The Last Dragon Lord

XXXIII

XXXIII

Dark couldn’t stop watching Frog. He stared at the television screen for hours, listening to the dragon’s croaky drawl. Even though the screen was cracked, he could see Frog clearly.

“In’the bog, when I was a boy, I had a happy childhood…”

Lucan and Miri had left the room arguing. Lucan insisted that Dark wear the muzzle and that they turn the lights off, but they forgot the television. Earl, the man in black, had tried to say something to Lucan—Dark watched the glimmer in the man’s eyes flare up at the realization that the television was on, but then fade away as Lucan answered a phone call and rushed out of the room.

Earl started toward the television to turn it off, but Dark growled at him.

“There’s no harm in watching a news report, is there?” Dark had asked.

Earl paused, looking at the television and then to the door where Lucan was.

Then Lucan called his name, and he hurried away without giving it another thought.

Dark had assumed Earl to be nothing more than a brute, but he was a thinking man indeed. Dark’s estimation of him rose, but only a little. A bodyguard was still a bodyguard—a human one at that.

When the door shut, Dark found himself alone again, comforted by Frog’s voice.

Frog!

The river dragon sat in his studio, speaking for hours in front of the camera. His wart-ridden face took up half the screen, and his throat bulged and flapped sporadically, a transparent green sheet of skin with veins that ballooned and shrank as he breathed.

On the bottom of the screen was an emblem of a frog sitting on a lily pad with the initials TFC on it. Every few minutes, the frog jumped off the lily pad and into the bottom of the screen; vine-covered text splashed up and landed on the lily pad: The Frog Channel.

Below, headlines streamed across the screen, advertising news that Dark didn’t understand.

“Before I announce the weather today,” Frog said. “It’s time I spoke up about the election. I’vad thoughts about it for a while now, but it wasn’tll last night that I’ve wanted to speak about it.”

Little old Frog.

How little he used to be. He was the size of his father now, maybe bigger. And that was saying something. To think that he had spent his humble beginnings in Dark’s tutelage.

To think that he had survived!

And what of Toad, his father? Now there was a true bodyguard. He remembered Toad’s quiet, humble nature and wondered if he and Earl were the same.

He remembered that he had dismissed Toad on the night of the attack. If Toad had accompanied him, maybe Dark wouldn’t have been cursed.

Dark rested his head on the ground, and the smell of raw meat drifted into his nostrils. He couldn’t eat it, and he wasn’t hungry anyway.

He yearned to see more faces from the past.

“I’ve seen many springs,” Frog said. “All of them were beautiful in their own right. When I was a boy, my father an’ me celebrated the rains. Great fog would roll off the sea, and we knew that the season was changin’. We’d been under the water, living in caves of mud, breathing soil and protecting our share of the aquifer. But one can only see so much pink before he pines for the fresh colors of flowers. When spring came, my father would wake me up and I’d smell the fog. He’d ask me why’nt I’d’ve smelled the flowers too, for they were bloomin’. I’d follow’im onto the banks and we’d go walking, magic gathering under the webs of our feet so that even our very footsteps glowed. And my father would nod to the skies, put his strong, arms around me, and we’d pray for my mother in the great beyond—bless her heart—and as the fog wrapped around us we’d pray for the other souls lost to the river of time...”

Dark hadn’t prayed, himself.

He didn’t think to; his pain was so great and he was in such a strange place that only survival occupied his thoughts.

Maybe he should have prayed, but there was no sky here.

That’s a good boy that never forgot his teachings, Frog ... he thought.

“My father didn’ speak much. He was the bodyguard for Old Dark.”

Pride surged through Dark and he stood up.

“And I don’t care if the network wants to censor me or delay the broadcast,” Frog said. “For thirty years I’ve been bringing the weather to the city’s doorstep. I’ll speak my mind, and if anyone has a problem with’at then they can feel the force of my underside.”

Frog looked directly at the camera and ribbited. “My father was loyal to the Darks. And they were a good family, as good as good can be given the circumstances of the time. Lords Dark the First and Second took pity on this little dragon, when I was no more’n the size of a croc. They taught me astrology. Dragon hist’ry. I learned to be prouda who I am. And I have the Darks to thank for that. If that makes me a problem to hist’ry, then I suppose I’m a two-thousand-pound problem.”

“That’s it, my boy!” Dark cried. “Tell them what a glorious ruler I was, and what a father figure I was to you.”

There was rustling in the studio. Someone off-camera must have been trying to stop Frog. He glanced to the right and stuck out his tongue. It extended off-camera and struck someone. Dark heard a yell.

Frog’s tongue lashed out again.

And again.

Then he settled, swallowed hard, and said, “When one wants’ve make a point, they try to stop’im. But I tell my story about the Darks so that you know where the skies of my position are. There’ve’ll be clouds in it, and fog and rain, but now you can’t misunderstand me. And to the network, I tell you: take me out of context and I’ll provide the weather out of context, seeing as Abstraction makes me the nearest thing to the god of weather.”

Silence.

“For the last six months, we’ve’a been hearing about the candidates and their thoughts. No point’n summarizing what’s already been summed up because it’s as clear as a freshwater stream. And none’ve what I’ve heard’s appeased this dragon. The governor points to his record and claims it’s as cool as a noon zephyr. Lucan Grimoire says this, says that and the young people’ve been swoonin’ for’im. And of course there’s Amal Shalewood, who sounds to me like a counterpoint ‘tween the two, though you have to respect a human who wants to spar with a couple’ve rich elves. When you get to be a dragon like me, as old as I am, you start to see that alluv’em are the same. The only thing different is their appearance. And bless my rivered heart, I’m not that old, but old enough...”

