The Dragon and the Witch (9 page)

Chapter Seventeen

We buried my mother near Crens Peak in a small garden of beautiful white, red and yellow wildflowers. I hand-carved her headstone to read:
Freed by love
and then, the date of her death. Night had come and gone and as the wind blew and the sun shone down on us, I took a few moments to wish my mother a safe journey to her next life.

My father stood at my side. His large hand wrapped around mine as we both laid her to rest. When I’d shifted to indicate I was finished, he leaned and whispered, “I have something to show you.”

I glanced up at him—he’d remained a man over the past twelve hours while we’d dug my mother’s grave and cleaned up the cave. “What is it?”

“It’s in the forest where we battled with the humans.”

I shook my head. “Father, I can’t handle seeing those men slaughtered right now. Can you just clean up the mess and let me mourn the two deaths I have to deal with?”

“No, I need you to come with me.”

I wasn’t in the mood to argue with him. I took one last look at my mother’s headstone and turned to follow him out to the war zone that had started at the setting sun the night before. So much had happened in that time. I’d lost my best friend, Piku, and my mother in a matter of hours. I was drained and wanted to sleep the day away.

As my father escorted me out to the forest, I thought of a hundred things I wanted to ask him. Like what his son’s name was and how old he had been before he died. And how long he’d been married to his wife. It was odd to think that Tolbalth had an entire life before me, but he did and someday, I hoped to find out more about them and about his life dreams before that night when he’d lost everything.

“Father?”

“Yes?” He walked next to me in a sleeveless shirt and loose-fitting pants. He carried a large bamboo stick that he used to assist him in walking, although he didn’t need any assistance. I think we were both just tired.

“I met a man yesterday, a witch doctor. He told me his name was Chay.”

“You were able to see his home toward the north between the trees?”

“Yes.” I laughed. “Has it always been there?”

Tolbalth nodded. “After his body was killed, his spirit decided to stay here and help me from time to time. He was like a father to me.”

“Do you find it strange that the man you considered your father was a witch doctor and the man I consider my father is a dragon and yet, witches and dragons don’t usually get along?”

He chuckled. “Sometimes, nothing makes sense. But that’s what makes this life to remarkable.”

“How did Chay die?”

My father thought for a moment and then glanced over at me. “He died the night my wife and son died. He’s the one who brought us to Golth and gave me the spell that I used on your…” He hesitated.

“It’s okay, Father,” I said. “I want to know everything.”

“For centuries, dragons were sought out for their blood and body parts, as it was said that a witch could find nothing more powerful than that of a dragon’s blood. Chay protected my family against the witches.”

“So, what happened to him?”

“He was killed by your mother and her clan on their way to kill me and my family. They figured if they took him out, then the protection around my family would no longer exist.”

“And that’s what happened?”

“Yes, but they didn’t anticipate the witch doctor sticking around in spirit form long enough to give me the spell I cast on your mother. He’s the one who filled my head with those words.”

I grinned. “He did the same thing for me when I was saving the men in the forest. It was like these words filled my head.”

“I should hope so. He’s like your grandfather since he’s a father to me.”

I smiled. “I like discovering new family.”

We stopped at the entrance into the forest. “Ready?”

“Not really. I can’t see what was done?”

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“Of course, I do.”

He reached out and I took his hand. We moved into the forest together and stopped at a clearing. “Where are all the bodies?”

“Hey!” someone yelled. “Can you hear us? Let us out of here!”

My head swung up to my father’s eyes. “Are those the hunters?”

“Yep,” he said, smiling. “You’re hopeless, girl. Every hunter we took down, you turned around and saved. But then, I noticed them walking off into the distance as if in a daze and I realized that you found a way to fix the problem without killing anyone.”

“You saw that?”

Compassion filled his eyes. “But Piku was shot and I realized that death didn’t have to be the answer to everything. I saw a pain in your eyes I’d never seen before and as a parent, I never want to see that pain again.”

I felt the smile tug at the corners of my lips.

