Windcatcher: Book I of the Stone War Chronicles (29 page)

Galirras went over this in his head.

“
Do you believe in god, Raylan?
”

It was an innocent question, but the topic somehow seemed to be linked, in his head, with his mother’s death. Strangely enough, he did not really feel the emptiness he usually felt when thinking about his mother. Instead, the pleasant warmth of his link with Galirras was present.

“
No, not really. I’ve always been more of an ‘I believe it when I see it’ kind of person. I don’t know when that started, perhaps around the time my mother died. We were a loyal, church-going family, until my mother passed away. Gavin always got very upset about the subject of god after her passing, so eventually we stopped going. I don’t know if he still believes, and blames god, or that he lost his belief because of things. For me, it matters little; gods may or may not exist, but I care little for them.
”

The dragon grew silent, in a different way, after that. It seemed he was deciding if he should ask his next question. After a while, he did.

“
Will I ever know my mother? And, are there any other dragons?
”

Raylan wondered when the little dragon would ask such a thing. He tried to come up with a suitable answer, in preparation, but never really succeeded.

“
I’m sorry, but I don’t know about your mother. In our kingdom, dragons are just a myth, as if they never really existed in the first place. Xi’Lao says dragons vanished from this world a long time ago. She said no-one thought they’d ever be back. But now, you’re here…so I would say that makes anything possible.
”

This seemed to cheer Galirras up, a little. He returned to the initial topic, trying to wrap his brain around the concept.

“
So gods might, or might not, exist but some people say that god exists. How do you know if someone is telling the truth? I mean, if someone told me they had seen dragons, how would I know they speak the truth?
”

Raylan had no real answer for that.

“
I think you go with your gut feeling.
”

“
What has my stomach got to do with any of this?
”
s
aid Galirras, confused.

“
It’s a figure of speech, it means you feel in your core…your wisdom, if you believe someone is telling the truth or not. Besides, there is nothing wrong with believing in something, it only becomes a problem if that belief actively becomes an obstacle for someone. If someone believes he’ll live forever by only eating bird eggs, no one will bother him. But if someone starts forcing other people to only eat eggs because of that belief, it will become a problem. Belief should never be forced onto someone, it has to be free choice.
”

Raylan gave it some more thought.
“
Sometimes, if you’d really want something to be real, it is not so much ‘belief’ but ‘hope’. There is a difference. Either way, belief can be a powerful thing, even if that belief is based on a false truth. For example, the people who spread belief in a god, usually enjoy a certain level of power. They’re the same people who run gatherings at a cathedral, or similar smaller houses of god, like churches. Some people think these church leaders will do anything to keep that power, including making people believe in some higher being that does not exist…
”

Galirras had not met many people yet, but he wondered why anyone would want to make you believe something that was not true. It felt wrong, somehow. After staying quiet for a while, he decided to let the topic rest, for a bit. Instead, he looked up toward the branched roof again.

“
Can we climb up and have a look around?
”
he
asked.

Raylan put his hand on the dragon’s snout and spoke aloud.

“I’d love to, but I don’t think we’ll be able to. We don’t have any good climbing gear with us, and we don’t have your talons to help us climb.”

“What’d he say?” said Kevhin, who overheard him.

“He asked if we could climb up into the trees. But, unless we grow claws like him, I reckon we won’t get up there…” Looking upward, he added, “That said, the view must be intense!”

“Totally!” agreed Kevhin with a grin.

Later that night, when most of them were already asleep, Raylan put his hand on Galirras’ neck. The dragon slept calmly. It seemed the restless nights were behind him, for now, apart from the occasional dream hunt. In those dreams Galirras clattered his jaws from excitement, like a cat ready to catch a bird. Raylan rolled up next to him, enjoying the warmth of the fire on one side and the natural high temperature of the dragon on the other. Trying to fall asleep, his mind went over the conversation of that evening.

Perhaps, in the old days, dragons
were
seen as gods. Who knows, he might even be right.

He closed his eyes and smiled. As he fell asleep, he heard them again. For the first time in days…the sound of wolves. The howls, echoing through the night’s sky, seemed awfully close.

Galirras burst into a full-on sprint. The small deer he spotted, unfamiliar with a dragon as a hunter, took a split second before recognizing the danger, then dashed away from him. It was all the time he needed. As he ran past one of the large tree roots, he pushed off and he leapt through the air. Shooting out with his claw, he slashed the deer’s hind leg from under it. The animal came crashing down, tumbled by the speed. As it slid to a stop, it only had a split second to let out a high cry before Galirras sunk his teeth into its neck and put the animal out of its suffering.

“
My biggest one yet!
”
he said with pride.

“Well done. That jump was very powerful. It almost looked like you were flying,” complimented Raylan, who came running up.

“
Well that would even be easier, I think. They would not hear me approach, if I could fly and glide through the air….
” he said with a small gloom in his eyes. “
But, this is good enough. It’s exciting to hunt on foot.
”

Raylan gave up asking him to use his wings. Galirras did not want to put in the effort anymore, it seemed. In the meantime, he learned to stay behind Galirras while he hunted. The dragon quickly learned to walk stealthier than him. By staying too close, Raylan would only scare away potential prey. And with a kill in sight, Galirras still got so excited he sometimes forgot Raylan was there and knocked him over during a pursuit.

