Banoom

Banoom dragged her tail through the fallen leaves on the malt path, the autumn foliage now past peak color, her breath visible in the air above her snout. Cambria woods – especially the malt path – was her favorite place on Yirrth, a retreat from awkward interactions with family ‘friends,’ volunteers, or the Charitable Order of Gnomes. A place to avoid whomever she was appointed to stay with that week.

Her current foster host was her parent’s executor, a banker troll name jee’Nonk, a bureaucrat at the pinnacle of his profession born unencumbered by any symptoms of mirth. Banoom’s scales had begun to break out in stress rashes, thus her wood-walks had become more frequent and longer in duration.

Her gaze upon the fallen leaves became all-encompassing, for she felt sympathy for them. “Not sympathy,” she corrected. “Empathy.” The Cambrian walks were more than just respites from the caves and river lairs of her assigned guardians, they were visits of comfort in the company of fellow weary souls.

“Quetzl save me,” she whispered, the soft foliage muting each step, releasing a fragrant bouquet of fall spice into the air.

Banoom possessed few memories of her grandfather, frequently wondering if they were real. She knew only one was genuine: barely old enough to stand, she clutched her family’s lineage tome, and her Grandpere Oketh spoke. “Your name means ‘messenger of Quetzl,’ but beware what you ask of him,” he whispered in his ancient, clangorous voice, “he seldom listens, but once in an age, he finds the compassion to act.” The words seemed to echo as she watched an elder dragon breathe flame into the stacked wood before her, upon which the bodies of her parents were placed side by side.

Grandpere Oketh’s own funeral pyre came mere days later. She was left with no one.

Indeed, the loss of her parents and grandfather – the last of the adult Obakis – reduced the dragon population in Cambria to just more than a dozen. There were even fewer now, and she was old enough to realize that the book she clutched that day – the tome of her bloodline – had perhaps only a page left – if any – before its story ended. All dragonkind, after ten thousand generations, would soon be libraries of bloodline tomes on abandoned shelves, forgotten, turning to dust in a Cambria without dragons.

The magnitude of the thought stopped Banoom in her tracks, and tears pooled up beneath her golden eyes, spilling onto the leaf-covered path.

“Quetzl help me, please,” she whimpered, and unable to bear the burden any longer, allowed herself to collapse, sobbing, upon the cool leaves beneath her.

*

The estate of jee’Nonk – Monifrey Cahr – was the envy of every banker troll in Cambria. A stone fortress chiseled into the north face of Granite Sky Mountain, it was the paragon achievement of ten half-giant mastermasons commissioned by the legendary King Gyerra three millennia ago. It took the hulking masons seventy years to complete, just in time for the great king to see it with dying eyes, shortly before lying in state in its Great Hall. Thirty centuries later, the massive mountain castle was never so grand, festooned with ages of scaling silver ivy that shimmered in the light of the realm’s three moons.

Banoom was quartered in the highest external tower on the east side of Monifrey Cahr, and although every room in the fortress was cold – perfect for trolls, not so much for dragons – she was content there, isolated, with an unparalleled view of Cambria Woods. The massive fireplace in her room held an inestimable fortune of hand-cut lavastones from the floor of Dragonfall Chasm, an area accessible for only one day each century. Banoom merely had to expel a quick blast of dragonbreath into the firebox and the lavastones did the rest, her surroundings bathed in long-lasting warmth.

Well into the night her melancholy distracted her from sleep, and the cool night air felt balming on her healing stress rashes. Her lower jaw on the window ledge, her snout a quarter mile above the tops of the trees, she sighed at the beauty of her woods. How she longed to try her wings! She imagined skirting above the tallest oaks and ancestral pixie pines, dusting their treetops in her wake before landing at the entrance of the malt path to enjoy her walk. She smiled at the temptation of stepping out from the window ledge and discovering the sensation of flight for the first time… but she knew that dragonflight was only achievable for dragons older than herself.

“You have to wait to mature before you even try, Noomy,” Moameencha, the kindest nanny gnome from the Charitable Order, had advised. “Ask any elder dragon: you can fly only when you’ve become a parent, when you’re strong enough.” But Banoom couldn’t ask any of the few dragon family acquaintances she had: that talk was meant for parents. So personal was the topic that she believed it taboo to even consider raising with virtual strangers of her species.

