Dragon Frontier Read online

  ‘Trapper’s probably halfway back to town by now,’ said McKenzie, ‘and, if Professor Haskell’s right, the boy walked around in circles. That bend in the river isn’t half a dozen miles from here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Haskell, ‘but I’m not a professor.’

  Garret and McKenzie looked at the geologist. No one cared whether he was a professor or not.

  ‘Mr Haskell has been in the forest for the better part of a week,’ said McKenzie. ‘I’m sure he needs a good supper and a soft mattress before you drag him back out there.’

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ said Mr Haskell, but McKenzie was determined not to let him intercede.

  ‘I’m paying your wages, Mr Haskell, and I say you’ve worked hard enough. You’ll get further leaving at dawn than fighting your way through the dusk.’

  Some of the men in the search party murmured their agreement. If the boy had survived one night in the forest, he’d manage a second. Garret was clearly outnumbered.

  ‘Have a drink with me, blacksmith,’ said McKenzie, clapping Garret on the shoulder in his oddly grasping way.

  ‘I won’t, thank you all the same,’ said Garret, and he turned to leave.

  The men lined up to take a drink at the founder’s expense, and Nathan McKenzie called out over their heads, ‘Back here before the cock crows. You too, Professor.’

  Jake struck camp early, after a good night’s sleep, despite being woken by a bear. The sun had not yet penetrated the canopy and was barely visible through the mist that shrouded the forest.

  Filled with confidence, he packed his belongings and set out on his uphill climb. He could hardly see a hand in front of his face, but he had faith in the tingle in his arm, and he was no longer fearful of the forest.

  Jake travelled for two or three hours, and the mist still did not lift. Then he felt a twinge of recognition. He retraced his steps and stopped. Everything suddenly felt terribly familiar. Jake had been here before. He had been here only an hour or two ago.

  He put down his bundle and pulled up his left sleeve. He placed his right hand around his left wrist and felt for the throb, the heat, the itch that had plagued him. The sensation that he had begun to take for granted had subsided. There was a tingle, but not the itch or throb that he had grown used to.

  Jake shook involuntarily, but he wasn’t cold. He had been so sure about finding the dragons and about the Natives being the key to finding his family. He’d been so sure he was on the right track that he hadn’t given his route another thought, and now his confidence was deserting him.

  Jake touched a tree. There was a prominent knot in the bark beneath his hand and a small broken-off branch protruding. He blinked and looked at the trunk. He stepped back suddenly and brought his hand up to his mouth as if to stifle a scream. The knots and swirls in the branch looked like staring eyes and a gaping mouth, and the broken branch looked like a gnarled, stubby nose. The tree appeared to be laughing at Jake, and he didn’t like it at all.

  Jake was determined to take a different path, until he realized that there was only one path into this patch of forest and only one path out. The undergrowth was dense and thorny, and it came up to his waist. He had to go back along the path he had walked before. He had become so intent on finding his way that he forgot to breathe, and everything began to swim before his eyes. The mist swirled and collected into the shapes of laughing faces, of horses and rag dolls, and of dragons. Jake could see sinuous tails and cavernous flaring nostrils exhaling bright streams of smoke.

  All the trees suddenly wore mocking, leering faces, frightening Jake almost out of his wits. He felt a throb, but it was not his arm. Jake’s entire body throbbed with the pounding heartbeat that he thought could be heard for miles. He clutched the blanket tightly to his chest and ran as fast as he could, as far as he could from the mist-creatures. He didn’t care that his legs were getting scratched by the undergrowth. He didn’t care that he had no idea where he was heading. He just wanted to get away.

  When he could run no further, Jake slumped down at the mossy base of an old tree and held his head in his hands. Gasping for breath, his head between his knees, he began to feel a little better. He told himself that his mind had been playing tricks and that he’d been too confident for his own good.

  Then Jake heard something. He heard a low, rumbling sound, like a sonorous, continuous roar. He thought it might be the dragons from his mind’s eye. He thought it might be the sound of dozens, even hundreds, of pairs of great scaled wings, beating an overlapping rhythm, shifting and bending the air into strange sound-waves.

