Lengo

LENGO by Gerald Killingworth

Lengo swished his way through the early Spring forest. His Winter sleep had been long and pleasantly dreamy, but now he was hungry, ravenously hungry. Life was coming back to the forest in burrows, in streams and in newly-made nests. Lengo didn’t expect to wait long before something crunchy made the mistake of catching his eye. He rather fancied a racoon or a couple of plump birds on a branch.

Lengo stopped and licked his lips. There was a disturbance in a clump of bushes a little way ahead. No-one in the forest should rustle like that. It drew attention to them, but all the better for him. He hurried forward in long strides, the sound of his footsteps hidden by the increasingly loud noises from the clump of bushes. His tall shadow soon loomed over a pair of squabbling foxes, too caught up in their struggle to notice him at first. Lengo bent over and his shadow deepened. The foxes stopped biting each other, looked up into a pair of fierce yellow eyes, screamed and fled. Lengo could easily have caught them in his long claws, but he was happy to let them go.

People have a very narrow view of dragons. Of course, they come in a whole range of hugeness, they are scaly, they fly and they can breathe fire. But this isn’t the whole story. Lengo was a particular kind of dragon, the smallest kind, though with enormous hands. This is why he could swish through a forest without colliding with every tree he passed. He cooked his food with a single breath and his talons were to be avoided at all costs, but he was a Nurturing Dragon, a protector of hatchlings. There are also dragons who spend more than half their lives lying around in hot pools and some are even said to be excellent basket-weavers. That seems a little far-fetched. What Lengo saw, therefore, in the undergrowth in front of him was not the succulent meal the foxes had been fighting over. He saw a pink, human, face, a tiny fist waving at the world, but he didn’t see food. Lengo was an extremely conscientious Nurturing Dragon, fully-grown but inexperienced and, some might say, a little dim. The baby was lying in a round wicker basket that looked to Lengo like half an egg shell. It was curled in the basket in the way that Lengo knew dragon babies were folded in their egg. It was also his favourite shade of pink. Lengo loved pink and was disappointed that newly-hatched dragonlings were always orange.

It had been a while since Lengo last looked after a hatchling. He suddenly felt very excited although this small creature wasn’t like any of the other dragonlets he had helped care for in the past. It wasn’t covered in scales, it didn’t have the pointy snout that made dragons so proud, but it was in half a shell, it was curled up and it was – pink!

Now, it is a well-known fact that dragon talons are amongst the hardest objects in the world. The truest steel bounces off them. What is less well-known is that these talons are also extremely sensitive. They can sense the emotions of any living creature they touch. These emotions will usually be of the Please don’t cook me or One quick bite, please kind. What Lengo now sensed as he touched the baby was trust, a warm, happy feeling that made him remember his hatchling charges when he was apprentice to the Senior Nurturing Dragon Old Fandar. When their little group of baby dragons were put to bed, he loved to give each of them a tap with his claw and feel how much they saw him as their adored big brother.

He carefully picked up the basket with its tiny occupant and carried it back to his cave. It was an excellent cave, dry and smooth-floored and always as warm as he liked it. Like most dragon caves, it was set in the foothills of a volcano and boiling lava or water flowed not too deeply beneath it. Fandar, being hundreds of years old and arthritic, had loved her cave to be super-hot and so she had chosen one actually in the side of a volcano. One night they were woken by the sound of vast boulders bouncing past the entrance as the volcano prepared for the eruption of a lifetime. None of the baby dragons in their care was hurt, but she and Lengo, who was only doing what he was told, were in disgrace and told to go away and learn some sense. That was Lengo’s first job as an apprentice and now he had a second, although he was on his own and had misgivings about the young creature in his care.

The mountains amongst which Lengo grew up were ideal for dragons, with every second or third peak being a volcano. Humans were rarely seen and the dragons hardly bothered to talk about them. All Lengo knew was that they were small and frightened and tended to make nuisances of themselves. It hadn’t dawned on him that it was a human child he was laying on the floor of his cave so tenderly.

