Burn(4)

At first, Sarah thought she’d somehow swerved into a ditch as the front of the truck dropped, slamming her into the steering wheel and sliding her father all the way off his seat into the dashboard. He called out, but more in surprise than pain, catching himself with his hand. Sarah slammed on the brakes, but nothing happened. They kept rocking forward as if they would turn a complete somersault—

Until they were rocked back, both of them helplessly thrown into their seats as the rear of the truck now dipped.

“What the hell?” her father said, alarmed.

The truck rocked forward again, and Sarah looked out at the road.

Pulling away beneath them.

“He picked us up,” her father said, stretching around to look out the back window.

Sarah glanced, too, though she was too afraid to let go of the steering wheel to glance for long. The rear claws of the dragon had grabbed the truck on either side, like an eagle that had just caught a salmon. Sarah looked forward again, at the road and trees that were now rushing past beneath them as the dragon’s great wings beat, carrying them, she hoped, to their farm.

“He picked us up,” her father said again, barely controlling his anger, not seeming to notice the change back to he.

“Is he going to drop us?” Sarah asked.

She could see that her father didn’t know the answer. They were in the dragon’s claws. They had absolutely no say in what would happen next.





Two


HE HIT THE ground hard, catching his wrist, and spent a moment not moving, purely out of hope he hadn’t broken it. He breathed, and the pain settled down into an ache, not the livid sharpness of a break. He’d had those before, had the crooked collarbone to prove it. He gingerly rolled over and flexed the wrist. It hurt, but it would work.

With a grunt, he got to his feet. His bag had landed some twenty meters away and was only located after an increasingly frantic search. If he lost it, things would be much, much harder. Well, just say it: If he lost it, things would be impossible.

And that would be the end of everything.

There it was, though, deep in a fern that left dead spores stuck to his heavy winter coat as he dug it out. He unzipped the bag, checked the contents, closed it again. The important thing was there, but so were the rations of food and water that would allow him to make this journey interacting with as few people as possible.

Some interaction would be unavoidable. This didn’t frighten him.

He was prepared.

It was after midnight, but he had a long walk ahead and was keen to start. A clear sky and bright moon lit the way. He was at the edge of a forest, as expected, near a road that followed a river. He would mostly keep to the latter, but at this late hour, the road would work best to get the miles begun.

First, though, he knelt to pray. “Protect my path, Mitera Thea,” he said. “Keep me from distraction. Keep me from everything but the fulfilment of my goal.”

He did not pray for safe return. He did not expect one.

Prayers done, he stepped gently from the grass to the road, as if it might rise to bite him or give way underneath his rough shoe. Neither happened, and he turned south. He began to walk.

It was cold, but again, he was prepared. The coat over a woolen top, the thick woolen pants, gloves, and a cap that came down over his ears and nearly swallowed his face. It was a face others would trust, bright and surprisingly young, still a teenager, with blue eyes that neither threatened nor dazzled, a smile that was modest and appealing and wholly lacking in danger.

The last part was completely misleading.

He kept on through the night, the bag over his shoulders, enjoying the clouds of steam from his breath with an innocence that was perhaps younger than his apparent age. He passed a few houses, pulled far back from the road and isolated from one another, but he didn’t see a single car. In fact, it took until sunrise, when he was almost ready for his first rest, to hear the distant churn of an engine.

An enormous yellow Oldsmobile turned onto the road well ahead of him. Hiding was simple; he disappeared into the thicker forest on the non-river side of the road and waited. He sat against a tree, facing away from the road, listening to the car’s engine grow louder. He was unafraid. They would likely not have seen him, and even if they had, what more was he than a normal young man out walking? He dug into his bag for a small bite of hardtack biscuit while he waited for the car to be on its way.

He had the second bite halfway to his mouth before he realized the engine had stopped changing in pitch and volume. He listened. Yes. The engine was still running, but the car was no longer moving. He took a slow, slow peek around the trunk of the tree, back toward the road.

The car had stopped exactly where he’d entered the woods. It was enormous, all curved corners and obvious weight, like a bull ready to charge. It sat there in the frozen morning, on a deserted forest road, as if waiting for him. Through the trees he couldn’t quite tell how many people were inside or what they might be doing. There was a small click and the car seemed to settle. He guessed that this was as it shifted from drive to park.

He returned the biscuit to his bag and with a flick of his wrists, slid into his palms the razor-sharp blades hidden in his sleeves.

The woods were quiet at sunrise. Even without snow, the frost was thick. No insect yet buzzed, no morning bird sang. The only sound was the engine and his breath.

His eyes widened. His breath. Great steaming clouds of it, giving him away as surely as if he’d lit a fire. But then, he thought, why should this be a hiding place? Why should this be anything more than the curiosity of a random driver wondering why a man walked off the road into the woods? On the face of it, nothing unusual was happening.