Chapter Eight
Eight
The next morning brought a steady drizzle of rain but no further sighting of the dragon.
Mo woke earlier than Juniper (again, Mo’s insistence that it was normal, okay, or sane behavior to wake before sunup and go and do things was worrisome) and scouted the area, finding what he could of prints and evidence of where the dragon had gone.
By the time Juniper woke, Mo was cooking two fish over a small fire and had news that the rain had slowed many of the parties and kept them in Filleadh for the morning.
The fire was sputtering pitifully, battered by the slow drip of rain, so Juniper rummaged in his pack until he found the tinder he’d worked to dry the day before.
It caught, making the flames leap higher and the fish sizzle.
Mo looked at him gratefully.
“Perhaps,” Juniper said hopefully, “it would be better if we hunkered down for the day? I’ve heard dragons don’t even like rain. In fact, I read—”
“No, you didn’t.” Mo’s grin was nearly hidden in his beard, but Juniper could hear it in his voice. “And I think our breakfast is ready.”
Fish was not the sort of breakfast Juniper would have chosen for himself, but there was mead left, so if he had to have fish for breakfast, he could at least have it drunk.
The last of the mead was gone too quickly, and the log he sat on to eat his breakfast too damp, but the cloak Mo had insisted he pack did him good and kept him mostly dry. All in all, things were looking up, as much as they possibly could when trapped on a horrible quest until Samhain.
“Since the dragon is so close, maybe this quest will be all over soon?” Juniper suggested. “Don’t you think?”
Mo didn’t respond for a long moment. Then: “I don’t think we should plan to be home until Samhain at the earliest.”
Juniper’s stomach sank. Mo was too kind to say the rest: That it was Juniper’s fault they were out here to begin with. That Juniper complaining about it wasn’t fair.
After a long moment of silence, Juniper gathered all his courage and said—
“I’m sorry.”
Mo looked inscrutably at him.
“I’m sorry for dragging us on this whole thing,” he said.
He could not look at Mo. Apologies were as uncomfortable as sunburn, and twice as itchy.
But he said it anyway, because he owed Mo that much.
Because he was always more trouble than he was worth, and he was lucky Mo had said yes to coming with him in the first place.
Mo shrugged one shoulder. “Junebug,” he said gently. “It’s not so bad out here.”
Juniper wasn’t sure if that was worse or better, but he nodded uncomfortably and let things fall silent between them again.
“I found a trail leading north, skirting Pointe Gan Filleadh,” Mo told him after a moment. “Though you’re the better tracker, so maybe you should have a look before we decide for sure. Are you ready?”
Was Juniper ready?
For a brawl, yes. For a fine warm mug of steaming chaga tea, definitely.
For his bed?
Gods, yes.
“If I must,” Juniper said, which pulled a rough laugh from Mo’s mouth.
“I found an abandoned farm about an hour’s walk north of here,” Mo said. “Well, an hour for us.”
“You are so often unintentionally rude,” Juniper told Mo, nudging him with his less-sore shoulder (the left one). “Are you saying that it’s a forty-minute walk at your pace?”
“A thirty-two-minute walk at my pace without the pack,” Mo answered. “Probably forty-four with my pack.”
“Insufferable man,” Juniper told him fondly. “And you’re sure we don’t have time to stop by town and rent a room just for an hour? I could bathe and care for my skin and—”
“Your skin looks like it always does,” Mo said.
“Well, that’s because I take care of it,” Juniper said, but Mo was already walking. “Wait. Does that mean it looks good? Or that it always looks bad?”
Mo laughed.
“Morningthall Elmthorn, is skin care a joke to you?” Juniper howled.
Mo turned to him, eyebrow raised. “Your skin is impeccable,” he said. “And not because of whatever lard you do or don’t have.”
It was stupid to feel like his chest was expanding with warmth at the compliment, especially delivered the way it was.
But Juniper was often stupid.
“Good. Thank you. And it’s tallow, thank you, more often than lard, but it is the reason I have a wonderful complexion.
So, what’s our plan?” Juniper asked as they started off down the hill, dead leaves crunching briskly under their boots.
He winced a little as one of his hard-earned blisters popped as he walked, leaking miserably into his only pair of dry socks.
“Our plan?” Mo startled a little.
Which was a damn good thing, because Juniper could catch up to him without running, then.
