Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) (17 page)

“Often—the best thing—to do,” Thomas continued as he cut, his words matching his rhythm, “is to run—so that you—can fight again.”

He waved for the others to follow. “Let’s get through here before the vines close up!”

The others moved swiftly and silently to follow, only Todd and Bobby making noise walking over the fallen leaves and branches. Todd was glad for the quiet. It gave him a moment to think about what had happened to his anger.

One thing this place had showed him: He was becoming very aware of the possibility of death. His death. Anybody’s death. Death constantly surrounded them, waiting.

Todd felt the weight of the knife in his hand. Maybe he could give as well as receive. Maybe there was some way he could learn to survive, to go beyond orders given by parents or soldiers or volunteers. The leather hilt felt warm in his hand. Maybe, Todd thought, he could kill something, after all.

For the first time in a while, it was easy to smile.

M
ary Lou opened her eyes. Someone had shaken her shoulder. She realized she was still in the clearing where she had met the People, except that now the small folk were gathered on the far side of the open space, beneath the trees. With their pale, bald heads, they reminded her of nothing so much as a field of mushrooms. They were marching to the edge of the clearing, toward a mass of vines between two of the larger trees. Dozens of them turned, one after another, and waved for her to follow. For some reason, Mary Lou thought of
The Wizard of Oz.

The little people must have shaken her awake. She shivered, and felt embarrassed because she had. There was something about their small, wrinkled bodies that still made her want to keep away.

In her dream, she had thought she had been woken by the prince. She wished it could have been his hand on her shoulder—if only her insubstantial prince could actually touch things. She looked around as she stood, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, but he seemed to have disappeared.

Where could he be? Mary Lou was surprised how much she missed him. He was the only one she could talk to in this place.

Maybe, she thought, someday, somehow, they could do more than talk.

“Mary Lou!”

Startled, she turned and looked at the People. One of their high, thin voices had called her by name.

The prince must have told them. Just as he spoke
for
the People, he had to speak
to
the People as well. He must have introduced her to this tiny tribe. She found herself smiling. In a way, he was still helping her, even though he wasn’t here.

“Mary Lou!” The way they said it, quickly, breathlessly, her name sounded like a single word. “Mary Lou!”
Merrilu.

The People called her name over and over, much as they had called Nunn’s name, but there was a difference, too. Their cries of “Nunn! Nunn!” had been frantic and angry. The way they shouted her name was gentler, almost playful. She smiled all over again.

The first of the small folk had reached the vines, climbing them with surprising speed. Those still on the ground continued to wave for her to follow. As she walked toward them, a pair of them pulled a vine free from the rest. They brought it toward her, calling her name even more excitedly than before.

“Mary Lou! Mary Lou!” (
Merrilumerrilu!)

They wanted her to climb up with them, like scaling a rope in gym class.

But the thought of leaving the ground made her hesitate, as if, in taking this step, she’d be at the mercy of these small creatures.

What should she do? She wished the prince were here to help her make a decision.

Maybe, if she stayed with these creatures, she could keep from being recaptured by Nunn. No matter what they looked like, the People seemed to have her best interests at heart.

Best interests? She was starting to sound like one of her mother’s lectures.

She reached out for the vine they offered her, grabbing it firmly with both of her hands. Before she could even begin to pull herself up, she found her feet off the ground as the vine was yanked from somewhere up above. She almost let go in her surprise but found herself gripping the vine even more firmly as the ground grew farther and farther from her feet. She was hoisted quickly aloft, maybe a hundred feet in the air in a matter of seconds. She looked away from the ground, suddenly so far below, afraid she might fall if she panicked, and saw herself lift past the lowest level of leaves.

There was a mass of branches directly above her. On one of the broadest of the limbs was a line of the People, all pulling on her vine, which they had looped over another, slightly higher branch to give them leverage.

Small hands grabbed at her legs and arms, pulling her back onto another massive branch, as wide across as one of the paths in the forest below.

