“Jack! You have to! You must!” Pick’s words were harsh and clipped, the tiny voice insistent. “Don’t you understand? Haven’t you been listening to me? This fight isn’t simply to save me or this park! This fight is to save you!”
Jack was confused. Why was this a fight to save him? It didn’t make any sense. But something deep inside him whispered that the Elf was telling him the truth. He swallowed his fear, choked down his self-doubt, hefted his makeshift sword and shield, and started forward. He went quickly, afraid that if he slowed he would give it up altogether. He knew somehow that he couldn’t do that. He eased his way warily ahead through the trees, searching the greenish mist. Maybe the Dragon wasn’t as scary as he imagined. Maybe it wasn’t like the Dragons in the fairy tales. After all, would Pick send him into battle against something like that, something he wouldn’t have a chance against?
There was movement ahead.
“Pick?” he whispered anxiously.
A shadow heaved upward suddenly out of the mist, huge and baleful, blocking out the light. Jack whirled and stumbled back.
There was Desperado. The Dragon rose against the night like a wall, weaving and swaying, a thing of scales and armor plates, a creature of limbs and claws, a being that was born of Jack’s foulest nightmare. It had shape and no shape, formed of bits and pieces of fears and doubts that were drawn from a dozen memories best forgotten. It filled the pathway ahead with its bulk, as massive as the crooked, shaggy tree from which it had been freed.
Jack lurched to an unsteady halt, gasping. Eyes as hard as polished stone pinned him where he stood. He could feel the heat of the Dragon against his skin and at the same time an intense cold in the pit of his stomach. He was sweating and shivering all at once, and his breath threatened to seize up within his chest. He was no longer thinking; he was only reacting. Desperado’s hiss sounded in the pit of his stomach. It told him he carried no shield, no sword. It told him he had no one to help him. It told him that he was going to die.
Fear spread quickly through Jack, filling him with its vile taste, leaving him momentarily helpless. He heard Pick’s voice shriek wildly within his ear, “Quick, Jack, quick! Push the Dragon away!”
But Jack was already running. He bolted through the mist and trees as if catapulted, fleeing from Desperado. He was unable to help himself. He could no longer hear Pick; he could no longer reason. All he could think to do was to run as fast and as far from what confronted him as he could manage. He was only thirteen! He was only a boy! He didn’t want to die!
He broke free of the dark woods and tore across the ball diamonds toward the bridge where Pick was caged. The sky was all funny, filled with swirling clouds and glints of greenish light. Everything was a mass of shadows and mist. He screamed for Pick to help him. But as he neared the bridge, its stone span seemed to yawn open like some giant’s mouth, and the Dragon rose up before him, blocking his way. He turned and ran toward the Indian burial mounds, where the ghosts of the Sinnissippi danced through the shadows to a drumbeat only they could hear. But again the Dragon was waiting. It was waiting as well at the cemetery, slithering through the even rows of tombstones and markers like a snake. It was waiting amid the shrub-lined houses of Woodlawn, wherever Jack turned, wherever he fled. Jack ran from one end of the park to the other, and everywhere, the Dragon Desperado was waiting.
“Pick!” he screamed over and over, but there was no answer. When he finally thought to look down for the silver pin, he discovered that he had lost it.
“Oh, Pick!” he sobbed.
Finally he quit running, too exhausted to go on. He found himself back within the deep woods, right where he had started. He had been running, yet he hadn’t moved at all. Desperado was before him still, a monstrous, shapeless terror that he could not escape. He could feel the Dragon all around him, above and below, and even within. The Dragon was inside his head, crushing him, blinding him, stealing away his life…
Like a sickness.
He gasped in sudden recognition.
Like the sickness that was killing him.
This fight is to save you, Pick had told him. The Elf’s words came back to him, their purpose and meaning revealed with a clarity that was unmistakable.