Up In A Heaval Read Free Page B

in due course. It's just taking us time to catch up on everything.”
    “Well, I'll help you catch up. Maybe I can find out why Drivel was locked in here.”
    “You can't find out! There are no records of him. We just have to accept what is.”
    Umlaut knew better but just had to make an issue. “I don't know much about you, Breanna of the Black Wave, but from what I heard, you never put up with what is before.”
    The woman looked stunned. “You're right! I've become part of the status quo. I'm ashamed.”
    Umlaut was surprised by her change. “I guess we all get caught up in things.”
    “For sure! You really want to stay down here?”
    “Yes. And try to find out what is the case with Drivel. He's certainly not violent.”
    “I'll bring your food right down.” She handed him the torch, turned, and mounted the steps.
    Umlaut turned to the dragon. “Am I being foolish?” he asked.
    The dragon shrugged. That was a considerable maneuver, a long ripple along its nearer torso, but the meaning seemed clear enough.
    “Here's the thing: I don't have much experience with dragons, but it is my understanding that they generally eat people and anything else they catch. Instead you have been friendly to me. That makes me think that you're not an ordinary dragon. You helped me do my job; maybe I can help you in return. If I can just figure out how.”
    Drivel nodded.
    “So maybe if I talk enough, and you agree or disagree, I can figure it out. Then maybe we'll know what's next.”
    The dragon nodded.
    “Is there a place I can put this torch?”
    Drivel nosed a section of a wall. Umlaut went there and found a notch in a nook. He set the base of the torch in the notch, and the polished indentation of the nook served to reflect the light outward.
    Breanna arrived back with a small cart. She paused at the top of the steps. “I'll toss Drivel's stakes down, but that won't work for your supper; you'll have to come here for it.”
    Umlaut went up the steps and found a very nice meal on a tray. Then Breanna tossed down one stake after another. They were evidently from a nearby garden, meat-flavored posts. They smelled like fresh flesh.
    “See you in the morning,” Breanna said as she departed.
    They ate together, by the flickering light of the torch. Drivel seemed to like his stakes well enough. Umlaut tried a bite of one: yes, exactly like raw meat.
    While they ate, they conversed, in their fashion. Umlaut talked and Drivel nodded or negated, and they zeroed in on the story. Soon it came reasonably clear. There were some surprises.
    Drivel was not actually a dragon. In fact he was not even male. He—she—was a female water serpent whose name was Sesame. She had been chased by a persistent male of her species whose favor she did not desire, so she had fled to where he would not follow: Castle Zombie.
    “Me too!” Umlaut agreed. “In my fashion.”
    But the moat had been too unsanitary for her taste, so she had had to make her way into the dungeon. Unfortunately a storm had come, and the zombies had battened down the hatches, or whatever it was they did, and Sesame had gotten closed in. A real dragon might have burned its way out, but she was merely a stranded sea serpent without fire, smoke, or steam, and without legs or claws. So she was trapped.
    “But weren't you uncomfortable out of the water?” Umlaut asked.
    She certainly was. Fortunately the dungeon was dank, and the slime on the walls was damp, and when it rained some water leaked in. She had found basins to collect it, so that she was able to drink and sometimes even to bathe. She had become acclimatized to existing out of the water; after all, many serpents were able to cope on land, and so could she.
    “But weren't you hungry?”
    Yes indeed. So she had approached a zombie who was storing something in the dungeon, representing herself as a male dragon, because she didn't know how close her serpent suitor might be lurking and needed to remain concealed. The