Read Online Dragon's Boy by Jane Yolen - Free Book Online Page A

day the weather broke and gray clouds rode sullenly over the brooding Mendip Hills. The leaves and grass seemed a darker green than before, and that was when the rain actually started, lightly at first like a fine mist. Then, as if the heavens had been slit open with a knife, rain torrented down.
    They sheltered as best they could in a copse of trees, the horses stomping restlessly under the drip-drip-dripping from the overhanging branches. There was no lightning, and Artos alone was relieved. The dragon had told him a man could die struck by lightning and that lightning sought the high point, like a tree. The dripping of the rain down the back of his neck was all part of the adventure. Even the discomfort seemed fun, though Cai complained bitterly and long, as if the rain had been sent just to plague him .
    At Shapwick there was a junior tournament for boys under sixteen. The other three signed up at once, but Artos held back. He’d really only worked with wands and not his sword, though he’d brought it with him, of course. And he was curiously reluctant to use it against another person in fun. But he was loud in his cheering for his three friends, so much so that many people turned to smile at him for his boisterous loyalty.
    Cai was eliminated in the first round, but by a giant of a boy, so he didn’t feel too terribly downcast. And when that giant was beaten in the final round by Bed, in a long and sweaty battle, Cai was positively elated.
    Lancot won with the lance.
    Artos was agog at the banners and drums and horns and—quite frankly—at the enormous numbers of people. The closest he’d ever come to seeing that many people in one place had been the last time the High King had visited Sir Ector, and that had been several years earlier, with scarcely a tenth of the crowd. He stored up the faces and the sounds and the smells to take back with him.
    He especially liked the pie sellers and was nearly sick from eating six pork pies in quick succession, the hot, tangy sauce running down his chin. Luckily the pieman ran out of pies before Artos ran out of coins, and he spent the last of that day’s coins to listen to a traveling troupe of players who told “The Conception of Pryderi” better than anyone he’d ever heard.
    Five days later at Woolvington’s wool fair, when they were settled at a fine inn, Cai kissed Olwen, a serving girl, and even told her that he loved her. But then, privately, he said horribly funny things about her to Bed and Lancot and Artos. Artos felt awful about it, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything to Cai. As Cai continued all evening to make jokes about the girl—about her fat ostler father and her ugly mother who was the inn’s cook—Artos fell to remembering the way he’d treated poor garlicky Mag. He felt his chin sink lower and lower onto his chest and he wondered what to do. Since he didn’t want to lose his new friends, he didn’t protest, but he began to think a lot about the dragon’s wisdoms.
    It wasn’t until their last evening at Woolvington fair, with Olwen sitting all unhappy by Cai’s side and Cai winking broadly at his friends as if to remind them about his jokes at her expense, that Artos finally knew what he had to do.
    He had been asked to sing and had gotten through several songs when he remembered one the dragon had taught him called “Olwen the Fair.” It was a sad song, really, for in the end Olwen dies. But it was lavish in its praise for the song’s Olwen, for her fair cheeks and eyes the blue of cornflowers. He sang it directly to Cai’s wench, ignoring the smirks and giggles of the other boys. He let her know with the song that he, at least, honored her.
    At the song’s end Cai’s yellow-haired Olwen was so touched, she gave Artos a kiss and went out of the room with her head held high. Cai was a bit annoyed at losing her. And the guards who had accompanied