The Saint of Dragons: Samurai. Jason Hightman

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      “You said it was toxic waste disposal, I think,” said Emily. “Why do you have to go round the world to do that?”

      “Well, there aren’t a lot of people who know how to handle the kind of …”dangerous material we deal with.”

      “It doesn’t make you glow, does it?” she said and laughed.

      “Uh, it can,” he said. He pretended to have trouble keeping Norayiss on course, pulling the reins to flex his arms. He was pretty sure Emily noticed how big he was getting. He was growing stronger every day with training – constant training, so he knew he’d gained quite a bit of muscle – though he wasn’t as tall as he’d like to be.

      “Nobody understands why you don’t go to school,” Emily remarked.

      “It’s just home-schooling.” That didn’t sound too strange, did it? “It’s not a big deal, I just travel so much, helping my dad, that I can’t really …”Have you ever thought about my name?”

      “Your name? Simon?”

      “No, St George. He was a real person. The legend says he fought a dragon, a long time ago, in the deserts of North Africa. A real dragon, OK? I mean, it’s not a legend, people say it was a real creature, whatever it was.”

      She creased her brow, half-amused. “And that relates to you …”how? I don’t get what you’re talking about.”

      He paused. What if there were real dragons, but they didn’t look like dragons. And they did really terrible, really evil things, making all these supernatural events you hear about that no one can ever explain, and hurting people, and killing people, and someone had to stop them from doing this. Oh, no, no, no, don’t say that …

      “It’s not toxic waste dumps, that’s not what I deal with,” he said at last.

      “And what do you deal with?”

      A species. He answered in his head. A species that drives people to do evil because it feeds off misery, soaks it right into the skin. It tortures people. If the serpent doesn’t actually do these things himself, he forces people to do it for him …

      “Maybe we can talk about this later,” Simon mumbled. Luckily, there was no more time for talking. They’d reached the school.

      Emily looked up and manufactured a smile. “I’ve got to go. Your horse is amazing, she’s really calm. So, um, I’ll see you around the shop, I guess. Maybe I could finally meet your dad,” she said.

      “He’s not real social,” said Simon, embarrassed.

      “Well, you can bring him by if you want.”

      She walked off across the grass and joined a group of girls, and he noticed her shoulders were raised and tight. When she finally shot him a glance, it was strange and Simon knew he had now put up a barrier between them. She was scared of him; he occupied a land of fairy tales and craziness. Or was he just thinking too much?

      He wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

      At that moment, a terrible shadow passed across the sun, but then was gone before it could be deciphered. He wondered if the menace was all in his mind; his world was always ordered by threat and fear.

      Fine. Live in your fantasy land, he thought, looking at the mean-eyed girls with Emily. This is real and I’m one of the few people in the world who can protect any of you. You need me. He wished they knew it.

      But he had no stomach for sulking; that was his father’s habit – Aldric’s genetic gift that he had probably passed down – and Simon didn’t want it. Strong, silent type. Right. What a joke. Silence is weak. It means you’re afraid. He couldn’t have got his father’s strength and agility, oh, no, that would have been too good, so he’d inherited a total inability to talk to anybody.

      Or had he? Maybe he would get along with everybody just fine if he got more of a chance to hang around them; if his father wasn’t always dragging him around the world or shoving hard work in his face.

      Stop it. Come on. Get out of your head, Simon thought. Here he was talking to himself instead of to other people and he realised he’d been staring at the girls as they walked away. I’m not staring at you, I’m just thinking.

      He tried to figure a way to look natural. Stop sleepwalking, he told himself. This is your life.

      Sometimes it seemed like the ordinary world was the one that was like a dream.

       CHAPTER FIVE A Home Life Destroyed

      Simon left the school and Emily, riding back home upset. He passed some teenagers pulling in with their cars and it finally hit him that he must look incredibly stupid to Emily on his horse. How great and impressive I thought I was. Look at me. What an idiot. All the kids looked so confident, so ordinary, with nothing to worry about except homework or a Friday night date.

      I don’t know how to act, I don’t know how to be, he was thinking. What do people expect? I’m a human disaster, I don’t even have anyone to tell this to, except Alaythia.

      As his horse weaved through the light traffic and back to the weed-sprouting trolley car tracks, Simon passed a group of boys in suits headed for the Lighthouse School further away, their hands full of a junk-food breakfast from the corner shop.

      They watched Simon pass. He was the mysterious boy, the one who had left the boys’ school on Halloween night and then came back to live hidden in the old castle house outside of town.

      “Simon St George,” he heard them whispering. He had always wanted to be a legend at school. He never knew it would make him feel so alone.

      “Doesn’t all that riding make you bar-legged?” said one boy, as if challenging Simon.

      “Bow-legged,” said another boy. “Not bar-legged. Idiot.”

      “Whatever,” said the other. “He’s so weird. He never leaves his house, his horse is his only friend.” He made kissing noises. “It’s his girlfriend.”

      Pathetic jokes. Simon rode past them. They still lived in their little land of dumb humour and stupid pecking orders.

      He knew things they would never know at the Lighthouse School – the darkness under life, the pain and fear of battle – and he was content to know all this, but it felt like the days of struggle ahead were endless, the enemy unconquerable, and he would never be done with the fighting until he was dead.

      He could see boys lining up for roll call on the field beside the lighthouse, neat rows in neat uniforms, and for a minute he wanted to wrap himself in their perfect boring school day, to avoid the disorganised, rambling lessons he’d get later from Alaythia, and the harsh training he’d get from his father.

      He saw his old friend Denman, the lighthouse keeper, heading into the tower. The gruff old Scotsman and his wife had practically raised him from infancy, but now Simon felt they were strangers, СКАЧАТЬ