Discordance

We hadn’t always asked the villagers to jump from the cliffs, but we found that there was something in the way they fell that prevented any further discordance. It’d been that way for aeons, and we’d seen how the human tribes had carved it on their stone walls, then within their tapestries, and finally upon parchments. They always recorded the same comical falling motion, whether it be by thread or charcoal - a four limbed body becoming seven.

Gray fell last year, after Majister Sinejal the Beaked entered the village, and had asked who among them had chosen to fall. They’d stared back at him, afraid of the beast who came asking for another offering of age, another sacrifice. Gray was sixteen at the time, and had seemed so young, but there was something in his eyes, in the eyes of all of those who chose to fall, that aged him. Them.

Great Sinejal would wait at the bottom of the cliff, his massive mouth with that cruel beak remaining closed until the Fallen reached him, after which he’d bow his head, scales rippling in the cool air of the valley, a reverent gesture, silent as always.

Sometimes there was a scream before that final crunch, other times I assume that they’d blacked out.

Sometimes they flew.

But Majister Sinejal the Beaked and Pious always remained silent.

For while the Dragons demanded the leap, they respected the Fallen all the same.

“Why do you wait for them, at the bottom of the cliff?” I’d asked him once, and he chuckled a deep, throaty sound, fixing his giant chartreuse eyes upon me. He was terrible in every sense of the word; his very being was the thing all Dragons aspired to be- massive and wise, and I’d been both humbled and awed the day I became his Second.

He was a millennium older than I after all, and the passing of time had welcomed him into his body, so that he moved within his skinsuit as though it had been borne to him. I had only been in mine for eight decades, and there were moments when the wings and tail felt foreign, and I’d have to wriggle into it, awaken the corners that still didn’t feel like home.

“We must always wait for them, to welcome them, to watch for their first breath as a Dragon.”

“And of those who don’t make it?”

“Then they are burned as Dragons are - from the breath of my body, the way my own will one day combust mine. By choosing to jump, they’re Dragons in spirit, even if some bodies don’t transform.”

And many didn’t. But some did.

I was one of the ones who did. Gray was one of the ones who didn’t.

The body of the sixteen-year-old had roared on a funeral pyre for about a week, and the smell of the smoke still hung in the Village’s air twelve moons later. Sinejal and I weren’t a welcome sight, but they knew we were coming. All dials on their kalendirs were set to twelve and various sacrifices had been left at their altars. I passed one, and incense flooded my nose, the scent of decaying food mingling with lemongrass in a strange dance. We weren’t welcome, but we strode into the Village all the same, watching the way the humans averted their eyes and shielded their children from us.

As though the arm of a mother could come between their children and the Rite.

“They’re young, this year, Drajin” Sinejal murmured, “I’m yet to see one of age.”

“Then a youngling will be chosen. A Fall will occur all the same.” I replied.

Sinejal sighed and stopped. His massive golden tail was swaying behind him, a self-soothing gesture I recognised all too well.

“Despite how we feel, Majister, the protection of the Rite is all that matters.” I tried, knowing that he had to see as I did, somewhere inside him. Old age had made him too soft at the edges, like worn shoes and I worried that those fraying edges would one day lead to a complete unravelling.

“It is those hard thoughts that make me fear that you lost more than your human body in the fall, Drajin.” Sinejal continued,

“di saetter drajelivet ower alt”

He dared to use the old tongue to reprimand me, and I felt a cold fury in the back of my throat, “I cannot recognise my previous life, Majister. I’ve spent too long in this one.”

“Perhaps it’ll come back to you, in the Silent Forests.”

The Silent Forests - a warning to remember, a suggestion that could not, would not be ignored.

“As you wish.”

But although it made my flesh burn with anger, there was a truth behind his old words in our mother tongue. Of course, I held Dragon life above all else. We wouldn’t go back to the ages of being hunted or maimed. Where our bones were used in medicine, our skulls as decorations for a gaudy village display.

Look ma! I’m stronger than a Dragon!

