CHAPTER 8
Awakenings
The dragon’s laugh of his dream gradually resolved into the annoying, familiar, harsh ring of George’s old windup alarm clock. It was six AM, and dawn had arrived. Despite the hardships and heartache of the day before, George felt completely refreshed. He quickly dressed and ate some leftovers from the refrigerator before donning the elf armor and sword and going outside. Dragon dreams still echoed in his mind. What did they mean? He had a vague feeling that the baby dragon had survived, but the voice in his head seemed too powerful and mature to be that of a mere hatchling. Was it Jewel?
We went to the forest. He half hoped to find that yesterday had been part of the strange dream, but forest destruction centered by three gigantic unconscious dragons remained.
“Morning,” said Mary. She stood next to Grog, opening a can of soup as the troll sat gulping down another one. At least a dozen empty cans lay next to the hairy troll, who was sitting up. “That’s the last can,” she said, as she handed him the newly opened can. “I couldn’t carry any more.”
Grog sucked it down in seconds. “MMMMM-GOOD,” he thundered vigorously. “HI KID,” he said in greeting to George. He stood up gingerly, than stretched and pounded his great hairy chest.
“How did you know what kind of food he would eat?” George asked Mary.
“Easy,” said Mary. “Johnny and I have been bringing tons of that kind of soup to Harry for years.”
“PLUS GROG EATS ALMOST ANYTHING,” added Grog. “ME BE FOREST TROLL.”
“And how do you feel?” asked George.
“MOST GOOD, EXCEPT HERE,” he said, pointing to his chest. “HARRY IS GONE.”
“He was my Great Uncle, but I hardly knew him. Could you tell me more about him and my mother?”
“YES, BUT NOT NOW. NOW WE MUST SEE DRAGONS.”
Grog led the way to one of the enemy dragons first, where he inspected it from head to toe. “THIS ONE BE LEE, SISTER TO JEWEL. SHE BE OF THE DARK HORDE NOW, BE ENEMY.” He placed an ear against the great beast’s chest. “HER HEART BEAT STRONG. SHE MAYBE WAKE TODAY, AFTER SUN WARM HER. THEN WE ALL DIE.”
“That doesn't sound good!” said Mary. “What about the other one?”
They were like ants inspecting these giants. It took fifteen minutes to even get to the other enemy dragon, and another ten minutes for Grog’s inspection. “SHE BE ELENA, SISTER TO JEWEL AND LEE,” Grog announced. “SHE WAKE MORE SOON THAN LEE. THEN WE ALL DIE.”
George was beginning to think that maybe the Government nukes were a pretty good idea.
Finally, they went to Jewel, where Grog repeated his inspection. He was very glum after finishing. “NOT GOOD. JEWEL WAKE AFTER ELENA, MAYBE BEFORE LEE, MAYBE AFTER. WE ALL DIE SOON.”
“What can we do?” Mary asked.
“MORE WARD, MORE ELECTRICITY, THAN MAYBE JEWEL WAKE FIRST,” said the forest troll.
As if on cue, a large vehicle of some kind could be heard approaching, noisily pushing its way through bushes and wreckage. Grog and George climbed atop Jewel so they could better see it coming.
“It’s Rick and Johnny in a big truck,” George noted with relief, when it was still a hundred yards away. The enormous truck was a bright yellow ten-wheeler that vaguely resembled a super-sized fire truck.
“GOOD EYES, KID,” Grog said silently. “YOU HAVE POWERS.”
His physical powers were needed when the truck got bogged down in ash and cinders. Grog and George got behind the truck and pushed it the final fifty yards to Jewel’s head. George felt stronger than ever.
Rick and Johnny climbed down from the cab, Johnny grinning ear to ear.
“Here is your electric generator, young man,” Rick told George, as he rushed to Grog and exchanged a warm hug with the huge troll. “It’s an airport auxiliary power unit, used to power aircraft on the ground when their engines are turned off. It uses a gasoline engine to power a generator.”
“You know my brother Johnny,” Mary said to the troll. “Johnny, this is Grog. The big thing we were always hearing in the bushes.”
Johnny was at first reluctant to get close to Grog, but after Grog reached out with a monstrous paw and gently shook his hand, he warmed to the occasion. “Far out!” he declared, as he examined the massive troll.
Meanwhile George and Rick were already at the truck, unrolling thick power cables. Grog also soon helped, and in minutes the generator truck was pumping thousands of times more electric power into Jewel than the George’s thin cable from the house was capable of doing.
