Prologe:
The aged, silver furred, lemur lowered herself down upon a thick branch in the tallest tree in the forest as she began the story.
There was a time, very long ago, when the forest was not as it is now. It was darker then on a moonless night. Closing in upon all that lived there trying to take their breath and life away. For untold ages the forest remained in the evil grip of the darkness. Then one day, a lemur came forward with a daring plan. To catch the sun and bring it to the forest of ever night....
Eepy snugged next to his mother and listened to the story, enraptured by the tail as Yeeks, the stories hero, made his way to the land of the day monsters to catch the sun. Of his daring escape and how he traded day sight with the sun for it to come to the forest. He was very young and the story inprinted itself on his mind for many years to come.
Today:
Eepy giggled and nodded his head to Steve. Steve was learning a lot about lemur langage and was able to understand most of it. "So Yeeps went back to his mate in the forest as the sun came to the forest for the first time to give it day. That is why we live mostly at night when the sun is now here. Now though, the forest is lush with much life."
Steve clapped his hands. He had been here for almost half a year from the time that he escaped from the hostage camp. "Oh! That was a wonderful story Eepy! Where did you learn it?"
Eepy cocked his head. "Long time ago. From an old old lemur."
Steve nodded. "I liked that trick that Yeeps played on that one day monster, 'Hold me up into the sky and you will get one wish.'
Eepy laughed and nodded. "Oh yes. That was a fun one!"
At that moment Taffy came bounding up to join them with worry in her voice. "Eepy, there is Dragon smell in the creek."
Steve looked at Taffy. "Dragon smell?"
Taffy held up her paw and Steve took it and put his finger on it. His finger came away black from what was there. "Oil."
Steve wiped the residue on the edge of his breech clout. Had it been that long?
He had grown tall, and his hair long. The sun had darkened him a deep cinnamon, touched with gold and his hair bleached dazzling metallic blonde. He had long before, given up his old way of dress, outgrown, no longer able to fit, and adopted the way of the local villages of humans on the far edge of the forest.
The local tribesmen revered him and kept his presence secret from outsiders. Steve smiled at that thought and at another. While he lived amongst Eepy'stroupe of Ringtail Lemurs, others came to look. Territorial squabbles had ended forever amongst them. He had become mediator. And, other species of Lemurs came to watch and learn from the golden headed boy who lived with the Ringtails.
Now something new. . . . Steve sniffed his fingers and tried to analyze the odor. Could this be a threat to his family, his troupe, and all those who trusted and held him in high esteem? "Taffy, can you show me where you got that stuff?"
Taffy nodded rapidly. "I can! There are drips of it everywhere."
Steve followed her at a jog; his bare feet struck the ground noiselessly as he ran. "Oil . . . Dragon smell. . . . What did they mean by . . . dragon smell?"
He remembered the story Eepy had told him earlier. Legends were based on fact, weren't they? Monsters . . . was it . . . possible? The deep forest was mysterious and forboding in some places. No one went there, not Lemur, not human. What if . . . what if the monsters of yore existed . . . what if. . . ?
Leeps leaped from branch to branch as he followed Steve to the edge of the stream where Taffy stopped by the edge. He sniffled down toward the ground and shivered. Dragon Smell was there. All of the lemurs knew what it smeeled like even none in living memory had ever smelled it. Even the very old when Leeps was newly born.
Steve stopped by the edge of the stream and looked at the wash on the edge. Their were drips of oil all along the edge, as if something had pulled itself out of the water. Some of the drips were very close to the water and fromed little rainbows on the water surface. He looked to Taffy. "When was the first time that anyone saw this?"
Taffy lifted her head. "It was not here in the early evening when I was last here. I has come sometime during the night."
Eepy put a paw on Steve's leg. "What do you think that it is? I have never told you the old stories about the Dragons."
