Là donn Brìde

The loamy earth split in waves as the dragon padded between the trees. The only sound was the snorting rasps of the creature's breathing, hot and wet and straining against the rapidly cooling night that was setting in. Its laboured movements shook down the autumn leaves, scattering its grey-green scales with a cascade of reds and yellows. And on its back, beneath the blanket of leaves, the child slept soundly.

The route the dragon had taken across the nearby savannah was not one unfamiliar to its kind, but time and mileage had slowly eroded the cartilage in its joints and it had begun to fall behind the herd. As the winter approached, others had forged on ahead, desperate to reach the warmer climes that lay beyond the mountains. The dragon knew instinctually that it would not reach that horizon by the time the snows began to settle.

Dragon migrations had once been a dangerous journey, beset by not only the savage wilderness itself but by the creatures whose eyes glowed within the growing gloom. Wolves and humans hunted them in packs, appearing from the shadows as they settled down to sleep, driving them with jagged claws and teeth over cliff-edges and into rushing rivers. They carved them up as the rest of the herd fled, and when the dragons returned in the spring they would find the bones of their families jutting out of the fresh-tilled soil like trophies. Dragons form deep social bonds, and they would stay and grieve were it not for the grim reality that the humans were never far away.

That was perhaps the reason why this particular dragon, bowed and world-weary as it was, had stopped to inspect the trembling form beneath the oak tree, perhaps an hour or two from the borders of the wood. The creature was smaller than a human - perhaps a child? - although the dragon had never seen one before. Humans were no longer nomadic like they might once have been, and whilst wary, dragons knew that this bipedal species would simply stop to stare as they passed by the land that was now carefully surrounded with felled trees and stones.

The small creature had two arms and two legs like a human, and was wrapped in some sort of woollen coat like a sheep. Its hair was matted and knotted down its back, although its face was naked of fur, unlike the humans the dragon had seen. It carried with it a modest pouch which contained the sorts of tools that humans liked to use, although much smaller than the spears and blades with which the dragon had so often been pursued over its long and storied existence.

At first, the dragon had used the opportunity to rest awhile, studying the rise and fall of the creature's chest in time with its own shallow breathing. It had considered circling around, but the thickets were dense and sharp, and its spirits were ebbing by the minute. As it edged ever closer, a fleeting shadow passed over it, and it contemplated whether it could quickly crush the creature, pressing its weight down until any threat was extinguished. But as it looked down at its sleeping face, it could not court such cruelty to such a tiny thing, and instead nudged it gently with its snout, releasing a tiny puff of smoke from lungs where once fire raged.

The creature stirred, and after a moment, peered up at the dragon through slitted eyes. Beneath the lids were red and teary, and they quickly closed again despite the huge beast looming above. The dragon stepped back, and noticed that the bed of leaves that covered the trail were discoloured around the creature - bright green and supple, where the rest were brown and crisp. It leant down and nibbled at one tentatively, finding with surprise that it was as fresh as a spring morning.

The dragon snapped at several more leaves, masticating thoughtfully as it continued to observe the creature on the ground. It was now convinced that it was some sort of human; possibly a child or one deformed in the womb. Proportionally, all the parts were the same, but it had tucked many parts into a small ball of limbs, now surrounded by a circle of lush green vegetation. The dragon pushed its snout in at the creature's underbelly, and again the eyes broke apart, even as it drew its body in like a crab.

The dragon knew that it hadn't eaten for some time, but it was strange to note that it was already feeling stronger after chewing on those leaves. It sat back on its haunches and stretched, feeling a gentle warmth trickle through its sore muscles, letting a faint but constant coil of ashen fumes twirl up and away from its nostrils. It ran a tentative claw through the leaves, and saw green shoots erupting beneath them, pressing up through the foliage.

The dragon locked eyes with the human, who was now awake. It looked thin and sickly and cold, and in its glassy eyes the dragon reflected back, trembling in the glow of the dying sun. Whatever this creature was, it had some strange Springtide power that even a faintly magical creature such as a dragon couldn't understand. Carefully, the dragon prostrated its form along the ground next to the human, pressing its neck down and keeping its aged wings folded against its scaly hide.

At first, the human had not stirred, although it kept its eyes trained on the hulking beast before it. But as the minutes crept by, and the cold descended, it had slowly unfurled itself. It bent its limbs in and out, the warmth creaking through iced-up knees and elbows, before gritting its teeth and wilfully clambering atop the reptilian form of the dragon.

