Bone Valley - The Last Dragon

Chapter 1 - Torren

Our story begins on the high squalling and thunderous bare bone ridge of Bone Mountain…

Okay, no, it doesn’t.

It starts on the top of slightly breezy Bone Hill, with Torren irritably adjusting his leather and steel helmet for the hundredth, actually… gods only knew how many hundredths of times.

The leather helmet’s round glass eyeholes needed cleaning. Torren wasn’t stupid enough to do it here on the waste fields surrounded by toxic fumes. If he didn’t keep his helmet firmly on with its drawstring, drop-down leather face covers tied tightly around his neck, ensuring his helmet was kept as airproof as possible, the fumes floating upwards from the discarded dragon dung would not only burn his eyes... they would sear his face right off.

He’d already begun to develop a nasal drip that only seemed to disappear after a few days away from the dung ponds.

Torren was sure his general health was suffering. But he couldn’t afford a proper Doctor, and Mother Harper, in her infinite wisdom, had told him on many occasions to go out, get himself a set, a girlfriend, a hobby and stop being such a namby-pamby big boo-boo baby. So, in light of this medical advice, the helmet could remain with dusty and foggy eye holes until he finished off-loading.

Not much to see through the glass anyway. Once you’ve seen dragon poop slide down a hill once, you’ve seen it slide a thousand times!

With drooping shoulders, Torren watched unenthusiastically as the silver sludge slid down the already silvery hillside; his mind wandered aimlessly.

The toxic fumes vented upwards, molesting the cool ocean breeze as it tried to cross the lake, creating a wavering haze over the ever-increasing lake of muck.

If dragon poo weren’t so repulsive to smell and toxic to be near, Torren pondered, then the lake could have been an unusual and interesting tourist attraction.

But, due to the high mercury content in dragon guano, anyone who touched it with their bare skin was quickly sent mad.

So understandably, most people of sound body and mind didn’t want too much to do with it, and its collection and disposal were left to the likes of Torren.

And in this humble dung collector’s opinion, the creators of all this waste, the dragons, had brought nothing but fire and fear to the thriving city of Bone Valley or what was left of it. Regardless of what the witches tried to make everyone think, dragons were bad news.

Torren smirked as he tied down the now empty dung boxes, making sure they wouldn’t unbalance and tip his carry cart over on the way back down the hill.

After the first small pod of dragons had appeared, the witches, he snorted, had held a campaign to convince the city that dragons meant revolution!

Admittedly, if we were talking about modernisation, since the arrival of Dragons, life had been turned upside down, and possibly, if push came to shove, you could say it had been improved.

Undeniably, the little dragons were very handy.

Good for keeping your house warm and dry.

Good for shoving under a cast-iron sheet and turning that into a cooking top or oven.

Good for burning… anything.

Good for melting… everything.

If you didn’t expect a regular flame, could put up with toxic poop, and weren’t put off by explosions and the aftermath; then dragons were a relatively cheap heat source, fuel source and industrial helper.

But! And here’s the very large and ever-growing ‘butt’. They had two very significant drawbacks.

The already mentioned poop and … their dietary requirements.

On the first count, the little ones were easy. A mouse or chicken was all they needed, as long as it was fresh or even better… wiggling!

And obviously, because they were smallish, their poop was in-turn small and could be stored in steel plate buckets, which were collected once a week by the likes of Torren. But lots of little poops tend to mound up… or, in Bone Valley’s case, ‘lake up’.

Then the flood happened, which introduced, amongst other problems the dietary issues.

The big dragons started coming through the dragon’s hole… or dragon’s portal, as the witches liked to call it. But in fact, it was a hole. Nothing more, nothing less. It had nothing wiggly, sparkly or special about it. It was black and dull, and a dragon would plop through it now and again. The longer Bone Valley had it…, the bigger it got…, the bigger the dragons, and the bigger the problems.

The big dragons liked fresh and wiggling food too.

The thought of it made Torren squirm and shiver.

These gigantic reptiles weren’t satisfied by cows, donkeys, horses or even elephants.

No!

They liked to eat… people.

And this not only shocked Torren to his core but also terrified every Bone Valley resident to their quivering little chocolatey centre.

