Legend Incarnate

Chapter 1

1

Sam pulled on his dog’s lead. “Pepper, come on,” he groaned, leaning heavily against the rough park toilets wall. He’d glanced up at the sky not a second before; it was rolling with greyish storm clouds, announcing an uninvited promise of pounding rain. His dog was still marking what she thought she owned—Sam dreaded to imagine how many hopeful canines had sprayed this wall. Pepper was tiny, a miniscule (but very overfed) Pembroke Corgi, but still she willed to own probably the town centre of Winchester, according to the way dogs marked their territory.

Sam’s pocket buzzed, causing him to hook the dog’s lead round his wrist and fish into his pocket, scrabbling for his battered mobile. He scooped it out, pressing the top button to turn the backlight of his phone on. The text was from his fourteen-year-old brother, Daniel. Get your arse back home, I think I might’ve broken the toaster and I can’t fix it. Sam grinned. He thought of what to reply for a second, and then he’d pressed send after replying with three words: you’re no man.

The sky overhead rumbled, and Sam yanked on Pepper’s lead. She whined in protest, but Sam pulled his hood up, protecting his sandy blonde curls from the severe rainfall he expected from the sight of the clouds. After he’d shoved his phone back into his jeans pocket, he gave up trying to disinterest Pepper from her territory marking and picked her up, ignoring her squeaks when he pinched the occasional roll of fat. He couldn’t really call it skin anymore; his mum had overfed Pepper since she was six weeks old. With just over four years of an unhealthy amount of food, no wonder she was the size she was.

Sam began to run, dodging the pedestrians on the pavement with a surprising grace for a teenage boy his height. When the rain started falling, he sheltered Pepper with his grey hoodie, even though it wouldn’t do her much good. Within a couple of seconds it had already started to become waterlogged and uncomfortable.

His feet were soon wet as well—his almost ruined Converse couldn’t handle much more and putting them through British autumn wasn’t the brightest thing anyone could do. Sam tried to ignore the roughness of the over-worn canvas and his holed socks on his feet and carried on running, his eyes desperately scanning for the sign marking his street. Pepper squealed under his hoodie again, and he willed for her to be silent. Almost immediately, she shut up, much to his satisfaction.

As if on cue, the rain also ceased. Sam stopped dead in the street, blinked, and then stared up at the sky as it cleared in what couldn’t have been more than twenty seconds. He almost expected the birds to start singing again, but they didn’t. Sam almost felt let-down; that element of cheese would have put the icing on the cake.

Sam dropped Pepper and knelt down, fumbling for her lead, his gaze still stuck on the now light blue sky. When he exhaled, his breath still created a mist, but it wasn’t pouring with rain any more. He was soaked to the bone, but strangely, he couldn’t feel it. His clothes felt heavy but his skin wasn’t reacting to the mixture of freezing air and wet clothes.

Sam’s pocket vibrated again. He knew what the text would read before he even slid open his phone: it would be something a fourteen-year-old shouldn’t even know the meaning of. A check of his messages folder corroborated his musings. Sam chuckled to himself and continued his walk with Pepper; they’d only been out seven minutes (Sam had read the time as he checked his messages) and now the rain had stopped, his mum would moan at him for returning home so soon. She’d complain about Pepper’s weight problem and then shoo him out again.

Instead of walking back, Sam yanked Pepper’s leash and dragged her to the abbey situated in the heart of Winchester, wanting to get out of the park. He’d spotted a couple of people from his school, and he was not in a mood to be mocked. Sam kept his head down, trying to keep his hood from falling off his head. The only jackets that fit him all the way down to his skinny wrists were extra large, and that made it hard for hoods to comfortably sit on his head.