ONE
DABUEK KUECGTT
The bus station was coming into view through the dusty window. Rufus knew that he was going to hate this new orphanage. They’re all the same, he harrumphed in his mind.
The bus’s pneumatic brakes screeched and discharged, bringing it to a stop. The driver came over the intercom, announcing something about the end of the line and all must clear the bus.
Rufus grabbed his backpack and stuffed his well-used copy of The Hobbit into it. Aside from the backpack and its contents and the clothes on his back, he owned nothing else.
He slowly followed the crowd out onto the cement platform next to the bus. Rufus observed a lady in a black dress and a large black lacy sunhat, fanning herself with a white fan, inspecting each of the passengers as they shuffled past her. Rufus had a gut feeling that this woman was here for him.
A silver broach on her blouse made a stark contrast to all of the black she was wearing. Is that a dragon or a snake? Maybe this won’t be so bad. He thought, walking down the bus steps and up to her.
He grumped “I’m here, let’s get this over with.”
The woman was looking at a couple who had came off the bus just before Rufus and turned to him with a surprised look.
“Why, yes! How did you know that I…” The surprise was coupled with a big smile.
She inspected the tag that had been pinned into his shirt and checked off a name on a piece of paper that was on top of the newspaper she was holding. She had a warm smile and soft features, as if she actually cared for people. The woman walked to the bus driver and showed him some credentials, evidencing that she was with the orphanage.
“Well, let’s get going. We have to be at terminal B2 in ten minutes.” The black dressed woman shooed Rufus down the covered walkway to a platform several hundred feet away.
In the distance, standing on the platform B2 with a large suitcase beside her, was a girl about the same height as Rufus. She was wearing a sundress, her hair was sleek and blonde, and she had this I own the world—aire about her.
Although they were still several bus stalls away, Rufus could see a similar patch to his own pinned onto her dress. Standing next to the girl was an unhappy man, dressed in the blue uniform of a station director.
“Hello, young woman,” sang the lady.
“Where have you been, Meme? This child has been waiting for nearly twenty minutes!” The director was not in a good mood.
“I can’t help that the schedule made by your staff and the times that your drivers arrive are not coordinated. Her limo wasn’t supposed to arrive for another five minutes.” She had a little bite in her voice. Rufus guessed she didn’t like being accused of wrongdoing.
“I will take my charge, if you are done accusing your own staff of incompetency. I suggest that if you have an issue with the way they are doing their jobs, you should take it up with them and not with me.” The smile that she had for Rufus was not shared with the Director.
“Please be careful with my luggage, there’s a good boy.” The young girl barely glanced at Rufus, being the only “boy” in earshot, he knew that the comment was directed at him.
“I’m not your bellhop. Haul your own luggage, or leave it.” Rufus wasn’t going to carry this girl’s anything. A thought struck him, she seemed to have some money.
“Unless, you have some cash.” He smiled and made a rubbing motion between his fingers and thumb.
“Yes, of course. I’ll give you ten dollars once you get my suitcase inside my room.” She smiled at Rufus.
“Make it twenty.”
“It’s a deal.”
Rufus started pulling the heavy luggage behind Meme and the young, female addition. They walked out into the parking structure, took the elevator up a couple floors, and made their way over to a silver mini-van. Meme opened the back hatch, and Rufus heaved the luggage in. They climbed into the seats and had an un-talkative ride.
The drive took them out of the city and onto a highway. Rufus asked “What’s up with the limo? I’ve never heard of an orphan riding around in one before.”
Disdainfully, the girls—whose name was Imogen—looked at Rufus down her nose. “If you must know, my parents had a trust fund set up when I was born.”
They turned off of the interstate onto a frontage road and, eventually, down a very densely tree-lined lane. A half hour later they arrived at a gate that opened upon Meme’s clicking a door opener on the sun visor. The gate led to an immaculately kept lawn that had massive trees partitioning the view. The lawn sloped up to a sprawling mansion with several side buildings lining the main road.
This isn’t like any orphanage I have ever seen, thought Rufus.
The mini-van pulled past the front of the building, via a roundabout and around the back of the left wing. The vehicle slowed down and Meme rolled down her window waving out to a man working in the garden. The man turned and waved back and said, “Hello.”
He looked around the same age as Meme, dark haired, slightly portly, with a dirt smudge on his cheek, and stood at about five-and-a-half feet tall. The mini-van sped up slightly after the man’s salutation and eventually came to an outbuilding with a long row of garage doors. They turned into one of them and came to a stop.
Once inside, they piled out of the vehicle. Rufus ducked his head to step out of the van and came up short as he looked down the row of vintage cars, motorcycles and even a biplane.
Who are these people? He thought.
“Grab your things and follow me. We have to register you with the front office before you get your rooms.” Meme said, then walked off without waiting.
Rufus, thinking about the twenty he was going to get from Imogen, grabbed her suitcase out of the car. He hurried to catch up with them. They were almost to the door at the end of the garage when Rufus caught up to them. He would have caught them earlier, but the amazing variety of vehicles he was seeing kept slowing his pace.