George than went to the ward, and exalted it to heal Jewel faster. The ward responded, increasing in intensity such that he could see the ward surround the entire dragon like a cloak made of fog.
Grog was pleased, but Rick wasn’t happy to hear of the Troll’s earlier prognosis. If despite their efforts the wrong dragon woke first, he’d be forced to vaporize the whole neighborhood, themselves included. “Any way to slow Elena?” he asked.
“NO,” said Grog. “IF WE DO SOMETHING, IT MAYBE WAKE HER SOONER. THAT WOULD BE VERY BAD.”
“Then we bloody well better try to wake Jewel first,” suggested Rick.
“MAYBE, BUT NOT SO EASY TO DECIDE WHEN. IF SHE WAKE TOO SOON FROM HEALING SLEEP, SHE HAVE NO DRAGON FIRE TO DESTROY OTHERS. THEN OTHERS WAKE WITH FIRE. THEN WE ALL DIE.”
“Let me try to talk with her,” said Mary.
Rick and Johnny both looked at her very strangely.
“You mean telepathically?” reasoned George.
“Certainly. I did it briefly yesterday, and she wasn’t fully awake then either. She was groggy, but responded rationally.”
That raised Grog’s big hairy eyebrows. “YOU TALK TO JEWEL AS SHE SLEEP. BOTH YOU AND GEORGE BE AHEAD OF SCHEDULE. IS GOOD. MAYBE WE NOT DIE SO SOON.”
“If waking them disrupts their healing,” reasoned Johnny, “maybe we should wake the bad dragons.”
“That’s totally silly, Bro,” answered Mary. “Like Grog says, maybe they’ve already healed enough to have green dragon fire. And if they aren’t, they could still flatten all of us in a minute. Jewel has to both wake first and be ready to take on the other two using fire. It’s the only way.”
She and George attended to Jewel while Johnny and Rick kept an eye on Elena. Grog trotted back and forth between the dragons, trying to gage which was closer to reviving.
With her hands resting on Jewel’s forehead and her eyes closed, Mary sat quietly as she attempted to communicate telepathically with the dragon. George stood some distance away, watching her. She was part of this business too, as much as he was. She had psychic capabilities, and had them for years. Somehow Harry and Rick had found that out and seen to it that her family moved next door. Why? What was her role supposed to be? Whatever Harry’s intensions might have been, her help over the last day had been of huge value. Now she was at it yet again, holding her small delicate hands on the forehead of a monstrous creature that could crush her in an instant if it so much as shifted slightly in its sleep.
George sat down on a fire-blackened boulder, closed his own eyes, and let his mind explore his surroundings as he had done the day before. Almost immediately, someone else found him.
“SHE IS JEWEL’S CHOSEN ONE, AS YOU ARE TO BE MINE, LITTLE ONE, THAT IS HER ROLE,” said the voice from his dreams! It was the hatchling dragon, George sensed!
“DO YOU READ MY THOUGHTS?” George thought in return.
“SOME OF THEM. I LEARN MUCH FROM YOU, BUT YOU HAVE NOT YET ACCEPTED ME."
"I don't understand," said George.
"I HAVE CHOSEN YOU BUT YOU NEED ALSO TO CHOOSE ME."
George thought about what Harry said and his mother wrote. He didn't see where he had any choice; it was his responsibility. "IF COURSE I CHOOSE YOU!"
George felt strange for a few moments, then he felt stronger.
"YOU HAVE MORE DRAGON POWERS NOW," said the juvenile dragon.
“I suspect that I will soon need them," said George. "Will Jewel recover soon?”
>
“THAT I CAN NOT SAY. I AM NOT YET READY TO CONTACT ANOTHER DRAGON, EVEN A FEMALE. I MUST FIRST GROW LARGER AND STRONGER.”
“But Mary and I are ready to do that already? We are humans, you and Jewel are dragons.”
“YOU ARE MUCH WEAKER THAN US IN STRENGTH OF THOUGHT, BUT YOU THINK MUCH LIKE US. EVEN EARLY IN LIFE, WE CAN EXCHANGE THOUGHTS WITH CHOSEN ONES. THEY ARE A GREAT AID TO OUR EARLY DEVELOPMENT SUCH THAT WE EMERGE FROM THE EGG WITH KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPECIFIC WORLD TO WHICH WE WAKE.”
