack humans?” Gavin asked.

  “Well…its been known to happen,” Eddie said. “Depends on how hungry they are, I think.”

  “Great,” Gavin said.

  “I think now’s a good time to get the rifle ready,” Seth told Albert.

  Albert nodded, took off his pack, and grabbed the gun. It was still loaded from the moment with the deer. Still, he rifled through his pack for more shells.

  Seth pulled the sword from the scabbard.

  More wolves came into view, some gray, others as dark as the wolf Eddie had spotted. Seth counted seven.

  “I think it’s safe to say they’re hungry,” Gavin said.

  “Stay close,” Malcolm told them.

  The six of them drew closer to one another, making a tight-knit circle. Albert was on the right; Seth took the left. Kinsey was behind them with her small axe, Malcolm in front, Eddie and Gavin in the middle.

  “Do you think we should keep moving?” Eddie asked.

  “I think we should take it slow,” Malcolm said. “Albert, fire a shot and see if that scares them off.”

  “Good idea,” Albert said. He positioned the gun in the air and fired a warning shot. The wolves winced, but didn’t retreat.

  “You could always shoot one,” Gavin said. “Maybe if they see one of their buddies go down, they’ll get the picture.”

  “I hate to shoot anything, unless we’re gonna eat it.”

  “I’m not up for wolf meat, despite how hungry I am at the moment,” Kinsey replied.

  “So, what do we do?” Eddie asked.

  “Just keep moving,” Seth told him.

  Albert took aim at one of the wolves and fired. Seth and the others winced at the report. To the right, a loud thud penetrated the wolf’s side. It whimpered, buckled, and fell to the ground. One of the wolves turned its muzzle to the sky and howled.

  Albert disengaged the round and loaded another, taking aim, and fired. A second wolf, hit in the neck, crumpled instantly.

  “Yeah, baby!” Albert cried, letting the shell fly, and loaded another.

  The rifle cracks, however, did not discourage the wolves, and they continued to advance.

  Albert fired another. The bullet sailed wide, hitting the ground with a soft punch in the snow.

  Ears lay back as the wolves closed in. Lips rippled, revealing arcs of yellow teeth.

  Ten yards to Seth’s left, the gray wolf he’d noticed darted from the trees and loped toward him. At the same time, Kinsey cried his name. Seth held the black sword and waited. When it leapt, he swung. Hungry, salivating jaws closed in, but Seth hit the animal on the side of the head. The blade cut cleanly through without hardly any effort. The wolf thumped, motionless, to the snow, which was now turning red.

  How many did that make? Seth’s eyes darted here and there, looking for more.

  Albert pulled the trigger, shooting another. The wolf made a whimpering cry and fell to the ground.

  “There’s one up ahead, Albert,” Malcolm said, pointing.

  Albert took aim and felled the wolf advancing twenty yards in front of them.

  Lone wolf cries echoed across the mountain. Albert took aim and shot another as it retreated, the wolf skidding to a stop before it reached the trees.

  “I think you scared them off,” Gavin said. “If any were still hanging around, that is.”

  “Seth got one, too,” Eddie said.

  “I think it was more luck than anything,” Seth said.

  They moved again, shuffling through the snow.

  “After that,” Albert said. “I might have to teach everyone how to use the rifle.”

  A feeble light shone through the clouds. They stopped again and looked around them.

  “Something’s not right,” Gavin said.

  “What is it?” Kinsey asked from behind.

  Seth still held the sword. They were in the same formation, heads turned, scanning the area.

  “There he is,” Malcolm said, in a whisper.

  Heads turned.

  The Dragon sat upon its horse on a rise roughly fifty yards ahead. Flakes of snow swirled through the air, and though there was no mistaking their enemy, he had changed, morphing into something more. He wore a helmet instead of a top hat now, with two horns curling outward from each side. The bones under its face had turned to shadow, revealing glowing red eyes. Its cape billowed in the light gusts. The horse, too, was a black destrier with muscled flanks.