It was a blaspheme to suggest that human life even came close.

A trashcan to a cathedral.

Quickly then, a young mother came before us as she exited from a hut, draped in the red sashes of her grouping, twin earrings dangling from each lobe, a babe at her chest. She was one of the Scarletts - a rag washer, tasked with cleaning the clothes in the village laundries- the hue that sat at the bottom of the proverbial pyramid while the Violette’s perched atop. There was a dark irony that the Violette’s' children never seemed to volunteer to Fall, and yet their debt was the greatest in the Tithe.

Their crimes had been the greatest in the War.

“The lower colours have the biggest chance to climb, by Falling”, I’d heard a Scarlett explain one year, “it’s not worth it for a Violette to even try, even if they do transform.”

The young mother was panicked by the sight of us; “It’s not yet a passing moon-” she spluttered towards Sinejal, not sure which one of us to keep an eye on, so she fluttered her head between, “-we have one more day left.”

“Indeed” smiled Sinejal, trying to tuck his long teeth away, “The Rite happens at dawn tomorrow, and we are honoured, as always, to be the ones to assist.”

She didn’t mirror his smile.

Majister Sinejal was as familiar a sight to them as their worn coins, as stories and warnings passed down through childhood, as the wind that snuck into their rooms at night and kissed their hair.

His position in the Rite had left him somewhere between a friend and a cruel God; taking their children until the debt was paid.

The Scarlett bowed her head quickly, then left like a cool breeze, hesitant to meet my gaze, and I couldn’t blame her. Had she lost a child in the Rite? How many years would it be before the babe would volunteer? Fifteen, twenty? What was that passage of time to the movement of the universe, to the dance of the stars and their northern constellations?

I swallowed down any pity and gently nudged Sinejal out of his piety.

“To the forests, then?”

As he gazed towards me, I noticed an unreadable glint in the embers of his eyes, reminiscent of falling stars and fallen harbingers. In the light of the filling moon, to the Scarletts, our worn footsteps looked more like sinkholes, threatening to pull us all under, together

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Majister Sinejal the Beaked and Broken was quiet, oddly so, and I couldn’t place what had upset him. Was he frustrated at the lack of offering this year? Did he wish to see more like Grey, fall and give penance?

Had the woman really shaken him so?

“The Tithe.” He spoke, as if picking up on my wavelengths, “I fear it is coming to an end. I’m unsure that this can continue.”

So, he’d gone mad then. “The Rite.” I tried to swallow down the adrenaline burning in my veins, “Is the only thing we ask. The ONLY thing. Without it, both Dragon and Human existences will end. The War will begin again, and this time there’s still debt owing.”

I swallowed, and I could feel tears prickling at the edges of my eyes now, and I hated the way they stained my scales slightly. It was weak, it was human.

“What was your name before?” Sinejal turned to me, “The name your human mother gave you? When you lived in the village?” I turned away for a moment and tried to forget but-

I slipped into the movement of the flashing images piling on top of each other, and around each other, playing by a pool of water with a stick, gangly and two legged running home to a mother and a small brother, and sleeping in sacks with my two legs wrapped up all warm and cosy, and oh, my favourite broth, and it’s dark and I can’t find her, then I’m falling, falling, falling, falling-

Landing.

On four legs, with something behind me, an extension of myself, holding me in place, sturdy as a tree log, teeth as sharp as an axe. And my eyes can see more than I ever could before-

And I’m home.

And the name she called down to me from the cliffs no longer fits me. As the clothes from my mother no longer do. And as I gaze up to the cliffs, I can see her, but I don’t recognise her.

“I don’t recall who I was when I was different.” I bristled. “I’m sure you were human too, once.”

“Naturally.” Sinejal smiled, but then, in the cold moonlight, I felt a prickle in my mind's eye, and I realised that we were not quite alone.

Perhaps it was something in the shine of the moonlight, or a slight difference in smell on the breeze, but there were no longer two lone dragons in the clearing, for something was watching.

