How to Slay a Dragon - Bill Allen [38]
“How about Shadow?” Lucky asked, but Greg decided on Rake instead, after the series of marks it had already left across his back.
Nathan left the trail and made a beeline toward two fallen branches, which he retrieved and handed to the boys.
“What’s this?” Greg asked.
“A stick,” Nathan responded.
“I can see that. What for?”
“Everyone should have a stick.”
Greg stared up at the man, stick in one hand, eternal torch in the other, waiting for an explanation.
“Helps you walk, remember? And there’s plenty more you can do with a stick, too. I’ll show you when we stop for the night. For now just do as I do.” He planted his own staff in the mud at his feet and hopped across a narrow puddle.
“Here, Greg,” said Lucky, “you can stow the torch in my knapsack.”
Tricky job, pushing the torch into the pack without setting Lucky’s hair on fire. Even trickier in the dark, when Greg retrieved the torch that evening to light a small campfire so Nathan could show them what he meant about doing more with a stick. The two boys sat cross-legged on the ground while Nathan stood motionless before them, head bowed, eyes closed. His hands were clasped loosely around the staff, which rested vertically, one end planted on the ground at his feet. Only his rhythmic breathing revealed he was even alive.
He needs a stick to do this?
Greg was about to ask what Nathan was doing when the wiry man lunged forward, thrust the staff out like a sword and withdrew it in one flowing motion. He stood then, poised for the next imaginary attack.
Greg perked up. Even Rake looked on curiously.
Again the stick flew up. This time Nathan continued the imaginary fight, spinning his staff like a giant baton about the entire clearing. Greg watched in awe as Nathan parried and thrust with unbelievably fluid movements, as if he were a dancer and the stick his partner.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Greg asked once Nathan, head bowed and eyes closed, finally returned the point of his staff to the ground. As if annoyed by the noise, Rake crawled down from Greg’s lap and slunk off into the shadows.
Nathan looked up and smiled. “Father taught me, back when I was younger than you are now.” He laughed to himself. “Though I suppose I never really took it seriously until someone very wise helped me see why I might want to practice more.”
“Well, it looks like you’ve had plenty of practice to me,” said Lucky. “That was amazing. Can you teach me how to do it?”
“And me,” said Greg.
“I thought we stopped so you boys could get some rest,” Nathan said, chuckling.
“I’m not tired,” said Lucky.
“Me neither,” Greg lied. Truth was, he’d barely managed to keep his eyes open since breakfast.
“All right,” said Nathan, “One quick lesson to start you off, but then you need to sleep, okay?”
Both boys agreed, and then listened intently as Nathan described the basics of a timeless art form he called chikan.
“Chicken?” Greg asked
“Chi-kan,” Nathan corrected, pronouncing the a like the one in wand. “Roughly translated it means ‘energy at peace.’”
To Greg’s disappointment, Nathan asked the boys to put down their sticks. He insisted they learn the philosophy behind the art form, claiming they’d never achieve mastery without it.
“I’d be willing to sacrifice mastery if I could just learn to spin the stick around the way you did,” Greg told him.
Nathan laughed. “I think it’s time you boys got some sleep.”
They camped with the eternal torch planted in the ground to scare off animals, which might have worked better if the flame hadn’t kept going out every time Greg drifted off to sleep and lost his grip on the handle.
“Why don’t we tie Greg’s hand to the torch?” Lucky suggested, but Nathan said no,