He nodded. “I’m leaving a couple of officers, and the county will repair the damaged roads.” He lowered his voice. “It’s up to you what you want to tell people, but the word will get out quickly, and your locals and tourists could become difficult to manage, especially if they believe they’re trapped.”
I tapped Cliff Way into the notes app on my phone, then pulled it up on a map of town. Maybe I would take a look later. It was a short dead-end road, so finding the house should be easy, if it was in as poor of a condition as the mayor implied.
“I know. I’ll deal with it. At least we’re not completely cut off.” Aspen waved to the lake and the boats.
Val? Sindari sat next to a park bench a few yards from a group of bicyclists who’d gotten off the trail. You may want to hear this.
I hesitated, not wanting to miss anything important between these two, but they’d wound down, and the mayor started helping the men load groceries into the SUV.
“It was a bear, not a sasquatch,” one biker, a fit man with short gray hair, said to what was probably his wife and three kids. “Sasquatch are just stories.”
“I saw four of them. There’s no way they were bears.” That was a boy of eleven or ten. He pointed toward the south. “And you all heard that roar.”
“A bear’s roar,” the father said.
The two older siblings, twin sisters, I guessed, exchanged long looks with each other. The mother appeared dubious too.
“There’s all kind of wildlife out there,” the father continued. “The bike-rental lady even said to look for moose and bears.”
“She neglected to mention sasquatch,” the mother murmured.
Her husband frowned at her. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m glad we’re not sleeping in one of those flimsy tents tonight.” She waved to my new home in the campground.
Remembering that I was camouflaged, I kept myself from snorting. The family headed up the hill to turn in their bikes.
“You want to go for a ride down that trail, Sindari?” I asked quietly.
Will it be as rough as the ride down here?
Probably not, unless a herd of sasquatch rushes out of the trees to chase us.
A herd connotes herbivores, rather than predators. They should not be dangerous.
I’m not sure if herd is the right word. Sasquatch are supposed to be mythological.
Like dragons?
We’ll find out.
It was about two o’clock. I had plenty of time to rent a bicycle and get back to pitch my tent before dark. My tent with the flimsy walls. I was more concerned about dragons trashing those walls than sasquatch, at least for now. When I thought of the way the roads had been destroyed, I decided that dismissing them might be unwise.
7
When you suggested a ride, I didn’t know you would be in that ridiculous contraption and I would be expected to lope alongside.
I grinned over at Sindari from the rather comfortable seat of my rented three-wheel reclining bicycle. We were about two miles south of town, with the lake stretching to my right and houses perched in the trees to the left. I’d never ridden a bike with a back rest before, and it made perusing the shadows to either side of the paved trail comfortable and easy.
Sindari, who only had to trot to keep up—the bicycle was definitely not designed for covering great distances at a racing speed—was complaining for no reason. It was sunny, beautiful, and tigers needed to exercise as much as people did.
“There’s a basket if you want to see if you can fit in.” I patted the little crate behind the seat.
Very funny. I’m larger than that entire contraption.
“I’d offer you a spot in my lap, but then I couldn’t see. I should have gotten a smaller tiger.”
Your foot is in danger of being chewed off today.
“I bet a service animal could fit in my lap.”
Both feet.
“So grouchy.”
I’m hot.
I extended a hand toward the water, surprised he hadn’t already jumped in.
He grunted, leaped over a log, and bounded into the shallows. He didn’t linger for long though. Maybe he thought I needed protection and that he shouldn’t let me out of his sight.
Tigers aren’t supposed to be small. We’re apex predators, both here in this world and at home in Del’noth.
“Apex predators shouldn’t mind jogging a few miles. I remember looking up tigers shortly after I met you. The article said they travel up to thirty miles a day in search of food.”
In search of food, yes. Not in search of goblins. Have you tasted a goblin? They’re stringy and less flavorful than scat. I’m convinced that’s why they’ve survived over the generations despite being so puny. Nobody wants to eat them.
“Maybe sasquatch are tastier.”
You implied they don’t exist.
I remembered the furry, two-legged creature I’d seen in the woods on the way here. “I’m not sure about that anymore. We’re getting into a more wooded area. Keep your eyes open.”
My eyes are always open, as are my ears and nostrils.
“That doesn’t make sleeping difficult?”
No.