I turned quickly, rounding on a hedge that moved just slightly more than the ones swaying in the breeze. Occupied.

“Who follows us?” Majister Sinejal inquired, and gently, like a moonbeam, a small blonde child unfolded from her hiding spot, revealing a mop of hair and black clothes.

A tiny orphan. She didn’t bear the colour of any tribe.

Those who bore blacks were called Sables - I’d heard them called - for the darkened rags that the other tribes would hand them; often far overused and unwashable.

“Wind Dancer!” The child announced, throwing her hands up above her, triumphant and joyous. “I walk too!”

Sinejal’s edges softened again, but I could feel the fire in my stomach growing wilder by the moment. Who was this sable to dare to tread in our footsteps? Who was she to seek an audience with a Majister?

“And why is that Wind Dancer?” Sinejal bowed his head down low, resting it in the dust, so that her azure gaze met his, and she reached out one tiny hand to bat at the emerald scales around his muzzle.

He allowed himself to be patted, like a common mule.

“I come too. I want to go to… the places!” Her face fell then, confessional. “Okay, so… not Wind Dancer, me Ciela.”

Ciela. The name struck a chord, as though I’d heard it somewhere before, read it somewhere before. In another life, or perhaps in this one, it was a name of magnitude.

It echoed as I considered it. Remember Ciela, remember-

Remember what?

“Ciela is a heavenly name.” Sinejal remarked, smiling at the toddler, and he raised his eyes slightly to mine, fixing his face in place. I’d seen that gesture before - what are you thinking Drajin?

“You can’t come, Ciela” But my voice broke on the final word, giving me away. “This isn’t a place for humans.”

But especially you, there’s something about you, something different.

“Ciela not humans!” She frowned now, hands on hips, pouting. A caricature of middle-aged disappointment, “me dragon!” and she pulled her arms in at her side, crooking them at the elbow, and flapped her ‘wings’.

Roaring to herself and scaring off tiny lizards that scurried away under her stomping feet, Sinejal finally looked at me, properly.

“You’re shuddering, Drajin. Is it the cold night’s air?”

I hadn’t realised, but now I couldn’t stop. “I’m not sure” I replied, but the voices in my head kept echoing.

Remember Ciela, remember. Ciela the fallen-

“We should return the child to the village, nonetheless. To the Sisters.” Sinejal was looking at me, hesitantly now, like a doctor with a patient that didn’t realise they were terminal.

Pity disgusted me.

“I’ll walk alone, you return Ciela, I’ll go to the caves.”

Then the girl looked at me, stopping, gazing, with the intensity of a moon catching me in her orbit. “Dragon.” She said again, pointing, “No, not Dragon.” A smile was on her lips now, and she held out one tiny hand as though expecting to pet me as she had Sinejal.

“Not dragon.” She said again, and there was something in the delicate form of her fingertips, in her darkened lashes, in the innocence, that made me drop my head slowly, meeting her warm palm with the base of my snout.

She rubbed it gently, familiar.

Remember Ciela, remember. Ciela the fallen, Ciela the monstrous -

“Henry” She smiled, and with the weight of that cursed word, I shuddered out of her grip, roaring and stretching my back, pushing my body into the sky as I forced the world beneath my wings, watching the world drop away, and the girl leave my sight.

Remember Ciela, remember. Ciela the fallen, Ciela the monstrous, for she shall fall, and we shall rise -

I was rising quickly now, through the clouds, and the mountains were huts, and the rivers were threads, and I was air and freedom and space.

Remember Ciela, remember. Ciela the fallen, Ciela the monstrous, for she shall fall, and we shall rise, for she is the best and the worst of us, the blessed and the cursed of us -

She knew my name. My forgotten name, the name that didn’t fit, but she’d seen it, stretched beneath my skin. She’d seen me, the part that had fallen away decades ago. I clawed at the sky, wishing to go higher, forcing my wings to move faster than they had ever before, as though I could forget if I went just a little higher, for just a little longer.

