Fight and Flight (Magic 2.0 Book 4) Page 16

“If there is, we haven’t thought of it.”

  18.

  It was a pleasant day in Yorkshire. A cool breeze blew the tall, soft grass in graceful waves around the legs of the seven dragons that stood, grazing peacefully in the sunlight, atop one of the gently rolling hills that stretched off to the horizon in every direction.

  The sound of birds singing and trees rustling was interrupted by the sound of Tyler materializing twenty feet above the ground, directly in front of the dragons, then shouting, “Hey, look at me!”

  The dragons all looked up at Tyler, mildly interested. In that instant, Gary materialized silently behind the dragons. He held his staff high over his head by its narrow tip. The large, glowing blue disc of a goal was affixed to the head of his staff, and Gary wielded it like a gigantic butterfly net, swinging it downward over the top of the dragon farthest away from Tyler. Because all of the other dragons were looking at Tyler, none of them saw Gary take the rear dragon out. Gary disappeared, leaving the herd one dragon smaller, and a disk of grass the exact circumference of the goal trimmed to a uniform height.

  Tyler disappeared. The dragons looked at the empty space he left behind for a moment, then went back to their grazing, unaware that one of their fellow dragons was no more.

  After a moment or two’s worth of peaceful grazing, Tyler reappeared, again floating twenty feet above the ground, but facing the dragons from a different direction.

  “This,” he shouted in an oddly conversational (if loud) tone, “is what’s called a diversion.”

  Again, the dragons looked up from their grass to face him. Again, one dragon stood alone at the back of the group. Again, Gary appeared, swung the goal down over the top of the hapless dragon, and disappeared. Tyler disappeared as well. The dragons went about their business.

  Tyler reappeared on the opposite side of the group and said, “It’s also sometimes called a distraction.”

  The dragons turned to face Tyler. Yet again, Gary materialized and swooped the goal down over the dragon at the back of the pack. This time, however, he let out a little giggle at how well the plan was working. The dragons all turned to see what had made the noise, but he had vanished mid-giggle, and was long gone by the time the dragons looked his direction. They turned back to where Tyler had been, but found him gone as well.

  Tyler reappeared. “But a diversion won’t work if your partner screws up and draws attention away from it. That’s why you never hear about a double distraction.”

  The dragons heard nothing behind them this time, but when Tyler disappeared, there was, again, one fewer dragon to not hear it. Soon only one dragon remained, which Gary neutralized from behind without bothering with a distraction or a diversion.

  Tyler appeared, and the two of them surveyed the scene of their triumph. An empty field with a large patch of perfectly mowed grass.

  Gary put up a hand and said, “All right! High-five!”

  Tyler looked at Gary’s palm as if it were radioactive. He pulled out the dragon map.

  “Come on,” Gary said. “Don’t leave me hanging!”

  Tyler said, “Your life will get a lot more pleasant if you learn to enjoy hanging.”

  Gary put his hand down.

  “Okay,” Tyler said, “That’s seven down, which leaves one that must have wandered away from the pack.”

  “I didn’t see it when we materialized,” Gary said.

  “Neither did I,” Tyler said, “but we weren’t looking for it. We were told to look for a bunch of dragons, and we found a bunch of dragons, so we stopped looking. According to the map, it’s hiding somewhere over there, behind that hill.” Tyler pointed toward a large hill covered with grass and a lush stand of trees.

  The two of them flew only a few feet above the treetops, hoping to maintain the element of surprise. They reached the hill’s crest, where they landed, walked to the edge of the trees, and got down on the ground to observe the vista beneath them without being seen themselves.

  The whole side of the hill had eroded away long ago, creating a small, crumbly cliff. At the base of the cliff, nestled in the valleys between the many hills of the northern English countryside, there was a large path, or a small road. It wound out of a grove of trees, past a glassy pond, and around a bend out of sight.

