The Dragon' Son by Kathryn Fogleman Page B

him in his tracks.
     
    “Stupid boy!” spoke a harsh voice behind him.
     
    He spun around to see a pale man with a hideous scar going across his face. He sat on a terrible beast that looked like a bear and a wolf put together. Keegan froze in terror, but something screamed inside of him with rage, and it made his heart ache terribly.
     
    “I was sure you would have told someone about seeing me, but I guess you just weren't smart enough to do that, were you?” The man said with a sneer spreading across his ugly face. The creature began to growl and bared its teeth, tightening every muscle in its body.
     
    “This is a nightmare,” Keegan whispered to himself. “I will wake up at home, in my bed, with the smell of mother's cooking in my nose.”
     
    The creature snarled and jumped forward with a roar, its mouth open, enormous teeth drawing closer and closer to Keegan's face every second.
     
    “All die at sometime! Why not now?” The man's voice echoed in Keegan's ears as all went black.
     

     
    Keegan’s eyes fluttered open and slowly began to focus. He was surprised to hear the gentle sound of falling water and to find that he was lying on rough gravel in a warm cave, instead of his soft bed at home.
     
    “Where am I?” He asked himself. He thought very hard for a moment until all the dreadful happenings of the day before came roaring back into his mind. He wished that he had remained asleep. He groaned, rolled over to his side, and pushed himself upright, trying to crowd the horrible memories out of his mind with any other sight or sound around him. The splash of the waterfall behind him was a soothing sound, and the warm morning sunshine flooding into the cave through the cascade of water was warm on his back.
     
    He stretched his tired and sore body then stopped abruptly when he realized that the boulder he had slept on during the night was not next to him. He looked around the cave and found it nowhere in sight. There were no boulders at all, in fact. There were only strangely formed rocks that had been cut out by time and water standing toward the back of the cave.
     
    “Well. That is very unusual,” he whispered to himself with an uneasy feeling growing deep inside of him. “Surely I did not imagine it.” He had heard of grief and weariness causing a person to go mad and to see strange things, but surely a pile of smooth rocks could not be imagined, especially when he had felt them against his body and slept next to them. However, if they were real, then where did they go?
     
    Keegan shook his head in confusion. His gaze landed on fresh impressions on the gravel beside him, going toward the waterfall. He looked closer at the strange impressions, trying to blink the sleep out of his eyes as he did. He stared at them a good, long moment before he realized what they were.
     
    He gasped sharply as the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. “Dragon f-f-footprints,” he stuttered quietly. His mind began to spin, going through hundreds of options for survival, and telling himself what he should do accordingly. Suddenly, he heard a deep, rich laugh at the opening of the cave that sent warm shivers up and down his body, and a feeling of awe almost overwhelmed him.
     
    He looked up at the waterfall and saw an enormous, beautiful, golden dragon standing part way in the cave and part way out, bathing in the cool, blue, falling water. His back was toward Keegan, his large tail swayed gracefully back and forth, and his giant leather wings were spread as far as the cave mouth would allow, letting the cool water run down them and into the pool. The enormous beast unexpectedly shook his whole body and showered cool water everywhere, drenching Keegan.
     
    Keegan tried not to scream as the cold water showered him. He shook the water from his head, stood, rushed to one of the rock formations, and ducked behind it. His whole body was shaking from fear and the startling cold shower. He had never seen a