They crossed the driveway to a side entrance of the main building, followed a hallway past the kitchen, and arrived at a large, sweeping staircase.
“Can I leave the suitcase down here?” asked Rufus. He was struggling to keep up.
“No! Of course you can’t leave it here. My things would be un-protected. I am paying you good money to carry it. Some waif could off with it and then where…”
If Meme hadn’t interjected it seemed as if the girl would have gone on for an hour. “Rufus, we have but a bit more, just up the stairs and through a couple doors. Please, let’s go.” Meme pleaded.
Rufus groaned and hefted the suitcase up the stairs—one stair at a time. They stopped outside a door with a clouded window, on which read the words “Front Office”. Meme unlocked the door with a key from her pocket and walked in, turning on the light as she did. She walked over to a desk, put down her purse, and sat in the chair behind the desk.
“Alright, who wants to go first?” She asked the pair of kids.
Unabashedly, Imogen sat down across the desk from Meme.
“Fine. Rufus will you please wait outside? There is a bench across the hall”.
Dismissed, Rufus eyed the girl as he shut the door behind him. He walked across the hall and sat down on the hard wood bench. The bench was interesting; it looked like it was from some storybook, with armrests as high as his eyes. The wood was so worn that the carvings on the ends of the armrests were hardly distinguishable, but he could make out little faces that looked like animals –gargoyles?
After inspecting the armrest his curiosity was piqued. At first, he hadn’t notice anything unusual about the building, but now he started to inspect his surroundings. Everything looked old, but was well taken care of. On the ceiling there was a series of paintings, which looked like different battle scenes. Every one of them took place in what looked like the same arena.
He stood up and looked at the scene right above him. It depicted a huge black knight standing next to an even larger red dragon. Below the depiction were the words “Joe vs. Jon, ’41.” Both the dragon and the knight were bleeding in many places. The knight’s helmet had been crushed in on one side with the rest of the plate armor scrapped, dented or covered in blood. The dragon too, had many large puncture wounds that were bleeding profusely. The knight’s sword was off in the distance behind the dragon. The scene depicted the knight either attempting to rush the dragon or to get past it to get to his sword, Rufus wasn’t sure. The dragon had a trail of smoke curling out of its mouth and was poised, its head close to the ground and tail swaying lazily in the sky above it’s back, ready to blast the knight with its flame.
Rufus stood, transfixed by the image. The longer he stared at the painting, the further back in the painting’s history his imagination traveled—as if he had no control over his imagination whatsoever.
He saw a crowd of creatures— humans and non-humans—ranging from small to large to incredibly large. The were flying, crawling, and sitting in and around the stands, cheering on their champions.
The Red Dragon was standing behind a large wooden gate—its head staring over the gate, eyes unmoving from the opposite side of the arena. Rufus followed the dragon’s gaze, past the crowd of creatures, past the arena’s dirt floor, to a door the same size as the dragon’s.
A loud bell tolled from a tower rising above the arena to Rufus’ left. The doors opened, and the dragon launched up into the air over the door and lazily followed a curving path through the sky.
Rufus, immediately turned towards the other door to see the entrance of the knight, but all he saw was a small boy. He had a sword on his back, but the boy didn’t have the height nor the armor nor anything that Rufus had seen earlier in the picture.
The dragon saw his foe and you could almost see the smile on its face as it dove straight to the boy. The boy nonchalantly watched the dragon approach. Although the dragon started spewing projectile molten lava out of its mouth—causing a swath of melted rock to appear as it landed on the arena floor—the boy waited until the dragon was right on top of him.
He drew the sword off of his back and, in a flash faster than Rufus had ever seen anyone move, the boy jumped and transformed from the young boy to the black-armored specter in the original painting. The knight leapt high enough to latch on to the dragon’s fore paw. He rapidly scaled the leg and jumped with both hands holding his sword high over his head, arching his back, and bringing his sword down with all his might on the dragon’s wing.
The sword bit hard into the dragon’s wing joint, and the dragon screamed and spewed white-hot lava from its mouth. The dragon spun, and the sword, wedged into the dragon’s wing, was wrenched from the black knight’s grip. The knight was thrown off balance and flung to the ground.
The scene of the combatants jiggled in front of Rufus. The image began to blur, and he came back to reality with a confused jolt. Then he felt his arms being manhandled and looked around at his elbows. They were interlocked within the arms of two much larger boys who were guffawing. Rufus realized that he was being dragged backwards, and started struggling.
“Let me go!” he screamed. “Ms. Meme, help me!”
“Ms. Meme, help me!” The boy on Rufus’ left mimicked.
“Man, I thought they were tougher than this. Welcome to the orphanage kid!” the other boy sneered.
Then the two boys stopped and adjusted their grip to dump Rufus upside down into the large garbage can that sat at the end of the hallway.