The Dragon Slayer

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. I have faint memories of a childhood without them; the Peace Years, before the beasts returned to quell the serenity of our village. I was privileged (a word my mother used) to be born into a world without fear. It wasn’t bravery, however, (she made certain to remind me). I had simply never faced the chaos of a tooth's edge or the scorch of fiery breath. To my mother, I was spoiled.

So the beasts lived in her stories. Whispered into the air I slept, breathed back into existence. In daylight, the bedtime tales transformed to warnings, hissed between clenched teeth to scare me from wandering, to warn me of the ways dragons found naughty girls especially delicious "like a fat Christmas hen". It was through no fault of my own, that the beasts became myths.

I was bright, even at such a young age, to see past my mother’s empty threats. There were no dragons to lift me from my bed when I burned my cheeks eating the huckleberry filling of my mother’s pies, blaming the emptied shells on my brother. No dragons to scorch our home when I lit my best pair of stockings aflame in the fires of our cooking stove. I blame my mother for making these childish warnings; I blame her for my disbelief. Had she not filled my mind with such fairy tales, perhaps I would not have eventually suffered the dragon’s wrath.

We were spared for years before it nearly took my life. A septennium, before the winged monsters returned on the night of my seventh year. My mother had neared the loss of her sanity at this point, although I had nothing to compare her stoic, empty demeanor, other than the tales of the person she once was. Out of range from the woman’s ears, others told me of the woman she’d been: her vibrance, her liveliness, her ability to outwit any man. Like the dragons, these were claims I struggled to believe; my mother, the woman who laughed little more than ten times a year, full of life? The woman whose smile was so out of use, when she grinned her skin cracked like hot, hardened soil?

“She was the finest Alchemist,” Cirris said that night, sloshing a mouthful of ale. He slapped the mug to the table, foam spilling over its sides. I was uninterested in a story I’d heard countless times, my eyes contained to the table that held my only gift: it was small, wrapped in flimsy brown paper and twine.

“The finest damn Alchemist–” he hiccupped, “–in the whole Eastern sphere. Kept dragons at bay–” He turned suddenly, mid-thought, to stare at my mother who was sitting across the room. Her face was hardened into its usual expressionless canvas, listening to another woman’s ramblings as my brother poked and prodded at her shins.

“I thought she was a witch,” I tested him, bored. He either pretended not to hear me, or was truly too drunk to focus on more than one thing at a time. But as if hearing the mock of my words, my mother scooped my wrigling brother into her arms and walked toward us.

Her eyes were empty and flameless. She picked up the brown parcel, handing it to me with a small, pinched smile. Despite her feigned joy, which irritated me, she was beautiful. Her hair was braided and long. Silver strands mingled with the black like stars lighting a sky. Cirris gawked at her, his eyeline clung to my mother’s bosoms, sipping his ale like a calf suckling its mother’s teat. I wished desperately that this could have been a family occasion.

“Where’s your father?” she asked, pausing me from tearing the parcel open. She shifted my brother to her other hip in her peer around the room. Our home was not large, but we had managed to fit quite the guestlist. Drunkenness hung in the air, the crowd unconcerned by my being there, despite my existence being the reason for our celebration.

“I’m not sure,” I said impatiently, staring at the gift. She heard the quickness of my voice and returned her attention to me. For a moment I thought she might yell.

“That’s alright. Open it.” I relaxed and did as she said, ripping my present free. Out spilled a small wooden doll, lumpy and uneven, amateurly whittled. The eyes were painted a light blue to match her dress, which was hand sewn and neat, lined with a thin ribbon lace. The fabric looked familiar, and I recognized it as a patch from one of my mother’s favourite dresses. I clutched it to my chest, smiling larger than I had in months.

“She’s wonderful, mother. I love her.” She forced her own smile to grow, and I was warmed until I saw the tears building in her eyes. In my seven years, I had never seen my mother happy or proud; she was bored, in fact–sometimes outraged– by our joy. I had learned it was easier to frown than submit to her fits. I pretended not to see her tears, furious. I turned from her, posing the doll in my lap.