Steve wadded to the other side of the stream and looked at the earth there for tracks or spore. There were a few drips of oil on that side of the stream as well. Leading into the dark depths of the twelvetree forest. He followed the spore for a few feet up the back. There were strange tracks in the earth. Like nothing that he had seen before. He remembered what kind of tracks that cars, trucks, and cats made. This was like nothing that he had ever seen. It almost looked like feet, but the edges were square on the bottom and there were no pads.
Eepy had been joinned by Leeps and they both came accross the stream to join Steve. Leeps perked his ears. "Do you know what it is Steve?"
"No. It came from the forest of Twelve Trees though."
"Nothing lives in the Forest of Twelve Trees," said Eepy with conviction.
"Something came from there still. We must go in and find out where it came from. Will you two come with me?"
Both Eepy and Leeps nodded. They would go where Steve went.
Taffy came running up to them and hugged Eepy. "Don't go! You will not come back! I just know it!"
Eepy nuzzled Taffy. "I have to go. Steve is going in there."
Taffy slashed her paw in the air. "Then I will go with you."
Steve turned around and slowly started to follow the path of the thing that came out of the forest. The path was well marked with drips of oil and branches. Whatever it was had made no attempt to hide its path.
Leeps, Eepy, and Taffy kept close to his heals and in time they came to a low, no, snuken building in the dead center of the forest. Steve aproched it low to the ground. His sling amred with his best pebble. It was very old and the concreat was crubling on the edges of the old building. There were no windows and only one door. It was covored in leaves and one tree had fallen over one side of it.
In the well were the door was the floor was covored by years of dead leaves and grass had had long ago started to grow there. The floor of the well had been badly damaged now though as the door was pushed open with the leaves and grass piled up just beyond it. Leaving the slick wet undermulsh, slimy from many ears of going back to the earth, on the bare concreat under it. The tracks lead there and had come from the building.
Eepy whined. "Steve. This is an evil place."
Steve went close to the building and looked at the door. There was something on the door. A simble that was very hard to make out. He put his fingers to it and the old white, red, and black paint crubbled under his touch. He had seen this before.
_________________________________________ | /\ | | / \ | | / / | | / / /\ | | / / / \ | | \ \ / \ | | \ \/ \ | | \ /\ \ | | /\ \ / \ / | | / \ / \ \/ | | \ \/ \ | | \ /\ \ | | \ / \ \ | | \ / / / | | \/ / / | | / / | | \ / | |____________________\/___________________|
Steve pulled away warily. Once his Grandfather had told him tales of a great war fought against people who wore that symbol, evil people who tried to conquer the World. A shudder ran up his spine. This was an evil place. A great horror took place here. He could feel it surround him.
"NO!" He bolted and ran. Something opened to one side of him and something malformed and hideous slashed out at him from the dark interior, seized him and dragged him out of sight despite his screams and violent struggle to be free.
----
After he regained his composure and courage, Eepy descended the tall tree's upper canopy where he and Leeps and Taffy had fled in panic. One the lower branches of the tree, he stopped and stared at the building in horror. Something had taken Steve. His screams still reverberated in his brain. A tear formed and ran down his cheek. What could he do? What could anybody do . . . now. . . .
Leeps and Taffy ventured cautiously onto the branch and sat next to Eepy still frightened. They stared. No one said anything. A wind blew through the trees and made them whisper softly. Dried leaves danced and blew across the concrete buttresses of the building and across the crumbling courtyard.
Eepy cried. In a moment his soulful keening was joined by his friends.
-----
Steve cowered in the dark corner of a dimly illuminated room in which the floor was covered with trash. Dank odors of mold and decomposing masonry filled his nostrils and threatened to make him gag. He had gotten a glimps of what had grabbed him; its grotesaque form sent terror ripping through reason and sent him into panic. Now he was alone. It was not far away. He could feel a presence. It watched him from some dark place beyond his line of sight and waited.
