Chapter 1 #2
“If you have no tribute to offer me after daring to violate my waters,” she screeched, “and no satisfactory answer to my riddle, then I have no choice but to place a curse upon your head!”
A curse? Calvin just had time to think, before the woman raised her hands above her head, her hair swirling, and then –
Another flash of light, even brighter this time, sent him sprawling to the ground, and he barely had the presence of mind to grab his shoes and socks before scrambling out of the clearing and back up the path at lightning speed, her eerie laughter echoing through the forest behind him.
It was a long time before he slowed down enough to put his shoes back on – he didn’t stop until he’d made it back out to the main trail, and even then he was looking back over his shoulder.
Stopping briefly, he sat down on the ground and gave his shifter healing a minute to deal with the scratches on his feet, waiting for his pounding heart and heaving chest to return to something approaching normal.
What… what was that?!
Had he actually been cursed? Doubtful. If there was one thing that his parents had been insistent about when he was growing up, it was the non-existence of curses.
The conversation had come about after his older brother had said that he’d cursed a then five-year-old Calvin to turn into a frog at midnight, and Calvin, in tears, had clambered onto his dad’s lap and begged him to reverse it.
While that particular situation had obviously been a bit different, his parents had stood firm over the years: curses weren’t real. And they’d been honest about the things in the shifter and magical worlds that were real, so he had no reason to think otherwise.
“That flash of light was just the sun reflecting off the spring waters,” Calvin muttered to himself, slumping back.
Pulling his socks and boots on over his now-healed feet, he started to head back toward the car. He’d had enough of this section of the woods – he wanted to get back to a track that hadn’t been closed off. Perhaps it had been done with good reason.
Like weirdos making prank videos in the woods. Well, let’s hope they got some good footage and go home now. I’m sure I’ll be able to catch myself running scared into the woods on YouTube soon enough.
Feeling foolish, he made it back to the head of the trail in half the time it’d taken to get out there. There was still a lingering feeling of doom hanging over his head, and he laughed uneasily.
Fine. Flying can wait for another day.
As he approached his car, he pulled out his phone, planning to pull up some information on campsites in the area – the more popular and near major settlements, the better – when he realized it was dead.
There wasn’t the faintest glimmer of life, even when he pressed all the buttons and held them down. The screen was as black as night.
Huh, he thought. I know I charged it before I set out.
Then again, there were probably dead spots in the mountains, so maybe the battery had gotten run down in the search for a signal.
Oh, well, he thought. I know where the main road is – if I follow it, I’ll reach a town eventually. If absolutely all else fails, I know I can head back down the mountain.
Reaching for his keys, he glanced down at his hand – and at the unresponsive Fitbit on his wrist.
A vague feeling of dread – no, not dread, just confusion and concern – rippled through his stomach.
Don’t be stupid. There’s nothing to dread. It’s a flat battery. And I know I haven’t charged it in a while.
Hopping into the car, he slid into the seat with a sigh of relief. Whatever weirdness was going on here, he was going to be far away from it soon enough. There was still plenty of time to salvage his vacation. And, if nothing else, he’d have a funny story to tell his family later on.
He turned his key in the ignition.
He turned it again.
He turned it again.
The engine wasn’t even turning over. It was so silent that Calvin could hear the key twisting in the ignition as he tried it again, and then again. Not even a tragic, choking sound as the engine gave up the ghost. Nothing.
You have got to be kidding me, he thought, turning it yet again. I don’t believe this. There’s no such thing as curses.
And yet, here he was, with a dead cell phone, a dead Fitbit, and now, it seemed, a dead car.
It’s not dead, he told himself without much conviction, even as another turn of the key proved to be fruitless. It’s just being a bit slow to wake up.
If he was going to be honest with himself, though…
yeah, the car was dead. Not just struggling, not just on its last legs, but one hundred percent non-functional.
The turn of the key wasn’t eliciting so much as a whimper from the engine.
Where it had roared to life perfectly healthily this morning, now it was as silent as the tomb.
And he knew that it wasn’t because he was out of gas, because he’d topped up just before he came up here to the mountains, and there was no sign of a leak.
He’d even done a bit of maintenance on it before taking such a long drive – he’d grown up fixing cars, so he knew his way around them and definitely would have noticed something drastic enough to cause this level of dysfunction.
“Come on,” Calvin chided, turning the key more gently this time. “I’ll take you to a car wash just as soon as we reach the next town, get you all fresh and clean. Whaddya say? You do this one thing for me, and I’ll do this for you. I’ll even put some air in your tires.”
Shockingly, the car did not respond to this obvious attempt at bribery. The only response was the sound of twittering birds echoing through the trees. It clearly wasn’t going to be going anywhere today.
Calvin didn’t really mind leaving it and going for help if he had to – the car would be safe enough in the parking lot where the hiking trails diverged, and luckily he’d had a good look at a map of the area while his phone had still been working.
Between that and his wyvern’s excellent sense of direction, he knew exactly where to go.
Speaking of his wyvern…
You’ve been awfully quiet throughout all this, he said pointedly.
