Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1)

by CRAIG SHAW GARDNER

  She heard a second, fainter howl, as if in answer to the first. She remembered the setting sun above. The forest was growing darker around her. She should get over to the tree trail while she could still see her way.

  She inched forward, trying to keep her weight above a large branch that pointed in the right direction. The mass of branches swayed but held. She grabbed a joint between the branches and pulled herself along, kicking with her legs like she was swimming. It was quiet again. Leaves rustled. Small branches snapped as she crawled toward her goal. But the howls were gone. Why did she feel like something was waiting for her down below?

  There was a groaning sound, like a door with rusty hinges. One of the branches was giving way underneath her. The foliage that supported her was dropping away. Her feet still rested against a substantial branch. She pushed out with her legs, wrapping her arms around another sizable limb as a mass of branches and leaves fell from where she had been a second ago. She hung from the great tree branch, her feet dangling in the air.

  She heard the limbs crash on the forest floor, some distance below, followed by a chorus of howls.

  Something was waiting for her below.

  But she had almost reached the trail. If she could simply swing herself forward, she could drop right on the vine-lined path and get out of this place.

  She swung, feeling her sweat-damp fingers once again slipping over the too-smooth bark. She let go when her feet had swayed to their farthest forward point, and fell straight toward the trail, and the huge trunk the path wound around.

  She yelled as she hit the trunk, her hands in front of her to break her fall.

  Her cry was answered by a new series of howls. She looked down and was surprised that she could see the ground, maybe forty feet below. She hadn’t realized she had fallen so far.

  She pushed herself away from the tree and cried out again when she tried to put her weight on her right foot. She must have twisted her ankle. At least, she hoped that was all it was. The howling cut off abruptly as a dark figure stepped from the shadows below to look up at her.

  The thing below stood like a man, but looked more like a great, shaggy dog. It held a bowl in one of its paws. Mary Lou realized it was the same bowl that had held her stew.

  “You feeeast withhout usss,” the creature said in a slow, grumbling voice. “Youu should inviite usss to the parrttyyy.”

  “Too mucchh foood forrr succhh aa sscrawwnny creeeaturrre,” a second voice called from the darkness.

  “Nooo neeeed tooo coook,” a third voice added. “Ggllladd tooo eeeat rrrraww.”

  “Whyy donn’t youu comme dowwn annd joinn usss?” the creature with the bowl called up. “Wee cann havvve ourrr parrrtyy herrre.”

  Mary Lou looked away from the creature below. Maybe, if she leaned against the tree trunks on her way, she could manage to climb back up to the People’s camp.

  “Vverrry wwelll,” a new growl came from below. “Ifff youuu willl nnott commme tooo meee, I willl vvissssitt youuu.” Mary Lou glanced back down as she heard a rustling below. The creatures were moving across the ground, dim shapes in the gathering shadows. Their leader smiled up at her, its great teeth putting the tiny fangs of the People to shame. “Unnlliike ourrr ffourr-leggedd brrotherrrs, I cannn climmb a treee.”

  “Merrilu!” the People called from somewhere overhead. “I’m here!” she called back. “Here!”

  Two more of the doglike things had leapt into view. They seemed quite agitated.

  “Theeyyy folllowww!” one of them barked. “Theeyyy folllowww!”

  Mary Lou was startled by the fear she heard in that cry. Maybe these things would be scared away by the very thought of the Anno.

  “She’s up here, hey?” another clear male voice called from down below.

  “Wolves!” a second voice, this one female, added. “If you offer us any resistance, we will shoot you. And we are very good with our bows!”

  These creatures were wolves? The things howled below her, six or seven voices joining in the chorus, as the leader stalked away, still on two legs. The other wolves that Mary Lou could see followed on all fours.

  “Mary Lou!” a call came from below. She recognized that voice. Two figures came out of the shadows. One of them was Todd Jackson!

  “Merrilu! Merrilu! Merrilu!” the People screamed as they streamed down around her.