  At the edge of the road, a little girl no more than six years old sat by the side of the pond with her bare feet submerged. She sat bent forward in concentration, manipulating something with both hands, her golden-blonde ringlets falling down in front of her face.

  “There!” she exclaimed, in the kind of slow, high-pitched voice that is adorable when it comes out of a child and creepy when it comes out of an adult. “It’s done!” She lifted up a piece of bark with a straight stick protruding from it. Several large leaves hung from the stick, forming a sail.

  “It’s a boat, Kelly! I made a boat!”

  The dragon poked its nose forward, as if sniffing the boat, but made no other move or sound.

  The girl giggled. “Now to see if it floats.”

  She placed the boat in the water, then nudged it out into the pond with her foot.

  “It works, Kelly! It works!”

  Gary whispered, “She made friends with a dragon?”

  Tyler said, “Yeah, and named it Kelly, for some reason.”

  The dragon blew a jet of flame. The boat shot out of the fireball and rocketed across the width of the pond with great speed, only stopping when it hit the far shore.

  The girl squealed and clapped her hands. “You made my boat go! Oh, Kelly, you’re my best friend. I love you.” She hugged the dragon’s ankle, the closest part to her. The dragon looked down and made a terrifyingly deep grunt, but made no move against the girl.

  Gary said, “Okay, here’s the plan. You grab the kid and drag her away. Her kicking and screaming will distract the dragon, and I’ll pop up behind it and kill it.”

  “While the little girl watches?” Tyler asked.

  “Unless you cover her eyes.”

  Tyler pictured it and shuddered. “I don’t think I could do that.”

  Gary thought for a moment and said, “Yeah, I understand.”

  Tyler said, “Good.”

  Gary said, “You kill the dragon. I’ll grab the girl.”

  “No. We have to make her choose to leave the dragon. Then we can take it out.”

  “We could wait until her back is turned, than zap her with some fire. Make her think Kelly did it.”

  Tyler pinched the bridge of his nose. “I have more than one problem with that idea. The first I’ll bring up is that you shouldn’t call it Kelly. Destroying a dragon is much, much easier emotionally than killing Kelly. The second is that we’re trying to keep from upsetting the little girl, and setting her on fire is probably going to upset her.”

  Gary rolled his eyes. “It wouldn’t be real fire. I’m not a monster! She’d just think she was burning, and feel like she was burning. You know what, forget I brought it up.”

  “Gary. There has to be a simpler way to get the girl away from the dragon than to frame the dragon for a crime it didn’t commit.”

  “It always works in the movies.”

  “No, it never works in the movies. The person who gets framed is always vindicated, and the person who did the framing ends up dead or in jail, because they’re the bad guys. We aren’t bad guys. I don’t care how much black you wear.”

  “Okay, okay. Fine. How would good guys handle this, Tyler?”

  “They might actually go talk to the girl. Introduce themselves. Explain that it isn’t safe to have the dragon here, and that we can take it somewhere it will be safer for everyone.”

  “So, good guys lie to children?”

  “Everybody lies to children, even their parents. The day a child realizes that is the day they start bec
oming an adult.”

  “Fair enough.” Gary got up to his hands and knees. “Better get to it, then. The girl’s not going to lie to herself.”

  Gary stood up, thought for a second, and then changed his artificial skeleton leg to look fully intact. Then he scrambled over the crest of the hill and carefully stepped down a part of the eroded-dirt cliff face that wasn’t quite as steep. After two steps, the ground gave way beneath him. The girl and her dragon watched silently as Gary slid down the remaining ten feet on his rear.

  Gary smiled and said, “Hello, little girl.”

  The dragon watched. The girl said nothing.

  Gary stood up, beat the dust out of his robe as best he could with one hand, and said, “Uh, sorry to sneak up on you like that.”

  The girl said, “You’re not a very good sneaker.”

  “No,” Gary chuckled. “I guess not. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about your dragon.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk to strange men.”