“Indeed, my boy,” Dark said.

How old was Frog?

When Dark was attacked, he had been one thousand five hundred years old. Frog couldn’t have been older than five hundred years old then. That would have made the river dragon one thousand five hundred years old now, or the equivalent of a forty-year-old man. If math could be trusted, then that made Dark the equivalent of a seventy-year-old man, now. He coughed at the realization and choked on his own spit.

His bones ached, as if to remind him of the years that had been stolen from him. He wished for Frog’s youth, though even Frog didn’t have much of it left.

“And why should we settle for a has-been answer on magical conservation?” Frog continued in his slow drawl. “If there’s one thing we dragons understand, it’s that the wind is breezin’ in the direction of doom. Why, if I still had my shares of the aquifer, I’d’ve voted with my influence. It seems to me that no one has posed any real solutions. And for that, I have chosen not to vote in any election. I will not support anyone who does not impress me with a detailed plan, for this world of ours is too beautiful in’an’o’itself to deserve any less. So I tells the candidates to stop knocking on my door and knock on the doors to Hell, because that’s where we’re all going in a few generations if they fail.”

Frog stopped, and his eyes widened as if he knew he’d gone too far. His hardened expression softened a little, as if his words had hurt even him.

“I myself don’t have any solutions, and maybe that’s a fault. But then again, I’m just your neighborhood Frog. If I hadn’t been teased and ridiculed as a young dragon, maybe’ve I’da had more ambition...”

Frog’s voice was pained, and it hurt Dark.

Had society been as mean to Frog as he said? Dark and his father had taken Frog under their protection because the other dragons ridiculed him. Toad tried to protect his son, but he could only do so much, given that he had many of the same awkward attributes as Frog.

What was there not to tease? His face, his big body, his voice, and his seemingly unintelligent, bumpkinish ways made him an easy target for more fit and physically capable dragons like Fenroot.

Dark had had pity on Frog. He never knew if the boy would amount to anything, but Dark and his parents were not so evil as to let other dragons abuse him.

Dark was a black dragon, an anomaly in nature. He knew what it was to be different.

And what a winning gamble he’d made in Frog. Like a time capsule thrown into the future!

“My boy, I am immensely proud,” Dark said.

Frog changed subjects. “Tonight we will see some more rain. The Magic Index is eighty-nine, the humidity, seventy-five...”

Dark had to find him.

The television turned off. The two men who paralyzed him every few hours had returned.

One of the men stood in front of the television.

“No more television for you,” Orion said. He wore a white polo, khaki pants, and a black skull cap. He smelled like a strange smoke, as if he were constantly exposed to burning fire. The smell was unpleasant to Dark’s nose.

Dark growled.

“Oh, come on, Orion,” the other man said. He wore a similar uniform, but he had dark skin. “If he wants to watch that stupid Frog, let him. No one takes that damned dragon seriously anyway.”

“We got orders,” Gus said. “We’re not that professor chick. We break the rules, we get canned.”

“The Frog Channel is the least dangerous thing he can watch,” Orion said.

Dark was sick of these men and he immediately marked them for death.

“Tell me, young ones: is this Frog really as stupid as he looks?” Dark asked.

Gus laughed. “You bet he is. Seeing as you’ve been around a couple thousand years, you’d think a dragon like you would know a thing or two.”

“How long have you been on this earth?” Dark asked.

“Forty years,” they said simultaneously.

“Ah,” Dark said. “How seasoned you both are.”

“Ha. Ha.” Orion unplugged the television and began to push it out of the room. “Soon as we feed you, you can crack jokes all you want.”

Gus’s hands glowed and Dark braced himself.

The blast hit him immediately and every muscle in his body seized. He yelled, but even his throat muscles locked up and cut him off mid-scream.

Gus and Orion unlocked the cage and entered. They refreshed the buckets of meat with new ones and set out a giant trough full of fresh water.

A trough! What was he, a pig?

Dark narrowed his eyes in anger as they took off his muzzle.

“No offense,” Gus said. “We’re just doing our jobs.”

You have the wrong jobs, Dark thought. When I skewer you between my claws, you’ll wish you had worked elsewhere.

The men exited the cage and locked it, taking the muzzle with them.

Orion tossed the two pieces of the iron muzzle from hand to hand. “We’ll be sure to clean this up for ya. Enjoy your dinner.”

He walked over to a metal box on the wall and flipped several switches, turning the lights off.

The box controlled the lights in the room...

He didn’t know if it was useful, but he filed it away.

As the men shut the double doors behind them, he heard a metal clicking sound.

His mind was reeling.

Dark regarded the trough and the meat. They fed him like an animal, tossed it on the floor.

But he wasn’t an animal.

He wasn’t an animal!

Frog would understand. Frog would rescue him! But the boy was so impossibly far away. And there was no way to communicate.

Dark smashed the floor, then slapped the bars with his tail. He raised his head to the ceiling and roared, shaking the room. Extending his claws, he swiped the meat, sending it everywhere.

He held the two men’s faces in his mind’s eye. He replayed their every move and licked his lips.

It was their blood he was hungry for.

But for now, he had to eat.

He lay down and ate, hating every bite.