Torren lifted the last empty bucket of poop onto the back of his steel-reinforced cart, locking it into place. Twelve big dragons were now out and about, and the witches, regardless of their image campaign, were desperately trying to close the hole.

“Twelve bloody big dragons too late!” could be heard being mumbled within the leather and glass helmet.

All the residents of Bone Valley would have agreed wholeheartedly; they didn’t have much in the way of imagination. The geographical names of everything tended to be a fantastic epitome of this: Bone Hill, Bone Valley, The Big Mountains, The Really Big Mountains and The Big White Cold Mountains Way Way Over There. But even though the residents of Bone Valley were collectively a bit of a creative desert, since the dragons had arrived, the people’s imaginations had… evolved. Rapidly!

A prime example… when the first big dragon slithered out of the hole, a rumour that they liked to eat virgins ran naked through the city streets, catching everyone’s attention. That one took off at the pace of a raging bushfire. It pushed the populace's imaginative evolution into high speed, which in turn created a couple of exciting weeks.

But not, unfortunately, for Torren!

Getting the smell of dragon poop out of your skin, hair and clothing takes a few weeks. Even with the protections the thick steel and leatherwork suit offered, the vapours still creep into your pores and stay there like unwelcome guests.

Sadly, no one was that desperate to ‘protect themselves’ even to consider Torren pre-detoxed. Unhappily, by the time he’d gotten a bit cleaner, the rumour had passed, and he had to go back to work; otherwise, the mortgage payment would be overdue, and no one likes living on the street.

Putting our young dung collectors’ personally disappointing turn of events to one side, this particularly interesting and imaginative fallacy regarding dragon’s dietary preferences was proven further wrong. This occurred when one of the big reptiles flew down from the mountains, ‘The Really Big Mountains’, and ate an old but big and bulbously-fat lady, who, remarkably, could run at quite a high speed when under threat.

This poor woman was reasonably well known around Bone Valley to have been a… How do we say this tactfully? …A very ‘experienced’ lady who peddled her wares while standing under a red light at night! So, after her death, everyone stopped trying to lose… something personal and began trying to lose weight.

Oh, the imaginative ways people had devised how to do that in a hurry!

So, after the virgin rumour died, poor, painfully shy and imaginative Torren had no other reason to hang onto the dream of finding true love, or at least a girl who didn’t want to hit him with a big stick.

Dreams don’t put food in your stomach.

Poo does, though!

And here now is the BUTT problem.

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Simply put, the dragon guano was not ‘breaking' down in an environmentally friendly manner.

In fact, the lake was setting any water bird silly enough to be tricked into landing on its surface… on fire. Happily, this didn’t happen too often because the birds usually combusted in mid-air quite sometime before their little flappy feet even got the chance to touch the lake’s silvery surface.

The problem was only increasing but in a hidden way. No one, except for all the dung carters, worried about what the populace of Bone Valley would do once the toxic silver sludge filled the dumping lake.

This was supposed to be an easy life. One which would give Torren the most significant return for the least amount of effort. He had initially thought getting into the sewerage business would be a breeze.

And it actually was.

A bit of light lifting… get your own horse and cart; little dragons equal little poos… easy! Bone Valley began to prosper on the backs of the little dragons. And then the big dragons came, and everything went up in smoke. Literally!

The cart was lifted with a loud grunt. Poor Bone Valley… Torren sighed; people were still trying to hang on, but it was hard.

Some here and there had built sandbag buildings hoping to live above ground and reclaim what once was. Most stuck to holes dug out of the dirt that their thriving community had once sat on.

They happily swallowed what the witches were selling; a new age, a new way, a fresh beginning. Simply, Torren thought, because the alternative was just too frightening even begin to accept. What if this wasn’t a passing phase? What if Bone Valley was now stuck with dragons and having to watch as every couple of weeks, another citizen was plucked off the ground or dug out of their home to satisfy the craving of a giant psychopathic reptile who did nothing in return other to burn what remained of the city to ashes.

And they just kept on believing the witch’s propaganda.

It angered Torren, and because he smelt a little bit…………….. Okay, Torren smelt like mature and fermented dragon muck, and no one enjoyed talking to him, and he certainly didn’t enjoy talking to any of the other dragon poo carriers because they smelt like shi… poo too! Torren had taken to talking to himself. And he had pointed out a fact that he, himself, found very interesting.

