If I Could Tell It

Cadbury Castle, Britain, 645

I looked down at myself as I stood naked in the center of my room. I suppose I was fairly tall for my age, just not as tall as I wanted to be. I was athletic, but I did not have defined muscles in my stomach and arms like Lancelot did. My skin was too pale, and it looked off with the golden color of my hair. My eyes were a silvery gray, like that of my mother. I think my eyes were my favorite feature of myself.

I had snuck into Kay’s chambers last night and asked him if I could join him on his journey to defeat the dragon. He had squinted his eyes at me and shrugged his shoulders like why not? Kay was that kind of person, the why not? kind of person. Except when he was mean to Lancelot and I on occasion, then he was very mean. Technically I outranked him by a lot because I was the son of the king and heir to the high throne of Britain. I did not like ranks though, so I really never used them to push people around. After all, I had never done anything to receive my rank: I was just born.

He had told me to wear my most protective armor and bring the sharpest thing I could find. It was before the sun had even risen so Austin had not come to help me get ready yet. No one was going to know that I had even left with Kay.

I picked some brown leather trousers from my wardrobe and pulled them over a pair of breeches. I found my sturdier plates in the bottom of my trunk by the door. I had never put on my armor by myself before, and it was a bit trickier than I expected. I had to use my teeth to grip one of the straps and pull with my hand on the other to fasten the plates properly. It took me about twenty minutes to get all of it on my body. I grabbed my hunting sword from the table; after all, it was the sharpest thing I had. I also tucked a little leather sack of silvers into the waistband of my trousers, underneath my tunic. I felt it cold against my skin.

After I had fastened all of the things I was bringing onto my body, I tied a thick rope around the bedpost and pulled it out the window. Then I carefully began to lower myself down the stone wall to the public window below. Thankfully I made it to the glassless window opening and pulled myself into the hallway. This whole debacle of getting from one window to another was, of course, to avoid being seen by the guards outside my room and to avoid being heard by my parents whose chambers were down the hall from my room.

Kay was waiting for me at the end of the hall with his arms crossed over his chest.

“What took you so long?” He asked me, irritated.

I shook my head, as if to say I know not. I thought I had gotten ready quite quickly. After all, I had met Kay before sunrise as he had requested.

“Come on,” he said, dropping the subject and turning and beginning on a brisk pace down the hall, down six flights of stairs on the servant’s stairwell, and out to the lesser used stables on the north side so nobody would see us leaving.

He had already gotten someone to prepare two horses for us with leather saddles and reins. He untied them from the posts they were attached to and handed me the reins to the brown one with white patches.

“Are you going to take a spear or a lance?” I asked him as we began to walk the horses out to the dusty road that lead to Meredith behind the north wall of the palace.

“Arthur, we are not going to actually kill the dragon,” he said condescendingly.

We mounted, and set off on the trail at an easy trot. “We are not?”

“Of course not,” he said shaking his head. “I doubt there even is an actual dragon. Some idiots probably made it up to get their village more attention.”

“Then why are we going?” I asked, looking at him carefully.

Kay was three years older than me, fifteen. He had chestnut brown hair that reached just below his ears and a burn scar on his left cheek. He was tall and lean, and sometimes this made his movements seem a little awkward. He had sort of an arrogant aura about him, as if he owned the world. It was false though, I could tell. Underneath it lay a layer of insecurity, uncertainty, and fear of the unknown.

That was probably why he always went on these “adventures” on which nothing ever actually happened. He wanted to prove himself; he wanted to show that he had some worth besides the fact that his father, Sir Halpin, was of noble blood. I suppose he and I had that in common, both of us wanted to prove our worth. Both of us had highly respected fathers. The difference was that people respected Kay’s father because he was a war hero and an honorable man. They respected my father purely out of fear.

“Because sometimes we do things so people can feel safe,” Kay answered me. “If we tell the people of Meredith that we have slayed the dragon then they will no longer be afraid to go out into the forest.”

“How do we make them believe that we actually did it if there really is no dragon?” I asked him. We passed by a very peculiar looking charred tree and I stopped the conversation for a second to gaze at it. “We will have no evidence.”

“The people are uncivilized faerie folk,” Kay said. “They will believe anything we tell them. Especially their future king.”

Oh yes. That.

