Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala (15 page)

Both Alfie and Benny chuckled because, between them, there wasn’t anything close to a man … They were just a boy and his dragon … or a dragon and his boy.

“Shall we oblige him?” Alfie asked in a voice that was too high-pitched to sound really brave. But the expression on his face, in his eyes, was one of grim determination.

“
Oblige
,” Benny echoed. “Such a fancy word for what you and I want to do to Skipper Black.”

Benny sailed around in a wide arc over the burning pirate ship. A huge column of black smoke spiraled into the darkening sky, bending toward the shore with the Easterly breeze. Some men, their hair and clothes singed, their faces smudged with soot, splashed about in the water while others still on deck struggled to extinguish the last of the flames.

“Well, it’s not very sporting to blast them with fire and not give them a fighting chance, now. Is it?” Alfie said.

“Do you have your sword?” Benny asked.

He knew Alfie always carried his sword strapped to his side, but truth to tell, it was a rather pitiful sword. It was made of two pieces of wood. The “blade” was a flat piece of wood that would better serve as part of a picket fence while the cross guard was a small piece of a tree branch tied into place with several loops of yellowing twine.

Without another word between them, Benny stalled in the air and then dropped down onto the heaving deck of the pirate ship. The crew made collective
oohing
and
ahhing
sounds as they drew back. The weapons in their hand were all but forgotten as Benny and Alfie eyed Skipper Black.

“Well, so yea be not so cowardly as I thought,” Skipper Black said as he approached them.

His good hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. There was a loud rasp of metal as he drew it out. In the gathering gloom of evening, the blade appeared unnaturally bright. Benny and Alfie wondered if there might be some magic in the pirate captain’s blade, but Alfie slid to the deck from Benny’s shoulders and stood straight up, his feet braced widely apart. A faint smile twitched the corners of his mouth as he faced the captain, his mortal enemy. He was secure with Benny at his back.

“Are you
sure
you can beat him?” Benny asked, leaning his huge head close to Alfie’s ear and whispering so as not to be heard by anyone else. “I could shoot flames all across the deck and destroy the entire ship, and then we could fly away.”

“No,” Alfie said. “It wouldn’t be sporting.”

“Sporting?”

“I want to fight him.”

Alfie gripped the hilt of his wooden sword so tightly his knuckles turned white. The fire in his eyes was much brighter than the lingering glow of the setting sun in the west.

Without another word, the pirate captain and the boy closed the distance between them. There was a loud
clank
as their swords crossed, and then they set to it.

Metal clanged against wood as man and boy fought without mercy. They slashed and parried, lunged and ducked swashing blows. Chips of wood flew from Alfie’s blade at the same time his rapid strikes put deep dents into the metal blade of Skipper Black’s sword. Alfie fought with fiery joy in his eyes, his arm swinging tirelessly back and forth, his wooden blade whistling as it sliced through the air.

They pressed each other back and forth across the charred wooden deck. The crew gave way, allowing them plenty of room to fight, but it was clear after a while that Skipper Black was tiring. He began to give ground.

“Go! … Go! Finish him!” Benny called out, urging his friend on. “You’ll be captain of the ship.”

For a moment, Benny was afraid Skipper Black might have an evil trick up his sleeve.

What if he was backing up only to lure Alfie into a trap?

But the look in the pirate chief’s eyes was gradually changing from anger to concern and then to outright fear of losing.

It was obvious he knew he was beaten … and to a mere
boy
at that.

Their blades whooshed and sliced back and forth. The pirate crew was silent as they and Benny watched, captivated by the spectacle. Alfie kept moving forward slowly, steadily pressing his advantage. His bare feet inched across the deck, nimbly avoiding the charred remains of ropes, weapons, and barrel staves. Skipper Black’s eyes widened as he fell back with a look of growing desperation.

“So, ye think ye can get the better of me, do yah now?” Skipper Black said between black and broken teeth.

He may have sounded brave, but his sword arm was dropping lower by the second as fatigue took its toll. Alfie didn’t let up. He kept coming at him, his arm swinging back and forth like a harvester, slashing … cutting …

“I don’t
think
I can,” Alfie said through clenched teeth. “I
know
I can.”

With that, he suddenly lunged forward and swung at Skipper Black’s sword with all his might, sweeping it from his hand. The sword twisted end over end as it flew out over the water and then went
plunk
into the sea, disappearing below the surface with barely a ripple. Skipper Black stopped and looked at Alfie in amazement.

“You beat me!”

Then, without a word, he dropped to the deck on both knees and raised his hands while lowering his head.

“I yield,” he said in a broken voice. “Curs’d be ye.”

A collective gasp went up from the pirate crew. In all their battles, in all their raids, they had never seen Skipper Black bested … and by a mere
boy!

“Do with me what ye will.”

Alfie didn’t say a word as he approached his victim. Sweat beaded his forehead, glistening like dew. He was breathing fast, but his face looked as fresh as the morning sun compared to the abject defeat etched on Skipper Black’s face.

“What I want is—”

“
Yoo-hoo!”

Everyone looked around as the sound of someone’s voice echoed in the stillness that had dropped like a curtain over the deck of the pirate’s ship. Alfie and Benny froze where they stood. After a breath, they turned and looked each other straight in the eyes.

“Oh, no,” Benny said.

“Don’t tell me— Is it—?” Alfie’s voice choked off.

“
Hello … Where are you?
”

The voice—a female voice—sliced through the gathering gloom. Skipper Black stood up and looked at Alfie, his face floating like a pale moon in the deepening darkness.

“What be this?” Skipper Black said, his upper lip curling into a sneer that raised his pencil-thin moustache.

