Chapter 16: Angry Mob

            Frain climbed up to a safe and reasonable height and I was taking deep breaths, trying to mentally get rid of my induced headache. It wouldn’t be long now until we reached the town, lake or forest. I was expecting Frain to fly all the way to the forest but then that would leave me with the problem of getting to the town without walking for a few good miles. It took awhile but an obvious solution seeped into my mind; Frain could easily drop me off during the first night nearby and hopefully no one would be awake to see a dark purple dragon landing within the vicinity.

            Indeed it would be a better thing if Frain was a darker shade or a different colour altogether (like black or maroon) though I’m sure he blended in well with the twilight skies. I remembered back when Frain and I were flying during night time above Dracona; there were more dragons awake than I imagined would be at that particular time. There was something that had occurred to me so easily, even when I wasn’t really focusing; the lightest colour that I saw was a marble grey. The colours ranged through speckled scarlet to maroon, mauve to violet, midnight blues and greys to blacks; all were at the darker spectrum of the colour range that all the dragons covered.

            Frain was the second darkest dragon that I was rather familiar with. Hydra was an aqua blue and Storm was a very bright, pale grey with white speckles. Jeta, like Torrin, was the deepest colour that there was, jet black; Torrin was old, very old and so he had specks of grey amongst his scales whereas Jeta was only about four years old and he was completely black (apart from the spines, all dragons had pearlescent spines and horns). There was no way of knowing, or telling, which colour was the more common amongst dragons; firstly as there were that many and secondly as some were speckled or had the blemish of a secondary colour. Frain, in fact, wasn’t just one colour all over; his wings were a more bluish purple compared to the spectacular purple of his body.

*****

            We were now flying a portion of the Meskar River (the one that passed near to Baedon) although we were too far north to see the town I had started at. As I thought on it, Frain banked to the left and we began to follow the river downstream southwards. After a good ten minutes of high speed swooping, we started to descend a few hundred metres and Baedon came into view from behind a small floating, fluffy cloud.

            It wasn’t necessary but Frain gave an almighty roar that shook me down to the pit of my stomach and I had to cover my ears; the result of which was letting go of the leather straps and I was almost thrown sideways off his back. Thanks to good reflexes, I latched back onto the straps and clung on tight whilst Frain circled round above the town. He was looking for a place to land.

            Unlike the other small towns we had ever visited, here was completely safe to let the people know we were definitely coming in to say hello. Back when Frain was just a baby dragon (small enough to lounge across my shoulders), one day I let Frain openly walk around the streets with me and there was a moment that I was questioned by a small group of children. It was very similar to when we were last in Itra only they were very much less inclined of being scared of him.

            At that point, Frain pulled out of his rounded flying and glided down towards the ground. We landed very lightly, something uncommon in my experiences; I hopped down and took off all the baggage and the harness. As I shoved that into an emptier bag, Frain had lowered his head and was swinging his tail violently. There was a loud commotion going on in front of me but I had my head down as I was crouching. Looking up, I saw that a large group of people were making their way over and a few of them did not look at all happy.

            The reason for Frain’s aggravated stance was due to the fact that, bizarre as it was, a couple of them were holding pitchforks and other assorted gardening or farming equipment. He was growling lowly as well though I doubt the crowd could hear him yet. As they got nearer, I heard the shouting a lot clearer. At first it was a bit difficult to interpret what all the bother was about but eventually I figured it out. It was all to do with an incident that happened just before I found Frain hiding, frightened, in the Harrisons’ stable.

            However, my knowledge now was a lot greater and broader and there was no way that Frain was the cause of the fire that burnt a man to death. At the age he was, he would have barely breathed a flame big enough to light a small fire. The surge of possibilities of what could have really happened was pushed straight to the back of my mind to consider for later.

            ‘You! You!’ shouted the most red-faced man I had ever seen (he must have only been a couple of years older than me). ‘Get out of here! We don’t want your kind messing about in our town.’

            There must be some confusion though I had to make an effort to sort this situation and calm everyone down. Frain wasn’t helping still in his defensive posture. ‘My kind? I haven’t come here to cause any trouble.’

            The flustered, infuriated man pointed at me with a shaking fist. ‘Not you. That!’ He turned his gaze to the fuming dragon. ‘That creature is not welcome here, not after one of them killed my father.’

            Another, only very slightly older man stepped forward and tried to restrain the yelling one. ‘Larkan, this is not going to help. You’ll get yourself hurt.’

            Frain growled louder and all of the people recoiled a little. ‘That creature is with me and he has never harmed anyone in his life. I can vouch for that, I promise. Anyway, I once lived here and this was the very same baby dragon that caused a bit of attention about... three years ago now? Yes, that long ago. If you rethink your accusation then this won’t get messy. I’m not threatening but I can’t always control him.’ I looked over my shoulder briefly at Frain.