The Mayor, the Council and the Monks had all… disappeared. All seemingly overnight.

The only ones who remained were the witches.

And for some reason, which Torren just couldn’t put his finger on, this worried him even more than the fact that the big dragons were using his home as their own personal ashtray and toilet.

The heavy wooden cart was wheeled back down to the horse parking station, the trick was to keep your footing, or a dunny box would be the last thing you remembered.

Because all the horses, unlike the dunny men, were considered to be quite valuable, they, therefore, were required by decree to be left at least a kilometre from the lake.

All the sanitary men felt pulling the cart up and down the mountain… okay, hill, (but it felt like a mountain, especially when the cart was full on the way up and on the way down when you were running for your life because your night cart was careening out of control behind you whilst you ran as fast as you can in your heavy restrictive leather steel and glass protective gear) was the crappiest part of the job.

Sally, Torren’s grey-mottled mare, was old and infirm. It didn’t matter that she was old because young horses soon became old and infirm when near dragon dung. This was another worry which kept Torren up at night. If that’s what dragon doo-doo did to the horses, what was it doing to him, his insides, his life force, his… potency?

She waited and watched patiently as her personal backscratcher and food provider made his complaining way down the muddy track, ensuring he kept a sure footing. The last thing he needed was to be injured or run over by his cart and be forced to spend time in Mother Harpers Hospital for the Pregnant and Medically Stupid.

Torren even had to admit he was starting to develop into a hypochondriac. On one of his many weekly visits to Mother Harper, his worries had pushed her to her limits, hence the ‘namby-pamby big boo, boo baby’ comment. So being forced to stay in her hospital and put up with the witch commenting about his looks, physique, job and marital status or lack of, was motivation enough not to hurt himself.

The city soon came into view… well, it’s burnt, and cindered bones came into sight. Anything that was not made of stone was now made of charcoal. Everyone not living in a stone castle had turned to living underground or in sandbagged bunkers because an earthen roof meant it was a fireproof roof.

Yes, indeedy, life was ‘a changing’ since the dragons came to town, mumbled Torren to his nickering Sally.

The witches and their advertising crew said living underground was an extraordinary modernisation of people’s lives. Earthen houses were insulated, warm and wonderful.

Torren was waiting for winter to come and to see how warm and wonderful a hole in the ground actually was once it filled up with rainwater.

“But not us, hey Sally girl!” Sally whinnied her agreement.

Our young cartman’s accommodation was a little different to everyone. He now lived in the Silent Monks’ abandoned catacombs, purchased by him for twenty pounds and eight pence. Unfortunately, his new home was also an experiment on how to keep an ice box-fleapit warm, dry and rat-free without sending himself to the poor house.

Buying his dragon had helped.

As much as this ‘non-environmentally friendly’ purchase annoyed Torren, life without a little dragon was unbearable! Without a doubt, it had put him in the position where he now ‘chased the dragon’, as Bone Valley residents now referred to it.

Purchasing Tony, a small but hot green back red bearded dragon, had required the young dunny man to work that little harder to afford the initial down payment and then the monthly payments for the small scaley creature. But, after a hard day out collecting droppings, coming home to a comfortable bricked-up three-walled corner inside a huge stone cavernous horse stable/garage, I mean home was now something he couldn’t live without.

Tony was easy to look after; he liked cockroaches and managed to keep the living quarters insect-free. Torren considered this a double win until Tony ate a cricket and developed a terrible case of explosive farts.

So, it is that this little farting dragon pushed Torren to work harder to buy the resources which would allow him to invent solutions to ensure his home was more comfortable and less… combustible. And on this day, after work, Torren drove down Potters Lane in the city’s potters and brickmakers section to find the very man he’d been looking for.

“Whoa, there, Sally girl.”

Torren flattened down his helmet hair and ensured his most earnest and hardworking face was clearly on display.

The local brickmaker, Norman, was busy staking bricks hot from the kiln. Which incidentally was fired by four midsized ruby red dragons.

“Hi, Norman. Can I have a load of bricks in the old cart today?” was cheerful and happily called out.

