The Dragon Seeks (A Dragon With Fur Book 2) Read online

  The Dragon Seeks: A Dragon With Fur book # 2

  by A. J. Chaudhury

  Copyright © 2017 Akhoy Jyoti Chaudhury

  All rights reserved

  About the author: I am a young author hailing from Assam, India. Writing has been the only constant in my life and I hope to make it big one day. You can visit my blog http://ajchaudhury.wordpress.com/ where I often interview indie authors.

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  Special thanks to Katy, Deborah and C. J. for help with the editing.

  It was noon.

  Vivek was alone in his room, staring at his legs which refused to support his weight. Every time he tried to stand up, splitting pain would erupt below his knees. He hated his legs. Why should they be so weak?

  He remembered well the night when he had had the fall. It was the Night of Duel in Werewolf culture. The moon had been brightest and every young male werewolf had participated in the event. Two werewolves were supposed to choose each other and fight till one surrendered. The other werewolves would cheer as the two fighters kicked and boxed each other— in human form, not wolf. Dori had been present amongst the spectators and Vivek had intended to impress her, maybe even ask for her hand if he won. The fighters were allowed to hit each other wherever they wished, except the groin. Vivek had chosen Mejanta, a werewolf that lived in the woods near the village of Bindi. He would have preferred fighting on the ground, but Mejanta challenged him to fight high up on a tree. He should have known Mejanta was good at climbing trees.

  One time Vivek had landed a kick on Mejanta’s chest and he had fallen off the branch and landed on his back on the ground. Vivek had feared the werewolf would break his spine, but Mejanta had gotten up with a groan and climbed back up the tree. And when Mejanta kicked Vivek in a similar way, he fell down and broke his legs. For a brief moment Vivek, eyes flooded with tears of pain, had met Dori’s eyes and he felt so ashamed.

  Vivek knew well the cause of his weakness— his mother. She was a human. A weakling. Why his dead father had married her only the gods knew. Not to say she didn’t have her virtues. She was a kind woman with a heart of gold, although Vivek could seldom converse normally with her after his accident, well knowing that if she had been a werewolf he would have easily recovered from the fall and continued with the fight, maybe even defeated Mejanta.

  Vivek snapped out of his thoughts as his mother came into the room, a grim expression carved on her face.

  And she just stared at him.

  “What?” Vivek asked, not getting her odd behaviour.

  “You want to get well?”

  Vivek let out a sarcastic laugh. Now what sort of a question was that?

  He didn’t reply.

  “You want to get well, or not?” his mother asked again. Vivek got irritated at her question.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” he said through gritted teeth.

  “I am done tending to you.”

  “Then don’t tend,” Vivek said. Let me be miserable.

  “To be precise, I am done with your behaviour.”

  “You don’t know how it feels like to lie atop a bed day in and day out,” Vivek said, allowing some heat into his tone. He didn’t want to be rude, but he couldn’t help it.

  “But I do,” his mother said and smiled for the first time after entering the room.

  “You have broken your legs before?”

  “Yes, before you were even a thought,” his mother replied. She came over and sat on the side of his bed. Vivek wondered if his mother was saying so to console him.

  “Look Vivek,” his mother said very kindly. “I know how it feels like not to be able to stand on your feet and walk or run. I had a very similar fracture as yours, just below the knee. Initially I was as cranky as you, but as the days passed I began seeing just how hard your father was working to keep things going. Some people said I would never be able to walk properly. Then one day your father suggested a very special Werewolf medicine to mend my leg.”

  “And did it work?” Vivek asked, filled with curiosity. He was seeing a flicker of hope here.

  His mother looked at him for a moment before answering.

  “Yes, it did.”

  “Do you know what the medicine is?”

  “Yes—”

  “Then why haven’t you brought that medicine for me!” Vivek asked. He was furious with his mother. If she knew of a medicine that could heal him, why had she bothered slaving away day and night with common treatments that were of little use? Was she just pretending to care a lot for him?

  “Listen to me first, Vivek!” His mother said angrily with a look of exasperation. “Your father could have suggested me that medicine when I first got injured, but he didn’t. Why? Because the medicine could have killed me, and it nearly did!”

  Vivek just stared at his mother.

  “It’s been months since your fracture,” his mother continued, “and you aren’t getting better at all. I can’t see your spirits break down any further. So I have come to ask you if you want that special medicine, I’ll go begging to your father’s family if you do. But remember, it can poison your leg if anything goes wrong and in the worst case it might…”

  His mother sobbed.

  Vivek’s lips quivered. Finally here was something that could enable him to stand on his feet, but should he use it when it might take his life? Vivek felt weak. He didn’t want to make the decision at all. He didn’t want to die at any cost, and he wished if his mother had never told him about the medicine in the first place. But he was dying already, wasn’t he? In the past few days he was beginning to have suicidal thoughts and the new infection that had caught his fractured legs didn’t help at all. The special medicine— whatever it was— was the only choice he had. He took in a deep breath.

  “Yes mother,” he said with so much hesitation that he could barely hear his own voice. “I want the medicine.”

