"The Remnants" is character-centered, 13,700 word story divided into two parts. It was written for my fiction writing class, and I have recently sent it in for consideration in Fantasy & Science Fiction, a literary magazine. If and when it gets published, I will certainly post the news!
The story follows Aiden, a young modern-day American man as he discovers a small colony of miniature dragons living in the woods not far from his town. At first questioning his sanity, he soon discovers that not only are the dragons real, but they also need something from him in order to survive. Aiden must decide whether or not these hostile creatures can be trusted and discover how to defend himself as a world of magic is rapidly opened up before him. It is an action-packed, original tale that blends reality and fantasy.
Here is a clip from the beginning of part one: (I apologize if there's any strange symbols in there...converting to .html seems to have messed a few things up. I tried to catch as many of them as I could.)
The Remnants
Part I
By Angela Merkle
Aiden checked his watch. Almost midnight. They should appear any minute, if they were going to appear at all. Despite his many layers of coats and the old blanket he had spread on the ground, the whole front side of his body was chilled from lying on his belly. But he did not want to move. This was the perfect hiding spot; it provided a nice view of the clearing while still keeping him hidden in the underbrush.
If anyone had come walking along in the woods at that moment and seen him, they probably would have laughed. They would have seen a young man, 24 years old to be exact, so bundled up in warm clothing that one could only barely tell (from the short cut of his brown hair) that he was a man at all. They might have taken him to be a hunter, but he had no weapon. They could have assumed he was a bird watcher, but he carried no binoculars. A young man such as himself, they may have said, should either be resting up for work on a Sunday night or out enjoying his youth while it lasted. Lying around in the forest on a frigid, snowy night like this bordered on madness. And Aiden would almost agree with them.
He could clearly imagine what his friends would say if they discovered him like this. Particularly Jonathan, his best friend. He would probably walk straight up and kick Aiden in the ribs.
"You're so weird," he would say. "I know you like being outside and all, but...this is taking it a little too far, don't you think?"
Jonathan and Aiden had graduated from college together and now worked together at the same small programming business. Jonathan was quite happy there; and one of his major faults, Aiden would say, was that he could not understand why his friend was not. Aiden had always longed for something greater out of life than business, even if that was the most secure and reasonable option. But unfortunately until he discovered his true calling, he was stuck. This was one of the main reasons why he enjoyed his time in the forest so much, escaping from the world to revel in the complex simplicity of nature.
And then there was Sophie, his college-aged younger sister. She was probably the closest person to him in the world. He could tell her almost anything, butif she could see him now, her brown eyes would fill with worry. "What's the matter Aiden? What are you doing? Are you feeling alright? Do you need me to call someone?" she would immediately want to know.
But luckily, Aiden did not expect anyone to be coming this way. Nobody ever did. He had a particular feeling that none of the people of the town three miles away knew how to get to this little forest clearing. Aiden had only discovered it by accident two nights ago. It had seemed unremarkable at first: a circular patch of ground a few yards wide where neither trees nor underbrush had seen fit to grow. He often found such spots on the walks through the woods he liked to take in his free time. But then he had heard the song, and thus realized why this one was different.
"This is stupid," he mumbled to himself. "I should just go home. Nothing's going to happen." He had been throwing this idea back and forth in his head ever since first stumbling upon this spot, debating with himself whether or not to come back. In the end, curiosity had won over.
The big hand on his watch finally hit twelve oclock. Aiden lay perfectly still, not daring to move. Would they come? The soft dusting of snow on the floor of the clearing began to shine. One might have taken it for a reflection of the moonlight at first, but it soon grew too bright to be mistaken as such. It was such a pure white light--untainted by shadows from the trees above. Once it had reached an even glow, like a dim star captured in the ground, the song began. Aiden held his breath.
Just like when he had first heard it, a single ethereal note floated into the crisp air. It was deep, but also light. Not definably male or female. More soon joined in. It was like a chorus of humming; music contained in the throat, but transcendent and beautiful beyond words. It sent a warm sensation tingling straight down to Aiden's bones.
A rustling sounded in the bushes all around the clearing and the light blue, cat-sized creatures came half-walking, half-slithering onto the shining snow. So it was true! They did exist! They were truly and physically there.
They were a reptilian species...but not like anything Aiden had ever heard of. Their scales looked smooth as they glittered between the white lights of the snow and the moon. Their bodies were lizard-like, their necks long and sleek, and their heads triangular. Folded on the back of each one was a pair of wings, which were surprisingly feathered like a dove's. The only word Aiden could find to rightly describe them was "dragons."