  The Dragon nodded a single time, and the ground changed beneath their feet.

  Corpses of dead children, kids their own age, congested the forest floor, strewn across the ground. For a second, Seth saw his companions alongside them. Malcolm had been torn in two; Eddie lay dismembered, his appendages quivering. Kinsey lay face down in the snow. Gavin had been impaled through the chest with a sword, his hands hanging limply on the weapon. Albert’s throat had been torn out.

  There were hundreds, perhaps, thousands of bodies congesting the mountainside, like a dumping ground for the dead. When he looked, the trees had turned to towers of rock, like the silent shadows of some lost, forgotten city, relics from a world he’d never been. This was the Dragon’s enterprise. This was his empty landscape, his city for the dead, and it went on for miles.

  Masie’s here, your mother, too. We’ve already fed on the entrails of the tiger.

  Cries filled Seth’s brain, making him wince. He dropped his sword and put his hands to his ears.

  He would be okay, he told himself, as long as he went into the dark. Just a glimpse, Seth thought. That wouldn’t kill him…

  “Shut-up!” Kinsey bellowed, rocking Seth from his nightmare.

  He hadn’t realized how close he’d come to taking that step.

  “Shut-up!” Kinsey screamed again.

  Seth fell to his knees in the snow. He buried his face in his hands.

  “Oh my God,” Kinsey said. “Oh my God.”

  Seth couldn’t breathe.

  “Cling close to me,” something invited.

  When he opened his eyes, dead hands gained volition. Feebly, every dead body in the snow attempted to cling to him, snatching at his pants and boots. But their forms were still. A hand touched his shoulder, and Seth swung around.

  Black eyes gazed into his own, another dead boy no older than himself, who clutched and threw himself upon Seth. He put the hilt of the sword onto the dead boy’s chest, and lifted him up, throwing him off. Just as quickly, the abomination transformed into a spider, and scurried toward him, its legs kicking at his face. A shriek split the air as the thing clutched at him. Seth grasped the sword and pierced it through its body, pinning it to the ground. Black blood oozed across the snow.

  Shadows moved across the forest between the trees.

  “Maybe this is it,” Albert said, in a voice of dread. “Maybe this is the end.”

  The air thickened. Physical black pressed against Seth’s skull. He couldn’t move.

  Fifty yards ahead, the Dragon turned, guiding the destrier down the hill and out of sight. Something lay across the saddle, but it was hard to see in the still-falling snow.

  Ben lay where the phantom had disappeared, motionless.

  The surrounding area was forest again, pine trees, the howling wind.

  Snow continued to fall in eerie silence.

  The six of them stood, motionless, trying to catch their breath…

  “Guys,” Gavin said. “What happened to Kinsey?”

  Seth looked behind him. Where she’d been seconds before was now an empty space. Her tracks did not lead off into the trees, but stopped completely, as though something or someone had simply lifted her from the ground. Seth thought of the form lying across the saddle when the Dragon had disappeared over the rise. He looked, and the form of Ben had disappeared as well.

  He turned his face to the
sky and wailed into the stillness. The sound echoed through the forest trees. Looking from one of his companions to the other, Seth demanded:

  “Did anyone see her? Did you? For God’s sake, did anyone see what happened? Tell me! Please! Did anyone see?”

  His friends shied back, shaking their heads. He shrieked again, his wail splitting the air. Seth collapsed, falling to his knees. Tears poured down his cheeks, and he dropped the bloody sword, putting his hands to his face. A vacuous breach seemed to fill his heart.

  It was you, he thought. It’s your fault. You lost her. You weren’t paying attention. The dead things…the children…Good Lord, what happened? What’s going on?

  His friends gathered around him, but no one said anything.

  iii

  She was gone.

  He couldn’t have gotten to her in time, even if he’d gone after her. The Dragon had taken her and disappeared. That was what he told himself. Once they’d dipped out of sight, the Dragon and Kinsey had returned to some bleak, uninhabited space only the Dragon could enter.

