In the last part Ohmie arrived at the the castle of his arranged wife-to-be in a neighboring kingdom for an acquainting meeting. Ohmie, unwilling to be bind into a catostrophic union, falsely claimed that Prince waynard (himself) had been struck by lightning and died. He offered himself, as Ohmie, to mentor King Herb's heir, young Prince Shauconnery. Soon enough, Ohmie and his previously intended, Princess May, became fast friends. During an occasion of playful, but ill-advised behavior Ohmie quite inadvertantly touched King Herb with his fingertip while running around a curving staircase. After Princess may convinced her father not to execute him, the king merely ringed one of his fingers with his sword, promising to axe the digit should it fail to scar, the scar to be a lifelong reminder.

Described in the previous part, local dragon of renown, Ol' Silver and Red, made an unwelcomed appearance into the castle's great hall. That scene had yet to occur as of this point in the tale's telling.

Chapter Two

           Ohmie showed up the day the Princess lost her husband, her intended husband, that is. Her intended husband Waynard, pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable, was the son of King Jear of neighboring Spewlunkia. Waynard was the Prince of the Land Over the Rainbow. The people called it the Land Over the Rainbow, and when May first heard it, she liked it so well, that became her name for Spewlunkia, as well.

            Spewlunkia, or The Land Over the Rainbow, was a country not quite as large as Princess May’s Calandria, but did have rich bottomland and therefore, slightly more prosperous. While very productively growing beans and rice, Calandria was rich with corn and cotton. Both countries raised cattle and chickens aplenty.

            “Waynard has been struck by lightning,” Ohmie falsely informed King Herb. “His carcass has been taken home. His father sends his deepest regrets, but he simply cannot introduce the prince-betrothed to King Herb’s daughter in light of the turn of events, him being dead and all.” That was the disheartening message Ohmie carried to King Herb’s Tempest Castle. And since Ohmie, the bearer of bad news, claimed to have been Waynard’s mentor, and was then, supposedly, without a pupil, Waynard being dead, would King Herb be in the market of an instructor of numbers and letters for Prince Shauconnery? That was how he became a castle resident and cohort of the Prince and Princess, masquerading as a lowly tutor.

            Waynard hated lying to the King of Calandria, the father of his betrothed, but saw it as as necessary evil, a slight that might be made right, or dismissed into seas of forgetfulness. He simply could not wed a pig in a poke. Nor would he force marriage upon an unwilling bride.

            Lowly tutors primarily worked for room and board. Most gambled on the prospect of ultimately tutoring a student of wealth who would reward him with either funds or favor, should said student prosper.

            Princess May felt a stab of vague familiarity with the explanation of Waynard’s fate. It would have been just about the same time of day that she’d left herself behind, floating, as it were – as if watching some part of her fate under review. The eeriness was more definite than any such previous sense. She’d been apprehensive enough as it was, the arrangement was to be a meeting with the man she was already betrothed to, not sure whether she would honor the contract, or dishonor her father. She was in a complete and total dither, quite flummoxed. And then she learned of her future husband’s heinous demise – fried to a crisp.

            Waynard, now disguised as Ohmie, was not the crown Prince, as was Shauconnery, heir to the crown. Waynard had two older brothers, the elder the Crown Prince, the second-born bound for glory, having been appointed a General in the army of the land’s Great King. Waynard was meant to wed the neighbor King’s daughter, and live out his days as guarantor of peace to the east, and possibly taking charge of the land’s agronomy.

            Waynard allayed himself by study and learning. He’d bled his own tutor dry of knowledge. Waynard questioned every master craftsman in the realm, every husbandman, every successful anyone, learning all he could of every known subject – especially histriology. There wasn’t a book in the land he hadn’t read, many more than once. His older brothers, jealous and suspicious of his thirst for knowledge, bade their father’s refusal of the boy’s constant requests for more books. Their resentful picking at him provided increased impetus for his mastery of the martial, as well as other fighting arts.

            Princess May was (now) unbetrothed, but not unpleased at this status. She’d been pledged to Waynard, now presumed dead, since the day of her birth. It would have been sooner, the betrothal agreement, but had she been a he, withdrawal from the bonded treaty would have been awkward. They waited until certain she was a she. This was to have been the occasion of the couple’s first meeting, but of course, it wouldn’t happen because of Waynard’s death. The second meeting would have been the day Princess May arrived in the Land Over the Rainbow to become Prince Waynard’s Princess. Now, she didn’t even know what he looked like. Or used to look like before being supposedly struck by lightning.

            But as of the time of all these thoughts and occurrences, the dragon Ol’ Silver and Red had yet to make his most unwelcomed castle appearance.

+++

            Princess May salted Ohmie’s incised finger, making certain it would scar. She didn’t want the bare pointer axed off simply to make a King feel kinglier. The rudely arriving silver and red dragon would soon take Ohmie’s mind off his tortured digit.

            Ohmie took issue with the silver and red dragon’s sudden disturbance of his numbers lesson with Prince Shauconnery as it crashed its way into the castle. Leaping from a table top, Ohmie launched his dagger, burying it deeply into the back of the dragon’s neck. It took on the appearance of a single horn that was wrongly placed to be a horn, a deformity. No one noticed the gilded carving at the knife handle’s butt, a lion’s head allowed only by royalty.

            The silver and red dragon was not pleased with his adornment, pirouetting to repay the debt. As nimbly as Ohmie had avoided the King’s cut-throat jab, Ohmie neatly slung himself atop the dragon’s neck, grasping the knife handle as would an aborigine the mane of a wild stallion while mounting it on the run. The silver and red dragon screeched the most terrifyingly hideous screech ever heard throughout the kingdom, or the surrounding kingdoms either, for that matter. The noise acted within everyone’s mind, causing them to imagine the sound they would make if being eaten alive by such a monster. Everyone grabbed to cover their ears it was so terrible and frightening. People plunged for cover under tables and chairs, believing the next instant to quite possibly be their last, becoming piles of ash from the inferno of the dragon’s flames.

            Instantly, as if magically, the two were gone. Some said they’d seen them, the dragon and his rider, exit through the busted-out wall, but others described that they’d simply vanished. Prince Shauconnery sided with the vanishing faction.

            Suddenly Princess May stood bolt upright, her mind seeing a prince, regaled in fierce splendor – Prince Waynard – favoring her Ohmie to a T. They were one and the same. Though she didn’t appreciate the deception, she would allow him time to unburden himself of the truth.

Author Notes

Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlinkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father The art is from FanArtReview, Snaked Dragon Doodle by brendaartwork18.

So far, Ohmie, actually Prince Waynard, lied to King Herb, declaring himself, the betrothed Prince of his daughter, Princess May, to be killed, struck by lightning. Ohmie then accepted a position of teacher to the crown prince, Shauconnery. It didn't take long for Ohmie and May to hit it off (become friends). While they were in the great hall, a dragon burst his way in. Ohmie sunk his dagger into its withers and leaped onto its back. The dragon then frantically escaped back to its mountain lair, Ohmie aboard.

Blado, Ohmie's friend from the land of Spewlunkia, quickly ran to inform Ohmie's father, King Jear, of the events concerning Ohmie and the dragon.

Princess May and Prince Shauconnery snuck themselves into the rescue party from King Herb's castle.

 

Ch 3

 

Since before the sudden appearance of Ol’ Silver and Red, dragon lore had been nothing more than that – lore and tales and fantasies of grandeur past, perplexity now covered the King’s face. No one alive had ever seen a dragon, let alone fought one. No one even knew where the behemoth might live. Traditional thought went mountainward, but where? The mountains were very big. And there were a lot of them. An army of horsemen would quickly find their horses at the end of their utility when confronted by the sheer walls of granite.

    But Princess May was insistent. As was little Prince Shauconnery. Both realize their affection for the red-headed teacher, their mentor, and their friend.

    No one noticed the new stable hand’s absence. No one except the horses, of course. They noticed that their feed wasn’t as timely or fresh and that their stalls weren’t quite as clean on the day that their favorite stable hand took the day off to run all the way to the Land Over the Rainbow to tell King Jear about his son’s disappearance.

    Ohmie was indeed Waynard. And the stable hand was Waynard’s friend and co-conspirator from Spewlunkia. He had remained with Ohmie, hiring on as a stable helper – Blado.

    Waynard was not of a mind to marry someone that didn’t want to marry him for himself. His plan had been to get to know Princess May, and for her to get to know him. It was he who had set up the meeting from the start. His father, King Jear, knew nothing about the event, only believing that his son was going on a quest of adventure, a rite of passage common to heirs of the crown.

    The stable boy, a gangly lad just coming into his growth spurt, was none other than King Jear’s nephew Blado, the son of Lord Foughtleroy. Blado was the Land Over the Rainbow’s best horseman, and second most adroit swordsman, bested only by the Crown Prince, Waynard, Ohmie for the present.

    King Jear had never seen a dragon either, but sent a troop to assist King Herb nonetheless.  Blado informed the men of Waynard’s hoax, swearing them to pact in the compact. To a man they all loved and honored both Waynard, or Ohmie, as well as Blado. Each one would gladly charge a platoon of dragons, real or magical, in defense or rescue of either one.

    They arrived at King Herb’s castle just as King Herb’s troop was departing in search of the dragon and Ohmie. King Herb had yet to know Ohmie to be Prince Waynard. Stable boy Blado, dressed in his fighting suit, went undetected by King Herb.

    Astonishingly, no one recognized May, dressed in borrowed armor, until shedding the armor for her more comfortable leatherwear at camp that evening. No one dared question her presence, or attempt to send her home. Prince Shauconnery appeared at breakfast the next morning, having spent the night just outside the light of the campfire. Being far too young to pursue dragons, he’d stealthily snuck from the castle, following the troupe at a distance.

    This was an unconventional posse, to be sure.

    Missing his Prince and Princess, King Herb arrived with another squad of fighters at the mountain’s granite base, the campsite of the two troops, a troop from each realm. They would rescue beloved Ohmie and avenge the dragon’s assault together.

+++

    Nineteen years old, Ohmie had arrived at King Herb’s castle as stout as a Redbud tree. Which wasn’t particularly stout at all, but he was strong and muscley, and broad of shoulder and back.  According to some, he’d grown taller since his arrival. If a horse needed picked up, he could squat under it and lift it about as easily as it could tote him, even though some said he appeared more a scholar than a lumberjack or stonecutter. Now, Ohmie wished he were a lumberjack or stonecutter.

