A Promise of Sun

From the rent, dragons fell.

Tamrin ran. His feet were small and could not carry him far. Shadows cast by firelight pooled like black fluid, dripping from above and on either side. Fierce amber light bit at his heels. There was nothing to the air but smoke and the crackling snap of wood; the screams had wilted a long time past. Smog scraped the underside of his eyelids, scratching at the inside of his skin with black nails.

The rent, a wound in the sky subsumed by stars, pulsed. Dragons oozed from it like blood. They swarmed and circled, screamed, and bellowed – riotous in senseless rage. Tamrin had never seen a dragon before but, as he was only three years old, this was not so surprising. There were many things he had never seen, and he wondered, in a moment of adult clarity, if he would ever get the chance.

For all its magic, a toddler’s mind did not deign to dwell on mortality. Death was other. It happened to someone, somewhere, but it did not matter. The eye of Tamrin’s imagination was better suited to memories of wildflowers in bloom and the sharp jasmine of their scent, of wandering by his mother’s side to pick them. There were no wildflowers now.

The stars burnt like embers.

He remembered that, too. Looking out the window to see a great, orange star. No honey, move away from the window. Come to mummy and step away from the glass. Her voice had been taut, as many words crowding her throat as those she chose to say. Hide your head. Don’t look. This, above all. Do not look, Tamrin. He did not know why she was crying as she twisted herself between him and the window, spinning him away. Just hold on to me, honey. Hold on tight to mummy and keep your eyes closed. But now he could see the star even with his eyes closed, and then he could feel the star, and then the star swallowed him up. It was a vicious, angry star that wasn’t a star at all. It was fire. Don’t you dare look! And he felt the moment his mother begun to burn. She turned stiff. Then she sagged. Her last words were lost in the steaming mess of flesh where her mouth had been, and as she died, she realised he could not understand. He put a pale hand to her head and a chunk of hair fell from his touch.

The wall behind her was aflame. The roof was collapsing. Tamrin knew to stay was to die, and death was suddenly very real to him. He had not realised it had already come for his mother.

He had tried to pull her out with him, had screamed at her to get up until his throat felt like it was bleeding, until he couldn’t see for the tears. Blind and lost, he sobbed one last time. He purged himself of it and, in the resulting silence, he grew up. In seconds he was no longer a child. He could compete with any man who dared look him in the eyes. The scalding heat dried his eyes faster than any amount of bravery could, and he gathered himself to run.

Tamrin thudded back into his body and the present, narrowly avoiding a low-hanging branch. The village lay behind him, a labyrinth of smoking debris. The jagged scar of the rent throbbed above him, emitting a glow he felt in his head more than saw. Tamrin was small and innocuous, and he was not discovered by the many, many dragons that winged overhead. For a time, their bellowing struck him dumb, driving stakes of sound through the tops of his feet. Eventually, even this grew distant. He was out. He was free.

He was alone.

Tamrin ran at a tree, the tallest and largest he could see, and curled into it. He did not sink to his knees nor shake, but he wrapped his arms around its trunk and breathed in deep the heady, wooden scent. He had outrun the burning avarice of dragonfire, for now. He could not hold to any sense of time and, in the boughs of his tall companion, neither could he retain the urgency that had saved his life. He became only vaguely aware of his breathing. His feet were torn and bloody, smeared with ash. He couldn’t see from one of his eyes. Drenched in sweat, the child slowly rubbed his hands against the grain of the wood and hiccupped. A sob rode the crest of the sound, and soon he was weeping.

The tree drank deep that night.

____________________________________________________

He awoke sometime before morning, the sun a distant promise. Tamrin lay on his back looking at pieces of sky winking through the trees, tracing shapes in pillars of smoke. Ash had settled in his hair, across his face and chest, but he did not brush it away. It was a comforting, phantom weight. He felt empty.

