Friday Flash: Here Be Dragons

This week Chuck Wendig is back on the job, and he gave us a pretty simple and open-ended challenge: write about a dragon. He then suggested that we think outside the box, maybe do something other than the obvious fantasy story. There's another kind of dragon most of us meet sooner or later. Young Georgie conquers one sort in this story. Chuck gave us 2000 words; I used right around 1000 of them. You are welcome to the rest.

Saint Georgie and the Dragon Lady

The residents of Oakblossom Lane all knew her, and they were all scared of her. There were two or three cranky old guys who sat on their front porches and hollered, “get off my lawn!’ but they were scared of her too. The children mocked the old guys. They didn’t mock Mrs. DuMont.

“Mom says she’s ruled this street since Adam was a pup.”

“I don’t know any dogs named Adam. And anyway, dogs aren't very old, so that's not such a big deal.”

Georgie fixed Alec with a disdainful sneer. “Don’t you know anything? Adam was the first man.”

“First man on Oakblossom Lane?”

“First man anywhere ever.” Georgie tossed her head, making all her braids dance and the beads click. She’d sat for hours to have those braids done, and she was going to make full use of them. They clicked for disdain of a boy who didn't understand anything.

“Oh, that Adam,” Alec said as though he’d known all along. “If she’s been here since before Adam, who did she rule then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the animals?”

“Suppose that makes her Adam’s mom?” The children of Oakblossom Lane—a stupid name, especially for a run-down street on the wrong side of the tracks with few blossoms and no oaks—peered again through the ragged hedge that hid them from the woman in her garden. Their Sunday-school lessons had said nothing about Adam’s mom.

“Maybe,” Georgie allowed. Wouldn't Adam have died of fear of her? She peered through the branches. Mrs. DuMont was still keeping the birds away from her peas. She was also keeping the children away from the soccer ball that lay only a few feet from her in a lettuce patch.

“Well, I don’t care if she is older than Adam,” Cecile said. “Someone has to get our ball back or we’ll have to go in and do homework.”

That was a powerful argument. Everyone turned to look at Georgie. Georgie looked at Alec.

“Not me. No way,” he said. “Dad says she’s a real dragon lady. Dragons eat little kids. So I’m not going near her.”

“Guess we need a knight to ride in there and kill her” giggled Cecile, who read the sort of books that talked about dragons.

The children heard a chuckle behind them. Mr. Jones, who had earlier chased them off his lawn, which was really just a weed-patch, stood there. “I guess you kids need St. George the Dragon-Slayer.”

They looked at him, not knowing just what he was talking about and wondering if he was offering to help them.

He wasn’t. He just stood there with his arms crossed, laughing at them.

Then they thought about the name he’d offered. Saint George. They all turned to look at Georgie again.

“I guess it has to be you,” Jamal said. Everyone nodded.

Georgie knew when she was beaten. Six second-graders told her in four languages that it was her job. She took one last look through the hedge and stood up.

“If even the grown-ups are scared of her,” she said, looking at Mr. Jones, “I don’t know how you expect me to beat her. But,” she tossed those braids again and the music of the beads gave her courage, “I will. You’ll see.”

Little chin thrust forward, and with a few leaves from the hedge still clinging to her hair, Georgie marched out of Jamal’s garden and around to the sidewalk. No one followed her to carry her shield or cheer her as she went into battle against the dragon.

“Figures,” she muttered. Leave it all to her, as usual. Whoever Saint George was, he'd probably had to go alone too. Well, whatever Alec said, she didn’t believe the Dragon Lady would eat her. Probably not, anyway.

Georgie stood on the walk in front of Mrs. DuMont’s house and waited to stop shaking. She shook worse the longer she stood there, so in the end she ignored her fear and marched up the walk and around to the side of the house. Drat Jamal, anyway. If he didn’t kick the ball so hard, it wouldn’t be in Mrs. DuMont’s lettuce patch. He should have come for it, but he was chicken, as always.

Georgie walked around the corner of the house and froze. Close up the dragon lady looked about ten feet tall. She was scowling, and she was looking right at Georgie as though contemplating if she'd be better with BBQ sauce or curry.

“What do you want?” As if she didn’t know. Georgie saw her glance at the soccer ball. Why hadn’t she at least removed it from the lettuce?

“Please, ma’am, we’d like our soccer ball, please.” Georgie wanted to be as polite as she could be. Maybe dragons didn’t eat polite children.

It didn’t help. “Hmph. I don’t see any ‘we.’ Just one skinny little girl.”

“No, ma’am. They sent me.”

Snort. “So you want your soccer ball.”

Georgie nodded.

“It’s sitting on my lettuce.”

Georgie nodded again, and took a step toward the ball.

“What are you going to do about my lettuce?”

Georgie looked closer. Several lettuce plants looked a bit squashed, and there were broken leaves. She didn’t know anything about gardens. Could you fix a broken leaf?

“I could put a band-aid on it and kiss it to make it better.”

The dragon lady made a face. In fact, her face seemed to be twitching. When she spoke, her voice was a bit strangled. “Do you think that will fix it?”

“It’s what Mama does when I skin my knee.” Georgie stuck out her leg where a pair of band-aids crossed over a scrape. “It works. If it’s really bad,” she confided, “Mama gives me ice cream. That always works. Can lettuces eat ice cream?”

“Perhaps we should skip the ice cream. I doubt lettuce plants will appreciate it.” Mrs. DuMont’s face was twitching again, and she seemed to be choking on something.

“Do you have a band-aid?” Georgie stuck to the point. She also boldly reached and picked up the ball, and bent down to kiss the injured plant.

