The Dragon Naturalist

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Most days, there were none at all. But there were always fresh reminders that this was no place to wander. Spoor that didn’t stop glowing for days, like something tipped gently from a giant casting ladle, holding lazy folds that one might mistake for cooling lava piled into graceful forms, perched like infernal icing on the boulders. Half-eaten things that were too small for the giant snouts to scavenge from the smaller rocky crevices where they had tumbled during a meal — “burnt orts” my father had called them. These bits were always charred into inedibility from what Naturalists termed the “finishing flare”: a sort of brief fiery rinse of the feeding area that burned all blood and residue into an inorganic-looking patina on the rocks, leaving nothing to draw crows and rats. Dragons were clean that way.

This housecleaning instinct was so strong that local peoples had learned to place blood-stained pottery in the Valley just to get a dragon to flare over it, creating the inimitable metallic sheen that could only come from the components of that greasy breath burning in place like a hellish lacquer. The process also seemed to skin the pot with a layer that forever proofed the crockery against breaking. And the best weapons were dragon-cured by the same means: blood-dipped swords and axes lain out in the Valley gained an everlasting anti-rust sheen, with the one drawback that one could never carry such arms with hopes of sneaking past a dragon because the smell would give one’s self away.

I had such a gleaming finish on the one metal thing I carried in the Valley today, an oddity that combined hook and shovel and adze and axe in a sort of lifetime toolkit joined into a single handle. I used it now as a pick to search through the orts and spoor for any trace of my father, and each plunge into the sooty mess saw it emerge shining and unsullied, a somber metaphor for my pure-minded task to poke through such foul leavings, to which I had diligently returned for a week now, to no result yet.

As to why no one placed helms and armor out for the same polish, too many stories explained the lesson. For what would a touring dragon flapping overhead think of seeing a column of marching men, clad in just the right shining gleam of flare-cured metal, winding through greenery or open roads? It would think the company to be the sinuous metallic flow of another dragon, which would then have to be met with a quick descent, and, on the ground, given an unfurling of all the excited social posturing that, if ignored or not returned in kind, would result in a territorial grapple anywhere outside the Valley, which was the only place where dragons dropped such aggressions to make a crowded rookery. And an armored column of men before an aroused dragon were no more than shiny beetles before a playful cat: stomped and batted and bitten one by one —

At last, following the prodding tip of my tool through the collapsing chunks of char and bone, I thought to see something brighter in the fish-scale finish that gleamed back from every surface. It had a warmer glow, something more manmade than the eerie monotony of silver all around. I prodded harder at the black molten shell encasing the burnt clump, careful not to lose the crumbling loaf to the nearest crack as it shed broken pieces, and finally saw the tiny embedded form of a golden figure, hunched up small, like a metallic fetus. And then I thought to hear the sneak of heavy paws. I turned slowly, slow as the hands of a clock, so that any rustle I might make would not drown out the hushed sound of footfalls, but saw nothing. I was surrounded by spires of stone that stood like silent thugs, some crowned by harder stone hats they had worn for centuries as the softer rocks wore away around them. All about, there were “rubs” too, where great stones were polished with yet-more-silvery patches where the geometry of the rock was just right for stroking away branches clinging to a scaly spine after adventures, or to peel back the starting tear of a splitting skin.

And, of course, giant shed skins lay about here and there in states of dismemberment, eyeless and gaping like huge serpent puppets. One drooped beside me, like a great slumping tent, giving me hope that its former wearer was not nearby, or if near at least too well-fed to wake. Outside the Valley, skins showed up rarely, as when a windstorm pushed one up and over the Valley’s edge so that it rolled crazily in the air like a mangled parchment kite, billowing with pseudo life, before crashing and draping itself around a steeple like a giant lost sock. The villagers were savvy enough that they didn’t fear the lifeless form but rather what it would summon: in certain seasons, dragons were keen to recover nutrients by eating their skins, or those of their neighbors, and would often wheel down from the sky to claim an errant skin they had seen from a great height. But since the spent skins were nearly as tough as when worn by the original owner, it was a complicated process for a dragon to eat a skin as a dog might chew a hide: by many degrees of sloppy gnawing, while held between the great paws. So leaving a storm-tossed skin near a town could then mean the nuisance of a dragon visiting for days, denning clumsily in a barn or hall, or simply sleeping on a roof that would forever after be too swaybacked to trust, if it could stand the unwelcome weight at all.

Convinced that the padding rhythm I’d heard was just some excited warble of my heart, I reached quickly for the tiny statue baked into the ort before me. The sooty block gave way, and I held in one hand the tiny remnant of my father, which he had sent me to retrieve via careful instructions before his recent travels.

