Avalee and the Dragon Read online

  So she worked and pushed with all her might, teeth gritting together, painful growls escaping her throat despite her best efforts to suppress them. Her hands were slick with sweat, her face with sweat and tears mixed indistinguishably. Yet it was for nothing. The metal was solid, even that weakest section was more than she could manage; though it took her longer than it should have to come to this conclusion. Avalee had been determined to make it work, but now she had to accept that her current approach was simply not going to work.

  She worked out the table leg, as gently as she could, and laid it down beside her, but didn't bother to pull out the padding or otherwise change her position. Instead, she stared at the manacle, willing it to release her—an activity as futile as the one she'd just attempted. But then her eyes trailed the chain to the ring in the floor, and she realized she may have been going about this all wrong. Unlike the manacle, the metal band that connected her chain to the floor was designed to be removed and replaced by simpler means than the forge-man’s heat and hammer. There was a clasp and lock, and though they were thick, she knew that the catch inside the lock and the metal ring that held the clasp shut, perhaps even the hinges at the opposite end of the ring, all of these things might yet be weak enough for someone with time, determination, and a sufficient lever. Someone just like Avalee.

  She smiled to herself, and then drug herself over to the fixture, taking the table leg with her. She ignored, or at least tried to ignore, the pain in her leg where she'd bruised herself trying to pry off the manacle and sat on her feet, facing the new object of her focus and eyeing it for a likely placement of the lever. After a long moment of considering, she decided to try to break the hinges. The ring itself was solid metal, so the hinged clasp would have to do. The lock didn't provide enough room for her to place the lever, so that also helped make the decision an easy one.

  Avalee slipped the broken end of the table leg through the clasp. It was a tight fit, but there was an inch or so of space remaining. Then she spun the clasp so that the hinge sat atop the table leg and the floor ring below. The broken end of the leg reached out past it just far enough to rest firmly against the floor, and Avalee was pleased that it fit nicely into a rough trough of pitted rock in the floor, which would help keep it steady. The clean end of the leg she placed on her shoulder, and then she placed her hands under it, as close to the end as she could with the base of her palms pressed up against it.

  She took a breath and then pushed up with all her might. Unlike before, she felt a response, a loosening. She heard a low wrenching sound as the pressure strained and stressed the metal in the hinge. It didn't break, not yet, but what she was doing was working. She stopped, took a breath, and repositioned her hands again before making her second attempt. This time, she added the strength of her legs and pushed herself up and off of her feet, barely so at first, as the metal resisted, but more so as it began to give. The wooden leg began to creak and pop as she threw everything she had into it, and soon it became a race between wood and metal hinge, between which one would give out first. Avalee didn't care, though, and she didn't give either any quarter.

  If the hinge broke, she was done. If the leg broke, well, she had three more of them to try. Now that she was getting results, she held nothing back. Her muscles quivered in her arms, shoulders and legs; they were on fire. Her jaw hurt from gritting her teeth together. Her fingers were cramped from gripping the wood so tightly. At this point, she wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to release the table leg if she tried to let go of it.

  Everything in her world came down to the hinge, the lever, and her body. Everything that was her, she poured into it. Everything and then she was speeding forward, straight up and over the ring and painfully landing atop it. Rolling over and off of it, she looked down and felt a moan escape her lips, a moan that sounded surprisingly like a laugh of relief, for there, she saw that she had succeeded. The clasp was broken, the irrelevant lock holding onto the pieces. She was free.

  She rolled onto her back and lay that way for a long minute to recover. Every muscle in her body screamed, and as she'd suspected, she could not force her fingers to release or even relax their hold on the table leg, not just yet. Still, she didn't give herself much time, not nearly enough to calm her breathing at any rate, but she knew she had no time to do that. Now that she was free, she was determined not to let her efforts go to waste. She had a feeling that if she was discovered now, she would find herself in a much more secure location, perhaps a cell, and likely with an attentive guard if there happened to be one about.

  Avalee preferred to err on the side of caution, in any case. It was time to make her escape a reality.

  Free from the floor, if not from the chain itself, Avalee did the only thing she could think of. She gathered up the length of chain and began to wrap it around her waist, like a belt. If she couldn't remove it, at least she would get it up off the floor and try to keep it from jangling when she moved. If everything worked and she got out of here, maybe she could find a smith to finish the job for her. She had to admit that was probably the only way, short of cutting off her leg or breaking her ankle, that she'd be able to remove it.

  Chain wound, she secured the end and allowed the broken clasp to hang from her hip. She couldn't quite get it tucked in so that it would stay still, and she worried that it might make a noise. Giving the problem just a moment of thought, she decided she could at least wrap it in a pouch of cloth to suppress such a noise as it might make. She tied the two ends together and wound the extra around where the lock held them together to keep it steady. Unfortunately, besides coming free of the ring, the hinges themselves weren't thin enough to come free of the last link of the chain, so she was forced to take the clasp and lock with her along with the chain itself. The remainder of the blanket, she wrapped around her leg, securing the chain in place so that it wouldn't happen to catch on anything she passed too close to, and so that it would not make noise. She knew she would only make it out if she was stealthy.

