“Confound it, Jack! Get going!”
Jack did as he was told, spurred on by the urgency he heard in the other’s voice. He forgot momentarily what had brought him to the park in the first place. Hurriedly, he stuck the silver pin through the collar of his jacket and wheeled away. He scrambled out of the ravine beneath the bridge, darted through the fringe of trees screening the ball diamonds, and sprinted across the outfields toward the dark wall of the woods east. He looked skyward once or twice for Daniel, but the owl had disappeared. Jack could feel his heart pounding in his chest and hear the rasp of his breathing. Pick was chattering from somewhere inside his left ear, urging him on, warning that he must hurry. When he tried to ask something of the Elf, Pick cut him off with an admonition to concentrate on the task at hand.
He reached the woods at the east end of the park and disappeared into the trees. Moonlight fragmented into shards of light that scattered through the heavy canopy of limbs. Jack charged up and down hills, skittered through leaf-strewn gullies, and watched the timber begin to thicken steadily about him.
Finally, he tripped over a tree root and dropped wearily to his knees, gasping for breath. When he lifted his head again, he was aware of two things. First, the woods about him had gone completely silent. Second, there was a strange greenish light that swirled like mist in the darkness ahead.
“We are too late, Jack Andrew,” he heard Pick say softly. “That bubble-headed Troll has done his work! Desperado’s free!”
Jack scrambled up quickly. “What do I do now, Pick?”
Pick’s voice was calm. “Do, Jack? Why, you do what you must. You lock the Dragon away again!”
“Me?” Jack was aghast. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t know anything about Dragons!”
“Stuff and nonsense! It’s never too late to learn and there’s not much to learn in any case. Let’s have a look, Boy. Go on! Now!”
Jack moved ahead, his feet operating independently of his brain, which was screaming at him to get the heck out of there. The misted green light began to close about him, enveloping him, filling the whole of the woods about him with a pungent smell like burning rubber. There was a deadness to the night air, and the whisper of something old and evil that echoed from far back in the woods. Jack swallowed hard against his fear.
Then he pushed through a mass of brush into a clearing ringed with pine and stopped. There was something moving aimlessly on the ground a dozen yards ahead, something small and black and hairy, something that steamed like breath exhaled on a winter’s morning.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” murmured an invisible Pick.
“What is it?” Jack demanded anxiously.
Pick clucked his tongue. “It would appear that Wartag has learned the hard way what happens when you fool around with Dragons.”
“That’s Wartag?”
“More or less. Keep moving, Jack. Don’t worry about the Troll.”
But Jack’s brain had finally regained control of his feet. “Pick, I don’t want anything more to do with this. I can’t fight a Dragon! I only came because I…because I found out that…”
“You were dying.”
Jack stared. “Yes, but how…?”
“Did I know?” Pick finished. “Tut and posh, boy! Why do you think you’re here? Now listen up. Time to face a rather unpleasant truth. You have to fight the Dragon whether you want to or not. He knows that you’re here now, and he will come for you if you try to run. He needs to be locked away, Jack. You can do it. Believe me, you can.”
Jack’s heart was pounding. “How?”
“Oh, it’s simple enough. You just push him from sight, back him into his cage, and that’s that! Now, let’s see. There! To your left!”
Jack moved over a few steps and reached down. It was a battered old metal garbage can lid. “A shield!” declared Pick’s voice in his ear. “And there!” Jack moved to his right and reached down again. It was a heavy stick that some hiker had discarded. “A sword!” Pick announced.
Jack stared at the garbage can lid and the stick in turn and then shook his head hopelessly. “This is ridiculous! I’m supposed to fight a Dragon with these?”
“These and what’s inside you,” Pick replied softly.
“But I can’t…”
“Yes, you can.”
“But…”