Of the Ages

In my vigil, the silence wraps around me like a blanket. Like a yoke. And it used to feel tighter, part of me remembers.

I don’t know if I have grown into it, this burden, or if I am just used to it. There must be a difference, but I do not know what that is. I wish I could ask you, and I suppose that I could, but I don’t think that you know either.

It’s funny – after years of waiting in this unearthly forest – and not just being idle, but waiting – this is such a disruption. I can’t help but think it. I think I would like to voice it, even in just a laugh or a chuckle, but I do not want to scare you. I think that my laugh is buried under too much moss, though. Not just unused, but covered up by other things. I won’t bore you with it now.

Instead, do you mind if I tell you a story?

Once upon a time, as all the great tales go, there was a horrible place called The Bight. It began beautifully, a jewel of an inlet, where the river opened up to the sea, where the sandy shores were divided from the old forest by a swath of open country. The Bight was perfect, briefly – where selkies could sun themselves and wisps could grow large in open air and the grazing animals were plentiful enough to have mostly-intact herds when the wyverns and dragons flew south to feed. But with all beautiful places, it attracted predators, and the men who discovered it built homes like wasp nests or termite mounds, spreading up and spiraling out.

There was a great dragon in this time called Grenior, and he knew that the men who came here were trouble. Not only because they spoiled The Bight, but because despite their weak bodies and mortal lives and minds, men are also touched by the Great Fire, and there is always a trace of power – and danger – when they are left to become great themselves.

Now, most of Grenior’s brood were largely migratory then, but in the autumns and springs of his long-ago youth, Grenior had become fond of the old forest, the shadow under the glittering seat of The Bight. He knew the wisps who were now retreating closer and closer to the tree-line, he knew the selkies who had now all but disappeared in fear of capture. He knew the nymphs who still lived free in the tightly-woven trees of the forest, the hags and their marsh-men who favored the inland bogs protected by the forest, and dark spirits who served as its guardians. And even though he did not yet know the men who were slowly overtaking The Bight, he knew enough to act.

As he flew southward one autumn, he saw vessels in the water that he had never seen before. Large vessels, teeming with men, bustling with activity. He saw the termite mounds of The Bight growing into tall spindle-spires, the blight of brick and mud and street extending its terrible wings much larger than it had mere seasons ago. And instead of leading his brood to the sunny reaches of the south, far from the dominion of men in those days, he alighted on the edge of the forest.

“Grenior,” wheezed an older dragon, dreaming of sun on his hide for the next long season, “why do we stop?”

Grenior did not answer him, because a new challenge was instead being meted out.

As the brood of dragons – not a small brood, mind, but not a truly terrifying number, as you’ll see – readied their concerns, they were met with the appearance of a conflagration of wisps.

Green-and-silver flames guttered to life right next to Grenior’s great claw. And another, some distance away. Then more, until the dragons were surrounded. And while flames are not exactly the most threatening things that a dragon can encounter, Grenior had spent the flights of his youth learning and loving the other residents of The Bight. So where other dragons may have met the wisps in fiery kind, Grenior instead bowed low to the first wisp. His brood hushed, and did likewise.

(One day you will be fortunate enough to encounter a wisp, but you will likely never see a full conflagration, as in these days the wisps keep to smaller herds. A pity, truly, but you will also never know how terrible this would feel if you were not amongst your own brood of dragons.)

“Great ones,” Grenior addressed, “we have just flown southward toward The Bight, and what we have seen threatens to claw under my scales.” Some of the brood murmured, unsure where he was going with this, but several of the wisps merely glowed in response. “The colony of man grows too great. They have already built up over the mouth of The Bight and drive creatures away from the shore. They are spreading through the open country, and soon they will be treading at the start of your paths. What will become of the forest once they venture in? What will become of the bogs and the deep magic?”

The dragons were beginning to understand, but clearly the wisps were already in agreement – a few of the flames grew larger or brighter. One sparked in response, embers floating skyward. The lilting, enticing hums of the wisps grew strong and cruel.

“They are already venturing into the forest,” came a reedy voice.

