Enchanted Realms

Chapter 3

“See!” Alyson said, fuming. “I knew they"d find some way to keep you from becoming king.”

Josh looked around to see who might have overheard. He leaned close and said in a low voice. “I don"t want to be king, and I won"t ever become king. I wish you"d stop saying it because I have no intention to ever return to this wyrm-forsaken place!”

She looked dismayed, and Josh wished he hadn"t said it so forcefully.

The Guardian, when shouted down by the crowd, had deferred Josh"s sentence until the morrow and had turned him over to his father. The two of them had left the castle, a small but morose crowd following them, many of them muttering their dissent at the severity of the punishment. But mostly drawn by the specter of a wyvern talker among them.

A quarter mile from the castle, Alyson had caught up with Josh and his father.

And the small crowd following them from the castle.

Josh felt pleased she"d come but was somewhat embarrassed. Vaulted to prominence in less than a day for acts as natural as breathing, Josh was bemused by it all. Dismayed at having been banished but bemused by the attention. “By the way, Alyson, thanks.”

She smiled at him and glanced toward the castle.

“Have you spoken with your parents, girl?” his father asked.

“No, Sir,” she said, her gaze dropping to the ground. They walked three abreast down the lane, getting hailed by passers-by, the news having spread fast.

“They"ll be wanting to know that you"re safe.”

“I know it, Sir, but I so wanted to see Josh. He"s—” she glanced at him “—a good person, a fine upstanding citizen.” Alyson pulled Josh over to her side so she could walk beside John and gestured the tall man to lean down. She whispered something into his ear.

“You did what? And he stayed?” His father grinned at him and pulled him close. “Josh, I"m proud of you.”

Josh walked on air, basking in his father"s attentions, his feet barely touching the ground.

They arrived at the ranch house far faster than Josh had expected, the small crowd right behind them.

His father ushering him in, Josh frowned at Alyson. “What do you suppose they want?”

She just grinned at him.

Josh overheard his father. “You want the blessing of the what? He"s just a boy, not the wyvern talker of the legends.”

Alyson giggled at him and stepped into their home, a small three-room affair that Josh had always known as cozy, and that everyone else had always called small.

“Clean, at least, but spare,” she said, as though talking to herself. “Could use a woman"s touch. How long ago did your mother die?”

Josh shrugged. “I was two or three.” He realized he was looking for the slightest sign of her disapproval, knowing she lived in accommodations vastly different, almost palatial in comparison.

A night in a cell had helped him look at it differently too, none of the rooms any larger or more comfortable. But it wasn"t his home he"d miss.

It was the wyrms.

Stepping to the back door, Josh looked out over the evening-lit pasture. The neighbors had helped corral the wyrms today, his father away at court, and Josh wondered sadly who"d help him tomorrow.

He stepped outside, oblivious to his guest, and walked over to the corral.

Several of his favorite wyrms crowded up to the fence. “Josh, Josh!” each said, and he greeted them by name.

Brilliant conversationalist they were not.

“Gone a day, glad you"re back,” was as complex a sentence as they spoke.

“Where you been?” said his favorite, Jenny. “Hearing rumors, but what to believe?”

“Night in a cell,” Josh replied imitating her truncated speech.

“It sounds like screeching to me,” Alyson said.

He hadn"t realized she was behind him. Josh introduced them, and translated their greetings to each other. He pulled the wyrm close, the animal just taller than he was, the knobbed bony crest a paltry shadow of the elaborate multi-spiked crown sported by wild wyverns.

He scratched between her horns where he knew she really liked it, the animals often seen head-butting things to scratch the itchy, leathery skin. With rudimentary claws at the end of their wings, wyrms and wyverns both tended to grasp objects with their four-pointed hind talons. Wyrms sported hind talons with a gleaming six-inch claw on the end, but the wyvern"s hind claws sometimes grew to eighteen inches.

Jenny ducked her heard and cooed at his scratching, then raised her head and looked at him directly. “Josh going away,” she said.

“Yes, old friend, I am.”

Jenny was the herd mother, had been for many years. She was the first wyrm Josh had understood. It seemed to Josh he"d learned wyvern speak before he"d learned his own language. Without a mother, Josh had often been placed in Jenny"s care while his father tended to herd business, rescuing a wyrm stuck in a crevice, finding lost or injured wyrms, conducting the sale of a wyrm to a villager.

“Josh sad, Jenny sad,” she said, and pushed her head into his embrace, her long sinuous neck reaching easily over the fence. Her breath stank of brine and sulfur, a stench Josh had long since become accustomed to.

He bit back a sob, a tear running down his cheek. What he"d lacked as family and friends had been amply fulfilled by these delicate creatures. He realized he was as unprepared to leave them as he was to venture away from Alsace. He didn"t even know where he was going.

“Josh afraid. Josh have home among wyvern.”

“Thanks,” he said, bewildered.

“Josh take healing to Vosges Mountains.”

