LittleWyvern.com

Well, it’s officially November now and I want to get the month off to a good start. For reasons beyond the scope of this post I am trying to get myself into the perpetual mindset of thinking “If Not Today…” and to that end I figured that there was no good reason to keep putting off this novel. I mean, in order to finish you have to start, right?

It is going on 5am right now and I haven’t proofread this at all yet. Please be forgiving. It’s late and I’m tired and what sounds good to a writer after 2am is usually total crap once the sun comes out. I am going to re-read and re-write some of this tomorrow and also try to put together a separate section of LittleWyvern.com so interested readers can follow my progress while the rest of you can be saved the trouble. In particular I need to find a way to break these chapters up into pages so you don’t need to scroll so much. I don’t really want to just link to a Word doc or PDF.

Still, I am interested in what you think…

Prologue

It was nearing sunset as the Number 9 to Jackson Flats crested the hilltop. Patrick gazed down upon the city harbor and the wide stretch of river beyond; its deep, calm waters tinted orange by the fading light. In a single fluid motion born from many years of habit he pulled down the small brim of his hat with one hand while shifting the old bus into a lower gear with the other. The engine moaned and the bus briefly shuddered. Nobody took any notice.

Patrick squinted in the twilight, constantly shifting his gaze between the road and the wide rear-view mirror that allowed him to keep watch over his passengers. The bus was unusually crowded for this time of night, but among all the travelers there were three in particular that caught Patrick’s eye. It was his experience that led him to take notice. It was his instinct that made him feel afraid.

Near the back of the long bus two teenaged boys were hovering over and laughing with a teenaged girl who sat between them. Patrick guessed them all to be about seventeen, though the older he got the younger everyone else seemed to be. One of the boys dropped into the seat next to the girl and leaned forward to whisper into her ear. The girl laughed at the comment and then playfully slapped the boy’s leg. The sound of the blow caused another nearby passenger to glance up at the trio in confused alarm. The teenager who was still standing made a remark to the passenger that Patrick couldn’t quite hear, but he guessed at its meaning when the passenger quickly lowered his eyes and the trio burst into renewed laughter. Ten or twenty years ago Patrick would have spoken up, but at sixty-seven his situation was more fragile. Age might have brought him wisdom and experience, but it also brought arthritis and two bad knees. If it came to a fight – which seemed to Patrick more likely than not when stepping between two drunken teenaged boys and a girl – he didn’t have a chance. The uniquely frustrating pain of helplessness began to take hold. If only…

Bing!

A loud electric chime snapped Patrick’s train of thought and stole his attention away from the teenagers. Someone had requested the next stop. Yeah, thought Patrick, I would want to get off this bus too.

The rickety city bus rumbled to a stop at the end of the block, and when the doors opened a half dozen passengers stepped eagerly onto the sidewalk. Patrick kept his eyes on the mirror, silently wishing that this might be the teenagers’ stop too. With his focus behind him the worried driver almost didn’t notice the two young boys who climbed onto the bus once everyone else had climbed off. The first was about fourteen with shaggy brown hair. Right behind him walked a second, slightly older boy with short dark hair. Neither spoke as the dark haired boy paid both fares and then moved to a pair of open seats near the middle of the bus. There was a squeal of delight from the young girl in the back as Patrick set the vehicle back into motion.

The night wore on and the bus got closer to the river. Though the sun had dipped below the horizon, the last fading residue of daylight offered up a dim silhouette of the city’s most famous landmark, the Lady McNulty Bridge. The massive iron structure stretched nearly one quarter of a mile and spanned the long width of the river, connecting the quiet town of New Saint Claire with the opposite shore and in turn the rest of the world. Patrick had only been a child when the bridge went up. In the years following the Second World War the government had undertaken thousands of civil engineering projects throughout the country. Returning soldiers needed work, and so it was that many of them ended up exchanging their machine guns for rivet guns and putting up bridges. Patrick’s own father had been on the crew that erected the Iron Lady – as the locals called it – and he still fondly remembered his father’s pride at pointing to a particular stud or fastener and whispering to young Patrick, “You see, son? I did that.”

The sight of the looming bridge made Patrick smile, but his happy memories were once more dashed away by the sound of shouting from behind him.

“And where do you think that you’re going?” A middle-aged businessman was trying to walk to the front of the bus but his way had been blocked by one of the drunken boys. The confronted passenger wasn’t quite sure how to react and he kept nervously glancing at the second boy, who merely stared back at the man with a sadistically passive smile.

“This is my stop,” muttered the man as he once more tried and failed to get past the younger boy.

“Your stop?” The boy shook his head but didn’t take his eyes off the man. “No, this isn’t your stop. See, if this were your stop I would have heard that cute little chime.” A look of confusion fell upon the man’s face and he looked quickly around the bus for someone who might help him. The boy turned to his seated friend and asked almost rhetorically, “I didn’t hear anything, Pete. Did you hear anything?” The second boy shook his head and then turned his attention back to the girl beside him. “Nope, he didn’t hear anything, either. So you see, this must not be your stop.”

Bing!

The electronic chime sounded crisp and loud. The teenaged boy spun around in a quick flash of anger, his eyes full of senseless rage. Patrick slowed the bus and readied for the fight to come while looking for the passenger who had sounded the chime. It didn’t take long. As the bus came to a halt near the base of the Lady McNulty Bridge the two young boys in the middle of the bus stood up and started walking to the rear door. The angry teenager took a step towards the younger, smaller pair and despite his age and cowardice Patrick nearly jumped out of his chair. But before any sad attempt at heroics could be made on the old driver’s part, the small boy with the shaggy brown hair took two quick steps toward the teenager. The sudden movement caught the drunken boy off guard and he didn’t have time to react before the younger kid had closed the distance between them. What happened next Patrick could not quite see. His view of the action was partially obstructed by the small boy’s dark-haired friend. He could be sure of one thing though; amazingly, there wasn’t a fight. The best Patrick could tell, the smaller boy had worked himself close enough to the teenager that he could speak to him in a voice soft enough that nobody else could hear. What exactly the boy had said the old driver would never know. The angry young man merely stared at the small boy for a moment before looking past him to the boy’s dark-haired friend. There was a short moment of hesitation before the teenager turned around, spat onto the floor, and then dropped down next to his friend with an exaggerated grunt.

The young boy and his friend continued to the door and Patrick watched in stunned amazement as the teenagers made no move to follow them. The weary driver shifted the bus back into gear and as he drove off Patrick saw the dark silhouettes of the boys in his side-view mirror as they set off in the direction of the Iron Lady. Had he waited around just a little bit longer Patrick might have been watching as one of those silhouettes dropped from the massive bridge’s edge, fell through two hundred feet of open night sky, and violently crashed into the calm dark waters below.

Instead, Patrick was still asleep in his bed the following morning when the city police found the shattered body of a fourteen-year-old boy floating in the river beneath the Lady McNulty, his shaggy brown hair rolling softly with the waves.