“Our plan is find the dragon,” Mo said.
“Oh, Morningthall. You sweet and delirious hunk of a man. That is not a plan.”
For all his strengths—and even his strengths at planning some parts of a trip, like supplies and where to sleep—when it came to something that involved a fight, or another type of danger…well, Mo just assumed he would show up and things would be fine.
He would just handle it, one way or another.
Maybe it was because he had stood a head taller than everyone else their age from the time he was about eight winters old, and he was built, to borrow a phrase from Juniper’s father (who had been good at such phrases and at just about nothing else), like a brick shithouse.
“What are you going to do when you reach the dragon?” Juniper asked patiently.
Mo shrugged. “We have knives,” he said. “And I have a net big enough to hold a man. I thought we’d immobilize the dragon, but only if we had to.”
“We…we’re going to catch a dragon with a net?” Juniper asked in disbelief.
Mo was back to his honestly ridiculous walking pace, his stride lengthening as he led them down a hill, splashing across a shallow stream.
Juniper and his blisters and sense of self all recoiled at the idea of tromping across a shallow stream and ending up muddy again, but he followed. Because, well. This was Mo.
And he’d follow stupid Mo Elmthorn to the end of this stupid continent.
“A net and weapons,” Mo said. “It’s a big net. I told you, the dragon I saw wasn’t much bigger than you, so I really think the net would be fine. Besides, we might be able to reason with them.”
Juniper raised his eyes to the heavens in silent prayer to all the gods he sometimes believed in, and also to Mo’s ancestors, just for good measure.
Juniper’s ancestors were probably still inebriated.
Or at least the only ancestor he had ever met was, and it would do no more good to pray to him now than it had done to ask him for anything while he was alive.
“Do you think it’s a bad idea?” Mo offered his hand when Juniper tripped over a root mid-prayer.
“Yes,” Juniper said as Mo’s fingers wrapped around his, his grip warm and firm. “But it’s yours.”
“Do you have a better one?”
“I wish we had a spear, and a bear trap—”
“You said those were unethical,” Mo protested.
“For bears,” Juniper said. “Are there ethics to hunting dragons?”
“I think there are ethics to everything,” Mo said. “Did you know my grandmam said that there used to be a species of dragons that could shift between human and dragon form?”
“Did you know that there are stories around our village that say you’re part bear?” Juniper shot back. “Not all stories come from truth.”
Though as he looked at his friend, whose beard was thick and whose chest had sported a fine layer of hair from the time they were both about twelve winters old, there might be some merit.
“I can hear you wondering if the bear rumor is true,” Mo snorted.
“You do eat fish for breakfast,” Juniper pointed out. “All right, if we can’t catch a dragon with a net, can we agree to do things my way?” he asked as Mo led them to a small footpath, so narrow it might have been more for wild animals than humans.
“Is your way renting a room at an inn back in Pointe Gan Filleadh and drinking for three days?” Mo asked him.
“Of course. And smoking a fat pipe of some local herbs so that I can tell you the most fantastic stories,” Juniper said. “The silver goose may be upgraded to gold, or even kingsmetal if you’re very lucky and the herbs are very good. Do we have a deal?”
Mo laughed again, the sound rippling through Juniper’s chest like a wave. “We do,” he said. “Do you want to man the net?”
“I do not, but thank you so much for asking.”
The conversation faded into the forest behind them as they walked, dropping slowly like red and orange and yellow leaves drifting down from the trees. The rain was still falling, a gentle drizzle that would eventually be miserable.
The little footpath narrowed and broadened and wound around elderly oaks and drooping willows, past little meadows of moss and dancing daisies and back across the stream three more times.
Juniper’s blisters protested each time, and so did his mouth, just for good measure.
When they reached the barn Mo had mentioned, it was nearing midday.
“We can sleep here tonight if nobody else happens by,” Mo suggested.
Juniper could have jumped for joy. He would have, if he had not been carrying a pack that weighed more than a full-grown ram and if his knees did not feel like a grandmam’s who had seen past a hundred winters. And if his damn feet didn’t hurt.
He settled for a semi-cheerful hooray and dropped his pack with a thump.
“Get your knife, then,” Mo directed him.
Juniper, who would have bitten anyone else who had given him an order of any kind, withdrew his knife dutifully. It felt strange and too large in his hand.
