Parker's Revenge

The entire town was cheering in the square. Banners of every color waved. Horns, lutes, and flutes sang out. The celebratory cacophony was was punctuated by screams of terror as an enormous black warhorse with shaggy booties trampled one too slow to get out of the way. More screams as blood geysered up and splashed the laggers.

“HO HO HAAAA! Get out the way ya idjots!” the lead knight bellowed.

The next cried out, “Make way for Prince Maddox! DRAGONSLAYER!”

A hundred of the prince’s stiff-backed men marched through the crowd on horseback.

Alfred Louis Jordan, sixteen, straddled the gibbet and had a fine view of his old friend as he came into the square on his dappled grey Percheron, it’s mane a wispy smoke-like flag and its thick legs prancey. Behind Maddox came the extra-large wagon- sturdy enough to hold the dragon’s body.

From his perch, Jordan could see the entire monster. Green and black and scaley…with razor sharp claws curled against its bloody chest, and six-foot tongue lolling from between foot long teeth. Hideous!

Though they had not spoken in four years, he was proud of his friend. So brave! A hero! The monster responsible for killing off entire herds of sheep and goats…and the bloody, horrific deaths of men set out to kill it…was dead. Finally, the village could breathe easy again and re-grow and prosper and shrive. What a prince we have!

***

The thunderous clangs of finely honed steel against steel rang through the valley like discordant church bells rung by a lunatic (and deaf) monk.

Jordan eyed his opponent through the eye slot in his helmet- eyes into eyes- Maddox was equally intense, his normally full, liver-colored lips were now pressed into a white line amidst his black mustache and beard.

Jordan felt his molars grind together in an effort to fend off Maddox’s brutal blows. He intuitioned fatigue in the bigger man’s demeanor, as if the man’s superior height and granite-slabbed muscles were weighing him down, making him tire faster. If Jordan could last another ten minutes or so, he’d have a chance at finding a weak spot, an unguarded opening amidst the chainmail, steel gauntlets, and thick leather belts.

Jordan detected a slight falter in Maddox’s left foot and felt his chance soon advancing…then the horn sounded.

It was closer than Jordan expected, perhaps just below the mesa to east. Drat! So close! Maddox’s lips curled into a sneer-leer, and he parried with renewed strength. His Lance was approaching fast. Amidst the clangs and gongs of the swords connecting, arose the earth-thumping cadence of hoofbeats growing louder.

Jordan needed a quick escape before the company of at least a hundred and fifty men made the mesa. He knew the woods well and, in his mind, he plotted the way to the drop-off hidden by the dense foliage behind his back. He manipulated his foe steadily around like the wheels inside the town square’s clock…only time was not on his side.

The prince’s knights’ banners appeared over the edge of the western field. Jordan had to move and move fast, before he was spotted by those men. He sincerely hoped the path he was familiar with was positioned behind him. He put forth a burst of power and felt the energy surge through his tortured chest and arms as he whirled and dodged…as he ducked a wild, head-removing swipe, he stabbed outward blindly. He only knew his blade had connected with his mark by the cry escaping Maddox’s clenched lips.

“GAAAAA!”

Blood bloomed like roses against the prince’s dirty white tunic. In a fit of blind rage, he raised his sword…Jordan threw himself backwards while letting his knees turn to jelly, effectively folding his legs protectively over his head. Please please please…then he was tumbling…somersaulting backwards down the mountain. The crunching of branches, the slapping of boughs against his curled-up body. He was exiting fast. Whoo! What a rush! Down and down and down.

Then…nothing but air. Whaaaa? Not good. Should be a soft grassy field…WHUMP! Blackness.

***

Jordan was ten.

He was nineteen… so he knew he was dreaming. But it had been a good time in his life, and he enjoyed the respite. He was battling in the dirt yard against his friend, Prince William Maddox, with wooden swords and taunts and laughter. Bill was taller but both boys were muscled with ropey sinews.

Maddox taunted in a made-up cockney voice, “Ah ya wee worm, I pick you off like a swallow…” as he swooped around Jordan, his dark hair flying like wings behind his head.

“Ach! Ya mudda had me worm…and she did indeed swalla!” They were pretending pirates.

The boys laughed as the wooden swords clattered and splintered.

Flames suddenly burst from the swords and filled his vision. His friend was gone, replaced by Margot who opened her mouth in a silent scream. A bird screamed in her place.

A crow approached the yard in the sky and as it did, it grew larger and larger…until its shadow blotted out the sun and smothered the flames. In the sudden darkness, the sharp beak of the bird struck and penetrated his head.

“Owwwww!” What the…?” Jordan sat up and winced as the invisible crow pecked his head again. His vision swam with red and black motes that fluttered like moths in a corona of candlelight. He breathed slowly in and out like he was taught as a kid after a knockout. His vision cleared. He was in a cave. It was warm and softly lit with gently flickering torches in a semi-circle around him. He detected the scent of something delicious. Sweet and charry…He looked around and to his right was a wooden platter on a stump piled with smokey charred vegetables. Cabbage, carrots, and small yellow summer squash sat steaming, he realized he was drooling when a droplet hit his chest.

