He was not the only one worried at what the next day would bring. With all that dwelled on his mind he fell asleep again, this time not waking until dawn. Ann was already feeding the fire and Tad was still sleeping soundly.
“Good morning,” she said softly. “This is the day we get answers, and I’m excited and scared at the same time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Gareth stood, wrapping his blanket around his shoulders, ready to greet the day. Ann was right. Today they might find answers to the hundreds of questions that forced them to cross the mountains. Suddenly he was not hungry. A sour taste filled his mouth as he remembered the old adage about getting what you wish for. The idea was central to dozens of folktales and children’s stories, but nonetheless, the truths were bound in each tale and story.
Tad woke with a start. He sat and looked around as if confused, fear evident in his expression, his eyes wide. “He touched me.”
Gareth dropped the blanket, and his hand went to the blade at his waist as he searched the area. “Who?”
“Belcher.”
Gareth swiveled and faced Tad. It only took an instant to find his umbrella of protection was in place and secure. “Tell me about it.”
“I was asleep when he found me. He laughed and was gone.”
“How do you know it was him?”
Tad cast the look children give adults when asking silly questions. “Because I’ve heard him when he talks to you.”
Ann’s hands were held to her mouth in fear, but she said nothing. Her eyes darted from Tad to Gareth and back again.
Gareth said, “He laughed? That’s all?”
“It was the way he laughed. Mean. Like he knows a secret that’s going to hurt and won’t tell me.”
The explanation sounded as precise as if Tad was an adult speaking to equals. The change took Gareth by surprise, as had most of the knowledge learned about Tad on the trip. If he didn’t know better, he’d think the boy was twice his age. The idea gave Gareth pause, but the fear of Belcher now increased. If Tad was right, Belcher knew of him.
Ann said, “We don’t know where we’re going or what we’ll find, but we need to go if we want to get it done today.”
To her surprise, Gareth hesitated. He both feared and wished to learn what lay ahead. They gathered their few belongings and were soon walking again, Tad not only kept up but rushed ahead. The snow diminished, and green sprouts spread leaves. The ground felt soft from the retained water but firm enough to offer a firm grip to their feet.
Gareth followed the other two as if by trailing them he could protect them from an attack from the rear. His mind was cold, reviewing each fact he knew about Belcher and searching for a way to exploit it. At the very least, how to protect Tad.
Tad set a pace fast enough for him and Ann to stretch their strides to keep even. Gareth kept them shielded from Belcher but suspected that now that Belcher knew of Tad he would try contacting him again. Belcher should not have been able to learn of Tad, let alone contact him, and Gareth withheld that information until he could determine what had happened.
“Are you listening to me?” Gareth asked Tad.
“I can’t help it,” Tad said as he swung a branch in front of him pretending is was a sword but not listening.
Gareth could lock him out completely, but then he wouldn’t be able to provide his protection. As his father had once told him, you cannot both look up and down at the same time. Your mind is only capable of so much.
The saying from his father caused Gareth to think of the body of Cinder rotting in that clearing. No, after Blackie had coated him with acid the body would break down very fast, bones and all, not rotting, but disintegrating. Within hours he suspected, there was little left, nothing recognizable, although neither Blackie nor Gareth wished to check on it.
After a day of rain or two, the great dragon would be returned to basic elements the same as all that dies no matter how hard they fight against it. Soon, those same elements would feed the grass, trees, and all that grazed upon them. An apple growing from that ground would have some of the elements of Cinder in it. The thought was not morbid for Gareth, but almost pleasing. Cinder would like knowing his dead body helped others as it grew fruit.
Gareth caught Tad’s laugh even as he chuckled to himself. No, Cinder wouldn’t like it because Cinder had a brain the size of a cow, only using it more for flying. The small portion of the dragon mind dedicated to thinking was probably smaller than that of a squirrel. Dragons felt, reacted, and acted on outside stimulus. Treating them like intelligent beings was wrong, no matter how much he felt attached to the beast.
Tad said, “If Blackie died you’d feel sad.”
“But if I died, would Blackie feel sad?”
Tad poked his stick at a tree beside the road as if it was fighting back and shouted, “Take that!” Then he turned and said, “I think so. Maybe lonely.”
The insight tended to make Gareth feel better, even if he disagreed with it. They walked in silence along the trail that would take them back over the pass. While no larger or wider, the ground was less steep and as the vegetation changed it did not become the familiar lush green of the other side of the mountains. Instead, the trees thinned and were almost all pine, tall and straight.
Dryness in the air made itself known as their sinuses reacted to the heat and to unfamiliar pollens. The grass under the pines had turned brown indicating the lack of rain. Each of them sneezed more than once.
But the day had turned warm, the sun bright, and the sky a shade of blue Gareth had never seen. He considered having Blackie fly high overhead so he could watch through the dragon’s eyes, but held off for selfish reasons. He enjoyed the discovery of a new land, one that grew different plants. Each twist and turn of the trail revealed a newness that held his interest.
When they came to a stream Ann knelt and drank, saying, “We should all fill up on water. This is the first stream since we broke camp. No telling when we reach the next one.”
Gareth was used to an abundance of streams and rivers. Even Bitters Island had a small river beside their settlement. The remembrance of the peaceful life there tainted his mind. Being forced to leave there was another reason to hunt down Belcher. His whole family had been affected and were now in a temporary home.
But again, it was Ramos that made him most angry when he thought of Belcher. Belcher had tried to make Ramos walk off a cliff to die because he “liked” Gareth. Then Belcher had made him freeze to death. Belcher had no regrets, no conscious. No feelings of others. Everything that happened was only about Belcher, in his warped mind.
Others. That single word brought to the forefront of his thinking the fact that there were only ten others ahead that he could sense. Gareth admitted to himself he didn’t use Blackie because of fear of what he would find. As long as they walked along the path, almost as a happy family on an outing, he didn’t have to face the probable scene ahead.
Images of deserted cities, whole towns and villages burned and destroyed leaped to mind. Gareth tried to shut out the images of raven pecking at the bones of the dead, wild dogs tearing apart corpses, and the stench of death.
He didn’t bother asking himself if Belcher was capable of such mass destruction. A single touch of Belcher’s mind told it was not only capable of such things but in his perverse way, Belcher could enjoy them. When he ran out of targets for his insanity, he would seek other victims, and he’d found them in Gareth’s homeland.
Ann said, “I feel like walking on ahead so I don’t do something to rouse you.”