The faerie folk were one of the tribes that roamed Britain before the Romans and the Christians came. They had dark features, and all of them were relatively small and short. The people of the New Ways sort of thought they were above them though. It was not that they were stupid or uncivilized or anything, they just did not believe the same way as us so they were thought of as lower. The faerie folk were not a problem, however, they were very compliant really, they lived in the villages they were told to live in and did the things they were told to do and in return they received protection and also were allowed to, you know, live.

“I guess.”

We did not talk much after that. It was more of just things like Kay telling me to watch out for a branch that I was about to run into. About a half hour later, we passed another charred tree like the one we had seen before. We slowed our horses a little to look at it this time. It was strange because it did not look like a lightning strike but rather more like someone had held up several torches to the tree and let it catch fire.

The ride to Meredith at a mild trot was generally about an hour long. Their village was fairly close to Camelot and Cadbury castle, so it was a popular place for the knighten to travel to. Or used to travel to I suppose. Now they were all away fighting in that ridiculous war. About fifty minutes into the journey, we began to see more of the charred trees, oftentimes grouped together in clusters as if someone had taken a gigantic torch and set fire to them all at once. We also began to see strange marks on the trees. The marks looked like someone had carved lines into the trees with a dull knife, ragged and uneven. The marks bothered me; they were so imperfect yet still in lines that looked like they were supposed to be.

Kay held his hand up, and we both stopped and dismounted, holding the reins in our hands. The horses stamped nervously as if they knew something but did not know how to tell us.

“What is going on?” I asked, looking around. The forest looked completely normal aside from the marked and charred trees.

“I know not…” Kay trailed off, gauging his surroundings the same way I was doing.

He drew his sword, and I swallowed and copied him.

I had never been in a situation where I had had to use my sword in a real way. It was always during training or Lancelot and I just being stupid. I was not quite sure if the skills I so frequently practiced would really be up to par if it came down to it.

It was so silent, my ears felt like they had stopped working. The forest was not supposed to be silent. The forest was supposed to be filled with birds and animals that all made noise. The silence made it seem afraid. But afraid of what?

Afraid of that.

Because a huge reptilian creature had risen up behind us. Kay and I turned around slowly. My heart was beating so fast and loud I thought that Kay could hear it.

“I thought you said that there was no dragon,” I whispered to him.

Kay was frozen in fear so he did not answer.

“Kay, what do we do?” Kay shook his head because he did not know and was probably too afraid to move.

I had never seen a dragon before that day, so I was not so sure what I was to expect. I suppose I expected a large green lizard with wings, sort of like an alligator. The dragon that stood before me now was much more terrifying.

The scales were a metallic black that almost had a silvery tint to them. It had sharp white claws that dug into the forest floor and had stained remnants of blood on them. It had a drooping chest and belly that dragged on the ground, but it still looked like a sheer mass of pure muscle. A long swooping neck came off of the thick body up to a large horrific head. The eyes of the dragon were pure white like pearls, and it had an extended snout with smoke rising out of the nostrils. The mouth was the most terrifying though, by far. The white teeth were long, sharp, and jagged. They were also smeared with blood, and out of the side of the mouth was a bloody human leg. That was the worst part. It was not only the most terrible creature I had ever seen, but there was now proof that there was no chance that it was friendly. It was a demon.

The moment that Kay and I and the dragon all regarded each other seemed to be the longest moment of my life. Which I suppose was probably good because it was likely to be my last moment before the dragon killed us. My blood rushing in my ears and my heart pounding in my chest were the only sounds I could hear. It was not a matter of if the dragon was going to kill me, it was a matter of how long the dragon took to kill me.

I looked at Kay. But Kay was no longer next to me. He was gone. I spun in a circle, searching for him. I saw a smear in the dirt where Kay had been. He must have run off to hide. Leaving me alone. With the focus of the dragon completely on me. That was when my body stopped responding to my own thoughts, the thoughts that I was thinking to run, to flee. To get to safety.

Instead, I ran straight at the dragon with my sword drawn, having no clue about what I was doing. It was like my movements were being instructed by a greater force, something that had always been there but had never been used.

The huge claw of the dragon rose up to smack me to my death, but I blocked it. Perfectly. I had never done that before. I did not even think about what I was doing, it just happened. My sword left a reasonable bloody gash in the foot of the dragon. I continued on my rampage toward the dragon and it spewed fire at me. I rolled to avoid it and used my forward momentum to get to my feet and then jumped in order to not be hit by the spiny black tail that lashed out.

