Duwaigunali: Chapter 1

Gaindohi - gain-‘Doe-hee
Chunulay - ’Chew-‘New-lay
Duwaigunali - due-way-guh-‘Nah-lee

The sun was shining pleasantly in the sky as Jackson walked through his fields. He had always enjoyed farming, and this year was especially good for him. His corn was already up to the top of his head, and it still had several months of growing left to do. His wheat was coming in thick and strong, and, as he walked down the evenly spaced rows, the smell of his crops greeted him; a smell of sweet grass and earth. It was a smell that always reminded him of summers as a kid when he had helped his Dad in these same fields.

This has to be the best day that we’ve had yet this summer – thought Jackson – with the warmth of the sun in a cloudless sky, except for a few distant clouds behind the northwest mountains promising to bring some light rain this evening. It might be a good day to just sit outside, and maybe take a nap under a tree after lunch.

Jackson was so content that it took several moments before he realized that a woman was screaming.

It wasn’t a cry of pain or of grief. It was much more like the scream of terror a mother would give if the side of her house was crumbling and she looked out to see a thousand men tearing down her walls. It was a scream that captured that moment of awe in seeing such a sight, along with the realization that everything you’ve depended on for years is being turned to rubble and your safety has forever been compromised.

Jackson ran quickly toward the sound as what he assumed was a cloud cast a shadow briefly across the ground. He ran toward his neighbor’s home and saw in the distance his friend’s mother making the sound and staring at the southern sky behind him; screaming, but not moving.

A deafening roar knocked him to the ground.

The roar wasn’t savage like a beast seeking food nor was it a sound that brought terror at the fearful thought of what could produce the noise, but it was big, deep and loud. It started with a sound that was very similar to waves crashing into the seashore (that is, if you were standing under the waves when they crashed) and then expanded into the sound of a thousand of the lowest notes of the largest ram’s horns. The sound felt like it was taking root in the inside of his chest, vibrating everything including his heart, and then trailing off lower until he wasn’t sure he was hearing the roar anymore, but rather just feeling it in his bones. He felt paralyzed as he lay face down in thick grass, barely able to breathe until the roar stopped. As the mighty sound faded into the distant mountains, he took a deep breath and turned over.

Standing above him, three times the height of a horse, was a monster more fearsome than any childhood story had ever described. Its body was covered in black scales that looked like glassy lava rock, and it was clearly built for strength, with strong, thick shoulders rippling out to strong, thick forelegs that blocked the view of the lower half of its body. A neck as thick as an ancient tree sprung from between the shoulders and two large, thick and powerful looking wings sprouted from somewhere on the monster’s back. Glassy black horns ran down the monster’s neck like an aging mane. The fearsome face looked wise and terrible, with the features appearing like the cross between a lizard and a horse, but with green, piercing eyes that looked too clear to belong to a beast. The fluid lightly streaming from the edges of the eyes gave the creature the look of an ancient bleary-eyed wise man that has lost his mind and now endures the tortures of a paranoid insanity.

It took several moments for Jackson to realize what the beast was, and for good reason. He had never seen a dragon before.

Jackson drew in a breath to scream out his own involuntary cry, but before his fear found voice a dark blue flame burst from the dragon’s mouth and enveloped Jackson and the ground around him. The distant woman’s scream was no longer heard by Jackson, because he could only hear the fire raging across his body. He writhed under the flame as he felt his clothes being consumed from his skin and every inch of his exposed body burning, from the soles of his feet to top of his head, to the crevasses under his fingernails. Jackson gave himself up to the heat and the pain until, after what seemed like several agonizing minutes, the flames stopped. He opened his eyes and looked again into the black dragon’s eyes, but they were now wide with what looked like confusion. The fluid still glistened at the edges of the mystical lizard’s face as it swept forward to Jackson’s pain-weakened form below it, and with a deep inhale the beast pulled back, grunted with a low growling sound and leapt into the sky. As the beast flew off, Jackson noticed that the hindquarters, though not as massive as the monster’s shoulders, were no less muscular and a long tail as thick as the dragon’s neck and equal in length to the rest of the creature’s body trailed behind.

Jackson watched in awe as the dragon swiftly disappeared into the southern horizon. Looking around him he saw nothing but raw, rich, dark dirt for thirty feet in any direction. His arms and hands were cleaner than he’d ever been able to get them in a bath, and the skin was reddening as though he had been rubbing his whole body vigorously with a coarse cloth. A few scars from long-forgotten injuries radiated red and raw.

The pleasant summer breeze suddenly brought him to a realization that his clothes were completely gone. Jackson’s mind stopped trying to make sense of what had happened and flew into a flurry of protective reactions. He stood up and raced to his home, without any thought other than hoping that his departure was not being seen by his friend’s mother.

When he reached his home, he quickly dressed and, having no further sense of immediate need or purpose, he crashed to the floor as the gravity of what had just transpired came to him with as great a force as had the roar. He laid on the floor of his home weeping with relief and gratitude for his life being spared, and shaking with the terror he hadn’t had time to feel when the dragon was standing over him. He lay that way for several hours as his emotions had time to run their course and he finally relaxed and fell into a light, dreamless sleep.

He awoke to pounding on his door and a voice saying, “Jackson, are you in there! Sir Jackson of Gaindohi! Are you alright?” The voice was distantly familiar, but the last remnants of sleep were still clouding Jackson’s mind. As he opened his eyes he saw his door open and one of the king’s riders enter into his one-room home. The rider’s eyes opened wide as he saw Jackson on the floor. “Are you alright?” he asked with concern in his voice, “are you injured?”

“No, I’m fine,” Jack replied groggily, as he slowly lifted himself from the floor and discovered that his only pains were a kink in his neck and slight ache in the front and back of his head. “What are you doing here?”

The rider, his tone sounding like the conditioned response of a soldier, said, “I’ve been sent by the king to bring you to the castle.”

“Why?”

“Because of the…events that happened earlier,” the rider’s military tone faltered slightly, “He'll want to know what you saw and…how you survived.”

Jackson nodded slowly, grabbed his travelling cloak and walked out his door with the rider, who was looking at him just a bit too intently.

“Is everything alright?” Jack said, causing the rider to look away with a hint of embarrassment.

“Did … it … really breath fire on you?” the rider asked.

Jackson sighed and rubbed his forehead, “yeah, it did.”

“But your hair isn’t burned.”

Jackson ran his fingers through his hair, “no, I guess not.”

“Did it…hurt?”

“Yes … a lot,” Jackson replied, “look, let’s just go see the king. I’m sure he’ll want to hear all of this as well, and right now I’m not really up to talking about it.”

The rider blinked and nodded, and walked over to his horse. As the rider mounted and waited, Jackson went to the stable to saddle his horse, Chunulay, a strong workhorse with a white and brown hide, whose stockiness showed her strength but did not give any hints as to her incredible speed. That being accomplished, Jackson mounted as well and the two riders began to trot towards the center of the kingdom of Duwaigunali, towards the castle of King Robert.

After some time had passed, Jackson asked, “What do you think the king is going to do about all this?”

The rider replied, “Actually, that will probably be up to you.”

“What do you mean?”

The rider stopped his horse and turned to face Jackson. “The king doesn’t want you to come just to tell him the story,” the rider half smiled, “he wants you to renew your service to him.”

Next: Chapter 2