The wyvern made a sound that clearly expressed its disdain for Calvin, the situation they were stuck in, and just the world in general. There is no point in expressing my opinion when you already know what it is. That would be the very definition of superfluity.
Oh, yeah? Calvin shot back. So your ongoing silence has nothing to do with the fact that you don’t know how to deal with weird glowing women in the woods who demand tribute?
As his wyvern retreated again into a somewhat baffled silence – which in itself proved his point, Calvin thought – he tried to run back through what exactly had happened.
It can’t be true, though, Calvin thought, even as he stared at the dashboard of his – very dead, very non-functional – car.
Curses aren’t real. Whatever I saw back there – that was just some kind of prank.
I didn’t get cursed because I didn’t bring a glowing woman a tribute, or solve a riddle. That kind of thing doesn’t exist.
Even as he thought it, Calvin was painfully aware of the irony.
He’d only come up to this isolated spot in the mountains so he could get a bit of time to himself and forget that in his day-to-day life he had to be a human with a job, not a wyvern with wings that needed stretching every now and then.
If anyone happened to have somehow seen him while he was in the middle of shifting into his wyvern form – a massive, dark green scaly creature with a thirty-foot wingspan – and taking off into the sky, they’d probably swear up and down such a thing couldn’t be true either.
Well, not that I got to shift in the end, Calvin thought with a rueful sigh. The wyvern glared at him with a baleful eye, but made no comment. As much as Calvin knew it liked to act like it was above it all, it had clearly been shaken up by the encounter with the woman.
Maybe, he thought hopefully, there was some kind of weird electrical event nearby that knocked everything out. That’s why all my stuff won’t turn back on.
He wasn’t cursed.
But whatever the case, his car definitely wasn’t working.
He turned the key in the ignition one more time.
“Pretty please?” he asked the car beseechingly, knowing full well that it was pointless.
Calvin sighed. He’d more or less skipped over the anger stage of grief. Clearly, he was now knee-deep in the bargaining phase.
Just depression and acceptance to go, he thought glumly. Wait, was there another one in there somewhere?
There was nothing for it – he was going to have to walk to the next town, and organize a tow truck from there. And find somewhere to charge his phone. And get his Fitbit checked out. He didn’t like his chances, though.
The whole point of coming up here, after all, had been to get away from civilization and have a digital detox – tiny country towns didn’t tend to have a surfeit of electronics repair businesses.
Not that he really needed his Fitbit – though the thought of it giving up the ghost while he was on a hiking holiday seemed particularly cruel – but he was probably going to need a phone in order to get everything sorted out.
“Sorry,” he said, patting the dashboard of the car before hopping out. “I’ll be back for you soon.”
Sure, he could tinker with cars, but this seemed like it was a little beyond his expertise.
Unless you happen to know something about fixing cars? Or curses?
The wyvern huffed, clearly trying to cover its annoyance at not having been allowed out to soar through the skies after all with bluster.
As you have already surmised, the ‘weird glowing woman’, as you so eloquently put it, was nothing more than a delinquent with a special effects kit and too much time on her hands. And curses do not exist, as you are well aware. As for car engines…
The wyvern spread its metaphorical wings majestically, and Calvin had to refrain from rolling his eyes.
… Why would I need to know about your inferior modes of transportation, when I can soar above the earth whenever I please? At least, that is what I was promised, even if such promises are apparently not to be honored.
Calvin did roll his eyes this time, though he couldn’t say he entirely blamed the wyvern.
I’m sorry. We’ll make sure you get your flying time soon. Just as soon as I’ve sorted out this mess.
We could fly up the mountain to the next town, the wyvern suggested, its eyes gleaming, and Calvin laughed, relaxing a little.
He knew the wyvern knew that flying to the town was not an option – especially on such a gloriously warm, blue-skied summer’s day as today, where the air was so clear that you could see forever.
One glint of sunlight on the wyvern’s iridescent emerald scales, and every person in a five-mile radius would be basking in its dubious glory.
Flying around the uninhabited side of the mountain and keeping a low profile like Calvin had originally planned was one thing, but flapping majestically into a populated area was another.
No, they couldn’t shift at this point without it being a massive risk. Calvin had no choice but to walk.
And really, it wasn’t that bad of a choice. Though the day was hot, the lush green leaves of the forest canopy provided a cool, dark umbrella over his head that kept things bearable, rustling almost imperceptibly in the gentle breeze.
He found himself making good time as he made his way back to the main road, the distant sound of cars reassuring him that he was heading in the right direction.
Emerging onto the road, Calvin looked first one way up its hot, black, winding expanse, and then the other.
Where to?
His wyvern sniffed the air, and then, with a confidence that Calvin found he completely believed in, it said, West.
West it is.
The wyvern’s instincts had never steered him wrong when it came to finding his way. If he followed its lead, he’d find civilization soon enough.
And sure enough, after only about fifteen minutes of following the road, he was passing a sign: Girdwood Springs: 3 miles.
Girdwood Springs. Sure, sounds good, Calvin thought to himself.
Maybe there’d be someone there who could fix his car.