I noticed a pattern in the strikes of the dragon: claw, fire, tail, tail, fire, claw. Block, roll, jump, jump, roll block. It clawed at me twice and it did two tail spins in a row, but it never blew fire twice in a row. I figured this was probably because it took more effort for it to generate fire, so it was able to do it less often. I figured my best shot at killing the thing, or at least injuring it, was to stab it in the mouth, as the rest of the body of the dragon was covered in hard scales that worked as armor. This was actually good because fire was the least used attack; the teeth, however, could be an issue.

I blocked a bat from the claw and jumped and grabbed a scale that had began to come loose from the body. I slid my sword into my belt. and I held on to it and tucked myself against the scales of the dragon to avoid the fire. It worked, and I began to climb sideways across the scales of the dragon toward the neck like a leech. It stamped around and tried to shake me off, but my grip was iron strong. It roared in frustration. I continued climbing until I was hanging on to the neck, just below the head. Somehow I was not afraid anymore. It was almost natural, as if I was born to kill dragons, and the instructions on how to do it were written on the backs of my eyelids.

I drew my sword with my right hand while holding onto a loose scale with my left and desperately trying to find footholds with my feet. I sturdied myself for a second and then tried to plunge my sword into the pink of the mouth of the creature while still avoiding the teeth. Blood gushed out onto my arm, and I pulled my sword back out. I noticed that the scale I was using as a handhold was beginning to separate from the skin beneath the armor. I stabbed my hunting sword there next, into the soft pink flesh; it felt like cutting into warm meat. The blood from the neck drenched me, and I jumped the seven feet back down to the ground, cringing at the impact, and ran what I considered was a safe distance away from the now lumbering and blood gushing creature.

Blood wet the ground, and my clothes, and seemingly everything around me. My surroundings were drenched in the warm scarlet liquid. The dragon fell to the ground from the loss of blood. The head fell onto the leafy ground with a thunk, and I slit the throat quickly as not to make the creature suffer.

I stared at the dead dragon silently. My racing heart slowly began to calm itself. I let my breath out that I had not even realized I had been holding. I stumbled back and fell to the ground, tiredness overtook me, and also guilt. The adrenaline of battle I had been feeling trickled out of my system. My nose burned with the scent of blood and my own sweat. The coolness of the fresh October air flooded my system and I breathed deeply.

Yes, I felt bad about killing the dragon. However, not as bad as you might think. The dragon had been killing innocent people for no inherent reason other than the fact that it had developed the taste for human flesh instead of wild deer or other forest animals that I assumed dragons might eat. I was saving lives by killing that dragon. It was one life compared to possibly hundreds. The people in Meredith did not know how to defend themselves; the entire village could have been destroyed. Burned to ashes and bones by this mighty creature I had slain.

“Arthur…” Kay came out from behind a tree that he must have been hiding behind.

I glared at him. My first feeling toward him was anger. He left me to die. He ran off in hopes that the dragon would kill me instead of him. He did not even try to help me or even make an effort to slay the dragon and save the people that he had supposedly set off to save. He was a coward.

“Look I…” He started and then trailed off, having a sudden interest in the ground.

I shook my head at him and clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth loudly to call for the horses. Surprisingly enough, they came. Even they were more loyal than Kay.

Before I mounted mine, I ripped one of the black scales off of the dragon. It fit in the palm of my hand and looked almost like a piece of obsidian. Then I mounted and kicked the flank of the horse, setting off at a gallop in the direction of Meredith.

Colorado Springs, America, 2008

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked Ty as we stood at the chicken wire fence at the far end of the graveyard near his neighborhood.

“Yeah, duh Arthur,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I’ve done it thousands of times.”

It was highly unlikely that he had done it thousands of times considering that he was only thirteen years old and there were only about three hundred and sixty-five days in a year. He also probably could not have done it until he was six years old, which only left seven years. That was only about twenty-five hundred days that he could have possibly done it and he was implying that he had done it at least two thousand times. That meant that he was doing it at least four out of every five days, and that was highly unlikely considering that he had things like school and football practice almost every day. However, I did not feel that Ty would properly appreciate my logic against why he could not have done it thousands of times, so I just went along with the inference that it was okay to do because Ty had done it thousands of times.