  “We’ll find her,” Malcolm said. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her, Seth.”

  The words seemed futile, but Seth nodded.

  iv

  Another four-point stag emerged from the trees. Seth, his thoughts preoccupied with Kinsey, wasn’t thinking about food, but Albert and the others thought otherwise. Fresh game was on the menu.

  Albert dropped the pack, lifted the rifle, and took aim.

  The deer paused, looked up, and gazed at the five boys.

  Albert pulled the trigger. The crack was loud, echoing through the forest. Albert hit it squarely in the neck. The animal wavered for a moment, then dropped to the forest floor.

  “Good shot,” Gavin said.

  Albert turned to Seth, sensing the boy’s thoughts. “A hot meal will do us good,” he said. He slung the rifle over his shoulder, knelt and exhumed a rope from his pack along with a large knife. He stood up, walking over to the deer, while the others followed, their footsteps crunching in the snow.

  Since Kinsey had vanished, hardly anyone had said a word. Seth tried to turn his thoughts away, but it was hard, and he found himself sniffing back tears, imagining the worst: where the Dragon had taken her, what he was doing. Finding her was one thing, Seth thought, but finding her alive would be something else altogether.

  Albert, with the knife, cut holes in the deer’s tendons; he looped the rope through the incisions, and with the help of the others, lifted the carcass off the ground, using a sturdy branch from a nearby tree as a pulley. Albert made further, methodical incisions around the genital area. Under the hide, he made another long incision all the way to the deer’s neck. He cut along the joint of each extremity, and after guiding his fingers along the inside of the fur—making sawing motions with the knife—he was able to remove the hide.

  “You’re Batman,” Eddie said, and Albert smiled.

  But Albert wasn’t done. The next process consisted of pulling out the entrails, and Albert made another incision before the rectum. With the help of the knife, he was able to remove the innards.

  “This is tricky,” he said. “Cause you have to do it without puncturing the organs, or you’ll ruin the meat.”

  “How did you learn how to do that?” Eddie asked.

  “I saw my dad do it a lot and asked plenty of questions. I didn’t think we would actually get to this moment, but now that it’s here, I’m sort of improvising.”

  With several deft actions, he removed the windpipe and the chest cavity. Afterwards, he proceeded to butcher the carcass, cutting the legs, back, and chest free.

  The task took some amount of time. When Albert was finished, he had various portions of meal-sized meat. “Now,” he said. “The cold should keep it for a while.”

  “We should get moving, away from the smell,” Gavin said. “In case of wolves again.”

  “Good idea,” Albert suggested. “Let me make something, though.” Albert used the hide of the deer to wrap around the meat, using the rope to keep it secure. With more of Albert’s ingenuity, he took several felled branches and made a makeshift sled with some twine in which to carry the meat.

  Once they were ready, they got moving again. After a while, they made camp while Malcolm and Seth found some wood from the forest to make a fire. Once the logs began to smolder, they pitched their tents, digging underneath the snow to drive the stakes into the ground. Situating themselves as comfortably as they could, they sat around the crackling flames, spearing the meat with branches they’d made. Soon, the smell of hot meat was simmering over the fire. Seth had to admit—in the mountain air—it smelled and tasted delicious.

  “Well, we could’ve saved a lot more of the deer,” Albert told them. “The eyes and brains are actually edible, believe it or not, and if we had a big pot, we could have made a stew.”

  “Oh, that’s revolting,” Eddie said, shuddering. “Brains and eyes.”

  Albert shrugged. “It probably would’ve tasted better with the stew, but I figured, we could only take so much. We’ll leave the rest for the foxes and birds, I guess.”

  They sat around the fire and bit into the strips of meat fixed to the ends of their sticks. Seth hadn’t realized how ravenous he was and ate his share quickly. It tasted gamy, but it was delicious, and it gave him strength. Eating without Kinsey, however, felt like a betrayal.

  Albert fixed more of the meat over the fire. Through the evening, they continued to eat until they were full.

