The Dragon and the Witch Read Online Free PDF Page A

“If the spirit concedes, then the rest follows. The thought of regaining freedom had been crushed from our souls.”
    I glanced around, noticing that we were walking toward a huge gully not far from our cave. The sun shone down, halfway between the horizon and the sky. It was moving into late afternoon.
    My father continued, “But, once in a lifetime, there will be one who will renew the faith in another. An unlikely creature, might I add.”
    “Who was it?”
    “A witch doctor befriended a baby dragon and he taught this dragon all he could. But,” he put up his finger, “in dragon form, he couldn’t get the youngling to pay attention, so he gave him the ability to shapeshift. The boy sat for hours listening to the witch doctor, learning spells and understanding more than he ever would have, if not for his friend.”
    “Wow, you’ve never told me this story before, Father.”
    “I’ve never needed to, Zadie. And up until now, you were always too young to understand.”
    “What happened to the baby dragon or the boy?”
    “He grew up and led an army of dragons into battle with men. Together, the dragons won. Their freedom restored, for a century, they flourished. Until…”
    “Until?” My hands were clasped in front of me and the dagger Tolbalth had given me as a birthday gift bounced against my thigh.
    He sighed. It was a heavy, burdened sigh. We stopped and he nodded toward a ravine. My eyes moved from him to the hundred-foot slope before me.
    I cupped my hands over my mouth and took a step back. Dragon skeletons littered the entire area, filling it with the death of yesteryears. My throat constricted and my heart sank. So many. Piled on top of each other, so many skeletons in this one spot. “This is the forbidden zone. I remember you told me that the place carried bad omens in the same way that the cave near our house is forbidden.”
    He nodded, staring out at the gully.
    “What happened here?” I asked.
    “We were attacked. And slaughtered. I couldn’t save them. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
    “Did any survive?”
    “Yes. Those who survived fled. I never knew what happened to the survivors. Never knew where they went or if they lived after the attack.”
    “What about you?” I asked, tears running down my face. I wanted to hug him, to tell my father that I loved him, but we’d never had that kind of relationship. So, I hung on to every word.
    “I found the witch doctor and asked for his help. My wife was injured. So we stayed and he hid us for hundreds of years until the land grew barren and the people moved on.”
    “You were the boy—the boy who befriended the witch doctor?” I asked.
    “Yes, I was the boy. I absorbed everything he taught me and while we stayed hidden from the world, I learned from him.”
    “What happened to your wife?”
    He turned to stare into my eyes, a pool of tears rested at the rims. “She died.”
    “Because of her wounds?”
    “No, because of her blood.”
    I wasn’t sure what he meant, but the pain in his eyes kept me from asking too many questions about his deceased wife. “And this is why you hate men—you hate shifting into a man form. Because of this.” I moved my gaze back out to the skeletons in front of us.
    “You’ll be eighteen tomorrow,” he said. “And there is so much that I need to tell you. I’ve waited to tell you.”
    We stood side by side for what felt like an eternity, staring out at the gully. A time for silent prayer or soul-searching for us both. I’d grown up in these forests and had never strayed to this side of the land just five miles east. This side had always been forbidden. And I had obeyed.
    I tried to picture the thousands of dragons that now lay in this gully as alive and thriving. I tried to imagine Tolbalth with a wife and a life before me. And while my mind traversed a million different thoughts, I had to ask my father the one question that had been bugging me for a lifetime—the question that nagged at me the