Blaze (The High-Born Epic) (15 page)

             
Just as he was getting to the woods, Scape came walking up.  Harold smiled at the feathers still in his mouth.  Harold gestured with his head to the woods, and Scape jumped up, wagging his tail furiously.  He began running circles around Harold, half-barking, half-yowling.  His bright green eyes blinked as he panted in excitement.

             
Harold and Scape entered the woods.  He searched for a good spot to practice, and after another half hour, he found an open area in middle of a dense clump of trees.  He looked at Scape and pointed to a tree.  Scape blinked his eyes and cocked his head.  He looked at the tree and walked to it and calmly lowered himself to his haunches.  Harold figured that whatever it was that Colonel Foxx had done to make Scape into what he was had also made him much smarter than most animals because he almost always seemed to understand what Harold wanted him to do. 

             
Satisfied that Scape was not going to interfere, Harold walked to the center of the small clearing and closed his eyes, listening intently.  He could hear only the wind, and the chirping of birds.  There was a chattering squirrel some distance to his right, but the important thing was that he did not hear any evidence of people.  He opened his eyes and looked around.  When he was sure that he was alone, he changed back into the first pair of burlap shorts.  Then he put the burlap bag full of shorts behind a tree, and placed his overalls beside them.

             
He took a deep breath, and found the source of the fire.  He called to it, and flames rushed over his body.  His shorts fell in ashes around him, and started a small fire at his feet.  He shook his head as he pulled the flames on the ground to him and doused the flames on his body.  He walked to the bag, and put on another pair.

             
Scape was still sitting there, unmoving, but his ears were now high on his head and his front legs were tensed as if he was preparing to run.

             
“Maybe I need to practice on something else first,” he said to himself.

             
He looked around.  Soon, he saw a large stick that reminded him of when he used to sword fight with Cooper.  He walked to it and picked it up.  He swung it around a few times and smiled.  He twirled and feinted with it, hopping back and forth as he parried imaginary attacks from unseen foes.  Scape jumped up and began barking and yapping, biting the air as he did so.  He allowed himself to laugh and relax as he thought about how funny he would have looked to someone watching him.

             
He motioned to Scape for him to sit down, and he seemed ready to run, but he uneasily obeyed Harold.

             
He held the stick up and looked at it while finding the fire in him.  He did not call the fire to his body, just the stick.  The stick burned much quicker than he expected, and fell in ashes through his hand.

             
“I can burn extremely hot if I can burn it that fast,” he said aloud and Scape half-barked, half-yowled at him.

             
He soon found another stick and was ready to try again.  This time he focused the fire all around the stick, not on the stick itself.  Sputtering fire blinked on and off around the stick.  He could feel it slipping from his control, and then it just stopped altogether.  He took a breath and relaxed.  Then he refocused his thoughts, and the sputtering fire returned, but it was stronger than it had been.  He moved the fire closer to the surface of the stick, and the fire became stronger, but occasionally sputtered.  Suddenly, the stick itself caught on fire.  He frowned as he watched it burn to a crisp, and then fall in ashes.  However, he did notice that it took longer for it to burn.

             
“Well, I can protect the stick to a point,” he said to himself.  “So, I should be able to practice enough, and eventually get it.”

             
Scape was still nervously sitting and his ears were still high on his head, but now his tail was rustling the leaves as it wagged back and forth.

             
Harold smiled at him and he barked again as he found another stick.  He managed to make it last longer than the first, but it also soon burned.

             
As the afternoon passed, he went through more than two dozen sticks, but each time he managed to hold the fire longer than the previous stick.  After three hours, he was able to hold the fire around the stick for almost fifteen minutes before it began burning.  Scape had gone from sitting to lying down, and his ears covered his eyes while he took a nap.  The last stick he held lasted a while, but it soon burned, and he was tired of practicing that ability.  So, he decided to test another.

             
He looked about fifty yards away, and found a good site.  He pulled on the air, and then burned it.  A small clap of thunder sounded and he appeared very close to where he had been aiming.

             
Scape winced at the noise and ran up a tree to the first branch, frantically looking around with his strange ears and wild eyes searching for the source of the sudden noise.

             
“At least this is easier for me to understand,” Harold said, raising his voice so that Scape would know that he was still there.  Scape crawled around the backside of the tree.  Harold could not help but to laugh as his ears slowly appeared from the other side, and then his eyes.  He froze in that position, only revealing his eyes and ears to Harold.

             
Harold laughed and shook his head.

             
“I think I’ll call this air-burning,” Harold said to Scape who still regarded him suspiciously from the other side of the tree.  “What do you think about that, huh, Scape?”

             
Air-burning came naturally when compared to controlling his fire.  He air-burned a few more times, and then decided to try something different.  He picked two spots, and concentrated.  He appeared in the first location perfectly, and then flashed again.  Though it wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be on his second burn, he wasn’t very far from where he had aimed.  He tried two locations again, and focused even more.

             
He landed exactly where he had intended both times.  Something rattled in the trees behind him and he turned to see Scape leaping from tree to tree, staying close to him.  Scape stopped a on a large branch and peered down at him.

