Larkenwood, the Wizard and the Dragons

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Though, I suppose that’s because Syrus Ironwing hadn’t always resided in Larkenwood. That damned ole wizard had us all mystified from the moment he arrived. Before then, we’d been a simple folk, in a quiet city, overlooking a peaceful valley, nestled between the Little Mountains. We’d also been fools.

It’d been the middle of Spring when the old man wandered into Larkenwood. Rumors of a wizard roaming our streets flew faster than the sparrows themselves could carry ‘em. It hadn’t taken long for a crowd to form in the square. Larkenwood never saw many travelers being as far north as we were, not to mention being hidden between the mountain peaks. No, it wasn’t an easy village to stumble upon. Looking back, it should have been obvious that it was no accident that ole Syrus found us.

That day, in the middle of our little town, he looked the perfect picture of what you’d expect an old wizard to be. He wore a dark blue cloak bound together by silver threads that draped nearly to the ground. A long beard of matching silver hair grew from his angular jawline down near past his sternum. His age left him hunched shorter than nature intended and even some of the women towered over him. But the most peculiar thing was the creature perched on his shoulder.

The beast was four legged and not much larger than the squirrels wandering the trees nearby. It had a tail nearly the length of its body and an elongated neck to match. Two appropriately proportioned wings jutted from its back and fanned outward whenever the thing was roused by the crowd. And the entire thing was covered in scales.

Shouts of Trickery! and Dark magic! rang out from the crowd as the wizard introduced to us his dragon. Wizards were few and far between these days, but a dragon? Worlds below, it had been lifetimes since anyone with two seeing eyes had seen a scaled-back beast. And yet, there one was, right before us.

It wasn’t a mere two sunsets before Syrus Ironwing had us deep in those blue pockets of his cloak. The youngins wouldn’t leave that poor dragon alone, and I’ll be sent to the worlds below if that damned thing didn’t adore our critters right back. It spent every afternoon flying through the fields with ‘em, weaving around as they tried to dodge its frantic tail - their new version of “catch me if you can.”

And ole Ironwing had the adults just as mesmerized. He had a spell or potion for everything he did. The cream he gave Thom Aldren cleared a lifetime of pock marks that not even Nan Litefowl, the town elder, had been able to clear. And that was just the beginning. The real magic came weeks into Ironwing’s stay.

It had been a dry spring and the mountains mostly blocked what little rain had come our way. The whole city was worried of starvation if the crops didn’t sprout soon. Until Ironwing said he had just the thing. The old geezer left for a few days and we all worried he wouldn’t return. Enough of us, we were sure was how he felt. But nearly six days later he arrived back just as dawn was breaking. The sky was a light lilac and I had been out tending my small flock as he entered through the rickety city gate. He greeted me as though he hadn’t been gone at all but said he must get going as there was work to do. I offered him a hand and the two of us went right on to the fields. As we reached the crops, he dug two glass bottles from inside his cloak, both only large enough to be milk jugs for rodents. He handed me one and kept the other for himself. I shook mine a bit and the charcoal colored powder within seemed dense but fine all at once. And what’s stranger, the stuff seemed to sparkle.

“Fairy dust?” I asked, not entirely kidding.

Ironwing laughed, “dragon dung.”

My face musta’ scrunched more than I thought based on the fit of laughs I sent Ironwing into.

“This don’t look like any dung I ever saw.”

“Dragon dung, as I’m sure you can imagine, is very large and relatively useless in its raw form,” he held up his bottle to the rising sun, “however, if you let it dry and then roast it over hot coals for an extended period of time, you’re able to grind it down quite easily and are left with this beautiful ash-like dust. And if you combine that with the dust ground from a tooth taken from a particularly ornery sea beast - you are left with this.” He shook his bottle and the ash glistened.

I stared at him, not having a damned thing to say about him leaving to roast dragon dung and steel sea beast’s teeth.

He continued to chuckle to himself as if my expression was the punchline to his tale.

“To work with us, then,” he motioned to the fields, “just sprinkle a small bit of dust at the start and end of each line of crops - like bookends. You start on this end, and I’ll begin on the other. We’ll finish in the middle.”

It was late morning by the time we finished.

“What now?” I asked.

“We wait,” he grinned.

The next morning was our day of rest and so the sheep and I were both nestled in until well past dawn. It wasn’t until I heard shouting that I finally stirred out of my little house and by that time, there was already a crowd forming at the edge of the fields. I pushed my way through the mess of people and couldn’t believe my own eyes. The crops had sprouted. Now, I’m not one to go on about magic, but it hadn’t rained and the sun was ablaze in the sky all the day before. Those plants had no business sprouting the way they’d done overnight. But they did, and my eyes be taken if they didn’t have a faint sparkle to ‘em. And that’s when I really started to believe in ole Ironwing.

We welcomed him as a bonafide Larkenwoodian and he became our wizard. He was one of us and we welcomed the magical change in our simple lives. Then one day, everything changed again.

Ironwing left on another quest as he liked to call them. It wasn’t unusual for him to be gone awhile and we never questioned his return, he always came back. But this quest lasted much longer than was typical of our wizard. So we were all overjoyed when he finally did return.

He came walking through the gate mid-afternoon and the whole town cheered.

“My family! I’m back,” he shouted, “and I’ve brought friends!”

Now, the ole wizard stood alone before us, so naturally, we looked around a bit perplexed.

And then, he whistled.

A horde of dragons filled the sky from the direction Ironwing had just come. I’m not spinning yarn when I tell ya, there were tens, no, hundreds of dragons in that damned sky above us. Big ones, little ones, short ones, long ones. It was like an old nursery rhyme of dragons.

Some of us stared. Some of us ran. All of us screamed.

In hindsight, the fact that any of us stayed to hear him out as a gust of wind so strong that only the beat of six hundred dragon wings could create, whipped against us, is truly an attest to how loved he was in our little town.

But, we did hear him out. And by that evening, his horde was peacefully asleep across the entirety of our valley - a sea of ever blending scales painting the landing below our town.

It was a shock to us all at how quickly the dragons became normal to us. Ironwing would never admit it, but looking back, I think he used a spell or two to calm our palpable nerves in those first few weeks. But it wasn’t long before the small ones were playing alongside our children just as the first dragon had always done. And Ironwing slowly allowed the large ones to help us with work around the village.

I’d never seen anything like the hold Ironwing had over his dragons. Those beasts were like farm dogs when it came to that wizard. They’d rollover and beg him to scratch their belly scales. And he’d feed ‘em rodents like they were biscuit treats. But worlds above be with you if you tried to touch one of ‘em when Ironwing wasn’t around. Besides the babies that played with ours, those dragons wanted nothing to do with the likes of other Larkenwoodians. Luckily for us, Ironwing was always around, and when he wasn’t, those dragons didn’t even so much as glance over the bounds of the valley. He had ‘em well trained, he did. There’s only one small problem now.

Syrus Ironwing is dead. And the dragons are still in our valley.