            Frain took that as some sort of sign and did back off a few steps; his tail dropped and he pulled his head back as well. ‘We are not welcome here any longer. Let’s go, Carly,’ he spoke to me but his existent voice seemed to scare the townsfolk even more than his body language.

            The second man seemed to be looking at me closer now that he had calmed down Larkan. ‘I know your face. You were that girl that seemed to appear out of nowhere in the town.’

            I allowed myself a small smirk. ‘Yes, that’s me. And this is that small dragon that some of the children took an interest in. He wouldn’t harm anyone unless they threatened either of us.’ Behind him, I saw that the crowd was slowly thinning out as the people decided there was no fight about to occur.

            ‘I hope you know what all that was about back there,’ he enquired as he remained in front of me.

            Busying myself with my bags and telling Frain to just lie down for a minute. ‘Yes, I know. There is no way that a baby dragon can do that much damage. It would have to been a dragon at least a whole year old and Frain had only just hatched.’ I did sound just as defensive as Frain’s behaviour looked only five minutes ago.

            ‘Ah, I see. Well you might have to explain that to my friend. All he has done every day for the past three years is curse you, or rather the dragon who did that to his dad. Since that wasn’t your dragon, I could guess that you two are safe.’

            Some part of me was wishing that he would just leave me alone; I had a few things I wanted to be getting on with. ‘Thank you. Now if you don’t mind, I have things to do,’ I finally said, getting a bit flustered myself.

            ‘Do you need a hand with all of that?’ he offered.

            Just as I was about to stand up and give him a piece of my well established mind, I changed it. ‘It would help. That’s the heaviest bag, I can manage the rest,’ I told him as I slung my rucksack onto my back.

            He picked it up and walked alongside me as we made our way to the town. It was a short way so I took my time. ‘So what brings you back?’ he asked, clearly trying to make small talk as we passed the first few houses and down the main road.

            ‘We were just passing over. Frain landed here, I had no choice but it might have been a good idea.’

            The streets were very quiet, no doubt due to Frain’s and my arrival. There was a lot I could refer back on to understand how scared or frightened these people might be of even a dragon as small as Frain is now. My new curious friend gave no indication that he was about to leave me anytime soon. We kept walking until I came to where the little trinket shop was... or used to be.

            With a gasp, I dropped my bags and sprinted to where there was a blackened faced building right where the Harrisons lived. The windows were smashed but boarded up from the inside; there was no door either just charcoaled hinges half hanging off.

            ‘What happened?’ It was all that I could say or ask, not expecting a reply however.

            ‘This? This happened around two years ago, during the spring. The elderly couple were found dead and no one has touched this house since. They all say it’s cursed,’ he ended and though I did hear him, I was so wrapped up in emotion that my eyes were streaming with tears.

            I had dropped to my knees and bowed my head, my chest heaving and gasping for air. ‘Nooo! Why?’ I wanted to say more but my throat was slowly constricting. I wanted Frain but he had refused to come closer to personal danger as well as not being comfortable walking in these narrower streets.

            The man put his hands on my upper arms and gripped around them with his fingers. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you might have known.’

            Shaking my head, my body shook too and my hands were twitching by my sides. ‘No, I didn’t. I haven’t been here since I left.’

            ‘Come on. I think you need a cup of tea.’ He led me to the pile of bags and attempted to pick them all up.

            I reached down and picked up two of them. I was touched by grief but I had no idea how to really deal with it, I hadn’t had anyone close to me die. There was too much swimming round inside my head, a cup of tea did sound very appealing right now. As my eyes cleared from their tears, I noticed I had no idea where he was taking me and I didn’t know what his name was. As he walked just ahead of me, I looked up and watched how his slightly longish hair bounced with each of his steps. He had plain, simple features with what seemed to just class as broad shoulders in my mind. He was taller than me, probably about five foot eleven maybe even six. Following him as close as I was, there was a patch where we came to a corner and a horse-drawn cart rushed past seemingly out of nowhere and I bumped straight into him.

            ‘Erm, sorry about that,’ I mumbled, hoping he didn’t notice my hesitation.

            ‘That’s alright; some people have been starting to behave oddly recently. A couple of families moved out last year, no one knows where they went. I think it has something to do with what happened at your shop, it seems to have scared a lot of folk,’ he explained as we headed down the road where the cart had come rushing out of.

            I didn’t want to start thinking too much; I just wanted a huge mug of hot tea and a lot of biscuits to dunk in it. Also, I still really wanted Frain nearer but there was no way anyone would be happy if he came closer to the town. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked, seeing how we were now off the beaten track.

            He stopped outside a rustic wooden door and grabbed the darkened brass knob. ‘To get you that cup of tea. Ah,’ he added as he stepped through the door.