Ben the Dragonborn

by Dianne E Astle

  “None of us should stay behind. There is no guarantee we will be able to come back this way. It would be hard for any one of us to survive this island alone. We can give Charla whatever help she needs,” Jared stated firmly.

  “If you’re determined, then we should go this way,” Ben said, pointing to the crevice. “There are good handholds. It won’t be too difficult for Jared, and Charla can make it with our help. But we should go now! The uglies are on their way.”

  Jared and Charla stood. Ben boosted Jared up. Once Jared had a good hold, Ben boosted Charla. Jared grabbed her hand and told her where to find a handhold for the other one. They began the climb up the crevice, with Jared reaching down to help Charla when he could, and Ben boosting her from below.

  As they climbed Ben said, “I saw a treg up close, closer than I ever want to be again. It came from behind while I was looking over the cliff and just about got me before I became invisible. The treg was wearing a collar.”

  “A collar!” exclaimed Charla

  “Are you sure?” asked Jared.

  “I’m very sure,” Ben stated.

  “What does it mean?” Charla wondered.

  “It means someone is controlling the tregs,” Ben said.

  “That makes sense,” broke in Jared. “That’s why they’re taking things they’ve never been interested in before.”

  Soon they were all standing on the surface, under a large tree near the small cave, from where they could look across the bare hillside to the center of the island.

  “Keep out of sight,” Ben said quietly, as he pointed out the perched treg. “We’ve got to get to the ravine. It’s too narrow for either the tregs or the uglies. We will be safe once we get there, if it’s possible to be safe anywhere on this island.”

  “I hope you’re right about that ravine not being wide enough,” Jared said. “But the real problem is getting across the hill to the ravine.”

  “The tregs will see us. We will not get far with them standing watch,” Charla stated.

  “I have an idea,” Ben said. “I will turn on my invisibility.” Ben picked up the small trees he had cut. He gave one each to Jared and Charla. “Hold a branch in front of you. I will stand between you and hold a tree behind each of you. The branches should hide you from the tregs. If we go slowly enough, the tregs may not notice that the trees are moving.”

  “It might work,” Jared said, “as long as the uglies do not catch up to us.”

  With those words, Charla picked up one of the small trees and held it in front of her. “Let’s go,” she ordered. “Let’s go now.”

  There was no argument from either Ben or Jared. Jared picked up one of the bushy trees Ben had cut, while Ben took one in each hand. They walked along, doing their best to ensure that their bodies were not visible to the tregs sitting on rock outcroppings.

  As they left the shelter of the cave, Ben said quietly, “One more thing, tregs can hear really well. It might be wise not to talk from here to the ravine. And the uglies have a wonderful sense of smell, so no farting.”

  Jared chuckled quietly but Charla said indignantly, “Mer do not fart.”

  They followed the creek because it was where the stubby trees were the thickest. Charla and Jared walked close together so that the small trees they held would provide the maximum amount of screening. They took a step forward, paused, and then took another small step. A treg rose in the air and flew towards them. They stood perfectly still as it flew above them, banked and returned to its roost. The three friends took even smaller steps and paused longer before they stepped again. The ground sloped uphill and there were places where they had to risk a bigger step so they could stand without risking a fall. The treg closest to the three companions seemed to know something was not right. It became more and more agitated. Occasionally it stretched its wings as if to take flight, only to settle down again as the three companions stopped moving. They slowly moved across the barren hillside.

  More than a half hour had passed and they were just over half way to the ravine. Ben’s arms were aching from the effort of holding the two small trees. He did not know how long he could continue to carry the weight. It would have been easier if he could move his arms, but he had to hold them steady so that the walking trees did not arouse suspicion. His plan was turning into a test of endurance. He was feeling sorry for himself when his eyes caught a movement to the west of them. It was two of the uglies. They were moving slowly towards the waterfall with their noses close to the ground. Occasionally one or the other would look up and scan the horizon, but they saw nothing that aroused their suspicion. Ben was trying to think of a way to let Jared and Charla know without speaking that the uglies had arrived. He did not want to risk attracting the tregs. One of the uglies snorted loudly and there was no need.