    Holding onto the silver and red dragon’s neck with his legs was no trouble whatsoever – for the first few leagues, the first several moments. His immediate concern was to keep the knife blade solidly imbedded in the dragon, keeping it from wriggling loose. Next was to keep his seat. Dragon flight was not leisurely park-strolling.

    Besides the burning of his thighs, and ache in his lower back, his main concern was how long he could remain conscious. The term dragon’s breath had taken on new and somber meaning since he’d become a passenger. Every time the silver and red dragon careened his head around to try to singe him off with a blast of putrefied flaming smoke he nearly passed out. The noxious exhaust was debilitating – almost. He figured he had one, or at most two, such ordeals left in him. He just hoped the dragon didn’t know it.

    After about an hour of aimless flying about, somersaulting and pirouetting spin moves in attempts to unseat the unwelcome rider, the dragon flew upside-down over the mountain peaks trying to skim Ohmie off on the rocky and icy ridges. Ohmie held on with sure-handiness.

    Finally, the silver and red dragon began to tire. A fact that no human knew was that dragons, as powerful as they were, and as ferocious as they could be, were low on stamina. Ohmie had the creature beaten … if only he had a lance, or at least his sword. All he had, though, was his belt dagger that was presently wedged between two of the silver and red dragon’s iron-tough scales. Suitable for dealing with varmint, both the four, or two-legged sort, or for double-dealing game cheats, the blade represented little more than a petty annoyance to such a tough-hided creature.

    The dragon’s lair was deep inside Mount Nebo. Through a small, narrow crevice just below a crag outcropping, totally hidden from the ground, the silver and red dragon expertly dived. First though, he had to ascend a thousand feet above the mountain top. Ohmie thought his fingers would freeze in the bitterly arctic jet-stream air. He could no longer feel them and begged them not to let go. The dragon’s scales beneath his legs felt like an icy saddle, but then like fire as he clenched ever the more tightly. The dragon needed the momentum of the screaming descent in order to negotiate the cramped and virtually airless horizontal passageway that descended to an arcing fall, down a shaft that tapered to a funneling queue to another cave that opened into a monstrous, dragon-worthy cavern. Where the drop queued to the lower cave, the lower cave continued in the opposite direction, making an inverted T.

    The tunnel was narrow, so shallow and narrow that Ohmie had to hug the dragon’s neck to evade the jagged top and sides. So narrow that he had to release his leg grip of the dragon’s lower neck, letting his legs and feet hover behind as he held on with his burning arms and hands.

    The tunnel was airless, too airless for dragon wings to make flight, even if the tunnel was wide enough. But it wasn’t completely airless. Ohmie could breathe, though only just. He didn’t know that the dragon could barely make a flame.

Author Notes

Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

Chapter 4
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 4

By Wayne Fowler

In the last part Ohmie (Prince Waynard) leaped aboard Ol’ Silver and Red and rode the dragon into his lair, deep into the center of a mountain. The entry shaft was nearly a vertical drop ending at a horizontal tunnel barely large enough for the dragon.
Search and rescue parties from both Calandria and Spewlunkia began their work. Princess May and Prince Shauconnery sneaked their way into Calandria’s party.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Chapter 4

    Exiting the cave, the dragon would have to walk past the point of the upward shaft because he couldn’t wing his way to the top in the virtually airless tunnel, even though the climate was moderately fresher as it turned upward. Exit required walking beyond the upward shaft to an underground, mid-mountain pool. Underneath the pool was a river of water leading to the bottom of the lake at the north side of the mountain. It was difficult going, but not impossible for the dragon to flow with the current into the lake, then to rise out of the lake’s water with air-sucking fury.

    Return by that route was impossible – not just hard, but impossible. First, the dragon wouldn’t be able to find the hole in the lake’s bottom. Second, he would be unable to find the river’s route from the lake’s bottom into the mountain’s core. Third, even if he did find those places, he would never have the strength to make the journey against the current with no air to breathe. After flying around, dragons grew too tired. They needed to drop into their rest, not climb or fly into it.

    But Ohmie knew nothing about dragons, save that they stunk.

    The dragon went to sleep as soon as he reached the lair. And true to dragon lore, the nest was a glittering, gleaming, heaping pile of gold and jewels. Ohmie slipped from the dragon’s neck as judiciously as possible, taking nearly an hour for each fraction of an inch of movement. Sliding across the iron-hard scales, he was certain the dragon couldn’t feel his presence, but to err would be to die. He didn’t want that.

    Once down, Ohmie had to be as careful as he had been while atop the silver and red dragon. Walking on the pile of gold was like walking on a sand pile, only the gold coins tinkle tinkled with each uncertain step, wanting to cascade and avalanche their way down the slope with each movement. Ohmie learned that he more-or-less had to roll himself down the gigantic pile.

    Finally, he got all the way to the ground, still walking on gold coins strewn about the surface of the cavernous cavern. He got the startlement of his life when he looked up to the dragon to see that his eyes were open. Fear froze him in place. After several watchful moments, he finally figured out that dragons, at least this one, apparently slept with his eyes open. The beast blinked occasionally, but never moved or appeared to focus. Ohmie noted that the only light in the room emitted from the dragon’s eyes, about as bright as two candles each.

    All Ohmie had was his knife, but he didn’t even really have that, not daring to remove it from the dragon’s neck for fear that the extraction would awaken the beast. Desperately searching, he saw, barely within reach on the pile of jewels and gold, was a ruby, diamond, and emerald-studded silver dagger. He could cause the weapon to drop into his hands by burrowing jewels from under it, but couldn’t guarantee the entire mountain of riches wouldn’t surge and avalanche downward, bringing the silver and red dragon along with.

    The largest diamond he’d ever heard of glimmered directly into his eye, reflecting the dim dragon-eye light. It was easily and noiselessly removed from its setting that would have needed adjustment if ever worn again. The diamond was mounted on a bedecked tiara, probably a Queen’s crown. Not wearing his pocket garments, Ohmie cheeked the banty-hen-size stone, tucking it neatly into his jaw as he would a giant piece of rock candy if he was still young enough to enjoy such delights. It was time to find his way out, time to escape before it was too late. For the briefest instant Ohmie considered perching upon a rock to think.

    A short distance from the dragon Ohmie found total darkness. Since the nest was in the room’s center, or so Ohmie felt, the way out could be in any direction. It could be close, or far. It was impossible for him to judge distance during the descent. Virtually blind, Ohmie dropped to all fours, crawling and creeping his way about the floor, feeling the ground for evidence of a path by its smoothness and indentation. It was a very long time before he had any confidence in his decision. He was quite certain that he’d circled the dragon a number of times, and couldn’t be sure that the packed path he’d found wasn’t one of his own making. Nevertheless, he followed it, hand-over-hand. Gradually he felt better and better about it being the exit, hoping it was the only one, and not the longer one of several. But then he hoped it was one of several and that the dragon would use one of the others should he decide to leave the lair.

    Ohmie had no idea how long dragons slept. This one hadn’t been seen in his lifetime that he was aware. Did that mean he had slumbered for nineteen years? Or had he been busy ravaging and plundering elsewhere? Had he been biding his time, letting this region recover wealth and glory from his last pillaging? Ohmie hoped dragons slept at least long enough for his escape.

    It didn’t.

    Ohmie heard the dragon’s rumbling. He heard tinkling of gold and silver against jewels. He felt the faint stirring of the air as the dragon stretched his wings. Ohmie had no idea how far he’d crawled, or how much farther he had to go. He’d been in the narrow tunnel for days, he felt. He knew it was a very long time by how thirsty he was. He’d had nothing to drink since before jumping atop the dragon. He began to reconsider the smartness of that act now that the diamond in his mouth was as dry as the dust in his hands.

    How smart was it to attack a dragon with a knife, even if it was the only weapon at his immediate disposal to defend his … his what? He wasn’t sure. Princess May had been in the room, and was certainly at risk of harm. She was wearing jewelry, and she was young and beautiful. Those three were known dragon targets. And Ohmie loved her. He just that very moment realized the fact. He loved her deeply. The very thought of losing her, or harm coming to her sent him into a fury, the sort of fury that had compelled him to leap onto the silver and red dragon, his dagger at the ready.

    The dragon let out a mountain-trembling roar. Ohmie felt the rocks shudder, felt them coming loose from one another, dust and pebbles falling from the rock ceiling. He understood then why the trail was rife with dust and loose stones where it should have been worn smooth. The dragon roared again, this time scaring him witless, though he would never admit to it in public. Though he would admit it freely to anyone else having heard the terrifying peril themselves.

    Caution to the wind, though there wasn’t even a slight breeze, Ohmie picked up his pace, crawling faster and faster, first hand over fist, then in a forward crouch, and gradually picking it up to an all-out run. During a couple of strides he felt as if the barometric pressure lifted a degree or two. It was only for two, or at most three long running strides so he didn’t have a lot of time to analyze the input. But he had more time to understand it as he galloped full tilt into a pool of water that seemed to have no bottom. No sooner had he swallowed his second mouthful of murky sludge that he suspected might be sorely contaminated with bat droppings and who knew what else than he was joined by the silver and red dragon.

    Joined wouldn’t exactly be the word Ohmie would choose were he telling the tale. The dragon barely fit into the mouth of the pool by himself. The sight would be as if a horse decided to bathe in a galvanized number ten washtub. There was no room for a man to even stick his arm out from the pool between the dragon and the rocky sidewall. The fit was so tight that the beast’s dive dragged Ohmie down the depths with him, leaving chunks of Ohmie’s skin and flesh all along the way down.

    Ohmie began to prefer being thirsty. Going from his previous dire thirst in fear of death to drowning were extremes sufficient to stop his pounding heart. It wouldn’t be until the hole widened, releasing Ohmie, that he felt the excruciating pain of his loss of hide. But he didn’t have long to reflect on the damage. The dragon’s increased speed through the depths created a suction effect, pulling Ohmie down even further. His craving air crescendoed.   

 

Author Notes

Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

Chapter 5
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 5

By Wayne Fowler

In the last part Ohmie, after having ridden the dragon down a shaft and through a tunnel into the dragon's lair, attempted to escape, only to be nearly drowned by the dragon’s plunge into a pool.
^^^^^^^^^^^
Chapter 5

Ohmie was bereft of breath long before beginning his rise to the surface. And the dragon had taken him deep – deeper than any pearl diver had ever plumbed – and they were professionals, well acclimated with the conditions, accustomed to the task. Ohmie was a landlubber. He couldn’t recall when he’d last been in water over his head. A flash of an ancient experience that may, or may not, have been himself skittered across his consciousness. A prehistoric soul entangled in tree limbs not too unlike the dragon's scales drowned. Ohmie, about to lose his sanity so starved for air, did not linger on that character’s fate, so near to ending his own.