“I’m not sure how you became the woman that you are, Zadie, because your mother’s kind and my kind always found war as the answer. But, I admire and respect the woman you’ve grown up to be. So, do you think you can cast a spell on them so we can set them free?”

I’d never felt so much love for the dragon who raised me. Tears filled my eyes and I ran to him, jumping in his arms and hugging him tightly. “Thank you! Thank you for believing in another way.”

He kissed my cheek and placed me back on the ground. “I may be older than you and even wiser at times, but I realize I can learn a lot from you, the same way you can learn a lot from me. I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter.”

“Father?”

“Yes, Zadie,” he mumbled as he glanced around the forest area.

“Where did you bury your wife and son?”

“What was left of them, I buried near the home where we lived just over Crens Peak.”

“Can I bury Piku there, too?”

“I think that’s a great idea,” he said. “Let’s free these men and together, we’ll bury Piku in our family resting area.”

And that’s what we did.

***

Three months later

I sat on the grass just over his plot and read the headstone again and again:
Piku, my best friend
.

“You know,” I said as I picked a dandelion and blew the white fluffy seeds into the air. Watching them drift off with the easy breeze made me smile at how Piku would have chased them down to see if he could get them before they disappeared. “I picked berries yesterday and it wasn’t the same without you.” I hesitated. “I had a whole satchel full in minutes, which leads me to believe that you used to eat them as fast I was picking them in the past.” I laughed at how he’d try to conceal the berries he’d eaten, but the red stain had always left the evidence on his white fur.

It was hard to talk to his grave. But I made way there every day, in the morning, to tell him what I had planned for the day, and in the evening, to share my adventures with him. It had been three months and those two times during the day were the most comforting to me. Knowing that his spirit might be there listening to me chatter brought me acceptance and even a small measure of peace.

But today, we had a visitor. A white medium-sized bird flew out of nowhere and landed on Piku’s headstone. It sat in the middle, staring at me, tilting its small head from time to time. I picked up a small pebble and tossed it at the granite stone to try and get the bird to fly away. But it stayed and chirped its disapproval at me throwing something toward him.

“You know, bird, Piku would have eaten you for dinner. If his spirit is anywhere around here, he might still get you. So, you should do yourself a favor and save your life by flying away.”

It chirped. And I laughed at its defiant behavior.

I readjusted myself and rolled over on my stomach as I picked the blades of grass that covered the soil. Then I turned on my back and rested one leg up on my knee as I stared into the sky. “Do you remember when I was nine years old and I thought I could touch the sky if I climbed the highest tree in the forest?” I asked Piku, as if he were actually there.

The bird chirped in reply.

I turned my head and saw that he’d come down from the headstone and was now inches from my head. “Oh, you’re still here. Take a hike, bird.”

I glanced back into the sky and continued talking to Piku. “Anyway, I told you I was going to climb the tree and you highly suggested that I keep my feet on the ground. I remember how we argued for fifteen minutes about that climb I wanted to make.” I laughed. “Sure enough, I rebelled, climbed pretty high and then fell and broke my arm. You carried me home while I cried and Tolbalth was so angry at us that he wouldn’t let us play together for a month.”

The white bird flew across my body and landed on my bent leg, staring down at me. It was at that moment that I saw something familiar in the bird’s eyes. “Piku?”

The bird chirped again several times, almost as if it was excited that I realized it was him. “Is that really you?”

I sat up, bracing my body with my hands behind me. The bird jumped from my leg onto my stomach and took tiny hops toward me. I reached out my right hand and the bird jumped into the palm of my hand, flapped his wings and landed on my shoulder. It cooed right against me.

“No way,” I whispered. “I’ve never talked to a bird before. I wonder if we’ll be able to talk to each other the way we did when you were a tiger.” I took the bird from my shoulder and brought it to my face so I could stare into his eyes. “Don’t you find it ironic that in your previous life you were a big cat and now, you’re a bird? That’s just cruel irony.” I laughed.

I glanced back at the headstone as the bird moved back to my shoulder. “I came here to tell you goodbye, Piku. I’m going to climb a new tree, but without you, this time. I’m going on my journey to be an adult. Father thinks I have a lot to offer the world and I think he might be right. I wish you were still alive to go with me on my journey.”