He was a farmer, used to using a knife for cooking or cutting vegetables, or even for cooking and cleaning fish (sometimes, if Mo really insisted he must).
But they did not do any butchering themselves, electing instead to trade for meat from Farmer Abernathy or from the markets, because outside of fish, neither Mo nor Juniper could bear the killing of animals.
“Say, Mo.” The thought struck Juniper several days and a quest too late. After all, it wasn’t like he’d planned for success. He hadn’t planned at all, honestly. “How will we kill this dragon?”
If he couldn’t kill an old rooster whose only hobby was chasing Juniper across the barley fields every morning, Mo certainly couldn’t kill a dragon. He would probably get teary and call it beautiful, and say something about the wonder to be found in all life.
Which, Juniper reflected, wasn’t all wrong. It probably would be beautiful.
But it would also be trying to incinerate them, which was less wonder-inspiring and more terror-inspiring.
“We have a net,” Mo said, as if this explained everything. “And all the dragons in the old stories were fairly reasonable.”
“Oh, silly me,” Juniper said, plopping down onto the damp, packed soil outside the abandoned barn. The barn was sagging dangerously in one direction, clearly long abandoned. “That clears it all up. We have a net. Thank you, Mo. Clear as fucking spring water now.”
Mo did not set down his pack. “We can trap it,” he said. “We get the reward for trapping it, not killing it. Didn’t you read the terms and conditions?”
“The what?” Juniper stared at him blankly for a moment before rummaging through his pack for some bits of cheese and dried fruit. He’d read the details about the deliverables, or he thought he had. He’d even read the part about SMART goals.
“You know, the bit at the bottom of the contract in very small text,” Mo said.
“The part with all the details, including the—you know?” In an apparent attempt to be delicate, he drew his finger across his throat to mimic beheading, in lieu of saying the word aloud.
“The unalivement? That’s the terms and conditions. ”
“Mo, my darling, nobody reads the terms and conditions,” Juniper said.
“Except the people who write them,” Mo said thoughtfully. “We should look in the barn first. Make sure nobody’s beat us to this spot.”
“Oh, Mo.” Juniper could not help the eye roll. Really he couldn’t. “Nobody but the desperate would pick an abandoned barn. Everyone else is in town enjoying warm bread and pints of mead and soft, soft beds.”
“Probably not all that soft,” Mo said practically. He drew one of his knives—the biggest one, his fingers wrapping firmly around the hilt in a way that made Juniper blush for no reason at all. “Come on.”
Juniper got to his feet with a groan. Everything ached. Why had nobody told him quests would be more than a little bit painful? Why hadn’t somebody tackled him to the ground when he first had the terrible idea to leap off that stage?
Some ideas were tackle-worthy. Juniper would never pass up an opportunity to tackle Mo if it became necessary. For his safety, of course.
“You need your knife.” Mo’s voice was soft, but not hearth-fire soft, lilting a little as he carded wool. It was waiting-for-danger soft, breath-of-wind-before-a-storm soft. Juniper probably shouldn’t like it quite as much as he did.
“You need your knife,” Juniper mimicked his words under his breath, pitching his voice as high as one of those blasted upselling shopkeepers. But he closed his hand around the blade, because he may play all day long, but if Mo needed his best friend to have his back with a knife, Juniper was there.
What had once been a small cottage was now nothing but a square wall made of stones, moss tangled between them, but the barn, at least, still had a roof. It was bigger than the house had been and built with good cedar—Juniper could see that even as it was sagging now.
The doors still held, too, great double doors that had once been painted a cheerful red but now had the duller auburn color of river rock.
Juniper lifted the crumbling wooden latch that held the two doors shut and let the doors swing slowly outward with a gentle, dying creak.
It smelled like hay (and sneezing) and warm late-summer afternoons (and sleeping in the haystack under the sun, even if it made you sneezy) and also a little damp, but what wasn’t damp at this point?
Maybe that was just Juniper’s own scent. Or Mo’s.
“Mo?”
“Shh.”
And then Juniper’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior of the barn. There was indeed a haystack, molding a bit at the bottom, and the remnants of a pen that had once likely held sheep, judging by the height of the wooden troughs.
And there, in the very middle of the floor, sat a very small child who couldn’t be more than four or five winters old, staring up at them from beneath soot-covered lashes.