Chapter 8

People have long since forgotten, but dragons, the creatures themselves, once inhabited the Earth. They were unrivaled in power, intelligent beyond measure, but also territorial and greedy, so much so that newborns were rare. Deep within his own memory, under a name he could not remember, he could still see the only one he’d ever encountered. After its mother fell to the King and his roundtable, he had gone deep into her lair with Master Merlin. The child was at the base of the cave, hiding in a den beneath the hoard. The wizard guessed its age at a century or so. It was its eyes he remembered most clearly. The creature was afraid, no doubt, but deep within its shaky, dilated, vertical pupils, he could see his world in flames.

In the hills outside of San Rufo, Italy, a woman glided slowly down a path, unimpeded by loose stones and snaring tree roots. A soft song on her lips, birds atop nearby trees fell to silence to admire her voice as she passed.

Her song ended, and Olivia came to a stop at the edge of a small clearing. A small boy was seated alone on a rock at its center, a tree stump in front of him covered in small stones organized like chess pieces. Olivia began to approach the child; he reached across the stump and moved a rock before reaching for another closer to himself. She could hear it now, the soft conversation he seemed to be having with himself.

She reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Oliver?” The boy turned to look at her, his eyes of emerald divided at their center by a strange pupil. “Oliver, dinner is ready; come back to the cabin.”

The boy seemed to be looking through her for a moment before he found her eyes. “Mama, Michael doesn’t think we should stay here. He says someone is coming.” Olivia stared into her son's eyes as she contemplated the name he’d mentioned, Michael. Oliver was a strange child; he’d been reaching for something no one else could see ever since he’d first opened his eyes. Michael was one of the first words Oliver ever said when he was ten months old.

She had believed it to be harmless, an imaginary friend, but Oliver advanced faster than any child she’d ever heard of, and he always knew more than he should, about everyone he met, everything he saw, and heard. Now, with what happened to his father, Olivia really had questions about “Michael,” but her stew was getting cold, and this was not what she wanted to think about right now.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Ollie,” she knelt down to look him in his eyes, “no one knows where we are. No one is coming; we are safe here.” She took him firmly by the hand and gently led him back up the path to the Clarke family’s hunting cabin, maintained by Clarke sons since her great grandfather helped his own father build it.

Her father only had her before he passed, with no male heir, she believed the cabin really belonged to Oliver, it was up to her to take care of it until he could.

The kitchen was rudimentary, the scent of venison stew was far from unknown to the pair as she poured a pair of steaming bowls and sat at the table. Oliver immediately set to eating, and Olivia watched him. He was worried, it was written all over his face.

They had been here a month already, Olivia wouldn’t have chosen to make Oliver’s first experience here a stressful one, but it was unavoidable. She couldn’t take them back to Dover. Oliver’s father had given completely into drink after he was let go from work. Trying to care for a family and managing a drinking habit with money they didn’t have was more than he could handle. His stress overflowed, often, and he turned it on Olivia.

The first time he did so in front of Oliver, however, was the last. His fists halted as a warm liquid sprayed onto Olivia’s face; she looked up to find a hole in his chest, and as he fell away, that Oliver was the only other person in the room. His voice echoed at her from the memory, “Are you ok mama?” Then from across the table, “mama?” Olivia realized she was staring straight through Oliver, so she forced a smile. “I’m fine, dear.”

“Your stew is getting cold.” Oliver’s bowl was empty; she looked down to find that the steam from before was gone from her untouched meal. The stew rippled, and she realized she was crying, again, something that she’d almost never done before, not since Oliver was born, or when her father died before that, was now an almost daily occurrence. And it was her fault.

If she’d been stronger, more brave, she would have left with Oliver before she had been forced to. She made herself chuckle, trying to drown her feelings, but she saw Oliver staring at her from across the table. His eyes were discolored, white pupils drilling into her own.

“You’re sad, mama.”

“I’m…”

“Are you sad because of what I did to papa?” Olivia felt tears well up again. “No!” It came out harsher than she wanted, and she found herself too choked up to continue, too close to tears to help him understand whose fault it really was. Oliver suddenly glared at the door. Olivia swallowed hard, but before she could speak, a hollow thud echoed into the cabin. She looked towards the door, as the knock repeated, and then again.

Oliver placed himself in front of her; his normally perfect black hair was on end, his body seemed to glow, and he whispered in a voice not entirely his own, “He’s here.”