My mother lost her joy shortly before I was born. She spoke of this heartache often, forcing me to listen and memorize her stories; their climaxes and endings, its characters and villains. In the one she told most, I was a character. When I was younger this had pleased me, but soon the thrill had worn thin. It began, with my coming to be:

A short time before I was born, in the earliest days of celebration during the disappearance of dragons, my mother mourned. She told me of the parties the valley held in these first days of peace: the vibrant festivities, ales shipped in from the South, dances in the streets, lovers embracing in balconies (now older, I blush to picture these “embraces”). My mother, sickened by the jubilation, birthed me on the eleventh night of celebration atop a tavern table strewn with candle wax and spilled drink. My birth had been an uncertainty; the vexation she held for the liveliness around her lured me to the world far too prematurely. She named me for the plum wine the tavern keeper’s wife had drunkenly spilled atop the table, and from then, I was part of her stories.

“Samora is a very expensive wine. I would never name you cheaply.” My mother always ended the story this way, as though I should be grateful. A mug of wine was usually accompanied in her hand for effect, yet never the one she’d named me for. I suppose I am grateful she named me sanely at all, having heard other’s tales of the spirits she’d gulped for the pain in my retreat from her womb.

I have since come to understand my mother’s abhorrence for normalcy. I see how it pained her those seven years: the boredom of pleasant Sunday picnics, casual trips to the market, the repetition of an orderly life nearly driving her to insanity. When the dragons disappeared, she was heavy with me, her belly rounded and marked by my growth, the stretchmarks of a firstborn. And truly, I believe motherhood–in everything it should be–was not what she had expected. Not without dragons.

When I was born, she had no one to care for but me. Those she’d once nurtured with protection and defense no longer needed her. My father left the brigade, (or rather, it dissolved) and took up work at a fishery. Her shop door’s bells no longer chimed, its windows soft with dust by the end of each evening, unscattered by the usual swing of entrances.

A year later, my brother was born. But the devotion of two children was no match for the adoration and worship she’d once received from those she’d protected. Gone was the excitement of casting away beasts; she was trapped in a life of mundanity, teaching infants to walk and eat and speak. She mourned childishly. Coldly. In her eyes, she was obsolete. She craved the chaos she’d hoped to raise us in, and met our love with rage.

While our neighbours and friends thrived, merry and peaceful, unfearful, our family was stunted by my mother’s misery. My father came home less and less. We lived cautious of her outbursts and horrible shifts in mood. We feared the prayers she forced upon my brother and I, morning and night. “Our secret”, she called them. I know now, the things she called prayers were spells; chantings over candlelight, echoed recitings I’d been taught in place of riddles and nursery rhymes.

It was that night, seven years from my birth, that my mother’s prayers were answered, and her sanity returned.

From our prayers, chaos returned to the valley.

The sound was unlike any roar I’d ever heard. It sliced through our windows, shattering the glass into shards of sand. I clung to my doll, eyes wide, frozen atop the bench I sat. Everyone in the room screamed. They knew what it was. They knew what had come.

“Everyone, stay where you are! Get down!” my mother roared, frenzied. Her arms were outstretched to her sides, palms facing the ceiling. At that moment, I sobbed, lowering myself to the ground in mirror of the adults around me.

“Irraloctus, azscha-lasch hizok sinz!” My mother’s hissed chants carried through our home, and I recognized certain words from our prayers. A pale blue fog lifted to the beams, dissolving into the wood. The house continued to shake, and I reached for my brother, holding him to me. For once, he didn’t move or squirm. He buried his head in my lap.

“Torzosoquené, irraloctus! Beastizot mizal!”