  Charla and Jared began to walk a bit faster. A treg lifted off its perch and flew towards them. The three companions stood still and hoped that the treg would not see anything suspicious between the leaves of the four small trees that met just over their heads. The treg circled above them for a moment and then flew toward the uglies. A second treg to the west of them had taken to its wings and was flying toward the uglies. The two tregs harassed the uglies. They attacked their broad backs with their razor sharp beaks. The uglies bellowed and swung their spiked tails at the birds. Occasionally they raised a claw-tipped foot to try to bat the birds out of the air. They snapped their massive jaws shut whenever the birds got too close to their heads.

  Ben whispered, “Walk fast. Don’t stop until I tell you!” The three companions made fast progress while the attention of the tregs and the uglies was focused on each other.

  Ben kept his head turned and watched the battle. Unfortunately it did not last long. Soon the three companions were standing still as the tregs flew back to their perches. The uglies continued their slow snuffling walk toward the waterfall. The three companions were now about three-quarters of the way across the hillside.

  The uglies bellowed behind them. They had picked up their scent and turned towards the center of the mountain. Ben looked behind them and confirmed that the uglies were coming their way at a lumbering run. The tregs became agitated. They rose from their perches and flew over the three companions to once again attack the uglies. Two tregs from perches further away flew towards them from the east and the west. Ben looked over his shoulder and saw that the uglies were closing the gap in spite of being under attack by the tregs.

  “Run,” Ben whispered urgently. “Fast!”

  The three companions threw aside the small leafy trees and sprinted toward the ravine. The uglies bellowed and picked up speed. Luckily for the three companions they were not the fastest of creatures. The two tregs continued to attack the uglies, while two other tregs, one from the West and another from the East flew toward the three companions. The tregs screeched and the uglies bellowed as the three companions ran as fast as they could.

  Ben pulled ahead of the other two, and had almost reached the safety of the ravine when he noticed Charla and Jared were not running with him. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Charla's legs had turned into a tail fin, and Jared was trying to carry her on his back. Ben looked at the ravine. He was almost safe. Then he turned and ran back to Charla and Jared. Jared and Ben linked arms and picked Charla up.

  The uglies lumbered heavily on; the sound growing louder with each passing moment. Ben could have sworn he felt their breath on his back every time they wheezed. The two tregs that had flown out to harass the uglies had not yet seen the three companions, which was lucky as these tregs were closer than the other two and fast enough to have caught them. If it was a choice between uglies or tregs, Ben felt they would be better off being carried away by tregs than torn limb-from-limb by the uglies.

  Charla looked behind them as the two boys carried her towards the safety of the ravine.

  “Run! Run faster! The uglies are catching up. They’re right behind us!” she screamed.

  Ben didn’t need Char
la to tell him that. He could smell their stinky breath and feel the movement of air on his sweat-soaked back.

  “The tregs have seen us!” Charla shouted. The tregs that were harassing the uglies noticed for the first time that they had another quarry. They flew straight up into the air and looped around and flew over the backs of the uglies towards the three companions. With a bird closing in on either side and two coming from behind, and two uglies breathing down their necks, the two boys ran on, carrying Charla between them.

  Charla and Jared screamed. A moment later Ben’s feet left the ground. He and Jared were gripping each other’s arm, and Charla was holding tightly to each one of them. A treg had Jared in its talons and was lifting all three companions into the air out of reach of the uglies. The three companions shot forward towards the ravine as the treg tried to gain altitude. It could have managed just one of them easily, but the three companions maintained their hold on one another and it was too much for the bird. It dropped them into the stream, just in front of the ravine entrance. The uglies charged onwards as Ben, Jared and Charla scrambled into the ravine. The uglies splashed through the water towards the ravine opening. It was too narrow for one ugly, let alone two. The uglies crashed into each other and the rock on either side of the ravine and fell down in a tangle of legs. The tregs attacked the uglies as they thrashed about on the ground. The uglies roared their disappointment and their rage at being attacked by the birds. The three companions watched from the safety of the ravine as the uglies untangled themselves, awkwardly stood up and ran back towards the waterfall. The tregs harassed them all the way across the hillside.

