The Shadow in the Sky

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. They didn’t exist, unless the stories parents told their children counted. Sometimes a crazed person would claim they had seen one and word would spread quickly up the trade routes. But those stories were always proven to be false.

That is until one summer a shadow fell over the village I lived in. I had just turned eighteen, and was apprenticing under the old seamstress. A grumpy woman with no children or husband. Many people suspected that she was a witch, not that it really mattered much; people needed clothing and she was the only person who didn’t charge an arm and a leg to make or mend clothes.

“Are you paying attention girl?” Alesia snapped her fingers in front of my face.

“Yes, of course I am.”

“Good.” She grumbled.

“Look!” an excited voice interrupted whatever Alesia was about to say. More excited shouts followed.

“I’ll be right back.” I said as I got to my feet and rushed to see what was causing all the shouting outside. On hot days like this our village was subdued. We all just wanted to get our work done so we could go down to the river and cool off. People had crowded into the streets, and their eyes were all trained on the sky.

It was late afternoon, nearing dusk when the creature circled overhead. It flew over the village several times, each pass closer to the rooftops than the last. At first it could have been a hawk or some other large bird, until the sun flashed golden on its silver scales. We stood in the road as though we were caught under some sort of spell. The closer it got, the more unsteady its flight became. Its claws nearly brushed the top of the baker’s cottage before it finally landed. There was a collective gasp from those gathered.

The dragon's form shifted, shrinking and reforming into a human with long silvery hair. Mothers covered their children’s eyes as the silver scales receded leaving a woman standing infront of us. As she fell to her knees, no one moved.

I was the first one to break the spell. I began pushing my way through the crowd, someone grabbing my arm as I broke through the front. I spun and glared at him. “Tria,” he started, his brown eyes scanning me, “how do you know she won’t hurt you?”

“Bowen, if she wanted to hurt us, don’t you think she would have done so before she landed?” I snapped in reply. I pulled out of his grasp and left him standing there with his thoughts. As I approached her, I shrugged off my smock and draped it over her shoulders to cover her. Kneeling in front of her I checked her over. There were two festering wounds; the first was in the middle of what was now her collar bone, an arrow likely to have caused the wound. The second and worse one was on her arm; a deep gash that looked as though it had reached the bone. From both wounds black lines spider-webbed, much like some poisons would. I began tearing strips of cloth from my skirt. Her eyes finally found mine, and they were breath takingly beautiful. Silver as moon light on water with stipes of darker grey and slitted black pupils.

“I’m going to bind the wound on your arm” I told her as I gently touched the arm below the injury. After a moment, she gave a slight nod. Murmurs from the villagers meant they were coming out of their stupor. I began to wind the cloth around her arm. Silence stretched between us until I finally glanced up from what I was doing. “Call me Tria.” I said as way of introduction. “I can’t properly treat you here,” she gave a slight nod then flinched slightly.

I paused when I heard footsteps crunch on the rock behind me and looked up to see the baker’s daughter Lena approaching, her hands twisting in her flour covered apron. “Can I do anything?” she asked softly.

I nodded after a moment. “Water, please, and clean rags.”

“Of course” she replied, running off to retrieve the items I had requested. Lena’s footsteps returned again, this time with another hurrying behind her. Lena carried a bucket of water and a beat-up copper cup, Annie held the rags and a clean ladle.

“Thank you.” I said as I took the cup and filled it with water, offering it to the dragon. She hesitated then carefully took the cup and drained it. She let out a sigh and held out the cup again and Lena ladled more water into the cup as I returned to tending her wounds.

Two more cups later she set the cup aside. I took one of the rags that Annie was holding and dipped it into the water. As gently as I could, I wiped the puncture wound at her collar bone. She flinched and let out a soft hiss. “I know,” I said softly, “but I need to clean this.” My words did little however to soothe her. Despite the clear pain of the rag going over her skin, she allowed me to clean her shoulder.

Sighing, I sat back on my knees to look at her. The one on her collar bone was deep, and there was evidence she had dug something out of her shoulder, likely the arrowhead. I moved closer, draped her arm over my shoulders and helped her stand. Her legs seemed weak and she had to lean heavily on me.

Slowly we made our way to my house at the end of the street. I pushed open the door and helped her into one of the rough wooden chairs next to the door. There was a healthy layer of dust on most of the surfaces in the room aside from the path I normally took to go to the bed tucked in the corner under the stairs. The fire place had of course been used for meals, but I stayed in this house as little as possible.

Once I had the dragon settled in a chair, I stepped back outside to get wood and kindling for a fire. As the fire made itself at home in the hearth I turned back to the dragon. Her eyes were on me as I moved about the room. The light from the fire made her eyes and hair glow gold. “Do you have a name?” I asked, breaking the silence that had been present since we had left the street.

“You...” She started, then cleared her throat. “You can call me Rysyn” she replied. Her voice was soft and musical, with a light accent from a far off land. I nodded and moved to the chest in the corner. This had far more dust on it than the rest of the house as I hadn’t touched it in years; generations of spiders had likely made themselves at home in the trunk. A cloud of dust puffed up when I pulled the chest open and began going through my mother’s old supplies.

I pulled out a salve and some other things and moved back to the table. Unwrapping Rysyn’s arm I look at it. “What happened?” I asked as I gently began to clean the wound; again she hissed softly as I touched the gash.

“Hunters” she replied, through gritted teeth. “They found my home and I fled.” She hissed as I applied the salve. “Wounds from iron weapons fester and will never fully heal unless treated.”

“This is going to hurt some, but that salve should numb you a little.” I told her as I threaded a needle. “Why would someone hunt you? As far as I have ever known, dragons were nothing more than legends.”

“We are far from being legends. We simply avoid human contact” she replied. I nodded and began stitching her arm. She tensed, feeling the needle enter her skin; I paused, waiting to see if she’d relax. The weight of her stare never left me, even as she relaxed.

I made quick work of mending her arm and helped her move to my bed. “Rest, I’ll have food for us in the morning.” Once I had her in the bed I moved back to the chest, curiosity finally taking hold; sleep seemed to have stolen over Rysyn as soon as her head found the pillow. At the bottom of the chest sat a leather bound journal. Careful not to disturb the glass jars and bottles I pulled it out and moved to the table, sitting down and opening the cover. My mother’s curling handwriting stood out against the white page next to a sketch of a plant; its leaves were purple and the flower that crowned the plant was blood red.

"Dragon’s bane. As its name suggests it is deadly to dragons. This plant offers a swifter death than iron, which will fester and slowly kill them.

I let out a breath. My mother had studied plants, I had known that; she was the village’s healer for a very long time. But this...this suggested that she’d encountered dragons. I looked back down at the journal and turned the page. Another plant, this one had leaves were white with purple veins and stem; the flower was the color of the sky.

"Dragon’s balm. Of course this is the opposite of Dragon’s bane. It can cure the effects of both bane and iron. But one must act fast if a dragon has been poisoned with bane."

I frowned. There was no indication of where this stuff could be found. I turned more pages in the journal, it had information on different types of dragons, drawings. I don’t know how long I sat there looking down at the pages before sleep took me.

I wasn’t sure where this meeting would lead, but I knew my quiet life in the village was over.