Remember Ciela, remember. Ciela the fallen, Ciela the monstrous, for she shall fall, and we shall rise, for she is the best and the worst of us, the blessed and the cursed of us. She is the Earth and the Fire and the bits in between -

I was above the clouds now, and there was nothing between me and the stars. The world was quiet now.

The moon hung like a shroud, standing sentinel, watching.

“Who is she?” I asked no one, and no one replied, and I couldn’t bear to hear the answer. But the beating in my chest was sure now.

The thumping steadied, from a gallop to a trot, and then to finally, a stretch.

I breathed deeply, filling my lungs with the cold night air.

For my heart knew who Ciela was before my mind could remember. And I knew what had to happen tomorrow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sun never seemed to shine on Falling days. As though it preferred not to watch, but to hide behind the clouds, casting the day with a dull grey wash. An observance day, I’d used to call them, for it felt as though there was light coming from everywhere, and nowhere.

The air was hot and contained, and I felt a beading starting at my temple, as I gulped yet another mouthful of water from the river.

I hadn’t slept, too full of memory, and concern for what was to unfold, so I breathed deeply, steadying myself.

Majister Sinejal the Beaked and Glorious was standing at the cliff’s edge, and the Villagers were all hesitantly filing into the clearing. Some boys of age were standing to the side, forcing their minds to remain clear as they clenched and unclenched their fists. Some mothers were crying, some men frowned at me, disgusted at the Rite.

For the first time, I felt the disgust rise in my throat too. Who was I to decide who lived or died?

Or transformed.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew what had to happen.

Majister Sinejal smiled gently, then introduced the morning as he’d done for the last thousand years. He explained the origin of the Rite, and the Great Wars, and the penance that the humans had to give to prevent further calamity. He reminded them that some had Dragon blood, and that the Villagers who chose to leap, weren’t choosing death, but the chance to live or die as a Dragon.

He bowed his head when he spoke of Grey, the boy who didn’t change last year, and then of triumph mentioning Galbator or Galadris.

“- you mean Gabe and Charlie.”

An old woman had spoken then, and I could see that this had shaken Sinejal slightly. He ruffled the scales around his neck, and the deep blue fire in his belly glowed through his amber scales.

“I do. And they are treasured Dragons now, as the tithe demanded.”

We didn’t become Seconds until enough time had passed that our loved ones had moved on. Died. It made the transition easier, to not return to assist with the Rite when our mothers and fathers remained.

I could see the white now, brimming in the old woman’s eyes, threatening to overflow. She was a river, rapids, whirlpool, and there was power in her gaze.

“To the matter of today.” There was a gentle murmuring amongst the village now, but Sinejal continued, “Who amongst you, has chosen to Fall?”

Remember Ciela, remember.

“Majister Sinejal the Brave -” I began and hated the way my claws trod into the ground, once, twice, a third time. I breathed deeply, steadying my nerves, when I spotted Ciela in the crowd.

She was perched atop a granite boulder, hugging her knees, her hair as wild as ever, but her eyes were focused now, and sure.

Perhaps she remembered too.

“I have chosen the next to fall.” I finished, and felt the crowd move, like a wave, as their attention turned to me.

“Oh, Drajin?” Sinejal was surprised, but unfurled a great golden wing, gesturing that I step forward, towards the gathering of expecting faces.

I glanced at the small blonde child again and could have sworn that she nodded.

“Ciela. The small Sable child will be the next to fall.”

As though a firework had been set off, there were shouts, and slurs, and a movement from the crowd as though the tide was coming in far too quickly. Sinejal looked at me as though I’d gone truly mad, and his eyes were furrowed under blackened scales, and the greying ones on his temple shone in the morning sun.

“What?!”

“She’s a child!”

“- they’re taking the children now?”

“- I didn’t know orphans were fair game, shall we offer up the elderly next?”

“What is she anyway? Three? Four?”

“- this is an outrage; this isn’t in the rules of the Rite.”

