The Green Dragons

The Green Dragons

There were’nt always dragons in the valley. But that was a time long ago, a time that had passed from living memory, almost.

The dragons of the valley were of the forest. They were known as the green dragons, because their color was such as to allow them to melt in to the foliage and not be seen. They were distinct from their fierce mountain cousins the deadly, ferocious, and cunning red dragons, and the rare, reclusive, blue dragons of the ocean.

Why the green dragons had come to this valley, and what they wanted was a secret known only to the dragons themselves and one man.

The people of the valley simply referred to him as the Old One, or the Old Hermit. He answered to many names, but his real name was known only to himself and to the dragons with whom he communed in the forests.

He lived in a ramshackle hut on an outcropping high up the valley wall. There was one narrow, steep path that led from the heights to the valley floor. The people wondered how such an old man could make the treacherous climb to and from the rocky ledge to the lush valley.

The villagers would often see him walking among the trees, talking, apparently only to himself.

“Father?” asked Urial, a twelve year old boy, the son of a farmer.

“What now?” replied Marcus.

“I see the Old Man off in the trees.”

“I know. He walks every day.”

“Why does he go there?”

Marcus loved his young son. He was the child of a late marriage. Marcus was more than fifty years old, an old man in terms of the village. He was easily old enough to be the boy’s grandfather. He had grown children, a product of the marriage of his youth. A marriage that had been arranged by his parents and that had ended very badly. He cared his grown children, but for him Urial was special. After the end of his early marriage Marcus for the first and only time of his life fell in love, with a woman twenty years his junior. Marcus, having struggled with his arranged marriage had become cynical. He did not believe in love, at least not until he had by sheer chance met Ella. Because of her,his eyes were opened and things he did not believe existed suddenly became real.

She had died giving birth to Urial. It would have been easy for a lesser man to turn on his infant son, and blame him for the death of his love. Marcus, however, embraced the boy and indulged him as the living legacy of the love of his life.

The boy had his mother’s eyes. And sometimes in the turn of his head or the way he smiled, Marcus could see his love, and know she still lived. The boy was smart and curious with a searching mind. He had his mother’s golden hair, but his father’s strength. Marcus worried that a valley of farmers would be too small to contain the boy once he became a man.

“Stay away from that old man. He is not right in the head.”

“Who does he talk to.”

“No one. He talks only to himself.”

“I don’t understand. I can see him over there. There is thought behind his actions. He is talking to someone. Someone I can’t see.”

Knowing the boy would not be deterred, and that his curiosity would only increase, Marcus decided to tell the boy the truth, or at least the truth as he understood it in the hope the boy would do as he was told and let the old man be.

“The Old Man is dangerous. Listen to me boy. You are never to get near him. It is not someone he speaks with, it is some thing. He talks to the dragons.”