The Beautiful Bird

The Beautiful Bird

By Lyndsay Ryor

Smykvyllycrys was hungry. Famished, honestly. Starving, really. The sheep that was yesterday’s breakfast had been naught but skin and bones and floof and hoof.

“Pathetic what passes for livestock around here,” he said to no one.

What he really wanted, what he craved was a fat, juicy pig; well-scorched, fat still crackling on its way down his long throat.

A runnel of oily drool escaped his toothy maw. So very undignified for a dragon, but why should he care? Who would see? In the months since he’d been exiled, he’d devoured every winged thing that dared to fly above this swathe of gods-forsaken forest. He’d swallowed the last ‘V’ of fat Autumn geese a month ago and hadn’t seen so much as a sparrow since.

Frustrated, he swooped down and loosed a great belch of violet-hued dragon-fyre, engulfing a large patch of scraggly, lichen-encrusted oaks in flames, their dead leaves disappearing with a crackle.

It didn’t make him feel better, not one bit.

He circled around and descended, landing in a small clearing, intent to gaze upon his fyre. He watched the trees burn, then crumble to smoldering coals. He gazed, mesmerized, at the orange and purple embers glowing in the black bones of the tree. Dragon-fyre wasn’t supposed to be purple any more then red dragons were supposed…

“Ooo! ‘Ello, birb!”

He whipped his head around, and his long neck followed. Standing behind him on two chubby little legs was a child’o’man, about the size of his head. A girl-child, it appeared, from the two curly wisps of yellow hair sprouting up from either side of its overly large noggin.

Finally, a stroke of luck! It wasn’t a pig, true, but the child looked well-fattened all the same. He’d never eaten any people; it was outlawed by dragon-kind since the Treaty of Offering had been agreed upon, but who’d know? And anyway, he practically was an outlaw, wasn’t he? And it was just a little peoplekin, after all.

He brought his hillock of a body around, lifting his wings and flapping them once with an intimidating WHUMP as he turned to face her, snaking his long neck and baring his teeth at his breakfast. Scared meat is tasty meat, his mother always said.

He moved towards her, stomping his enormous, clawed feet, causing the earth to rumble.

She was shaking! Quivering in fear! She hid her face behind her tiny hands, eyes wide in terror, as his head descended on her, she squealed and then… giggled?

“’Ello, birb!” She repeated and giggled.

This was not going as expected.

His nostrils flared as he huffed a blast of air that blew her little piggy tails back.

“Oooo, tickles!” she squealed in delight.

He gawked at the child in a very undragonlike manner. What was wrong with her?

“’Ello, birb!” she said, again, waving a little hand at him.

“I’m sorry but are you… did you just call me a bird?!” His voice cracked with disuse. Dragons could talk as people talk, but they didn’t like to, and anyway he hadn’t seen any people since… that last sacrifice.

“Pwitty, burpley birb,” she declared, nodding fiercely, “Booful birb!”

She thought he was… beautiful? Ridiculous. He’d wyrm his way into her mind and teach her proper fear!

He brought his head down and faced her, dragon-eyes-to-child-eyes, and unfocused his violet orbs in just such a way, letting them become swirling galaxies of light and stars to enthrall her.

When her little body slumped and her eyes glazed over, he began. He focused and projected a small part of his mind, pushing it up out of him and down into the little peoplekin’s mind. He wasn’t particularly skilled at this trick; he could perceive basic fears and send back vague images and sounds at best, but it would be enough to teach her fear.

Instead, she taught him.

The images in her head were not at all vague, and the strength with which she projected them was immense. He had no need to dig for images – she gave them to him, complete with feelings and sensations.

He was held against a soft body, he was sleepy and warm and full of delicious, sweet milk. He was held high above a man, tossed in the air, flying then falling, scared, but a good kind of scared, trusting the man’s strong arms and grinning face, knowing he’d never be dropped. The sun was warm, and the air smelled sweet with lilacs. Laughter bubbled out of him while he watched a tiny kitten chase a butterfly, then a green grasshopper, then its own tail until it got dizzy, tripped over its own paws, and fell down. The man, the woman, the kitten, a cow, a horse, a pig, butterflies, bees, ants and birds and birds and birds. He watched the birds from the window of the little house; he’d never noticed there were so many different kinds. Blue ones, yellow ones, red ones, green ones, every color ones, and so many sizes, even tiny little iridescent ones he'd never seen with his dragon eyes – they would have seemed so small and insignificant, but they were so exquisite seen through these little eyes. He heard the songs of the birds and the chopping of an axe, the lowing of a cow, the mew of the kitten and a name – just two syllables over and over and over again, “Lee-Lee” – he heard it murmured softly in the dark as he drifted off to sleep, whispered softly in the early morning; he heard it said in reprimand, consternation, frustration; he heard it sung in a lullaby and a lively jig; and then he heard it screamed in panic.

Lee-Lee!