He looked around, fearing a trap. His belly rumbled and his mouth filled with saliva as if he were about to be sick. What do I care if it is a trap? Or poisoned? Just this morning I was again…well call it as it is…wallowing in despair. The face of Margot wavered and blurred in his teary vision, unsettlingly like the way her face had charred and disfigured as the fire overcame her. He wiped at his wet face with his scarred hands and sucked in snot as he looked around again, this time his eyes grown accustomed to the low lighting. The cave was quite pleasant- cozy and warm. He reached for a fat yellow squash; its charred skin crinkled as he bit into it.

“HMMMFFF?”

Jordan froze, slick yellow squash juice oozing down his chin. He swallowed the mush in his mouth and slowly turned around.

The dragon lowered its head until its right eye was a mere five feet from his own. A high-pitched keening sound filled his ears as he scootched backwards on his bum until his back brushed up against the rough granite wall. The noise was his.

The dragon’s head popped up and tilted. In the low light the beast looked black, the torchlight reflected off satiny scales. Its head was half as long as Jordan’s body, its neck long and graceful and the spikes down its back glittered as golden as pirate’s treasure. The shape of its body was a dark mass at least twice as high as Jordan. It shuffled its wings with leathery flaps and queried, “Hmmmfff?” again, but much softer, seemingly aware that it would frighten the soft pink human again. It nudged the vegetables gently with its nose and a tomato rolled off the platter.

The dragon’s right paw whipped out so fast it was just a blur…Jordan gasped and covered his head with his arms, like that would do any good, his eyes squeezed shut, his body trembling like a Fall leaf about to end it all.

“Pft.”

Jordan peeked out from between his hands. The dragon made a humming sound in its throat as it held the tomato gently out for Jordan to take. It appeared to be smiling.

Jordan said, “Um…thank…you?” He took the fist-sized fruit. The dragon backed up a couple of feet and nodded, its deep amber eyes shiny and curved at the edges just as human eyes do when that person is grinning.

Jordan bit into the tomato. It burst into his mouth and left a sploosh of red juice down his soiled tunic. “Oh my. This may just be the best thing I have ever eaten.” The words gurgled as juice ran down his chin.

The dragon skewered a carrot on a long black talon that looked like polished onyx. It held it in front of its face as a soft rumbling rose in the dragon’s lengthy throat, like rounded river stones tumbling together in a stream. Its mouth opened…Gads! What teeth!...and a small bluey-white flame flickered out. It was gone in two seconds. The carrot was roasted and gently steaming, beads of juice like honey dotted its base. The dragon held it out to Jordan who was licking tomato juice from his fingers.

The dragon watched Jordan eat for a few minutes then lay down on the opposite side of the cave where there was an enormous, wagon-sized, bowl-shaped nest of willow branches. It lay its head on the edge of the nest continued to watch its guest with amusement on its face.

Jordan ate half the vegetables. He’d never been so stuffed. He had no idea what time it was but figured it must be late in the evening or early morning; his eyes drooped, and he let them. He felt safe.

As usual, he dreamed of his lost love. As usual, the dream started out pleasantly…this time they were pic-nicking alongside a slowly ambling river. His belly was full and the sunlight flashing off the water was as hypnotic as Margot’s girlish laughter. The golden flashes grew flashier- more extravagant- and deeper in color…amber to orange to nearly red. Margot’s mouth stretched into a silent agonized scream behind the flashes as they turned into flames.

As usual, Jordan awoke with a face wet with tears and a lonely heart that had no will to continue beating. He looked across the cave. The nest was empty.

The dragon was beside him, staring at him, its huge eyes dark and sad. Jordan cuddled up to its side and the huge but gentle beast tucked a wing over and around him.

The rest of his sleep was dreamless. He awoke feeling more refreshed than he had since…since the fire.

“M-m-Margoooe?”

“Wha?! Did you just…?”

The dragon nodded and repeated, “Margot,” clearer and surer this time.

“How…?”

“Saw your sleep vision.” The dragon’s voice was soft, breathy, and deep.

“My dream? A nightmare. One that haunts me day AND night.”

“She was your love. Your wife?”

“Not quite. She was the love of my life. She, the daughter of a duke. Me, a mere carpenter. Oh, I am a great carpenter, been hired to build a cathedral far from here…Wales. It was to be my life’s work. We would have lived comfortably. She was betrothed to another…” Jordan sighed.

“That prince you were fighting.”

“Y-yes. How…?”

“My ears are sharp. Ha. Sharp like the swords you men wield against one another. I flew over and hid amongst the hemlocks by the path you were seeking.”

“I missed it.”

“Yes, quite a tumble you took. You were out for sixteen hours. The prince’s company would have found you, the path you cleared with your somersaulting may as well have had signposts with arrows.”

“Heh heh, yeeeeah…ouch,” he said as he probed the egg-sized lump on the back of his head.

“You said, ‘so be it. I’m coming Em’, before you passed out,” the dragon said sadly. “Seems as though you had lost the will to live.”