Mrs. DuMont gave up the battle and smiled. Georgie almost dropped the ball back on the lettuce, she was so surprised. The dragon lady could smile?

Then the unthinkable happened.

Mrs. DuMont laughed.

And on the other side of the hedge, six second-graders gasped in wonder. St. Georgie the Dragon Slayer had triumphed.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016

Flash Fiction Friday: The Third Birch

Hopefully, next week I'll be back to struggling with the Wendig challenges, as this is the final week of the round-robin competition he set up for February. In the meantime, I went on-line and found a random title for this week's story.  I present, in 950 words...

The Third Birch

The Moss children played in the birch grove almost every day. The three oldest liked to climb the trees, or play tag or hide-and-seek among the smooth white trunks. Amelia, the youngest, thought of the grove as more than a place to play, though no one knew that, because no one paid her much attention most days. She was just “the baby,” and considered by her older siblings to be too young to keep up in their games, even if she could have run. They showered her with love and attention when they thought of it, and forgot about her when they ran off to play their games.

So Amelia sat under the third birch to the left of the path, the one none of them could climb because it had no branches for a long way up. Some catastrophe had stripped it long ago. John tried to shin up it sometimes, but even he couldn’t do it. Sarah and Timmy didn’t even try, because if John couldn’t climb something, there wasn’t any point in them attempting it. So they left the third birch to Amelia, and she left them to their games.

Amelia was something of an after-thought, three years younger than Timmy. The other three had come along one right after the other, only 16 or 18 months between. So naturally they considered her the baby, and alternately cossetted and ignored her, as older siblings do, the more so because she couldn’t run and climb as they did.

Amelia, at age 6, still understood many things the older kids had forgotten. She understood the sound the breeze made in the top of her tree, and she understood what the rabbits were saying when they came and wiggled their noses at her. They never came to the other children, because they were never still. Rabbits liked children who sat still, and Amelia, who had a twisted foot that kept her from running well, sat still far more often than any of the other children.

One spring afternoon she sat with her back to the tree, admiring the grove, and feeling loved and comforted by her smooth-barked friends. He brothers and sister were playing tag, and she watched with a little smile. Some days Amelia hated not being able to run as fast or walk as far as the others. Some days she hated being left out. But on this day, she didn’t mind. She was thinking.

Other children had trouble keeping secrets. They chattered constantly, so words came out without their willing it. Amelia, in learning to keep still while the others ran about, had also learned to keep quiet. She had no end of secrets, secrets no one else might think were valuable, but which she knew to be the secret of joy.

One of Amelia’s secrets was a mother fox and her kits. They denned under the fence post a yard or two from her tree, and she sat there so often, and so quietly, that the foxes had stopped worrying about her. When the others ran off to the far end of the birch grove, the mama fox came out, and today, three fuzzy kits came out after her, brand new and wobbly on their little legs. They didn’t walk even as well as Amelia did. They wobbled about and played in the sun on the soft, new grass, until a shadow overhead warned of a hawk, and then the mama fox shooed the kits back into the den, following them down the hole in the ground. And Amelia sat and hugged her secret to herself and smiled.

She was still smiling when the others came back.

“What are you so happy about?” Sarah asked. Sarah never did believe that Amelia could actually be happy. Sarah was so full of energy that sitting still wasn’t even a possibility. How could Amelia be happy when she couldn’t run about?

“Nothing,” Amelia lied. “It’s a nice day. Who won the game?” She could always distract them by asking about their games. The question started Timmy and John to arguing. Each thought he had won, but Sarah finally told them she had. Amelia kept smiling, because she knew that she had won.

Another day, Amelia sat under her birch while a gentle rain fell. The others had gone running for the house when the rain started,
and forgotten her. She could have gotten up and walked home, and she knew she should have. But the rain wasn’t very wet, and she liked the way it shone on the trees. It turned the white of their trunks whiter, and made the black scars blacker, and that was so beautiful it almost hurt. That was another secret.

But secrets ended on the last day of school. The others ran ahead to change clothes and then go play in the birch grove. Amelia, who had now finished her first year of school and knew a great deal more than she had a year before, including that her school clothes were now her play clothes, went straight to the birch grove and her tree.

The farmer who owned the grove was there, with his three grown sons. And the trees either side of the path lay dying on the ground. The farmer had decided the path needed to be widened so he could take a wagon through, but Amelia didn’t know that. She knew only that her best friend was dead, and she flung herself on its smooth, white body, weeping. The farmer couldn’t dislodge her, nor could his sons, and they stood about scratching their heads and wondering what to do next.

When her brothers and sisters came, Amelia lay on the slaughtered birch, and neither moved nor spoke.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015

Cheap thrills, author style

Today I got the biggest thrill of the last several months.  A grade-schooler recognized me in the grocery store and told her mom, "She writes the Ninja Librarian book!"

Yup, my first groupie.  First time anyone has spotted me as a writer.  Not the Library Lady.  Not the PTA lady.  The one who writes the Ninja Librarian.

Okay, I'm easily wowed.   The kid attends my local grade school, and I read to her class last spring.  Still.  Wow.

I was still glowing from that one when I stopped by a friend's house, and one of the many kids around there (another from that same class) started telling everyone how I'd come to his class and read two chapters of my book.  Finally he looked at me and said, "You're an author."

For just a moment I was taken aback.  It felt. . . like cheating or something.  Then I got a big stupid grin and told him, "Yup.  I am."

This kind of thing is exciting for me, new as I am to being published.  But it also made me think.  Having people identify me as an author means I need to be an author.  Every day.  Even when I don't much want to write, or think I have no inspiration.

Because that's what authors do, and I don't want to make liars of those kids.