  Jared and Ben pulled themselves onto a ledge that ran alongside the stream. They lay on the ledge, chests heaving, mouths open, gulping air. Charla lay in the middle of the stream, her eyes closed, and her mermaid’s tail moving just enough to keep from getting carried downstream and out of the ravine into the open.

  Charla swam over to the ledge and pulled herself up, still in her mermaid form. “Are you guys okay,” she asked. She reached out and pulled Jared’s shirt aside to reveal two punctures in his chest that were seeping blood. Jared winced. Charla looked at his other shoulder and saw two more spots of blood. She opened her backpack and took out a jar of healing ointment. Very gently Charla smeared ointment on Jared’s wounded shoulders.

  "We were lucky," Jared said through clenched teeth. "If the treg hadn't picked us up, the uglies would have had us.

  Charla finished putting on the cream, but kept her hand on Jared's shoulder.

  It was growing dark as the three companions moved further up the ravine until they found a suitable place to spend the night.

  15. RESCUE AND CAPTURE

  Charla dreamt that night of giant spiders with wings, a spiked tail and an alligator jaw. They were coming at her from every side, but she could not get away. She was stranded on land in her mermaid form, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not call forth her legs. Jared and Ben were asleep on the ground, not aware that plate-sized spiders were chewing on them. Charla called over and over, warning them that if they did not wake up soon they would die. Jared and Ben moaned and occasionally cried out, but they never woke up, no matter how loudly Charla called. The spiders had already eaten off their ears and noses.

  Charla was particularly angry at the damage the spiders were doing to Jared. She yelled at them to stop. Then she began to sob, “Leave him, leave him, he is good. Leave my friend alone. I love him.” Those last words shocked the sleeping Charla, and roused her from sleep. As she lay there half asleep Charla realized the truth of the words she had spoken in her dream. She had feelings for the human Lushakan. When Charla was fully roused from sleep she was glad to discover there were no spiders. The one true thing about her dream was that Jared did moan as he tried to sleep on the hard ground with wounded shoulders.

  Morning found the three friends despondent and afraid of what the day would bring. Charla and Ben opened their backpacks and shared their food with Jared. They ate in silence, each one lost in their own thoughts.

  “I’m sorry!” Charla said finally, her eyes closed tightly to keep tears from leaking out.

  “What for?” Jared asked with a look of concern on his tired face.

  “I just about got you both killed. When I’m frightened I can’t seem to keep my transformation. What was easy before is hard now.’

  “You’re getting tired. We all are. I’m finding it more difficult to keep going and legs are natural for me. And staying invisible is getting harder the more tired I get. So it’s no wonder that you are having a hard time,” Ben replied.

  “But you haven’t even begun to train yet. I’ve been training for two years. I should be able to do better. If that happens again, just leave me behind. I don’t want to be the cause of your death - either of you,” Charla’s tears flowed freely now.

  Jared laid his hand gently on Charla’s tail. Charla’s eyes met Jared’s and he smiled reassuringly. Then he said, “What we’ve faced would frighten anyone.”

  “For sure,” Ben said. “This place should be called Death Island, rather than Spenser Island.”

  “But…I must be able to hold the transformation if I’m ever going to be chosen to go off world. The Watcher was right. I’m not ready. Perhaps I never will be…”

  “We wouldn’t have made it this far without you. You saved both our lives more than once,” Jared broke in.

  “Jared’s right,” Ben said, his eyes closed. “We have a saying on our world, a true one I think; ‘Only fools are never afraid.’ Besides,” Ben added, “I’ve been chosen, and I’ve been more afraid than either of you. If it were up to me we’d have turned back a long time ago.”