Two bicyclists appeared around a bend up ahead, pedaling in our direction. I reached for my cloaking charm—I’d been removing the spell whenever we saw someone, so they wouldn’t gape and fall over at the sight of a bicycle moving with no bicyclist—but Sindari halted me with a word.
Don’t.
Dragon?
Dragon.
I couldn’t sense him—Shaygor, I assumed—but one of the reasons I’d summoned Sindari was because of his greater range.
The bicyclists did indeed gape at what, to them, appeared to be an empty bike coming toward them. They stopped and got off the trail. Way off.
Let me know if he’s heading this way, please. I switched to silent speech, on the off chance that a dragon miles away could hear my voice.
He’s flying over the south end of the lake. He may be fishing.
Fishing? I imagined a silver dragon lounging on the end of one of the docks we were passing, sunning his belly while his pole extended out over the water.
More like an osprey, Sindari informed me dryly.
I scanned the wooded slope, hoping to see the sasquatch the family of bicyclists had seen—or maybe goblins. Was it possible goblins were behind a hoax? Using their magic and maybe some gadgetry to convince people that sasquatch were rampant around the town? If so, to what end? To scare the inhabitants away so they could loot the houses here?
For a town with a population of two hundred, there were a lot of houses. Vacation properties and rentals, I supposed. Everything from mansions with great wrap-around decks to log cabins to rickety old shacks that looked like they’d been temporary homes for loggers back when the bike path had been a railroad.
As the trail headed out into the open, the lake on one side and marshy pools on the other, I caught sight of the silver dragon. It was Shaygor.
As Sindari had suggested, he was flying over the lake. As we watched, he pulled his wings in close and dove down toward the water. At the end of his dive, he tilted his head up, turning the descent into a skimming of the surface with his maw open. He closed it, and even from a mile away, I imagined I heard the clack of those jaws snapping together. If he’d gotten a fish—or a dozen—I couldn’t tell, but he rose back up, wings unfurling and flapping again.
I stopped pedaling. The trail continued in the open right beside the lake, and he was sure to notice the bicycle steering itself along the bank. Dragons, I was positive, had sharp eyesight.
The hair on the back of my neck rose as Shaygor flew a little closer, entering the range of my senses. It seemed strange that my eyes had spotted him first, but I could see for miles up and down the open lake.
Shaygor flew lazily north, heading in our direction, but not directly in our direction. His yellow eyes glowed slightly as they perused the shoreline. Looking for me? He shouldn’t have known I had come here, but maybe something he’d plucked from my thoughts had hinted of this town as my final destination.
I don’t think he’s aware of us. Sindari sat in the grass beside the trail, alternately eyeing the dragon and a log in the marsh that was full of turtles sunning themselves. Maybe turtles tasted better than goblins.
Let’s keep it that way. I was tempted to backtrack, but turning the wide-framed bike on this tight stretch of the trail would take some doing. And he was sure to catch any movement. It didn’t help that the bike had a bright yellow frame.
His scan of the lake ended, and his gaze locked on me. Or, more likely, on the bike. I could feel the faint magic from my cloaking charm and knew it was still activated.
Did a dragon know enough about bikes to think it strange for one to be sitting out by itself on a trail? I hoped not.
You may want to move, Sindari suggested as Shaygor banked and sailed toward us.
Damn it. He was coming to check out the bike.
I eased off it, glad the three-wheeler would stay upright without me doing anything to it. The dragon pulled in his wings again for another dive, but I doubted he had fish in mind.
I scooted away from the bike and backed up the trail far enough that I wouldn’t be close enough for him to see through my charm’s magic if he landed. Shaygor picked up speed, coming in as fast as he had in the fishing maneuver. But it wasn’t trout that he plucked up this time.
He swooped down, his massive maw locking around the bike frame, and back up with it in his mouth. Metal wrenched as he snapped his jaws together, and pieces flew in dozens of directions. The turtles on the log scattered, disappearing into the water. Shaygor shook his head as his flight carried him over the marsh, and the remaining bike pieces plunked down, disappearing under the surface as the turtles had. The orange flag that had been sticking out of the back on a pole fluttered down to land on the trail.
The dragon banked and circled back. Had he smelled my scent on the bike? The charm would keep someone from smelling me, but I doubted it could mask my entire route.
Get off the path, Sindari warned me. He waded quietly and slowly into the closest pool.