Free The Mask Wearer by Bryan Perro Page A

her. “I know that you wish to find your parents as soon as possible, but I had a dream last night and I feel I have to tell you about it. I was baking rolls. Every member of my family was around me, and I was doing my best to please them. My children, my grandchildren, my cousins, my nephews, they had all been turned to stone. Then, suddenly, you appeared in my dream. I did not know you and you asked me for something to eat. I gave you three or four rolls. As you bit into one of them, you found a hard-boiled egg. I told you, ‘One often finds eggs where they are the least expected.’ That’s it. I don’t believe that dreams are meaningless, so I baked rolls this morning and I brought them with me. I also have some eggs. They’re for you and my wish is that you find your parents soon.”
    Amos thanked her, took the food, and went on his way without really understanding the old woman’s dream. When he turned back to wave a last good-bye, the woman had vanished.
    The farther Amos walked, the more he thought about what the woman had said:
One often finds eggs where they are the least expected
. He stopped in his tracks. What if the pendant stolen by Yaune all those years ago contained a rooster’s egg? That had to be the reason why the magician of darkness wanted so badly to get it back! The pendant itself did not possess any magic or evil power. It was simply the wrapping that protected the egg. The first owner of the pendant had wanted to create a basilisk. It made total sense: this magician commanded an army of gorgons, and wanted to add to his ranks a monstercapable of destroying an entire regiment in the blink of an eye.
    Amos concluded that the enemy of Bratel-la-Grande exercised power over all living creatures, near or far, who were related to snakes. He had to be malevolent, treacherous, and very dangerous. Beorf was in great danger, and Amos wasn’t sure how to warn him.

BEORF, THE GORGONS, AND THE NAGA
     

 
    T he gorgons were in hot pursuit of Beorf. He ran into the forest, his head lowered as he tried to avoid the nighttime obstacles.
    The first two days following Amos’s departure had been quiet for the humanimal. The gorgons concentrated their search in the city. In his hiding place in the forest, Beorf slept and rested in anticipation of the difficult nights to come. He also pondered at length the best strategy of defense against the invaders. The main idea, simple and efficient, was to get rid of the gorgons one by one.
    Beorf perfected dozens of traps and set them everywhere in the forest. He guessed that after several nights spent uselessly searching Bratel-la-Grande, the monsters would inevitably begin to comb the surrounding areas. The gorgons would find various trails—all his own—and would follow them to try to corner any fugitives. The humanimal had purposely leftfootprints in the fields and in the forest that led directly to the traps.
    So as not to be spotted when going from trap to trap, Beorf morphed into a bear. The gorgons were looking for the thief who had stolen the pendant, a human. Not a bear! These creatures would never imagine that the animal and human were one and the same.
    One moonlit night, as the gorgons followed Beorf’s footprints, three of them encountered quicksand. Hidden from sight, the humanimal saw them disappear into the ground.
    “Minus three!” he shouted.
    Meanwhile, another small detachment of gorgons found itself in the clearing around his old burned-down house where he kept his beehives. Beorf ordered the bees to attack. The insects swarmed together to form a huge cloud above the gorgons and swooped down on them at full speed. Petrified in flight by the gaze of the monsters, the bees fell from the sky like a torrent of stones and pierced the gorgons’ bodies. The insects had sacrificed themselves, allowing Beorf to get rid of five more gorgons.
    Soon Beorf noticed that the gorgons’ wings enabled them to glide for short distances, but that the