  “Well that’s true,” Charla said. “I’ve never met anyone who is afraid of water before,”

  “I’ve had dreams ever since I was little,” Ben said. “I have dreams where I drop out of the sky into deep water. I can’t breathe and it’s dark. I call out for my mother, but she does not come. Everything goes dark. I float near death.”

  “Is it a memory?” Jared asked.

  “I’ve wondered that myself,” Ben replied. “Whatever it is, the Guardian made a mistake in choosing me. The only reason I’ve made it this far is that the two of you are with me. You two are the ones I would choose if I was doing the choosing.”

  “Us two?” Jared asked.

  “Yes, you two!”

  “How does one get to be chosen?” Jared asked.

  “I don’t know. All I know is that my dad is a Chosen and so was my grandmother. I think my mom was a Chosen as well. My dad and grandmother both went to the same school I go to, but I don’t know about my mom. She must have, I guess. My dad is off somewhere doing the Guardian’s work. He’s been away for eight months. He told me that he would be gone just a few weeks. I’m afraid something happened to him and I’ll never see him again. I didn’t know what my dad did or anything about the six worlds until I went to Miss Templeton’s office three days ago. If someone had told me about the Guardian, Watchers, Chosen and portals to other worlds I would have thought they were nuts.”

  “At Fairwaters all the students know about the purpose of the school, but not all are chosen to go off world,” Charla said. “Jared, you would be a Chosen if humans still trained at Fairwaters.”

  “There used to be humans?” Jared asked.

  “Yes, humans and mer trained together, although some say that humans were never more than servants of the Chosen.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ben said. “You accept that humans are chosen from other worlds, why not this world?”

  “We…many of us…but not all…believe the humans on Lushaka are inferior to the humans from other worlds. We…some anyway believe that the humans of Lushaka would never be chosen no matter what world they lived on because they are of an inferior breed of human.”

  “Is that what you think?” Jared asked.

  “I used to think that way,” responded Charla.

  “
What happened?” Jared asked.

  “I met you, tree ape, and knowing you changed my mind.”

  “No, I meant what happened to cause humans to stop training at Fairwaters?”

  “There was a war between humans and mer. The students at Fairwaters got drawn into the conflict. All the humans and over half the mer were expelled. There haven’t been any humans since.”

  “We’ve stories of that war. We have stories of people who betrayed us because they were not really human, but mer with the ability to look human. Changelings, we call them. Because of the changelings many of my people died. We are taught that every changeling must die. We are taught that if we know someone is a changeling and allow that person to live, then we are disloyal to our people and a disgrace to our ancestors. I never knew that a changeling could be someone…I…I…” Jared’s voice trailed off.

  “Jared, when I get back to Fairwaters, I will tell the Watcher about you. I will tell everyone who will listen that I’ve met a Lushakan human who is intelligent, has true courage and can be trusted. I will tell everyone who will listen that you are worthy of being a student at Fairwaters.”

  Jared looked at Charla and then looked upstream in the direction they needed to go, speculation clearly written on his face. “We should go,” he said finally and got to his feet.

  The ravine had been formed over the centuries by water wearing down into the rock. Over the years the stream had cut a narrow path deeper and deeper. In some places the sky could not be seen. In other places the ravine sides went almost straight up, revealing a narrow patch of blue sky. The tregs could not fly into the ravine because it was narrow and deep.

  Ben and Jared walked beside the stream when they could. In places where the gravel ledge disappeared, they took to the water. Charla stayed in the water and swam where she could. Where the water was shallow, she slid over the rocks as she pulled herself along with her hands to avoid changing from her mer form. When they hit the first waterfall, Charla transformed long enough to use legs to climb to the next level. They had gone over six small waterfalls when they found themselves in a place where the ravine opened up. Over the centuries, when there was a heavy rainstorm, water had swirled around and around and worn out a bowl in the rock. Charla dove into the deep pool in the center of the bowl, while Jared and Ben walked around the outside of the pool towards yet another waterfall at the other end.