See previous blog posts and Peter M. Last's blog, http://www.peterlast.com/blog for the previous installments of the story!
Wyatt scowled at the old man but
recognized the truth of his words. “Fine, I’ll be quiet,” he growled. “But how
am I going to keep from starving to death?”
Jim
sighed and rubbed a hand over his grizzled chin. “You’ll wait till we’re
walking in the sun to eat, just like you’ve been doing for the past three
days,” he said with magnificent patience. He looked at the young man, or rather
through him. This boy has got a lot of
growing up to do.
Oblivious
to Jim’s long-suffering thoughts, Wyatt nodded absently, swinging his sword as
he looked around the tavern. “Maybe some of these people know where the Sea of
Thrack is,” he said.
Jim
just grunted, accepting a bowl of soup from the barkeep. “I’ll ask,” he mumbled
around the spoon, once the barkeep had moved back out of hearing range.
While
Jim devoted his attention to his supper, Wyatt began to wander around the room.
There were a sad, moth-eaten collection of stuffed animal heads mounted on one
wall. Wyatt reached out to touch the bristly snout of a boar, his hand sliding
through the creature’s head. “They don’t have a dragon’s head,” he muttered,
remembering his own plans to slay the dragon. He sighed; killing the beast
would have won him glory for sure, but instead here he was on a quest, sent by
the very same dragon he had planned to kill.
Rubbing
his eyes, Wyatt started to sit down in an empty chair. He was already
off-balance by the time he remembered that he would fall through it, and he came
to a rest with his chest even with the floorboards. Too tired to get up and sit
somewhere else, Wyatt drew his knees up, propped his crossed arms on his knees,
and rested his chin on his arms. Insubstantial he might be, but walking all day
was still tiring.
Some
time later, Jim glanced around for Wyatt’s ethereal form. He spotted the boy’s
head and shoulders on the floor, the rest of Wyatt’s body out of sight below
the floorboards. Mouth hanging open, Wyatt was emitting an occasional snore.
Shrugging, Jim followed the barkeep’s direction to his room.
******
Wyatt
woke with a crick in his neck and an ache in his back. Groaning, he raised his
arms above his head and stretched, arching his back. Then he sat up with a
startled, “Hey!” He was sitting on the bare dirt below the tavern’s floor, and
his head and shoulders now poked above the floorboards. He scowled. “That rotten gypsy.”
“What
are you complaining about?” Jim asked from the bar, where he was sitting alone,
breakfasting on a bowl of porridge. “If I’d woken you to come into the room,
you’d still have slept on the floor.”
“This
being blinked out is really annoying,” Wyatt grumbled, running a hand through
his rumpled hair. “What wouldn’t I give for a hot bath.”
“I
bet that’s the first time you’ve said those words,” Jim chuckled.
Wyatt
glared.
“You
might want to move before that sunbeam hits you,” the old gypsy said
conversationally. “It might be kind of painful to suddenly turn substantial
while you’re stuck in the floor.”
Wyatt
hastily leaped to his feet and backed away from the cheery yellow sunbeam
stretching from the tavern’s front window.
A
half hour later, Jim having finished his breakfast and bought some biscuits and
ham for Wyatt, the unlikely duo were making their way down the main street of
the small town. Now substantial in the early morning sunlight, Wyatt hungrily
wolfed down the food.
“It
seems we’re still about a month’s travel from the Sea of Thrack,” Jim said,
leaning on his gnarled staff as he walked. “The shortest route is overland to
the Shay River, which’ll run right into the Sea.”
“A
month?!” Wyatt yelped, spewing biscuit crumbs. He inhaled a couple of crumbs
and coughed to clear his windpipe.
“What,
did you think the dragon was joking?” Jim said dryly, speaking above the sound
of Wyatt’s coughing. “I told you this
was Peddler’s Pond.” He waved an arm toward the body of water to their left.
“But
I don’t have a month to waste traveling,” Wyatt protested. “I’ve got to get
unblinked-out so that I can find another way to get famous.”
Jim
rolled his eyes. “What do you want me to do, change the geography of the land?
Besides, why are you so worried about getting famous, anyway?”
Wyatt
shoved half a slice of ham in his mouth, glancing sideways at the old gypsy. He
wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably, not wanting to share his dreams with the
sarcastic man. “Just because,” he mumbled around the ham.
Jim
looked at Wyatt with a knowing expression. “You know, what other people think
of you isn’t as important as what sort of person you actually are.”
Wyatt
ignored the other man, feigning absorption in his breakfast.
At
that moment, a man with the filthiest beard Wyatt had ever seen leapt out from
behind a tree. “All right, fork over your valuables!” he hollered, brandishing
a six-foot claymore that was clearly too large for him. The point of the
massive sword kept dipping toward the earth.
Wyatt
and Jim both started at the man’s sudden appearance, and Wyatt whipped out his
own sword. It looked pathetic next to the claymore. “Stand forth and do battle!”
Wyatt hollered in his best heroic voice.
Old
Jim sighed and rolled his eyes as he leaned on his staff. “Is this really
necessary?” he asked plaintively, as the other two men began to circle each
other.
After
clumsily thrusting at Wyatt with the claymore, a move the younger man easily
dodged, the bandit stopped and shoved two fingers in his mouth, whistling
shrilly. A shadow suddenly obscured the early morning sun, and Wyatt and Jim looked
up to see a dragon dropping out of the sky.
The
dragon landed with a whump that threw
up a cloud of dust, causing all three men to rub their eyes and cough. Throwing
back its head, the dragon roared, a stream of fire flicking from its open maw.
Wyatt
snorted. The dragon was barely three feet tall. “You’re using a baby to do your
dirty work?” he sneered at the bandit.