  He felt an urge to follow it, but, at the same time, dreaded coming face to face with the creatures of his imagination. He felt a tug, but he didn’t know whether to run towards or away from it. He had followed the throb and itch in his arm, certain that they would lead him to his destination, but they had not.

  Jake took a deep breath and ran as hard as the uneven forest floor would allow, through the trees and the mist, locking his eyes on a spot in the distance. He didn’t follow the sound, and yet it seemed to surround him, thrumming and booming, becoming louder and more continuous. There was no rhythm to it any more; it was simply a fathomless roar.

  Jake came suddenly out into the light. The trees of the forest were behind and below him, and he felt like he had climbed to the roof of the world. All he could see was a great open space with the bright blue sky as much below him as it was above him. The rainbow that arced into the endless distance seemed to terminate in a cloud several hundred feet below where he stood.

  Everything was shades of blue and white and grey. The glistening grey rocks caught every spark of light that fell on their slick surfaces. The frothing white water crashed off those rocks, travelling at unimaginable speeds. Then it fell into the glistening turquoise expanse of the lagoon below. The endless drifts of mist that cut across everything were a milky, bluish white, backlit and coloured by the endless purple edge of the rainbow. Jake thought that if the booming roar of millions of gallons of water could be a colour, then that colour would also be blue.

  The thundering water had cut a gorge in the rock so vast and so deep that Jake felt as if he was standing on top of the world. He looked out into the sky, his senses filled with the sound and sight and smell of water. He could even feel it on his skin in the spray of millions of droplets in the fresh mist. It quickly drenched his hair and face and clothes, and even the bandage on his hand.

  Jake opened his mouth. He felt a myriad tiny pinpricks as droplets of water, flung through the air, struck the flesh of his tongue. The water tasted blue and white, and as clean and fresh as it could be.

  Jake didn’t need to think. He knew, as if he had known it always, that this waterfall was the key to finding the Native settlement. He was on his way.

  Suddenly, a hand fell heavily on the drenched shoulder of Garret’s jacket, bringing Jake back down to earth.

  He heard a voice and felt warm breath very close to his ear.

  ‘Injuns call it Smoke Mountain,’ said Trapper Watkiss, right in Jake’s ear.

  The force of falling water was so great that it filled all the senses, including making the ground vibrate underfoot, and Trapper didn’t know if Jake had heard him. He held firmly on to the boy’s shoulder, turned him and walked him slowly away from the edge of the cataract.

  By the time the mist had cleared from his eyes, and Jake had returned to his senses, he was standing a couple of hundred yards from the waterfall, face to face with Pa Watkiss’s strange brother.

  ‘Injuns call it Smoke Mountain,’ repeated Trapper. Jake stared at the old man, but he said nothing.

  Trapper backed away from Jake
, afraid that he might have spooked him, and looked around for the boy Elijah.

  Eliza was struggling up the steep path behind Trapper when she spotted Jake. She ducked her head so that he couldn’t see her face and stayed behind Trapper.

  ‘It’s all right, lad,’ said Trapper. ‘Your folks were worried. Sent me to track you down.’

  Jake still said nothing. He brought a hand up to the long lock of hair that clung, wetly, to his forehead and swept it away.

  Trapper Watkiss gestured wildly at Eliza while keeping his eyes firmly on his prize.

  ‘Brought your old wheel-horse for company. Elijah,’ he said. Jake frowned and tried to see who was standing behind the old man.

  ‘Elijah?’ asked Jake.

  ‘Your old buddy,’ said Watkiss, still waving at Eliza. There was a long silence, and then Eliza stepped up beside Trapper. She looked at Jake from under the brim of Daniel’s old hat.

  ‘ELIZA!’ Jake blurted with surprise.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jake,’ she said. ‘Please forgive me.’

  There was another long pause while Eliza waited for Jake’s reaction.

  ‘Elijah?’ asked Jake, beginning to smile.