             
Harold smiled as he picked out three spots.  His brow furrowed in concentration.  He rapidly flashed to the different locations.  The first burn was perfect, but the next two were slightly off, but not by much.  After three more attempts, he could land within inches of each intended spot.

             
Scape ran around the trees wildly, half-barking, half-yowling as his tail wagged.

             
“All right, Scape,” Harold said.  “Let’s try four spots.”

             
As he concentrated, Harold could almost feel it already slipping from him.  He forced it, and he heard thunder and saw fire.  He flashed in and out of existence, and he felt his fire roll over him.  The first burn was good, and the second burn was off by only a couple of steps, but the third and fourth were far from perfect.  He heard a loud pop and saw a cloud of dust and ash around him when he exited from his fourth burn point.  He could hear something crashing around him, and he had heard the sound before.

             
He had appeared in a tree, and had broken it in half.  He reflexively air-burned in an attempt to get away from the danger and thundered into sight a few steps away.  Then he watched the tree fall in front of him.  It was rather large and made a lot of noise.  Harold grimaced and looked down.

             
He was also covered in fire, and his pair of shorts was drifting in ashes around him.  He doused his flames, and looked around at the fires he had started.  He pulled them to himself and then walked to the tree where his clothes were.  He put on his third pair of burlap shorts and looked around.  The entire area was riddled with scorch marks, and ashes wafted in the air.  He could hear something creaking and then he heard a loud groan that he recognized.  Scape jumped down out of a tree far away and began running towards Foxx Hole, and Harold grimaced as he watched the leaves and dirt kick up behind him while he frenziedly ran away.  He was running so fast that he was barely more than a few inches off the ground.

             
Harold squinted in amused disappointment as he watched another tree crash toward the ground.  As it fell, some of the vines in it pulled on another tree close to it and caused it to hit another that was festering with pine beetles.  The rotten wood practically exploded when the falling tree hit it.  Finally, the second falling tree hit the ground with a loud boom as the intertwined vines brought a shower of leaves from other trees down with it.  Harold stood there for a moment watching the tops of the trees shake and the leaves drift to the ground.

             
After a moment of thought, he took off his shorts and put on his overalls and picked up the bag full of his extra shorts.

             
“Maybe I should just go check my trap line and fish hooks,” he said as he nodded.

Chapter 12

             
It was late in the afternoon when the house came into sight.  He walked into the barn and the mule looked at him.  Harold smiled as she turned her head into the wall of the barn.  He put down his bag of shorts and then fed and watered her.  He reached in his bag and took out the squirrel and two fish that his traps and hooks had landed and then exited the barn.  He smiled to himself and half-laughed because Scape was nowhere to be found.

             
When he walked inside he saw Cooper and Ollie sitting at the table and each of them had one of the books that Aunt Nean had taught him with when he was their age.  Ollie was so entranced by her book that she didn’t even notice Harold walk through the door.  Cooper was looking up at the ceiling and was leaned back over his chair with his arms dangling.  Though he wasn’t making any noise, Harold could practically hear him groaning.

             
“Stop acting like that, Coop,” Harold said.  “Do you know how the High-Born are able to rule over us like they do?”

             
Cooper sat up in his chair, “‘Cause they have guns and they’re lots stronger than us.”

             
“No,” Harold said.  “It’s because they’re smarter than us.  That’s the only reason they can make the things they do.  It all starts with being able to read.  Everything begins there.”

             
“But, reading isn’t any fun,” Cooper said.

             
Harold walked to him and picked up his book.  The cover was gone, but from what he gathered on the first page, it was about a boy and his dog.

             
“I’ve read this book, Coop,” Harold said.  “I promise that it’s good.  How about I help you with it.”

             
“Okay,” he replied.

             
Ollie was still reading her book and she gave them a rotten look and got up from the table and walked to her room.

             
“I guess we were makin’ too much racket for her to read,” Harold smiled.  “Okay, where were you?”

             
Cooper just smiled and pointed to a sentence on the page.  Harold looked at it and then read a paragraph, and let Cooper read the next one. 

             
Over the next hour, they sat there, taking turns reading paragraphs.  Despite his dislike of reading, Cooper didn’t have any trouble doing it.  Harold barely even noticed Aunt Nean come into the kitchen and begin making supper.  She just remained quiet and watched them read while she stirred in the various pots.

             
Before long supper was ready, and Aunt Nean called Ollie to eat.  Harold and Cooper put up his book and Aunt Nean was soon spooning out the portions.  As they ate, Aunt Nean asked Cooper and Ollie questions about their books.  She excitedly answered her questions, and though he was able to answer most of her questions, it was obvious that he did not like the book.

             
After supper was finished, Aunt Nean put the children to bed, and Harold filled the box of sand.  Tonight she had a very old book with mud caked to it, and some of the tips of the pages looked burned.

             
“Harold,” she said as she opened it.  “I don’t know how you know so much already, but I think you’re ready for something more difficult.”