  That finished, she grabbed the table leg in one hand, rough end out, and the pitcher of water in the other, taking a deep drink of it. The lid fit back in tightly and the container was nearly empty, but she was going to take it with her. She would need something to carry water, particularly if she had to travel in the wilderness for any length of time. She figured she could tie it to her belt of chain, but she felt she'd already wasted enough time preparing to move to stop and try to do so now.

  Elisa might return at any moment.

  ~~~

  Chapter 5

  Gingerly, Avalee stepped up to the cloth and brushed it aside to peer out now that she was close enough to look in either direction. To her left, the passage went straight for only a few paces before winding to the right. To her right, a glow of flame revealed the end of the passage—not a blank wall, but an opening leading into a larger cavern. It was close. She felt a lump of fear in her throat. Could this be where the dragon lived? In that cavern, where it likely could hear everything she had done? Her heart was racing, but she held her makeshift club in a steady hand and looked each way again, considering her options.

  She really had no idea which way to go. She wished she were able to make herself invisible, like the thieves in the stories sometimes could. If she could do that, this whole thing would be so much easier; but those were only stories, and she was only Avalee—just a girl, a frightened girl with little more than a stick to defend herself. She decided to take a look at the cavern first. After all, even if that was where the dragon was, it was also the most probable way out of the caves.

  So, she looked once more to the left, watching briefly for any flicker of flame that might announce the approach of Elisa or anyone else. Then she steeled herself and took the passageway to the right, neither crouching nor hurrying. Her side and her ankle throbbed with each beat of her heart, each step an added torture to their burning protestations. Despite her efforts, her breath caught and released in pained gasps, making much more noise than s
he would have preferred.

  Only ten paces taken and she reached the opening into the greater space. It was enormous; wind danced about her and lifted and caught her hair up in twists, likely tangling it beyond hope. Its touch upon her skin was glorious, however, cooling the flames of exertion that still burned in her muscles, soothing her. But she took no time to revel in the sensations, she had to move before she was spotted.

  Besides being huge, the cave was not empty. On the far end, to her left, a fire pit was burning, and the scent of meat roasting above it was just barely detectable from where Avalee stood. She thought she saw the shadow of a person tending the meal and the flame, and hoped that it was Elisa. If it was, then perhaps Avalee would have only the woman to deal with. There was no sign of the dragon; though as Avalee's eyes raked across the enormous space, she found the place the beast would likely use to enter the room. It was to the right, actually quite near where Avalee stood.

  With a quick glance over at the fire, and a reassuring look at the darkened path leading along the wall towards the greater opening in the cavern wall, Avalee began to move. Her goal was the very place that the dragon might be, but she tried to ignore the claxon of warning her in her mind. She tried to ignore the instinct that told her to run the other direction, to cower and hide, to look for a rescuer to take her away from this place. No, she took this path because such other options would lead to capture. There were no rescuers; even if this place had been Dragon's Mount within easy reach of her people, there would have been no rescuers. They had left her to her fate. She was dead to them already. No one would ever give her another thought save for composing a pitiful skit for the next victim to watch. It gave her little comfort to know that at least her skit would show her rightly, would show that Avalee had faced the dragon on her terms, despite the outcome.

  She thought all of this to distract herself from the urge to run, but never once did she forget where she was or what she was doing as she made her way slowly along the wall. Every step threatened to reveal her, and unlike in the passageway or the room where she'd been held, this one had an unfortunate tendency towards echoes. She heard almost everything that happened by the fire pit and imagined that the distant figure, like herself, heard every false step on her part, every muffled clank of the chain wrapped about her body, every pebble loosened by her careless foot or the brush of her body against the crumbling surface of the wall. Avalee worried that, before long, that person would recognize such sounds were more than just simple coincidence and would decide to investigate. If they came near, she was sure they would spot her.

  Avalee gripped the wood of her club in response to the thought of discovery, but she pushed on. Only a few paces more and she would reach the opening. There was no time to waste.

  And then she reached it, and before looking around the corner, she pressed her back against the cavern wall for a moment while she calmed herself and slowed her breathing. She also took the opportunity to swallow some more of the water. The itch in her throat from the lingering thirst—made worse by all she'd done to ignore it—threatened to reveal her location with a cough, and she wasn't about to give it the chance to do that, not when she had water handy to stifle such a thing. She capped the pitcher and retrieved her weapon from under her arm where she'd held it.

  Carefully, Avalee slipped closer to the opening and peered around the corner. Nothing but the purest darkness met her eyes, even dimmer than the cave where she was, where the only light came from the distant flames of the cook fire below. She doubted that her eyes would be able to adjust at all to that greater darkness, but she didn't care. She planned to follow the wall until the next opening. Hopefully, such a thing wouldn't lead her into another maze of tunnels, but it was a risk she was willing to take.

