I hope you do not think me mad for this tale... in it's telling there will be many moments in which you will be tempted to write me off as a lunatic. At times, I rather wish that all my experiences were simply the visions of a raving lunatic (me). You may also be tempted to think I am lying. Again, I wish that I were. Truly, if I could say that this tale weren't a true one, I would gladly confess it here and now. But, I am neither mad nor a liar. This story is true.
It seems to me that dogs may be the best judge of man readily available. If dog is man's best friend, then it follows that if a dog doesn't befriend a person then either there is something wrong with the dog or the man. Naturally, this assumption cannot always be counted on to hold true, but I have found it does hold true more often than not.
That is why I trusted the girl in brown. She was a figure of intrigue, a girl who's exact age couldn't be determined by looking at her. To see her body one would think her to be ten or eleven, but to see her eyes... they were a warm and ancient brown, like a fire that had burned since fire had first begun. She must have walked through a gap in the trees... I hadn't seen her. That was strange. And even more strange, my dog hadn't heard her... strange. She was strange, but I did not find myself frightened. And she did not seem to frighten my dog either.
My dog has seen nearly everything I have seen. This may seem an odd statement to make, but the telling of this tale requires many odd statements.
I grew up in the remote plains of western Kansas. My father was a rancher, my mother an unwilling rancher's wife. I say unwilling not because she was unwilling to do the work involved with being the wife of a rancher, but simply because she was unwilling to be labeled by such an old fashioned term. Yet, even though it may have been old fashioned, she consented to teach me at home (this mostly consisted of me reading and helping my father on the ranch). Thus, when I was given a puppy at the young age of five, every minute I could spare, (and many of the ones I could not), were spent with him. As I grew up, he grew up. As I learned how life worked, he learned alongside me.
Once, on a hot summer day, my dog and I went for a walk beside a river behind our house. I carried a fishing pole and a bucket in which I planned to put the fish I caught. He carried nothing. When we got to the bank of the river, I stripped off my shoes, socks and shirt. He stripped off nothing and dived directly into the river while I remained on the shore. I selected a tree which lay it's shade onto the cool dirt beneath, and cast my pole into the river. I listened for the satisfying plop into the water, as I cast my vision elsewhere (I believe I was watching a bird, but I can't remember very well). Instead of the satisfying plop of lure meeting water, a sound arose that ingrained itself on my brain forever...
I snapped out of my moment of memory, and found myself looking at the scar on my dog's left ear. We had learned about fishing together. We knew as much about life as the other did, and neither of us felt fear of the strange girl standing before us.
Who is she?
She had not yet spoken, and neither had I. She simply stood on the other side of the fire, at times almost seeming to become part of the fire itself... Perhaps this is one of the first moments you are tempted to think of me as a lunatic. I don't blame you, but I must insist that even if I were a lunatic, my eyes have never failed me. My father never allowed me the use of a gun, and I learned to hunt by bow. My eyes rarely fail, and if any part of me is to be trusted, it ought to be they.
I remained seated, staring past the fire at the girl, my bow laying unwanted by my sleeping bag. She was silhouetted against the trees of the small, Kansas forest. My camp was set up on the edge of said forest, ten miles from my family's ranch house. To my back was the expansive prairie, green with the thought of spring.
"You stay silent a long time." spoke the girl, breaking the silence. Her voice matched her eyes, both in warmth and in the strange, ancient quality. She walked past the fire, and patted my dog on the head. She did not speak again for a minute or so, and simply contented herself petting my dog. Her silence did not bother me, as neither my father nor mother were much for talking, and my dog rarely so much as barked.
"What's his name?" she asked. Her eyes looked at me, and drew the answer out.
"Jay."
Jay was a beautiful German Shepherd who thought he was a human. If Jay were in fact a human trapped in the body of a dog, he was both the most silent human I had ever met (as I said, rarely does Jay bark) and the best human I have ever known.
This thought flicked through my head in an instant, and the girl somehow seemed to share it with me.
"You are right to think of him as you do." she said.
"Who are you?" I asked. She did not answer immediately, standing to her feet. Jay and I watched as she walked toward our fire and stared into it. I could not tell what she was looking at, as her back was turned to me.
"It would do no good to tell you my name." she said with finality, but not without kindness. "I will, for the moment, tell you only what I must."
Who is she?
"Son of man, I am sorry for your future but there is nothing I can do to stop it. It seems that you have been... for lack of a better term, selected." She paused, and gazed at me. Questions rushed through my head like a stampeding school of fish, and I snatched at the nearest one to the surface.
"Selected... who selected me?"
"I am afraid, son of man, that I cannot tell you that. I can tell you only that you are selected to do things that no mortal ought to be asked to do... And give you the hope that things will soon become more clear."
I would have assumed that it was obvious that things should become more clear, as they couldn't possibly be any less clear. However, I still had no fear of the girl.
"Who are you?"
She laughed. Her laugh... was different than any I had yet heard or would hear again but from her.
"You will know one day soon. For now, I give what I can." She reached her hand into the fire, and scooped up an ember. Surprisingly, neither Jay nor I found this action reason for alarm, as neither of us stirred from where we sat. She walked towards me, and stood directly in front of me holding the ember. A smell wafted from her to my nose and I realized that she must have either been standing very close to the fire or have created a perfume that smells exactly like a campfire.
"Son of man, this will not hurt." I believed her, and did not flinch as the strange girl put the ember on first my right eye then the left.
"Keep them closed until you no longer hear my voice. You must head to the bus stop tomorrow night, and get in the bus that arrives exactly at 6:33. At first it may appear to be shrouded in mist, or perhaps may appear to be a mirage, but your eyes have begun the process of adjustment. When you arrive at the very last stop the bus will make, hike up the hill and walk past the tree with the dragon. Immediately seek a girl named Rachel Dare. She will know you, but you should not let this frighten you. One last thing before I leave you. You also ought to know that you call your dog by a name that is not his own. He is called Argus, and it would be good for you to begin to refer to him as such."
And then it seemed as though warmth itself had been sucked out of the air. The voice stopped.
"Well Ja... Argus." Argus' tail wagged emphatically. "Let's go see about a dragon."