Hero by Alethea Kontis Page B

and time.
    Peregrine and Betwixt took their time journeying up to the small, out-of-the-way alcove. Betwixt’s great hound’s feet slipped on the steep path, which made for slow going. Peregrine had selected this particular niche for its dry warmth, its proximity to the dragon’s lair, and its difficulty to reach. Betwixt often had a hard time getting there while sporting particularly large shapes, or aspects without wings. Peregrine was only forced to bow his head to avoid the low ceiling, and watch his knees on the knobby floor.
    He slipped off his soft boots, lit the library’s lantern from his torch, and then scrubbed the torch out against the rough, pitted ceiling. “There were a few maps of the continents that I recall . . .” Peregrine muttered. He set the lantern on the gnome-shaped icerock pedestal beside the piles of books and papers with a “Thanks, Old Man.”
    Betwixt sniffed from pile to pile, sneezing at some particularly old documents and rendering them into dust. “Oops.”
    “It’s okay. That one was Trollish. I never could read it. I put all the maps over on this side, but I thought I had separated out the ones that weren’t just of the mountain . . . yes, here.” He gently unfolded a large, wide sheepskin sailing map of the three continents, with the ocean between them. Above the ocean, at the highest point of the map, a star marked the Top of the World. The shadows on the wall bent over to examine the work of art with him. Whoever had created this map had been quite the traveler. Before seeing this, Peregrine had had no sense of exactly how large the world was.
    “You’re not going to give her that one, are you?” There was a growl in the chimera’s voice. “She’ll probably just destroy it.”
    “I know.” The map itself didn’t matter; Peregrine had long since memorized it and every other scrap of vellum and skin he’d collected here. But holding the thing gave him some wistful measure of hope, reminding him that there was still so much of the world yet to see.
    “Copy it on the wall, here,” Betwixt rattled his tail at an odd blank space to the left of the niche’s entrance. “For safekeeping.”
    As long as the dragon slept on, as it had for centuries, everything here at the Top of the World would be safely kept. And if the dragon ever woke . . . well . . . there would be nothing left worth keeping.
    Peregrine took up a sizeable chunk of charred coal. On the right side of the alcove’s opening were hash marks he had begun making when he’d first discovered this place, both drawn and scored with a knife, in an effort to mark the passage of time. Eventually he’d tired of the exercise and progressed to more productive things like bettering his artistic abilities, or teaching himself how to play the silver flute he’d found on a wispy old skeleton of unknown origin.
    He sketched the lines of the map onto the uneven wall from memory; it was easier than trying to hold the skin open, balance himself, and scratch on the wall at the same time. The coast of Arilland sloped downward into the desert wastelands. Also in the south lay the island kingdom of Kassora and, an ocean beyond that, the Troll Kingdom.
    Peregrine leaned back and held up the lantern to see how closely he’d come to recreating the map. Betwixt, who had spent the time sniffling and sneezing and rattling through more stacks of papers, stumbled over the bumpy ground to have a look.
    “It’s amazing how you do that,” said Betwixt.
    “What?” Peregrine slapped his hands together and tried to dust the worst of the coal onto his skirt. “Draw something from memory? I’ve had quite a bit of practice.”
    “No, I mean telling yourself you’re drawing one thing, and then painting another picture entirely.”
    Peregrine lifted the lantern higher and scooted back from the wall. The shadows fell away to reveal his masterpiece. As close as he had been, he could only see the coasts of the continents