Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

“One can dream,” the monkey-thing replied with what looked like the beginning of a smile.

Nunn raised his hand to strike.

“Only using my wit!” the creature cried defensively. “You remember that! You’re the one who gave it to me.”

Nunn curled his fingers into a fist. The monkey was right. It was nothing more than what Nunn had created.

The monkey cowered, its eyes on the wizard’s hand. Nunn half considered tearing the construct apart. It would be a satisfying bit of destruction. It would also be far too wasteful. Building it had been hard, intricate work. There were bound to be flaws. And every time he chose to tinker with this creation, he risked losing more of the energy he had bound inside the thing, until someday all that power would leak away and return to where it had come from. Nunn couldn’t allow that, especially now. The monkey might not be an ideal vessel, but it would do. The Circle had begun, and even this creature was a part of it.

The monkey peered over Nunn’s shoulder. “So Obar got to them before you?” The creature made a clicking noise with its tongue. “Such a generous soul.”

Nunn spun about to look back at the glowing image. “Not for long,” he replied after a moment’s pause. “It’s time for you to get to work.”

The creature ambled over to the edge of the image and smiled. “No killing,” Nunn added quickly.

The monkey’s smile vanished. Its eyes seemed to glow with disappointment.

“You’ll have plenty of opportunity for that later,” Nunn continued. “I’m sure that most of them are quite expendable. But we have to test them first.”

The monkey’s smile returned.

“Nunn,” the creature said. “You’re so good to me.” The thing vanished to do its work.

“M
y lawn! What have they done to my lawn?”

The voice woke Nick up, but he didn’t open his eyes until the pounding began.

“Joan!” another man’s voice called. “I think you and Nick should come on out here!”

At first, Nick thought the second voice belonged to his father. The thought brought him fully awake.

He forced himself to sit up. Why would it be his father? What did his father care about them anymore?

“Joan! Nick! Are you in there?”

No, certainly not his father. By the end of the second sentence, he knew that the voice belonged to Mr. Mills. He heard other voices, shouting somewhere down the street. It was quite a commotion for first thing in the morning.

If it was first thing in the morning. Nick noticed his clock radio still wasn’t working; the dial seemed permanently stuck at 6:07. That meant the city hadn’t gotten around to fixing the electricity. He glanced over at the bookshelf by the bed to that spot where he usually left his watch. There it was, and it was still ticking. Good old, cheap, wind-up watches; except that the face of this watch read 3:14. Either the sun was up awfully early or he had slept awfully late. Nick shook his head. Maybe his good old, cheap, wind-up watch had stopped for a while during the storm.

He heard the, door open downstairs, and his mother’s voice, speaking words he couldn’t quite catch. He climbed out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and sneakers. He checked himself out in the full-length mirror on the back of his closet door. Not bad for a scrawny seventeen-year-old, he supposed; no new zits, and he hadn’t sprouted fangs in his sleep.

He frowned. His hair looked different; even redder than usual this morning, almost like it was on fire. It must have something to do with the light. The sun lit the still-closed shade in such a way that the pale paper seemed to glow with a pinkish tinge. He glanced back at his reflection. The only time he’d ever seen his hair look like this was in those old snapshots his father used to take. It was like the mirror was showing his hair in Kodachrome.

“Nick!” That was his mother’s voice. “Come on down here, honey!”

Nick sighed. He’d regard his flaming locks some other time. He wanted to know what was going on. He swung his door open, crossed the upstairs hall, and took the stairs two at a time.

His mother waited at the bottom. She had her arms folded in front of her, a position that made her look short and imposing at the same time. He could tell from her expression that whatever was happening, it wasn’t going to be fun.

“Hi, Nick,” Mr. Mills said quietly when Nick reached his mother. Mills stood on the front walkway, just beyond the open door. He wasn’t smiling the way he usually did when he visited. And his straight, almost gym-teacher-like posture looked definitely rigid.

Nick forgot to say hello back when he saw what was outside, past the vice-principal.

First off, the sky was green; well, more of an aqua. But definitely not blue. And all the colors beneath the sky were wrong, too. Nick thought again about his hair in those snapshots. The entire world looked like that now; like one of those pictures that hadn’t been developed quite right. He went to the door, then stood and stared for a minute. Mr. Mills cleared his throat. Nick’s mother didn’t say a word.