She again felt a pang of solitude, and her hearts ached. She began to look into the tear forming in her right eye when that growing drop seemed to suddenly and brilliantly shine from within, and immediately Banoom snapped herself out of her daydream. She looked out into the night and realized that the dazzle in her tear was actually a scintillating white light originating miles away, from Cambria Woods, growing brighter and turning the surrounding area into a circle of breathtaking daylight.

“That’s on my path…” she gasped, worried that her woods would ignite, but quickly the light collapsed upon itself, and when she blinked, it was gone. Banoom questioned if what she’d just seen had really happened, but before she could answer “I know it did” she had grabbed her cloth hiking satchel and abandoned her quarters, leaving the door ajar behind her.

*

Banoom arrived at the mouth of the malt path shortly before the first yellow light of the sun could brighten the floating mist. During her dash from Monifrey Cahr, she realized it couldn’t have been a flameflash she’d witnessed: her firedrake senses would have detected any smoke particles before she was even halfway there. Banoom felt excitement investigating something like this, and as the horizon began to glow, she bounded onto the malt path with a giddy lightness, senses sharp, even wearing something resembling a smile.

Her gait was lively and swept the drying leaves from the hard dirt beneath them, each step now flavored with floral crunches. “Lightning?” she questioned, trying to narrow possibilities from an already narrow list. “Of course not,” she whispered, rolling her eyes at the thought, “giant lightning bug is more likely.”

Approaching the stretch of path she’d pinpointed as the light's epicenter, Banoom pulled back on her gallop, listening to birds in the oaks and pixie pines celebrating the new sunlight. She navigated a turn in the path and stopped. The spot where she’d sunk to the ground in tears the day before was now devoid of leaves, a large swath of bare dirt exposed, circular, the perimeter encompassed by untouched leaves and pixie pine needles. She had never seen anything so geometrically perfect, not even the carvings of Monifrey Cahr. There were no burn marks, no beastprints, nor any signs that the circle had been manipulated.

Another rush of giddiness tickled Banoom’s scales. She leaned her snout to the ground and sniffed, causing a few leaves to brush against her nostrils then return to the ground. To her delight and surprise, she isolated a scent completely alien to her experience on the malt path and, her imagination declared, quite possibly on the continent of Cambia. She grinned and creeped forward, slinking around the circle.

She sniffed again. Same scent, but closer. From her crouch, she noticed that the leaves near the opposite side of the circle were mussed, and it made Banoom tilt her head in question. Was it a small, one-legged animal that disturbed the leaves? Then Banoom realized something that deepened the mystery profoundly. The tracks originated from the circle… as if the creature had come from the sky and then dragged itself down the path.

“A flying creature that’s injured?” Banoom puzzled, “A gryphon, or… a raiju!” She gasped. A raiju would make sense: a white spirit wolf traveling in the form of lightning would explain the brilliant light! “I should be careful then,” she thought, “especially if it’s hurt.” She sneaked forward, scanning nearby trees for signs of scratch marks which would assuredly be present if the raiju was angry.

“They’re so rare, no wonder I’ve not smelled that before,” she reasoned, lifting her head up high on tippyclaws to look for more clues. She had never been so confident and gleeful, until she saw what clumsily stepped out of the woods and back on to the path two frog’s leaps before her.

The creature that dragged the leaves was vastly rarer than a raiju. Indeed, in ten thousand generations, it had never before existed in Cambria.

*

Dr. Larson averted his eyes from his patient’s parents and swallowed, regaining his professional composure. In all the years he’d had to deliver news to families, he always maintained his emotions, but this one, for some reason, permeated his skin. It hurt. He watched the clipboard in his hands shake, and wondered why it had never happened before.

He raised his eyes to peer through the observation glass and into the dimmed white room. From the ‘news’ room, he couldn’t hear the soft beeping of machines, but he could see the respirator’s yellow air bladder expanding and contracting, his mind automatically adding the device’s rhythmic sighs and hisses to accompany the visual.

