Mason Crafton's Arc

Chapter 16 of 16

The prince sat an arm's length away, offering to talk. Mason wanted the talk. But talk meant looking at his face, and looking away from the dragon. The moment Mason stopped watching the beast, it might lift its head and choose the prince again. Mason needed something to hold the prince in place without spending their own eyes on him. Then Mason heard the dry hiss of scales on rock behind the boulder. Two snakes slid out of a gap in the stone. The first was thick and dark, its head raised, mouth open, tongue flicking at the prince. It hissed like a warning shot. Mason had passed this pair on the ridge path before and given them wide room. Behind it came the second, slimmer and calm, its eyes soft and steady on Mason's boots. Mason still had the last strip of the prince's cape in one fist. Mason dropped the cloth between the boulder and the prince. The mean snake stopped hissing. It coiled itself across the cloth and settled there, head high, facing the prince now instead of Mason. The gentle one curled beside it. Two guards on the prince's own scent, told by that scent to hold him. Mason did not have to watch the prince anymore. The snakes would. "Now we talk," Mason said. Mason kept both eyes on the dragon. The prince looked down at the coiled snakes and did not move. "You don't need those," he said. "I sat down. I meant it." "I need my eyes for the dragon," Mason said. "They watch you. I watch it. Talk." Steps scuffed the slope below. Two boys climbed into view. The older one had his hand out flat, pushing the younger back. The younger held a kitchen knife in both fists. Mason knew them. The Cooper brothers, still hunting their father in these woods. "You," Max said, pointing at Mason. He did not lower his hand. "Oliver, stay back. You sent us to the swamp. There was nothing there. Oliver, I said stay back. Our dad's still gone." He looked at the dragon, then the prince, then the snakes, and did not run. "Everyone said nobody comes out of here. Where is he?" Mason had no answer, and the boy's stare pinned Mason as surely as the snakes pinned the prince. But the prince did. "Pinecrest, past the second stream," the prince said quietly. "A man's been sheltering there three days. Green door. He's fed. He's fine." Max's mouth opened. He grabbed Oliver's sleeve and pulled him back down the slope, gone before the prince finished. Mason turned the prince's own words over. The prince knew the forest better than Mason ever could. That was the deal worth making. "You lead the creatures," Mason said. "I hold the dragon. We split the forest, or the princess takes it all at dawn." The prince looked at the snakes, then at Mason. "Talk," he said.