“What’s going on?” Nick asked when he found his voice.

“We don’t know,” Mills replied. He tried to smile reassuringly. Teachers could always smile reassuringly. Somehow, today, Mr. Mills’ smile didn’t work.

“Something’s changed,” Mills added after a moment. “Chestnut Circle is still here, but—well, it doesn’t seem to lead into Oak Street.”

Nick laughed at that, a quick, braying sound, louder than he’d meant it to be. What was Mr. Mills talking about? Nick tried to think of another question, something that would sound intelligent. Nothing came to mind. He decided he had to see for himself. He stepped outside.

“Something’s changed”? That was all Mr. Mills could say? Nick felt the way he had when his first dog died and all the adults kept talking about his pet “passing away.” It was more like
everything
had changed; like their corner of the world had gone crazy.

The sky had a green tint to it, and the sun was the kind of red you got at the end of a day in fall, except now that red sun was almost directly overhead. The houses around Chestnut Circle looked different, too, partially from the weird shift of colors. But some of the houses also had great strands of dark ivy crawling up their sides where there had been nothing but boards or brick the night before.

And there was more. At the far end of the circle, out where Oak Street used to be, but also in those spaces where he could see between houses, out beyond every yard, there was a forest made up of hundreds of thick, tall, dark trees; trees that plunged everything beneath them into shadow, so that the little clearing of Chestnut Circle was the only real point of light.

“My lawn!” that same voice yelled from down the street. “I’ll call the city about this!”

Nick saw Mr. Sayre wildly waving his hands over his head. Sayre hadn’t been out last night with the ice cream truck. It had probably taken his lawn to bring him out in the daylight. The only time Nick ever saw Mr. Sayre was when he was out working on his yard. Now, though, his manicured grass had turned a sickly blue, and a full quarter of his front lawn had been taken over by that same dark, thick ivy that attacked his house.

Sayre turned and glared straight at Nick, happy at last, Nick guessed, that there was somebody outside that he could yell at. “I’ll call the city, I tell you!”

Nick had a feeling, even if the phones worked, that there would no longer be a city to call.

“What should we do?” Nick’s mother asked from the doorway to the house.

“I think it’s best if we get everybody together,” Mr. Mills replied. “We all know each other here in the neighborhood, at least a little bit. We certainly know each other better than we know what’s happened around here.”

“That sounds good,” his mother replied with a curt nod as she unfolded her arms. “Besides, I’m really worried about Constance Smith.”

Mills nodded back. “Joan, if you can get Constance, and Nick goes next door and tells the Dafoes? The Jacksons, too.” He turned to look out across the yard. “Why don’t we meet in front of your house? I’ll go up to the top of the circle and get the Furlongs. Maybe I’ll even be able to talk some sense into old Sayre.”

Both Mills and his mother started walking before Nick could say a thing. Not that he minded talking to the Dafoes. Heck, there might even be a chance that Mary Lou would answer the door. But the Jacksons? If Todd Jackson made Nick’s skin crawl, talking to Todd’s father made Nick’s skin want to jump off his body. Todd would threaten you if you smiled at him the wrong way. Smile at Todd’s father, and Mr. Jackson would start swinging.

Still, Nick supposed it was better than having to talk to crazy old Sayre, who was still out there screaming about his lawn. He had a job to do. He should get it over with.

He trotted over to the Dafoes’ house. The door opened before he could knock. Mary Lou’s little brother, Jason, stared up at him through his thick glasses.

“Jeez, Nick,” Jason said, his voice cracking with excitement. “What’s going on out there? Look at the colors, would you? Is it something about the hurricane?”

That was the longest speech Nick had ever heard from the fourteen- year-old. When Jason hung around with Bobby Furlong, Bobby did enough talking for both of them.

“Well, is it?” Jason insisted. He looked strange in this new light too. His blond hair was almost white; his fair skin flushed a too-bright shade of pink.

“No,” Nick remembered to answer. “I think it’s something worse.”

“Jason dear?” Mrs. Dafoe’s voice came from somewhere deep inside the house. “Is that somebody at the door?” There was something about the way Mrs. Dafoe phrased things that sounded almost too polite.

