Keenin twitched his fingers and felt the hard band of metal resting below his hand. Light flashed across his closed eyelids. The places he knew were getting desperately far away and he could no longer say how many days had rolled by. Each was spent in the back of an enclosed cart, his hands resting in cuffs that held his arms over his head and pinned him to the wall. 

There simply wasn’t a way to get out, magic or otherwise. Since Judial had locked a thin cuff to his wrist, Keenin had been unable to make anything burn. This meant no signal fires, no burning down the cart around him, and no help from his elemental whom Keenin had started to feel like a voice in the distance.

The cart bumped again, this time with the clattering of boxes and the distraught clucking of a chicken which one of the men had brought for the eggs. The dim light through the wooden slats gave Keenin a sense of his surroundings and had been enough to notice the painting of a red bird on stored bits of armor, the very same marking on the soldiers attacking Meladona. His bleak situation made Keenin wish that he could apologize to the people he left behind. 

He now felt a great deal of regret for ever wanting to leave his home and for wanting anything more than a simple life in the dirt. And Lester. He missed Lester more than anything. Lester had been the one to inspire him, showed him that struggling for himself could be worth it. All Keenin had wanted was to see all those homeless children get more of a chance, to get a chance to be equal, and noticed in a good way. 

He took in a deep breath scented of pine, and let it go. Curiously, a white puff of his breath dissolved by his face. He exhaled another white puff to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, but there it was again. It was neither early morning nor the start of the fall season, but his fingers were a little chillier than he remembered.

“Is it getting colder?” a man outside asked. 

“The sun’s out,” another said.

“It’s just the wind,” a third mentioned. 

“Does it seem foggy?”

As the cart continued to creak along it did feel colder despite the sun on the roof. Then the cart rolled to a quiet stop.

“Why are we stopping?” Judial called up the line. 

“Sir!” one of the men called from a distance. “There’s a girl blocking the road ahead!”

Keenin could hear crying.

“Arrows up,” Judial called. “I’m not believing that fog and a girl in the road aren’t connected. Watch for bandits. I’ll take care of this.” 

Keenin couldn’t see the fog that they were talking about, but he heard the stretch of bowstrings and the step of a horse moving up the road.

“What if it’s a ghost?” a man whispered.

“Then you wouldn’t see her,” another responded. “Now quiet. Boss said he would manage.”

“Girl,” Judial called out. “Move off the road before we run you over. I am not in the mood for beggars or thieves.”

“Not yet. Not yet," he now heard the girl's voice. "I know it’s here. I dropped my ring right here. I cannot go home. I cannot go home until I find it.”

Keenin couldn’t see from inside the cart, but he heard something below the cart drop and instinctively knew it was one of the trace lines connecting the horses to the cart. This must have been the reason the girl was keeping them here. A second person must have crawled underneath the cart while hidden in the fog.

There was the knock of an arrow and a thunk of a hit.

“I don’t wait. My apologies to your partners, but we have places to be,” Judial said.

The girl. Judial had shot the girl. Keenin willed them not to notice the person under the cart when he heard another jingle.

“Hey!” the driver yelled out. “Little thief.”

The horse whinnied and jumped forward as this thief spooked the poor beast. The cart jerked forward, taking Keenin and rider with it as it wobbled dangerously on its single trace. Keenin heard men yell and dive out of the path of horse and cart and felt the cart drifting as the driver held tight on the reigns, but the poor driver must not have had the strength to hold horse and carriage in line. The carriage and Keenin swung sideways. He screamed and felt a jarring impact with a tree, which knocked the latch open as objects were flung around and out the back of the cart. 

The only good was that the cart was no longer moving. Keenin hung from his chains, toes dangling, half hearing things outside as a blow to his head left his mind circling on inner thoughts. Blood dripped from his chin. His eyes were open, but he could see very little from where he was.

This felt like when Alaban tripped him for stealing. It would be nice to wake up back home, but no. Judial was sure to come pick up the pieces when he was done with whatever was keeping him. The wind seemed to be shouting and roaring while Keenin was developing a headache. The right side of his forehead felt like a bruised peach. 

“Can you hear me?” he heard a girl's voice ask.

Great, he thought. Now one of the thieves had found him. He was sure that getting out of these chains would be so much fun.

“Can you hear me?”

Wait, it sounded like Tess. Keenin opened his eyes wider and looked to the opening in the back of the cart, but nobody was there. Actually, he seemed to have been half asleep because the noises had quieted down. No wind. No shouting men or thudding hooves.

“What did we get?” a girl outside asked.

Just how many girls were there? Keenin heard the chicken clucking outside. 

“I thought it smelled like charcoal and chicken,” a boy said. 

“Just army supplies. I guess we can hide them,” the girl said. “But Clide, I told you not to show yourself. People might come looking for a dragon.” 

“Not if they’re smart. Besides, your ghost trick didn’t send them running like it was supposed to and that wind guy was really angry. I had to defend myself.”

A spray of what sounded like dirt hit the side of the cart.

“Another ghost,” the boy said. 

“These men attract ghosts like bees to honey. It’s disgusting.”

“You mean like bears,” the boy said.

“Like what—

“Let’s see,” the boy said.

Keenin expected to come face-to-face with the boy as he checked in the cart, but instead, a blue-tinted claw pulled the door open and the ridged head of a dragon peered in at him with ice blue eyes. It exhaled cold air through its slightly parted jaw in an expression that Keenin interpreted as surprise. Then it closed the door as though to forget about him.

“Hey!” Keenin called in annoyance. “This is weird for me too, but I’m really stuck here.”

“Clide, what are you doing?” the girl said annoyed.

This time it was her that opened the door. This girl seemed to have dried blood down the side of her face, which suggested this was who Judial had shot with an arrow. She was just as suspicious as the dragon, who now was curled close to the ground as though trying to hide its large body behind hers. To be fair, he looked small for a dragon. 

“Oh, I’m sorry Clide was rude. I didn’t notice you here,” the girl apologized.  

“Fine. Great,” Keenin told her. “I don’t care who you are or why you robbed those soldiers. Just let me down so I can leave.”

“You aren’t a criminal, are you?” she asked. 

“Obviously, I was kidnapped,” Keenin told her. “Undo the chains. Please.” 

“I got it,” the dragon said. 

A long scaled tail wrapped itself around the dangling chains and yanked them bolts and all out of the wood, showering him with dust. The dragon pulled him from the cart and held him still dangling near its snout. 

“You seem really calm,” the dragon told him, curiously. 

“Put. Me. Down,” Keenin stressed. 

He didn’t want any more magical encounters. He had seen enough griffins, elves, terror birds, and encountered enough terrible help to last a lifetime. 

The dragon named Clide set Keenin down gently and dropped the chains connected to his wrists into his hands.

“Do you want help?” the girl asked. 

“I’m sure I can manage a pair of rusty cuffs,” Keenin said. 

There was sure to be a bit of metal in the cart he could use to pick the locks. It was just annoying, but at least he could eat whatever food he had been sitting beside on the way here.

“You seem like you might be here a while,” the girl said. “How about we take the good stuff to our place and you come with us to clean up.”

“Fine. But then I'm leaving without you,” Keenin said.