With a start, the dragon heaved itself to its feet, barely feeling the weight of the malnourished thing that now clung to the spiny ridge that rang along its back. It only knew that if either creature were to survive the winter, they would need each other before the end.

In fiery red-gold irises, the dragon's pupils dilated to accommodate the dusk light. It lumbered away down the path, until the inky black enveloped them both.

*

Even here, on the forest floor, the child could feel the warmth of the light that cascaded through the canopy above. It tasted different to the winter light - heartier and sweeter, almost treacly; not like the cool and crisp bite that winter sunshine had. For a moment, she drank it in, closing her eyes and pressing her hand into the mossy bracken. When she opened her eyes, a wild clump of woodland grasses had appeared beneath her splayed palms.

The child looked around at this, the very fringe of her woodland kingdom. Here, the undergrowth was at its thinnest, untouched by her green fingers. The path was away off to the east, where the sun came through the earliest, so very few humans trod this part of the woods. The thicket was too dense for deer or other game - nothing that might make it worthwhile for a hunting party or foragers to traverse. It was quite navigable compared to her home deeper in towards the creek, though, where she had been at work since the snows settled in.

Those first snows had nearly robbed the girl of so many things. First, she dangled on the precipice of death for several days, overcome by hypothermia, warmed only by the cradling of Mama. Once recovered enough to walk and move, she had watched the dragon slip slowly in the same direction, her juvenile mind realising only in the final moments that her power gave life to the beast.

At first the child had only been able to forge the most basic shoots and reeds, raising them out of the dirt floor where their seeds lay frozen and scattered. Mama had followed her around the clearing where they lay, up against a mighty oak tree, her leathery tongue snatching at the vegetation before she finally closed her heavy eyelids. For a day or so, the child sat with the dragon and cried, until she rose, fed and rested, and the tears turned to those of joy.

The child had seen herds of dragons roaming the far countryside, but was too young to know of their monstrous, fire-breathing past in myth and legend. She viewed them much as children viewed cows or sheep, without fear or uncertainty, and was keen to ensure her enormous protector was well-fed. Over time, the green shoots became root vegetables and flowering plants, sought out beneath the soil by some innate ability in the child's mind, triggered only by pressing her skin against the earth. As the ground further hardened, she learned to bond with the trees, bringing out chestnuts, acorns and fruits that she and the dragon greedily ate.

As the dragon's strength returned, so too did its inner fire. It used the warmth to cocoon the human, and although neither of them knew what a bonfire was or how to make one, they could manipulate the branches of trees to create a shelter in which a fiery atmosphere was exhaled. In this living cave of intertwined boughs, the child created a mossy mound on which the two could sleep, and they whiled away the winter in each other's company.

Now, the spring was returning with enthusiasm, and the child was enjoying the freedoms it was giving her to roam the wood. In the darkest parts of winter it had been too cold for her to explore without her Mama, and the dragon was still old and sedentary, even with the renewed strength the child's powers had brought it. Once the snows had thawed she had begun to expand their territory, creating a maze of tangled vines and only she knew how to navigate, further closing off their world from the one she had lived in before.

The child was still young, and she had little understanding of the events that had led to her lying cold and alone on the trail through the forest. She did not understand the gravity of the fight between her parents; only that she missed her human mother, and wondered why she had not continued walking even as she urged her daughter onwards. She had been kitted out in hardy clothes as if for a long journey, although those clothes had become ragged over the previous months. In her bag, she had been given all manner of survival tools, as if her mother had expected something to go wrong.

It wasn't important: the dragon was her Mama now. She was a strangely pragmatic child, largely unaffected by the trauma that would send another of her age catatonic. As the only other living thing she interacted with, she had simply fused her emotional wellbeing to that of the dragon, replacing her maternal figure with another as easily as changing clothes. When she got sad, she would curl up in the giant animal's embrace, and when she was happy about something, she would whoop and cheer as if the dragon could understand such a celebration. When she saw her first frog in the creek, she made such noise that the dragon became alarmed and chased the animal away, worried it was causing her to cry out in pain.

Their bond had grown as strong as the trees with which the child surrounded herself. She loved the way that they made the forest feel close and cosy at the same time as being so towering, creating a shield with both trunk and branch that hid the two of them away. As she paced now through the wood, she went from pillar to pillar, healing ruts in the bark and drawing out the diseases that she inherently sensed in their roots. In the ever-so-slight breeze that wafted overhead, the leaves rustled, and she liked to think that the trees were saying thank-you.