The parents clearly required a few moments to themselves, and Dr. Larson quietly excused himself to return to his patient’s bedside, where at least he could reposition a stuffed animal while rechecking her vital signs. The Intensive Care Unit technically didn’t allow gifts or personal items, but in this case, everyone knew such policies were mere suggestions. He took the fluffy blue stuffed animal from his patient’s feet and placed it between her arm and torso, the toy’s bulbous, bright pink nose facing up.

“My Angela loved Grover, too,” he whispered. “SuperGrover was her favorite.” Again he swallowed hard, touched more by his daughter’s memory than his patient’s condition. He again dismissed the emotion, this time by squeezing his eyelids tightly. “I still have her favorite book in my office, so if you promise to get better, I’ll read it to you.”

He noticed his patient’s eyes move under their lids, and like he used to do when Angela did something encouraging, his mouth opened in a purposefully amusing smile.

“Okay, then. I’ll read it to you tonight.” Dr. Alexander Larson, still smiling, closed his eyes and made a request he’d not made since that terrible day nine years earlier. “Angie, wherever you are,” he said, “please put in a good word for this little girl for me.”

*

The creature was pink, adorned in artificial coverings of different colors and patterns, and had long yellow fur, but only atop its head.

“What in Quetzl’s name,” Banoom whispered, wide-eyed, trying to remain motionless.

Clearly, it was disoriented, staggering awkwardly with each step and only on its hind legs. It made brief, nonsensical noises that seemed to question the air around it. Apparently, it hadn’t yet noticed Banoom, whose mouth and eyes were still agape.

It carried on its back something pinker than anything she’d ever seen, with the likenesses of unicorns and rainbows on it. “You don’t look like a unicorn,” Banoom thought, although that would have explained how it flew here, and a rainbow might have explained the appearance of a bright light. Perhaps it was a satchel, like her own, made by some super-talented satchel artisan of her kind.

The forest was now brightly lit, and it was inevitable that the creature would notice Banoom. It did. It seemed to develop in slow motion, and Banoom wondered if the injured pink yellow-top would play dead, defend itself, or send out a wail for help when it saw her. Instead, it did something absolutely unpredictable.

“Help,” it said softly, and spoke directly into Banoom’s eyes. It had been aware of Banoom the whole time, and although a small fraction of the young dragon’s size, it wasn’t frightened or at all alarmed.

“You can speak!” Banoom said calmly, and the creature nodded.

“You help?” it questioned.

This time, Banoom understood the request. “Oh,” she said, “okay, I’ll help.”

“Thanks,” it replied, waiting.

“Umm. What are you?” asked Banoom.

The creature thought it a silly question. “A girl,” she replied.

“Oh. So am I,” said Banoom.

“Hi,” said the girl.

“Hi,” said Banoom. “My name is Banoom Obaki, only daughter of Sire Oketh the Younger and Mare Scisson the Healer.”

“I Maggie,” said the girl, and paused, sadly. “Lost.”

During the long reign of Great King Gyerra millenia before, Obaki dragons were beloved not only for their great nobility and integrity, but also for their magical ability to bond with individuals from all species, forming friendships as ironclad as kin, a depthless loyalty considered unbreakable. To be a part of the Obaki Bond was a legendary honor, universally regarded as a treasure without equal.

Banoom Obaki never had the opportunity to learn from her parents or grandpere about her family’s legendary ability. Nonetheless, the instant a tiny girl creature named Maggie asked for help and admitted she was lost, the last Obaki immediately honored everything about it.

*

The only person on Yirrth she could approach about the Maggie creature was Nanny Moameencha of the Charitable Order, and Banoom raced all morning to the Order’s Sanctuary at the base of Gmont Orn. The Maggie wasn’t injured, but she was as exhausted as any creature she’d ever observed. Due to the petit size of her species and her very young age, Maggie fit nicely inside of Banoom’s cloth satchel, where she slept soundly for the long duration of the walk.

She strode to the sanctuary gate and pulled on the great chain near one of the stone pillars supporting the gate doors, and when she heard the gong within the outer building, she prayed to Quetzl that Moameencha would be the one to answer.