Several of the dragons started, snarling and coughing smoke. A few wisps flickered away to safety. A gnarled figure emerged at the foot of the outer trees, hunched and clinging to the shadow that the last boughs provided. The dragons, still alerted, calmed as the hag continued: “I have seen them.”

“What do you mean?”

“The men and women who have claimed The Bight have begun to stake claim here, in small ventures. Slowly, they are laying trails, exploring. Twice I have seen felled trees. They are looking for a way through, and a way to use these lands as they have the others.”

The wisps blazed at this, and more than one dragon stamped its great feet. Grenior himself was heartsick and angry – though dragons did not care for the flora of the old forest like the inhabitants, especially the hags and the wood-spirits, he knew that this pierced like the first strike of a talon.

“Men cannot do this,” hissed a member of his brood, her nostrils flaring.

The wisps blazed their assent.

“They should not,” came the hag’s call from the trees, “but order does not govern these creatures in the same way it does us.”

“They believe themselves masters of order,” Grenior rumbled, “and believe that there is none higher.”

“No.” The hag was still shadowed, protected by the trees. “But they are governed by their fear, as that is what they try to master most of all.”

I will spare you some details, as the legislative workings of dragons is certainly not written into many of our tales for a good reason. But Grenior and his clan and the wisps and the hags and their marsh-men knew what they must do, and they set out in haste to do it.

Grenior bid any of his brood who wanted to continue the migration to do so, and many did. But a noble few felt the resonant call of the old forest’s great need, and decided that protecting it was more important than many of the other things that made them feel like dragons.

The wisps were the first horror to land. Men with bright tools and charts came one at a time, or two-by-two, on expedition to understand the vast resource that loomed large at their borders. At first, they were curios of the wisps – flames from nowhere, disappearing to reappear a little further away, sweet music that turned sickly when they realized they had left their companions, or their tools, behind with their bearings on the trail. I will not share what the wisps did with those first men – the ones they didn’t just abandon – but they also began to lead them toward the hags, who were all too happy to provide these lost men with either a fright to carry home or their own gruesome end.

Grenior’s brood had an easier part of the bargain – patrol the skies, steal a meal from a pasture here and there. There were only three or four dragons in total then, who had not ventured south or returned to the craggy peaks, and Grenior did not want the men to know how truly few there were in comparison to the great numbers they saw each migration.

And it worked for a while. Younger humans would still come, as a test of bravery, and scamper off at the first hum of a wisp or caw of some bird. The expeditioners were few, but they were tasty and the things they carried were shiny, and for decades and decades, Grenior helped protect the forest, and his dwindled but dedicated brood began to amass a hoard like all good dragons need to be happy, and the wisps and the hags and the marsh-men and the spirits and even the nymphs, who did not treat with the great protectors often, were safe.

What happened next was not on purpose.

It started as the folly of a nymph, actually, some years after great Grenior’s passing.

Grenior had been young to lead a brood, and his few loyal kinsdragons began to fall to time as he did. By the time the great magics had reclaimed him, there was one other left. She had been called something else from her hatching, but we remember her as Defender, or Araminta.

Araminta was not truly great by dragon standards, but she was wise (many dragons are not) and at Grenior’s demise she was troubled. No dragons had successfully nested in the old forest in the many years since the brood had splintered, and though fear of the wisps and the hags and especially the dragons had kept humankind away from the recesses of the forest for years, she knew that would not hold after her own death. And indeed, it barely endured Grenior’s – somehow, the men grew bolder. Great noises and lights and fires overtook The Bight from time to time, and it seemed to make them restless, as they began to leave in broods of their own, first by night but then occasionally by day.

Most of the venturers left into the hinterlands, the place beyond the open country and away from the forest that is lost to much dragon memory in these parts. I do not know if that is where the crags and peaks of Grenior and Araminta’s homeland was, or if it is elsewhere and is still home to them. I fear that if it is where these men went so purposefully, there may not be dragons there at all any longer.