As the girl closed her eyes to listen, another sound came over the breeze. Fast, anxious voices pierced the atmosphere like a knife, although still faint as if far away. The child strained to listen, for she had not heard a human voice in many months. They were definitely on the trail, and although she was too young and uneducated to know about minutes or miles, she had a rough understanding by now of how far away things were based on the number of trees between here and there. She fathomed they were about ten-tens of trees away, walking back towards the village, on the northern edge of the wood.

Never hesitant, she began to walk in the direction of the voices, using a large stick which had fallen to the ground as a cane to help her negotiate a rocky patch of ground along the route. The voices sounded panicky, and as the girl neared the path she began to crouch as she walked, making sure to keep low behind the two high banks of dirt that bordered this part of the trail. Now she could make out that it was several adults, both men and women, who were moving at an incredibly slow pace.

"I cannot make haste, Tobias," a woman was saying, kitted in men's trousers and a dirty gambeson. "The poor thing is lame."

The child peered further over the ridge she now lay behind, and spotted that the woman held reins which belonged to a shaggy donkey, one hoof raised in agony from the stony ground. It was limping along, but barely, and the child could see flecks of white beginning to form at its mouth. On its back, two great saddlebags weighed the creature down even further.

"Well," said one of the men, possibly Tobias, "find a way. If they catch us, we'll hang."

"We'd be quicker carrying the silver ourselves," snapped the other, running a gloved finger along an axe looped through his belt.

"What are you suggesting?" said the woman.

"Kill the animal and drag those saddlebags to the caves."

"Kill it?"

"You'd rather leave it here, maimed, to die of exposure?"

The child was watching this argument with fascination, partly because she didn't understand around half of the words these adults were using. She did not realise they were about to harm the donkey until the man slipped the axe from his belt and steadied it on the animal's neck.

"Ahh!" cried the child, startling the three so much they almost vaulted the beast they were about to murder. It wasn't really a 'no', or a 'stop', but simply an outburst of pure fear and panic that echoed around the treetops.

The woman regained her composure first and scraped three inches of steel from its scabbard, keeping her hand wrapped tightly around the hilt. "Who goes there?" she shouted in the child's direction.

Gingerly, the girl raised herself above her parapet, revealing her tangled, unkempt mane, followed by her pale and muddy face, with two piercing green eyes staring out from deep within it. One of the men made a religious sign and kissed a pendant hanging around his neck. "Don't get too close," he said. "She ain't natural!"

"Nymphs and dryads?" scoffed the woman. "Bit old for fairy stories, Gus." Even as she said this, she didn't relinquish her sword-grip.

Tobias, still holding his axe, grabbed the reins of the donkey, who had taken a few halting steps forwards. It yelped in pain and the child started forwards in response, stopping only when the woman fully drew her blade. "Stay back," she said, eyeing the girl nervously.

The girl had no idea how to communicate with these people, although she understood that 'stay back' wasn't friendly. She gestured with her stick towards the donkey, looking earnestly at the woman. She desperately wanted them not to kill the poor thing.

"After our silver!" said Gus, who was unravelling a little at this turn of events. "Tree spirits robbing us blind!"

"If we can't carry it," said Tobias, "this little runt can't either."

There followed a few moments of silence, as all four parties stared each other down, broken by the shuffling of the donkey. After what felt like forever, the girl started to carefully step forwards, in the animal's direction. The three adults took an instinctive step back, none of them wanting to engage this potentially dangerous woodland spirit. Step by step, the girl approach the donkey. When she was halfway, Tobias raised his axe high above his head, as if to strike at her, but she locked eyes with him and kept coming.

Upon reaching the distressed creature, which stood high above her diminutive frame, she reached out a hand and stroked its filthy fur. Its leg was badly cut, and the wound was showing the early signs of an infection. Placing her hands on the ground, she sought out the thoughts in the earth. She found two types of flower and a thorny weed, and latching onto those notions like she had done so many times during the winter, she drew them up through the soil.

The adult humans watched in awe as plants thrust through the gaps between the girl's fingers - first, green stems that unfurled simple pink petals around a yellow pistil, followed almost immediately by a faintly blue lily a prickly green tendril. Opening her eyes, the child ripped them from the ground with a delicate tap of her trailing hand, as if to thank the earth for its contribution.

Taking both palms and appearing to not notice the thorns at all, she began crushing the plants against each other, soon creating an ointment that was smeared all over her skin in a purple hue. She looked up at Tobias, noting that his axe was no longer raised so aggressively, transfixed on the scene unfolding before him. Turning back to the donkey, she took both hands and squeezed them around the wound.