    He didn’t know how he regained the surface of this water, only glad he’d risen with his back downward, his mouth out of the water. He came to his senses floating, his ears completely water-logged and his stomach seemingly filled with bilish water. He thought about the drone in his brain even though he was breathing. He thought about the bat droppings. He turned on his side and threw up. He imagined that his body somehow swallowed the water instead of breathing it.

Had there been light to see, he would have seen the greenish, purplish, vile yuck projecting and pouring from his mouth. The smell was as if he’d been kissing the dragon with an open mouth. He threw up again, spitting out the chunks of bitterness that stuck between his teeth and cheeks. He would have thrown up again, but he only dry-heaved, puking nothing but foul air and deep grunts. He dragged himself onto the bank only to pass out, wondering what had become of the diamond that had been stashed in the void where his wisdom teeth might one day live.

    The water’s boiling woke him. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, only that it was long enough for the dragon’s return. He considered the damage the dragon might have inflicted upon the castle, but not for long. He had no time for such considerations, only time for escape, to get to where the dragon wouldn’t find him. He ran for the zone where he remembered the pressure change. That must have been where the ceiling lifted, the place where the dragon flew down into his lair.

    It was. Ohmie realized almost too late that the dragon flew into the mountain, and swam out. The hissing water must have somehow been a phenomenon of the spiraling down the shaft, not swimming back up as he’d first thought. Ohmie pivoted, running back to the pool, slipping into the stinky mess after losing his footing in his own vomit. Steam and rank stench belched from the tunnel, the dragon obviously having passed through the point of ascent as it returned to its treasure hoard.

    Knowing he could never stay underwater long enough to swim out, Ohmie again found the shaft to the mountain top. The climb was torturous. Rock after rock, climbing up the vertical sides of the shafting tunnel. He felt himself weakening without even the faintest hint of light appearing above. He hoped that it meant no more than that it was a dark night sky. Or that the tunnel took a couple of hard turns at the end, not allowing entrance of the unbending rays of light.

    Ohmie was spent. His arms and legs ached. His injuries screamed in agony. He was long past hunger and thirst. Yet the surface remained cloaked in absolute and total darkness. He lifted an arm, or at least he tried to. It felt like an anvil and weighed as much as a horse. What he was trying to do was to see if perhaps his eyelids had welded shut, there may be unseen light above his closed lids. Failing to lift his arm as high as his eyes, Ohmie felt himself drifting back, fading into the abyss. The hole, he knew, had a bottom. That was where he’d started … what … how many days, or weeks ago. His exhausted brain couldn’t know. Only that he was at the end of his strength and endurance. He felt himself slipping … slipping …  Another fraction of an inch and his equilibrium would be lost. He’d fall to his death, landing in a heap, jelly for the dragon’s licking up.

+++

    Princess May felt a pang deep in her soul, catching her very breath. Trembling, she sat directly on the ground, no thinking-rock at hand. She snapped her head side-to-side as if shaking out marbles, wondering whatever possessed her to imagine a thinking rock. Trance-like, she concentrated on Ohmie. Within a moment, no idea as to the cause, or the effect, the overwhelming burden lifted.

+++

    Something stabbed the bottom of Ohmie’s bare feet. He’d lost his shoes in the pool, both of them. Climbing the jagged wall had cut and bruised his feet, but an undamaged spot was again pierced as with a poker. Ohmie snapped alert, catching a last second grip, saving himself from falling. Again, he felt the prick of an urgent stab under his foot. In his delirium he imagined someone below pressing him to keep climbing. He did. Presently he felt himself fading once more, losing incentive and motivation to continue, so utterly physically wasted as he was.

    Now the stabbing commenced under the other foot. Ohmie couldn’t turn to investigate without falling. All he could do was climb. If he wanted to find out what was happening to his feet – a spider or wasp or rat, maybe, he’d have to climb out and do something about it.

    Which is what he did.

    Once to the curvature of the cave, where the vertical shaft did indeed bend to a horizontal cave, a glimmer of light illuminated as if lit by strong candles. Ohmie saw that his bloodied feet had been pecked. The bright yellow Canary bird perched itself on his left shoulder, sweetly singing the very tune Ohmie had sung to it after saving it from the cats. The repayment task completed, the bird flew out of the cave and down the mountainside to the warmer climes that it preferred.

 

Author Notes

Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

Chapter 6
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 6

By Wayne Fowler

In the last part Ohmie escaped from the dragon’s lair with the help of the freed canary. King Herb and King Jear joined in search of Ohmie (Prince Waynard).

^^^^^^^^^^^

Chapter 6

    King Herb took his troop around the mountain to the right. King Jear led his to the left.  Blado and volunteers from each troop began an arduous ascent up the heartless granite mountain, their goal the peak in hopes of finding the dragon’s entry – and Ohmie.

King Herb felt Princess May would be more secure away from the battle that he was certain would ensue, so he didn’t object to her volunteering to ascend the mountain with Blado and the other climbers. The other two volunteers from King Herb’s regiment were more inclined toward her protection than Ohmie’s rescue.

    After two days of fruitless search, the mounted companies met at the backside of the mountain. Neither had seen any evidence of dragon nesting, or mountain entry. King Jear’s team had the longer way to travel, having to skirt a large lake and cross a river, but could find nothing of the dragon, or the son. The Kings agreed to continue circumscribing the mountain, each troop circumspecting, or circumnavigating, whichever, the monstrous peak on the same routes in the hope that one would see something from the opposite side that the other had missed.

    Their second meeting was at the point of origin where Blado, Princess May and the others began scaling the mountainside. King Jear held vigil as King Herb returned to his castle for food supplies and proper climbing equipment.

    Princess May and Blado peered into a gaping slash in the mountain at least a thousand feet straight down. They’d chosen wrongly. Early in the climb there was a decision to be made – left or right. Left appeared to be a dead end, a ridge that stopped abruptly at what looked to be an impossible, reverse-angle climb. The right led slightly downward, something they didn’t want to do, but then turned back up at another ascending ridge.

    Their choice – to the right – dead-ended at this impassable crevasse. They had no choice but to backtrack. They were out of food and water anyway.

    Seeing King Herb returning from the distance, they retraced their steps all the way to King Jear’s encampment, their starting place, glad for the rest.

    This time, at the reverse-angle climb, the well-outfitted climbers found ascent possible around and beyond what they couldn’t see from the previous vantage point. The climb was most difficult, but not impossible. On the third day of their climb, off to the distance on a completely different ridge, they saw who had to be Ohmie, or Waynard, depending on which climber was doing the seeing. King Jear's people saw Prince Waynard, the King's son. King Herb's folk saw Ohmie, their friend. The figure was walking, stumbling rather, on two legs, not four. Either human or a small abominable snowman. They took him for Ohmie, or Waynard, whoever was doing the seeing.

    It was no easy feat to trek over to Ohmie’s ridge. Steps retraced to where crossing over to Ohmie’s range was possible proved far more treacherous than the climb up since feet sight wasn’t nearly as good as eyesight. By the time they reached their friend, Ohmie was barely recognizable: cut, bruised, and swollen where he wasn’t gaunt and diminished. He accepted their aid, passing out at their touch, having held on as long as he had, longer than humanly possible of natural strength. Princess May knew that he’d held on for her when their eyes met, just as his began to fade and roll back into his head. Blado half carried, half dragged him down the mountain to their camp.

    Ohmie awoke with a gasp as they placed him on the ground at their base camp. The small jolt of his laying back very nearly caused him to gag and swallow the diamond that had fairly snugged itself in its hiding place high near the roots of his teeth, quite amazingly having remained through the entire ordeal.

    “For you, King Herb,” Ohmie said, nodding for Princess May to present the surprising gem to her father. King Herb held it up to the bright sun, diffused light radiating through the prism-cut stone, rainbows spearing from it. Everyone’s gaze moved from the diamond to the mountain peak from where Ohmie must have come after taking the jewel from the dragon. Ohmie, or Waynard, depending on who was doing the admiring, marveled at his prowess and courage, having ridden the dragon to its lair, taken the stone, and lived to escape.  

    King Herb was ecstatic. He just knew that the stone had come from his Queen Grandmother’s crown. She died while he was still young, but he remembered seeing it on her head. No one ever spoke of its loss, or the disappearance of one of his uncles and a squad of soldiers. King Herb had no idea that a dragon had been responsible.

+++

    “I don’t know, Ohmie.” Blado had never addressed his friend by his royal title, the two having been bosom buddies since old enough to play fight. Not even knowing that Ohmie was a prince at their first meeting allowed Blado freedom to attempt to pin and pummel the prince with his bulk and brawn, though it rarely worked that way. “It’s one thing to take a dragon’s diamond while escaping, but…”

    “Look, Blado. It’s all stolen goods. Even a dragon has to know that booty, ill-gotten gain, is fair game.”

    Blado’s eyes crossed as he tried to ponder the idioms. Many conversations with Ohmie descended to silence through the eyebrow gazes. Finally, unable to bridle himself, he asked, “Fair game? You mean like a buck instead of a doe or a fawn?”

    “Yeah, exactly.”

    Then on the same trail, Blado replied, “I get that it’s stealing back what was stole; but Ohmie, it’s a dragon!”

    Ohmie shrugged his shoulders. “A dragon that has my dagger. And I want it back.”

    “What’s May gonna say?” Blado asked, a grin forming.

    Ohmie’s eyes crossed.

    “I’ll tell you what she’ll say,” May said, having heard the conversation from the stable doorway. “Shauconnery told me you were here. So when do we leave?”

    Three sets of eyes darted from one to the other, over and to and back again – Ohmie, Blado, and May.

    Racing through all possible objections and rebuttals, within an instant Ohmie accepted that no such venture could possibly bechance except with May at his side. To apprise her of the risk, Ohmie asked, “And should the dragon scorch off your beautiful curls?”

    “Then I’ll be your bald-headed bride.”

    Blado choked and spewed at the unwelcomed vision that he couldn’t suppress.

    “We’d best get to planning and packing, then, hadn’t we?” May snapped as she wheeled about back toward the castle proper.

   It was weeks later that Ohmie, actually Waynard to everyone but May, Blado, and Shauconnerey now, stole away in the dead of night. They took only such vittles and supplies as the two young men could carry. Among their stuffs was a lightweight, but amazingly tough cord of over a mile in length. The cord was made of the guts of a thousand cats. They also took as much rope as they could carry and still climb. For sufficient cord material, Blado was referred to the catgut supplier, the home of an eccentric couple, the man never seen in daylight, and the woman known by her beautiful fur coats, though the patterns were always of a clashing, erratic nature: yellow, calico, and gray. Gray stripes dominated each coat, interspersed with the other colors.

