Ayomona

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley,” the little girl began. Her voice, which could be as piercing as a siren when she was upset and as lovely as birdsong when she was happy, was almost silent now, almost more the shape of words than words themselves. She was a tiny thing, standing there alone on the dimly lit stage, made even tinier by the expanse of darkness that was the silent audience spread before her. The moderator appeared out of nowhere next to her, bent down and whispered something, and when he vanished again he left behind the clipped-on microphone that she’d forgotten.

So many things had been forgotten, leading up to this moment. In the front row, which was nearly lit enough by the stage to make out her face, the girl’s mother leaned forward. Her whole being ached to swoop onto the stage and envelope her daughter in the caged protection of her arms. She had forgotten – had it been willful? Had it been deliberate? - that despite her daughter’s precocious talent, there already raged deep inside the girl a crippling shyness born of an adult’s fear of failure. And really, what person, regardless of innocence, would not be struck silent on this night, at this stage, in front of these people?

Breathe, Anna, her mother thought fiercely, her own chest rising and falling with forced deliberation, and Anna’s eyes drew as if unbidden to the front row, where they locked onto that familiar, beloved face framed by the bright red hair that fell too around her own face. There is no word in any language to describe the grief of a parent who has to hold themselves back from helping their child, from saving them from harm. Her mother forced herself to smile and nod.

Anna looked up. She knew no one would save her. The crumpled paper in her hand seemed as foreign to her as the languages the other contestants before her had spoken. They weren’t supposed to listen to each other’s stories, but she was the only English-speaking child in the finals, and without her translating earpiece, the moderator had relented and let her listen. The voices of the Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Urdu washed like waves over her, while she watched the other children hold forth, waving their arms dramatically as they read their stories or spoke the words from memory. They had been performers, and the audience had loved them, offering up their love in laughter and cheers, taking shape in the dark like living, beautiful things. Anna, the last contestant, mute on the stage, would receive no such gifts. And just when she’d made up her mind to drop her pages and beg the world for help, something else stepped in.

Another voice.

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley,” the voice said. It came from somewhere near her, but there was no one near her. She was frozen to the stage. Her feet weighed tons. She could not move.

The audience could not tell; they heard Anna’s voice, and settled back into their chairs with a crude mixture of empathetic relief and disappointed boredom. Her mother could not tell; she heard Anna’s voice, and settled back into her chair with her eyes half-closed, feeling her heart thud wildly in her chest.

“The valley was poor and sparse, and hardly anyone lived there,” the voice continued. “The people who did called it many names, but only one was known to the rest of the world, and that was Nasaken, which in their language meant Land of Magical Beings. Perhaps that’s how the dragons knew to come.”

Anna heard the words as if from a great distance, as if a pillow had been pressed over her ears. Her words, her story, being read to the world by an unknown voice that somehow sounded exactly like her own, and she was paralyzed, unable to stop it. She was too young to fully comprehend the strangeness of the situation, and therefore did not try to reason through what was happening: her mind focused instead on her all-consuming paralysis. Later, she would describe the feeling as if being squeezed on all sides, like an overripe grape, bursting to be freed of her skin. She would have been panicking if she could move even a muscle.

And then something else happened. She heard, even through her muffled head, words that were not her own. The voice was changing the story.

“The people of Nasaken were violent and cruel, and when the dragons came, they were hunted without mercy.”

–no! Anna’s mind revolted, confused and angry. The people were kind and had tried to befriend them. It was the dragons who were killers!

“But they stayed, living on the outskirts of the village in the caves of the mountain, because the town of Nasaken had secrets buried there. Secrets that the dragons once knew and had forgotten, but they wanted to know again. To remember.”

–secrets? Anna struggled, as much now out of indignation at the voice’s words as anything else. At home, her older brother sometimes stole her stories and edited them, adding crude jokes and brawny boy characters who spit tobacco and always saved the day. She would not speak to him for days after this happened. Was it possible this was another of Brandon’s jokes, that he was underneath the stage somewhere, reading into a microphone?

“Despite the violence, there was one dragon who wanted to learn to speak to the humans, to understand them. This dragon’s name was Farah, which in their tongue meant Grace. She was young, and brave, with glistening red scales that she inherited from her mother. She looked on the violence and the hatred with sadness, for she wanted nothing more than for the humans and the dragons to live in peace.”

In the crowd, Anna’s mother suddenly sat bolt upright. Her heart, which had calmed when the story began, was pounding again. Her red hair swung forward onto her bare shoulders as she gripped the sides of the chair, her eyes fixed on her daughter’s form. Was she imagining it, or was Anna’s body starting to shake?

“What Farah did not know was that she was blessed with a magical power far beyond that of the other dragons. It was dormant when she was a young dragon, but in the early days as they fought and settled in with the Nasakens, Farah began to feel it within her. The presence of another being. Another consciousness.”

Anna’s mother was half standing now, the beginnings of hysteria rising in her throat. Her friend, who’d come with her in the conspicuous absence of her husband, pulled her back down in alarm. “Anna’s doing fine!” the friend whispered.

“This power only came to Farah when she was under great stress. When she felt that she was alone in the world, when she felt that all was lost, that’s when the magic inside of her came to help her. Farah was, in fact, a living embodiment of the secret that the dragons had come to Nasaken to find. She was not one thing. She was not one dragon. She was what the Legends called Ayomona – Home of Many Spirits. And not all of those spirits were dragons.”

The audience was just beginning to like the story. They were more attentive now; the restless murmuring that accompanies the end of a show had quieted; they wanted to hear more about Farah and the valley. And perhaps the voice would have continued, and perhaps we would know already what Anna’s fate was to be, had Anna not suddenly crumpled to the stage, and utter silence fell. A tiny thing, now almost offensively tinier.

Anna’s mother could barely breathe.

She’s been Summoned.