It was, although it was difficult to know until she was almost at the gates. Her Order habit was identical to all the others, and virtually all gnomes being the same height, it was only when Banoom saw her brilliant azure eyes above a bulbous nose that she was able to breathe.

“Noomy?” the voice said with equal parts concern and happy surprise. “Are you with us this week?”

“No, Nanny Mo,” she replied, “but something has happened.”

“Oh dear,” she reacted, opening the gate. “Come inside, dear, I’ve just made mushroom casserole…”

“I can’t, Mo,” Banoom whispered, “I’m not alone.”

Moameencha’s eyebrows flared, and she peeked around the dragon, confused. Banoom opened her cloth satchel enough to reveal a tiny pink face to the gnome.

“Quetzl’s breath, Banoom!” Moameencha squealed, waddling through the gates and closing them behind her, “do you realize what that is?”

“I don’t,” answered Banoom, “that’s why I’m here. She fell from the sky on a beam of light, and she wants to go home.”

“Great Quetzl’s breath,” Moameencha said again, calming herself. “Noomy, that’s a human child. You know where they live, don’t you?”

Banoom shook her head.

“They live on the other side of Dragonfall Chasm, in Rheal.”

Banoom’s stomachs sank. “Oh Quetzl, how do I get her across a great river of lava? I can’t fly, and anyone who can fly would eat her without a thought.” She wanted to cry, but her rushing adrenaline kept her focused.

Moameecha reached up to take Banoom’s hand. “Noomy, you’ve lived a hard life, but I’ll tell you now, you have been blessed by Quetzl!’

“How can you possibly think I’ve been bless…”

“Because The Day of The Breech is tomorrow!” the gnome interrupted. “One day in a century, and it’s happening tomorrow, you do know that right?”

“I didn’t,” she shrank, embarrassed.

Moameecha blinked and suddenly laughed. “Are you part luck dragon?”

Banoom looked into the nanny’s eyes. “That’s the first time anyone’s asked me that.”

Silence fell on them for a moment before Moameecha’s smile dissipated, replaced by her schemer’s face. “You have to leave immediately to get there when the molten rock recedes.”

“Okay…”

“Then you must cross the void faster than you’ve ever moved before,” a look of fear overwhelmed Moameecha’s blue eyes, leaning as close as she could to Banoom’s. “Because once you get the human safely to Rheal, the lava will already be refilling that gap.”

Banoom whimpered in reply, looking at the sleeping face in her satchel.

Moameecha forced a reassuring grin. “I’m going inside to fill a second satchel for you with things you’ll need. Wait here and be unseen.”

The gnome waddled back into the sanctuary at an unnatural pace, and Banoom hid with her cargo behind the massive stone pillar. As the young human awoke, the young dragon smiled over her, only now realizing the risk of her promise.

*

The little girl’s parents were finally asleep on “news room” cots pushed together when Dr. Larson kept his word to his patient. He’d found the children’s book – the same copy he received when he was little – and sat in a chair aside the bed.

“If you haven’t read this one, you’ll love it, I promise,” he smiled, lowering his reading glasses and readying his voice. “The Monster at the End of This Book, featuring Lovable, Furry Old Grover, by Jon Stone,” he read in his own voice, then switched to a very respectable Grover impersonation to say “hello, everybodeee!”

He opened the book to the first page, and instantly the old paper smell sent him back ten years, when he and his wife first read it to his daughter. Sissy used to do the Grover voice, and it was her voice he heard in his mind, her facial expressions that he emulated in his bedside show.

Dr. Sissy Larson was a fellow pediatric cardiologist, a star to her patients – children with little hope of achieving young adulthood. He’d heard countless stories regarding her uplifting presence, caring game plans, and unfailing dedication to not only her patients, but their parents as well, and it was almost nine years to the day when all those stories were retold. He sat in the front row of First Congregational Church when they were read, but he couldn’t hear a word. His attention was focused on one adult-sized coffin aside a smaller coffin, and dazed by valium, all he could hear was squealing brakes, then a fugue of metal meeting glass.

At his dad’s funeral just eight days later, well-wishers kept approaching him, telling him the same thing.

“Do you know that you are very strong?” he said as Grover, nearing the end of the book.

