We Fight Dragons (Volume 1, Chapter 12) 'Maiden'
The Dragon was cunning. It did not want to enter into a fight until it had an advantage. It’s former minions had kept out of sight since their failed attack, which the Dragon thought showed an unusual amount of self-preservation for such incompetents.
The Dragon regularly roamed the city and listened to the humans, and each day it grew angrier and angrier that the Knights in Blacken Green must be feeling safe. Prey should fear a Dragon, it thought, not the other way around.
Inevitably, the Dragon recognised two girls who were sitting and talking on a park bench in the sun after school. They were the same girls who had led it to its previous servants, and who knew where they might be found. It flowed over to them on the currents of the air, listening for anything that might be useful.
Zar complained to Mels for the hundredth time that day. ‘I haven’t seen Niles and those bozos for almost a week. What do you think Jam did to them?’
‘Why do you keep asking that? I doubt that Jam did anything to them. I think you have Jam and Niles mixed up.’
‘Whatever. I’m still not over his mum. She kept prying into what I was doing. Asking weird questions.’
Mels knew that Zar was actually jealous. Jealous that Jam had parents who paid more attention to him, than her parents did to her. It was both understandable and sad at the same time.
High above, the Dragon was intrigued that Zar knew the mother of the boy. It spiralled down and circled the girls to better hear what they were saying.
Mels felt a chill run down her spine. It was like the time that they had run into the man from the Department of Education… what was his name… Mr Scales? Again, some instinct warned her not to give away that she was scared. That somehow it would make her a target.
‘It was like she was testing me!’ exclaimed Zar.
The Dragon already understood that Jam’s mother had to be a Maiden. But now it had found someone who could recognise her, and it could use them to locate her. It whispered in Zar’s ear. ‘The mother… take me to her…’
Zar stood up without a word, spilling her backpack on the grass, and walked towards the train station as if she were on a mission.
Mels was shocked, but quickly realised that whatever she was afraid of was now responsible for the strange way her friend was acting, because Zar was behaving like Niles had behaved just before he had disappeared.
As Zar walked away, the sense of dread went with her. Mels sensed that her Zar had just been swept up in something dangerous, and Mels was not going to leave her friend alone when she needed help the most. She picked up both their bags and followed at a distance, using trees, lamp-posts, garbage bins, and anything else she could use as cover.
She followed Zar to the train station, and then to the platform for the western-line to Blacken Green. Mels hung back from the platform until Zar boarded the front carriage of the next train. When the closing signal for the doors sounded, Mels ran into the back carriage and hid behind the seats.
The train took off, and Zar stood looking out the front window until they reached Blacken Green. When she departed the train it groaned as if being relieved of a great weight. Mels darted out at the last moment, and saw Zar walking towards the motorway along a path that followed the train tracks.
Mels used all the cunning she had to keep from being spotted. Zar had walked a nearly straight line from the station to the tunnel that went under the motorway, which she disappear into.
The tunnel looked dark and potentially dangerous. Mels considered running across the motorway, but that also seemed dangerous. She plucked up her courage and ventured in to the musty and dirty tunnel. When she safely reached the other side she was relieved to be back in the open.
She could see Zar up ahead, walking towards a large orchard that was surrounded by tall fields of growing wheat. The orchard was part strawberry garden, and part planted with small trees bearing little red berries. It was deserted except for a woman in overalls and gumboots who was pruning one of the small trees. As Zar walked up to the woman, Mels followed as closely as she could, and hid behind the rusted husk of an old tractor.
‘Oh hello, Zarah. Nice to see you again.’ The woman smiled towards Zar. ‘I see you remembered where I work. Did you want to talk about something?’
That was when Mels heard the voice.
‘Release.’ It was like a whisper on the wind.
Zar shook her head, as if coming out of a dream, and shrieked in alarm. ‘How… where…’ She started to panic. The woman stepped towards Zar, trying to comfort her, but Zar turned and ran away as quickly as she could. She ran right past where Mels was hiding, and it was only Mels instinct to be still that stopped her from going after Zar.
The woman, confused, watched as Zar ran away, but then she detected that something was wrong in the very air around her.
‘I can sense you,’ said the woman. ‘Show yourself.’
If Mels was frightened before, she was terrified when a terrible scaled beast materialised in the air in front of the woman, so big and heavy that when it descended to the ground she could feel the very earth shake.
‘You are his mother. Only a Maiden can sense a Dragon.’
‘I am Freya Wood. My husband and son will slay you if you so much as touch me.’
Mels wondered if this ‘Freya’ was Jam’s mother? She had to be, but what was she talking about? How could she even bear to be so close to such a monster and not scream!
‘You must have felt safe in your little town. Now you know that safety was a lie.’
Freya Wood spoke gracefully as she said, ’Kill me then, serpent. The god of light waits for our people.’
Mels was so shocked that she almost cried out.
‘But why would I kill a Maiden… when she is the perfect bait… to kill a Knight’
For the first time in the encounter Freya Wood looked worried. Before she could say anything else the Dragon scooped her up entirely in its claws and scuttled away.