It was a stunning moment, like grasping the base of the forking candelabra shape of one’s own lineage, if that single stem could fit in the palm of a hand. In this curled golden shape, this little metal embryo, I held all the shrunken instructions, all the footnotes, all the miniature frozen memories of every nerve and cell and wrinkle of a man who had been dead a week, but who could supposedly be re-writ into being, like oak from acorn, if this tiny relic was given the right mold and right living soup to rise within.

But that, too, would depend on dragons. Though I’d sifted this dense kernel of my father from dragon middens, it would be no more than a mantel curiosity forever if I could not make the womb-like bath in which it could grow to full size. And that bath was fresh dragon spittle itself, the same salve that the beasts would dab and lick into their own giant wounds with their giant prehensile tongues here in the comfort of the Valley after their tussles and raids. The slime was a rich gel that prompted cut or burnt flesh to crawl back into shape, without scar or disfigurement, obedient to its original form. A glistening tub of the stuff could heal an army, but that wasn’t often done because one would first need an army to take such a tub-worth from a dragon.

And here I was, seeking if not a bucketful of the stuff, then perhaps at least a cup, to re-grow my deceased parent. This, too, was not often done, because one would first need to die in only one way: by dragon flame, and then already outfitted with the little fetal-shaped pendant that would encode all of your being into its crystal centre as you were charred away in the same instant into pure energy. Though not strictly career-ending, it was a rare death, and for a career not many aspired to: Dragon Naturalist.

That had been my father’s role, and his reason over many years for getting too close to dragons too often, not for bravado but to sample and understand the many ways that dragons did such unnatural-seeming things, and how we might harness those elemental abilities for our own weaker selves. How flames could erupt from their unscathed throats and smolder in their droppings, how exactly the silver flare patina was made, what hidden glands secreted the fireproof scales, and, most importantly of all, how the magical saliva, this elixir of life and healing, might be extracted in volume and put toward not just curing wounds but extending human life. These were the things that humans had stolen only fleetingly and piecemeal, in one brave fable here and there, and all as one-off feats: scales rendered down to make a lone magic sword, a desperate use of drool to revive a beloved queen or special slain hero, but never in any rigorous way that everyone might understand and use. Dragons granted these glimpses at power and immortality only rarely, and at great cost.

And so, before his final errand, my father knew well that he might pay the cost for tugging at the heavy curtain that veiled such secrets. He had planned to go deep into the Valley, to the very floor that one could glimpse from the upper rim: a dry river winding like a neat piece of tailor’s tape, chalky white against the silvery ranks of spires, cones, pillars, and many weird shapes that studded the Valley’s slopes like endless rows of teeth. The path to the bottom was an unthinkable gauntlet for anyone sane, for any of those rocky phantoms could rouse in an instant and reveal itself to be the craggy lines of a merely resting dragon, pewter on silver on grey, rising in irritation to spit a burst of pink and orange.

And yet, it was just such an invisible sleeper that I was hoping to find today. In his careful plan for resurrection should anything go very wrong, my father had first found me a source of the slime needed to regrow him from the little votive figure: a wounded dragon, one which had returned to the Valley more battered than usual, likely from a heavier fiend that had lashed it cruelly with tail-blade and talons so that long gouges curved from shoulder to flank. For weeks, my father had stalked this weakened creature; waiting, well hidden in his grey cloak and stone mask, he had watched from high ground to confirm that it anointed itself daily with long shining licks that outlined its wounds before flattening its great bulk seamlessly upon the rocky rubble, varied flaps and spines disguising all edges, hidden in plain sight like an overgrown viper. Even the great wings collapsed cleverly so they fell in random folds and spikes that matched the lumpy stones, all to better conceal the resting form from any stronger interloper who might decide to thrash a lessened competitor out of the Valley for good.

On the tiny map I had copied into my palm with sticky ink, my father had sketched the landmarks by which I might triangulate the placement of the silent creature from several odd pinnacles which had finally come into view after all my furtive hiking. At first, I dared not step into that triangle without first spotting the dragon, but passing my young eyes again and again over the same plaza-sized patch of stone yielded no clue at all of jaw or wing or haunch, just a marbled jumble of grey and silver shards. Nor even did a rise and fall of breath betray its stillness, for dragon lungs pumped an internal bellows of sorts that let their outline keep a statuesque pose. Like everything a dragon did, even when lying still, it was masterful and inscrutable.

