The Dragons Revenge (Tales from the New Earth #2) by J.J. Thompson Page A

have this
refuge, Simon thought. All thanks to him.
    Daniel had stocked the Dry
Goods room and, at the time, Simon had thought he was crazy. It had
been about a year before his Change began and the world started to
fall apart.
    There were sealed,
air-tight barrels of flour, sugar and salt. Resealable bags of
spices. Canvas bags stuffed with fine kindling and many other
practical supplies that Simon would never have thought of.
    Daniel had brought in
hundreds of candles and boxes of old-fashioned wooden matches. A
barrel of cooking oil. Tools, including a hammer and a big bin of
nails. A shovel. The list went on.
    In fact Simon was still
discovering new items whenever he wandered around the room. Just a
few weeks prior to his current crisis, the wizard had opened a random
box and, to his astonishment, found a sealed bag of gumdrops. Why
they were there, he had no idea. But what a treat they'd been.
    He chuckled and shook his
head. God knows what else is in there, he thought as he opened the
door to the final room.
    This one he simply called
'The Wardrobe'.
    Inside there were large
cedar chests and tall bureaus along each wall. Rolls of fine cloth
that Simon had used to make his robes and undergarments lay piled to
one side in their plastic wrappings. A large box filled with hundreds
of spools of thread and dozens of needles stood beside the cloth.
    He looked at them for a
moment and had to smile again. He had never had to sew back in the
old world. All of his clothes had been tailor-made to fit his
muscular, two hundred and fifty pound frame. Of course all that had
changed when things fell apart.
    After his Change, Simon
learned to sew by necessity. For some reason, loose-fitting robes
were the only kind of garment he could stand wearing for any length
of time. He eventually decided that wizards simply preferred wearing
that type of clothing and, because he had Changed into one, that was
what he was comfortable with.
    It made no sense to him
then and it made none now, but there it was.
    But there's no way I'm
wearing a flimsy robe out in that storm, he thought and began
searching through the chests.
    They were filled with
clothing of all kinds. Pants and slacks in one chest. Dozens of pairs
of shoes in another. Shirts and coats hanging in the bureaus. The
mystery wasn't that Daniel had stocked the room with clothing. No.
The thing that Simon couldn't get over is that everything was made to
fit the man he'd become, not the large man he had once been.
    Daniel, Daniel, he thought
with a shake of his head. I'll be thanking you forever, old friend.
    He rummaged around until
he found all that he needed. Then he carried his discoveries upstairs
to his bedroom and began to get dressed.
    Simon put on a set of
thermal underwear, pausing a moment to get used to the constricted
feeling of the garment. It was necessary but he didn't like it.
    He pulled on thick woolen
socks, a heavy shirt and sturdy pair of pants came next, followed by
fur-lined boots.
    Finally he struggled into
a dark blue winter jacket with a hood and thick gloves.
    He looked at himself in
the mirror and burst out laughing.
    I look like bundled-up
five year old, he thought. His young, unlined face with its enormous
mismatched eyes stared back at him innocently, with a crazy grin.
    Ah well, no one's going to
see me anyway.
    He walked back downstairs,
careful not to trip in the bulky clothing, and headed for the front
door.
    Then he stopped, made an
exasperated sound and went back to the stairs again. He walked down
and into the storeroom with all of his tools and found a small
shovel.
    Unless I want to dig with
my hands, I'm going to need this, he thought ruefully. And then he
climbed to the main floor again.
    Simon was sweating already
when he reached the front door. He glanced at the fire and saw that
there was enough fuel on it to burn for several hours and then he
pulled back the bolts on the door and, with some effort, forced it
open.
    A blast of arctic air
slammed