    During the weeks of Waynard’s recovery, they, Waynard, Blado, Princess May, and even Prince Shauconnery, studied as much as was available about dragons. They’d even interviewed all the oldest people in the realm. Only a handful of people were as old as the King, and only a few of them still had their mental faculties and memories. Ultimately, May and Prince Shauconnery agreed to remain at a base camp, prepared to mount a rescue should one be necessary.

    The gist of the team’s understanding was: 1 – dragons could fly, 2 – dragons breathed fire, 3 – dragons were very strong and had no obvious weaknesses, 4 – dragons could see in the dark with the aid of the fire in their eyes (evidently their breath’s pilot light was in their eyes), 5 – dragons lived a very long time, perhaps hundreds of years, and 6 – dragons had a strong affinity for shiny jewelry and gold.

    Waynard added to the list of dragon attributes that they could swim. He also could list dragon deficiencies that were previously unknown: 1 – dragons grew tired (at least the silver and red one did), 2 – dragons slept with their eyes open, 3 – dragons couldn’t smell very well, and 4 – dragons lived alone. With that information, a plan began to emerge.

    The catgut cord and the rope were the first parts of the plan.

 

Author Notes

Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

Chapter 7
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 7

By Wayne Fowler

In the last part Ohmie was rescued from the mountain. Ohmie and Blado devised a plan to rob Ol’ Silver and Red of his treasure.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Chapter 7

    The climb up the mountain was laborious. And of course, Ohmie’s memory of the route was as diminished as his condition had been on his only other time in the area. That was when he was nearly delirious with exhaustion on his escape down the mountainside. They made several wrong turns but eventually found the crevice to the descending cave that led to the downward shaft. The climb took far longer than they’d hoped because the rope grew heavier the higher they climbed. Less than halfway up they decided they needed to tie one end to their waists and as the dangling rope became too heavy to trail behind, they would pull it up onto a coil on the ground and start over, climbing and pulling, climbing and pulling. But eventually, their strenuous method paid off with them at the crevice opening with every inch of their rope.

    Ohmie’s plan depended on either the dragon being asleep in his lair, or out flying around and not soaring down the tube, or in the narrow horizontal tunnel while they were in them. If he was asleep, they wanted him to stay asleep. If he was not asleep, they didn’t want to alert him. If he was gone, there would be no way to know that until they got to the lair. They certainly didn’t have supplies enough to monitor the mountain’s entry and exit until sighting the silver and red dragon. They would have to risk it.

    “Ohmie,” Blado began, “what if the dragon flies down here while we’re still in the shaft?”

    “We’re goners,” Ohmie replied, continuing his preparation for their descent.

    Blado pinched his lips, nodding reluctant understanding. He couldn’t help himself – “And what if he barges into the tunnel while we’re still in it?”

    “Still goners,” Ohmie said. “It’s pretty tight” Ohmie grinned to his friend who’d stopped his task to stare at Ohmie. Ohmie then added, “But hopefully, we’ll hear him while he’s flying down and we can race clear. First, we’re super quiet because he might be down there sleeping.”

    Comforted a tiny bit, Blado resumed his task.

    After knotting together their two long ropes, they looped one end around a boulder. They practiced snapping the rope off the rock with wrist flicks. It came off easily each time. Next, they lowered their backpacks down the shaft with the two connected ropes. They’d carried them up the mountainside and could carry them down the shaft, but the weight on their backs would make balancing very difficult, maybe even cause them to fall. It was safer and easier to lower the packs with the rope. Then Ohmie could lower Blado the same way. They left the rope in place in case they needed it to climb out quickly.

    The silver and red dragon was, indeed, asleep on his pile of jewels. At least they hoped he was asleep. It was impossible to tell for sure since he slept with his eyes open. He wasn’t snoring, or even breathing like a sleeping human breathed. The two couldn’t dare wake him. But their plan required taking certain calculated risks.
Ohmie immediately remembered the vile stench. Blado barely noticed it.

Stealthily, they crept up to the pile of jewelry forming the dragon’s nesting roost.  Blado had the more perilous task of tying an end of the catgut cord to the dragon’s ankle, or what he considered an ankle. The hardest part was to reach the dragon without disturbing the tinkly pile of necklaces and coins.  Blado had that job mostly because he was braver, insisting the job his, and because he was more accustomed to cautious movement around large animals, being a stable hand.

    Ohmie’s job was to confront the dragon, standing in front of his open eyes, ready to divert his attention from his ankle until Blado’s task completed. Ohmie’s danger was being torched by surprise, not knowing how quickly dragon flame ignited and flared. Neither was he sure whether he might die of flame or fright.

    The end of the cord that was tied to the dragon’s ankle had a possum kit’s bladder attached. The bladder contained a small amount of air, making it a balloon. Between the balloon and the ankle, Ohmie had gently scratched through the catgut sinew with his belt knife, a replacement for the one presumably still stuck between two of the dragon’s neck scales. He hoped that he hadn’t weakened the sinew too much.

    Ever so cautiously, Ohmie took the coil of catgut cord all the way to the pool of water’s edge, securely tying the other end to a stalagmite that was nearly grown into a pillar. Ohmie took care to make sure the cord would not hang up on anything along the way. A small candle provided enough light to lay the cord going out, and to check it coming back.  Blado was to remain perfectly still while Ohmie laid the cord.

    Once back, the two young men again risked their very lives. By the dim light of the dragon’s eyes, they inspected the jewels, making special note of anything of gold. Their hunch was tentatively verified; none of the gold had been exposed to serious heat. Ohmie and Blado hoped that that meant that dragons, at least this dragon, would not flame his own nest and risk destroying his hoard of gems and baubles.

    Ohmie had tied an empty wine bottle several feet from the end of the cord, and then gently looped it on a skinny catch of ceiling rock. The slightest tug of the cord should cause the bottle to fall to the floor and shatter. That was precisely what Ohmie did as he carefully edged around to Blado’s position on the backside of the pile of jewels. Their plan was to break the bottle, and as the dragon startled, to use the dragon’s own jewel-pile-disturbing motion to mask their warily burrowing under coins and gems and jewelry. Their hope was that the groggy dragon would not notice their movement or noise, more immediately concerned with the unnatural noise of human’s glass breakage.

    They were half right. The dragon was more mindful of the noise in the tunnel and had glided effortlessly off the mound in that direction. But then the dragon stopped. Something was different. Something caused him to consider his lair. Praying that the cord tied to the dragon’s ankle didn’t catch on anything, the young men held their breath and forced their bodies to be totally still. They both feared the dragon would hear the same pounding of their hearts that they could hear inside their heads. They both feared that the pounding within their chests may be pulsating the pile of jewels with each beat. They both feared that the nearly timeless dragon could outlast their held breath. They both feared they’d left some part of themselves uncovered.

    Presently the dragon quit his lair, likely satisfied naught amiss. Just as before, he traveled the tunnel toward the pool of water.

    This brought one more point of speculation on the part of intruders, Ohmie and Blado.  They hoped the dragon would exit the mountain altogether as long as he was up anyway. Surely, he would want to know what was happening outside since a human bottle had somehow made its way into the cave. Also, the rope they’d left in the shaft was hidden to the side, but careful inspection by dragon fire would certainly expose it, maybe even burn it to cinders.

    As quickly as the dragon left the lair, the two engaged another part of their plan. And that was to fill their pockets and mass their necks with as many coins, jewels, and necklace-type jewelry as they could quickly gather. They wanted to be on their rope and out of sight before the dragon returned, hoping to be out of the shaft before he zoomed back down it.

    They both knew they’d probably stretched their guesses and wishful speculations too far. Some part of their plan was bound to fail, and the more that did work out made the remaining parts more and more suspect.

 

Author Notes

Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

Chapter 8
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 8

By Wayne Fowler

In the last part Ohmie and Blado managed to reach the dragon’s lair and encourage the dragon to leave his nest with catgut string attached to his leg. After loading up with valuables, they began their escape back up the shaft.

Chapter 8

    Not hearing the dragon splash meant they would climb the rope if they reached it ahead of the dragon. They heard no splash. The dragon was still in the tunnel. What they did hear was a dragon’s roar. Like Ohmie recalled from the first episode in the lair, and just as unnerving, the dragon discharged a hideous, spine-tingling, nerve-jarring, fear-inducing, screeching, screaming roar. Ohmie and Blado both believed they would enter eternity with that heinous sound to listen to for all time.  Blado fairly flew up the rope hand-over-hand, his feet rarely touching the sides of the shaft. Ohmie was not as nimble. And much heavier. His strongest and best efforts didn’t get him out of dragon-flame range.

   Ohmie reckoned that the dragon had turned around at the pool where the tunnel widened and heightened to more like a cavernous cave than a tunnel. He hoped that the dragon did not tangle and break the catgut.

    The first torching blast was the weakest. All it did was to singe off all Ohmie’s hair. The space between blasts was enough for Ohmie to make several more feet of elevation, motivated by the savage heat. The dragon’s second torching blast was by far the hotter and stronger. That one burned the tail end of the rope and burned off the back of Ohmie’s clothes, raining gold coins back down to the dragon. The falling glitter momentarily unnerved the dragon, causing him pause until the air between him and Ohmie had cleared. He then belched his worst, a flame that ignited the chips of coal on the shaft walls. One of those chips contacted the rope above Ohmie, burning it apart. Ohmie fell like one of the shiny coins.

    Fortunately for Ohmie, the dragon cease-fired the blazing flares of death. Ohmie spun like a cat, trying to right himself enough to face his danger. He knew better than to waste time grabbing at the stony walls of the shaft. His only hope was one, not to roast like the last summer solstice hog, and two, try not to smash into a broken heap on his landing.

    All he could see were two red eyes glowing up at him, getting very large, very quickly. Instinctively he drew his belt knife.

    The dragon’s predicament was that he could either see, or shoot flame. He couldn’t do both. The passage was so narrow that he didn’t have the freedom of movement necessary to stick his whole head up the shaft. The horizontal tunnel was so narrow and short that his progress was one-way only, and that, at a crouch. When he was headed for the lair, he had to go all the way to the cavern in order to move normally or to turn around to go back. It was too tight to even back up. He had to go forward. And when he was headed for the pool, he had to go all the way to the water’s edge before finding enough space to turn around. At that end, the cavity was barely large enough to get this done. If he’d grown any larger since his last turning around, he wouldn’t be able to do it there either; he’d have to continue through the water.

