I
If any one moment could be said to be the turning point in my life, the moment where destiny shifted, where all further actions and choices moved me toward the day when I would be forced to flee my home and give up my music, it would be the time I put my flute on the bench outside my house when my mother demanded I take bread and cheese to my father working in his fields. So much of my childhood was taken up with ways to get out of my chores that should anyone from my childhood see me now, they might not believe it was me. I’ve grown some, yes, but I also no longer have the music to fill my time. And as music filled so much of my time, I tried to be away from my flute as little as possible, but I also took steps to protect it and ensure its safety. Accidents happen, and when the other children in the town dislike you because you have a gift they do not, and your lazy habits are tolerated a bit more because of that gift, sometimes what seems like an accident isn’t. That day, I had chosen to leave my flute on the bench rather than argue with my mother about taking it back to my room. Arguing would have kept me from it longer than it would take to run to my father in the field and back, and run I did, as fast as my legs would move me. Because of trouble I’d gotten into over the years with other village children, I’d learned to put on quite the burst of speed when needed.
Now, if I’d put the flute down on one of the chairs behind the house, or taken the time to argue with my mother, things might have been different. If, after everything, I had the chance to go back and make another choice, would I have? I cannot tell. Most likely not, but I say that with the comfort of not actually having that choice to make.
When I returned home, my flute was not on the bench were I had left it. I glanced around frantically, hoping that it had only rolled off. It wasn’t anywhere I could see it. I drew in a deep lungful of air to call to my mother – please, gods and goddesses, let her have taken it inside – when I heard someone cough loudly in the street behind me, the very directed cough of someone trying to get my attention.
I turned and saw Hugh, Eric, and Gregory smiling at me. Those triplets had caused the greater portion of the unhappy moments in my childhood. Hugh stood in the middle, slightly taller than the other two, all three of them easily a head higher than me or any other boy or girl in the town. In that place, in that time, childhood lasted much longer than here, where girls look to marry at fifteen or sixteen. Girls in my hometown were still sometimes playing with dolls, and boys were not yet given the responsibilities in the fields and town reserved for grown men, and most of them still played at being knights with wooden swords. Well, Hugh, the largest boy in the town, held my flute in one hand.
“Give. It. Back.” I took a step forward to punctuate every word.
“No,” Hugh said. “Your parents obviously don’t love you enough to keep you honest about your chores, so we’re going to.”
I ground my teeth together. Even after all these years, I can still remember the ache in my jaw as I struggled to keep from screaming at him. Screaming would have brought adults, and that was cheating. By the unwritten, unspoken laws of the children in our town, if the adults got involved, you lost status in the eyes of everyone else. I had so little status that I couldn’t afford to lose any. Also, if everyone found out what had set me off, and the three brutes looking at me with malicious grins would surely tell them, everyone would know what kind of a reaction stealing my flute would produce. Oh yes, anyone who caused another child to get an adult involved gained standing in the eyes of the other children. Needless to say, Hugh, Eric, and Gregory collectively held as much status in this game as all the other children put together.
“Whether or not I get my chores done has no effect on you three,” I said.
“Oh, but it does,” Eric said. “Any time any of the rest of us shirk our chores even the slightest bit, we get compared to you.” He pitched his voice up an octave or two. “‘Well now, since you don’t mind your duties, let’s get you a fiddle so you can run off and play with Elzibeth.’”
“Maybe if you didn’t have a flute,” Gregory said, “you’d be able to be a bit more like the rest of us.”
My ears grew warm. I ground my teeth together even harder.
“May I please have my flute back?” I said through my teeth.
“Perhaps,” Hugh said. He twirled the flute in his fingers. “But you have to do something first.”
“What?” I asked, dreading the amount of work they were going to heap on me, or the embarrassing act they were going to make me perform, humiliating me before as many in the town as possible.
“Spend the night in the dragon’s cave,” they said in unison.
“Fine,” I replied.
From the way their faces scrunched up in befuddlement, I’m sure they hadn’t thought that I’d actually agree. I would worry my parents a bit, and surely I’d see some form of punishment, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared. I spun on my toe, went into the house, and collected my cloak, some food, and one of my father’s lanterns with several extra candles. Mother was so busy preparing the stew for dinner that she hardly noticed me. She said something about getting some chore done before getting back to playing my flute, but I hardly noticed her.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, pushing my way through the brothers.