At last I sighed and reached gently through my pack for what I had hoped not to need at all, or ever: a dragon-waking tool. Much as the herders of the North had learned to make tiny pipes that only their dogs could hear, the tiny stone bowl I now unwrapped was perfectly proportioned so that it would ring like a silent bell when its rim was rubbed with the little rod pegged to its side. That song would then penetrate the skull of any dragon nearby, making a searing itch of the ear that, much as the tiny footfalls of a fly will toss even the head of a warhorse, would make a dragon flinch and squail just long enough to break the invisible pose in which it hid before me. The idea was that a short sounding of the bowl would merely make the creature ripple peacefully in its sleep without waking. And, once seeing its contours, I could see where I might steal closer and scrape some of the dust-caked glop from its wounds, and be gone.

I placed the translucent bowl on a squarish stone, thinking that my sweaty grasp might muffle its ringing in just the wrong way. Lifting the stroking-rod from its ring, I placed it on the smoothed lip of the bowl as lightly as I could so as not to fumble and tap out too strong a call. I winced and tried to imagine how wrongly this could go. I had never done this before.

Slowly, I rasped the tiny rod forward, hugging the bowl with the lightest stroke I could make, one full pass around the rim. It made no sound at all, no scrape nor scratch, as though I had rubbed fur on fur. Surely that was not enough.

Closing my hand around the bowl to quiet any lasting signal, I suddenly felt where my father had notched the bowl’s rim with a tiny mark, only a quarter of the way round. Turning the thing over, I finally noticed his even tinier hand-scratched warning: “NO FURTHER.”

I looked up, and the empty patch of ground in which I had strained to find any form at all seemed to swirl like gauze in a breeze, as though I were watching grains of gruel take their first swims in a boiling pot. And then, in that shimmer of stony bits, I realized that I was watching what no Naturalist may have even seen before, or perhaps had seen so soon before death that it was never shared with anyone: the dragon’s scales themselves were turning from rough to smooth, like rough wax burnished flat with a flame, their craggy hectic outlines that defied all pattern suddenly falling into sleek alignment with every length of skin that rose from the Valley floor, puddled chains of silver coins lifted from gravel in a graceful sweep. So perfect had been its guise of debris and yet all the rude facets of its wasteland camouflage vanished as the rising dragon took form before me as a polished thing of silver.

It was beautiful. First rose the neck — a harp, a bow, a whip of metal that stretched like a winding vine, arcing triumphantly overhead. Then the bulk of the torso followed, like a century-old tree growing all in an instant, with aeons’ worth of strength steeled in its final pose. Finally, the flared wings, rising like a silver shipwreck in reverse, with billowing sails spread suddenly. And all silently, as though the whole monster were a silk scarf pulled from a padded box —

The wings suddenly dropped, as though they had spread mainly to stretch, breaking my reverie, but all at once I could see my plan was a failure. The dragon was impossibly close, terrifyingly big, as massive as a bridge, if a bridge could be angry. I could finally see the gleaming tracks on its side where the damaged scales were cut and bent askew from their perfect rows. The furrows were gummy with silver blood and the jellied salve, but well out of reach, as high as a church-roof gutter. I fell back as the head pointed toward the sound of my scuffling feet, and saw why my father had perhaps thought this plan could work: the eyes had been slashed through in whatever battle had sent it back to lick its wounds in the Valley, one socket tightly shut, the other bulging with an orb that barely pushed aside swollen lids and ooze. The tongue dabbed nimbly at this eye to clear it of grime but it was clear the dragon was nearly sightless still in the remaining steps of healing.

Nonetheless it could hear, and even find me simply by casting about with neck and tail, so I scrambled away from the sweep of its reach, thinking desperately to claw my way to a good enough height that the nearby spires might miraculously divert any spiteful blast of flame that might be cast toward my panicked steps. Even now, the slender end-blade of the tail lashed quickly between the surrounding rocks like a great probing needle, feeling for a soft target that would be the pest that had poked it with the silent alarm. Centuries of molestation by human prodding had tuned dragons with layered reflexes of annoyance, as a man does not even think to swat the vague shape of an insect near his brow—

Turning, I slipped and knocked the little bowl skittering from its perch, shattering it on the rocks. Even in my crazed flight, I felt a pang of sadness for yet another piece of my father lost, filtering down forever into the cracks of the Valley. But as I watched the shards fly apart I was quickly overcome by the weirder sense that the fragments made no sound at all, almost as if, in breaking, the bowl made the opposite of a sound, a loud silence that expanded outward and rushed past me, even absorbing my hoarse panting and scrabbling —

And I could see that, silently, the dragon heard it. Its bulk pulsed briefly, tail pausing, the great head cringing as though struck, the one squinting eye squirting a thick droplet. But, just as soon, another head rose from the rocks on a nearby ridge. It reared with none of the majesty of the injured animal, but with a snakelike quickness, snout swiveling to fix in my direction. This was yet a greater dragon, not hurt at all, only resting, waked by the silent tones of the breaking bowl, rising from where it had lain upslope in equal invisible fashion. Its waking glance was unmarred, and its clean silver eyes looked through me to take in the larger situation: a slower rival, unconcealed, festooned with injuries, vulnerable. It unraveled swiftly, fast as the chain of a sinking anchor, and flowed downslope in a soundless streak.