Araminta warned the other forest beings about this movement, especially after she patrolled the skies to find fearsome fires at some reaches of the men’s nest. She remembered what Grenior taught her, about mankind also being born of the Great Fire, possessing some level of knowledge and maybe even magic, and knew that even though these great bellowing fires looked like destruction, they could be hiding something more insidious.

Araminta did not, however, tell the nymphs. Which wasn’t entirely her fault – the nymphs are a bit soft, you see, and did not take to the old forest’s means of protecting itself. They believed that there were other ways to deal with men, but they were also the ones who lost sisters when the men first arrived and felled trees. You’d think, as old as they are, their memories would be longer, but they still eschewed the protective measures of Grenior and the wisps and especially the hags.

So as the men began their own migration, some got so emboldened as to try the abandoned paths into the old forest again. With fewer dragons and wisps that were a bit out of practice and great fires at their back, a small brood made it further than any men had in years. But they stumbled across an enclave of the lilac-orange wisps, and they fled.

It is interesting, thought Araminta later, how men assemble a brood. There was a male and a female and several little ones, which did not seem like a way to explore (dragons leave their little ones in the nests until they can reasonably fly, hunt, and fend for themselves).

The brood was heavy-laden, and in their retreat, some of their trinkets and treasures were scattered to be free of their extra weight. In their fear, however, they had also outpaced one of the smaller members of their group: a little male, dark and baleful, who was soon so alone and so terrified he could only whimper.

He happened to take refuge in a nymph-grove, and a dryad of Birch was startled to awake to his presence. Dryads especially resemble men, but are much more beautiful in their barks and green leafy hair, but the resemblance to a female of his own kind must have been great reassurance to the small man. Indeed, it was. She was desperate to help and made the tremendously brave decision to return him to his brood, though she knew that this would be perilous for herself. The Birch nymph made haste, consulting with other dryads and naiads along her way, using the languages of the old forest to retrace the path of the mortally-startled men.

She found them. She was so relieved that they seemed to be looking for their lost member, but delight soured. As she approached, leading the little man, the older male and female blanched and stilled. The other small men, of varying sizes, did their best to get small and hide. The Birch nymph, unsure how to communicate with them, led the lost hatchling as close to them as she dared.

The men cowered, retreated as he tried to return to them. They were paler than the foolish nymph who returned him as the small human approached. In stricken tones, they called him “Changeling” and bade him stay away. And as his little face crumpled, as he began to wail, they shrunk back, afraid he would run to them for comfort.

And the dryad of the Birch tree knew that this little human was now othered, a victim of the forest that had worked so hard to make itself formidable to the men at its edges. So she gathered him up, hushed him, and returned home with him.

She had grown fond of little Changeling, but the dryad could not take the tiny man into her tree, and he was very evidently not fed by sunlight and soil (she tried). The naiads could not house him, either, though he was fond of the water, which they approved of greatly. All the nymphs knew what would become of Changeling if they took him to the hags, so there was only one place left to go.

Araminta was not a great dragon, not by dragon standards, but in the short time of her lonely reign her wisdom had earned her reverence in the eyes of even the nymphs, who had feared Grenior and hated the ways that he had taught the forest to protect itself at the expense of even men’s lives. So the Birch nymph knew that the aging dragon was her last resort.

Deep in the forest, where the tributaries of the river are winding and the air is soft and dark, the playful magic of the nymphs is replaced with more reverence. This was where Grenior had made the dragons’ home, to easily commune with the other guardians. Around a curve of a brook and between heavy, gnarled trees even older than the nymphs, the old dragon rested on the hoard of tools and trinkets and jewels from the far-off past of a different, larger brood.

The Birch dryad presented Araminta first with some of the things that Changeling’s brood had dropped in the forest, but Araminta was not easily put off scent.

“What else do you bring me, Birch?” she asked gently (for a dragon).

The nymph’s voice was usually warm and lilting, but her plea sounded atypically thin. Even Changeling knew she was desperate as she said, “Araminta. Please.”

The little man was deposited at the edge of the hoard.

“This is Changeling,” she tremored. She was dwarfed by the dragon. “He was abandoned here, I think by mistake. But his family wouldn’t take him back from me. They were so afraid of him.”