  “Todd!” she tried to call out over the frenzied calls of the Anno. But their calls of “Merrilu!” seemed to drown out everything. She turned to her would-be saviors. A moment ago, she couldn’t wait for them to arrive. Now she wished they would just shut up!

  “Please!” she called to the People. “Could you stop your calling for a minute?”

  But their cries of “Merrilu!” grew in intensity, as if it was some war chant. She saw that many of the Anno carried their bows, and a few even held spears taken from their enemies. Poison sticks.

  “Merrilu!” the People all called in one great, united voice as they drew their bows and shot their first arrows toward the humans on the ground.

  What were they doing? They could hurt Todd and his friend, maybe even kill them!

  “Back off!” the other man below shouted. He dragged Todd toward the safety of the surrounding trees.

  “No!” she shouted with every ounce of strength left in her. “No!” she screamed at the People as they swarmed around her. “Can’t you understand?” She tried to move forward, to rip the bows from their hands, but pain shot up from her ankle. She leaned back against the tree, gasping. “No,” she whispered, her voice much softer than before. “I don’t want you to hurt them!”

  “Merrilu!” the People called. “Merrilu!”

  The People kept firing their arrows down to the earth, even though Todd and the others had long disappeared.

  Twenty-Two

  Evan Mills was wrong. This was more than darkness.

  The world was changing around him, and changing again. He saw flashes of light in the darkness, bright strobes in the black. And in that light were objects, places, people, things that he thought he might recognize, if only he could concentrate on them for longer than the instant they were illuminated.

  One flash showed an expanse of green, maybe a grassy hill. Mills thought, for some reason, about being a boy, taking a walk through a meadow on a hot afternoon.

  Another flash, full of grey. Mills thought of a city street, the first place he kissed the woman who would be his wife.

  A flash, almost pure white, and he was in the doctor’s office at the moment that he and his wife, Cathy, were told they would never have children.

  One more, in red, as he yelled and cursed until he lost his voice as Cathy threw everything in their living room to the floor.

  Another in brown, an autumn day washed in rain, the day Cathy left. He wanted to say something, simply call her name, but that great weight in his chest kept his mouth closed, his voice silent.

  Flash piled upon flash, giving Mills ten, a hundred, a thousand pieces of his past. It was like that old cliché about your whole life passing before you, except in this case, Mills got the idea that his life was being replayed for someone else’s benefit. He thought he heard a deep chuckle, but he couldn’t tell if that was any more real than those strobed scenes he might be making up in his head.

  “Don’t believe any of it,” Mrs. Smith cautioned.

  At least, Mills thought she had cautioned him. Her voice sounded like she stood right next to him. How could he hear her like that if she was nowhere to be seen?

  “Where are you?” he called.

  “Oh, dear,” she replied. “Wait a moment. I believe I can take care of this.”

  The light strobes ceased abruptly. The air was filled with a chorus of sopranos as Mrs. Smith descended from somewhere high above. Her housecoat had been replaced by immaculate white robes, even more brilliant in the bright light that seemed to hang around her like a halo.

  She glanced self-consciously at her attire as she landed in front of
Mills. “Oh, dear, that was rather melodramatic, wasn’t it? I’m sure there must be some way to adjust that sort of thing.” She smiled and shook her head. “I’ll simply have to work on it.” Melodramatic wasn’t the word for it. She had looked like some angel in one of those old biblical epics.

  “I do have a fondness for Cecil B. De Mille,” she admitted. “It’s not something I’m particularly proud of.”

  Mills had had enough of this. Maybe he shouldn’t have gotten angry with Mrs. Smith, but she was available at the moment.

  “What do you mean?” he shouted at her. “I need to know what’s going on here, and I need to know now!”

  “You need an explanation?” Mrs. Smith’s wistful smile faltered a bit. “I’m not quite sure I could. I simply seem to have a knack for this sort of thing.” The wrinkles around her eyes deepened as she reached for words. “It’s a certain way of thinking about things. That’s all I can tell you now.”

  “Interesting,” Nunn’s disembodied voice commented once again. “Be quiet, will you?” Mills yelled, throwing his anger in a more appropriate place. “We are not here for your amusement!”