    Once in the tunnel, his eyes could look into the entry shaft above as he crossed under it, but in order to direct his torching muzzle from the crouched position, he had to crane his head and neck to a nearly impossible angle. That was why the coal chips on the shaft wall ignited; the torched flame was not straight up the tube, but angled, deflecting off the sides. But still, it was direct enough, and hot enough, to blister Ohmie’s rump.

    Ohmie’s knife, preceding his body by the length of his arm and the length of the blade, broke Ohmie’s momentum and his fall by breaking both the blade and the arm. Since the silver and red dragon’s eyes were Ohmie’s focus, that was the point of his aim. The razor-sharp, pointy-tipped hunting knife along with the force of all of Ohmie’s falling weight easily slid above the dragon’s eye just below the eye socket and orbital bone, breaking the blade and Ohmie’s arm, as well.

   But the hardened steel did not break before severing the muscle tissue that operated the dragon’s eyelid. The eyelid would never work again, but forever droop over the dragon’s left eye. From that moment on his left eye was as good as blind. It could see, but only the underside of the drooping eyelid, no further.

    Ohmie’s arm had snapped like a chicken’s wishbone halfway between his wrist and elbow. It would have hurt badly had Ohmie remained conscious. But he didn’t, his head smacking first the tunnel wall, then the silver and red dragon’s iron-tough scales. Since there was no room to fall to the floor, wedged onto the dragon’s neck, there he stayed, pretty much in the same position as when he had ridden the dragon into the lair. By the time the dragon eventually made it into the cavernous lair, Ohmie was astraddle the dragon, his tunic hooked on the knife handle that projected from between the dragon scales like a horn. There Ohmie remained.

    Blado thought he’d been deafened. The dragon’s bellow was so loud that droplets of creamy, oozy, blood trickled from his ears. The force of the scream virtually propelled him up the last distance to the top of the shaft. Rocks around the crevice mouth shook in empathetic response.

    Princess May shuddered in tremors at her encampment by the lake. Her job was to watch for the bladder balloon that had been affixed to the dragon, and attempt to secure the cord, careful not to be seen by the dragon when it emerged from the water’s surface.

    Blado had a dilemma. He was in a quandary. He was flummoxed and perplexed. The loose dangling rope told him Ohmie was no longer on it. The dragon's roar told him that the dragon was mad. The continuing rumble that he felt, more than heard, told him that the dragon was still alive. The silence from Ohmie told him that it was possible Ohmie was not. He pulled the rope up, finding that a large section was gone, burned off.  Blado was bewildered as to his proper course of action. He was not prepared for such an eventuality.

    Ohmie might need his help. Ohmie might already be dragon scat. To go for help might delay Ohmie’s rescue to the point that the mission would be recovery, not rescue. What would Ohmie do in this situation? What would he, Blado, want Ohmie to do?

    That answered it. Without hesitation, Blado lowered the remaining length of rope down the shaft, following its path, hand over hand to its burnt end, then rock by rock to the bottom. Once at the end of his rope, Blado gave it a snapping flip, ducking as the knot joining the two sections whip-sawed down, barely missing his noggin. Dragon-smell told him to go left once he landed atop the rope pile on the shaft’s floor.

    One red eye told him he’d arrived at the lair.  Blado didn’t know what the dragon had done with his other eye. He knew from Ohmie’s description that the dragon slept with both eyes open, so again; he became flummoxed and perplexed, and standing stock-still until certain the dragon was all there, surely not half somewhere else. Like his other half, with his other eye, behind him, ready to toast and eat him. He rooted there until positive that the dragon was indeed sleeping. Dropping to all fours, Blado searched the cavern floor for his friend, Ohmie.

    He’d searched the entire base of the cavernous cavern, right up to and all around the pile of gold and jewels before hearing Ohmie’s faint groaning from above.  Blado could only barely make out the dragon’s outline from the reflected light of the dragon’s single eye off the cavern walls, the geodes acting as infusers. The line of the dragon’s neck didn’t seem right. Either it had a cancerous growth, or Ohmie was in his saddle.  Blado opted for Ohmie since the groaning seemed to come from there.

    Now what was he to do? Yet another flummoxing perplexity.

    Blado dropped to his haunches, squatting aborigine fashion as he thought.

    Outside, Princess May, spying a suitable rock, suddenly sat and thought herself. She thought about the adventure, about their scheme and plan, and about the team. She thought about Blado and Ohmie, Prince Waynard – mostly about Ohmie. She thought about him as Ohmie, how she learned from him, how she’d taught him. She thought about how she felt about his deception, about how self-serving it was: he could decide whether he wanted her, but did he care about whether she wanted him? Would his under-cover guile afford her the discovery he’d awarded himself?

    What if it had been she first to plot the ploy? Would she have? Of course, she would, had she thought it up. It was brilliant. She could have marched herself into King Jear’s castle, explain the Princess’ absence, and study the Prince just as he had her. She could have fallen in love with Prince Waynard first, instead of second, Ohmie first.

    That was it! Her first revelation, reward for rock-sitting! She loved Ohmie.

 

Author Notes

Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

Chapter 9
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 9

By Wayne Fowler

In the last part Blado daringly tied a catgut string to one of the dragon's feet, planning to escape by climbing the shaft once the dragon left down through the pool and watery tunnel. Instead, the dragon torched the rope, causing Ohmie to break his arm falling down onto the dragon’s back. Blado would have made it out, but returned for his friend.
Meanwhile, May, waiting for the two at an encampment by a lake, realized that she loved Ohmie.

 

Chapter 9

    Now, what to do about it, May thought, her love for Ohmie. Of course, she would marry him and have five children: at least five. But that was tomorrow. What about today? What compelled her to rock-sit? The men needed her help, of that she was most convinced, but how? She settled into deeper thought. Thought deeper than she’d ever imagined. Thought so deep she felt herself settling into the earth, her head sinking low, low, low under the ground.

    That was the instant, the simultaneous instant that Blado finished digging his hole in the short, narrow tunnel from the cavernous cavern lair. Digging, not knowing exactly why. Presently he did know, and edged the hole deeper into the tunnel, far enough that once the dragon got as far as the hole, he would have to keep going all the way to the water beyond the shaft he and Ohmie had entered from.

    It was also the instant that Ohmie came to, snapping himself alert with the pain in his broken arm, falling off the dragon’s neck, falling to the golden cache in the same instant Princess May fell from the rock.

    Blado shrieked. He meant it to be a threatening challenge, but the result was effective nonetheless. He was glad that fighting men hadn’t heard his wimpy war cry. He would have been embarrassed by the obvious terror imbedded within. But it worked. The dragon, instead of following the noise of Ohmie’s fall to the gold, turned toward Blado shooting flame that would have curled his eyebrows had he not flattened himself into his foxhole, despite the fact that the flame quickly spurted out.

    True to his plan, the silver and red dragon soared to the tunnel a little too aggressively. He’d assumed that the disappearing challenger ran back out of sight and again up the shaft, no idea he’d sunk into the ground where there’d never been a hole before. He came to a stop with his massive tail pinning Blado in the hole that could, before long, become his grave should he stay there until the air was gone.

    The air in the hole did, indeed, begin to stifle. Blado’s hallucinations were the expected result of suffocation, his oxygen-deprived brain. He imagined being stabbed to death, feeling stabbing pricks all over his body.

    What he felt was the blade Ohmie wielded. Despite excruciating pain in his right arm, he managed to light his little candle. With it, he found a silver ceremonial sword amongst the riches of the dragon’s wealth. Climbing the stair-stepped ridges of the waggling dragon tail, he hacked and stabbed at the appendage, attempting to either sever it from the dragon, impeding his ability to fly straight, or at least encourage him to propel further down the tunnel, freeing his friend.

    He managed both. The fleeing silver and red one-eyed, half-tailed dragon screamed his way down the tunnel dragging a skewed and more-or-less useless tail behind.

    Bleeding from the pin-pricks, but grateful nevertheless, Blado wrapped Ohmie’s broken arm, securing it into his tunic. Both knew that Ohmie would not be climbing out, and Blado would not be able to hoist him out. Taking the time to go for help was out of the question.  Blado sensed urgency.

    Princess May, dazed by her fall, having landed on her head, scrambled back onto the rock, sensing urgency.

    Running full out after the dragon, Blado ushered Ohmie, who should have been growing accustomed to agony, down the tunnel trying to be careful to avoid the hole in the floor. The pile of rope was still too heavy for one person to carry by himself, so Blado tied the burnt end to Ohmie’s good wrist, taking up the other end himself.

    They reached the pool just as the last of the dragon’s diving ripples waned away.  Blado had no time to lose. Risking Ohmie’s very life, Ohmie in absolute and full understanding and agreement with their course of action, cooperated as best he was able. Blado tied his end of the rope to the quickly disappearing catgut cord. No sooner than he’d cinched his knot, unable to check it, Ohmie suddenly wisped from the room, slung underwater by the towing dragon, barely able to draw in a half-lung of air.

    Blado watched his friend disappear underwater, hoping he didn’t get stuck and die in a watery grave, unable to swim out.

    Ohmie hoped the same as he followed the trail of air bubbles through the churned-up water. Instant darkness overwhelmed him, both outside his eyes, and inside, too. He’d passed out and begun to drown. He tried very hard not to breathe the water, but finally couldn’t help himself, feeling his bursting lungs demand air so fiercely that they involuntarily took in enough water to completely fill, unable to extract the oxygen as did the fish that pecked at the bleeding gashes on his shoulders and legs.

    Princess May sensed the water’s turbulence long before the silver and red dragon emerged. With a burst of effort, the dragon cleared the surface and shook like a wet dog. His tail hung limp, hampering his normal lift-off. It more resembled that of an albatross. Or an errant grasshopper devoid of flight plan or sensible trajectory.

    The bladder balloon bobbed to the surface. Seeing it, Princess May dove with the grace of a dolphin. She arched and dove into the lake, pulling the catgut cord, which easily separated from the dragon’s foot, back to the beach, gently reeling in her catch. It seemed an eternity before the cord became a rope. Her arms tired long before she felt any real resistance. She regretted every single instance of complaint over Ohmie’s having urged her to exercise beyond the point of pain. Her arms ached, but kept hauling in the increasingly heavy prize.

    Ohmie hung up on seaweed, the tugging on his arm pulled his shoulder completely out of its socket, but eventually yanked him free. Many minutes passed before Princess May, wanting to cry, but forcing herself to action, pulled him to the shore. With Herculean strength she hefted him far enough to turn him face down pounding and pumping until the gallon of murky, pukey, bat-slime belched from his lungs, replaced by the air forced into him by Princess May’s mouth-to-mouth blowing. Once the necessity ceased, her blowing became mutual kisses.

