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HEART OF A DRAGON

Love echoes in the forest.

By Tom DemarPublished about a year ago Updated about a year ago 7 min read
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I witnessed the atrocities and horrors of war.

My small village was an idyllic oasis nestled among the forests and pure waterways and greenery of the countryside. We played as children do, uninhibited and free in the beautiful natural environment gifted to us by our forebears.

One day unannounced troops arrived and slaughtered my family and friends. My mother ran as fast as she could to escape the bloodbath, clutching me close to her chest to keep pace. Her body was numb but she kept telling her feet to keep running, keep running, beyond the point of exhaustion, timing her breath and forgetting everything around us. We were deep in the forest where I had never been. We hid in the overgrowth. She placed her finger to her lips forbidding me to make a sound. But it wasn’t long before we could hear boots trampling the leaves again.

Mother decided to protect me by covering me with leaves and branches. Then she ran again. I could hear her breathing fade in the distance and the boots running past me. One set of footsteps stopped near me. I held my breath. I heard my mother scream out to me her last words.

“Look to the sky!” she shouted.

A tremendous wind blew the branches, a deafening shriek pierced the sky, and a large shadow darkened the forest. The soldiers who felled my mother shouted and scattered. Then a burst of fire descended from the heavens and scorched the trees where those evil men ran. I still can smell their burning flesh.

The wind blew stronger from the giant beating wings of the mighty dragon as it landed in the clearing not far from where I hid. I remained quiet. The thump thump thump of the huge tail pounding the forest floor grew louder as the dragon drew closer. I was frozen with fear when I saw its head and protruding teeth like daggers larger than my three-year-old body. The dragon stopped. For several moments it did not move as it fixed its eye on me and ensnared me in hypnotic trance.

Beyond any reason I climbed atop the dragon’s head and held tight as it beat its wings and lifted me from that forest to the safety of a foreign village. The people of that village ran when they heard the mighty dragon soaring in their direction. And when we landed I climbed off and watched the dragon fly away again, screeching and flapping into the distance. After a time the people of the village came out and honored my arrival. And for ten years I was housed, cared for, and fed.

I heard the stories about the forces who overtook my home village on the orders of a dictatorial regime, who viciously ended the lives of my family and friends. I ventured back into the great forest to confront my trauma and find the dark path back to the place of my birth. For days I roamed the forest, foraging for berries and digging for mushrooms.

One day I came across a child’s skull on the ground. I imagined it to be the head of a girl I might have loved. I sat and stared at the skull. What might she be telling me if the head was still attached to a body? I sat for two days looking at her beautiful head. I couldn’t eat or sleep. How I loved her. I heard her entrancing voice telling me to avenge her murder. I moved on and found other human bones and skulls. They were like a trail, leading me back to the village of my birth.

I peered from behind the trees at the people living in my birth village. I waited, hungry and tired, anxiously wondering what it is I should do. I retreated back into the forest. Again I saw the scattered bones and skulls of family and friends. They all were talking to me now.

"Avenge our fate!" they charged.

On the ground I found a rusty hatchet, half buried, lost in a hunt maybe a season ago. I cleaned off the hatchet. I walked into the village at night. I entered one of the tents where there was a sleeping soldier. I plunged the hatchet into his neck, blood squirting all over the bed and all over me. I lifted the hatchet and struck again, and again and again. The body was separated from the head. The head rolled onto the floor. I picked it up and left. I ran back out into the forest and showed the soldier’s head to my deceased friends, who all beamed their approval.

I am the hunter who once was hunted. I felt empowered, no longer the victim. With that act of vengeance, that empowering swoop, I began to feel alive. I used to be numb. I didn't feel life. I felt as dead as my family and friends. Now I had a purpose. I again ran out of the forest and into the village and attacked. I went back each night into the village into another tent and severed another head. I did it for my family and friends. And for my one true love. I became very adept at my craft, decorating the forest with my art of scattered severed heads. This may not meet with approval of the church-going public, or maybe it would. I only wish I could somehow relate to you the thrill of fresh kill.

One night I was spotted by the watchman and I fled for my life. They ran after me with dogs. I ran like the wind! I put up a tremendous fight. I was beaten and bound and taken to a platform in the open square at the center of my family’s village.

“Any last words?” cracked my executioner.

“Look to the sky!” I retorted.

A tremendous wind blew, and a deafening shriek pierced the sky. The executioner jumped from the platform and the townspeople fled. My majestic dragon had come to save me again!

The dragon landed and approached me with the hypnotic eye I remembered from when I was an innocent child. I could not speak. I felt my soul pried open to the eye of the dragon for what seemed like eternity. Then in an instant the dragon took off and beat its magnificent wings, soaring off into the night sky. I remained bound and left to die.

The night wore on and a chill gripped me. Hours passed but no one emerged to do whatever it was that would be done with me. I would die by the executioner or die a slow death exposed to the elements. I felt I was going out of my mind. I lost sense of who I was or why I was there. I counted the stars in the sky. I tried to remember my mother’s face, but I couldn’t remember anything in my fading memory. And then there was nothing. I blanked out for I don’t know how long.

“You are as frightened as you are frightening.”

These are the words I remember waking up to on the platform still bound and shaking. I lifted my head to see a face. A girl, alone, was staring at me. She came closer, then stopped at a safe distance, with her eyes locked on my eyes and my eyes locked on hers. Without another word she left my sight. Then she returned with a sack around her shoulder and holding a dagger. I did not know what she planned to do to me. The girl looked around and then cut my bindings. She grabbed my hand and whispered.

“We must run or they will kill both you and me.”

I don’t know how I ran so fast. I could not feel my feet touch the ground. The girl was always ahead of me, looking back and waving for me to hurry. We reached a fast-moving stream. There was a canoe moored to a boulder. She freed the canoe and we rode the current to a far-off land beyond the forest. I don’t know how we escaped. Perhaps no one dared to chase us for fear of the dragon. But twenty years have now passed and we have been safe, far from the place of my vengeful mission.

“We fed off the forest and fished the stream, and built this home for your father and you, our sons and daughters, and for me,” said my wife of twenty years.

“A new place. A new life. Gradually my memories returned, when I could better handle them,” I added.

“What is the lesson from your father’s story?” asked my wife of our children gathered at our feet near the fire which we tended in the clearing outside.

Our children remained quiet, entranced by my traumatic story, their eyes aglow, reflecting the flickering flames. It would take them some time to process this heretofore unheard violent history of a peaceful playful father they know and love.

“Look to the sky!” our youngest said.

I replied, “Look to your heart and live.”

“Look to your heart and live,” repeated my wife who saved my life.

The fire’s flames were fanned in our furnace when just then a tremendous wind blew. A deafening shriek pierced the night. We held each other and looked up to see my dragon soar across the sky.

FableFantasyLoveShort Story
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About the Creator

Tom Demar

I drove from NYC to see a friend in L.A. I drove to Oregon, to Seattle, to Kansas City, to Florida. I want to tell the stories of hopes and dreams, desires and desperation, my story, the wilder side of America. tom-demar.com/writer

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