An Introduction to Dragons

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Her father had told her of slyphs, snyx, snigs & cargots & she still scanned for them every time she searched the clouds. But she had never heard of dragons. Not until he was gone.

It was a slyph—her slyph—who first mentioned them to her. The two of them had become fast friends long before she knew what a slyph was. It came to her as she slept, entering her dreams—which was all she believed they were at first. There was something different about these nocturnal visitations, however. She rarely remembered other dreams &, when she did, they always seemed disjointed & odd. But with her slyph, she remembered everything as though she had never slept, as though their time together was just another part of her day.

Her father had been both surprised & happy to discover that his daughter had a slyph for a best friend. “It’s a good omen,” he had said. “Slyphs are very timid creatures & don’t show themselves to just anyone. They keep their distance from most, appearing only when they see something exceptional in a person’s heart. And then, it’s usually not for long. Even the best have moments when they will frighten a slyph &, when that happens, they rarely see one again. To have one for so long…, long enough to become best friends…, that’s…, that’s just very good…. It’s really…, just very good.” She remembered him choking up as he told her these things. His eyes had welled with tears & a kind of smile struggled to his face that suggested he was too overcome with joy & pride to manage one fully.

Her slyph called itself Cyr. When it had first introduced itself, telling her its name, its pronunciation seemed impossible. It was as though it was saying it three different ways all at once. She couldn’t do that, not even in her dreams, & she never knew which way it was going to come out until it did. She quickly learned, though, that how she pronounced Cyr’s name would give her a pretty good idea what their time together would be like. If she pronounced it “Sigher”, they would spend the entire night in wondrous conversation. If it came out “Seer”, it would allow her visions of fantastical things. And if she said “Sǝ’eer”, it would be a full night of show & tell.

Her father had explained that slyphs have no gender, that is, they’re neither boys nor girls. They tended to be both oddly beautiful & handsome in appearance with a lengthy probiscis swirling gracefully before it, sweeping through the air with childlike curiosity. They had two arms & hands, just as she had, each hand sporting seven fingers & three thumbs, two of them opposable.

“Have you heard their songs?” her father had asked. “They’re supposed to be amazing, employing the sounds of whirling strings, brass choirs & full battalions of percussion, but also those of rustling leaves, the lapping of waves & every other sound you can imagine!” Her father had spoken dreamily of their music, & with almost as much longing for want of having heard it as the infinite longing she experienced whenever Cyr had sung to her.

“Yes,” she had acknowledged, & she could tell he heard in her voice that which he had hoped to believe was true. “The way Cyr applies its fingers & thumbs over its probiscis, the way they flow & fly as it undulates beneath them…, at times it seems as though there are thousands rather than just twenty. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard.”

“And the singing?”

“More intricate & beautiful than the madrigal choirs we sometimes hear when you take me to town. It’s as though each voice is telling a different story, each of them haunting & beyond lovely, each perfectly understood as though speaking all by itself. I don’t know how Cyr does it. It only has one mouth!”

Her father had reveled in her descriptions, his eyes closed, his head & body moving about as though swimming in these sounds he had never heard. Oh, how she wished she could make them known to him.

Finally, he had asked, “What does the rest of it look like? I’ve heard so many different descriptions. Which one is true?”

She had thought for a while before answering, “I really couldn’t say. It never seems to be just one thing. And it’s always changing. One moment it seems to have feet & a body like yours or mine, but it also has talons & hooves & appears to be nothing but light but also dirt & water & air & every color both brilliant & dull, & a tail but not…. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“So it’s true,” he breathed, his eyes closed, head tilted back, imagining what she could not begin to describe. “Everything I’ve ever been told is true!”

This both puzzled & comforted her. Somehow it was good to know that what she could neither fathom nor express was exactly what it was.

“Have you seen through its wings?” he had asked, his eyes still closed.

“Wings?” she asked. This was something new. There were things she had thought looked odd out of the corners of her eyes when she hadn’t been looking at Cyr, but she had always dismissed them as some quirk of her peripheral vision.

“Ah, there is still something I can teach you about slyphs,” he had sighed with complete endearment. “Slyphs have wings, finer than gossamer, so delicate they cannot be seen if you’re looking directly at them. But if you let your eyes lose focus & gaze through those delicate bits of lace, they will show you things.”

“What kinds of things?” she asked.

“Things that have been, things that are, or things that are yet to be. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been told. Whatever it is that you need to see..., or at least that your slyph wants you to see.”

She paused, before donning a faux look of exasperation. “Well now you’ve done it! You’ve made it so I can’t wait to fall asleep, but I’m so excited I’ll never be able to get there!”

They both had laughed at her predicament. Then her father had leaned forward, his hand on hers, & said with more tenderness than it seemed possible the world could hold, “And I can’t wait to hear in the morning what wonderful stories you will have to tell.” Once again, his eyes were full of tears.

Those had been the last words they had spoken together, the last of the creatures most could not see which he had shared with her. The next morning, she had been awakened by the sound of four Blinders at the door. They had spoken very loud & officiously to her father, before taking him away. No one told her why or where.

Until five nights later. Four nights in a row, Cyr had not come to her. Four mornings she could not remember a single dream. She had become as disturbed by her slyph’s absence as she was with her father’s, so much so she could no longer remember what she had seen through its wings that fateful night.

She had become fearful she had done something to offend & had subsequently lost her best friend. But on the fifth night, Cyr returned.

“Where have you been?” she had asked, her voice trembling.

“I had to follow…, to see.” Usually Cyr spoke in song, or at least with a multitude of voices. Only when there was something of singular importance did it speak with one voice. This was such an occasion. Cyr took her hands in both of its, looked her straight in her eyes & spoke firmly. “I needed to know. For you…, I needed to know.”