  ‘He thought I was a boy,’ said Eliza, pointing at Trapper. She pulled off her hat and scratched her head, letting her braids fall down. Her hair was ratty and had made her head hot, and she had a line of sweat across her forehead from her hat. Then she hurried to Jake’s side, as if it was two against one.

  ‘Darn and blast it all to blue blazes,’ said Trapper Watkiss, locating a hump in the grass to sit on to wear out his anger at being tricked by the slip of a girl.

  Eliza took Jake’s hand and led him over to Sarah. She began to unpack one of the panniers, pulling out Trapper’s threadbare linen towel and giving it to Jake.

  ‘Take off that wet jacket,’ she said. ‘I’m sure there’s something dry in here. It might not be clean, though.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Jake, towelling his hair.

  ‘Because I was wrong to treat you badly and be jealous,’ said Eliza. ‘I know Mama and Papa have got enough love to go around, even if you aren’t my actual brother, and I said some awful things about you to Horace and the others.’

  Jake blushed, thrust the towel back into Eliza’s hands and walked away. She had told Horace and the others about his dreams. She had told them that he was crazy, that he believed in dragons. All the old humiliations welled up in Jake, and he vowed that he wouldn’t go back to McKenzie’s Prospect with Eliza. Besides, he was so close to finding the Natives and the dragons, and, once he found them, he would learn what had happened to his own family.

  Jake slumped down on the grass near Trapper and began to take his jacket off. It was clinging to him, making him colder instead of warmer. The blanket was wet, and he hoped that Daniel’s old jacket might still be dry.

  Eliza messed about with Sarah’s panniers, playing for time, deciding what to say to Jake. Then she started walking towards him.

  ‘Papa treated you the same as Dan. I should’ve known he’d treat anyone like that, but I was sad and jealous. You were sick, and it wasn’t your fault. I should never have told Horace that you believed you’d seen a dragon … It was stupid.’

  ‘Dragons,’ said Trapper Watkiss, almost to himself. ‘Saw one mesself a long time ago. Not much chance of seeing one again, I s’pose.’

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Eliza.

  Jake rubbed his damp arms with the linen towel, blotting the sheen of cold water from his tattoo.

  ‘Did you say something about dragons, old man?’ asked Eliza.

  Trapper looked past Eliza at Jake. ‘What do you think that is, then?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ asked Eliza, turning to look at Jake.

  Trapper Watkiss got up and walked towards the boy. He took hold of Jake’s arm and held it at an angle for Eliza to see.

  ‘What do you think this is?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking from Jake’s arm to his face. ‘What is that?’

  ‘Sign of the Thunderbird. That’s what the Natives call ’em,’ said Trapper Watkiss. ‘They all have the tattoos and the burns. Fire-breathing beasts mark their own.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Jake.

  ‘You belong to the dragon-kind now, boy,’ said Trapper. ‘They’ve marked you.’

  ‘That can’t be true,’ said Eliza, her fingers hovering close to Jake’s tattoo.

  Trapper Watkiss let Jake’s arm fall and pushed his right hand up his own sleeve, feeling around for something. He found it and pulled his hand out, bringing with it a leather thong threaded with smooth, glassy green and blue beads, some cloudy, some clear, but all quite beautiful.

  ‘They’ve all got one of those,’ said Trapper, nodding towards Jake’s tattoo. Then he pulled at the thong, so the beads rattled together, and said, ‘And they’ve all got one of these.’

  ‘Take it off,’ said Jake, the colour rising in his cheeks, his voice urgent.

  ‘Won’t,’ said Trapper, tucking the bracelet back under his cuff.

  ‘How could you possibly know that dragons exist?’ asked Eliza.

  ‘Seen ’em,’ said Trapper Watkiss. ‘Got stuck on the mountain, years ago. Got sick, and the Injuns found me. I lived with them in a settlement, high up on a plateau, overlooking a valley. Never did find it again.’

