FanStory.com - Ol' Silver and Red, ch 10by 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.

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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.