Free The Story of Owen by E. K. Johnston

dragon slayer by proxy. It’s not a particularly epic tale, though I could make it into one if you would rather (and I probably will, if I am ever asked to writean autobiography), but it’s what happened.
    The sword fighting turned out to be quite a bit of fun, once the agony of muscle development produced actual muscles. I’d never been much for sports before, preferring music to running around, but at least carrying a bari sax around prepared me for the weight of a sword. I was shorter than Owen was, and a bit stockier so my balance was good, but he had several years of practice on me. He trained with a sword that was nearly as tall as he was. Even with both hands on the hilt, I couldn’t hold the tip up off the ground for very long. His actual sword was shorter and a bit lighter, but by training with the heavier one, he built up more stamina. The sword Hannah gave me was one she’d made for Lottie’s physical therapy. It wasn’t exactly light, but it was manageable, and by the end of October, I’d gotten used to carrying it around when I wasn’t at school, strapped to my back so I wouldn’t trip over it (but where it could whack me in the head with the pommel if I turned too quickly).
    Before Owen, I’d spent most of my Saturday afternoons playing piano or poking away at my compositions. Now, rain or shine, I spent them in the practice ring in Owen’s yard, facing off against Hannah or Lottie, or more rarely Owen himself, with Lottie’s old broadsword in my hands. I’d probably never actually get close enough to a dragon to use anything I was learning, but it made my parents feel better, and it meant that when I watched Owen drill, finding rhythm and rhyme in the growing symphony of his motions, I could more accurately describe what he was doing. The axiom “write what you know” was a bit forced in my case, but I didn’t really mind, once my arms stopped feeling like lead weights while I played the organ on Sunday mornings.

    The last week of October was bright and sunny. Children prepared their Hallowe’en costumes two sizes too big in case the weather turned, and the farmers collected the last of their crops, one eye on the ground and the other on the sky as they sat in the high combine seats or drove the gravity bins between field and silo. Hannah was taking advantage of the chilly air to work in the smithy in the mornings, and so I watched while Owen trained with Lottie. The sky was absolutely clear, except for the smoke from Hannah’s forge, and I was so used to seeing it now that it didn’t make me nervous anymore. Fortunately for me, Lottie was always on guard, even when she was crossing swords with her nephew, and so when the dragon decided that Hannah’s smithy looked like a good target, Lottie was the one who saw it coming.
    The dragon came down on us from the west, which meant it must have flown over Trondheim on its way. Since Lottie had spotted it with enough time to spare, she sent Owen racing for their real swords and yelled for me to run and get Hannah out of the smithy. I was in such a rush that I forgot my backpack on the ground by the training ring. Dragon drills at school had left me with the habit of dropping everything when the alarm was given, and it wasn’t until Hannah had smothered the flames in her forge with the water she typically used for quenching and locked us both in the dragon shelter just outside the smithy door that I even missed it.
    â€œHow are you so calm?” I asked her. She was sitting on the old red chesterfield that Lottie had put in the shelter, but I was too anxious to sit. This was the closest I’d ever been to a dragonattack, and I knew that, outside, Owen and Lottie were using their swords for real and that there was nothing I could do to help them.
    â€œPractice,” Hannah said. I looked at her and realized that even though she looked at ease, her fingers were laced together