Another cloud of smoke lifted into the rafters, a deeper, heavier blue. It dissolved, and I noticed in the windows its reach to the outside air. The beast’s roar transformed above us, its deep yell writhing into a screech. The crowd had shrunk to the lowest we could manage, silent and shaken. We waited for my mother’s next words.

“Ilmoctus! Olvoctun! Be gone!” she yelled. Her feet floated ever so slightly from the ground, and I screamed.

The beast matched my shriek of horror, sending wind into our home from the force of its flight. Pottery shattered to the floor, tables and chairs overturned and crashed atop our heads. The harsh sound of wind and wing grew distant and I unflattened myself. My mother still floated just above the ground. Her hazel irises were gone, the whites of her eyes replaced with a hideous, clouded grey.

“Mother!” I cried, standing to reach for her.

“G'down!”

Cirris’ warning came too late. Through the windows, a thin, aimed rope of fire slapped across the right side of my body, slashing me like a whip. I don’t remember the events past this moment. I don’t remember waking up. Only that I did, several weeks later, scarred with burns thick like scales.

I remember the horrors of this night, daily; the thoughts come and go as they wish, like a shiver.

I thumb the largest mark beneath my ribcage. In thirteen years, the scars had lightened to a pearl-pink, but the bumps had shrunk very little. Even through the fabric of my tunic, I could feel the protruding lumps in my skin. I watched my mother outreach her spindly fingers across the shop counter, the customer’s reluctant fist releasing the waterfall of coins. He grunted, nostrils flared.

“Yer’ve increased yer prices again,” he said matter-of-factly. Despite his hard appearance, he said this gently.

“Still catching up from the Peace Years, Raff.”

“Just gets hard ter keep up. Saf’s havin’ our fifth soon. Lotta moufs ter feed.”

“And this will keep your family and crops safe through the harvest,” she said pleasantly. She pushed the heavy burlap sack into his arms. “Remember to pour the sand in a thick line. No gaps, heavy with stones. You got enough stones, Raff?”

He nodded meekly. “Saf hadda kids get ‘em from Silver Creek with ‘at wheelburrow you lent us.”

“Good. Bring it back some time next week if you can. I’ll have Emmeric deliver your crop-sand tomorrow morning, bright and early. Usual dropoff?” He nodded. “Good.”

He left the store, and I quickly followed the small trail of grains he’d released in his exit. I swept vigorously, the swish of broom attracting Measel from his sleep. Lowering his front half to the ground, he waited in crouch for a moment before pouncing expertly onto the edge of the broom, releasing several of the birch twig bristles with his claws. He swatted at the strands, his long black tail flicking like a twitch. I laughed, sweeping the broken broom pieces into my pile, shooing him.

“Your brother owes me a new broom. That pest of his is always ripping it apart,” my mother said. She swore at Measel, who’d already returned to his pillow.

“He’s just playing.” I returned the broom to its usual corner.

“He knocked over an entire bottle of newt oil last week,” she added. I could hear the defensiveness in her voice. Rolling my eyes, I bent to Measel, scratching under his chin. To my delight, he began to purr.

“We can’t leave him home when Emmeric’s out doing deliveries all day,” I responded, tartly. She was quiet, and I wish I’d bit my tongue. Emmeric’s being here–my still being here– was a topic I usually tried my best to avoid. It was a miserable subject for all involved.

It was nearing a year since his seventeenth birthday; since my mother had pleaded with the valley guardsman to refuse Emmeric’s application to their defense brigade. He had been furious of course; young, blood driven, wanting to do his part to protect the valley. His dearest childhood friend had joined the guardsman just one month before, dying at the talons of a Blackscale within two weeks of training. Vengeance in the heart of a teen old boy was a dangerous thing, my mother had said.

I never learned if they’d given in to my mother’s pleas, and I didn't prod. But for some time, Emmeric’s interest in enlisting seemed to fade. My mother presumed the allure had worn off, as did I. Until one morning, he strutted from his room, armoured in flimsy metal pads, a thin metal sword hung at his side. My eyes had widened, meeting his. And thus, their battle had ensued.