“What? What did you need to know?” she asked, her sense of panic rising with each passing moment.

“Where they were going, what they were doing, these fallen angels who cannot see.” “Fallen angels” is how Cyr referred to Blinders. “What they did with your father.”

“Where is he? What did they do with him?” Panic was turning to fear & dread.

“They took him to the city on the far side of the valley, to the Office of the Interrogatory. They were very curt with their questions & not very nice to him. They wouldn’t let him sleep & they gave him nothing to eat or drink for three whole days.” Cyr paused & looked away, its eyes no longer able to meet hers. “They beat him,” it barely whispered.

“Why?” she asked with incredulity. “He’s done nothing wrong!”

“You know that & I know that. What they know is something different.”

She had pondered those words for a few moments, then asked, “Where is he now?” hoping beyond hope she would not hear what she feared.

“When they were convinced they’d gotten everything they could from him & passed judgment…,”

“They pronounced judgment on him?”

Cyr squirmed & shrugged a little. “They didn’t exactly ‘pronounce’ judgment. They never said anything about it. It was more of a foregone conclusion.”

“What was their conclusion?” she straightened, bracing herself for what would come next.

“They took him across the mountains to the barrens, where no one may go, & they left him there.”

“And?”

“And that’s when the dragon came & carried him off.”

There it was. The first time she had ever heard the word. Cyr’s heart was clearly failing, its voice becoming so broken & soft she could barely hear. They sat together there in silence for the longest time.

“What’s a dragon?” she had finally asked.

Cyr explained that it didn’t know. It had never seen one. But it knew it had been a dragon that had come & that her father was surely dead. “Dragons are bad, beyond dangerous,” it had said. “They reduce forests to ash with a single breath. They’ve been known to devour entire towns & still hunger for more. They cause crops to wither, waters to foul, the heavens to flash, the skies to rumble & the earth to shake. No, I’ve never seen one & I’m glad for it. But I saw the look in his eyes. They were the eyes of one who had seen a dragon, eyes that understood they were lost, in the grasp of something they could never escape. I could see in his eyes he knew.”

It was the first time she had not trusted Cyr. She refused to believe what it had told her. She sat there speechless as one objection after another trampled through her brain. Then, as the silence between them grew, she became upset & decided not to speak to it again until it apologized for lying to her.

But days became weeks & weeks turned into months. Her father did not return & no one came with other news to contradict what Cyr had said.

She half expected it to abandon her over this &, for the moment, she was fine with that. But Cyr continued to visit in her dreams, singing its songs & offering what comfort it could while she remained sullen & silent.

“I don’t believe in dragons.” She kept beating the thought through her head. “Father never told me. I’ve never seen or even imagined one. No one has.” But she was beginning to wonder & to suspect they were all around, lurking just out of sight. Each corner, door or wall felt dangerous now. Her clouds morphed into apocalyptic portents, just waiting to release their terrors. The world of light she had always known with her father was now shrouded with these dragons she could not see.

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Now in her mind they were everywhere.

Oddly, though she longed to restore her friendship with Cyr, she could not bring herself to confess this growing belief. Something was holding her back. She was becoming her silence. It held onto her as dearly as she held onto it. It blocked out the songs. It numbed the heartache. It allowed her to remain in solitude & wallow in her loneliness.

-----months later, in the sanitarium-----

The door to her room opened. She turned from the window where she had been watching the sun turn smoky & dark as it slipped from the sky. It was the Blinder who came most nights to bring her pills—the pills which helped her to forget & not to feel, the pills that helped her keep silent. He did not knock. He never knocked.

She did not move from her window perch. He told her to open her mouth & dropped the pills upon her tongue. He handed her the glass of stale water from her table to help her swallow, then had her open her mouth to make sure she had done so. He didn’t reach to undo his belt this night as it wasn’t the right time for it, though sometimes he did it anyway. She was glad for that. His needle was small & she had never felt more than a slight prick from it. It didn’t hurt the way the needles of other Blinders she had known since being brought here. Still, she was tired & relieved not to be bothered.

He did not make her lie down but left her at the window, leaving as abruptly as he had entered. It was as though she wasn’t even there, nothing more than a task for him to complete. She didn’t care. He wasn’t anything to her, either.

She turned back to the window. Barely a hint of grey remained in the sky beyond the mountain peaks. Except for the light outside & those she could see from the other wing of the building, the world was falling into darkness. It didn’t much matter. The only things she could see from her window were the parking lot, gates & fence, an empty field, the mountains beyond & the sky overhead, all entombed in dusty shades of ochre & grey.

She couldn’t decide whether to settle into bed or simply fall asleep where she was, leaning against the cool glass of the windowpane. She liked the cool. Most nights the bed was too warm. It was never clean. Blinders weren't too keen on housekeeping.

Either way, Cyr would probably come & spend the night singing songs while she pretended not to listen. “Pretended”, because recently she had begun to hear them again. The music slowly seeping past her defenses was awakening things she hadn’t felt for a very long time. She couldn’t say it was good, but it wasn’t exactly bad, either.

There weren’t always dragons in the valley, but that time was past. Cyr had convinced her of that long ago. Lately the visits had been about building her resolve. Tonight it would find it had succeeded...,

...not quite in the way her slyph would have hoped. Tonight she would confess she needed to find them--these mythical dragons--if only to become something other than whatever it was that she was now.

To terrify a slyph is never to see it again.

To witness a slyph's devotion so great as to overcome its whelming fear is another thing altogether.