Aidens heart pounded noisily in his eardrums. Excitement seared in his blood at the confirmation that his discovery had in fact been a real one, and not his imagination.
Two nights ago while out on a late night walk, enjoying the snow and stars, Aiden had heard what sounded like singing. Intrigued, he veered off the path to follow the sound. After about ten minutes into the woods, he stepped around a thick clump of trees and just that suddenly he found the dragons. He had not seen their light as a forewarning. They were simply and abruptly there, humming their tune and circling around the clearing in a kind of dance.
Aiden's mouth had fallen open in a sort of silent scream. He closed his eyes and opened them again to find that the dragons had not disappeared. His feet felt rooted to the ground. Looking back, he was struck by how exactly it felt like that dream everyone has had where they are staring at a monster but unable to run away from it.
Fortunately, the dragons took no notice of him. Keeping in time with their song, they began to circle around in a steady ring. Then they stopped, facing the empty center. They each spread their wings and stretched their necks up to the sky, trilling at the moon, and then lowered their heads to the earth to touch their noses to the snow. One of the dragons, the only one that was slightly bigger and had what looked like antennae trailing from the back of its head, stepped into the middle of the circle. It continued its cry to earth and then to the sky while the others resumed their pacing around the perimeter, pumping their wings very slowly up and down.
As if in slow motion, Aidens legs bent and he sat down in the snow, his eyes locked on the dragons. He was so alarmed that his hands were trembling, but he still could not bring his body to turn and leave. As the dance progressed, a strange sense of warmth entered his lungs and spread through his veins as if he had breathed it in.
Finally, at exactly one o'clock, their voices trailed off and they vanished from sight by crawling slowly off into the underbrush. As soon as the tip of the last one's tail was no longer visible, an intense cold swiftly replaced the warmth inside Aiden. He shivered.
He had sat there for what felt like a long time after that on that Friday night, frightened and unsure what to do. That could not have been a dream. He was positive that he was wide awake. Then perhaps...a hallucination? Aiden forced his freezing legs to support him as he stood up. He inched toward the clearing in slow, careful steps, all the while scrutinizing the bushes through which the dragons had disappeared. The snow of the clearing was no longer any brighter than could be expected with only the moonlight to shine down upon it. At the edge of the empty space, Aiden knelt down and stared hard at the snow. With one hand he dug into his deep coat pocket for his keys. Because this was not his first late-night walk, he liked to keep a small flashlight on his keychain. The pinpoint of light pierced the darkness as he angled it at the ground. The dragons had stood right here. Theoretically, there should be...
Footprints! And there they were. Animal tracks in the shallow snow unlike any he had seen before. They were similar to that of a four-toed lizard, but the claw marks were almost talon-like, and no reptile could possibly be out wandering around in this weather.
Aiden twirled the flashlight in his hand anxiously. He was strongly against the use of any sort of drug, even cigarettesone grandparent dying of lung cancer and another wasting away under the influence of heroin was enough to convince him not to touch any of it. He also had not had good experiences with anything containing alcohol. He was sober, healthy, and awake. Which meant that either he had just made one of the greatest discoveries of science or--
Or I'm completely crazy, he could not help but think. If he had heard this story told by anyone else, even one of his closest friends, he would have been seriously concerned about him. Could a hallucination make him see this much, the tracks included?
Aiden rushed home to his one-bedroom apartment, shedding layers of clothing as soon as he stepped inside the door. He spent the rest of the night doing research on his computer. Much to his unease, he discovered that hearing voices--including singing voices--and seeing bizarre visions were not unheard-of symptoms of things like brainstem lesions and schizophrenia. However, he was definitely not showing any of the other nasty signs of these malaises.
When the sun rose on Saturday morning, Aiden took up his coats and boots once more. This time though, he also packed his digital camera safely within his pocket. He had to know the truth. He resolved not to tell anyone about this until he knew for sure whether the dragons existed in this world or strictly in his mind. His plan, of course, was to try and take a picture of the dragons, or at least of their tracks.
But as he left his apartment complex, a new batch of snow began to fall. By the time he came to the edge of town, where sidewalks merged into dirt trails and buildings gave way to looming pines, a perfect white sheet was covering all it could reach. Aiden got a sinking feeling that this did not bode well for the dragon tracks. Sure enough, by the time he reached the clearing a while later, any sign that unnatural creatures had been there had been swallowed up by the elements.