    The silver and red dragon again crashed back into the lake, splashing the two into consciousness of their surroundings. He’d been flipping and flopping trying to gain flight, this time nearly squashing Princess May and Ohmie as he landed very near the shore. Finally, after what would be total embarrassment for a human swimmer, the dragon paddled its way to the shore, not too far from Princess May and Ohmie. Fortunately for the two, the dragon’s drooping eye pointed toward their direction. Taking advantage of his lateral blindness, the two stole out of sight behind large rocks just as the dragon began to thrash about, stumbling ashore.

    Trusting that Blado, with his two good arms and trim and fit body could climb out and make it back to the castle alone, Princess May helped the injured Ohmie home where he could be tended to and helped to heal.

    Blado made it back the next day with a report of having seen the dragon in erratic flight around the mountain peaks.

 

Author Notes

Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

Chapter 10
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 10

By Wayne Fowler

In the last part, Blado tied Ohmie to a rope connected to the catgut tied to the dragon’s foot, pulling Ohmie from the dragon’s lair to May’s lake. May helped Ohmie to the castle, one of his arms broken and the other shoulder pulled from its socket. Blado climbed up the shaft and safely returned to the castle.

Chapter 10

 

    It was four full weeks before Princess May would allow Ohmie, as she more and more began to refer to Prince Waynard, since the cat, as it were, was out of the bag – out of the castle. She and he had become far more than friends and mutual teachers. Princess May forgave Ohmie his deception with her realization that she would want an incompatibly arranged marriage no more than he did. She was also extremely grateful for the opportunity to come to know him outside the trappings of royalty and all its inherent excessivities. She loved him. In the rare moments of intimacy, she continued to call him Ohmie.

    King Herb allowed Prince Shauconnery to tag along as both escort/chaperone, and to learn how to kill a dragon. It would be a good thing to know since he would be King one day and there was now at least one known such beast in the land.

 

+++

 

    This dragon was every bit as big as a small house, nearly as big as a small barn. Princess May, Ohmie, Prince Shauconnery, and Blado found him easily enough. All they had to do was listen for just a minute once they neared Mount Nebo. Echoing off the granite wall was the distinctive sound of splashing and rushing water. Ol’ Silver and Red, as they called him, was trying to get out of the lake. Whenever he gained flight after having paddled and crawled ashore, he flew no better than a wing-clipped hen, or a liquored-up and half-crazed grasshopper. His damaged tail offset his natural equilibrium.

    The young dragon hunters edged and crept to a boulder top to watch his efforts. Occasionally the thrashing dragon tread himself to the shore in order to launch airborne. He never flew more than a few seconds and always ended up in the drink. Ol’ Silver and Red repeated the sorry spectacle far beyond the dark of night. The young hunters dared to return into the tree line in order to build a warming fire, believing they’d be safe from the exhausted dragon inside the tree-crowded woods.

    Early the next morning, before anyone else wakened, Ohmie stole to the water’s edge. He was barely able to make out Ol’ Silver and Red floating like a huge whale – a dead whale. But Ohmie could tell that Ol’ Silver and Red was not dead by the light escaping from his one good eye. He was not dead, but was very, very hungry.

    Ohmie waited until the dragon’s floating spin took the sleeper’s eye away. Then the prince silently swam to Ol’ Silver and Red’s backside, dragging a long rope behind. Once at the dragon’s side, he climbed the scales as would a rock climber a mountain. Ol’ Silver and Red, so tuckered from his days and nights of flight attempts, didn’t budge. By daybreak, Ohmie’s mates having discovered he’d gone ahead, they followed to see his progress. He’d made the dragon’s neck, firmly clasping onto his long since, scale-buried knife.

    Ever so cautiously, Ohmie climbed Ol’ Silver and Red’s head, a micro-sliver at a time, excruciatingly careful not to disturb the dragon, or give away human presence. As heavy as he was, the dragon’s hundred-times-mass made Ohmie seem ant-like to the full grown beast. Finally, just before noon, while Princess May and the young men ate their lunch, Ohmie reached his goal, the top of Ol’ Silver and Red’s brow, within reach of his face. With his new belt knife, Ohmie carefully, gingerly, stealthily, reached out and forcefully stabbed down, heedful and attentive to his aim.

    Instantly Ol’ Silver and Red let out his fiercest screeching, howling, and nerve-wrenching-wracking attack scream. The only thing was – he couldn’t see a thing – completely blinded by Ohmie’s eyelid-cutting slash, drooping Ol’ Silver and Red’s good eyelid over his only seeing eye.

    Ol’ Silver and Red thrashed as violently as any tornado could thrash water. It looked to everyone as if the lake was in a rolling boil, churned by a thousand rampaging stallions. They feared for Ohmie who’d disappeared in the chaos.

    Suddenly he shot into the air nearly like a breaching whale.  He dog-paddled to the shore, the others certain his shoulder was again dislocated.

    That was not the case. Rather, in his non-swimming arm, he trailed an end of the rope he’d managed to loop around Ol’ Silver and Red’s neck while underwater.

    In the dragon’s weakened condition, the four, Princess May, Ohmie, Prince Shauconnery, and Blado, were able to drag the dragon to the shore, though not onto the shore, of course. But at least they could wade out and tie the monster’s wings together behind his back. Fortunately, the dragon remained subdued long enough for them to braid the rope, greatly multiplying and compounding its strength.

    Unthreatened by Ol’ Silver and Red, the young men and Princess May finally had time for a fire-cooked meal. And for peaceful rest.

    Ol’ Silver and Red could walk, though awkwardly with his wings bound and unable to properly control his balance. Blindly, depending only on his senses of smell and hearing, he staggered about in his hunger-weakened state.

    It took Ohmie and Blado only an hour or so to herd Ol’ Silver and Red back into the lake. Their most successful tactic was to tempt him to blindly chase them. Once in the deep water, they tethered him from one side of the lake to the other side, the ropes remained in the water, too wet for the fire-breather to burn them. Ol’ Silver and Red was captive.

    Over the course of the next few days, Ohmie made repeated ventures up the dragon’s stair-stepped spine in efforts to reach his ears. Ohmie needed to talk to the dragon.

    Finally, Ol’ Silver and Red calmed sufficiently to hear Ohmie’s voice, cocking his ear to Ohmie’s whisper. “Your gold,” he whispered over and over. “Your gold.”

    Ol’ Silver and Red’s threatening growls slowly began to turn to moanful, grief-stricken wails.

    Shivering through the cold night, and the morning’s relieving rays of warmth, Ohmie whispered over and over, “Your gold for your eyesight and freedom.”

    By lunchtime, Ohmie climbed down from Ol’ Silver and Red’s neck to eat with his friends, confident he’d made progress toward a bargain. By suppertime, a deal had been struck. Ol’ Silver and Red chose sight and flight over blindness and flightlessness – even if it meant impoverishment, bowing and nodding his assent.

    The four went to work.

    Using the same catgut cord as before, Ohmie fashioned reins of a sort. “Hang on!” he shouted to Princess May, Prince Shauconnery, and Blado. The warning proved insufficient, failing to keep them aboard Ol’ Silver and Red as he bolted and bucked as Ohmie’s knife pierced through the middle of the lower part of an eyelid. Ol’ Silver and Red’s reflective flinching cast all four of them off his back and into the lake.

    Prince Shauconnery and Blado busied themselves driving sticks of green willow between scales on both sides of the gashes on Ol’ Silver and Red’s tail. Princess May lashed the gaping wound closed with a loose braid of three lengths of the same cord. The willow wood and loose braiding allowed the repaired tail the flexibility necessary for controlled flight. Ol’ Silver and Red instinctively knew to be still during the operation.

    Ohmie fitted his eyelid reins through bent-wood eyelets wedged atop Ol’ Silver and Red’s head. Pulling the cords offered Ol’ Silver and Red sight. Selectively pulling the left or right cords opened either one or the other eye. Ohmie figured to control Ol’ Silver and Red’s flight by his eyes. Closing both lids effectively blinded the beast, causing him to slow to a landing, or risk crashing into trees or mountains.

    Being small of brain, the dragon forgot his hobbled wings and tried to bolt and thus renege on his deal the instant Ohmie pulled up the eyelids the first time. The result was four wet young people and a flipped-on-his-head silver and red dragon – a lesson learned.

    Finished with his surgical task, Blado released the hobbling ties that had bound Ol’ Silver and Red’s wings. Ohmie set himself for flight. Once untied, Ohmie allowed Ol’ Silver and Red his sight, pulling both eyelids up. He rocketed airborne with Ohmie barely able to stay aboard, leaning completely back on the flying beast’s neck. Ohmie held on tightly, not even hinting that he had no control in such an extended position. In direct vertical flight, he was not able to drop both eyelids. The force of the upward climb held them open. Ol’ Silver and Red could have continued flying straight up and Ohmie could have done nothing about it except fall off, or fall unconscious as they left earth’s atmosphere. Fortunately, Ol’ Silver and Red tired before they reached the stratosphere where the air was too thin for human breath. Eventually, their great arcing curves of descending flight brought them back down. By controlling the individual eyelids, Ohmie taught Ol’ Silver and Red turning directions. Ol’ Silver and Red believed the turns were his own decision, aiming for where he could see, but it was Ohmie who controlled where he could see.

    The repaired tail was not as good as his old, unaltered tail. Ol’ Silver and Red could turn left almost as well as before being hacked, but right turns were more than twice the radius, only about half as tight. Ohmie quickly learned this as he nearly crashed into the side of the mountain. Had he not blinded the dragon for an emergency landing they would have. After half a day’s practice, Ol’ Silver and Red learned that double eyelid jerks meant climb, and fainting eyelid droops meant descend. Ohmie learned how to drive a dragon.

    The four climbed aboard Ol’ Silver and Red’s long neck. He hardly knew they were there, except for the reins controlling his sight. As they approached the castle Ohmie allowed Prince Shauconnery to move to the front, as if he were the dragon pilot. One day he would be King and the confident projection of power and control wouldn’t hurt. Prince Shauconnery would never forget Prince Waynard’s (Ohmie’s) generosity and forward thinking.

    Blinded and wing-hobbled, Ol’ Silver and Red spent as uncomfortable a night as imaginable with all the unseen gawkers parading by to witness the spectacle. He was happy to haul the burden of crates back to the mountain. It took several trips, but was far better than listening to hee-heeing people.