“We—uhh, we have to go now,” Benny said as he took a cautious step backward. The shifting of his weight made the ship heave from side to side. Seawater sloshed into the scuppers.

Alfie looked at Benny with gathering surprise in his eyes.

“
Yoo-hoo … It’s time to come home now!
” the voice called. “
Where are you, child?
”

Benny looked wistfully at Alfie, and then he turned his head, looking over his shoulder at the shore. Night had settled across the land like a dark, heavy blanket.

“I … I’m over here,” Benny called out, his voice a low, mournful note.

“But the battle’s not over,” Alfie said. “I haven’t taken my prize yet.”

“I’m sorry. It’s getting late,” Benny said. “I have to go home now. My mom’s calling.”

“If he don’t be acceptin’ my surrender, says I,” Skipper Black said with a snarl, “then he don’t be winnin’. I live to fight another day.”

“I’m really sorry,” Benny said, lowering his head and looking at both Alfie and Skipper Black with the most mournful look possible for a dragon. Then he turned and looked to the shore as a huge, dark shape appeared over the nearest sand dune. The silhouette of a fully-grown female dragon towered against the night sky, blocking out half of the stars.

“Ah-hah … There you are,” said the huge, hulking dragon as she walked down the slope toward Benny.

“Hi, Mom,” Benny said, lowering his head until his scaly jaw nearly touched the sand.

“Benedict! What are you doing, standing on that rock?”

“Nothing.”

“Get over here.”

With a few flaps of his wings, he flew over to the beach where his mother stood.

“How many times have I told you that I do
not
want you playing down by the water alone … especially once it gets dark? How many? Tell me.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t—”

“Who were you talking to just now?” Benny’s mom asked. There was a peculiar mixture of worry and anger in the golden disks of her eyes. “I thought I heard someone else talking.”

Benny sighed and then jerked his head back when a tiny lick of flame shot out of his nostrils.

“No,” he said. “No, it was just … me.”

“Are you sure? If you’ve been playing with that Lambert boy again. You weren’t, were you?” His mother shook her head with a stern look of disapproval.

“No, Mom.”

“I don’t want to be telling tales out of school, as it were, but I know that young boy is the one who put you up to lighting those fires in the woods last spring. We were lucky the entire forest wasn’t destroyed.”

“No, it was just me and … and Alfie.”

“Alfie?”

The expression in Benny’s mother’s eyes softened, and she moved close enough to him to lean down and nuzzle Benny’s neck.

“Darling, how many times have I told you that Alfie is just a … an imaginary friend? He’s not real.””

“I know … I know.”

Humiliated, Benny was unable to meet her gaze.

“There
is
no Alfie … And there’s no such thing as ‘people’ … not anymore, anyway. They’re figments of your imagination.”

“All right, Mom.”

“I say it’s time you grew up … at least a little. I want you to promise me you’ll forget all about this … this
Alfie
from now on. Do you hear me?”

When Benny didn’t answer her right away, she nuzzled him again until he couldn’t help but smile.

“I did … I will,” Benny said, and with that, they both turned and started walking across the sand dunes toward home.

At the crest of the hill overlooking
Mockingbird Bay, Benny hesitated for just a moment. When he sighed, a plume of flame lit up the deepening night as he looked back at the sea one last time. A piece of driftwood caught fire, blazing with a blue flame from the salt-saturated wood.

Benny gazed into the dancing flame, as blue and hot as a midsummer sky. A single tear ran down his scaly green cheek when he considered that his friend might now be lost to him forever. He sighed as he stomped out the fire. He didn’t want to burn the forest down again.

And just before he turned to follow his mother into the woods, he paused and whispered, “Psst … Hey … Alfie … See you tomorrow.”

It might have been the distant sound of the surf in the night, but was sure he heard someone whisper, “… see you tomorrow …”

That morning in early September, Miko Barnes and her husband, Dave, were late getting to Logan Airport. It wasn’t as if the Boston traffic was all that bad. There weren’t many cars on Route 1-A through Revere that early. But last night—like so many nights before—Miko’d had disturbing dreams. In fact, last night’s nightmare had been so bad she’d lain awake in bed until dawn tinted the eastern sky, and it was time to leave for the airport.

Miko was on her way to
Los Angeles to visit her elderly mother, Kyoko, who—according to the phone call from her aunt last week—was failing fast. As worried as she was about what might happen, she was determined not to worry and to deal with it only when it happened.

This morning, something else gnawed at her, filling her with subtle dread. All she knew for sure was it wasn’t just the anticipation and worry about the flight to
L.A. that was bothering her.

Throughout the drive, with a clear, bright September sky overhead, Miko couldn’t shake the feeling that something she couldn’t see or hear but which was very real was close by, threatening her and casting a dense shadow over the morning. Even so, the bright sunlight stung her eyes, making them water and blur her vision. She told herself she wasn’t crying, but she appreciated that Dave had offered to drive her to the airport before he left for work. So what if he was a little late?

“You dreamed about him again, didn’t you?” Dave said, half question, half statement of fact. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and didn’t look at her, focusing instead on the road ahead.

Miko wondered if he really was interested in her dreams or if he was merely being polite, asking out of habit and a sense of obligation after forty-plus years of marriage. No matter how much the dreams bothered her, the situation no doubt bored poor Dave … if he felt much of anything. After being together for so long, she should have been able to read his moods, but she couldn’t … not this morning, anyway.

She was too confused and frightened. The image of another man, a much younger man, filled her thoughts. Even as she pictured him in her mind before describing him to her husband, a rush of fear went through her like she’d experienced last night and so many nights before.