It is my folder! And he’s checking up on me!
Dr. Whittier hung up the phone and shuffled the pages of the file back together. When he rose from his seat, Bonnie let the door close gently, and she hustled over to a desk and sat down. She leaned forward to make room for her backpack and gazed straight ahead. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dr. Whittier peek in the window.
Brrinnggg!
The class bell made Bonnie jump, and she glanced at the window. Dr. Whittier was no longer watching. She left the detention room and saw him sitting at his desk. She let the door close softly behind her and raised her eyebrows hopefully. “So, can I go now?”
Dr. Whittier folded his hands over the file. “Yes, yes. Of course.”
Bonnie left the office and walked down the hall, but the sound of the office door made her turn around. Dr. Whittier was leaving. He had a file tucked securely under his arm, and he hobbled down the hallway in the opposite direction.
Bonnie felt a blistering chill, worse than ten snowballs down her back. She could barely think. The thought of her deformity finally being revealed nearly paralyzed her. Yet, she felt torn. She had hidden the truth for so long, she wouldn’t mind if a white knight rode up on his steed, shining the light of truth on her secret, ready to protect her at all costs. But what if the wrong person found out, a dark knight who would expose her to everyone?
There were too many mysteries, too many clues, and Dr. Whittier seemed like a man on a mission. But was he on the side of light or the side of darkness?
Apparently Gandalf decided he’d given enough comfort for one afternoon, and he pulled away from his master’s embrace. Billy watched him prance into the hallway and down the stairs, his fluffy tail waving back in self-satisfaction. He envied the cat’s freedom—no worries, no problems. His food bowl was always well supplied with tasty morsels of some kind or another, and a place to sleep was as close as any bed, sofa, or lap. He never had to worry about who he was or what his parents were.
For Billy everything he had ever known had suddenly been swept away like worthless kitty litter, and now even the floor seemed to crumble under the weight of his burdens. Every thought swirled in a Kansas-sized tornado. Stumbling about in the corridors of his own mind, he felt lost in a carnival maze of mirrors. He turned toward the door to go downstairs, ready to demand an explanation from his parents, but he stopped, afraid of what a confrontation might bring.
He glanced around the room, desperately clinging to images he held dear. There on the wall by the window hung a pencil sketch he had made with the help of his father when he was first learning art. It was a portrait of Merlin, drawn from the fantasies of his imagination. Although he had no idea what Merlin actually looked like, the more he stared at the glass-encased sketch, the more familiar the aged face looked, as though an old friend stared back to offer him help and comfort.
Over on his desk he noticed his pint jar of shark teeth. The summer before last he and his dad collected them during their vacation in Venice, Florida. He still remembered the feeling of swimming in water that had once teemed with monster sharks and pretending they were still lurking just below his dangling toes.
A relatively new treasure also sat on Billy’s desk, the computer he had received for his birthday. It hadn’t taken him long to learn how to get on the Internet and surf for information, both for fun and for school projects. Now its very presence gave him something to hope for. Out of the millions of web sites out in cyberspace, there had to be stuff about dragons.
After hurriedly changing his stinky shirt, he plopped down on his desk chair and began navigating the mouse cursor through dozens of web sites devoted to dragon lore, knights and damsels, and other ancient legends. The effort of wading through the mass of information dizzied his mind, and with the swirling confusion already fogging his thoughts, he just couldn’t take any more. Probably 90 percent of this stuff is just stories people make up. I need facts!
Billy shook his head and closed the browser. With a sigh and a click of his mouse, he switched to his e-mail program. Several new messages popped into his in-box. Some were advertisements, but one looked like a personal note. His spirits lifted when he saw Mr. Hamilton’s name. He opened the message and read.
Mr. Bannister, I thoroughly enjoyed conversing with you during our ride today. When I returned to school, I spoke with Dr. Whittier. He agreed to allow you to attend classes tomorrow and clear your record if you will scrub the newly inscribed graffiti on the school’s front wall. He planned to have you clean the restroom, but the janitor had already mopped the whole floor to get the water up. In my opinion, we have arrived at a good settlement. If you are sincere about wanting to keep up with schoolwork, come an hour early tomorrow; I will meet you if you need help to get started. I want to be sure you attend the next class. I will be talking about Merlin. Today’s lecture notes are in an attached file.
Sincerely, Charles Hamilton (1 Peter 2:18, 19)
He read the message over again and recognized the ending reference as a Bible verse. He spun his head toward a bookshelf on the opposite wall and scanned the book spines. He didn’t use his Bible very much, but once in a while, when his father was out for an overnight trip, his mother would give him a lesson from it. He especially liked the stories about angels—Michael, Gabriel, and . . . and whatever the other ones were named. There it is! He softly stepped over to the shelf and slid out the small, leather-bound book.
After flipping through the pages for a while he found the passage. “Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God.”
Billy pondered the words, and his mind settled into a happier mood. The fact that Mr. Hamilton had been kind enough to send such an uplifting message cheered him. The old teacher had a heart to go along with his information-packed brain.