He was shushed and stuffed into a wooden box – no, a cupboard - and covered with sewing scraps, outgrown clothes, and old blankets. It was dark and stuffy, and now he knew fear. He knew he musn’t make a sound, and he didn’t, not even when he heard the rough voices; not even when he heard them grow louder and not even when the screaming started, laughing and grunting and crying all at the same time; not even when he heard the sharp yelp of a kicked dog, or when the whimpering of the dog came to a sudden stop and the whimpering of the woman a less sudden stop; he swallowed every sound that tried to escape his throat until it got so very quiet, and his throat hurt from not screaming, and then he couldn’t have made a sound if he wished. He was all frozen up inside, eyes squinched shut against the darkness and the sound of footsteps, closer, closer, stopping. The creaking of the cupboard door, the sound of disgust at the pile of rags and moth-eaten linens that wasn’t gold or food or anything useful at all. Just invisible Lee-Lee, waiting to breathe until the door was kicked shut and for some time after, and Smykvyllycrys knew fear, as no dragon ever had. He stayed under those stuffy blankets for hours, maybe a day, maybe more.

There was bright sunlight when he cracked the cupboard door, blinding his eyes after so much darkness, and so he smelled it before he saw it; the metallic tinge of blood, and as his vision began to clear, he knew not just fear, but terror, and it jarred him out of the thrall he’d shared with the child. With Lee-Lee.

He blinked and flicked his eyes back to violet. She blinked her little grey-blue eyes and he saw a tear trickle down her face. Just one. If dragons could cry, he would have wept then, but he just said softly, “Lee-Lee.” And then he laid down on the ground and curled up, his tail tucked under his chin, the way he had when he was just a small dragonkin; a time which somehow seemed not so long ago as it had that morning. Lee-Lee climbed up and nestled into the crook of his leg. She slept, and after a long hour of wondering how he’d been so arrogant to believe he could teach anyone fear, so did he.

A dream awoke him, or rather he awoke in a dream, which was strange, since dragons don’t dream. It was Lee-Lee’s dream, though, shared between their sleeping minds, and he saw himself now, through her eyes. He was a shiny-scaled, purple dragon with shimmering wings in hundreds of shades of purple and lavender, breathing purple sparkling fire, and he was glorious, marvelous, wonderous, and yes, even booful. But he knew he wasn’t, and so he showed her his truth.

He showed her how he was shunned by his red dragon-kin because he was purple, not crimson, not scarlet, nor even burgundy; but purple, and ugly and he didn’t belong with them in the Red Valley. He didn’t belong anywhere, for there never had been, and never should have been a purple dragon. Smykvyllycrys had been named after his grandsire, Smykvyllycrys, the Great. Dragons were named before they hatch, or he was sure they wouldn’t have honored him with that name. And now they called him Smykvyllycrys, the Grape.

He showed her the fights that made him so fierce and strong, and the damp, earthen cave where he slept alone, far from the colony of crystal-encrusted caves where the real red dragons lived.

He showed her The Place of The Offering; a ring of tall, upright, grey-blue stones where men brought fat cattle and pigs and sheep and goats to offer to the red dragons. They did not worship the dragons, they feared the dragons, and this was right and good, for the dragons were huge and fierce, and the sacrifices they Offered were to thank the dragons for not eating them and burning their homes and villages and towns and farms and trees for hundreds of years.

He showed her the day he went for his first turn to take an Offering – he’d fought for that first turn, that rite of passage all red dragons waited for. It would be his proof, his confirmation. And then the men had laughed at him. Puny little men laughing at him. A dragon. It was all too much, and he’d reared and cavorted and snorted gouts of violet flames to frighten them. He’d devoured all of the Offerings raw, and a horse or two that had not been Offerings for good measure, and then he’d flown away, breathing his purple fire on their windmill and grain tower on the way back to his dank, dark cave.

He showed her the day he was driven from the Red Valley. Dragons don’t have trials or anything so formal, of course, so they simply drove him out. All seven of the full-grown dragons, including his mother were there, and his clutch-mates, and even his small cousins, born just last season.

“Smykvyllycrys, for breaking the rules of the Treaty of Offering, you are exiled, never to return,” his father had proclaimed.

Then they had all chased him away, breathing their red flames at him. Flames couldn’t hurt a dragon, of course. Not really.

He showed all of this to Lee-Lee so she would understand who he was.

“No,” said Lee-Lee.

“No?” he asked.

“No, Villa-kriss!”

And she showed him who he could be.

She showed him a tiny girl, asleep in the crook of his leg, hugging it and smiling in her sleep.

She showed him a laughing girl, tickled by the chuff of air from his nostrils.

She showed him a shining, shimmering beautiful, and yes, purple dragon, scales iridescent in the sun, chasing the laughing girl through a field, among butterflies and grasshoppers, and chasing his own tail until he got dizzy.

She showed him a little girl, leaning on the shoulder of this beautiful dragon, singing to him and warming her tiny, pink toes by a purpley-orange campfire.

She showed him, finally, and this was the best thing of all, a little girl clinging to the back of a huge dragon, flying through the night sky, her pigtails blown back, screaming in fear, but the good kind of fear. The kind that feels good because you could fall, but you trust you won’t be dropped.