The Search for the Red Dragon - James A. Owen [70]
“Technicalities,” muttered Charles, eyeing the silent guards around them.
“I don’t think we can leave,” Bert said suddenly. “The clues we’ve been looking for might be right here.”
“Can’t leave?” John exclaimed. “Good heavens, Bert, why in blazes not?”
“Two reasons,” said Bert, his face darkening. “One—Burton referred to the ships that took their children as ‘living’ ships. So I think I know what’s happened to our missing Dragonships, and to what use they’re being put.”
“Agreed,” said Charles. “They’re being used by this ‘Stephen’ rogue to kidnap children.”
“That’s what makes the second reason even worse,” said Bert in a choked voice. “Much worse.”
“Why?” asked John.
“Because,” Bert said, turning to look at Jack. “The name of Aven’s son, the kidnapped prince, my grandson…
“…is Stephen.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Haven
The Croatoans put their captives in a small lodge made of wicker and animal skins, but that nonetheless also had leaded glass windows. It might have seen other uses, but it was obvious to them all that this was now their prison.
The fires outside were allowed to burn down to embers, and eventually the settlement grew quiet as deep night descended on the Underneath.
In the lodge, the companions slept. And sleeping, they dreamed. Not dreams of their recent adventures (and ordeals), but dreams that seemed to be searching for the meaning that lay beneath all that had transpired.
John had no fear.
He had often wondered what it meant to be afraid of something, but in the years since the war, he had gradually come to realize that nothing made him afraid. He had witnessed the deaths of many friends and had seen himself placed in mortal danger. And he had emerged from those experiences changed—for the better, he hoped. But unlike the physical changes borne by those who had been wounded in some way, John’s change was invisible; he was no longer afraid of death.
…a regal, thin-framed man…spread his arms in greeting.
His new attribute showed itself, not through an irrational recklessness, but rather in a disregard for any personal price he might pay for a course of action. The best word he could use to describe this awareness was from India: satyagraha. It meant to do anything, give anything, sacrifice anything, to pursue what was right without harming another. And to do it without regard to self.
The only fear John had was for his children.
He had often dreamed of them falling from a great height, and just out of his reach. Falling, like Icarus flown too close to the sun, too far away for a father to save. Sometimes he dreamed that he could almost reach them, and once, when the dream was of his eldest son, he dreamed that he extended his hand and grazed the boy’s fingers before he fell.
Thereafter, he determined that if the boy was close enough to touch, he was close enough to hold—and save. And that played constantly in John’s thoughts afterward. Chopping firewood for the household stove, he sometimes imagined that a large split log was a child’s hand, and he carried it from the woodpile to the hearth using only the tips of his fingers, holding on by the least, most tenuous grasp. He often lost the wood, as the splinters it left reminded him. But he grew stronger; and eventually he could carry a huge log between his fingers as far as he chose to walk, without risk of dropping it.
After that, he still dreamed of children falling—but he never again failed to save them.
Jack dreamed about desire. Not so much about the desire for things, or desire to be something, but about the meaning of desire. And in that way, he also dreamed of fear.
As a child, he once dreamed that he could leave behind the dreary life he saw ahead of him, and go to a place where he could be a child forever; and he knew that he desired it. But awake or asleep, he chose to smother his desire.
As he grew older, his dreams manifested themselves in action, and he followed his desire to be a hero and have a life of grand adventure—but his fears were also realized, and those