  “Ah. Very good. You shouldn’t talk to strange men. I’ll introduce myself. I’m Gary.”

  “You’re strange, Gary.”

  The girl looked up, obviously noticing the sound of muffled laugher coming from the crest of the hill. Gary pretended not to hear it.

  Gary forced a smile. “I couldn’t help but notice your dragon.”

  “His name is Kelly. He’s my best friend.” She hugged the dragon’s scaly leg. Gary noticed that her eyes moistened slightly as she looked up at him and said, “I love Kelly, and he loves me. He’ll cook you alive if you try to hurt me.”

  Gary said, “I would never hurt a sweet little girl like you.”

  “Kelly’ll cook you even faster if you try to hurt him.”

  Gary could see that the girl was getting upset. He remembered from his childhood that a kid’s emotions have a kind of momentum. When a child starts working themselves up, you have to make them as calm as possible, as fast as possible, or else they will whip themselves into a day-ruining frenzy that will remain long after the actual cause of their unhappiness is gone.

  An object in motion stays in motion. A child who’s upset stays upset.

  “I’m not here to hurt Kelly,” Gary lied. “I’m here to help. See, I’m from a town far away that was attacked by dragons.”

  “Kelly didn’t do it!” the girl said, tears now rolling down her face. “Why are you blaming Kelly? He hasn’t hurt anyone, much.”

  “I . . . much? Um, I know Kelly didn’t do it. I was there—I saw it. Kelly wasn’t there. I’m sorry. Come on. Don’t cry. I hate to see a little girl cry.”

  “Then go away,” the girl sniffed.

  Gary said, “I’m here to help Kelly. I see I’ve made you unhappy. I’m sorry. I’m going to sit here, and shut up until you calm down.”

  The girl instantly started crying, shouting, and advancing on Gary. “Don’t tell me to calm down! I don’t gotta do what you say! You’re not my dad! You’re just some dumb guy who fell down the hill!”

  She stood a few feet away now, and because Gary was seated on the ground, he had to look up at her.

  “I know I’m not your father. Please don’t cry. I know Kelly’s your friend, and I know he didn’t attack that town. But some people are mad because other dragons did, and they blame all dragons.”

  “Why? Why would they blame all of the dragons?”

  “They don’t know dragons as well as you or I do.”

  The girl was still crying, but she seemed at least willing to listen. “What do we do? How can we protect Kelly?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I’m looking for . . .” Gary paused and looked up at the dragon, “gentle, friendly dragons, like Kelly.”

  “Why?” the girl sobbed. “What are you gonna do to him?”

  “I’m not going to do anything to him. I just want to take him somewhere safe. That’s all.”

  The girl’s sobbing slowed. She looked at Gary and said, “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “You just want to take him somewhere safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you won’t hurt him?”

  “I won’t hurt him.”

  “Where is this place? What’s it like?”

  Gary said, “Oh, it’s . . . it’s wonderful! It’s a big farm, on an island, far away, with fields, and grass, and wide-open patches of sky for Kelly to play in, and other gentle dragons for Kelly to make friends with, and he’ll be fed and looked after for the rest of his life.”

  “That sounds lovely.”

  “It does. It is!”

  The girl smiled. “When can we go?”

  Gary said, “I’m sorry, but you can’t come. It’s only for dragons.”

  The girl exploded into loud wailing sobs. Gary looked at her, then turned, and, at the crest of the hill, saw Tyler smiling broadly and giving a double thumbs-up.

  19.

  Honor walked the winding forest road home, only slowing slightly as darkness began to fall. Runt trotted along beside her, perfectly matching Honor’s speed.

  “I see you slowing down, Runt,” Honor said. “That’s all right, but we’re safe. Safer than we were in town, at least. Remember what father always said: It’s wise to fear animals, but animals fear you back. People won’t always show you that courtesy.”