 

Author Notes

I apologize for the length of this post. I just couldn't stop midflight. Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

Chapter 11
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 11

By Wayne Fowler

In the last part, Ohmie rigged a method of steering Ol’ Silver and Red. After May mended his tail, they managed to fly him as well as anyone could ride a horse. Ohmie allowed Prince Shauconnery to man the ‘driver’s’ seat upon their return o the castle.

 

Chapter 11

 

    Recovery of the gold and jewels was no simple chore. It meant coaxing Ol’ Silver and Red out of his lair again, once Waynard allowed him to go home, which he didn’t until the flying beast had transported two miles of rope and about a million wooden crates and barrels up to the crevice opening on the mountain top. There was barely enough room for all the boxes and barrels.

    Given his head, Ol’ Silver and Red made it down the shaft and through the tunnel to the top of his pile of wealth in less time than it took Waynard to loop a rope around the same rock they’d anchored to the last time.

    Of course, Ol’ Silver and Red was blind, causing him to blast his torch at every noise or scent, though aromas needed to be smoke-thick in order for the olfactory-challenged animal to detect.

     Ohmie lost all the hair on his head before finally tricking Ol’ Silver and Red into flaming the wrong direction while he stole behind the frustrated dragon. Throwing rocks to hinterlands didn’t work. Ol’ Silver and Red was able to hear quite well with his eyes effectively blinded. He heard the waves of air as Ohmie whipped his throwing arm, sending tongues of fire to scorch and singe off arm hair and blister the backs of his hands. Ohmie had to employ old ventriloquist’s voice projection tricks to slither around and behind Ol’ Silver and Red. The dragon was conquered, but not tamed.

    Once again, catgut cord and bladder balloons affixed to the sleeping dragon’s ankles offered a fair chance at getting the riches out of the mountain. Hauling the loot up the shaft and then down the mountain would take several lifetimes using traditional methods. Enlisting the dragon to voluntarily give over his wealth seemed to the four to be more than they could reasonably expect of any creature: animal, or human.

    No, they would not ask Ol’ Silver and Red to help in handing over the nest of treasure. But they would enlist him to string their make-shift circuitous loop-line. Using every length of rope they’d brought, the young men looped around every column, which was a converged stalactite and stalagmite, creating a floor-to-ceiling column. With all the ropes connected, and each end fastened to the dragon’s ankles, they had a continuous loop from one dragon ankle to the other running the length of the cave and all the way to the pool of water, looped around several columns.

    Before they’d ever ventured from the castle, Ohmie and Blado practiced with the ropes strung around a set of trees, like a rope fence encompassing trees in more or less a straight line. Harnessing a team of horses, the young men proved, in theory, that the connected ropes could continuously loop the trees.

    At the last moment, Ohmie untied the catgut cords, dismissing it and the balloons as too risky. As Ol’ Silver and Red would run to the pool, according to their plan, the cords would break at the first resistance as the rope burned around the columns. Since they might not have such an opportunity a second time, the risk was to be all on Ol’ Silver and Red. If the ropes were not long enough, he could drown in the watery tunnel from pool to lake. Not only did the four not want Ol’ Silver and Red to drown, they would also lose the gold. Ohmie and Blado hoped the miles of rope would be sufficient.

    It took more time, but it was well worth every stressful moment. Fortunately, the beast of burden slept.

    The young men staged barrels of water beside each column. Ohmie’s job was to douse the heating columns with the water as Ol’ Silver and Red’s tether rope tightened around it. Their concern was two-fold: one, that the rope not burn in half, and two, that the rope slide around the moistened columns as fast as Ol’ Silver and Red raced down the tunnel cave. It wouldn’t do to break Ol’ Silver and Red’s legs anymore than it would to break the rope.

    Blado shattered glass jars as he had so many weeks past, waking the slumbering giant. Blind and startled, Ol’ Silver and Red missed the tunnel from the cavern, slamming into the cave wall just beside the tunnel entrance, shaking it off. He made it on his second try. Then, tangling in the rope, he tumbled onto his snout. Furious, he belched flame as best he was able down the chute, scorching off all the loose fibers of the hemp rope.

    Ohmie’s column broke the instant the rope tensed around it. Ohmie’s heart leaped into his throat. He ran to the second column, soaking it long before the whip-sawing rope began to ensnare it. It too broke, the rope sailing through the fracture following after Ol’ Silver and Red. Again, Ohmie frantically raced to the next column – this time too late. It was broken even before Ohmie reached it. The next column was made of more sturdy stuff, holding firm, even though a channel was quickly etched into it, making a groove for the rope. Ohmie labored furiously, dousing the warming rope from the barrel of water. Before long, the barrel was empty, and the rope began to burn against the column as it glowed from the friction.

    Unable to keep the rope from smoking, and afraid it would burn in two, Ohmie kicked at the rope-burned groove as hard as he could, breaking the column down. The rope loop raced to the next column, breaking it upon contact. Ohmie was soaking the next column just as the rope began circling. It had to hold, since it was the very last column encircled. Blado began to douse the column, as well, after jump-roping Ol’ Silver and Red’s leash.

    Suddenly the rope stilled, completely stopping its encircling of the column. Either Ol’ Silver and Red had stopped in the watery tunnel, perhaps returning to finally eat them, or he had reached the lake. Three miles of rope played down the waterway. Only about thirty feet lay above the pool. That meant that it was a mile-and-a-half to the lake’s surface, presuming that that was where Ol’ Silver and Red stopped.

    Princess May watched for Ol’ Silver and Red in the area she’d seen him rise the last time. She did not see any bladder balloons. She and Prince Shauconnery paddled a make-shift canoe out onto the lake, hoping Ol’ Silver and Red would not be of a mind to kill and eat them upon his appearance. Fortunately, Ol' Silver and Red bobbed to the surface belly up, gently rolling upright. Emboldened by having ridden, driven even, the great silver and red dragon, Prince Shauconnery dove from the boat, severely tipping it and nearly spilling his sister, the Princess.

    The water was dark and shadowy beneath the brute. Prince Shauconnery knew he’d not have another chance with the rolling and thrashing dragon. He finally managed to snag one of the ropes, electing to pull it to the surface rather than chance drowning while trying to untie it underwater.

    Princess May knew that both rope ends were tied to the dragon’s ankles that the men, for whatever reason, had elected against the cords and balloons. She watched carefully as Ol’ Silver and Red bobbed on the water’s surface. After maneuvering her vessel a distance from the dragon, the rope firmly in her grip, she gently tugged on the end attached to one of the dragon’s legs, matching his rocking motion. Soon her opportunity came. Just as Ol’ Silver and Red rolled precipitously, banking hard against the water, she yanked with all her might, tipping him completely over. Prince Shauconnery cut the end tied to one ankle as Princess May cut her end. Ol’ Silver and Red was free of the binds, and they had their loop intact.

 

Author Notes

Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

Chapter 12
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 12

By Wayne Fowler

In the last part, Ohmie and Blado, using Ol’ Silver and Red, managed to rig a loop of rope through the underwater tunnel from the dragon’s lair to the lake.

 

Chapter 12

 

    Their pre-arranged signal was three short jerks on just one of the ropes, which Princess May was to expect no sooner than one hour from the dragon’s appearance. Not long after gaining the bank with the two rope ends, she felt the gesture. Ohmie was ready to send the first installment.

 

Suddenly remembering that they were to have tied the two ends together, Ohmie having shown her the type of knot to tie, she had to do it underwater since one end of the rope was being towed under the lake and back into the mountain. Prince Shauconnery scampered to the canoe to return his sister and the looped rope to the bank where they could reel in a treasure box.

    The plan called for Ohmie and Blado to await a returned signal before launching the evacuation of the nest. They knew that Ol’ Silver and Red would not be returning, blinded as he was, but were moderately concerned that he might give the Shauconnery and May trouble should he perceive the transfer of his wealth, the loss of his hoarded nest. They mistook the Prince and Princess’s shoreward movement as the signal to begin operations in earnest.

    The looped rope’s circling action bowled the land crew over as Ohmie and Blado began sending crates and cartons and barrels of gold and jewels from the cavernous lair. Hours and buckets of sweat later, a veritable mountain of gold, diamonds, emeralds, and rubies later, Princess May’s and Prince Shauconnery’s hands raw from broken blisters later, the cavalcade of containers finally stopped. Princess May and Prince Shauconnery collapsed in separate heaps where they stood, only rousing themselves for nourishment. For the next long spell, Ohmie and Blado would simply have to await their recovery.

    Knowing that the men had no doubt exhausted their supply of containers, the Prince and Princess emptied the partially filled boxes and barrels into one another, filling them to their brims to re-attach the empties to the looped rope for re-use. Once done, they signaled back. They had to signal several times, finally tugging an end of the rope many yards before gaining any response. They didn’t know if the men were busy, asleep, or whether the rope had a large enough sway that the men couldn’t feel slight tugs. In any case, they began pulling the empty boxes and barrels back into the mountain.

    The rope’s movement was so slow, Princess May and Prince Shauconnery thought that Ohmie and Blado might be at the end of their endurance. Then she thought about catching a trout and reeling it upstream. The fish’s tug and fight were so fierce she thought she’d caught a whale, surprised that it was only yearling size. The trout, with its mouth agape acted like an anchor, a ship’s sail, catching the current’s resistance.  The empty containers must have presented the men the same difficulty. She and Prince Shauconnery, against their guarded interests, helped by pulling on the loose end of the loop, wishing someone had thought to employ draught horses.

    When the circling route of the looped rope again stopped, all the containers safely on the bank, Princess May let the men assume it was time to rest, eat, and wait for daylight to begin again. It took all of the next day to finish. Ohmie and Blado left Ol’ Silver and Red a pile about a foot-and-a-half tall and covering nearly the same radius as the original nest of the silver and stage trinkets. Then they slept, waiting until they’d rested before attacking the climb up the shaft and descent down the mountainside.

 

+++

 

    Bruke was a troll. He’d been a troll for as long as he could remember, though something deep down inside told him that long, long ago he might have been a human.

    The truth is that he was a human – a particularly ugly human. A human so ugly that no one would talk to him, or even look him in the eye. His eyes nearly touched each other at the bridge of his nose which hung to his lower lip, the end of it appearing as if a moldy prune. He didn’t think his mouth had always been this wide, but gradually, over the course of a hundred years or more, stretched to reach from one ear to the other.