“Huh?” he looked at her. “Why there?” One of the mountain spines that crossed the continent, the Vosges Mountains emerged from the western seas as a chain of islands, climbed their way in a series of peaks toward the continental center, where the spine bent southeast and marched toward the southern sea. Tucked in the bend was the kingdom of Alsace. At the continental center, as Josh looked to the northeast, glaciers gleamed even from this distance, wild rivers of slow-moving ice, treacherous for their snow-covered crevices and precipitous defiles.

“Healing needed there,” Jenny said. “Josh go tonight, not stay here. Not safe.”

“Uh, all right.” Jenny often knew when something was amiss, just as she"d known he was leaving. I"d better warn Father, he thought, now feeling concerned. He told Alyson what Jenny had said.

“That would be prudent,” Alyson said. “Look, Josh, I"ll say goodbye, since you"ll want to get going soon. I just wanted you to know that I wished I"d gotten to know you sooner.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I hope everything"s going to be all right for you. You probably upset your parents terribly by speaking up like that.”

“It served a greater purpose, and a few lesser ones.” She grinned at him, then stepped close and kissed him on the cheek.

And then she was gone.

Bemused, he watched her go.

“Josh smitten, Alyson too,” Jenny said.

“Oh balderdash,” Josh said, laughing.

* * *

Josh sat bolt upright in bed, thinking he"d heard a wyrm squeal in distress. He"d awakened from a dream about a wyvern sporting Alyson"s head, complete with her tumbling, carrot-red curls.

On the second squeal, he was out of bed and into his breeches and out the door, his gut knotting up at the sure knowledge of what he dreaded most: Wyvern attack.

In the corral, wyrms began to squeal in earnest, circling the fence in panic. The stars above were blotted out by wyvern, dozens of them.

His father right behind him, Josh sprinted across the yard.

“You get the bell and I"ll fight "em off!”

“No, Josh!”

But he"d already grabbed a pitchfork and had leaped the corral fence.

A black shape dropped, Josh aimed and launched, and the pitchfork found its mark.

A gout of flame and a roar of pain split the night, wyrms scattering from under the fire. The pitchfork fell, dislodged as the wyvern flapped away, tail bleeding.

The bell atop the barn began to ring frantically.

Josh retrieved the pitchfork as another shape descended on the opposite side, and Josh ran, pitchfork poised. A wyrm squealed as powerful claws sank into its back. Josh hurled and again found his mark, and the wyvern roared with pain, spitting fire, dropped the wyrm and tumbled, the pitchfork embedded in its neck.

Josh ran up its tail, danced across the bony ridges of its spine and leaped onto its shoulders, taking the pitchfork out of its neck.

“Peaky human, I"ll have you for lunch!” The wyvern crouched as if to launch.

“And I"ll have wyvern steak for dinner, I will!” Josh thrust the pitchfork toward the neck but the wyvern launched, throwing him backward and sending the pitchfork astray. He tumbled off the wyvern"s back to the ground, falling flat on his back. The wind knocked from his lungs, Josh struggled for a breath, the injured wyrm beside him.

“The boy is a talker!” he heard the wyvern say, and the wyverns repeated it amongst themselves, their wings filling the sky above him, blotting out the stars.

Why aren"t they attacking? he wondered as he lay there helpless, unable to breathe, paralyzed with fear and expecting a gout of flame to consume him.

Instead the stars returned, and as he began to recover his breathing, Josh realized the wyverns were fleeing. The bell still tolled and neighbors with pitchfork and shovel and pike and whip had begun to arrive, some bearing crystals of light and others carrying torches.

“Josh, are you all right?” asked Angus Millgrinder, a scythe in one hand. He helped him to his feet. “What happened?”

“Fell off the wyvern, I did. Knocked the breath out of me. Where"d they go?” He scanned the sky and saw not a shadow of wing.

“Back to the mountains,” Angus said, pointing.

Josh could just make out the flock against the stars.

A whimper of pain reminded him. He stepped over to the injured wyrm.

“Jenny,” Josh said, kneeling beside her and cradling her head.

“Jenny hurt bad, Josh tried hard,” the wyrm said, her usual screech barely a whisper.

“"Fraid she"s a goner, Josh, look at those gashes.”

She"d been cleaved through the spine, Josh saw, right above her sacrum. She"d never walk again, if she lived at all, the blood gushing, gushing, gushing from the wound in time with her heart.

“Josh thanks Jenny for everything, loves Jenny always,” he said, a tear spilling off his cheek and onto Jenny"s snout.

“Josh cries for Jenny,” the wyrm whispered, and then she died, her head relaxing into his lap.

His father rushed up behind him and knelt to embrace him, other neighbors gathering.

“Fought "em off single-handed, he did,” Angus said. “Never seen anything like it.”

Josh leaned into his father"s arms and wept, his best friend Jenny gone, his exile imminent, his life ruined completely.