The bird chirped and I laughed, putting my finger to the bird’s feet and pulling him off my shoulder so I could look into his eyes. “You
are
Piku, aren’t you? You just don’t know how to talk the bird talk yet.”

He bumped his beak to my nose.

I laughed. “I’m so glad it’s you. Interested in going on my journey with me?” He jumped from my finger back onto my shoulder, which told me he was ready to go. “The only problem is, if I fall and break my arm again, I’m not sure how you’ll carry me home.”

Piku the bird touched my ear with his beak and I laughed again. “Okay, if you’re going to hang out on my shoulder, we need to get a few things straight. First, no pecking my ear and second, no pecking my ear.”

The bird chirped a soft tune next to my ear.

“Now, that I can get used to.” Joy filled my heart to know that my life as an adult was about to start and I’d have my best friend with me on the journey of a lifetime.

Epilogue

Two Years Later

I’d been gone for far too long and had not been able to send word to my father. I saw our home in the distance and my eyes filled with tears. It looked so desolate here now. The carved rock was now weathered and crumbling as much as the area was brown and dry. When I’d left our village, the forest had been green and full of life, but now, it seemed so barren and lifeless. Golth did not look the same as it had when I’d set out on this journey. I felt like something had happened in my absence. Something terrible.

Piku chirped overhead and landed on my shoulder. “Whatcha think about the place?” he said.

I shrugged. “I’m not sure. It looks like everyone’s left. Do you think my father’s okay?”

“Want me to go up ahead and see?” Piku asked.

“Sure. Good idea.”

Piku took off in flight and headed toward our old home some two hundred feet away. I watched with concern that something might have happened to my father while I had been gone on my two-year journey.

“I’ll never get used to you talking to that bird,” Theod said, slipping his fingers into mine.

His six-foot, muscular frame always made me feel safe and secure by his side. Not that I couldn’t take care of myself, of course. Theod wore shoulder-length black hair and had glowing blue eyes. He was a warrior prince from his land and the son of a king and queen.

I’d met him while I’d stalked through his land, chasing the sabretooth lion I’d hunted and eventually captured. Theod must have been impressed because he’d asked if he could escort me home to meet my father and ask for my hand in marriage. Piku and I laughed nervously at Tolbalth hearing the news that some man wanted to marry his only daughter and take her back to his lands. Of course, he would be livid, at first. But I decided to tell Theod very little about Tolbalth, so as to not scare him away.

“He’s there, Zadie. He’s there,” Piku said from the sky. “He’s been waiting for you. Worried about you.”

I smiled. I had planned to be gone for a year, but I hadn’t seen my father for two years—every additional second of the journey home seemed to last an eternity. I let go of Theod’s hand and took off running toward our old house. Father must have heard Piku chirping, a sound he’d probably rarely heard these days, as I saw no other birds in this entire wasteland that had once been my forest home. As he stepped out from around the side of our cave and put his hand up to his eyes to shield them from the sun, I waved at him in his dragon form and called, “Father!”

The look on his face when he saw me running toward him was a look that would always stay near to my heart. “Zadie!” he said, running toward me and catching me when I jumped into his arms. He swung me around as if I were a little girl again. He set me down and gripped my face as he placed a warm kiss on my forehead. “Look at you. You’re a grown woman now.”

“I am, Father! And I’ve missed you so very much.”

He glanced down at the pendant that hung down around my neck from a silver chain. “And look at this. You found the sabretooth lion.” He held the huge tooth in the palm of his hands. Then he laughed. “Don’t tell me, you bargained with him to give you a tooth so that he could live.”

“Father!” I laughed and slapped his arm. Piku landed on my shoulder.

Tolbalth noticed Theod moving up behind us. He pushed me behind him protectively. “Who are you?”

“Sir Dragon.” Theod bowed respectfully. “I didn’t know Zadie’s father was a dragon. She didn’t tell me…”

“My name is Tolbalth. I ask again, who
are
you?”