*

Maggie was finishing the last paper cone full of Moameecha’s mushroom casserole when Banoom reached the south shore of the rapidly receding lava river. Without her frequent hikes, Banoom would have already been an exhausted dragon.

A little face peered out of the satchel and found amazement in the disappearing floes of red. “Hot,” she said, still licking gravy off her lips, and looked into Banoom’s eyes. “Hot.”

“Even battledragons would agree,” she concurred, looking around for anyone who might have come to see The Breech. At this spot, at least, there was no one else. Banoom could hear a high-pitched squeal from left and from right, imagining that it must be the induction of lava into the inhaling Yirrth, and she was shocked to see how quickly the smooth lavastones beneath were becoming exposed. They were glowing steadily between expanses of flat, shiny black riverbed which Moameecha had called moonglass, which, ancient gnomes had written, was what made the dark spots on two of Yirrth’s three moons.

Banoom tested a paw on an expanse of moonglass, and while it was still hot, it wasn’t painful. She huffed a sigh of conviction and moved forward on the riverbed, every step testing before trodding. Vents which had been dormant for a century underneath magma began to cough out blasts of acrid smoke, some lasting only a moment, some lasting minutes.

“Hot, Noom,” said the satchel, the little human having shrunk deeply within, covering herself entirely.

“I know, Mags,” replied Banoom, taking a long step over a jutting rock, “but we’re making good time and you’ll be home very soon.” The ground shook vigorously every few moments, sometimes strong enough to make Banoom catch her balance. Between jets of smoke and pumice being ejected from the vents, she began to discern a landing on the opposite shore, elevated above the river line and leading to an ascent up the Rheal side of the chasm. “That’s the goal,” Banoom thought, and ended the practice of testing each step before it was made.

From both east and west, thunderous percussions occurred simultaneously, and the lava withdrew even faster. Banoom began to feel fear, not knowing how quickly the flow of molten rock would return: if Yirrth began to exhale as she reached the climb in Rheal, then it was not likely she could make it back, she’d be covered in blazing hot lava in the attempt, like a bug in amber. “One day, in a hundred years, they’d find my bones,” she thought, “and wonder what I was.”

*

Dr. Larson closed his office door, realizing that he’d forgotten the old book on the edge of his patient’s bed. He was tired. He thought about pulling out his cot, but instead slid onto his leather office chair and allowed it to recline, picking up a domino-sized remote control to dim the lights. “Why are you so emotionally invested with this one, Alex?” he said, finally releasing the question. He stumbled into sadness on occasion but had never truly had such an issue in all these years of work. The words ‘counter-transference’ crossed his mind: perhaps there was something about his patient that reminded him more of Angela than he cared to admit. He just didn’t know what that was.

He picked up Angela’s three-by-five picture from his desk and looked into her eyes, hazel, flecked with gold. “Angie, my 'messenger of God.' If I’d been there to drive, you would have been in the back seat, not the front. You’d be a young woman now. Young, but definitely older than my patient.”

He was tired. He closed his eyes and began humming Three Little Birds, Angie’s favorite song.

She seemed so close.

*

It was difficult to know when she achieved the shore – the riverbed moonglass was as dark as the rock aside it – but as soon as she reached the base of the chasm on the Rheal side, Banoom began dashing up the sandy incline.

“Noom,” Maggie peeked her head out, her face dripping with sweat, “drink, please?”

The small canteen Moameecha provided felt warm enough to contain tea, not water, but without looking, Banoom took it from the second satchel and opened it for the girl, who drank, not seeming to care about temperature.

“We’re almost there” she said, “there’ll be drinks at home much more refreshing, I promise.”

“Close,” replied Maggie, then paused, as if she could hear home.

“Can you tell me about home?” asked Banoom, running on all fours when she could.

Maggie sighed. “White,” she replied. “Lottsa people.”

“White?” Banoom repeated, focused only on the approaching peak, where she could see a building made of stones much straighter than those at the sanctuary.

“I have kitties at my real home,” Maggie admitted. “They say ‘meow’.”

“Tell them I said ‘meow’ when you see them, okay?” Banoom reached the peak, then stopped with the building just steps away. “You’re gonna be home by bed time.”

