Wednesday, August 31, 2005

   Chapter 3: The Dragon (part 1)
Outside, while he was walking along the busy streets, Pen stripped off his belt and slid the new scabbard and sword on top of the one he already had by a metal ring. When he put the belt back on, with both swords on his left side, he felt rather strange. It was nice knowing that he finally had a real, great sword to work with. But there was another weight on him: Danesan.
Why did he do that? Pen asked himself, resting his left hand on the comfortable wooden pommel, so that the other end of the too-long weapon wouldn’t drag on the ground. Why did he just give me the best sword in the house? I never did anything for him! How did I deserve it? What does he want from me?
“Excuse me—“ started a lovely elf selling red jam from a basket.
“Leave me alone,” he retorted, walking right past her. She looked rejected, but did not try again.
According to his watch—a mixture of magic and wheels that he still could not comprehend—he still had a little more than two hours to spend in the city. But with his new sword at his side, he wanted to do nothing more but go back to the Archives and try it out in the training yard. After pacing through another alley, deep in thought, he decided that he would go look for one of the wisepeople and ask for permission to head home. He didn’t know if he would be allowed to, but it was worth the try.
From what he had heard from the kids on the way to the city, they were going swimming in the Anster. The water from the lake was always warm, thanks to the power of the two suns on the shallow pool, which made it a very popular resort. Many people also took advantage of the high crystal cliffs, using them as natural slides or—farther away from the city, where the water was deeper—for cliff diving.
The beach was on the south side of Quont-Ein, just below the port and extending past the city’s crystal bounds, where the cliffs turned to face the water. It was a long walk away from where the weapon stores were.
Sighing, Pen decided that it would be quickest to cut directly through the middle of the city, even if it meant facing the bustle of the castle. It was a far enough walk without taking any side alleys to try to avoid people.
The closer he got to the high, golden walls, the closer the crowds got, until Pen found it very difficult to move at all. Discarding his initial plan, he struggled out of the river of people and cut through a bookstore to the nearly empty alley on the other side.
But the reason it was so empty was because it was a dead-end against the castle wall. Gritting his teeth in frustration, Pen turned to go in the opposite direction. But just as he turned his back, he heard a little voice behind him.
“Help!” it squeaked; the sound made quiet by something in the way. Pen turned back to wall, where he noticed a stack of book-crates in the corner. “Sir, help me out!”
Pen considered ignoring it, like he usually did for everything else, but it wasn’t normal for something in a crate to talk. After a moment of hesitation, he spoke up. “Where are you?”
“The second from the top on the right!” the voice told him urgently. Checking that there was nobody else in the alley, Pen went to the stack and knocked on the rightmost boxes. From the sound of it, the top one was still full of books, but the one beneath sounded hollow. Making sure a second time that he wasn’t being watched, he quietly lifted the heavy box off the stack. When he lifted the hollow one, the little voice exclaimed a quiet “Yes!”
The box was nailed shut, but the nails on the bottom side were rusted. Pen turned it on its side, to some squeaks by the inhabitant, and drew both of his swords. “Watch out,” he told whoever was inside, and started to slowly push his old sword inside the gap between the side and the bottom planks of the box. The nails squealed as if in pain as the gap grew wider.
“Almost there,” Pen grumbled to himself. He drove the new sword in beside his old one, then pushed both of them in opposite directions. The wood screamed again as the bottom peeled and broke away.
Out flew a pseudodragon. She was still young, big enough to fit in Pen’s hand, and she was still only a rust color, instead of the brown-red pattern of an adult. Stretching her little wings out, she landed on Pen’s shoulder.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing!” yelled the voice of the bookstore’s owner, a blue-haired elf. He looked enraged.
Pen did not waste a second; he ran for it, sheathing his swords as he went. He slid into the nearest branching alley, elbowing aside a group of teen-aged angels. Trying to dodge as many people as possible, he ran through the maze of streets until he had lost track of where he was.
But he wasn’t paying attention to where he running, anyway. His mind was on the little dragon that was hanging on to his shoulder. Pseudodragons were some of the only dragons that lived in Anatol’s forests; he had seen them before. However, the only time you saw the mini-dragons in cities, in close association to angels and elves, was when they were with Havoc groups or others close to the king. Their telecommunication skills were used for communicating over distance. So why was a pseudodragon being kept in a box? They were creatures honored for their skill, and nearly everyone respected them because of it. They were not pets.
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