He put out his hand. “My name is Theod and I escorted your daughter safely home to your lands. Not that she needed my help, but she did appreciate my companionship on the long journey.”

He glanced down at me from the corner of his eye. “Zadie, what’s going on? Who is this impertinent man?”

“He’s a dear and trusted friend of mine and well, I’m twenty now, Father. I met him on the road and—”

“And, I’d like your permission to marry your daughter, sir.” Theod didn’t waste any more time in regard to stating his intentions.

“Marry her?” Tolbalth took a step back. “Daughter, I sent you out to capture a sabretooth lion, not capture a husband.”

Piku leaned into my ear and whispered, “Everybody back up slowly, the barbeque session is about to start.”

I laughed.

“This is not a laughing matter. I’m serious, Zadie.” Tolbalth narrowed his eyes.

“I know you are. But I’m a grown woman, Father, and I love Theod. We want you to come with us, to his lands. We can build a life there. A good life.” I leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “Dragons are free and they live among the people. They are accepted and respected, even revered.”

“Then I am not the last dragon on Earth?” he asked in surprise.

“No, you will be among several others of your kind. They are good-hearted and true dragons.”

“What a land you describe, my daughter.” His eyes searched inside himself and he was silent for long moments in deep thought. “There isn’t much here anymore. Especially when you’re gone. Not just you. Everyone and everything is gone, even the butterflies and the bees. Whatever didn’t die of thirst has fled. Even the witch spirit of Chay has faded from this place. We’ve been in a drought for the past two years. It has become a place where I waited for death, or you, whichever came for me first.”

“I can see that. You are thin, Father, too thin. Come with us to the land of plenty where you will have all that you desire, even me by your side again. Green hills and flowing water and fat rabbits. Sweet air without this heat and this dust.”

“You speak of such a bountiful place, Zadie.”

“It is. It is a place that is so beautiful and abundant that I had to come and get you. I would never leave you behind, my dear father. Just as you never left
me
behind.”

“I have ached for your voice, your laughter. But this marriage. We must speak more of it.” Tolbalth took my arm and pulled me to the side. “Piku, go,” he said. Piku took off from my shoulder to land on Theod’s. My father gently took my hands in his clawed hands. “Do you love him more than anything, Zadie?”

“Not more than you.”

He smiled. “But you must if he becomes your husband.”

“Then I will, but in a different way, Father. And I shall love you with all my heart, just as I always have.”

“You still
love
me?” His voice was full of emotion.

“Of course I do. That’s why I came back for you. Why
we
came back for you. I told Theod that I wanted you near me. Near us. To share our lives in his rich, green land.”

“That’s good enough for me.” He turned to Theod and stepped toward him, his clawed hands open in acceptance and his eyes shimmering at my tender words. “You may marry my daughter, but if you ever so much as ever hurt a hair on her head or a vein of her heart, I will destroy you.
By fire
.”

Theod smiled bravely. “You have my word of honor, sir, that I will protect her and take care of her with my life. For the rest of my life.”

My father nodded and glanced around the arid lands again. “In some ways, I’m going to miss Golth and the memories we made here. In other ways, I can’t wait to leave the disturbing past behind.”

I reached out and took Theod’s hand at the same time that I circled my other arm around my father’s neck as I hugged him. “It’s time that we expand our family and make new memories, Father.”

“New memories, indeed, Zadie.”

The End.

Also available:

The Last Crusade

A Novel by K.T. Tomb

(read on for a sample)

Chapter One

A lone messenger—carrying the standard of the German Emperor and wearing the Crusaders’ tunic—rode swiftly toward them, shouting, “
Coeur de Lion! Coeur de Lion!
”

“Halt!” King Richard called out and his order was relayed back to the warriors he led. When the messenger pulled up in a cloud of dust, he bowed briefly.

“Wolfgang! I watched you in the battle at Acre. Speak freely!” Richard said.

“Your Majesty, I have urgent news from near Jerusalem,” he said in French. “Is that where you travel, to fight Saladin again?”

Richard nodded. “Yes. This time, we shall finish him off. What is your news?”