The first thing to steal its way inside him, even before the pain, was fear. It was sheer luck the woodlands had not yet caught ablaze, and Tamrin no longer believed in luck. He knew nothing of where he was. Home was a town, of which he knew a small section. Beyond home was the woods, and his world ended there. He did not know the way back.

Night broke before daylight.

A turgid film of smog smothered the sky. Tamrin had still not moved, perhaps could not – he couldn’t feel his toes. Below his knees was a throbbing emptiness. He looked out in the direction he believed was home, craving something that may be familiar. The forest regarded him without expression.

A growl shocked him out of his reverie and Tamrin’s head snapped to the right, then the left. He scanned a high arc from side to side before realising the sound had come from his stomach and, with that realisation dislodged, a landslide threw itself upon his head. He was hungry. Starving. Boulders of thirst entombed his terribly small body. He had a loose understanding of where food came from – meat came from beasts and plants from the earth. His newfound intimacy with death spurned the former, but he knew even less of the latter.

I’ll ask mum.

Words, slipping through as silt in a river. Their trail carved a cold road through his skull.

It would not be exaggeration to say this was almost the death of Tamrin, for a body may persist long after the soul has withered. Lying on his back, the child looked no different from the fallen leaves around him, breath stinging from the smoke in the air. He curled inwards, folding in upon his centre. He comprehended hopelessness. He did not know the word for it.

And he felt before he saw a great shadow bruise the sky.

Tamrin looked up.

A shard of darkness splintered the sun, and then vanished. A vast rumbling of wind scattered the twigs and dirt by his feet. Trees bent. Tamrin pressed himself to the dirt and then was flattened from the force of it.

He rose, slowly.

A dragon prowled an oval around the boy. It was impossibly large, green scales glittering like quicksilver. The enormous expanse of its wings wove sinuous paths between trees. You are a small thing. Sweat broke out on the boy’s forehead as the dragon’s maw cracked open. Intelligent eyes of the sharpest gold did not blink, but perhaps winced. And you are apart from the swarm.

Its voice started in his mind and then pushed outwards, never quite reaching his ears.

“Tamrin,” he said. The first word he’d learnt, right after mumma, which was far, far too painful.

I do not understand this word. Something opened in his head. Eyes. Or wings, unfurling. Images slunk into his periphery that bore a suspicious resemblance to things he had lived and seen. Tamrin shoved them aside, blinking furiously. The force in his mind turned sharp in answer – insistent. It pushed at him, and the images returned, outlined by a nimbus of stubborn green light. Closing his eyes did nothing to soften the assault. The dragon was inside him, burning through him, and she – for he knew then the creature was a ‘she’ – could see everything.

Which simply would not do.

Tamrin found a door in his mind and slammed it shut. The images had begun to slow and coalesce into a face, his mother’s face, but they now dispersed until only flecks of colour danced in the corner of his eye, and even those slowly faded. He would not allow this creature to have anything more of his mother, even her memory. The memory was all he had left, and it was his, and the dragon had no right to his pain.

There are screams in your head, little one. She hung her grand, emerald head, dragonscale glittering. She was a marvellous creature, utterly unlike anything he’d dreamt. He found it challenging to hold the terrible truth of her in his mind, so he scrunched his eyes tight and drew upon the vast dark. You are hiding something from me. And then she sent forgive me like a razor into his head, and the boy’s quivering hands turned steady, and made fists. Did she die?

Tamrin couldn’t see very well. He refused to wipe his eyes. If he moved, he might shatter, fractals of him scattered in the wind to join the leaves and ash.

You hide her from me. Did you grow from her?

Did he grow from his mother? Why, yes, he had. Every moment of his life thus far had been shaped by her, had mirrored and been inspired by her. She came once more to the front of his mind. The nimbus returned, fluctuating between shades of orange and gold, phantom flames devouring her silhouette. She was trying to speak to him; to his mind, she was blaming him. He was wrong, of course. This disillusion must be forgiven as it was no result of ignorance nor impetuous youth. Tamrin needed someone to hate, and the closest at hand was himself.