Stubbornly, Aiden sat down in the snow a few feet away from the clearing. He was determined to wait for the dragons until they came again. An hour crawled lazily by and nothing so much as a raccoon made an appearance. The snow, however, was not relenting. In the general silence, the patter of the fresh flakes hitting the ground resounded loudly about him. Finally, Aiden stood up and in a last vain effort searched around the clearing on his own. He did not realistically expect to find dragons hiding just out of his sight, but he could not stop himself from trying. Defeated, incredibly freezing, and without so much as a footprint or a shed scale to photograph, Aiden left about an hour and a half after arriving.
After reaching home, he fell into bed irritably, intending to sleep the rest of the Saturday away. But restlessness and chills plagued him despite the many soft blankets he had piled on top of himself.
"I'm not crazy," he grumbled aloud. "And I'm not a schizo." The dragons he had witnessed not only looked real, but felt so real as well... He could not dismiss them as a hallucination so easily.
This same thought had plagued him all weekend. His common sense told him that dragons could not possibly exist, but his intuition felt otherwise. When he was asleep, he dreamed of little blue dragons flying around in circles over the trees. When awake, the memory of their song and dance played over and over again in his mind like a never-ending movie reel. Finally he could take it no longer. He simply had to find them and prove that his encounter with them had been real. In a burst of excited inspiration, it occurred to him that perhaps the dragons were nocturnal. The first time he had seen them it had been near midnight. So on Sunday night Aiden bundled himself up, took his camera once more, and headed out into the woods.
And sure enough, here they were! He knew for certain now that he was not imagining them. The snow crunched beneath their little feet. The leaves of the nearby underbrush twitched when the dragons tails accidentally flicked them now and then. When they breathed out through their snake-like nostrils, tiny puffs of fog rose in the air. Aiden watched them dance for a while as he trembled with cold and excitement. A wide smile spread across his face. He could think of no greater accomplishment for a nature lover than discovering a new species!
As noiselessly as he could, Aiden slid his hand down into his coat pocket. He brought his camera slowly forward and held it out before him. He pressed down on the silver button to turn it on--and to his dismay he found that it would not. He pressed it harder to no avail. Either the batteries had died or the frigid temperature had somehow affected the camera. Aiden silently cursed the digital age. It was times like these when he wished he had an old-fashioned disposable camera handy.
He supposed there would be no pictures of the dragons tonight, but that did not lower his spirits too much. He had still made a wonderful discovery that merely waited to be exposed to the rest of the wide world. How should he do it? Getting a different camera would be a good start. Then perhaps a video recorder. Or he might skip all this and just bring someone professional with him, like a scientist or zoologist if he could convince one to come to this out-of-the-way New England town. Aiden wondered if there would be a Discover Channel special all about these animals. He wondered if it getting involved in something like that would allow him to leave his job for a while...
If he had not been so intent on keeping quiet, Aiden might have laughed out loud. He was getting ahead of himself. First things first. He would choose someone to share his secret with. Someone he trusted. That would help hold over his excitement until he could get in contact with a person of importance.
Who should I tell? he thought as he lay there watching the beautiful and strange creatures maneuver around one another without ever actually touching. Jonathan was his closest friend with whom Aiden could share almost anything, but... Jonathan would probably not agree to keep this a secret for long. He was too outgoing. He would probably try to catch one of the dragons and show it off to everyone he met. Aiden could almost see him running straight into the clearing and tackling one, which was not a good idea in Aidens mind. He did not know if these animals were venomous, or what else they were capable of for that matter. They seemed strangely intelligent. It was incredibly eerie the way they hummed in such entrancing voices. He could not help but feel that their size was misleading.
Who else would agree to watch them from a distance then? The answer came to him at once. Sophie. She may have been his sister, but she was also like a best friend. While she could be talkative at times, she was generally more timid than Jonathan. She would understand the importance of secrecy.
Aiden watched the dragons, thinking over what he would say to Sophie, until the hands on his watch hit exactly one o'clock. At this point, the creatures gave a final forlorn-sounding cry into the night that seemed to make all the forest stand still. Aiden had almost forgotten how warm he was feeling until he heard this; the gentle heat swelling in his chest increased so that his brow actually started to sweat despite the cold air.
One by one, all twelve of the beastsfor he had counted and discovered that there were twelve of thembegan to slither off into the brush once more. Only the one with the antennae-like tendrils paused. Craning its long neck up straight, it turned its face squarely at the spot where Aiden hid. His muscled tensed. He could see the dragon's large blue eyes clearly. They were such a striking shade of deep blue. Could they see him too?
After a few long seconds, the dragon relaxed and turned away to follow after the others. There came the sound of rustling and crunching snow, and just that quickly it was gone.
(Note: story doesn't end here...but this should at least give you an idea of what it's about.)