The Dragon and the Witch by K.T. Tomb Read Free Book Online

“Don’t go telling your father that you’re a witch. He’ll burn the idea out of you.” He moved past me and kept walking. I turned to follow him.
    “I can see the past, too. Like things that have happened. But I think I must have touched something from the past to have the vision come to life. If you look at the facts, you’ll see that I’m right.”
    “You’re not right, so stop telling yourself that you are.”
    “My mother is visiting me for a reason, Piku, and I’m going to find out why.”
    “You’re going to push your father to no return is what you’re going to do. Then our land will have to deal with an irate dragon with a mean streak and a deadly set of fire-induced lungs.”
    “You make him out to seem worse than he really is.” We walked side by side toward the ravine my father had taken me to the day before.
    “No, I make him sound nicer than he is. Let’s remove mean streak and say that he’s an irate dragon with a death wish to kill everything in his path.” Piku glanced down where I was staring. “What’s this?”
    “It’s a test.”
    “What kind of test are you going to do with a ravine of old bones?”
    “You knew about this place, didn’t you, Piku?”
    “Yeah, who doesn’t? It’s not a place anyone wants to visit, Zadie.”
    I narrowed my eyes at the tiger, staring him down. We’d been friends since I was five years old and he’d never told me about this place. “And you never told me about it, why?”
    “Why would I? It’s not like I was there when it happened. Although, it was only twenty years ago when this slaughter took place.”
    Irritated, I huffed. “I’m going down there.”
    “Down where.”
    I pointed toward the gully.
    “No you’re not. All that’s down there is death, Zadie.”
    “Well, death and I are going meet face to face then.” I carefully took a step on the steep slope, sliding a few inches and using my arms out to my sides to steady myself.
    “If you kill yourself, what am I going to tell your father? He’ll hunt me down, skin me and use my fur as a scarf.”
    I glanced back at his worried face. “Piku, I won’t kill myself. I’ll be careful, you just stand guard and make sure my father doesn’t sneak up on us.”
    “Great,” I heard him say to himself, “I get to deal with the real-life, fire-blowing, edgy dragon while you deal with harmless skeletons.”
    “I heard that, Piku.” I laughed when I heard him huff. He turned his back toward me and stood guard, the way I had asked him to do.
    Turning my attention back to the hill before me, I masked my fear. I wasn’t trying to be rebellious by going down in a gully full of dragon skeletons. Instead, I wanted to see about this new power of vision. It had happened to me in the cave with my mom and the day before in a dream. I believed it also happened when I’d first touched the blade of the dagger my father had given me. Somehow, someway, I believed I was able to see into the past. Heck, stepping into a traumatic place such as this, should tell me if I was able to visit the past.
    When I made it to the bottom, I turned to Piku and raised my hand, waving at him. “I made it.”
    “Good, now hurry,” he yelled down to me.
    I said to myself, “Yeah, yeah. I’m hurrying.”
    I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but standing among hundreds of dragon bones in a sunken part of the land left me with an eerie feeling that moved through my body. The quiet left a hollow sound around me. I thought I could hear their cries, but it was my imagination of a time when they’d fought fiercely but helplessly for their lives.
    I kneeled next to a pile and pressed my open palm over a ribcage. Nothing happened. I wasn’t able to see the past or anything associated with the bones. A part of me felt deflated, wondering what had caused me to see what I thought was the past in the cave the night before.
    The way the bones lay, intertwined with other dragons, broke my heart. A clump of bones twisted