“Of him?” Araminta’s tail flicked relaxedly. “He does not frighten me, he is only a hatchling.”

“Yes,” said the Birch dryad breathlessly. “They seemed afraid of him because of me – because I brought him out of the trees back to them.”

The dragon’s large eyes roved over the human, considering.

“I cannot care for him. He is not like a nymph. You know more about humans – what can we do?”

“We?”

The dryad quaked. “Araminta, I know you are wise. You have protected this forest with a gentler claw – surely, some mercy is within their reach, too. Perhaps you could take him to another colony? Or if not, help us to feed him until we know how to care for him ourselves? He is so little, and he will die alone.”

Araminta considered this. She knew the dangers of one man, but she also had great respect for the gentleness of nymphs, and did not want to see a hatchling of any species be consumed by the other protectors of the forest.

“Rest easy, Birch,” she breathed. “You may leave Changeling with me for a time. I will help hunt and provide for him until you can rear him of your own.”

Blooms appeared, scattered in the nymph’s foliage. “Oh, Araminta, you are great indeed. Thank you. I will return again to check on him tomorrow – and I will tell my sisters of your kindness.”

The nymph did as she said, but more importantly, so did the dragon. Araminta cared for the young man, providing him with meat that she roasted, speaking gently to him, nestling her under his wing. Changeling did not grow quickly – she knew that men gained independence far slower than dragons already – but she was soon surprised by how attached to the small man that she was becoming.

The birch dryad and many of her nymph sisters would visit and play with him, and as Changeling grew, little by little, he learned the old forest from the ground up, and it learned him. His totters became surer, he was able to understand and respond in broken pieces to the lilts of the nymphs and the rumbles of the dragon and even the occasional glow of a wisp. And something stranger began to happen: the forest began to not just know him, but love him.

“Love” might seem like a strange word, but what else is it that you protect? And as surely as the beings of the forest protected their home, they knew that should the need arise, they would protect him. And as he slept curled under Araminta’s wing, atop the glittering hoard, he eclipsed it in value to the gentle, great dragon.

And as he grew, he changed. In little ways still, but as though he was changing sideways instead of growing up. He began to get longer, growl more clearly. His eyes became far-seeing, his skin tough, his talons sharp. And the old magic of the forest, the thing that needed protection most and least of all, worked in Changeling as it had worked long ago when the forest was new. It chose him as it had the first wisps and nymphs and even the first hags, chose him as the nymph had saved him, as Araminta had protected him. And one day, slowly but suddenly, Araminta found that Changeling had become like her. And not only she but the nymphs and the wisps and even the hags understood what a gift they had been given, and they loved him even more for it.

It is funny – stories are like stretches. They are both the practice and the precursor. I feel unburdened, after years of this silence breaking, and this is the first of many gratitudes that I will get to offer you, I’m sure.

I know that you do not understand this yet, but I am committed to tell you again. It took me many years to remember it, and I have had many more to remind myself, even after the others have not been able to remind me.

It is impossible to outlive a forest naturally, but things still change. This is not the realm that it once was – many of the nymphs have been lost, long ago when the men attempted to expand again. The great fires and loud noises were like what I barely remember, a lifetime ago when I was first driven away. It was a great period of mourning, and losing them felt like losing sisters, or mothers.

My mother instilled in me a great respect for all beings, especially knowing that the great fires burn deep within even the ones that seek to harm me, or the forest, or my friends. I promised her that I would follow in her footsteps – that any guardians to join our rank would not be taken, but would be found. Like I was.

It has been so quiet here. Everything is overgrown, and I feel that way too. But sometimes there are still little bright fires and little hums, sometimes a mad cackle, sometimes a rushing stream, and those and my rumbles have been enough to keep us safe.

But I have been ready for you. I’m so sorry that I called you a disruption earlier – I promise, it’s just as the cobwebs shake off. My growl feels as gravel, so little have I spoken in the decades past. I may not be the great dragon of my mother, but I will always work to follow in her step and fly in her wing-beat.

I do not know what they call you, little one, and I do not know why I was called Changeling. But I am happy to take the years to learn, and to pass on all I know.