Now there’s a thought! I’ll ask Mr. Hamilton my questions.
After all, he seemed to know what was real and what wasn’t when it came to the legends. Maybe he knew something about dragons, too.
With his hands on the home keys, Billy started typing, but after a couple of sentences he stopped. Boy, does this sound stupid. “Mr. Hamilton, please tell me everything you know about dragons. It’s really important.” Billy held down the backspace key until his entire message disappeared, and he began again, this time typing slowly and thoughtfully.
Dear Mr. Hamilton,
I appreciate the ride home today, and I enjoyed our talk about the Arthur legend. There’s one part of the legend that you didn’t mention—dragons. Did they really exist? If so, what happened to them? Where can I find more information on dragons? I will be at school one hour early, like you said. I’ll see you there. Thanks for getting me off suspension.
Billy Bannister
Billy clicked the send button and breathed a sigh, relieved that he had at least done something to start solving this nightmare of a mystery. A familiar noise made him turn his head. Yes, it was the engine of the school bus. I’d better get out there fast. If Mom and Dad find I’m home already, they’ll want to know what happened. I’ll have to tell them eventually, but I’d rather do it in my own time. I just hope Mom doesn’t notice that I changed shirts.
He snatched up his backpack and headed toward the stairs, but the soft padding of footsteps below made him stop cold. That way was blocked. His mother was near the bottom of the steps. He ducked away from the stairwell before she noticed him.
I know! I’ll go out the window! He tiptoed back into his room and sneaked toward the wall that faced the street out front. He had tried this trick before, scaling the drainpipe when playing hide and seek with Walter. After casting furtive glances all around, he opened the window slowly, looked outside at the shingles, and gauged the distance to the roof’s edge.
Piece of cake, Billy said to himself as he climbed out. With his shoes gr
inding the gritty roof surface, he walked with bent knees to the end of the gutter, his arms slightly extended and his palms down to keep his balance. The shingles radiated the day’s unusual late autumn warmth, and a fresh breeze cooled his dampening skin.
When he reached the corner of the roof, he dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms and legs around the drainpipe. This trick was a lot easier when Walter was chasing him and they shared unrestrained bravado. Now, with all the dragon stuff going on, he felt like a wet noodle had replaced his spine.
Billy took a deep breath, gripped the metal with his shoe soles, and began sliding earthward. On the way down, his finger caught on a jagged pipe joint, and he jerked away in pain. Just before his upper body toppled, he snatched the pipe again with his bloodied hand. He rushed his descent, allowing the rough metal to scrape his bare forearms, and he shinnied the rest of the way down, landing firmly on his feet. Whew! Made it!
Sucking the wounded finger, he hurried around to the front of the house and hustled up the sidewalk to his front door. It looked like the bleeding had stopped, so at least the cut wouldn’t give anything away.
A sense of guilt weighed him down, like the wounded finger reflected something bigger, a deeper truth of some kind. He couldn’t remember ever sneaking around like this, but, then again, he had never heard his dad say he had dragon blood before. The trust he had always felt had buried itself, like a scared mole hiding from a lurking cat.
Billy entered the front door with his head held high, pretending everything was normal. “Mom, I’m home!”
He heard his mother’s voice calling. “We’re in the living room, Billy.”
He hustled down the hall and turned into the room, finding his mother sitting on the sofa immediately to the right of his dad. A huge book lay open on his dad’s lap, something like an ancient Bible, complete with a worn leather binding and yellowed parchment pages.
Billy wanted to ask about the book right away, but when his father closed it, he decided to wait. He was glad his pants were now dry, and his mother didn’t seem to notice the shirt. So far, so good. He scooted to an unoccupied chair adjacent to the sofa and sat back, trying to hide his turmoil, at least for now. “What’s up, Dad? You’re home early.”
He gazed at Billy, almost as if he were seeing him for the first time. Billy felt like his dad’s eyes were fingers, poking and probing his mind and body for information and giving him shivers all over. “Your mother called me,” he replied. “She wanted me to help her take care of a problem.”
“What problem?”
“She noticed this morning when you kissed her that your breath was extremely hot.” His mother pointed to the welt on her cheek while he continued. “We’re guessing you’ve already noticed it, maybe for quite some time.”
Billy shifted uneasily in his chair. “Well, I—” He paused. He wanted to blurt out everything, but he felt like something clamped his mouth shut.
“Go ahead, son,” his mother prodded. “You can tell us.”
Billy sighed and looked down at his shoes. “Yeah, I’ve noticed it, especially today. I had a problem in school. I tried to stop Adam Lark from setting off the fire sprinklers in the restroom, but I accidentally set them off myself.”
His father shifted forward. “Set them off yourself? How did that happen?”
Billy leaned over and began retying his shoes. “Well, Adam was putting his lighter up by the sensor, and I tried to blow it out. For some reason, my breath’s gotten so hot, it must have set the alarm off.” He looked up, and he felt his throat tightening and tears welling in his eyes. He firmed his chin and tried to blink away the tears. “Mom, what’s going on?” He turned to his father. “Dad?”
