Motherhood and Dragons

Motherhood and Dragons

The Unusual Travels of Puckney Bowes

Undetected from his mother’s view, two-and-a-half-year-old Puckney Bowes tottered away from his house in the woods towards the clearing ahead, his fleshy stovepipe legs jutting out from a thick white diaper. Drool oozed from the bubbles at his lips as he marveled at every leaf, stone, stick and bug that he encountered with his first taste of independence.

Watching him from the shadows were a conspiracy of ravens and opportunistic turkey vultures, peering down from branches that bounced softly under the weight of their anticipatory jerks and twitches. All predator eyes darted between the doughy body of the child and the door of the home that he toddled out of.

Without delay, the hungriest of the ravens leapt from their hiding places and began to swoop and circle in a pre-feeding frenzy. The birds knew they’d have to act fast. Where unattended children were, mothers were never far behind.

Just before they dove at the child, the smaller crows watching from the trees began shrieking in terror at an incoming dragon, bulleting downwards to the swarm of birds, its’ eyes wild with anger. It extended its massive wings as it gained speed, its full size completely blocking out the sun and turning the forest floor into the dark of night. The pestilent predatory birds collided in the sudden darkness, knocking into one another, all trying desperately to escape the clearing and the coming wrath.

Inside the little abode, Puckney’s mother Meridia hummed to herself as she folded clothes, stopping abruptly at a sound that grew louder by the second. A freight train out of control? A tornado? The floor began to shake, and as the rumble grew louder, dishes in the tiny kitchen started rattling and then falling in a clatter. Her eyes darted to her son’s bassinette. Empty. Meridia briefly froze, feeling her blood plummet into her shoes. The afternoon light through the windows suddenly disappeared, plunging everything into blackness. Meridia leapt out the door and burst onto the path, screaming Puckney!

Meridia ran into the void of nothingness through what seemed like all of space and time, fueled by the sickening sensation of imminent danger and losing a child. It did not matter that she could not see the hand in front of her face, nor have any sense of where she was. Wherever Puckney had gotten to was where she wanted to be. Please, let him be safe, she prayed.

Her brain played images in rapid fire sequence of her short time with Puckney: the day she discovered she was pregnant. The friends who stopped calling to go out and who never bothered to even check in. The pity glances from random strangers as her belly swelled. Her parents having died when she was 18 in a freak car accident meant that the light of this incredible child transformed even the loneliest of orphaned existences into a glowing hearth of daily love and joy. He’s all that I have, she sobbed.

Boom! The deafening thud of something massive falling to the ground knocked Meridia over and back a few feet. Disoriented, she drew herself back onto her feet slowly, only to bounce against something hard. Not a tree, or rock – but skin, leathery and taut. The odour of sulphur filled her nostrils, and her already-burning lungs drew tight in her chest. The midday sun returned to the forest floor as the massive beast closed in on itself, retracting its wings into their folded position. Fractals of light began to sparkle and shine through scatterings of leaves and feathers still falling through the air. As she backed away a few steps to get her bearings, she realized she had run, face first into the hind quarters of a….dragon!?

Heart racing, she blinked hard as she searched the ground for her boy, the lump in her throat nearly bursting. “Rawr!” Puckney exclaimed happily, and Meridia gasped, at last spotting her son tucked protectively behind the dragon’s wing. The tyke giggled at his own imitation of the beast’s heralding cry just moments before. Relief made her swoon as she walked towards him, sidestepping the dead ravens and crows littering the ground.

She embraced her son tightly and nuzzled her face into his hair, feeling her panic and dread slowly leave her. This had been a close one.

Her little Puckney was just a child, completely clueless to both what had just happened, and what had almost happened. No one would believe her if she’d told them about this - she had learned that much already. Meridia remembered something her grandmother had said to her as a small child – that up to a certain age, children were not completely of this world. Now that she had a child like Puckney of her own, she wondered if she too was not all of this world.

Careful not to slide on bird carcasses, she reached out and gingerly touched the dragon on the back. “Thank you,” she said aloud, her face wet with tears and turned towards to the beast. Slowly, the dragon turned its head to gaze at her, and then at Puckney, its dazzling, gigantic eyes the color of sunflower fields. Leaning forward, the dragon touched the boys face gently with the tip of its beak. Puckney squirmed out of his mother’s arms and embraced the dragon’s beak with outstretched arms and kissed its nose. “TANKS, DRAGON!” He shouted joyfully.

