StormBreathers Saga Episode 128
Five StormBreathers and their masked riders.
Polaris circled the great tent slowly from above, easing herself lower with every nervous loop until she was flying at the same altitude as its peak, which was crowned by a brightly lit star with a dozen sharp crystal points.
She paused to hover above the large plowed parking area on the south side for a moment. There were tons of cars parked there, but not a single person in sight since they had all gone inside the tent.
Eyes settling on a long, wide strip of empty black concrete, she shifted her camouflage and dropped to the ground...just as a yellow car with an orange hood and one orange door darted into the open space directly beneath her. She landed with her front paws perfectly implanted in the center of the hood, both the tires and the driver screeched, steam poured out from under the crushed hood, and the tantalizing smell of fresh pizza drifted out through the cracked windshield.
Polaris wrenched her paws from the crumpled metal and dove into the shadows while the panic-stricken pizza guy kicked open his jammed door. The door fell off its hinges when it swung open, crashing onto the concrete and shattering the window. The driver tripped on a loose shoelace as he scrambled out of the gaping hole where the door had been and plummeted head-first into the nearest snowbank.
It was, naturally, Max.
“Are you kidding me?!” he panted as he righted himself and swiped the snow from his crooked glasses. “I want my job to be boring again!”
Polaris didn’t stay around to hear the rest of his rant. She quickly slipped away around the back side of the circus tent, not wanting to blow up yet another car.
There she came to a tall fence of interweaving laser beams. From above, the vivid blue streaks had appeared to be surrounding a second parking area, but it was actually a cluster of small travel trailers parked on the grass that was now buried in snow.
The trailers were lifted unusually high off the ground and set on large, heavily treaded tires. Other than that and the wall of lasers, the little camp looked like the welcoming neighborhood on wheels where Polaris had been raised.
Each trailer was trimmed with Christmas lights and a small evergreen tree stood just to the side of each door. On one the lights were blue, on another they were yellow, on another white and another multicolored. The one that caught her eye the most was a quaint white trailer trimmed with bright green lights. One glance at it and a rush of electrical excitement shot through her.
Without a second of hesitation she leapt over the lasers and landed in the center of the camp with an elated squeal. She folded her wings to avoid toppling the trailers on either side of her and trotted up to the softly lit door with ears pricked forward and tail stirring up a flurry of snow from the ground behind her.
The little tree beside the icy step was decorated with fur garland, glitter-dusted dragon feathers and polished StormBreather scales. The tree topper was a small angel fashioned from wood, with a pearly scale for a halo and a pair of white dragon feathers for wings.
Polaris bumped the door with her nose and nickered loudly, prancing in place while she waited eagerly for it to swing open. When no one answered, she pressed her muzzle against the window and peered inside.
As the dimly lit interior came into focus, her happy nickering faded into a sad, sighing groan.
There were no beads hanging in the doorway. There were no candles on the windowsill. There were no snapshots of a bright-eyed baby dragon covering the small fridge from top to bottom. There was no Circus of Storms poster taped to the ceiling above the bed. There was no dragon spike nightlight embedded in the wall by the sink. There wasn’t even a plate of carob brownies or a smoothie blender on the counter.
Polaris’ wings and ears drooped and the light in her wide eyes dimmed as the steamy cloud of her breath crept across the cold window. She turned away slowly, head hanging and tail dragging limply through the snow. She sniffed the air, but the scent that had drawn her to the cozy camp was gone, along with her hope.
She stepped outside the circle of trailers and started halfheartedly flapping her wings without so much as a glance skyward. Then a wave of cheers followed by the roars and cries of multiple dragons and galloping notes of festive music made her pause to look back at the enormous tent.
Strangely, the dragons’ calls weren’t fearful or angry. They almost sounded excited, maybe even playful.
The breeze toyed with a loose flap of fabric on the smooth, sweeping outer wall of the tent, briefly opening up a slender crack of warm light behind it. After casting one more downhearted glance at the empty trailer, Polaris deepened her camouflage and crept up to the curious golden glow. It was coming from the back entrance, which was a tall opening blocked by a huge, heavy flap to keep out the cold.
She nosed aside the thick material draped across the doorway and peered into a spacious canvas room lit by strings of bright white Christmas lights strung in a zigzagging pattern across the steeply sloped ceiling. A hanging circle of lightweight, floor-length curtains formed a dressing room in one corner and another corner held a simple wooden tack rack. In the middle of the room stood two wooden folding tables, a freestanding double-sided mirror framed with more sparkling white lights, and a large cedar costume chest covered with paintings of regal StormBreathers, hulking yetis, tumbling clouds and snowcapped mountains.
Small bottles of red, green, silver, gold, blue and white glow-in-the-dark paint and freshly used brushes were scattered across one of the tables. The other held a notebook and some kind of wireless sound system control board.
Polaris inched her way across the room, hesitantly sniffing at every object she passed. She snorted nervously when she reached the tack rack, only to find there wasn’t a single chain or muzzle hanging from it. There were only simple braided halters and a couple of soft fur saddles.
More noises rose and fell deeper inside the tent. Some, like the squeals and playful snorts of StormBreathers, drew her toward the curtained doorway on the far side of the room. The sounds of the crowd, however, kept her from nosing that curtain aside.
She lingered in front of the motionless flap for a few minutes, torn between the urge to go on and the urge to turn back. She was just about to choose turning back when she caught another whiff of the scent she had lost outside. Faint as it was, it pulled her through the slit in the canvas wall like the steady tug of a lead rope in the hands of a trusted master.
The doorway didn’t open into another sparkling room like the first, or to the brightly lit heart of the circus. It led into a dim canvas corridor just barely high and wide enough for a full-grown StormBreather to walk down with wings folded.
Cautiously, Polaris stepped into it and let the curtain fall closed behind her. The corridor wound out of sight to both the left and the right. It formed a complete circle around the spacious central section of the tent, with several slits in the fabric marking the closed doorways leading to and from the performance ring.
Through the flimsy walls she could see diffused flashes of light and distorted silhouettes dancing, swaying and soaring with the lively beat of the music. One of the closed slits was directly in front of her and would have been easy to step right through, but her paws felt like they had suddenly sprouted roots of iron. So she stayed frozen in the darkness, breathing heavily.
The scent she was after was like a whisper of home too soft to be sure it was real. She couldn’t bring herself to leave without finding the source of it, but she couldn’t bring herself to step through that doorway, either.
It turned out she didn’t have to.
Only a few moments after she stepped into the dark corridor, the lights of the performance ring went out and the upbeat music faded into a mellow intermission song. The slit in front of her widened into a gaping hole as the rippling material was lifted away, and suddenly she was face-to-face with the looming shadows of five StormBreathers and their masked riders.
To be continued…