Matt See's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Matt See had climbed the tower steps twice that morning, and twice the door had stayed shut. The woman inside would not answer for a pretty face. He knew this now. He sat on the bottom step with his blonde hair stuck to his forehead and watched a green dragon circle the spire, breathing pale fire at the shutters. His own dragon, tame since he was a boy, and even it could not coax her out. The village had spent years telling him he was enough. Barmaids poured him free ale. Farmers' daughters left flowers on his windowsill. He had come to the tower believing a smile would finish what rumor started. The enchantress had sent down a single note through a crack in the door: Bring me something no other suitor has. Then silence. He walked back down the hill with the dragon trailing above. Suitors had left gifts piled at the base of the tower for years. Silk. Gold. A tame lion with a mane of pink blossoms, curled asleep beside a chest of coins. Pretty things. Soft things. Nothing she hadn't refused a hundred times. Matt stopped at the meadow below the tower and looked at the pink lion again. Someone had led that beast here on a ribbon. He had never held a sword long enough to blister his palm. He had never tracked anything wilder than a rabbit. That was the problem. Every man before him had offered what was easy. He cut through the trees to the training ground he had passed a hundred times without entering. A ring of oaks. Wooden posts wrapped in rope. Swords driven point-first into the dirt around the edge, waiting. Three instructors in dust-colored tunics looked up when he stepped through the gap in the fence. "I want to learn," Matt said. The nearest one looked at his soft hands and laughed. "For what?" "To catch something in the deep forest. A lion. The one with the green mane. Alive." That stopped the laughing. The Verdant Mane had killed two hunters last spring. The instructor spat in the dirt and picked up a wooden blade. He threw it. Matt caught it wrong and the grip bit his palm. "Six months," the instructor said. "If you last a week." Matt did not have six months. The tower had other suitors on the road already; he had passed two on his way in. But he gripped the wooden sword and took the stance the man showed him. His dragon settled on a log at the edge of the ring and watched, smoke curling from its nostrils. By sundown his arms shook and his shirt was black with sweat. He had been struck down eleven times. He stayed. The good looks that opened every door in Olive Hollow were worth nothing here, and for the first time in his life, Matt See was glad of it.