  “We have a good supply of meat now,” Albert said. “If we’re careful, we can make it last quite a while. Hopefully the cold will help keep it fresh, and the hide it’s wrapped in. I’m just worried about the smell. I’ve had enough wolves for a while.”

  “Amen,” Eddie said.

  As the sun set behind the clouds, Seth thought about the events of the day, the pain of their loss. He wondered what the coming days would bring.

  She’s still alive, he thought. She’s still alive. We’ll find you Kinsey, or we’ll die trying. I promise.

  Were the others thinking the same?

  Albert pulled out a small shovel from his pack, and proceeded to dig a hole in the ground several yards from camp. He made the hole big enough to put the meat inside while still wrapped in the deer hide. Then he buried it again to keep it from unwanted predators.

  The fire was still going but dwindling.

  “I’m sorry about today,” Seth told them, staring into the flames, then looked at each of them. “I didn’t mean to go off on you guys…it’s just…”

  The others looked at him. Malcolm smiled and nodded.

  “Don’t worry about it, Your Majesty,” Albert said, poking the fire with his stick. “We’ll find her.”

  Seth sighed and nodded.

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “We’ll find her. Everything’ll be okay.”

  Gavin was gnawing on a large chunk of cooked meat from his wooden spear. “I don’t know about you guys,” Gavin said, with his mouth full. “But I think I’ve eaten better on this journey than I have in my whole stinking life.”

  Seth and the others smiled.

  “What?” Gavin said.

  “You look better than you’ve probably looked in your whole stinking life,” Malcolm said, grinning, the firelight reflecting off his glasses.

  “Cherry-pickin’ll do that for ya, young master,” Gavin said, like an Irish ogre. “And lots of ’elp ’round the table.”

  Grins emerged, but not a single chuckle sounded.

  v

  “With what we saw back there,” Eddie said, some time later. “I hope that was the last of it.”

  Eddie’s eyes had been darting here and there throughout the night. The events made everyone fitfully awake, and no one was anxious for bed.

  How could you sleep at all? Seth thought. I’m sorry, Kinsey. I pray to God you’re safe. We won’t go back without you. Hear that? That’s a promise.

  “Hey guys?” Seth said, and looked at each of them in
turn. “Promise me something…I know what you said earlier, Albert, but…just promise me, okay? Promise we won’t go back without her. We’re not going back to Ellishome without Kinsey…until we find her. Agreed?”

  They were like silent warriors, marred by a ceaseless journey.

  “Promise?” he said, again.

  “I never thought otherwise,” Malcolm told him, playing with the stick in his hands. “I’ve been thinking the same thing since she disappeared. Of course I promise.”

  Eddie nodded. “Me, too, Seth. I thought the same thing. No going back until we find Kinsey.”

  “Same here,” Albert said, staring into the flames.

  “Don’t count me out,” Gavin said, between a mouthful of meat. “I vow from here on out. No Kinsey. No victory.”

  Seth nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, guys.”

  Their countenances were the stoniest Seth had ever seen. He wondered if he had the same wild, primitive look about him, as if the land had made them feral. He had never seen four kids look the way his friends did now. Not looks of rugged toughness, but resistance.

  “We should have a name,” Eddie said, looking into the trees.

  “Yeah, the Coo-Coo’s,” Malcolm said, smiling.

  Albert and Gavin laughed, a strange sound after the events of the day.

  “Naw,” Gavin said. “Eddie’s right. Maybe we should leave something, even if it is stupid. We should leave something behind, something that will stay forever, just for us, something we know about. That we did whatever we could to save Ellishome.”

  “How long have we been out here anyway?” Seth asked.

  Malcolm pulled up the sleeve of his coat and laughed.

  “What?” Seth said. “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s digital,” Malcolm explained.

  “So?”

  He showed the watch to Seth. “It froze.”

  The watch was a blank screen.

  “Six, maybe seven weeks, is my guess,” Malcolm said. “I don’t know.”