Dragon's Own (Print)

Dragon's Own
Willa Okati
All rights reserved.
Excerpt from Dragon's Dare
Copyright ©2018 Willa Okati

"I still don't like this," a low female voice protested. She sounded more like a reasonable type. "We've got no idea that this kind of nonsense will help us at all."

"No? Then tell me, how could it hurt?" Dob asked with the kind of patience he'd show to a slow-witted child.

"Might not be so great if the dragons don't like traitors," the woman replied dryly. "Dob, I'll be plain. This is insane. Noah and his vigilantes have been doing a hell of a lot of good."

"I'm among their numbers," Dob protested. "This is my way of helping."

The woman snorted eloquently. "I still don't like it."

"You don't have to. Listen to me. The last of the World Wars has nearly finished us, the humans. Little food, little water, little safety. If we are to last another generation, we must have help."

"And you think the dragons are the answer?"

"Why not? You know that dragons are rich, that they have caves of wonders full of treasures."

"Money's worthless," the woman pointed out. Noah rolled to his stomach, ignoring the protests of pain from his ribs, and propped his chin on his forearm. Whoever this was, he liked her. She had common sense.

Hmm. Maybe I can use her…

"Money is not the point." Noah had his doubts that Dob believed that. After all, hadn't he demanded a high price from these city survivors for providing them with a human gift for the dragons, claiming that for sacrifice to mean anything they had to give up things that mattered to them?

Noah smothered a laugh. Dob still didn't have a clue, did he?

Dob paused, as if trying to figure that out, then made an impatient "tch" noise and went on. "Enough of this. I know what I'm doing. Noah!" He banged on the door. "We are coming in. Do not attack, do not fight, do not try to run."

The lock spun, and the heavy steel door creaked slowly open. Dob peeked around it, so comically wide-eyed with fear that Noah couldn't help hooting at him.

"What's funny?" Dob demanded, pursing his lips sourly, like he'd been sucking on lemon rinds. He shoved the door far enough open to be able to walk through. A skinny, nervous man and a sturdy woman, perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties, followed him. "Is your head cracked?"

"You're asking me?" Noah rolled his eyes, knowing it was petty but would drive Dob up the wall. He stood, stretching his arms above his head. "Skip the speech about how it's a far, far better fate that I'm going to, okay? I get the idea."

Dob actually looked offended. "It is a better fate!"

"It's not the best of all possible options for him," the woman murmured.

"You shut your mouth! Noah, what you will do for us by going to the dragons, it might save all our lives. They are mighty, they are fearsome, and if they will help us by protecting the cities, then we humans may survive after all."

Noah had to admit Dob's reasoning would sound good to any outsider. Not to him. He knew, all too well, that in the end this all just boiled down to greed and fear, Dob wanting to get the dragons on his side.

He gazed at Dob until Dob fell silent, his bluster drying up and leaving a heavy, uncomfortable gap between them. He glanced at the woman behind Dob and mouthed tell the others during a second in which Dob cleared his throat and looked away, a faint, dull red coloring his cheeks.

The woman nodded once. Good enough.

Noah held his head high. "Let's get this over with. Take me to the dragons." He wouldn't run, and he wouldn't beg. He'd face the dragons like a man, a real man, and he'd fight the good fight, the honest fight.

He hung on to his resolution even as they shoved and wrestled him through the filthy city streets -- their idea, not his, as he came quietly. Gobs of slimy garbage from mockers splattered him, skinny dogs barked at his heels, and old women cackled at his plight.

Noah didn't flinch when they arrived at the gate between worlds through which he'd travel to dragon space -- or so Dob and his followers figured. The few times the dragons had come to nose around humans or been spotted circling in the skies above, they'd emerged through one of these breaks in reality where their two worlds overlapped like two sheets of paper laid one atop the other.

"Good luck, my friend," Dob had the gall to say as he tried to push Noah toward the arched, shimmering gate. "Before they… well, before the dragons take their due, tell them why you're there, and what you ask of them for our sakes."

"Why don't you come along with me and ask them yourself?" Noah invited, pleased at the way Dob blanched.

He wasn't anywhere near as happy with Dob's hard push between his shoulder blades that sent him stumbling forward, then tumbling through the bizarre gap into dragon space. He'd never taken drugs, knowing they weren't safe -- especially in these post-war times -- but grief, this had to be what a bad high felt like. Or perhaps this was what Alice felt, tumbling down the rabbit hole. Pure whiteness with no walls, ceiling or floors or horizons, yawning out forever, seeming to have no end --

-- until, with a heavy thump and jolt, Noah landed. The journey had either taken days or merely seconds. No telling.

As it was, he barely had time to realize he'd made it, that he was in the dragon lands, before huge yellow eyes stared unblinkingly into his.

"Well, well," the dragon rumbled, its forked tongue flickering as it spoke. "What new treasure is this? Is it for eating?"