We scaled the fence and jumped down onto the perfectly trimmed green grass of the graveyard. The soil sunk softly underneath our sneakers and I cringed: we were going to leave footprints.

“Relax,” Ty commanded me. “Nobody will be here on a Saturday.”

I looked around the cemetery nervously. It was dead silent. Excuse the pun. Various tombstones marked the ground where different people laid. Toward the center of the place was a smallish concrete building with bright flower beds around it. That was our destination. We were going to sneak inside the the office of the Gravedigger and take his keys. Why? I was not really sure. Bragging rights, I suppose.

It was easy enough to get to the building. We just walked across the grass to the nearest sidewalk and then traveled down the sidewalk till we reached it. We sidled up against the wall behind the flowerbeds and listened for what was going on inside. We did not hear anything at first, and then we heard off-tune whistling.

“That’s the guy,” Ty said. He nodded, and we began to creep around the side of the building until we reached a window with the blinds halfway pulled down.

We crouched beneath the windowsill and peaked through the bottom of the window, being careful not to be seen.

The Gravedigger was a smallish, skinny man in ripped overalls and a dirt stained long sleeved white shirt. He had a long scraggly brown beard and the same scraggly brown hair on his head. The keys that we were after were jangling on his belt. He sat down in a wooden chair at a computer desk and started scrolling through something. He continued to whistle badly.

“Ready?” Ty stood up and patted my shoulder. I shrugged and stood up with him.

I followed Ty around to the back of the building where he unlocked the back door with a key he had stolen a couple weeks ago.

We crept into the building into a black and white tiled laundry room of sorts. There was a washing machine turning loudly. If you ask me, the Gravedigger needed to wash his own clothes. Ty shut the door softly behind us, and we stood on either side of the doorframe leading into the main office where the Gravedigger was.

Ty smiled manically at me and raised his eyebrows. I closed my eyes for a second and hoped we did not get caught. Mr. and Mrs. Ector would not be pleased if they found their foster son arrested for breaking into a graveyard. Ty held up one finger, then two, then three, and then he ran out into the room yelling.

“I’M A ZOMBIE!!!” He yelled. I let my head fall into my hands. Really Ty? I stayed behind the laundry room door, listening carefully through the wall.

“AAAHHHH!!!” I heard the Gravedigger yell. “You son of a gun, little pest!!!”

Obviously, Ty had been here before because the Gravedigger recognized him.

“I will take these!” Ty said. I was guessing he was reaching for his keys.

“No, you will not, you little punk!” Gravedigger yelled at him. I heard the sound of metal on metal and a harsh click.

Then I burst through the door into the main office of the room to see Gravedigger aiming a hunting rifle at Ty who was running around the room like crazy trying to avoid being shot.

I did not think. I acted.

I tackled Gravedigger to the ground and ripped the rifle out of his hands, straddling his chest. He punched me in the eye, and I grabbed his hands and pressed them to his chest like I remembered from training there.

“Who the heck are you even?!” Gravedigger yelled at me. He spit in my face, and I cringed.

I did not respond to him. I just left him there, wrestled to the ground. “What do we do Ty?”

“Uhhhhh…” Ty seemed utterly confused.

“Ty!” I said loudly. I needed him to focus so we could come up with a plan, so I did not spend the rest of my life sitting on this man.

“How did you do that…?” He asked me, staring wide-eyed. Gravedigger tried to yell at me again, and I covered his mouth with my hand.

“I do not know,” I said, which was the truth. It had felt the same as fighting the dragon, everything flowed from somewhere I did not know I had inside me. “But I really need you to tell me what to do right now, Ty!”

“We can’t call the cops cuz ya know...we broke in…” Ty reasoned. “However, he did almost shoot me.”

“So we are not calling the cops,” I said. Gravedigger began to struggle again. “What else?!”

“Ah…” He set his face in a thoughtful look.

“Think!” I yelled at him.

“Jeez Arthur, you’re usually so chill,” he said shrugging.

Maybe it is a good thing I am not “chill” right now because then we would be in serious trouble! I am literally sitting on some man who just tried to shoot you in the middle of a cemetery! Maybe you should be a little less “Chill”!!!!

“Look we just need to do something quick,” I said, taking a deep breath.

“We probably need to just get out of here,” he said. “Gravedigger can’t prove it’s us, so we’re home free if we can get out without being seen.”