And now, the beast.

The gate tore us from our home, she sent calmly, like it mattered. For all our might, we were frightened.

Tamrin locked eyes with the dragon and showed it what fright looked like. Showed what it was like to die of fright and yet live, hollow heart pumping a broken chest. He unleashed a gaze that could not safely be handled by the face of a child, and the dragon recoiled.

He lowered his head and wiped the back of a hand against his nose, watching it fall to slap down on his thigh.

What is Tamrin?

He gestured dully at himself, pulling his knees into himself.

You are a Tamrin? I have not heard this thing.

He felt her rustling in his mind like shifting leaves of parchment. Softer, this time. Not quite afraid but certainly tentative. Through her rummaging he relived the discovery of his first tooth. In a heartbeat he spent hours watching his mother sew, a crack of sun leaking through the window. Tamrin is your… name? Other children were running with him, learning to find their feet, falling atop each other. Laughter, like the prick of thorns. My kind do not have names. We are one, or we are swarm, but always we are dragon.

Tamrin saw himself as incredibly small, and ugly. He did not know what ugly meant, or what it felt like, but he been called it enough by the other children to be certain all the same. He wanted to learn to read, and his dream was to touch the moon one day. He saw himself through the eyes of a dragon and thought the word Tamrin.

Then he thought of fire.

He thought of pain.

He thought of his mother’s hair falling out, of her trying to speak and losing her words.

And thought the word dragon.

The dragon rose onto her hind legs. It was as a mountain clawing at the sky. Both wings snapped out, sparks snapping and coalescing into a blaze beneath brilliant, slanted eyes. Tamrin fell onto his back. Legs of stone, feet of lead. He looked up at the sneering, draconic mouth and was struck by the realisation that he had offended her. That she was furious.

And hurt.

I am more than fire, she sent, staring down at him, just as you are more than pain. I am a force that brings great change, and thus shall you refer to me. She threw her head back and a column of alabaster-white flame with veins of gold speared the sky, tearing a cloud in two. Change! she sent, triumphant.

The boy held her sending in his mind the way he’d cup water, staring at the surface. Silent.

You will die if you don’t rest.

But Tamrin had slept a great deal already.

That was not rest, she snapped. She spat a small plume of fire, no larger than a feather, no brighter than a match. Are you not exhausted?

Yes. But it was not safe. Not here. Not anywhere.

Do not be foolish. None would dare encroach so long as I am nearby.

He could not trust her, yet he did. Their bond worked both ways and, though he refused to look, he could feel the sincerity of her, thrumming a soft melody.

I will watch.

You will eat me.

You would barely wet my tongue. A pause. You are strong, for a human.

He did not feel strong.

And yet, here you are.

And yet, here he was.

____________________________________________________

As he dreamt, Change saw the boy begin to shiver.

She pushed a small flame from her snout. Curiously, this did little to calm the child. He began to thrash in his sleep, pulling away from the heat, a high-pitched keening sound wheezing from his throat. The dream reached out to her across the bridge of their bond, new and fledgling though it may have been, and she saw whispers of what he’d tried to suppress. Whispers that bellowed. Change extended the membrane of her wind and brushed it, lightly, against the side of his face. He reached for her and gripped what he found. It hurt a little, but she did not pull away.

Instead, she sent colour to him in his dreams. She wrapped pink and blue and green in a bow of light and sent him what little peace she could offer, beaming it into the cold darkness of his hurt. Change does not have to be cruel, she sent tenderly.

The toddler held tight to the dragon and slept through the night.

___________________________________________________

You dream loudly.

Tamrin woke, warm. He was hungry, and his eyes were dry. Change lay on her stomach, eyes open and fastened to him. He couldn’t measure what hid in her gaze.

I am thinking.