The lights flickered. Steve tensed. It moved. Metal against masonry. It moved. He drew into a fetal position and tried to make himself mall, unnoticed amongst the trash and fetid leavings of what must have been dinner for something.
Bright light flooded over him hotly. He screamed and closed his eyes tightly.
"A child. . . . A Golden Child . . ."
The whispers seeped into Steve's mind and startled him. He quivered in terror and waited for pain and death that did not come.
"Golden Child . . ." A soft, croak of a voice said with reverence.
"Golden Child. . . ." said another more gutteral voice.
"So small. . . ." added a third, rusty from disuse.
The bright light vanished. Steve lifted his head. Three immense figures vanished from sight in two different directions. "No, thou must not look upon us . . . Hideous are we now. . . ."
Steve puzzled. He lifted his head higher and tried to see through the gloom.
Soft sobbing drifted through the room. Steve's fear subsided slowly, but he kept his distance. There was a decided odor now. . . . He had smelled it before, but where?
"Golden Child . . . thou has come at last, but too late . . ."
"Too late?" Steve's curiosity began to get the better of him and over rode his fears.
"Yes," came a quavering voice. "We are too far gone . . . unable to heal. Tis best thee goes and leaves us to our fates."
"I-I don't understand. . . ." Steve moved cautiously to his feet, ready to run if need be.
"All that has happened is legend amongst we who survive the atrocities forced upon us by Hunnish humans for the sake of their war. It was told amongst us that a Golden Child would come and that he would set us free and return us to our lands. . . . Thou are too late . . . we no longer wish freedom. We are too far gone. . . ." Sobs followed.
"But . . . WHO are you?" Steve took several tentative steps toward the main room, arms held away from his sides to defend himself. The odor assailed his nose again and he remembered. "Dragon Smell!"
"Aye, that is what we were. . . ." came the third voice, weak and weary.
"But . . . You . . . I mean . . . You were outside . . ." Steve tried to reason things out. These . . . People had been outside, free. What held them here? "You could've been free!"
A heavy sigh followed by sniffles and sobs filled his ears with sadness. "We are tied to this place. We can go outside, but must return. We are not free . . . If we tried, we would die."
A shaft of bright light shown down through the room. "Follow the light, Golden Child. Thou will be free.'
Steve crept cautiously forward, then ran to the center of the room, turned and looked back. Three immense figures cowered against the walls, and hid their faces from him. Dragons. . . . They were dragons. Tails, long necks, wings, hideously malformed; metal prosthetics projected from their bodies and covered their feet and some of their limbs. "Cyborgs!"
"Pleas, Golden Child, leave us and run to thy freedom." One of the dragons lifted its head and motioned toward the light and the open door above.
Steven stared, caught by the piteous appearance of the dragon's face and the great hopelessness in its eyes. He couldn't move. "No . . . I can-can't."
The dragon turned its head away. "Please. . . . Go."
Steve glanced at the light and freedom. Compassion stopped him. He walked slowly and deliberately to the dragon that had offered him his freedom and put his hand to its forelimb gently.
The dragon tensed and cried out in anguish.
"I won't hurt you," Steve said softly. "I will help if I can. Will you let me?"
The dragon shuddered and turned its head to gaze at him. "Golden Child, what can you do that we have not tried. We are kept from our power by what they did to us long ago. There is no hope for us. We know that now." Two unfettered fingers stroked Steven's hair gingerly. "Thou are kind as we knew thee would be, but it would all be for naught."
"Why?" asked Steve.
The dragon stood hunched and crippled and hobbled painfully across the room and slumped on the ground. "What can thee do we have not thought of or tried?"
Steve sighed and approached the dragon again. "You're hurting. I want to help 'cause you were kind to me and didn't hurt me."
The dragon leaned its head against the moldy concrete walls and whimpered.
Steve knelt by the dragon's armor covered feet; he glanced over them with an eye for detail, then slipped his finger into a groove and pulled on the cable that crossed the gap.