  “Well,” Nunn’s voice replied. “Perhaps some of you aren’t.”

  “Now, he is so sure of himself,” Mrs. Smith chided. “Let’s see what we can do about that, shall we?”

  “What? You can’t—”

  Nunn’s shouting voice abruptly stopped.

  “There.” Mrs. Smith’s head bobbed up and down in a no-nonsense nod. “That should give us a little privacy.”

  Mills had no idea what to say. Mrs. Smith picked up the conversation for him.

  “Sometimes, as I’ve grown older, I notice that my mind has begun to wander. It’s a frightening thing, to discover you don’t remember how you got somewhere, even where you are.” She paused for a second as she looked out to the woods beyond them. It was only with that gesture that Mills realized the forest was there again. No doubt Constance had brought that back as well.

  “My mind seems to wander just as much here,” she continued, “maybe more so. But back home on Chestnut Circle, I’d lose myself. Here, when I wander, I find things.”

  She paused again and frowned, waving her right hand in an impatient sort of way that seemed more directed at herself than at Mills.

  “Here, I should explain this to everyone.”

  She closed her eyes. The forest was filled with the rest of the adult neighbors.

  “What’s going on here?” Jackson demanded. His wife flinched at his anger, but she didn’t seem to shrink away the way she had before.

  “Harold,” Rose Dafoe called to her husband. “I was so worried!” They stepped together so that Harold could take her in his arms.

  “And where were you, Leo?” Margaret Furlong demanded of her spouse.

  “Trying to survive, like the rest of us,” Furlong retorted sharply. “If you could look at what was happening to the others, instead of simply thinking about yourself—”

  “Now, please!” Mrs. Smith announced in a voice remarkably strong for one so frail. “There’s no reason to fight. This was all that—Nunn person’s doing. Some sort of trickery. However, I seem to be able to counter it. I always was strong-willed. You should ask my husband—Arthur.”

  She paused for a moment, as if only with the mention of her husband’s name did she remember the world they’d all left behind. Arthur had been trapped in the city, cut off by the storm from returning home. Maybe Constance realized she would never see Arthur again.

  “But, Constance?” Joan Blake broke the silence. “You brought us here? How?”

  “Oh, Joan,” Mrs. Smith replied in her usual self-deprecating way. “I don’t think I brought anyone anywhere. I believe we were all here all along. We simply couldn’t see each other. Trickery, like I said.”

  “But what about Mary Lou and the boys?” Rose Dafoe asked hopefully. “Do you think you could find them, too?”

  Mrs. Smith considered the question for a moment, her aura dimming with thought. “Well. I don’t think I could conjure up the children, if that’s what you mean. I can see through the things that are happening here, but I’m not able to create anything of my own. I don’t understand enough of this yet. Perhaps I never will.”

  Half the neighbors seemed to want to talk at once. Margaret Furlong demanded an explanation of everything. Her husband told her to stop bothering people. Rose Dafoe talked about how they had to look on the bright side: They were all together, and they all seemed healthy. Mills thought he heard Jackson murmur something about the “crazy old lady.”

  Somebody had to get some sort of order. Mills thought he was as good a candidate as any. “People!” he called in his best teaching voice. “Now listen. We have a moment’s peace here, but it may only last a moment. We need to make some sort of plan.”

  “How can we plan,” Leo Furlong complained, “if we have no idea where we are or who’s in charge?”

  “We have to find our children!” Rose Dafoe demanded. Harold moved close to his wife, tried to take her hand, but she brushed him away.

  “First,” Mrs. Smith said evenly, “we have to find some way to protect ourselves from Nunn.”

  “Nunn?” Mills felt like laughing. “But he’s gone! You simply sent him away!”

  “Yes, but how? And why does it work?” Constance shook her head. “I have to figure out how I manage these things before they will do us much good.”

  “Why do we have to protect ourselves from Nunn?” Jackson demanded. “Seems to me he’s willing to work with us.”

