Breath of the Wild

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. They were once like us, working, laughing and growing in our midst. The amber fields and metallic forests belonged to us all. Fire meant warmth and water meant life. We walked alone with no fear.

I loved one of them. She was one of the first to fall, and it was my fault – or, at least, no one can convince me otherwise.

In the valley, we all knew each other. Names, ages, relations and occupations were a secret to no one. Dana was no different for a long time, not because I didn’t care for her but because I never spoke to her. I suppose I had always been afraid of her, though not in the same way as now. Back then, it was my own dread that kept me in the shadows while I watched her dance in the village square. She was a renegade lantern who had torn herself from the lamp-posts to flitter amongst the people. My heart yearned to bask in her light, but my feet were not so light as hers and kept me rooted in my spot.

Yet flames have a way of stealing up on admirers when they least expect it. She always denied it, but I still suspect Dana spied me watching her dance and arranged our meeting to suit her wishes.

I was dragging my empty cart along the road into the forest. Though it was not long past dawn, the morning was already bright and warm with the Summer sun claiming the sky. Birdsong and rustling leaves filled my ears, but my mind was neither on them nor the heavy work that awaited my axe and I. Her caramel skin replaced the sight of the trunks, and the glittering eaves were exchanged for her midnight curls. Emerald eyes blinked at me from every hole in the canopy above.

When I drew near the Glass pool, it wasn’t until she let out a loud sigh and splashed the water that I realised it was Dana herself sitting on the bank and not some figment of my imagination. My palms sweated on the cart handles and my teeth gritted against each other as I slowed to an indefinite halt, my feet still shuffling in the dirt. She must have heard the cart stop, for she grew suddenly rigid and flicked her head around to look at me before I could regather myself.

“Costas!” Her voice was warm and husky in her shock, like glowing charcoal sprouting embers. “Do you always come this way into the forest?”

I had to clear my throat before answering. “Most days.”

Her head tilted to the side, and she twisted her body around to face me fully. “I wonder why I have never seen you pass before then. Although I suppose the sun is bringing me out earlier and earlier.”

“Do you always come out here… to the pool, then?” I asked.

She lowered her head and smiled without showing her teeth. “Most days.”

I shuddered as the breeze caught the coolness from the water on its way through the trees. “Well. I shall leave you to it, then. Good day, Dana.”

At once, she hopped to her feet and stood before my path. “I have never held an axe against a tree myself. I am going to try it today.” Then she moved aside and gestured for me to continue, which I did without realising until she stepped in line beside me.

She talked about many things on our way to the grove, but I don’t remember any of it now. Where earlier, the trees had taken on her shape, they disappeared completely in her presence. The heat did not bother me that day, nor my calloused hands and aching muscles. By sunset, my cart held half the amount of wood it usually carried home, but my heart was already burning with hotter flames than two full carts could produce.

Dana danced down the path on our way home, and I did too. She held aloft a fig branch she had severed and was twirling it above her head as though in a show of triumph to the rest of the forest. Her blazing song set them swaying and roaring, throwing volleys of twigs and leaves to hinder our passage. Dana was not deterred. She only sang louder and raised her branch higher until even I considered loitering behind to let her prance off without me.

As soon as we came within view of the town, she cast the branch to the side and ran off down the road with no more than a wave behind her for a farewell. If that were the last I saw of Dana, as I feared in that moment seeing her flee, my life would have been a happier one.

Yet my naïve heart had no such foresight and jumped for joy when I came upon her the next morning, already awaiting me in the grove. “Good morning, Dana,” I said with half the volume I had meant.

“Morning.” She didn’t rise from her seat on one of the stumps, nor did she turn away from the wall of standing trees she was staring at.

I set my cart down and edged closer. “Are you alright?”

She ran her fingers through her hair and shook her head slowly. “I thought I would feel better after yesterday.” If ashes could speak, they would sound like she did in those moments.

I tried staring at her, but her meaning could not be made out from her back, so I looked up at the trees instead. They gave me nothing. “Are you sad we cut the trees down?” I guessed.

“No!” she cried, jumping to her feet to make her point. “Not about that!” But something was stopping her from elaborating, and she simply stood in front of me, spewing sighs and exclamations without any words. At last, she gave up and turned her back on me again before marching over to one of trees and kicking it until her sandal gave way, striking her foot instead. She would have moved on to some other avenue of venting her rage had I not stepped in, wrapping my arms around hers, more in an attempt to restrain her than to display any bold hopes of bringing her comfort.

“What is it, Dana?” I asked, surprising myself with my state of composure. I could hear her heart hammering against her chest and her slender frame was trembling in my embrace.

Yet when she spoke, it did not come out in a soft whimper. Her words were hot and heavy like glowing coals being billowed into flames. “Those trees do not know how fortunate they are, Costas. How long have they been standing there? Years? Decades? Some even centuries! Yet how can you tell? There is no difference between ten years and a hundred. Their leaves do not fade, their branches do not wither. Season after season they regrow and bear more fruit until they have seen six generations of our descendants, or more. Why do they deserve such fortune? What did we do to be cursed with lives so short and tiresome and grey?” As she was spitting out her complaints, she reared and twisted to free herself from my grasp, but I would not let her loose, seeing her madness already swelling in her reddening face. I doubted if the axe would do anything for her by this point. Her breath alone would have set fire to the whole forest.

“Dana,” I tried, but she barely heard me over her vicious gasping. “Dana. Calm—”

She let out a long groan and forced her hands to her face, which I was sure she was going to claw at if I had not grabbed her fingers in my own at the last second.

“Dana!”

Her head snapped up with a blank expression painted on her face. A newcomer could not have guessed she was in the throes of panic a moment earlier. “Forgive me, Costas. I didn’t mean for you to see that.”

I could not find anything to say, so she bowed her head and slipped out of my clutch, only to return with my axe held out to me.

“I will just watch you today. I have delayed you enough already.”

I must have taken the axe, for the next thing I noticed was Dana’s polished palm gliding into my own and leading me over to the cedar we had left off from the day before. She stroked its smooth trunk and her hand melted into the woody grains.

“What beautiful old age,” I heard her murmur. Then her gem-like eyes stole my vision and my head swayed. “Kill it, Costas!” she hissed with bared teeth, but after blinking in fright I realised she had not spoken at all and was merely sharing her warmth with a smile. “I’ll sit over there in the sun,” she told me, and I think I managed to nod in reply. “The heat doesn’t bother me.”

Having Dana, the angel, sing and laugh for me all day, I made up for the previous half load with an overflowing cart by the end. I had not noticed the labour, and as we strolled back beneath the golden eaves at sunset, it was difficult to believe that the picture of tranquillity beside me was the same wild tempest who had terrified the morning.

“Do you think I am beautiful, Costas?” she asked before we parted ways in the village.

“I have never seen anything more beautiful,” I said without hesitation.

She pondered this for a moment, then leaned forward and burned my lips with hers. “I hope you are right,” she whispered, then ran off before I could say anything more.

If she had only believed me, things would have been different. We would have remained together in the valley until we grew old. But fear spreads like fire.