“Mary Lou!” Those same small hands plucked at her sleeve. “Mary Lou!”

She turned and saw a dozen or more of the three-foot-high People scrambling from branch to branch in front of her. They waved again for her to follow. The branches grew so close together here that it was easy to move from tree to tree, like climbing a slightly uneven set of steps. She strode carefully up to the next tree, using another, higher branch to grab for support, as the People raced forward like mountain goats along a cliff.

They climbed that way for a while, Mary Lou slowly gaining confidence as she stepped from branch to bole to branch. In places where there was a gap between the trees, the People had used the vines to tie together bundles of branches into rough bridges.

She stepped carefully on the first of these. She stopped as it swayed with her weight.

“Merrilu!”

Three of the People stood at the far side of the bridge and beckoned her on. Their dark eyes seemed very concerned as they stared out from their wrinkled faces. Maybe, she thought, she might trust them, after all.

She placed her other foot on the bridge. Her penny loafer slid a bit as the bridge swayed, but the ropes that held the logs to the tree trunks showed no sign of breaking. The People held their hands above their heads and screamed in delight.

And so she rose from bridge to bridge, branch to branch, tree to tree, with the excited calls and laughter of the whole tribe around her, until she noticed that the world was brighter than before. Soon, as she climbed, she caught a glimpse here and there of the sky, and once a corner of the bright red sun above. She and her escort were nearing the top of the trees.

She followed the branch path around another large trunk and stopped abruptly. There, before her, was a whole expanse of the tied logs, entire platforms, some with other structures built atop them: tiny huts, she guessed. She saw a central area where stones had been piled upon the deck of logs, with smoke curling up from the middle of the pile. It must be an oven. She was surprised that the People had control of fire.

But what did she know about the People, except what she had heard from Nunn’s Captain and the prince? Here was a whole village, hundreds of feet above the forest floor.

“Merrilu!” the People called. She stepped onto the edge of the first platform. She had expected it to sway like the branch bridges, but it felt very firm beneath her feet, wedged and tied between the trees. The People continued to wave her toward the center of their village. She stepped forward and realized that she was walking fully in sunlight. The branches ended here, and she could see the almost blue sky stretch before her. She looked out beyond the far edge of the platform and saw the whole of the forest spread below.

The trees seemed different from up above. In places they appeared like leaf-strewn hills; in others, where the branches grew sparse, they looked like intersecting clouds of green. It seemed to Mary Lou that this place was almost a whole magic kingdom above the earth.

The People called and waved for her to join them at the edge of the platform. There was a row of log stools with a triangle of branches at their back. All seven stools faced toward the village, six of them proportioned for the three-foot height of the People. The seventh and central chair was much larger, so big that Mary Lou might almost have fit into it herself.

As she approached, seven of the People climbed onto the stools. The one in the center gained a boost from a couple of his fellows. He wore a necklace of leaves and stones around his neck. Besides the small breechcloths that they all wore, this was the only article of adornment Mary Lou had seen on any of these creatures. She must be getting an audience with their chieftain.

“Merrilu,” the Chieftain said.

“Merrilu!” all the rest of the People echoed. “Merrilu!”

The Chieftain made a high, keening sound, and all the People joined in as well. It was so shrill it hurt Mary Lou’s ears. She tried to smile, and not let them know that she would much rather run away.

The Chieftain and the rest of the People stopped their shrill cry, all at the same instant. Mary Lou took a deep breath, worried about what might happen next. There was no way out of here if something went wrong.

The three to the left of the Chieftain—maybe they were village elders—passed an object from hand to hand to their leader. The Chieftain looked up at Mary Lou and, showing all his teeth, offered it to her.

Mary Lou looked at the gift. It was a bow; a bit smaller than she was used to, but probably gigantic for creatures of this size. The largest of these creatures was maybe a foot and a half shorter than she, but their arms were much longer in proportion to their bodies. She could easily use this bow.