His father patted the sofa cushion on his left and reopened his book. “Come sit here, Billy. I have something to show you.”
Billy stepped over and sat down, nestling into the cushion but keeping his distance. He swallowed hard, and he gripped his knees as he turned his head to see what was in the book.
His father turned a large, tawny page, revealing dozens of lines of flowing script on the ragged parchment. “What do you know about dragons, Billy?”
“Um . . . Only what I’ve read in books, like The Hobbit. They’re fierce, scaly, flying lizards that can breathe fire.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, they gather treasure, and they’re evil. They kill people when things don’t go their way.”
He turned another page, this time more slowly. “In your mind, do they look something like this?”
Billy stared at the newly revealed parchment. It displayed a drawing of a knight fighting a dragon, a beautiful depiction of heated battle, the knight with drawn sword and uplifted shield, and the dragon with torrents of fire blasting the shield with outraged ferocity. Behind the knight stood a young lady in a white, flowing gown, obviously the object of the battle. Although he had never seen this picture before, something about it seemed familiar. It reminded him of a picture in the principal’s office, but there was something more, something personal. Billy nodded, keeping his eyes on the page. “Yeah. Something like that.”
His father turned another page, revealing several lines of centered text. The handwritten script flowed in nearly flawless curves, not quite calligraphy, but possessing the swirls of an ancient and devoted pen. The letters created odd spellings and indecipherable words.
“This is a poem,” his dad explained, “written by the same man who drew the picture. He was a squire for one of King Arthur’s knights.”
“Arthur’s knights? Like the ones of the Round Table?”
“Well, not quite. This knight was Arthur’s fiercest, to be sure, but his bloodlust kept him from securing a seat of nobility. He was forever in pursuit of dragons, to the point of madness.”
Billy couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It sounded like a fairy tale, like his father was telling a bedtime story. “So dragons were real? They really did breathe fire and try to kill people like in the picture?”
His father’s brow turned downward and his jaw tensed, but his voice stayed calm. “Some dragons killed many people, giving all dragons a bad reputation. Arthur commissioned this particular knight to eliminate the species. At the time, Arthur was unaware of the existence of good dragons.”
“Good dragons?” Billy looked up from the page. He felt a tight knot growing in his stomach, and he squeezed his kneecaps like he was trying to wring out a sponge. “So why are you telling me all this?”
His father placed his hand on the page and ran his fingers across the lines of text. “To explain it, I’m going to recite this poem for you. It’s written in an old version of English, but I translated it and tried to make it rhyme in modern English. The rhymes aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty close, and I memorized my version of it.”
With dragons slain my master craves
Another beast, another prey
For dragons now wear human skin
And roam the earth to spread their sin
My master hunts and never rests
We purge the land and spoil their nests
’Tis strange to spill the human blood
But dragons hide beneath that hood.
He turned the page back to the picture of the knight and dragon, and Billy stared at it again, this time passionately searching for its mystery. The image took over all his senses, and it seemed to come alive in his mind. The eyes of the dragon glowed, pouring out evil as it unleashed its maniacal fury. Billy locked on the eyes. That was it! The eyes! This artist drew eyes the same way Billy did when his subject was furious, with tiny white dots in the center of the pupil. As he scanned the portrait, he noticed other similarities, human hands, tree leaves, boulders, all reflecting his own style, not exactly, but close enough to keep him entranced, and wondering about this even deeper mystery.
Billy finally tore away from the picture’s hypnotic effect. He took a deep breath and looked up at his father. “Dad, what are you trying to say? What does thi
s have to do with my . . . uh . . . my problem?”
His father took his own deep breath and put a hand on Billy’s thigh. “I’m saying that I’m one of those dragons who now wears human skin.”
Billy felt the urge to pull away from his father’s touch, but he sat motionless, staring at the hand on his leg, thinking about its thick hair and imagining it morphing into a hideous claw with scales and razor-sharp talons. His body trembled with shivers. He couldn’t help it. The tremors spread to his arms and legs, and his father jerked his hand back.
Billy tried to speak, but his tongue felt thick and tingly. He finally spit out his only thought. “I—I already knew that.”
His mother and father turned to look at each other before his mother leaned over to speak. “You did? How?”
Billy’s tongue felt more normal again, and he explained, cringing inside and half closing his eyes as he spilled his story. “I got suspended because of what happened in the bathroom, so I came home early. I heard you and Dad talking about Dad being a dragon. I climbed down the drainpipe and came in like nothing was wrong. I didn’t want you to know about what happened today, at least not right away.”
“I understand,” his father replied without hesitation.
Billy opened his eyes again. “You do?”
“If I had heard something like that, I think I’d have run to the nearest insane asylum and checked myself in.”
“Something like that did cross my mind.”
His father gave him a smile. “Well, you showed a lot of courage coming in to talk to us.”
Billy lowered his head. For some reason he had a hard time looking into his father’s eyes. “I don’t feel very courageous.”
“Why not? How many other kids hear what you just heard? I think you’re taking it very well.”