“Okay,” I nodded. I motioned to the person I was sitting on. “So what do we do with him?”

Ty smiled mischievously. “The closet.”

“What about the closet?” I asked irritated.

“Let’s put him in the closet,” Ty said. “Then we can get out without being seen.”

Gravedigger struggled beneath me. Apparently he did not want to be put into a closet.

I nodded. “How do we get him in?”

“Uh…” He trailed off.

I thought for a moment, then I got up off of him and gripped his arms together with my hands and dragged him to his feet. “Open the closet door.”

The closet was on the left side of the room from the door to the laundry room. It was about ten feet away from where I was currently holding Gravedigger who was still struggling like mad.

Ty opened it, and I dragged Gravedigger to the closet and shoved him inside. I held the door shut while Ty took a wooden chair and propped it under the door handle.

Gravedigger was screaming an awful lot of curse words, and I felt like he might cause enough commotion that someone would come to him.

“Okay, let’s get outta here,” Ty said, slapping me on the shoulder. “Oh wait!”

He reopened the closet and quickly grabbed the keys from Gravedigger’s belt. Gravedigger tried to get a punch in at him, but Ty dodged and slammed the door shut and repositioned the chair. I rolled my eyes at him.

Then we ran back through the office, through the laundry room, and out the back door to the cemetery. We trekked across the perfect grass at a full sprint, climbed the fence, and jumped off the other side. We ran to the nearest tree and collapsed behind it, breathing hard.

And then Ty started laughing.

Laughing. Like it was the funniest thing ever that he was just almost shot and that we shoved someone into a closet. And I do not know why, but I started laughing too.

I went over to Ty’s house that night for dinner.

His parents, Theresa and John Walker, were very nice people, although sometimes it was hard to understand what they were saying through their thick African American accent. His younger brother, Landon, who was in the sixth grade at Carmel, was a bit of a tattletale but he seemed to like me well enough.

“How was your guys’s day?” Mrs. Walker asked us as we sat at the dining room table.

“Fine,” Ty said, cleverly undescriptive. I nodded to say that I agreed with him.

Mrs. Walker rolled her chocolate brown eyes and her puffy black afro-like hair bounced as she did.

“What did you do today?” She prompted us. Mr. Walker passed the golden-brown basket of biscuits to me, and I took one. That was one of the reasons I liked going over to Ty’s house. His mother made the best southern-style food.

I glanced at Ty, watching how he was going to answer this question. “We went to the park and hung with some of the guys from school.”

I nodded again. Best to just go along with it.

“Sure,” Landon mocked us.

“Shut up,” Ty glared at him.

The phone rang, and Mr. Walker got up to answer it. “Sorry, I gotta take this.”

Mr. Walker was a police officer, so he always received phone calls about things happening at his work or problems that his co-workers needed help with. The funny part was that Ty’s father’s job was to keep people out of trouble and following laws and things, and Ty was...well a troublemaker.

“Arthur and I are gonna go up to my room ’kay mom?” Ty said already getting up.

I would have liked to have a second helping, but whatever Ty needed to do in his room sounded important so I forwent it.

“Thank you, Mrs. Walker,” I said. I almost bowed to her and then I remembered that that would be strange.

I followed Ty down the picture strewn wall to his room that was painted a vibrant electric blue and had pictures of pro football and basketball players pasted all over his walls. That was what Ty wanted to do when he became an adult after all. Be some sort of pro sportsman. I hoped he made it. Miss Marion had told me it was stupid of Ty to dream that way because it would only result in hopeless failure. Apparently, pro sportsmen who did well in the world were quite rare.

Ty turned on his boxy gray computer and drummed his fingers on the keyboard. When it finally loaded, he opened the internet e icon.

Evergreen Cemetery, Colorado Springs, Caretakers. He clicked on the first link to find information on burial at the cemetery. He went back and clicked on the second link. Then we heard a knock at the door and we both turned our heads. Ty closed the computer so the intruder would not see what we were doing.

“What’re you guys doing?” It was Landon.

“Nothin’,” Ty said, and glared at him. “Go away.”

“Mom said Marion called and said she wants Arthur home,” Landon said, crossing his arms.

I stood up. “I will see you at school Ty.”

“Yeah, I’ll finish the project,” He said, smirking at Landon.