Closer to the Heart

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.”

“Funny,” drawls Yana, blowing dust off a crumbling spellbook. “Tell another one.”

“I’m serious.” Amélie climbs off the ladder and kicks it aside. It’s not like they’re going to find anything useful here, anyway. All annals dating back to before the Church split had been relocated to the cathedral vaults under Gideon’s education reforms a few years prior; these days, only his direct subordinates are permitted to leave and enter as they wish.

Yana casts a patronizing look in her direction. “So am I. What’s next, you’re secretly descended from Astrid I and planning to contest the succession of the throne?”

“Well,” hums Amélie, considering it, and snorts when Yana rolls her eyes. “But really, listen. Haven’t you ever thought about it?”

“No?” Yana slides the spellbook back onto the shelf and brushes her hands off on her skirts. “It makes sense. If there weren’t always dragons, how would anyone have lasted the winter all those centuries ago? Only dragon fire burns long and hot enough.”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Amélie says. “It’s not like I was there.”

“Right, but somehow you’re sure that they didn’t exist.”

Amélie glances at the timepiece on the wall and takes Yana’s wrist, tugging her down the aisle. They have two hours before they need to be home, but that should be just enough. “I’m not saying that they didn’t exist. Only that they didn’t always live in the Valley.”

“So where were they? Living here, alongside us?” Yana stumbles a bit over her skirt hem when she hears no argument. “Amélie, you can’t really think that—”

“Wait,” Amélie tells her. “And I’ll show you.”

They’re lucky that they live on the outskirts of town, and that the path to the central library is muddy and covered with leaves from the spring rains, or else the clinging dirt of the forest would give away where they’d been in an instant. Yana complains at first when she sees where Amélie is leading them, but she quiets soon enough to focus on watching her step among the tangled roots and overgrown berry bushes. Amélie has always liked that about her—that after her token protests, she’ll give anything a try, if only just once. They wouldn’t have managed to stay close for almost two decades otherwise.

Amélie navigates by landmarks: left at the tree scarred wickedly by lightning, left again where the ford thins to its narrowest, down through the dense cluster of wild melon vines. She stops when the ravine comes into view.

“We’ve walked quite far now,” says Yana uncertainly. “You know where you’re going, right?”

“It’s here,” murmurs Amélie. “Don’t move too much.”

Yana looks even more apprehensive but complies. Her silvery hair is falling loose from the crown of her head and curling in the oppressive humidity. She brushes it back with one hand and grips Amélie tighter with the other.

“And don’t be afraid, okay?”

“I can’t—” Yana drops her voice to a whisper “—I can’t do that on command!”

Amélie shakes her head. “Just watch.”

Yana opens her mouth to say something else, probably accusatory, but Amélie hears the soft crackling of broken twigs and hushes her.

Through the underbrush pokes a dark, velvety snout, followed by a head of iridescent scales. After a few moments, the head is followed by a slender body no larger than a hunting dog, with a pair of wings folded flat against its sides. Amélie feels Yana squeezing hard enough to cut off the circulation to her fingers, itching to say the obvious: A dragon, here?

A dragon, indeed, though clearly a baby. They observe, transfixed, as it snuffles along the forest floor and noses at half a melon that had cracked open. It paws at the fruit for a moment before sticking its entire snout into the sun-ripened flesh, which yields easily, bursting with juice. Amélie glances over at Yana and finds her almost endeared, her vice-like grip going gradually slack.

The clouds are knitting the sky shut above them. There will be rain again soon, and they will have to leave before they’re caught in the downpour, but maybe if they wait just a bit longer, Yana will see, too.

A bolt of lightning streaks through the heavens and Amélie winces, steeling herself for what comes next. Sure enough, a deafening clap of thunder gives them away not a minute later. The tiny dragon leaps into the air, startled, its underdeveloped wings beating fruitlessly for a moment before it thumps back down onto the ground. A few pieces of melon are still stuck to its snout. And then it turns its head and notices the two of them standing across the ravine. One eye is dark, and the other is a clear, perfect gold.

Yana staggers backwards, yanking at Amélie’s hand, but she stays put. Because she thinks—like last time, maybe—

There: a dim glow suffusing the air around the dragon’s body, its form crumpling and distorting. Limbs shrinking, snout receding, scales appearing to fall away like so many droplets of water. But in the end, when the form resettles, there are no scales scattered nor wings discarded on the ground. Just a human boy, shaking, young enough to still have all his milk teeth. He possesses a full head of dark hair and a flushed, healthy complexion, though his ribs are faintly visible. The only indication that what had happened a few seconds prior was no fever dream are his eyes, still mismatched and wary.

He makes a soft noise like a wounded animal.

“Is he afraid of us?” croaks Yana.

He makes the noise again, then a series of familiar sounds. Clearly, he’s unused to speaking. But as they continue listening, the syllables converge slowly into an intelligible phrase. “Don’t hurt me,” pleads the dragon boy, scrabbling at the damp earth. “Don’t hurt me.”

It isn’t the rumbling, mountainous tongue of the Valley, which no one from these parts can understand. It’s Ardirian, just like they speak, if accented in a lilting, archaic manner like the oldest hymns they were taught as children. Old Ardirian, which no one has spoken fluently for the better part of four centuries.

“Don’t hurt me,” repeats the dragon boy hoarsely. Now that his scales have disappeared, the fading sun illuminates a scar running vertically down his dark eye. It’s not fresh, but it’s not properly healed, either, the skin of his eyelid and upper cheek puckered unevenly.

Amélie releases Yana’s hand to wipe her sweaty palm on the sleeve of her blouse. “See?” she says quietly. “Does it still make sense now?”