“Yes. I still feel that way.”

“You do not have the will to seek revenge?”

“Revenge? How to take revenge upon fate?”

The dragon was silent for five minutes, studying Jordan as if perusing a Cervantes novel. At last, he nodded and said, “The fire…”

Jordan’s spine straightened, his eyes narrowed, “…it was a thief. Snuck into the shack we’d found to spend the night in…I awoke. The room was on fire and filling with smoke. I saw his face, just for a heartbeat, as he fled out the door. Then Margot was screaming next to me. Her hair was on fire. I put it out with my shirt and then found the door was stuck shut, as if something was holding it closed. I ran at it and broke it down. The wooden shack was so decrepit, the entire wall collapsed, along with the roof on top of me. By the time I got free, Margot was not screaming anymore…” he sobbed, he guts wrenching.

The dragon draped a wing over Jordan’s back and let him cleanse his soul. After ten minutes, he said softly, “The prince is a petulant child…”

Sniiiiff. “Well yes. Born with a silver spoon and all. He’s spoiled…but we were friends as children, and he wasn’t all that---”

“But you were fighting…to the death.”

“I would have acted the same way if another man had stolen my love away.”

“Would you have killed her so no other man could have her? Would you have sought such drastic and…evil…revenge?”

“What are you saying? That the prince had sought us dead? That he killed Margot?”

The dragon stared into Jordan’s eyes and the man saw the truth in them.

Jordan said, “You saw it in him the way you saw my dream.” A statement, not a question.

The dragon nodded.

“I’ve been a fool. Cryin’ and carryin’ on…blamin’ myself…wanting to die. A damn fool! I shoulda killed him in the duel!”

“Then you’d be dead too. You could not have slain all one hundred or so men.”

Jordan, with new life-force surging through his veins, nodded, “You’re right…uh…

“Call me Parker.”

***

As the sun set low over the eastern mountains like a fat red spider settling into a web of indigo clouds, Jordan and Parker hid in the same hemlocks Parker had hidden in twenty-four hours earlier. The knights were camped on the mesa. The prince’s tent in the center was aglow and shadows hovered to and fro inside like a puppet show Jordan had seen as a child, done with stick puppets behind a screen.

He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Parker could.

“…disappeared into thin air…” said one man.

Whack! “You incompetent fool! No one just disappears…”

Parker lets out a rumbling growl, “GRRRRROOOOWWWWWLLL”

“Wh-what was that?!” said the prince.

“Wolf?”

“GRRRROWWWWRRRRR! HISSssssss!”

Maddox shrieked, “Dragon!”

Parker slid his talons down the side of the tent, shhhhhhhrrrrek, and sliced four man-sized rents.

“AAAAIIIIEEE!” Maddox screams. “Get that bastard! NOW!”

The knights in the tent take off after Parker who lopes away down into the eastern slope of the mesa. One by one, all the tents empty as the knights pursue.

Maddox stands in the center of the mesa, watching the melee take off after the flagging dragon’s tail. Under his breath, he mutters, “Get him you fuckers. Give me another win.” He smacks his fist into his palm. He is grinning madly like the devil.

Jordan, standing behind him, understands that his old friend is a coward whose knights had killed the dragon dragged into the square…and that dragon had been a relative of Parker’s. Perhaps even his true love. That this man before him was tall and strong on the outside, but black and rotting and a façade of what he had always believed.

Jordan said, “I know the truth.”

Maddox whirled, his sword flashed in the moonlight as it was raised.

Jordan did not hesitate, he ducked low and spun about the prince and severed the tendons in the prince’s calves. Maddox crumpled like a half-baked cake. His impressive size was reduced to a mere lump. Jordan stood in front of his old child-hood friend.

He raised his sword…but then a whoosh of air swirled the dust and dry grass into a tornado. Parker was back. Jordan understood. The dragon wanted to witness the end of the one who had killed his own love. He turned back to Maddox…the grass was flattened and bloody, but the prince was gone.

Jordan and Parker turned towards the center tent and just as they breached the entrance, a sssssliiiiing sounded. Jordan heard a gasp…then a gurgle. He saw the crossbow in Maddox’s hands and the grin on his face.

Maddox crowed, “I did it! I really got him! Me! Jordan my old friend…”

Jordan, in a fit of rage, took Maddox’s head off with a single blow.

***

Back in the cave, Jordan gathered his pack of meager belongings. He was sad for his friend Parker but slept easily now knowing both Parker’s and his own loves had been avenged. He had a cathedral to build and that would keep him busy. With his new up-beat attitude, who knew what the future may hold?

As he daydreamed about learning to play a musical instrument, he checked out Parker’s nest. He lay in it, remembering the dragon’s pleasant musky scent. Tears welled as he scootched to the back. The nest was willow bows bent in intricate patterns and stuffed with thousands of feathers and hemp sacks and dried reeds. Really quite luxurious. But what’s this hard thing? Rock pillow?

Jordan dug into the softness and layers…and found an egg about twelve inches tall.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispered into the dark, still air, “Parker was a she.”