She lowered her head slightly, hoping that this was the right sort of thing to do in front of a chief, and took the curved wood in her hands. The string was surprisingly taut. She’d be able to get some distance with this thing.

There was another flurry of movement to the right of the Chieftain as a second gift was passed along the row of elders. Their leader held this out to Mary Lou in turn. It was a quiver, made from tree bark, which held seven arrows. Mary Lou wondered what mystical symbolism that number had for the tribe.

“Merrilu!” the Chieftain said again.

She expected the rest of the tribe to repeat her name the way they had before. Instead, the People were eerily quiet, so that all Mary Lou heard was the noise of the leaves, a heavy rustling now, the branches whipping about as if they were about to have a storm.

The silence was broken by a scream: the sound of all the People together, more like a single voice than the hundreds gathered around.

The Chieftain spun around in his chair to peer over the edge of the platform. They all seemed far more agitated than they had a moment before. Mary Lou wasn’t at all sure that this was a part of the ritual.

“Nunn!” the Chieftain shouted.

“Nunn!” his tribe replied. “Nunn! Nunn! Nunn!”

What were they saying? Had the wizard found her? Mary Lou took a step away from the edge of the platform. But there was no sign of Nunn. Instead, three new creatures, much the same size as the People but covered with a fine, red fur, vaulted onto the platform from somewhere below.

The People were in an uproar, no longer screaming anything in unison, but screaming nonetheless. There was something familiar about these newcomers: their large shoulders and chests and the way they shuffled more than walked, more like apes than men. Mary Lou realized she had seen one of these creatures before, changed somehow by Nunn’s magic: the creature of light.

Another dozen or so of the creatures had scrambled onto the platform during the confusion. And all of them carried either knives or spears.

“Death to Anno!” one of them cried in a voice that was shrill, but far deeper than that of the People. The other red-furred creatures took up this cry in turn. “Death to Anno!”

The People fell back before them as the red-furred ones jabbed at them with their spears. A couple of the newcomers threw their spears in their excitement. One of the weapons clattered on the platform between two of the People as one of the village elders swatted the second away with a defiant hand.

The elder stiffened suddenly, grabbing at the hand that touched the spear. Mary Lou couldn’t see any blood. At most, the elder had gotten a scratch. He fell to the platform, shrieking in a way that made all the other cries of the People seem like nothing more than conversation. The People fled as he rolled back and forth.

Mary Lou realized, as the People retreated from the attack, that the red-furred creatures were turning toward her.

The elder stopped screaming and rolling, and lay very still. He looked quite dead. The red-furred creatures raised their spears above their shoulders as they rushed toward her.

Mary Lou slipped on the logs as she tried to back away. She almost fell. She realized she still held the bow and quiver in her hands. Did she have any time to defend herself?

“Mary Lou!” the first of the creatures cried quite distinctly. “No one leaves Nunn without permission!” The creature’s tone was in an odd singsong, like this was a message from the wizard himself, something that this creature was only obediently parroting.

Mary Lou felt she should be petrified. But Nunn’s message only made her angry.

The wizard would not control her. She grabbed an arrow from her quiver.

“You are Nunn’s,” the first of the creatures shrieked. “Capture first!” It barreled toward her, leaping across the logs with short, muscular strides, the arm with the spear raised to throw.

“Nunn will do what he wants!” the creature continued in the same fierce monotone. “She is nothing without Nunn!”

As quickly as she could, Mary Lou fitted an arrow to the bow, aimed, and released the string. Maybe too quickly. The arrow veered left, striking the creature in the shoulder.

“Capture?” the creature cried, pain giving his voice emotion at last. It stopped to break off the shaft of the arrow as it stared at

Mary Lou. “No capture! Die! Die! Die!”

C
harlie stirred as Nick gently patted his head.

He looked down at the mutt. His mutt. Plug-ugly, that’s what some of the other kids in school called him. And while he might not have the greatest face—the pushed-in nose, the floppy ears— he did have great soft fur and deep brown eyes that somehow helped Nick through his worst days at home.