Sinejal was on his feet now, looking down at me, knowing that it’d already been done. For once a name was uttered before The Great Cliffs, the contract was in place, and the leap had to be taken. We all knew what happened to those who didn’t, and death was a more peaceful alternative.

“She’s a child, Drajin.” Sinejal pleaded, “she’s too young, she won’t make it!”

“You need to remember, Majister. Remember who Ciela is.”

I couldn’t read his expression as he turned away from me in disgust towards the cliffs, then heaved his body to the sky before letting it sharply plummet into the valley, awaiting the landing of the toddler.

I prayed to the Gods of Wind and Sky that she’d land with seven limbs, and I couldn’t stomach the alternative.

“Come forward, Sable.” I spoke, and for a moment I didn’t think that the crowd would part, letting her through.

“You’re making a mistake, Serpent” the Crone spat, and I raised my head up to full height, glaring down at her with the fire of a thousand suns.

“Watch yourself, human.” I replied, “The best is yet to come.”

Ciela, light as hare, hopped down from the precipice, and walked towards the edge of the cliff. The sun was at its highest now, and she glanced up, before she glanced down, down down. She played with the pebbles under a small foot, and kicked one off, watching the way it bounced before disappearing out of sight into the cavern below.

“Dragon.” She said to me, and I smiled

“It’ll be okay, Wind Dancer”

She beamed at this and reached out a hand to stroke my elbow. I crouched down for her, and she leant into me, warmly cuddling into the emerald scales.

“Henry.” She replied, then took a few steps back, and jumped.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For the first few, horrible seconds, nothing happened, and I knew that I’d killed her. Her small, outstretched frame seemed to hang in the air as the wind played in her golden locks, before all at once, it happened.

And it was as beautiful as it was terrible.

From her centre, erupted her true form.

Remember Ciela, remember. Ciela the fallen, Ciela the monstrous,

From between her shoulder blades, tore a massive obsidian beast, and the girl was no longer falling, but rising under the air currents.

for she shall fall, and we shall rise, for she is the best and the worst of us, the blessed and the cursed of us.

And four massive arms, met at pointed joints, sparking scarlet and amber in the morning sun. The villagers were at the Cliff’s edge now, held in silence as the child transformed.

She is the Earth and the Fire and the bits in between,

Then her massive maw turned and pulled, until azure eyes glinted under ashy hoods, and I knew that she could see the past, and the present, and that she was the future.

and she’s locked away out of harm and unseen,

Her tail was twice the length of mine, and I gasped as I realised that her body doubled the width of even Sinejal. She was immense, and finally free from her tiny cage.

for in the Fall she will change and Rise,

And Sinejal was in the air now, meeting the one who had been foretold, and in his expression, I knew that he remembered who she was. For in this tongue, Ciela may have been Wind Dancer, but in ours? It began to translate more quickly now, the combinations clicking into place, and I could feel the sliding doors of my memory now wide open.

Verdensædir

Ciela the World Eater.

She bore the name we feared to speak, the one Dragons had tried to forget.

and devour the moon and eat the sky.

Ciela landed and her massive form eclipsed the sun, her beautiful onyx scales shimmering with primal power, and she bowed her head once before me, a revenant gesture of gratitude.

“Finally, Henry,” she said with a honeyed tongue, the words dancing in my ears, and affirming her position; the one that had always been hers. Queen, Empress, Goddess.

“I am back.”

Ciela the World Eater turned towards the crowd now, whose faces hung in hollowed screams. They’d called her the darkness, the night, the reason they’d smeared ashes over The Fallen, to hide them from her terrible gaze.

She had been gone for an age, an epoch, so long that we’d assumed she was a warning to children to keep them in line.

“I didn’t realise -” Sinejal was flat on his front now, a bow so low he rivalled her shadow.

“My life is yours, my Queen.” I collapsed to the ground and knew that I’d sooner take a bullet to my heart than let anything, anyone harm her.

“Their tithe is paid.” She smiled, and the fire in her belly grew white as it threatened to consume the village. “Now the fun begins.”