“It’s Nick from next door!” Jason called.

“Why, how nice to see you, Nick,” Mrs. Dafoe said as she emerged from the kitchen. She looked like she would on any other day, her clothes perfectly ironed, her hair perfectly in place. “What can we do for you today?”

What can you do? It’s the end of the world
, is what he thought. What he said was, “Mr. Mills thinks there’s something wrong. He wants everyone in the neighborhood to get together and talk about it.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Dafoe replied, allowing herself the slightest of frowns. “I guess we could do that. Thank you, Nick. I’ll get the rest of the family.”

Nick thanked her back and ran to the next house.

“I see you!” Mr. Sayre yelled at his back. “Turn around when I’m talking to you! I want some answers!”

Nick banged on the Jacksons’ door instead.

The door opened with such force that it slammed against the inside wall.

“What do you want?” Todd’s old man demanded. He lurched forward into the doorway, squinting at the sunlight. Even though it was still the first thing in the morning (probably), he had a beer in his hand. “This better be fuckin’ good.”

Nick stumbled back down the steps, careful to keep out of arm’s reach. The man stared over Nick’s head, although it didn’t look like his eyes were particularly focused. He also looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days. His rumpled clothing appeared to have been on his body just as long.

Nick looked to either side, ready to escape if Jackson made another move. “M-Mr. Mills,” he stuttered. “He thinks something’s going—”

Abruptly, Nick forgot what he was going to say next. He saw something in the woods and heard the same shouts he had heard before, sharp, short sounds; but now they were coming from around the corner of Jackson’s house. Down the street, in the space between his house and the Smiths’ next door, he could see men, dressed in brown, step from the shadows of the forest.

“Oh, shit,” Jackson agreed. The door to the house slammed shut.

The newcomers seemed to be wearing uniforms of some sort. The brown showed on their sleeves and leggings and boots. They also wore breastplates and close-fitting helmets, but if these were made out of any metal, that metal was tarnished and dark. Once the men moved from their forest cover, they hardly made a sound. They reminded Nick of the scenes from Vietnam he saw on the news every night. Except the armor made the soldiers look a little like Spanish conquistadors.

Nick ran out into the street, toward the gathering neighbors. “Mr. Mills!” he called.

“I see them,” the schoolteacher said as he stepped beside Nick. He nodded to his right. “I thought I saw more moving farther up the street.”

“
Now
you’re out here!” Sayre was calling as the neighbors gathered on the street. “You took your own sweet time. Look at this. It’s an outrage, I tell you! Someone is going to pay!”

No one looked at Sayre. By now, he seemed to be the only person unaware of the approaching army.

That’s what Nick realized it was: a whole army of strange men dressed in brown, more than a hundred of them, he’d guess. He could see them now at the end of the street and in the yards between each of the houses, closing all the neighbors of Chestnut Circle inside their ranks.

“Someone is going—” Old Man Sayre shut up at last. He, too, had seen the visitors.

“If you would move forward?” a new voice spoke behind Nick and Mr. Mills. Nick started to turn his head. “Don’t turn around,” the voice continued. “Walk.”

Nick walked. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mr. Mills walk as well. In front of him, he could see the other neighbors being herded toward the central asphalt circle.

“My lawn!” Sayre called out. “Watch where you’re walking there!

I’ve spent good money on this lawn!”

Todd and his parents walked from their house toward the others. Nick saw Todd wave at the lawn man to keep quiet. About ten of the men in brown moved forward and surrounded Sayre.

But the soldiers seemed to make him even more frantic. “You can’t keep me quiet. I’ll say my piece! This was a free country, last time I looked!”

Todd took a step toward the street, as if he might physically restrain Sayre. His father stepped in his way. Todd and his father stared at each other for a minute, but neither one said a word. Todd’s hands tightened into fists, but he stayed on his own lawn.

For once, Nick thought, Todd had had a good idea. Sayre was going to get himself into real trouble. The soldiers were tightening their net. Nick didn’t see any guns, but some of them had bows, with arrows notched and ready for flight. And all but a few of them had swords hanging at their sides, in elaborate scabbards of the same dark metal as the helmets.