The dragon gasped and convulsed. The armor clattered and fell from its foot; it stared, mouth agape. "How . . ."
Steve looked into its face unsurely. "You-your feet hurt. I-I just wanted to help. . . ."
"Can you. . . ?" The dragon held out its other foot.
Steve moved hurriedly, eager to help, searched for and pulled the cable. The armor loosened and he pulled it apart, piece by piece until the Dragon's foot was free.
The other dragons came slowly, beseechingly, sat and held their feet up, and Steven loosed the armor from them and pulled it from their four-toed clawed feet.
The first dragon smiled at Steve. "Thank thee, Golden Child. Thou has eased the suffering we have lived with for so long.
"I wanted to . . . help," said Steve.
"Thou has, said the smaller of the dragons. "Thou has helped us more than thee knows. . . . Go, take thy freedom and our gratitude."
Steve grinned and trotted toward the open door and into the light. The forest looked the same as he had left it and on a branch of tree at the edge of the small clearing, three Ringtail Lemurs howled, heads held high. He smiled and jogged to the tree, looked up and grinned. "You guys singing?"
Eepy looked down, wide-eyed. "STEEEEEEEEEEEEVEEEEEEEE!" He leaped into Steven's arms, licked his face frantically and cried.
Steve laughed. Leeps and Taffy leaped at him, amidst joyful shrieks and toppled him to the ground. They nuzzled and licked him frantically in their joy at his return to the World of the living.
Something large and green emerged from the crumbling building. A dragon! No longer encoumbered with cybernetic prosthetics, no longer hideously malformed and cripped. It stood tall and flapped its immense wings.
Leeps and Eepy and Taffy shrieked in terror and leaped into the trees and climbed out of sight.
"Golden Child!" called the dragon in a bold clear voice. "We thank thee and willnot forget what thou has done for us!"
Steve scrambled to his feet, awed. The dragon had healed itself and was whole again, free of the clanky cyberjunk that had left it lame and horribly crippled. "How . . . how'd you . . ."
"Heal?" questioned the dragon with a sparkle to its bright yellow eyes. "Thou allowed us to reach our power and thus heal ourselves and throw off all that was done to us."
"I did?" called Steve, surprised. "How?"
"Thou allowed our feet to touch the World, the source of our power. From that moment, we knew that all told us of thy legend would be true." He bowed deeply to Steve. "We dragons take thy kindness seriously and will forever by thy friend. Think of us and we shall be close by. Call us and we shall be at thy side."
Two more shapes emerged from the building and unfurled wings of gold and red. They stood straight and beautiful to the sight as did the first.
"Farewell, to thee Golden Child," they called, wheeled and rose into the sky with powerful strokes of their wings. "Beware those who would seek thee out! The forest will protect and hide thee and thy Ringtail tribe. And, remember us kindly. . . ."
Their voices trailed away in the distances as they became distant specks, against the afternoon thunderheads that rose high above the forest in the distance.
Steve blinked and waved.
"Monsters! Monsters!" Eeepy dropped onto his shoulder.
"Dragons," corrected Steve. "Friends. . . ."
Weeks went by as the summers depths settled around the ringtail forest. Eepy never got tired for telling the story of Steve taming the Dragons in the old dark evil plece in the middle of the twieltree forest. The home to the dragons.
"So he came out of the low place. Leeps and Taffy had given up hope but not I! I still had my eyes on the loe place and waited for his return for I know that he would be back." Eepy took much joy in telling the story. Around him sat three younge leamers all listening with vivid intensedy.
One of the young ones piped up. "Leeps said that you were all giving the mornning song?"
Eepy bit his lip and thought really fast. "Well yes. I was doing that as well. I was trying to keep Leeps and Taffy from panicing! I had to do that even though I knew it didn't need to be done."