Gus jumped forwards as the donkey yelped in pain, but the woman caught his braces and hauled him back from interfering. The powerful animal almost threw the girl, but she clung on, feeling the salve seep into the bloodstream. She tightened the grip in her small hands, and felt the skin begin to close around the sore, the muscle knitting itself back together as the remedy began to fight off the disease. The donkey had stopped braying, and after just a few seconds, she let go, and it placed its hoof firmly on the floor.

"Impossible," breathed Tobias, finally.

"Devil magic," said Gus. "Kill her." He said this to Tobias, but he wasn't listening, so Gus began to draw his dagger.

Behind him, an almighty roar cut through the forest. The girl's Mama loomed between the trees on the verge above the track, having followed the child's scent when she didn't return to the shelter. The dragon knew what shiny sticks did to her kind. She saw the weapons in each of their hands, and let a coil of smoke eject menacingly from her snout.

Gus went deathly pale, rooted to the ground. Tobias and the woman were backing away in terror, which turned to a run as the dragon took a step ut of the treeline.

"Mama!" cried the girl, rushing to stand in between the dragon and her prey. Gus suddenly found his agency and, stumbling, began to lope away after his friends and the newly-healed donkey.

The dragon, however, had already lost interest, exhausted by the trek and her theatrics. She knelt down and nuzzled at the girl, accepting the small hand that patted her lovingly on the nose. As the two turned towards home, the girl stared at the vanishing forms of the three humans and their animal. The cosy world that they had created for themselves suddenly felt very small indeed.

*

The girl did not return to the trail for many nights, in part due to the more watchful eye of her Mama. Every time she went to explore, the dragon would haul itself to its feet as if to join her, and the child would coax her back to the ground, watching with concern as her legs trembled under her weight. She knew that what happened on the trail had worried the dragon, and this protectiveness would need to wear off before she could go galavanting again.

The blossoms had fully bloomed on the trees by the time she began her journeying in earnest again, patrolling in ever-widening circles which took her closer and closer to the road. One day, she patted the dragon lovingly on the hide as she dozed, took up her pouch of tools from where she had hidden them in the shelter, and took off towards the place where the encounter had happened.

Creeping carefully towards the verge as she had done previously, the girl was shocked to see a small collection of unnatural objects clustered at the side of the trail. Some had been blown by the wind or damaged by the rain, but they were quite clearly and purposefully gathered together by an unknown somebody. Standing next to small bundles of wheat and barley were waxy candles, their flames extinguished, and clay bowls with coppers and the occasional silver piled inside. At the centre was a pile of stones, each one a size smaller than the last, their surfaces smooth and polished.

The girl looked around before sliding down the earthen bank, approaching the nick-nacks cautiously. She observed the pile with a cocked head like her mother dragon did, before reaching out and touching the topmost stone, watching it wobble slightly under her protruding finger. She brushed her hand through the ears of wheat, enjoying the way they tickled her skin.

The child sat down, cross-legged, and stared at the things for a while. She supposed they must have something to do with the donkey-people, because it was so close to where she had encountered them, but she didn't really know what or why. She examined each one, occasionally reaching out to touch them, and at several points lying back on the dirt to think about things. When she was done, she returned to the dragon and they ate together, looking up at the stars through a hole in the canopy.

The girl made that journey as often as she could over the next few weeks, seeing things added and removed from the pile for her to investigate. In a world of such brutal simplicity, it gave her developing mind some new problems to consider, and she began to think more and more of the world outside the forest.

The two-tenth time she visited, she heard human voices from far away not long after arriving, and sat patiently behind the verge until they reached her. Sure enough, when the voices were almost directly on top of her, she heard two heavy sets of boots thud against the ground, and the gentle whinny of a horse. The girl shuffled up to the top of the verge and looked out at the two chestnuts mares and their retreating riders.

"Have you brought the matches?" asked one long-haired woman to another long-haired woman. "I think we may need to petition for some new candles from the temple."

"You're right, Sister Charity," said the other woman, producing a sleeve of wooden matches coated in sulphur. "Perhaps glass housing would protect them from the elements."

"Perhaps," said Charity, "although glass is expensive and the church is poor. Thank you, Sister Penance."

Penance dutifully began lighting candles whilst Charity dropped more coins in the bowl. "I lose faith with each passing day that Tobias and Gertrude were telling the truth," she said to nobody in particular. "The fields are still so barren, and we approach the months where crops must grow."