“You use humans to help you learn things when you are young?”
“YES, THAT IS MUCH OF IT. YOU HAVE GENTLE THOUGHTS, AND IT IS NOT DANGEROUS TO EXCHANGE THOUGHTS WITH YOU. THERE IS MORE, BUT I HAVE YET TO LEARN ALL MYSELF.”
“Harry taught you things.”
“YES, AS DID YOUR MOTHER. BUT YOUR THOUGHTS ARE MUCH MORE CLEAR, AS YOU ARE MY CHOSEN. I WILL LEARN MUCH MORE FROM YOU, IN TIME.”
“You said in our dream that we most both grow.”
“YES. I MUST GATHER KNOWLEDGE, AND WE WILL GROW TOGETHER, LEARN TOGETHER, DRAGON AND CHOSEN. THAT IS THE WAY.”
“Jewel is already grown. Why does she need Mary?”
“JEWEL WILL ALSO LEARN FROM HER CHOSEN ONE. THIS IS A STRANGE WORLD. THERE IS MUCH TO KNOW.”
“Will Mary be alright? Jewel won’t hurt her, will she?”
“NO. DO NOT WORRY THAT YOUR FRIEND IS CHOSEN. HER FATE IS THAT OF JEWEL, AS YOUR FATE IS TIED TO ME.”
George was dumbfounded by it all. This ‘Chosen One’ business was serious! His fate was tied to that of a baby dragon? That’s what this all came down to? He tried to think of a reply, or to think of more questions, but sensed that the dragon’s presence had withdrawn.
“George, are you alright?” Mary asked.
George opened his eyes to see Mary standing next to him.
“I’m fine. Any luck?”
“Jewel is waking now.”
George looked at the dragon just as its eyes opened. He and Mary backed away from the immense creature, but other than opening its eyes, it did not move.
“THE DRAGON ELENA WAKES,” came Grog’s distant shout. George and Mary turned to see Johnny, followed by Rick and Grog, running from the dragon Elena, who was already stretching wings and legs where it lay. The reptilian head lifted off the ground and turned red eyes with pupils the size of trash can lids towards them. Grog scooped up Rick than Johnny under his arms and tripled his speed, closing the gap in huge bounds as Elena slowly arose on four sturdy legs.
“Jewel isn’t ready yet!” said Mary.
Indeed, Jewel started to move her appendages slightly, but still lay on her side, and seamed to be nowhere near righting herself.
“The Air Force SAC has seen the dragon move and has scrambled fighter-bombers,” added Rick, who held some sort of radio in his hand when Grog sat him and Johnny down to join George and Mary. "The nukes were on their way."
“Get them to hold off,” said George. “All of you head for cover.”
“What are you doing?” asked Mary.
“You aren’t ready to fight dragons, son,” Rick said.
George was already gone, pulling the elf sword from its scabbard as he ran towards the Dragon Elena. It started out as swift running, but soon he found that he was bounding a hundred feet at a time, skimming over the burned out landscape as though gravity hardly held him, traveling faster than Grog had. George had expected something like this, for he felt the dragon and elf strength in himself, and had seen what Harry could do with it.
Elena pointed her head to the sky and roared, causing the air and Earth to tremble, and Johnny, Rick and Mary dropped to the ground in agony, with hands over ears in a futile attempt to block out the deafening sound. Outside the Simple property, people in the neighborhood paused in their yard work and other activities and looked towards the forested end of the cul-de-sac. They thought they heard thunder, muffled by perhaps ten or twenty miles of distance, but the sky was clear as far as they could see. Much earlier a few of them had noticed a big yellow truck drive to the end of the street and onto the Simple property, crashing through tangled growth, but the sound they heard now was too far away to be related to that. They went back to their summer activities.
George grimaced in pain from the sound but never lost a step. As he approached the dragon it drew in its breath deeply and rose up on its hind legs. It had to be the green flame that was coming next, George reasoned, super-hot flame that would incinerate him and his friends, maim Jewel and mark the beginning of the end for all of Earth!
Thousands of miles overhead, a ‘spy’ satellite in geosynchronous Earth orbit captured the unlikely image of a massive dragon standing and taking several steps towards a prone dragon, and passed telemetry to two Air Force jet fighter-bombers that were flying towards the dragons. Each carried tactical nuclear weapons more potent than those that had been used against Japan in World War II. Human loss would be horrible, but the dragons would be destroyed and taught a lesson.
****