Mels followed them to a shed at the edge of the orchard. Inside the shed, the sinister ‘Mr Scale’ was using a length of old rope to bind Freya Wood to one of the poles that held up the roof. A slit of light shone through a window in the back wall, high-lighting Freya’s eyes as she caught sight of Mels. Freya moved her eyes from side to side, warming Mels not to do anything, before lifting her chin slightly, urging Mels to get away.
Mels knew that things had gotten beyond her. While the Dragon was focused on tying up Jam’s mother, Mels used the moment to quietly slink through the orchard, towards the tunnel back to the town.
She didn’t know what to do besides seek help, although that she couldn’t imagine how she might convince the Police that there was a Dragon in town. She was heading for the front gate of the orchard when two figures, one big and one small, strode out of the tunnel towards her. It was Jam, and an adult who looked like he could be his father.
‘Jam!’ she mouthed as loudly as she thought was safe, and waved the pair to where she was kneeling behind a raised garden bed of strawberries.
Jam and his father joined Mels behind cover. ‘Mels?’ Jam exclaimed, happy and concerned at the same time. ‘How did you get here?’
‘I… in the city… Zar was acting strange. I followed her… a… monster… has your mum!’
Mels instinctively withdrew as Jam reacted to the dire news by becoming enraged, glaring and looking around for something to attack. The man with him put a steady hand on Jam’s shoulder, and Jam calmed down.
‘Sorry, he didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Jamie’s father, Mr Wood. Who are you?’
‘Mels. Amelia.’
‘Ah! So you’re the girl who was with him when those people fell on the tracks?’
Mels nodded. It wasn’t exactly how she remembered it, but it was close enough.
‘Where’s Freya? I mean, where is Jam’s mother?’
‘It tied her up in the shed over there,’ she pointed. ‘I think it’s a trap.’
‘So do I. You need to get out of here. If you know the way back to the station, you need to get there as quickly as possible. Can you do that?’
Mels nodded.
‘Good. And unless you want people to think you’re crazy, don’t mention this to anyone.’
Mels nodded even harder. She would not even believe herself if she told the story.
As Mr Wood snuck between garden-beds, working his way towards the shed, Mels saw him use a mobile to tell someone he called Geoff to gather people and head for the ‘dragon stone’ and perform some kind of ritual. Then he phoned someone called Nathan and told him to come to the orchard to fight a Dragon!
Mels knew that Mr Wood wanted her gone for her own safely, but when she thought about Jam’s mum tied up in the shed, she just couldn’t run away. As dangerous as it was, she was compelled to stay and witness what was about to happen, and to help in any way she could.
Ten minutes later a car pulled up at the front of orchard and a large man with a heavy overcoat got out of the driver’s door, and pulled another overcoat from the back seat. Mels thought he looked ready for a fight. Mr Wood waved the man over, and when they were together he put on the second overcoat. The trio then started inching carefully toward the shed, moving one at a time while two of them always watched the skies, the two adults in front and Jam following.
Overhead, Mels saw storm clouds gathering above a distant hilltop on the town’s side of the motorway. Was that this ‘dragon stone ritual’, she wondered? As the sky above grew darker, Mels crept forward to get a better look at what was happening at the shed.
The men were clearly focused on watching the shed and the sky, but Mels saw something different. There was a still patch of uncut grass, unaffected by the growing wind, and it was as large as the monster she had seen. In fact, somehow she knew that it was the monster, hiding in plain sight, and the men were going to walk right past it to get to the shed.
In the garden bed in front of her were a bunch of large ripe strawberries. Mels picked a handful, took aim, and threw then at Jam. One hit him on the back of the head and he spun around looking irritated, until he realised that it was her. She pointed at the still patch of grass, and then threw another handful of strawberries.
They splatted in mid-air, on something invisible, and bits of strawberry fragments fell to the ground.
Jam had enough time to shout a warning to the others, before the grass stirred into life and a giant invisible force swept across the ground in a circular motion. Somehow Mels knew that it was the monster’s tail. She saw Jam try to jump out of the way, but the tail caught a trailing foot, and he went spinning.
The monster had given itself away. The other man who had just arrived threw a canister towards the monster, which exploded with a greenish powder. Where the powder touched the monster it stuck, making that part visible, so that it began to look like a hollowed-out bronze sculpture with patches of mottled green skin.
Using the cloud of powder as a distraction, Mr Wood rushed over to check on his son, and to Mel’s relief she saw that Jam was okay.
‘What do we do now?’ the newcomer asked Mr Wood.
‘Keep it distracted, until the banishing,’ said Mr Wood. ‘Stay out of its reach, but try to keep it in the area.’
‘Amazing! Is that all!’
The Dragon attacked suddenly. Instead of taking to the air, where it could not reach its prey with its claws, it scuttled along the ground. The three would-be rescuers scattered to avoid and distract the beast. When it looked like it was going to attack one of them, that person got behind cover while the others grabbed its attention.
If their intent was to frustrate the half-visible beast, it was working. Each time its quarry evaded it, each time it was taunted from a different direction, the Dragon grew more and more angry. Doing so, it failed to notice the storm that was building above it. However, eventually it reached a point where its patience was exhausted.
‘ENOUGH!,’ it bellowed.' ‘IF YOU WONT FIGHT ME TO SAVE HER, THEN SHE WILL BURN.’ With that, it inhaled and expanded its body like a balloon, and breathed a fountain of flames that set the shed on fire!
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