  Night fell, and Vivek waited on. His mother had gone in the afternoon to meet the Werewolves. She had locked the door from outside as she usually did when going out, and that made him feel claustrophobic. Vivek could only wonder how the Werewolves might be treating his mother.

  A tightness in his belly informed him about an urge to pee. His mother had kept a metal container near his feet on the bed and it was already half-full with urine. Even reaching out to it hurt a lot and Vivek decided it was best to control his bladder for the moment.

  Then he heard the main door creak open.

  “Mother, is that you?” Vivek asked aloud.

  A moment of silence followed.

  “Yes,” his mother’s tired voice said, “it’s me.”

  Vivek heard her shuffling about for a moment and then she entered his room with a candle.

  She was carrying a small rabbit-skin bag. Her face looked haggard in the pale yellow light of the candle that she placed on the table.

  “Took you a long time,” Vivek said.

  “The first werewolf I met was a total moron,” his mother said, “he kept refusing to take me to his clan for a long time, and when he did the werewolves discovered that they didn’t have the medicine.”

  “So you went for nothing?” Vivek said. He experienced a strange mix of emotions. A part of him was gleeful that he wouldn’t need to apply the possibly poisonous medicine on himself, while the other part lamented his slim chances of ever being able to stand up again.

  “The leader of the clan was kind enough to ask some of the werewolves to find the herbs needed to prepare the medicine. Then he ground everything and mixed them in spe
cific proportions and gave the medicine to me in this bag.”

  Vivek looked at the bag. What was in it? His death or his cure?

  “Listen Vivek,” his mother said, apparently noticing the uncertain look on his face, “if you don’t want to apply it, I’ll just throw it away.”

  “Did they tell you how to apply it on the fractures?” Vivek asked instead.

  His mother pursed her lips and nodded, her eyes swimming in tears.

  “Then apply it,” Vivek said, not meeting her eyes.

  “You haven’t eaten anything since noon—”

  “Doesn’t matter, please get along it.”

  “You’ll pass out when I apply the medicine. You will need the energy.”

  “Fine,” Vivek said with a grimace. He was getting impatient and wanted be done with the medicine as fast as possible. Otherwise he feared he might lose the nerves to have the medicine applied on him and risk possible death. Keeping the rabbit skin bag on the table near his bed, his mother went to the kitchen. After sometime she returned with a hot bowl of rice. Vivek shoved the food into his mouth as fast as he could, although it seemed to give him burns on the inside and washed it down with a glass of water. Then his mother began making preparations for applying the medicine.

  She brought a large square sheet of cloth.

  “Can you raise your legs for a moment?” she said.

  Vivek did so. It was painful, but the excitement made him manage it. Then she brought a roll of cloth.

  “What’s that for?” Vivek asked.

  “To hold the medicine,” his mother replied, a grim seriousness reflecting in her eyes. Vivek decided not to question her further. She unrolled the cloth on the table that had the rabbit-skin bag. Next, she opened the bag and carefully laid out the contents— an orange gooey paste— along the length of the cloth. Then she pushed the table as close to Vivek’s bed as possible. Vivek noticed she avoided any contact of the paste with her hands. She then put some pillows under his broken legs so that they were elevated. The position was painful.

  His mother looked at him.

  “Are you ready, son?”

  Vivek swallowed bile and nodded.

  His mother wrapped the cloth with the paste around his broken legs. The moment the paste touched his skin a strange sort of warmth engulfed his legs. Vivek wondered why his mother had said the medicine could kill him. It was just a paste, wasn’t it? Just over his skin, not under. He failed to see how it could poison him.

  But as the moments passed, the warm sensation became a burning sensation and soon he felt like his leg was on fire.

  “It’s hurting,” he told his mother through gritted teeth.

  “It’s bound to,” his mother said. “Feels like burning, right? I’ll water it after some time. Hold on.”

  Only now Vivek repented not taking a piss earlier. His bladder felt like bursting but if he made any attempt to move the paste might leak out trough gaps in the cloth, so he held it.

  Pain unlike any he had ever experienced engulfed his legs and Vivek sweated away like a cube of ice in the summer sun. Only this was winter.

  Stars appeared in his vision and he found it difficult to breathe, feeling as though he was choking.

  “Take… it… off, mother!” Vivek begged as he slipped into the realm of unconsciousness. The last thing he knew of was his bladder relieving.

  ***

  Amit could only curse himself for his decision to accompany Mortugal and the two vampires to Dragonland, even as he sat behind Ritika atop Mortugal’s back and struggled to not incite certain thoughts in his mind. The dragon was flying very slowly, such that Amit thought it was not very different from riding a horse— one that was galloping thousands of feet high up among the clouds.

  While Dragonland was their ultimate destination, it was to Vampire country that they were presently headed. After Mortugal had proclaimed that they needed to travel to Dragonland, Ritika’s mother had suggested him to take a look at the scroll.

  “Well, show it to me,” the dragon had said, “though I don’t even remember if I learnt to read Vampree.”

  And Ruponi produced the scroll, which she had somehow managed to hide from the Bnomes earlier. Mortugal sat down and Ruponi placed the scroll on the grass just under his head, and the dragon peered down at the pointy shapes.