Steve sat a few feet away and listened the the story. Eepy never managed to tell it the same way twice in a row. Gently he stroked Taffy's fur with one hand. She was having a hard time trying to keep from snickering as she sat in his lap.
With a soft snicker she shoke her head. "Silly creature."
"Yep." Steve scratched between her ears. "Good storyteller though." He was still following the story enjoying it when Taffy sat up in his lap and started to listen to something. He didn't think anything of it though as he stroked her from head to tail.
"Eepy! Do you hear that?" Taffy was looking very worried. All of the lemures sat up on their rumps and started to listen.
Steve strained his ears but didn't hear anything. At least for for a long time.
Eepy nodded to Taffy. "Yes I hear it Taffy. Can you hear it yet Steve?"
Steve did finily hear it. Rythmic thumping in the air got louder as he sat there. He knew what the sound was as well. A helocopter was comeing this way. He quickly moved to the edge of the clearing and hid under some bushes. The Lemurs were right behind him.
Soon the helocopter was overhead and slowing down over the clearing that Steve and the lemurs were just in. It lowered, of all things, a small plane to the ground and landed next to it. About 10 men got out of the chopper and started to go around the clearing looking things over. Two of the men were dressed in suits and were forced to sit on the ground as other men took flame thrower and started to burn the grasses on the ground around the plane and under the plane itself.
Eepy whispered to Steve. "What are they doing?"
Steve could just shake his head. "I don't know."
Steve jumped at a loud 'crack' out in the feild. The men out there were smashing the windows out in the small plane and digging at the dirt under the airplane now. Steve backed away from the edge of the clearing a little and started to make his way around to the other side. Were the two men in suits were being held. Leeps, Eepy, and Taffy kept up with him. He snuggled down under anouth bush near the two men.
----
Captain Jed looked around the clearing and grined. He turned to Wildcat. "This is a perfect place for the crash. We want the plane itself to burn as well so that the cause of death is hidden."
Wildcat nodded. "Yes sir."
Jed nodded and walked over to the two prisoners. "Hello Dr. Blain, hello Senator Todd. Would you two like a cup of coffee?" He looked to them expectently.
Dr. Blain looked up into the eyes of the man standing over him. He tried to hold his anger in. "May I ask if the poison will be swift?"
Jed held his hand to his heart. "Why sir! How could you think that of me? Yes. It will be quick and painless. I am not a sadistic man in any way. You both will simpliy fall asleep." Jed grinned kindly at the two men. He looked behind him. The setup was going well. It would be some time before they were missed and some time tell they were found. He looked back at them. "I will get you your coffee sirs." He straitened his back again and left them.
----
A few feet away Steve listened to what was said. They were only a few feet away from the men in suits. He looked to Leeps. "We need to help them Leeps. We need to get them out of here."
Steve turned to look at them again. Eepy tugged at his shoulder. "How can we do that Steve? How?"
Steve pointed out from the bush. "They have rope around their wrists. Do you think that you two could nibble them open?"
Eepy steped out from the edge of the bush to take a look and nodded. "Yes. How do we get there to do that though?"
Steve grinned and picked up a rock and tossed it over to the men. It landed with a small thump. "Go, now."
-----
Senator Todd looked at the CIA men doing their job with the airplane. There was not hate left in him for them. Was very hard to hate something when you knew what was going to happen. There was a soft thump behind him and he turned from where he was to look. Two small animals came running out of the bush right for them. Behind them was a young boy!
Within moments the bonds were undone and the boy was waving them over. He looked to Doctor Blain. "Well?"
The Doctor looked at the Senator. "What can they do. Kill us?" He grinned and turned around fully with the Senator and took off at the run. When they got to the boy he took their hands and ducked into the forest.
-----
Steve just got ahold of their hands when the shouting started behind them. Then came a soft chuffing from behind them and the treebark overhead ripped up form the inpact of bullets. "Comeon. I know where a good hiding place can be found!" At this moment there was only one place where he know he could hide.