  Their pace slowed further when they approached Kludge’s camp. It was getting late. The sun had not fully set, but with the tall tree coverage, it might as well have. Honor had expected to hear the awful, tortured sounds and blood-curdling shrieks that Kludge and the Bastards generated when they had finished doing violence for the day and turned their attention to making their music, but the woods were strangely quiet. This scared her more than the terrible music would have, because if the Bastards weren’t making music, then they were doing something else, and she didn’t think she wanted to know what.

  Only as she drew alarmingly close to the camp did she start to see or hear anything. She heard grunts of exertion, occasional shouts of encouragement, and far more frequent cries of fear. She saw the trees painted with staccato bursts of orange light that she now recognized all too well as coming from dragon fire.

  Honor hunched over to make herself even smaller. She and Runt kept to the far edge of the road, ready to dart into the woods at a moment’s notice if they thought they were being pursued. She always worried when she passed Kludge’s camp, but at least it was dark, just dark enough that she thought she might not be spotted.

  As they rounded the corner, she could see that she probably wouldn’t have to put quite as much energy into sneaking as she’d feared. Kludge and the Bastards’ attention was fully occupied.

  Several of them were pulling mightily on ropes, leaning far over, putting all of their weight into simply standing their ground. The other ends of the ropes were tied around various parts of a horned dragon.

  The dragon was certainly stronger than any one man, probably stronger than all of the Bastards put together. The fact that the Bastards had enjoyed any success in subduing the beast at all would have been a testament to the power of coordination and teamwork—if the Bastards had worked as a coordinated team. Instead, their ropes looped around whatever part of the dragon they’d been able to lasso, and they each pulled in opposite directions, accidentally leaving the dragon no efficient means of pulling away, as no one direction was “away.”

  The whole chaotic mess probably still wouldn’t have worked if Kludge himself hadn’t managed to get his rope looped and cinched tight around the dragon’s mouth. The dragon couldn’t open its jaws. That meant it couldn’t bite, and when it tried to breathe fire, two intense jets of flame shot out of its nostrils at forty-five-degree angles, illuminating the forest and confusing the dragon, but missing the rope and its attackers entirely.

  Honor crept
along the edge of the woods, as far from the action as she could, but she never fully took her eyes off the fight. She had no love for Kludge and his stooges. She wasn’t fond of dragons either. Being a decent person, she had a natural tendency to feel sympathy for any dumb animal caught in a bad situation, but that described all of the participants in this conflict.

  One of the men was shouting, “Oh, no. This is bad! It’s stronger than us! What’ll we do!?”

  Kludge bellowed, “Shut up, Heel-Kick! We’ll take this critter down yet! Stretch, Gripper, make sure you’re pulling opposite directions. Pounder, L.L., you do the same.”

  One of the men shouted, “Why don’t you pull opposite to Pounder? Why do I have to?”

  Kludge said, “Because I’m going to be too busy punching you in the face for questioning me if you don’t shut up, Long Lobes! Only Donnie, you’ll . . . whoa!”

  The Bastards pulled the horned dragon in six different directions, using six different ropes, but only one of those ropes was looped around its head. While six of the Bastards all teamed up against the dragon’s lower body, Kludge fought its head and neck alone.

  The dragon whipped its head around at the end of its powerful serpentine neck. Kludge lifted off the ground and swung back and forth like a pendulum but kept his grip, even as he bashed sideways into Pounder.

  The two of them lay groaning for a second, then Pounder gasped, “Sorry I got in your way, boss.”

  Kludge just had time to grunt, “Watch it next time,” then he was yanked away again. The dragon threw Kludge as far as he could in one direction and watched him slam to the ground, then threw him the other direction, just to watch him come crashing down again.

  “Everybody, pull as hard as you can,” Kludge shouted. “Only Donnie, you let go of your rope and climb up on its neck. Try to weigh it down.”

  Only Donnie, the smallest of the Bastards, said, “Yes, Boss!” He turned to Gripper, the largest Bastard aside from Kludge, and said, “You heard Kludge. Climb up on its neck!”