    He still, though, had the normal number of teeth – thirty-two. That was the main reason he thought he was human in the first place – his teeth count. Dogs had forty-two, cats thirty, and opossums had fifty. Pigs and bears had forty-four and forty-two. Humans had thirty-two, like himself. Bruke knew because he’d eaten the heads of every one of the creatures, even of the human creatures.

    Bruke’s teeth only vaguely resembled human teeth. His were all pointy, like little spears, and gapped about an inch apart. They worked fine for ripping flesh, but not so much for chewing. He’d long ago learned to wolf down whole hunks of meat.

    Fish were different. Fish wriggled so fast, too fast for his tongue to position them for proper biting. They were also slippery, too slippery to hold halfway into his mouth for biting. Fish had to be swallowed live. Bruke didn’t mind too much. He only ate to get full, and survive; wriggly fish filled him faster than sheep or goats.

    Fish, though, soon learned to avoid the bridge under which the troll made his home. They called it the Troll Bridge, as did the local farmers. The local farmers chose to cross the river over a gravelly ford some miles downstream.

    The bridge was ancient, much older than Bruke. It was built by the same people that built the land’s castles. The water under the bridge flowed all year round, beginning at the mountain lake, which filled from the mountain spring, which came from Ol’ Silver and Red’s cavern pool. The river meandered through the countryside, eventually to Princess May and Prince Shauconnery’s castle.

    Bruke, the troll, got fat on fish and sheep, and the occasional dog or cat or goat. But soon there were no more fish, and no more dogs or cats, and all the animals of the forest grew far too smart to cross the troll’s bridge. Bruke grew gaunt: thin and gaunt. Also, his arms stretched and reached the mud under the river from so much scraping of the vegetative muck from the river bottom. The occasional grub, or worm his goal.

 

+++

 

     Princess May and Prince Shauconnery worked feverishly, recovering and beaching the boxes and barrels. One barrel broke free of Prince Shauconnery’s grasp as he slipped and fell. The barrel floated out into the lake. As soon as the two finished emptying the containers for their return to Ohmie and Blado, Princess May, unaware of any such thing as a troll, quickly ran around the lake, intending to skip across the bridge for the barrel that had floated to the other side. Halfway across, too late to turn back, she heard the explicit challenge: “Who’s that tripping across my bridge? Now I’m coming to gobble you up!”

    Stunned by this development, Princess May did not linger to converse. The troll’s wide mouth puckered after his question, preparing to bite. May was nearly to the other side.

    The troll was unaccustomed to such incivility from humans. Was this puny human unaware of how things worked? He very nearly lost his prey. At the very last second and only because his arms had grown so long, he snatched her by the ankle, yanking her over the low rock wall, underneath the bridge and into the bleak darkness of the water’s depth.

    On her way, toes over brow, her head slammed against a round rock that capped one of the bridge piers. The noggin smack happened just as she called to her brother, the Crown Prince. What came out was a screaming sound, something like “sja – aug!” Then, before she could repeat her plea more clearly, she went unconscious from the head-banging. And before she could get her bearings, she was underwater, being held on the river’s mucky mess by the troll’s foot.

 

Author Notes

Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

Chapter 13
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 13

By Wayne Fowler

In the last part Ohmie, Blado, May, and Shauconnery liberated as much of Ol’ Silver and Red’s bounty as practical. Rescuing a floating barrel, May crossed an ancient bridge, unaware that the troll, Bruke, lived below. Bruke captured May, knocking her unconscious.

 

Chapter 13

 

    May’s “sja-aug” scream carried across the lake, bouncing off the mountain’s sheer cliff walls. It carried to Ol’ Silver and Red who perked his ears, awakened from his listlessness by a distant memory.

    Ol’ Silver and Red’s given name just happened to be Sjaug, given him as a kit by a wizard named Merlin. It was Merlin that taught him to appreciate jewels, starting with a King’s crown. And it was Merlin who’d sealed him inside the mountain. He’d remained sealed until he dared the long, watery tunnel into the lake. Before the first attempt, he had no idea whether it went anywhere, or narrowed to a tight channel that would trap and kill him. Ol’ Silver and Red was anxious to rekindle the acquaintance. He would like very much to set Merlin ablaze.

    As fast as a dragon could fly, he flew to the sound’s source, reaching the bridge just as the troll pulled limp and unconscious Princess May to the surface. Had it not been for the rocky bridge, Ol’ Silver and Red’s flame would have toasted Princess May. The troll stepped out from under the stony cover, holding Princess May toward the dragon just as the flame ebbed.

    That was the moment Princess May came to. Seeing in whose arms she was bound, she began to fight – tooth and toenail. The troll’s attention was momentarily diverted from the dragon. Too late, he turned back to Ol’ Silver and Red. Bruke, unable to do anything but look into the dragon’s mouth at the teeth that bit off his head.

    Princess May slithered from the dying troll’s arms into the river that flowed beneath the bridge to safety. Ol’ Silver and Red spat out the foul, nasty troll head, and flew off, much more timidly, toward the relative protection of the mountain, spitting vile troll parts along the way.

    Back to the treasure pile, Princess May and Prince Shauconnery busied themselves cutting pine boughs to cover the hoard of jewelry that had mounded over the accumulated containers until they could no longer be seen, completely inundated by coin, brooch, and glittering danglements.

+++

 

    There was a final matter unresolved for Ohmie and Blado, namely, Ol’ Silver and Red. Climbing down from the mountain, Ohmie and Blado heard first, and then saw him in a canyon between steep ridges between the lake and the mountain range. His growl was a low, menacing rumble, something of a cross between a lion and an elephant. All vegetation within a hundred feet of him was burnt to ash. They left him alone, blinded by his drooping eyelids circling a lone fir tree as children might a mulberry bush.

    The two discussed killing methods and options on their way to the Prince and Princess, settling the matter just as they caught sight of the others. Prince Shauconnery whooped a welcome and Princess May dashed full bore, heaven-bent-for-leather, and intent on rewarding her Ohmie with kisses not soon forgotten.

 

+++

 

    Quarter shares. Prince Waynard, Ohmie, insisted, acting more in his official capacity. He and Blado could have filched and purloined all of it, justifiably stealing away with every coin and jewel, but they were not that sort of people. They had honor, and honor begged honorable behavior. Which in this case demanded they consider where the wealth first came from, whose land it was found on, whose help assisted in the capture and collection, and what was to be done with the rest of Ol’ Silver and Red’s life, however long dragons live.

    Blado restored his father’s nobility, increasing his domain by purchasing the mountain range housing Ol’ Silver and Red’s cavernous lair. Who could have known that the granite held veins of silver, copper, and lutetium? Prince Shauconnery took his share home to his father’s Kingdom, which would one day be his own. Princess May did as well. King Herb awarded the better part of her share as her dowry for the day she and Waynard married – the happiest day of their lives up until then when each next day was happier than the previous.

    Near the lake, on land given by Blado, Waynard and May built themselves a modest home, large enough to house a family of five kids. Just down the lane they founded and christened a university they called Ockshford where they employed teachers of the highest caliber to study the universe and train men and women commissioned to open schools and teach the children of the land their numbers and letters.

 

+++

 

    One day Prince Waynard and his new brother-in-law, Prince Shauconnery hiked out to where Ol’ Silver and Red had last been sited. Waynard and Blado agreed that Prince Shauconnery, eventually to be King Shauconnery, should be able to take credit for having subdued the dragon. But how could they kill the beast after he’d saved Princess May? And after having snatched all his treasure? Especially since he hadn’t hurt anyone – at least to their knowledge. Clearly, they could not. The damage he’d caused to the castle window, or hole in the castle wall, had long since been repaired. And the cost was far less than they’d taken from the dragon.

    And he had saved Princess May’s life, whether purposefully or unintentionally.

    No, they couldn’t kill Ol’ Silver and Red.

    Sneaking up behind him, Waynard, acting more like Ohmie than his princehood, and Prince Shauconnery cautiously crept up his back to the knife handle and the attached reigns. Ohmie was certain the dragon was not surprised by their arrival, or unaware of their mounting. The silver and red dragon’s modest startlement at Ohmie’s flick of his ear seemed to be faked.

    Ohmie gave him his sight. Once Ol’ Silver and Red finished with his aerobatic temper tantrum, Ohmie set a course for the crevice cave opening near the top of the mountain. Once landed nearby and Prince Shauconnery safely dismounted, Ohmie carefully tied one eyelid at a three-quarter droop, allowing bare minimal dragon sight.

    It took a moment to realize he’d been released, but once understood, their dragon friend shot skyward, arcing downward and into his lair-leading shaft. But not before shooting a torching, singeing, furnace blast at the two humans. Prince Shauconnery, in front with his sword, raised all the while as if in a victor’s pose took the brunt, his clothes falling to the ground in an ash pile, his skin permanently reddened.

    With a hundred Chinese celebration blasting poppers, Ohmie closed the crevice opening, crashing house-size boulders down the shaft. Should Ol’ Silver and Red ever leave the safety of his lair again, he’d not be returning to it.

    No one ever saw him again, though there were mysterious losses of jewelry and consistent reports throughout the land of unexplained, char-broiled animal carcasses. Ol’ Silver and Red was charged with the crimes, but more and more over the spanning generations, grew less and less tangibly believed in.

P.S.

    One day, 657 years later, a grinding, rock-chewing, cave-making machine’s rumble inched its way through a certain mountain, clearing a path for a brand new four-lane highway. The crunching noise traveled through the granite to a cavernous cavern, where a certain silver and red dragon fired up his eyes within his long-since-healed eyelids.

 

Chapters next?

 

For those of you who’ve read this little novella (nearly 20K words), the  tale is concluded. However, it occurred to me that there might be more to the Ohmie, May, Blado and Ol’ Silver and Red band of friends.

 

There could be an invasion from the hinterlands. Or an invasion of space aliens. There might be a swarm of evil dragons who maraud the countryside every three or four hundred years killing livestock and people just for the fun of it.

 

Ohmie might train Ol’ Silver and Red in the art of heavy construction, laying impossibly heavy girders and beams.

Ohmie and May might convince Ol’ Silver and Red to fly them on worldwide adventures.

 

I would like to develop Ohmie and May’s love for one another, but that might not be appropriate. I don’t think I would enjoy Frodo in a passionate love affair in the middle of his quest (possibly fatal) in dealing with the ring of power. The deviation from thrilling action to the throes of passion might be too jarring. It might work for a romance novel to introduce a harrowing action scene, but maybe not an action thriller where Rambo goes all kissy-face stupid.

 

I don’t expect to produce a chapter a week, but if I did, do any of you have an idea in which direction an audience might find entertaining?

 

Author Notes

Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia. Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries. Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father

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