“Our Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa is dead. He and his horse drowned in a river.”

Richard’s heart sank. He took a deep breath of the hot desert wind and let it out again. “What of the German campaign?”

“It is ending. After the Emperor’s death, the Turks hit us hard. King Philip or King Leopold may take up Barbarossa’s campaign, but most of us, barely a thousand who are left, are going home to Germany.”

“As bad as that?” Richard asked, shocked that their numbers were so decimated.

“Worse, Majesty. There is plague breaking out among the troops on the road closer to Jerusalem. I was sent to warn you before you got close to the city.”

“Are you sure it is plague?” Richard asked, shocked even more. “Not siege sickness?”

“It is plague, Sire. I have seen the dead with their underarms burst open.”

“That is a sure sign of it. Well, this is unexpected, on all counts,” Richard murmured in chagrin. He had no immediate supply provisions to take the German campaign under his wing, even if he could stop them from fleeing. Nor did he wish to bring plague into his own troops.

“Unexpected, indeed, Majesty. Our hearts are broken from the loss of our leader, and our troops are withdrawing before more of us succumb to plague. I am ordered to officially announce that Jerusalem is yours, should you choose to take it without us, against Saladin. I know there were plans that we might again fight alongside you, but now, we cannot. It is a fearsome time for all Christians to head into Jerusalem.”

“Thank you for the news and the warning. Please relate my sorrow at the loss of Barbarossa to your countrymen.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty. I shall do so. Is there a return message about the English campaign?”

“We shall proceed onward toward Jerusalem, as planned,” Richard said firmly.

The blond man nodded, his face stoic. “Very well, Sire.”

Richard paused. “Will you join us, Wolfgang?”

“With respect, I cannot, Your Majesty. I am charged with my final duty of warning all those on this road of the growing plague in Jerusalem, and of Saladin’s men punishing the Christian pilgrims in heinous ways. Then I go to my ship bound for home. I have paid for my passage. If I fail to board the ship, word will be sent to my family that I am dead.”

“Carry out your duty, then. And Godspeed,” Richard said.

“Godspeed to you and your men as well.” Wolfgang galloped past them on his sweat-streaked horse.

Richard waved his hand and his army, once again, rode behind him toward Jerusalem. The men were quiet—no one dared to ask him anything. They rode in silence for quite some time as King Richard grew to feel more and more unwell.
Blasted ague
, he thought, shivering, even in the merciless heat.

Bearing the news of Barbarossa’s death and the subsequent loss of even fringe support from Germany, Richard the Lionheart didn’t know if it was his spirit or his body that suffered more. One thing he did know was that his enthusiasm for the Third Crusade seemed to wane like the high, thin clouds that promised rain but never delivered it. News of plague in Jerusalem was even more disturbing. And now with the German Emperor dead, Leopold and Philip would squabble for position and surely, at home, Richard’s brother, John, would make even more trouble than he already had. But it would not do to turn back. The King of England did not retreat.
Ever.

He was, however, tired of this arduous journey, and yet, there was still Jerusalem to conquer. He was set on taking the Holy City from Saladin and wanted it so badly that he could taste it. However, the scurvy and ague were definitely getting to him, as well as to the other men. When they had gone to Acre and fought Saladin, he and his men had feasted on quinces. That seemed like a long time ago. But then, everything in the desert seemed ancient and unchanging, except for the sky. It was sometimes difficult to keep track of the days, the weeks, the months.

Suddenly, his horse stumbled and went down on his knees. Nearly unseated because his legs weren’t in the stirrups, Richard leapt from the quivering horse that squealed in pain, his knees scraped from the rocks.

“Henri!” Richard called out sharply. “Right front foot. Perhaps a thorn.” He handed the reins to his personal groom, who hurried close, got the horse up and examined his feet and knees.

There was a cut on the front right hoof and Henri pulled a long thorn from it as the horse shuddered. He cleaned the wound with water, spread unguent and packed it with herbs. Then he tied a clean cloth over it to hold in the herbs. He let the horse’s leg down again and patted him.