Before she could say anymore, the dragon’s eyes closed as it exclaimed a large moan, and suddenly it laid on its side, panting heavily. A sound like the woosh! of a whale spurting water through its spout sent Meridia and Puckney running to the dragon’s underbelly. Sure enough, there were six glistening and dewy dragon’s eggs, birthed onto the ground! A mother dragon to boot, thought Meridia – one that just wanted to find a safe place to lay her young. Settling Puckney to the ground, she quickly removed the apron from around her waist and laid it on the ground like a blanket. They rolled the eggs onto the blanket, tying and knotting it tightly so as not to lose them and keep them warm.

“Rawr!” the exuberant Puckney exclaimed again into his mother’s face, grabbing her long auburn tendrils and pumping her hair so excitedly that he lost his balance, plopping down on the ground onto his diapered bottom, next to the eggs. All our children, Meridia thought.

She took Puckney by the hand and bundled the top of the apron into a knot to carry the eggs to show the mother dragon. Coming around the side of the beast, Meridia noticed a long scar oozing blood, and one of its legs looked incredibly swollen. “Dragon? Dragon!” Meridia and Puckney tapped and shook the dragon’s face, but to no avail. The mother dragon had not only saved Meridia’s child but also her own progeny in one final, fatal selfless act. As the most majestic flying being in the sky, birds like those ravens and crows probably had probably frustrated her for years, much like summer mosquitos did Meridia.

Meridia took a breath, feeling sorrow swell in her chest for the dragon. They were both alone in this world, doing their best to protect their young. Sliding to her knees, Meridia reached out to touch her son’s golden curls when a familiar pain began to throb in her temples. It wouldn’t be long before they were returned to their real home. She recognized the pressure building in her temples that always alerted her that the ‘departure’ time was near, like the warning bell of an approaching train.

After Puckney had turned a year old, unusual thing began to happen to the mother and son. At first, she thought she was losing her mind, overhearing Puckney cooing in his crib to “people”. The next day, Meridia had been looking through her own childhood photo album, when Puckney exclaimed ‘maw-maw’ and ‘paw-paw’ at a picture of her parents, whom he had never met. He nodded in his usual enthusiastic way when she asked him if those were the people he talked to so often in his room.

A few days afterward, Meridia had opened the hall closet door and reached in for the light switch, only to find a staircase that didn’t exist. That was the first portal experience. She quickly called around to find somewhere else to live, convinced the dubious-looking landlord must have pumped something hallucinogenic into her air vent; and yet even with a new address, the bizarre portals and experiences increased in frequency. Her doctor had tried convincing her that it was post-partum depression, perhaps escapism from the doldrums of raising a child, alone. He had slipped her a note to a psychiatrist. No, it wasn’t conjectures, an illness or bold lies a single mother made up to entertain herself. Nor was it a “typical lower East Side single mother having post-drug addiction issues” as she’d overheard one doctor say about her after the first terrifying portal jump she’d taken with Puckney by accident, soon after the closet incident. Whatever this was, it no longer gave her a door to close, or a choice whether to travel or not.

As Meridia’s temples pounded harder, she looked around her, taking note of this newest spectral experience. A dragon at their feet. Behind her, a quaint little home in the distance, complete with gabled windows and a puffing chimney. Above, swaying ancient pines, so fragrant and clean smelling that Meridia almost didn’t want to leave their sweet, clean, heady scent. None of this was London’s East side, smothered in grey clouds and grey rain and the smell of whatever belched from the nearest industrial vent.

Somewhere back in Whitechapel, a tattered journal sat on a nightstand where Meridia would record all of this. Yes, somewhere in time, the 30-year-old, single mother to Puckney would resume folding laundry in their dingy, lower East London apartment. Only this time, she grinned to herself, she would pick up one of those accordion leashes for children that would attach the very clever, and very swift young Puckney to her.

This had been a scary one….but she would wake up tomorrow in her ticket stall, to her job as a ticket puncher for the Underground. Sure as rain.

Tomorrow though, they would figure out how to explain the dragon eggs.