  “Hmmm…” Mortugal said after sometime.

  “Can you read it?” Amit asked.

  “Not a single word,” said Mortugal in his raspy voice. “I don’t think I ever learnt Vampree in my life before my sleep. But I think I know who wrote this.”

  “You do?” Amit asked, baffled. He didn’t understand why Mortugal could remember certain aspects of his old life easily, while other aspects he didn’t remember at all.

  “This has to be Norhul’s handwriting,” said the dragon.

  “Now who’s Norhul?”

  “A great friend of mine and a fellow dragon. Notice the writing’s somewhat slanted, with some curly portions here and there? That was exactly how Norhul wrote.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Ritika, the disbelief in her tone obvious.

  “Quite,” said Mortugal. “Looking at this scroll, I remember a certain instance when I was sitting near him, watching him write something in Vampree.”

  Amit exchanged looks with Ritika and her mother. He couldn’t help but linger his gaze on Ritika for just a moment longer.

  “So where did you say you found this scroll?” Mortugal asked.

  “Mother found it buried in our garden,” said Ritika.

  “That’s curious,” said Mortugal. “Why would a scroll written about me by another dragon be in Vampire land?”

  “Because it’s written in Vampire tongue?” Amit said. He thought it was obvious. “And you are only speculating that your friend wrote it, aren’t you?”

  Mortugal closed his eyes and frowned. He seemed to be straining his memory. He gave up after a moment, opening his eyes with some exasperation.

  “I don’t blame you for not trusting my memory,” he said, “it has gone bonkers after my sleep. No wonder it is advised to not sleep a lot. But believe me, if I am sure about anything, then it is that my friend Norhul wrote this scroll.”

  “So what do you suggest we do?” Ruponi asked. “Travel to Dragonland?”

  “It’s in Dragonland that we’ll find the answers as to how I can end the war,” said Mortugal. “And we should ultimately go there. But this scroll has piqued my curiosity and my heart tells me to go to Vampire country and take a good look there. For all I know there might be other scrolls just awaiting us there.”

  Enough with scrolls, Amit thought. He decided he had had enough with the matter and it was best to step out of it now.

  “Well, that’s for you to decide then,” he said. “I hope you’ll succeed in ending the war. But first, you will fly me back to my village, right?”

  Both Ritika and her mother looked at him with shocked faces. But they didn’t say anything. They probably knew Amit had done more than enough. As for Mortugal, the words took some time to sink into his head, but when they did the dragon looked at Amit with a frown.

  “You want to return to your village?” he asked Amit, who nodded. He had so many things waiting back in his village. And then he remembered— he had put Mayesha’s pigeon in the cage. While there were a few grains in it, it was unlikely to last Ritu long. It would take hours to get back to Bindi and Amit could only pray that the bird would survive without food and water.

  “And I want to return right now,” Amit told Mortugal in an urgent tone. “I’ve got something important to do there.”

  Mortugal exhaled.

  “Well, hop onto my back then. I’ll fly you back to your village. But before that take a good look around you. These lands so far away, don’t you feel like it was your destiny to come here? Why should you be the one to awaken me? If I am special then you are definitely ten times as much special as me. Maybe the gods meant you to end the war, instead of me.”

>   “You don’t understand,” Amit said, getting impatient. “I’ve got things waiting for me back home.”

  “Things that are greater than ending a war?”

  Well, he had his great woodcutter life back home. It was a monotonous life at best, but Amit had got used to it. And there was Ritu.

  “My pigeon, I put him in a cage and he’ll die if I don’t return.”

  “Is that a pigeon?” said Ritika, pointing at the sky. Amit looked up. There was in fact a pigeon flying in the sky. A white one, so much like Ritu.

  But not Ritu.

  And then the bird descended down and soon it was clear the pigeon was coming towards them. Before long, the bird landed on the shoulder of an astonished Amit.

  It was Ritu.

  There was a letter tied to Ritu’s leg. Amit unfolded it and read. The handwriting was very rough, as if written in a hurry.

  Amit,

  I am sorry, but I must tell you the truth.

  I am not the girl you met at the fair. Mayesha, isn’t that her name? I was at the fair too, watching from a short distance as the two of you talked. I liked you, I don’t know why. Then I saw Mayesha giving you the pigeon and an idea struck me. I know magic, and I cast a spell on the pigeon and became its master. When you sent your first letter to Mayesha, it was me to whom the pigeon brought the letter. All these days you have been corresponding with me.

  Then today I saw you. From what I gather you are helping the Vampires. I have nothing against them myself, but it is necessary for my father that the war goes on between the Vampires and the Werewolves. He cannot continue to exist without their hatred. If you continue helping the Vampires then my father is bound to hurt you. I am not warning you, but it’s just that I care for you. Return to your home and let the war be as it is.

  And who was that dragon you were riding? His eyes were familiar, like I have known him before, in a different age and in a different form.

  I am sorry for everything. You can return the pigeon to Mayesha, though I think she married about a month ago. It wasn’t easy for Ritu to break out of the cage even with the help of my magic. But I have healed him.