“You’re already doing your part, we’re doing our part, Emmeric!” she’d yelled, desperately. They’d been screaming for several minutes, repeating the same useless points.

“By selling your overpriced hocus-pocus and sand? It only makes them angrier! No more defense, we need to kill them!”

“You’re going to kill a dragon, are you?” She laughed, venomously. “You and your scrawny little arms that can hardly lift the sandbags? Are you going to kill a dragon, like your father did? Like Rein?” At the sound of his friend’s name, he whitened.

“You know,” he began, pausing. He sucked his teeth. “The more you speak, the more obvious it becomes that Father would have rather died than spend the rest of his life with you.”

And with that, he left; my mother’s wails ringing through the village.

News spread quickly. But not of my mother’s wails.

My dear brother trekked through the shade of the forest’s path leading to Fort Nevan. It was during his pitiful, pouting walk in a meadow’s gap–the sky clear of shade, bare and blue– that the beast spotted him. The white-winged Oculus diving for him, having swept through the sky, talons outstretched, the sun’s swell hitting my brother’s sword and armour, shining into the eyes of the beast, momentarily blinding it. Instead of lifting my brother into the air, the beast had beamed its fiery light, scorching my brother’s eyes. Emmeric had screamed. From dozens of yards away, his men (who were not yet his men) charged with arrows and longswords, sliced through air and sky. The beast, merely scared away, to this day, undefeated.

Emmeric shared these horrors from his bed weeks later, eyes bound and wrapped (one had been removed, leaving a horrible, black, scabby hole). He spoke only to me, refusing even the briefest greetings from my mother for nearly six months in her care. He knew my mother’s wishes had been granted. He was doomed to be denied the role of guard for his injuries: his one remaining eye too pale and sensitive to light. Although she would never admit it, Emmeric and I were certain this pleased her, despite the cost.

Silently, we wondered if our mother had prayed as she did in our childhood, for this fate. But even if she hadn’t, the dragons’ return had been her doing. My burns–my brothers–were our mother’s doing. And unbeknownst to the children she’d forced to chant–ours. It was a secret we shouldered, for fear of being outcast. For fear of what our mother was capable of.

She thrived from chaos. But only a chaos she could control.

The door’s bells chimed. Emmeric entered, his walking stick nowhere in sight. His black hair was wild and slick with sweat. He walked to my mother, slamming a parchment onto the counter.

“Did you complete your deliveries? What is this?”

“A letter from the Nevon Brigade.” He paused, huffing, out of breath. His eye was squinted. “They’re drafting.”

“They know your situation, Emmeric. We’ve been over this.” He slammed his fist to the counter, crumpling the letter beneath it. I jumped, startled.

“They’re drafting all firstborn sons. And–”

“Yes, and they know your situation.”

“–and if the son cannot serve, the next in line must serve in his place.”

The room was still. My mother was expressionless. I could see the tightness of Emmeric’s biceps as he squeezed the countertop, leaning over it. He didn’t turn to me. I knew he couldn’t.

“I will talk to them. They know your sister is scarred. She is not well.” This was only half true. She preoccupied herself with something under the desk.

“You mean like you talked to them when I tried to enlist? Why don’t you just send another dragon down to–” She stood, slapping him. It happened so swiftly, if it hadn’t made a sound I might have missed her hand to his cheek.

“Don’t touch him!” I cried. I moved between them.

My mother rolled her eyes.

“Samora. A dragon slayer,” she spat. She leaned into the counter, her laughter hardened into a grimace. “Is that what you want? To be torn apart, limb from limb, and swallowed? Should I bury an empty grave, like I did for your father?”

I fought the quiver in my lip, meeting her crazed eyes. I reached for the letter, pulling it from the grip of her elbows with a harsh tug.

“Samora the Dragon Slayer has a wonderful ring to it.”