He rose into a seated position, rubbing clots of soil from his hair. “About what?”

Not like that.

Tamrin frowned, and then sent, like this?

A breeze that didn't exist wrapped around him, smelling like a smile. I am thinking something quite foolish.

The sun hovered far above them as if dangled on a string, the forest floor mottled in patches of lights. Higher still was the rent. It seemed to be growing smaller.

I must fly through, or risk trapping myself on this side.

Joy and mourning, hand in hand, raced down Tamrin’s face. You can’t!

I must. Change opened her mouth. A wave of gooseflesh rose upon his skin as mist slumped from her long, cavernous throat. The mist was cold fire. I have taken much from you she sent, her face now obscured by the curtain of roiling, glacial fog. This mist is of me. I am the greatest of fools, and I offer it to you, if you wish it.

What will it do to me?

There is something dark in your heart, Tamrin. I saw it. I can feel it still. Perhaps you are strong enough to withstand it’s pull, but then again, perhaps not. Humans are not nearly so singular as you choose to believe. Should you breathe in my gift, you will become more than human.

I would no longer be me.

These words are not to be mistaken as verbatim. There is no language to describe their sendings. It was a musical almost-language. It was intent and, in the case of Change, even a small amount of what would eventually become love. She clawed to her feet, talons wrenching at the ground below. The earth roared through her. Even so, she reached for the sky.

I’m scared, Tamrin sent.

Have you not grown weary of being scared?

Yes.

Oh, yes, he had.

She was flying, now, looming above him, her back to the sun’s bright inferno. Her wingbeats did not scatter the cocoon of mist still draped over and around him. The rent grows dim, she sent. If I am to leave, it must be now.

Tamrin took a deep breath and swallowed cold fire. He sent, let me come, too.

Change roared.

His clothes tore. His skin split. His eyes grew large, and wide. The dragon swooped and gripped his body in her clothes, his new body, his suddenly clumsy body, his flesh that was suddenly more, and pulled him up until earth was swallowed by sky.

Fly, Tamrin.

I don’t know how.

A laugh that felt like butterflies landing on his lashes. You will learn.

His only warning was the echo of an idea, slithering into his ear. He reached up to clasp at her, but his arms were no longer arms and they did not behave as they should. He flopped awkwardly, looking very much like a fish. He was fashioning a deep, snarling curse to send along the bond when she dropped him. In the end, all he sent was panic.

Change sent a low, resounding sigh.

Then she sent one of his own memories through the bond, the final one, the one he had not allowed her to see. But of course she had seen. They were as one, now, frozen flames binding them to one another. She sent him the final moments of his mother, but she sent the memory she had seen, unhindered by doubt and fear and pain.

Tamrin felt the ground running to meet him.

Change pressed the sending further into his chest, threading it through his heart. Which broke. And dragons could not cry but fingers of steam curled from his eyes. Why are you forcing me to see this again?

Again? Bristling red and shimmering violet – anger thrummed through their bond. You lived this moment, child, but you have yet to see it. You refuse to see it. And by doing so you refuse her final gift to you.

It will kill me.

But he looked, for he had no choice. The vision consumed him, drawing him to inhabit the worst moment of his life.

His mother bent over him. Time grew thick and sluggish.

He had not realised how beautiful she had been, seconds before the fire claimed her. It did not matter it was a fight she was doomed to lose. The fight itself was magnificent.

The fight was what mattered.

He could feel her flesh turn soft under his hands, smell the sudden tang of burning hair. She spoke her dying words. And her tears –

A warrior’s tears, Change sent, her fangs bare to the wind, exultant in the skies. There is no greater triumph than to protect what we love.

Tamrin stretched wings of deep jasmine, the colour of wildflowers, and soared. He had been unable to hear his mother, but he thought that he knew what she’d said now all the same. He thought, you too, mum.

And he followed Change through the way between worlds.

Into whatever came after.