II. The Knight and His Shadow
Colin Sinclair didn’t know where he was at first.
He found himself sitting up in a bed that could have been his. A gray lump of fur sleeping curled at his feet looked like his cat, Shadow. The brown walls, slat-wood floor, and light bulb dangling from the ceiling reminded Colin of his broom-closet-size bedroom. So did the solitary window, posters of musicians Gordon Giltrap and Oliver Wakeman thumbtacked on either side. Leaning against the wall beneath the Giltrap poster Colin recognized his dad’s vintage Gibson guitar.
Colin threw off the covers, took a breath for courage, and tried dipping one toe on the floor.
The slats felt solid.
Colin slid off the bed as a groggy Shadow grumpily crawled out from under the covers.
The boy looked out the window. There was Old Bread Street, less than a mile from Cardiff Harbour and the River Taff. Looking beyond his neighborhood, Colin saw the rest of his hometown of Cardiff, Wales.
Everything looked the way it should at five o’clock on a late spring morning. The world appeared normal, but still it somehow…felt…maybe…different. No, Colin was positive something was different. And if it wasn’t the world, then it had to be him.
“I think I had a bad dream,” Colin whispered to Shadow as the cat curled around his leg. He picked up Shadow. “I suppose it was a dream. I’m not sure.”
Colin wasn’t sure because before tonight, May 26, his twelfth birthday, he had never dreamt. Which could explain why he wondered, if it had been a dream, why it took place in a crystal city. And why was there an attacking green dragon? And who were those other boys and that girl? What was she doing holding an empty scabbard?
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“And why did the scabbard have to be for a knife?” Colin shuddered, trying not to sob.
Shadow purred as Colin scratched his chin, but suddenly stiffened the way cats do after spotting a bird or rabbit. Colin was used to this and so, unlike the cat, missed a big man with rusty hair and a bushy mustache standing near a streetlamp across Old Bread Street. The stranger fit seemed to right in with his matching tweed cap and pea jacket, but the cat in Colin’s arms sensed something out of place with the man. Maybe it was the way the stranger was staring at the Sinclair house. At Colin’s window. At the boy.
Colin set Shadow on a desk next to two piles of unfinished homework. “People have bad dreams everyday. Doesn’t mean anything. It’s nothing to worry about.” The boy climbed back into bed. “Eventually everybody has nightmares.” As he pulled his covers to his chin, Colin heard a dog bay outside.
His skin sizzled, as if he had stuck his finger in an outlet.
The dog had to be as big as a hound, judging by the low howling. A hound that sounded as if it was hunting but had lost the scent.
“Don’t be a scrut,” Colin murmured, thinking himself stupid. Hounds didn’t go hunting in the capital of Wales! It had to be his imagination! Probably just like it was his imagination that the shadows in Colin’s room were growing darker and drawing closer to his bed as the hungry baying continued.
Shadow jumped straight from the desk to the foot of the bed and curled up, hiding his face under his bushy tail. Colin plopped down on his pillow, tugging the covers over his head. Neither of them dared to move again until sunrise.
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