I got about twenty or so paces beyond them, when I heard that attention-getting cough again. I stopped and glanced back.
“You have to bring proof,” Hugh said.
I gave a sharp nod and left town.
II
Everyone knew generally where the dragon’s cave was, but nobody went because it was in the wild hills north of the town. Also, the last man to go to the dragon’s cave, in the time when my grandfather was a child, never returned. When people gathered at the tavern, every once in a time, someone would speak of that knight that went into the hills and never came back. People would speculate as to his fate, and even as to why he’d gone up there in the first place. No one had seen any sign of a dragon in more years than anyone could guess at. And even without fear of dragons that probably weren’t there anyway, the wild hills contained more than enough real dangers: wild boars, wolves, and the occasional sinkhole. Natives of small towns generally share one common trait, and I’ve seen many small towns. People who live in them tend to have enough sense not to go looking after trouble.
I scrambled through the hills and crags and brambles for hours. I’d narrowly avoided a wild boar and soaked myself up to the waist by not being able to quite jump across a stream. Scrapes and cuts covered my hands, and I had a large lump on my head from failing to climb the edge of a ravine. Apparently, I didn’t have enough sense not to go looking for trouble. Well, in my defense, I hadn’t gone looking for three bullies to force me into this. Yes, I could have gone to my parents, but such thinking was impossible in the pride of my youth.
The sun had set, and the shadows between the hills had grown long enough and deep enough that I’d lit the first candle in the lantern. I’d come to the area where people said the dragon cave might be, and I’d been wandering back and forth, searching for it. I was about to give up for the night and find a place to sleep when I found it. I came around a hill, and there it was, a black opening in the side of the largest hill I could see. I’d come here planning to climb to the top and use it as a vantage point.
Now I didn’t know if this really was the dragon’s cave, but I couldn’t imagine it being anything else. In my mind, I’d known that there was a dragon cave. I’d known it was in the wild hills. I just wasn’t prepared for the enormity of it. It was somewhere between fifty and sixty paces away from me, and I could tell the top of the cave was at least ten times as high as I was tall. It hung in the side of the hill, dark and gaping, like some mouth waiting to swallow an unsuspecting passerby. Thinking that did nothing to settle my growing nerves, and I froze there, staring at it.
I might have stayed there all night, unmoving, but a wolf howled somewhere in the distance. That got my feet moving again. While a dragon might be waiting somewhere in the bowels of that cave, the cave might also be empty. On the other side of the coin, the wolves were very much real. The dragon, even if it was there, might not devour me whole, but I thought I’d probably prefer getting eaten in one gulp by a dragon than I would getting ripped apart by a pack of wolves. I hurried toward the cave, thinking that if a dragon had ever lived there at any time in the past, wolves and other wild animals would probably stay away from it. Quick death or a safe place, the cave seemed the wisest choice.
Even with all my logic and sound reasoning, stepping across the threshold of that cave was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. As I write these words, my heart pounds at the memory. My stomach nearly emptied itself of the cheese and bread I’d eaten hours before.
The light of the lantern went before me a few paces and then faded into a gloomy haze. The air in the cave felt heavy, as if pressing down on me and stamping out my light. Still fearing the wolves more than any potential nastiness I might find in the cave, I went further inside.
A gust of wind caused the candle light to flutter a bit, and I thought I saw something move across the floor to my left. I nearly dropped the lantern and ran screaming from the cave. As it was, I gave a squeak of surprise but managed to stay in place. I held my breath and tried willing my heart to slow as I waited for the light to steady. When the wind died down and the candle ceased flickering, I realized it was my own shadow. I had the lantern in my right hand, and my shadow stretched out into the darkness. It weaved and danced every time I moved the lantern a bit. I released my held breath in a long, steady exhale.
It was still light enough to see outside, so I placed the lantern on the floor of the cave and went to gather firewood. This area didn’t have as many trees as some parts of the hill I’d been through, but I’d noticed more than a few branches that would make a nice fire and more than enough twigs for kindling. In only a few minutes, I had enough wood to build and feed a nice fire to keep me warm until I was ready for sleep. A few minutes after that, and thanks to the candle in the lantern, I had a fire burning fifteen paces into the cave.
The light of the fire fared much better at pushing back the darkness than my little lantern. Placing another small piece of wood on the fire, I stood up, stretched, and looked around.
And screamed.
DEAD WEIGHT: The Tombs