  ‘They had teepees painted with dragons,’ said Jake. ‘They had a corral for their horses and another for the dragons. They fed them fish from beautiful baskets –’

  ‘Dragons on them baskets too,’ said Trapper Watkiss.

  ‘They covered their burns with tattoos,’ Jake said, ‘drawn on by the medicine man.’

  ‘Seen it done,’ said Trapper. ‘Never caught the fancy of a dragon, though, not like you.’

  ‘Show me the bracelet again,’ said Jake.

  ‘Only if you know where we can get more like it,’ said Trapper Watkiss. ‘They’re real gems. Old man McKenzie wants prospectors mining for gems. I’m supposed to help.’

  ‘You told me Mr McKenzie sent you to find Jake and bring him home,’ said Eliza.

  ‘Mr McKenzie sent me to follow Jake to the Native settlement,’ said Trapper Watkiss.

  What Mr McKenzie wanted didn’t matter to Jake, and he wasn’t afraid of Trapper Watkiss. Jake had got this far on his own, but the old man might hold the key to getting him where he really needed to be.

  ‘Give me the bracelet,’ said Jake, ‘and I’ll try to find the settlement.’

  When Trapper Watkiss dropped the bead bracelet into Jake’s left hand, the boy felt a bolt of lightning searing through his left arm. He clutched his left wrist and gasped. Then his arm warmed and tingled with a strange sensation of lightness and of power. Jake felt that, if he only tried, he could lift a boulder as big as a house.

  He looked at the bead bracelet. Then he took hold of it by one end, in his left hand, and he raised his arm in the air. A smile spread across his face, and he started to swing the beads in small fast circles. He kept his arm straight and steady, and rotated at the wrist, just as he had seen Yellow Cloud do in his dreams. He guessed the bracelet would act as a whistle when air was pushed through the beads, piping a high clean note into the air.

  Nothing happened.

  Jake let his arm drop. He had wanted nothing more than to reach the Native settlement, to find out what had happened the night the wagon train caught fire, and to prove that dragons were real. He was terrified, but he was also desperate to look a dragon deep in the eyes and see what dwelt in its mind.

  ‘We should go home,’ said Eliza, breaking through Jake’s thoughts.<
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  ‘You can go,’ he replied. ‘I’m going to meet a dragon.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Eliza. ‘Can’t you see the old man’s mad? And if I know anything it’s that Nathan McKenzie is not to be trusted.’

  ‘That’s the pot calling the kettle black,’ said Jake. He was cross and felt foolish that swinging the bracelet had not worked for him as it had for Yellow Cloud.

  ‘I’m going back,’ said Eliza, striding deliberately away.

  ‘Foolish girl! You’ll lose yourself and I’ll be blamed,’ shouted Trapper Watkiss, stomping off after Eliza. When he reached Sarah, he called out again, ‘When I catch up to you, I’ll tan your hide, girl or not.’

  He pulled a pack out of Sarah’s pannier and disappeared into the forest. When he caught up with Eliza, she was examining a curved notch, carved into a tree trunk.

  ‘Is this one of yours?’ she asked as Trapper Watkiss appeared.

  ‘Yes,’ said Trapper. ‘Is your gun loaded?’ he asked, pointing at it. ‘And do you know how to use it?’

  ‘Yes, and yes again,’ said Eliza.

  ‘Good,’ said Trapper. ‘Look for straight trees a foot across, and, when you find one, look for my mark.’

  ‘Like Gretel,’ said Eliza, ‘I can find my way home.’

  Trapper Watkiss looked at Eliza, and she smiled at him. He was a little surprised to realize that he was smiling back. He stopped, not wanting to make a habit of it.

  ‘Take this,’ said Trapper. ‘Emergency pack. Food mostly, tinderbox, knife.’

  Eliza took the pack. ‘At least this way, Mama and Papa will know Jake’s safe,’ she said. ‘You will bring him back, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Trapper, ‘after I’ve done Mr McKenzie’s work. He’s good to me, and I won’t let him down.’

  Eliza thought she might kiss the old man on the cheek. She looked at his hairy face, remembered his smell and decided against it.