“No, bugger off!” As he bent, Norman spread his legs wide to allow his large girth the room to fold, so he could deliver another six bricks to the cooling ground; he didn’t even bother to cover his builder’s crack, so quickly revealed in the tectonic manoeuvre.

“Aw, come on, mate, I’ll do ya a deal with your dragon-by-product. Let's say four buckets for a load of brick. They can be seconds; I’m not fussy!” Torren kept smiling, desperately hoping the wind would carry his scent in the opposite direction and away from Norman.

The middle-aged brickmaker stood up with his layers of fat wobbling back down to his stomach like an avalanche of lard. “You can have a load for four buckets and a delivery.”

“Aww, that’s awesome, mate. Anything for you! What and where can I deliver?”

Torren couldn’t contain his merriment. This meant he would have enough bricks to finish the floor and fireplace so that Tony would have a comfortable, warm spot to snore, and Torren could relax if the little reptile passed wind in the middle of the night.

“Me. I'm the load, so hurry up and get on with it, Stinky.”

Torren’s heart sank as he watched a black-cloaked woman under a dark broad-brimmed pointy hat bustle out from the doorway of Norman’s small underground office.

A witch.

This was not going to be his favourite afternoon.

It was pretty evident that he should have asked for two loads of bricks. Norman's smile was wide, broad, and full of business acumen.

“Terribly sorry, Miss, but the smell only gets worse the closer you get to me, and the higher you get on my cart, it tends to get quite clawing on the sinuses.”

Torren hoped this would be enough to put off his potential passenger. In actual fact, he shouldn't have even bothered; false hope always hurts the hardest when it fails to deliver.

Norman put his big rough meaty hands on his wide girth, searching for some form of bone related to his hips. “Well, Stinky”, he said as his grin became sharklike, “If you want them bricks, this is the delivery you need to do!”

“Is this going to be a problem?” The wide black pointed hat bobbed about below the passenger side of Torren’s cart. “I'm not exactly thrilled about being seen in public with you or having to be in proximity to your dung cart. I've heard the rumours, you know. It's not as if we witches live like cloistered nuns. Is it true what they say about you and your homemade soap?”

A pair of big blue eyes appeared from underneath her black hat. They belonged to quite a pretty face if you were into self-flagellation.

Torren voiced a confident “No!” in a baritone pitch before the nervous sweats appeared, adding another layer of discomfort to the situation. “Must be some other dragon waste disposal unit you're thinking of. Just climb up, and let's get on with it.”

The blue eyes narrowed as her red lips hardened; she commented loudly, “No, it is you. I remember your voice. It was a lot higher when you came to see Mother Harper. I distinctly remember it when she applied the cold cream to your….” A quick red blush exploded onto the witch's pale skin.

Norman burst out in an echoing laugh. “Oh yes, that would be our Stinky; he’s always trying to get on the good side of the ladies. The pity is, he just hasn't met one without a sense of smell!" Norman's fat rolls jiggled and wiggled as he barely contained his mirth inside his large form.

Torren gritted his teeth. Looking down at the now beetroot red witch, he didn't bother to attempt to change his voice but spoke with all the deep and welled-up depression that all dragon poop collectors wear as a badge of honour. “Let's get going.”

The witch climbed up and sat on the buggy’s front wooden board, trying desperately to touch the least amount of cart she could.

“Bye, Uncle. If I don’t see you again, it’s because this one,” she flicked her disparaging blue eyes in Torrens direction, “is holding me captive in some skanky dungeon!”

If only Torren had known that this very moment would change his life, some would say for the better; he may have marked the occasion with more than a depressed sneer.

Suppose he, too, had only known that this very moment would lead him to a point in his life where he stood looking up the nostrils of one very angry dragon with little more than a winning smile and quick wit. He may have pushed the brick makers witch to the ground, giving up any hope of losing his virginity, joined a hidden monastery deep, deep underground, and learned to put up with cold, wet and dark accommodations. Because if he had, his future certainly would not have held the moment where he regretted not doing so.

We live... and be BBQed by our own choices!

Bone Valley - The Last Dragon is a novel with each chapter being released on the first Saturday of every month.

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Other work can be heard on 'Wilhelm presents Frightening Tales' - again, click on the link below.