  She had to assume that there was a way out ahead of her. Had to assume that the reason for the utter darkness wasn't that she was traveling further into the cave away from the outer world, but that she was heading towards that freedom, perhaps only dim due to the fall of night outside, though she had no way of knowing the time of day or night for certain. She felt as though it should be night, and any other option threatened to undermine what little bravery she held, so she chose to ignore the other possibilities until they revealed themselves to be reality. Until then, she would believe in herself and in luck.

  She was still alive when she should have been dead, still free when she should have been captive, so it wasn't such a jump to believe that luck would be on her side in this.

  As Avalee made her slow way around the corner and found herself traveling straight for longer than expected, she focused on positive thoughts, of streams and trees, sunlight and birds. Her father's voice and her mother's touch on her shoulder. Her sister's laughter and her brothers' pranks. Despite the situation she found herself in, she took comfort in these things and pressed on, even when she realized she was not in another cavernous space, but instead a rather large, and long, tunnel. It had begun to curve around to the left, and up, which made Avalee picture it as a spiraling ramp in her mind. An absence of sound to her left in the direction of the inner curve soon came to her attention, and she realized her imagination might not be that far off. She guessed that if she were to leave the wall and travel in that direction she would encounter the edge of just such a ramp, and perhaps a steep fall if she tried to pass beyond it. She stuck to the wall, thankful in the boon of luck that had kept her to this side of the tunnel and not the other. She didn't even want to think about what might have happened if the wall she was following had suddenly opened up into an abyss.

  Of course, assuming there was a fall where the wall was absent was just that, an assumption. She had no way of knowing such a thing for sure unless she investigated, but Avalee was content to continue as she had been, following the rough curve of the cave wall. But, she was certain of one thing, the chamber she was now in was even bigger than the one she'd come from. Absence of sound meant it was so huge as to swallow echoes. She knew this instinctively. It was also getting warmer. She had no idea what that meant.

  After nearly half an hour of traveling, as far as she could tell, Avalee decided it was time to rest. This time she carefully took a seat facing out towards the emptiness, because she couldn't bear to have it at her back. She drank more water and frowned when she realized that was the last of it. She took a short moment to fumble the ends of the blanket cloth from her waist around the handle and tied them tight to hold the pitcher in place. Now that it would do her no more good as it was, she felt it worth the effort to get it out of her hands. She finished quickly, and checked the knot on her leg as well. All secure, she managed to return to her feet, though her body protested.

  And then she was moving again, the wall to her right, empty space to her left. Before long she began to realize that she was able to see after a fashion. The cavern was brightening nearly imperceptibly, but it was brightening. She paused and looked around for the source, her eyes straining, but she couldn't tell from where the light came, not yet at least. But still, she was thankful for it and began to move with a little more confidence now that she could make out where her feet were landing. Now that she could tell where solid ground was, and wasn't.

  She wasn't relieved in the slightest to discover her assumptions about the ramp were correct. She seemed to be spiraling up and around a deep chasm. The spiral of the ramp funneled down into it, and each level higher seemed to be further from the center of the cavern. It became obvious to Avalee that while she'd come a long way, she had a long way to go yet. As the light brightened still more, she learned that she hadn't even managed half of the journey, but there, at the far end of the cavern and several levels yet to go, was the source of light, finally revealed to her, the cavern opening. The exit.

  Hurried on by the growing light and a similarly growing sense of urgency, Avalee doubled her speed, making excellent time. After a few minutes, she glanced over at the widening chasm in the center of the chamber and despite her goal of reaching the top, desp
ite her progress towards that goal, a burgeoning curiosity began to get the better of her and she began to shift her direction towards the edge.

  A couple of feet away, she stopped and leaned slightly forward to peer over the side. She'd expected to find nothing but air, no bottom, no end in sight, but she found something else. Still clear, even with the loss of the contrast from the surrounding darkness, a pinprick of light shone below, flickering, and a shadow, as of someone moving near it, cast against the adjacent wall. All still very far down, but unmistakable, even from this height and angle. It was the same fire pit she'd seen before she began her ascent. The same figure tending it if she hadn't missed her guess.

  Still no sign of the dragon, and now that she knew that this space, this cavern, was the extent of it, she knew that the dragon was outside somewhere. Possibly even waiting for her out there. Backing away from the edge with an upward glance, Avalee saw the first true rays of sun break in through the opening and paint the opposite wall golden. A warm breeze swirled about her as she continued her journey, though her burdened leg drug slightly more with each step. The extra weight of the chain and the bindings that held it stiffly to her leg wore at muscles unused to such an unnatural strain.

  With the growing light and the realization that the figure below would likely soon check for her and knowing that she truly wasn't all that far away, she broke into a trot—almost a jog, barely quicker than she'd been going, but still quicker—and observed how the ramp widened before her as it neared the exit. Avalee reached the final level of the spiral, if it could be called that, and pushed herself to go faster. Now running, no longer caring about the noise she made. Let the woman below discover her. Once Avalee was out, she would lose herself in whatever land she found herself in, and she doubted the quiet Elisa or even the dragon would find her then. She would see it was so.