  “At least he’s talked to us and fed us,” Margaret Furlong agreed. “That’s more than could be said for that other fellow!”

  “And one of Nunn’s men killed Sayre!” Leo pointed out venomously. “You’d forget about anything as long as you get three square meals!”

  “I don’t think it’s time to trust anyone just yet.” Everyone stopped speaking as Mrs. Smith’s voice cut through their arguments. Mills couldn’t remember when he had heard her voice sound so strong. “I like what Evan had to say. Yes, we certainly should try to find our children. But we must have a plan.”

  “Yeah, we have to keep ourselves safe here, too,” Furlong interjected, his smile faltering as he looked to the others for support. “I mean, none of us want to die!”

  Margaret Furlong gave her husband a look reserved for cockroaches after you had squashed them with your heel. “Leo, why do you even try? I have never seen anybody so ineffectual.”

  “I tend to agree.” Nunn stepped forward so that he stood between the Furlongs. Mills hadn’t even been aware that he had arrived.

  Nunn turned to the male half of the couple. “Leo, you do seem ineffectual to me. You’ll be the first. After you, the choices get harder.”

  “What?” Leo’s voice squeaked as he tried to frame some sort of question. “Where did—how did you—”

  “None of that matters anymore,” Nunn replied smoothly, “at least not to you.” He turned to Furlong and held out his hands. “Leo, you are mine.”

  “What?” Leo looked surprised. “I won’t! Constance, can’t you—” Leo Furlong began to waver, the way a television image did when the reception was bad.

  “No!” Mrs. Smith shouted. “I won’t let you!”

  “Really,” Nunn answered her in a tired voice. “Try me again when you’ve figured out what you’re doing.” He waved his right hand and Mrs. Smith vanished. He turned back to the wavering shape that had once been Furlong. “Now, Leo, it’s time for you to do something of value.”

  “Nooooo!” What was left of Leo’s voice turned to a moan as his image shrank and swirled, then bounced like a child’s ball into Nunn’s open palms.

  “Oh, yes,” Nunn said. He closed his eyes as his hands encircled the ball. His frame shook as he breathed sharply. His eyes opened, and then his hands. The ball was gone.

  “Leo!” Margaret called.

  “He’s gone, I’m afraid,” Nunn said with a grin, “but his pass
ing has served a greater cause. I need energy to complete my work. Those of you who agree with me will see benefits as well, believe me.”

  “What have you done?” Mrs. Smith popped back into existence at Mills’ side.

  “A bit too late, my dear old dame,” Nunn said smoothly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that if you want to compete. I ate him, of course. Everyone needs to keep up their energy. Especially after having to fend off a raw power such as your own.” Mrs. Smith looked as angry as Mills had ever seen her. “Are you saying that my actions helped lead to Leo’s death?”

  “Does that disturb you?” Nunn said, his smile growing with every word. “I have ways of making it easier.”

  Mrs. Smith’s aura flared behind her. “No. I can’t blame myself for something I didn’t understand. But I’m beginning to understand you all too well.”

  “You will be difficult, won’t you?” Nunn looked to the rest of the neighbors. “I will be blunt with you. The old lady is a remarkable exception. Most of you show very little potential. However, even what little you have can be molded. I am going to leave you on your own for a bit. You will be given nothing. You must make choices to survive.

  “You can join me, and you will have both comfort and my protection. I will take my victims from those who refuse me. I will warn you that, as the battle intensifies, so does my hunger.”

  He waved to all the men and women of Chestnut Circle as he began to fade. “Welcome to the seven islands. I hope you enjoy what little stay you have remaining. Now, if you will excuse me, I believe it’s time for my nap.”

  He was gone. For a long time, the only sound in the clearing was the deep sobs of Margaret Furlong.

  The sharp pains were gone. The Captain had thought they would never end.

  He tried to open his eyes. Light flashed before him. The Captain grunted, the only sound left in him.

  “Not fair!” a shrill voice screamed. “Not fair!”

  Zachs was here with him. The Captain was glad the creature was angry about something else than him.