Lengo was still ravenously hungry and he could feel his mouth watering as he gazed down at the plump little arms waving energetically. The need to care and the need to eat pulled him in opposite directions with equal force so he waved goodbye to his new charge and hurried out of the cave. Once he had a good breakfast inside him, he knew he would think more clearly. How to feed the pink creature, for example. He was sure it wasn’t ready for the chomped-up pieces of animal they gave to young dragons from the moment they hatched.

His steps took him along the same path as earlier. And, yes, at exactly the same spot he heard bushes being agitated. They were the self-same bushes in which he found the baby and he was curious to know what was going on. Was there another creature in a basket? In fact, the foxes had returned. They assumed that the dragon had eaten the baby, having probably cooked it to a delicious crisp. He might have dropped a few tasty tit-bits and they were busily searching for these. In a matter of seconds, they became crispy tit-bits themselves.

Lengo patted his stomach. Just what he needed. He was about to return home when his ears picked up another sound, a yelp perhaps. He headed off through the undergrowth, disturbing the new brambles as little as he could. Dragons have wonderful eyesight and from some distance, and through a curtain of ferns, he saw two wolf cubs energetically play-fighting. Their mother, a large dark-grey wolf, watched them admiringly, giving the occasional low growl that warned them to keep their noise down. They were full of the Spring and took no notice of her at all. In a tremendous green whoosh, the dragon swept into the clearing. The wolf cubs were now inescapably held in one giant clawed hand and their mum was in the other. From the cubs, Lengo sensed only confused terror; from the she-wolf, his talons read Don’t eat my babies over and over. Dragons can’t send messages back through their talons. If he could have had a conversation of this kind, Lengo would have said I have other plans. An idea had come to him and he strode back to his cave, flattening everything that grew in his way.

The pink baby was half-asleep when Lengo returned. Its eyes flicked open as it felt the vibration of heavy dragon feet on the floor of the cave.

Lengo sat down next to the baby and rested for a moment. He needed to be sure that the mother wolf understood what he meant her to do. She was still sending her Don’t eat my babies emotions through his claws and this was beginning to get on his nerves. His claws formed cages around the wolf family and he shook both cages vigorously for a moment. The captives took the hint and lay down on the broad dragon palms, quietly awaiting the worst.

Lengo experimented with a smile in the direction of the mother wolf to show that the worst was not what she expected. Unfortunately, when a dragon smiles, so many of its long, sharp, shiny teeth are revealed that the effect is terrifying. The wolf pressed her muzzle against Lengo’s palm and covered her eyes with her paws. Do it. Do it. Do it. Lengo sensed. He dropped her to the floor and pressed her there with a single talon. With his other hand, the one still holding her caged young, he pointed to the baby in the basket. Fear had sapped the she-wolf of most of her strength. She could barely move her legs as Lengo now used his talon to push her towards the basket. When she reached the basket, he held her there. The wolf looked up into the eyes of the powerful green creature. Lengo blinked and nodded his head. For good measure, he shook her cubs in their cage. They rattled like dice. If she attacked the baby, he would crush them and she understood that.

The she-wolf placed one paw on the edge of the basket. She looked up at Lengo who nodded. She placed a second paw inside the basket. Again that look, and again the nod. Then, very, very slowly, she brought her muzzle behind the baby’s neck and bared her teeth. Lengo’s talon appeared beside her own head in warning. She took hold of the garment the baby was wearing and lifted the child up and onto the floor. Another look and another nod before the mother wolf lay down beside the baby and used her paw to pull it towards her. Lengo placed his caging hand on the floor and released the two cubs. Soon, three youngsters were happily suckling and Lengo could breathe a sigh of relief. He remembered to turn his head and sigh to one side because even the gentlest dragon sigh is hot enough to scorch wood.