A New Saga Begins: The Adventures of Wyatt Narr, Hero of Dragons

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.