My father had always called dragons the Perfect Animal, and that is what they were. Stories of talking dragons posing riddles, singing songs, arguing with kings and empresses — all this was child-safe fantasy, fodder for moral tales and bedtime banter. The brutal mass of a dragon had no gift of speech. It was like nothing else. It was the chaotic weight of a falling boulder, a lithe chunk of geology, lava sheathed in scales. It was a miracle that such force could even be packaged in a living thing. The two dragons struck with the orchestral clang of meeting armies, shining hides searing past one another in a deafening metallic rattle, each row of scales screeching past its mirror opposite, and the pair crashed downhill.

The course of their grapple scarred the slope wherever the rocks were not silvered fully by dragon flare, any unconsolidated spires toppling like chessmen, grinding into a coarse bed of sliding cobble and silt beneath. Dragons had no voice to roar, nor trumpet, nor rarely even hissed, but in their blows they rang like giant hammers, like the turning gears of hell.

Beside the churning storm of scales and stones, I had lost all sense of strategy, madly dodging crumbling piers, squirming below and under whatever seemed safer from one instant to the next, carried along in the flowing mass of the collapsing hill. At last I was flung into the lee of a well-silvered stone, and I saw that the wreckage gathered there had ground against the battling pair and was now painted with the shining blood of the wounded dragon, and, bound in splashes of that metallic juice, the thick jelly I had come to find.

I clawed madly at the stones to find one to which clung the best balance of silver and slime but also small enough to lift. At last my hands closed about one the size of a cabbage, gleaming with veins of shining goo, and I struggled to my feet. And as the titans writhed below, I found the crevasse through which I had slunk slowly down throughout the whole morning in such care and silence, and now simply ran headlong through the steep hallway of stony walls. I ran, hunched, hugging the slimy stone to my chest like a thief, a fugitive from noisy gods. I ran, ratlike, without stealth or shame, with a giddy fury rising within me, exultant in my escape. As the hellish noise faded behind me, I was happy to be small, happy to flee with my tiny life, chased completely off of the great stage where these beasts roiled like violent weather, like landslides, like angry fallen stars. And I fled the Valley, alive.

The resurrection took seven days. Compared to my task in the Valley, it had all the drama of rising bread. In his bed, my father had left a great wooden tray, lacquered inside, and carved to a manlike shape, like unto a close-fitting coffin. In the center, I placed the amulet that housed his encoded form, still dusted with silver from the folds of my cloak where it had hidden all the way home. I dared not clean it and risk diminishing anything writ into its surface, for I understood nearly nothing of how it had been made, only that it had been made to use just once.

The stone I had brought from the Valley was now skinned over with a fleshy hide that coated its former coating, but with a heated knife, I slit this dried jacket to reveal the still-wet jelly beneath. Filling the tray with boiled water, I stirred in all of the gel that I could retrieve, veins of shining blood still marbling the liquid’s surface. I figured that the blood and spittle came from the same source, so there was no sense in losing time with meticulous spoon work to separate the two. I drew a damp cloth across the tray and began my long vigil.

Through that week I dreamt my trip to the Valley innumerable times, woven through with panicked wakings in which I found only the quiet tray beside me, rising slightly higher with a vague form swelling beneath the cloth. And then, in sleep, again the heave and crash of the great scaly bodies, the stare of the silver eyes, the shattered bowl, all in inalterable detail. As my mind reeled to fix each memory into a final glassy whole, the sun rose and set until the days became a honeyed blur, and fell to blurry slumber. I know only that I finally woke to the orange light of morning, and my father, placing a weak hand on my arm, nude and whole but for the cloth stretched over the moist empty tray, smiling at me with eyes that were definitely his own, yet more silvery than they had ever been, seeming every bit of his glowing 300 years.

The rising morning light now gilded my mother’s bed, and her smaller tray, where both had stood for the last many years. “Tomorrow,” my father said softly, and settled serenely back to the wooden outline that framed him, to sleep.

And at last I slid to the floor and slept freely, waiting til tomorrow to learn what that would mean.