As Galirras tore into the soft belly of the deer, Raylan knelt beside him. He had gotten used to seeing him eat, although he still found it sloppy. Then again, some of the guys in their squad ate in a similar way. The dragon was growing fast. Standing next to him, Galirras already came well above shoulder height with his head. His body filled out with muscles. Stretched out from head to tail the dragon was easily the size of one and a half men.

They traveled through the giant tree forest for a number of days now. The trees started to vary in species. The ground held various leaves next to an abundance of thin needle leaves. Despite the differences, all trees still had massive trunks towering upward. And although the branches of some trees twisted, with complexity, through the air in comparison to the more straight branches of the needle trees, there were still very few low branches……it often felt like walking in a hall of pillars.

As Galirras became more adept at hunting, he and Raylan took over some of the hunting trips from Kevhin and Rohan.

“
Would you like to take a leg back to camp?
Maybe even two?
”

The dragon sighed heavily. It had been a successful morning hunt, perhaps because they went out before dawn.

“I think that’ll be a great idea.”

As Raylan cut through the hind quarter of the deer, Galirras moved to the side. He lay down on a flat slab of rock, which had been warming up in a rare ray of sunlight falling through the roof of leaves.

Raylan tied the two hind legs together and slung them across his shoulder. The group would not go hungry today.

As he approached Galirras, he found the dragon staring intensely at a spot on the ground. A ray of sunlight touched the ground, not far from the stone slab Galirras sat on. In the beam of light were three leaves twirling, moving around each other in circles, almost dancing.

Raylan looked at the leaves with a mesmerizing look, one similar to the small dragon’s look, then something struck him as odd. Looking around, he saw no other leaves moving, no branches swaying, nothing. There was no wind this morning as they stood there in the dim light of the forest.

“That’s odd,” he said, aloud.

Galirras looked startled, as if he had not seen Raylan approach him. Immediately, the leaves dropped to the ground.

“
What is odd?
”

“There’s no wind at all, yet those leaves moved as if touched by it.”

“
That was not the wind. I think that was me.
”

Galirras sounded a little surprised at his remark.

“What do you mean, that was you? Can you do it again?” asked Raylan.

“
I think so.
”

As he returned his gaze to the leaves, Galirras raised his head, in concentration. Front legs crossed, head raised, the dragon looked focused and relaxed at the same time, as the end of his tail twitched, back and forth, every now and then.

After a moment where nothing happened, one of the leaves started trembling. Shortly after, the other two leaves that had been in the dance started shifting. The movements increased, until all three leaves suddenly lifted in the air, as if carried by a breeze. The leaves swirled around, just above the ground, sometimes touching the green moss, sometimes flying to the side. But each time, some invisible force pushed the leaves up into the air, or back into the odd dance.

“That’s amazing! How are you doing this?” Raylan wondered.

Looking at Raylan, the dragon beamed with pride. Right away, the leaves scattered, as if hit by a gush of wind, and fell to the ground. Galirras let out his breath.

“
It takes a lot of effort, but I am getting better at it.
”

“What do you mean?”

“
I have been practicing.
”

“But how can you move them without touching them?”

“
I
am
touching them…in a way.
”

“I didn’t see you move. How can you be touching them?” said Raylan, who grew more confused and more interested.

“
I touched the air around it. At least, I think that is what I did.
”

“The air? But how? You can’t even see the air…”

“
You cannot?
”
asked Galirras, as he turned his head and twirled his three pupils at Raylan, in wonder.

“
When I look at things, I see little sparkles flying everywhere. They light up and fade away really quickly, like flowing water sparkling in the sunlight. I see them better in direct sunlight. It’s harder to see them in the shadow of the trees.
”

“It must be a dragon thing,” said Raylan, “but what does that have to do with the leaves moving?”

“
Well, I thought the sparkles looked pretty, so I wanted to catch them. But my claw moved right through them, or perhaps the sparkles flowed around it. I tried several more times, but it had no effect. So, I started watching the movement of the sparkles. They were random, at first, but I noticed a few days ago that if I concentrate on them, they started moving in the same direction. The more I concentrate, the faster they move.
”

“So, you are able to move things by moving the sparkles?”

“
Not at first. One night, I noticed the flames of our campfire got larger, if I moved the sparkles toward them. I saw I could push against a flame and make it bend. That got me thinking what else I could move. I was not successful, until I just moved these leaves today.
”

“And here I thought you just liked to look at the flames every night. Who knew you were doing such an amazing thing.”

Galirras yawned.

“
It is very tiring to do. I would like go back to camp and sleep for a bit, if that is okay.
”

“That’s fine. We got enough meat for today’s meal,” said Raylan. “Besides, I want to ask Xi’Lao if she knows anything about thi—”

Raylan turned around slowly, mid-sentence, as a low growl originated behind him. He saw a dark brown timber wolf with a lowered head and pulled back lips. The animal let out another deep dark growl, looking Raylan in the eye, as two wolves joined it from behind the tree. The soft snapping of a branch made Raylan look to his left. Another wolf moved, in a circular motion, around them.

In total, seven wolves came into view, surrounding them from all sides. The smallest one was as big as Galirras.