"They are thieves," mused Penance, "but I do not take them as liars. They had so little reason to. And that mule was halfway to lame when they left. Nothing heals that quickly, sister."

"You are right," sighed Charity. "A dragon brings magic with it. I pray that these spirits bring us luck. We have made all the right offerings."

"We can but hope, Sister."

The two women prostrated themselves and placed their foreheads on the ground before climbing to their feet and returning to the horses. They remounted, and with a pull of the reins, left in the direction they had come from.

The child waited for them to fade into the distance, then returned home. Her dragon was sleeping deeply, as she did a lot these days, so the girl curled up with her and began to cry. Where her tears fell, the earth became lifeless and cold.

*

The girl stayed by the camp for a few days, watching the tadpoles in the creek, and listening to the birds in the treetops. She spoke to her Mama, but the old dragon didn't wake up often, and only occasionally responded with a huff or a snort of smoke. On the fourth day, the girl made sure that the dragon had some food to graze on, packed her pouch with some for herself, and began walking purposefully towards the edge of the woods.

It was almost dusk when she reached the treeline, eyeing the huge expanse of grass anxiously as it rushed away from her down a gentle hill. She stood in the eaves for a little while, her hands clutching a dragontooth in her pouch nervously. At the bottom of the slope, she could still make out fences where the people of the village had divided up the land, with trees lining the roads, and little fires burning in the windows of little houses. The air tasted like crushed herbs, and she spent a while picking out all of their different scents.

When the sun finally sank behind the far horizon, bathing the valley in starlight, the girl began the short walk down to the farmsteads. People were beginning to drift away to bed, but even now there was the light chatter of conversations that only belonged in the wee hours. One by one, they filtered out, until it was her and the breeze once more.

When she reached the centre of the farmland, the girl stopped. She looked around at the earth, and through her feet felt the millions of seeds that the people had scattered into the ploughed furrows, the energy within them almost making her tremble with potential. Hunkering down on her haunches, she use her long, dirty fingernails to claw a small hole in the dirt, before reluctantly dropping the dragontooth inside.

The girl had not misheard the two women on the path. She knew that dragons were magic, and when she found her Mama's tooth upon their shelter floor, she knew what she had to do.

Covering the fragment again with soil, the girl got down on all fours, her palms placed flat against the earth. She cycled through the sounds around her, before focusing on the comforting white noise that pervades every night. Closing her eyes, she began to talk to the seeds, and did not stir until all of them had sprung forth into the breaking dawn.

Exhausted and disoriented, the girl barely noticed the voices starting around her again. Only as they got louder did she understand that she was still in the village, and the townsfolk had already realised that something was amiss. She dragged herself to her knees and then her feet, stumbling forwards and getting a facefull of stiff green stalks. Her work was disguising her, giving her the vital time to clamber away.

As the farmhands came upon the sea of vegetation that now stood before them, the child was clutching her pouch to her chest, running back to the safety of the woods.

*

The child was walking by the time she reached their clearing, her trusty stick in hand as she pushed the curtain of vines away to reveal the shelter. The first thing she noticed was how cold it was, the air retaining that very slight chill that only spring mornings can have. The second thing she noticed was her Mama, curled up so tightly and suddenly looking very small. Her chest was hardly moving.

The girl jumped to her side, launching the stick to the corner of the shelter in her desperation to reach the dragon. She placed both hands on her hide before slamming them to the ground, raising up fully-grown carrots so fast that they almost sprang out of the earth. The dragon did not move, save for opening a beady eye to look upon the girl.

The magic of this dragon was all but extinguished, and had come this far only by the love and attention of the little girl who now cried rivulets of tears as she stared into those once-fiery eyes. The old beast had been comfortable and content in the shelter, but she had been powerless as she watched the girl leave that last night. She had helped her see another springtime, and that was where their journeys now had to part.

The girl snuggled in close as the dragon's breathing became shallower. She stayed there for hours, her tears running freely. When she opened her eyes again to look upon her mother dragon, she was embraced in her serpentine caress, the huge animal turned entirely to stone.

*

Two boys knelt down at the shrine, overflowing with dedications. One turned to his father, nervously, but with smiling encouragement he placed his offering down - a small dragon, whittled from oak.

"Pray for harvest, and perhaps the wood-nymph and her dragon will grant it!" his father said.

Hidden by the leaves, the child smiled, her pouch full of dragon-teeth.