Maggie craned her head out and gasped a happy breath. “Door.”

Banoom saw the door between walls of perfectly rectangular red stones, but a haze of fog blanketed everything else about the human construct. She placed Maggie down just outside of the opening and crouched beside her. “Do you know where to go from here, Mags?”

The girl sighed. “Yes. There,” she pointed at the door, “bed.”

“Good. Don’t worry about anything, everything’s going to be alright,” replied Banoom. “I’ll watch you, okay?”

“Alright,” said Maggie, and she stumbled into Banoom, hugging her chin. “Thanks.”

Banoom felt the pain of Obaki Bond separation, and her eyes teared up. “Welcome,” she said, her voice cracking. Maggie sighed and walked toward the door.

Before Banoom could stand again, a brilliant circle of scintillating light appeared in the doorway, and as soon as the girl stepped into it, it dissipated. When Banoom could refocus, Maggie, the light, the door, and the building were gone. Only the fog remained. Relief and a new kind of homesickness filled her hearts.

Banoom galloped back to the north-side peak of the chasm and looked down. There she closed her eyes.

The lava had returned to Dragonfall River. Yirrth had exhaled. The Breech had ended.

*

When Dr. Larson returned to see his patient, his stomach sank. A flurry of nurses and staff were in her room, and beyond them he could see the parents hugging and weeping.

“This is my fault,” he told himself, scurrying through onlookers and responders to enter the room, then he stopped cold. His patient sat upright in the bed, holding his copy of the Little Golden Book in her arms, a smiling blue Grover waving from the cover. She was awake.

He directed his puzzlement into the gaze of a respiratory therapist, who looked back at him with a similar expression. “I’ve never seen this before,” she said.

“What?”

“She woke up. Three weeks, and like a light switch, she woke up. Take a look at the ECG, blood oxygen, respiratory… she’s off respirator, Alex! It’s like she has a new heart and lungs. I’ve never seen it before.”

He slowly approached the bed, the child’s parents still holding each other as they smiled, drying their eyes, the father saw him and extended a hand in his daughter’s direction as if to say, “behold.”

“How are you feeling, Maggie?” Dr. Larson asked his patient.

“Thirsty,” she replied.

The doctor immediately filled a plastic cup from a pitcher of ice water, handed it to the girl and watched her sip.

“Girl brought me back,” she said.

Dr. Larson blinked twice and issued a confused smile. “Who did, Maggie?”

“Girl,” she sighed. “I forgetting.”

“That’s okay,” replied the doctor with a hint of sadness.

“Don’t worry,” Maggie consoled. “She said every little thing is gonna be alright.”

*

Atop the peak, Banoom wept. Her oath fulfilled, there was nothing more to be done.

She wished she could say thank you to Moameecha, to tell her that the little human had gotten home safely. She wanted to say how freeing it had felt to take care of someone else for a change, after years of feeling like a burden to those who took on the charge of taking care of her. She was given a chance – a blessing – and it was wonderful.

Banoom sniffled and emptied the satchels before her. The empty paper cones that had held casserole blew off of the cliff toward the chasm. Her family’s tome, draped in a clean piece of white fabric, fell to the ground, then the nearly empty canteen, and lastly, Maggie’s unicorn satchel, which bounced, spilling brightly colored wax writing implements onto the dirt.

She picked up Maggie’s satchel and sniffed it, recalling the scent that she’d first picked up on the malt path early the previous morning. The bond didn’t really feel broken. It merely felt as if it couldn’t again be shared in this world the way it had for so short a time.

Then Banoom looked at her bloodline book one last time, thumbing through countless generations, and gulped back tears as she reached her name on the final page. Banoom Obaki. The last of her line.

Underneath that, at the bottom of the page, scribbles of blue, red, and green formed a shaky word, as if written while on a bouncy ride.

“MagGie.”

Banoom held the open page against her chest, a single tear flowing from her eye falling to the cover of the tome.

"Quetzl couldn’t have told me any more clearly if it had been spoken in his own voice…"

Banoom quickly packed everything back into her cloth satchel and secured it to her neck, then she jumped over the edge of the cliff high above the lava.

And she began to fly.

*