The Truth in the Blood

We dragons do not dream.

For humans, slumber is a crevice by which untruth may enter the mind. They yield to the fabrications that find them in the clouded dark.

Dragons perceive the world with clarity. In slumber, our unfettered senses sharpen to all that can be heard and felt and smelled and tasted in the air. And if we perceive danger, our senses rouse us to action.

I was jolted alert from a midday rest by the wails crescendoing into my slumber—a woman’s lamentation, throaty and unrestrained.

We dragons have a saying: “Speculation never filled a belly.” We investigate an unknown, or dismiss it from our thoughts. I arose to track the cries. Gliding from my lookout atop a towering cliff, the trail of sound led to a clearing in the thick green canopy spread below. I circled out of sight to listen.

“It must be done,” rang a male voice, with the composure of authority. “You must leave now, before the Golden Serpent comes.”

The woman’s wails grew louder, more frenzied. “No, my son!” she cried, again and again. “My only son!”

There was a clang of iron, as of spears meeting. I angled my flight to be able to glimpse through the tree cover.

The woman had attempted to fling herself on a little cot at the center of the clearing. Two mail-clad guards pulled her back, and two crossed their spears protectively over the boy. The woman sank to her knees, still weeping, arms reaching toward her child.

A grey-haired man stood near the head of the cot. He wore no armor. He spoke again to the woman, more gently. “I promised you he would not suffer, Saira. See, he sleeps deeply, with a look of peace.”

From his light blue robe he pulled out a vial. “Would you like to join your son in the sleep of acceptance?”

He uncorked the vial and held it out to the woman. When she did not move, he gently lifted her head, poured in the drops, then caught her up in his arms as she went limp.

He called to a soldier. “Take her to the healer's tent at the watching post, and guard her until I return.” She was lifted onto his horse, and they rode off.

The blue-robed man gazed at the cot for a few moments. Then he lifted his head in my direction.

“I know you are watching, Golden One,” he said with raised voice. “Would you do us the honor of coming down?” Then to the dozen or so guards bunched in the clearing, he ordered, “Make way for the Golden Serpent!”

I snorted with disgust. Their name for me was a dishonoring lie. I am no slithering snake that hides in the rocks and bites at the heel. I am Dragon. I soar, I take, I devour.

I admit, their title was fitting in one aspect. Long ago I had named myself Haroumenesa, the color of the sun before its setting. My youngling Drake had called me Esa.

Branches waved and dust rose as I landed in the clearing. Guards scurried into position between myself and the child on the cot, their pitiful spears upraised and trembling.

It is believed that dragons can read minds. This is a myth, but a convenient one. The psyche of humans is crudely tethered to their physiology; our attuned senses can trace their emotions and intentions as easily as we can track their blunderings through a forest. As I scanned the guards, the scent of their terror, mingled with awe, was pungent.

One of the guards near the center of the line, a burly man, stood steadier than the others. He boldly returned my gaze. I perceived no fear in him, only a brash arrogance.

I turned my head slightly, and issued a stream of firebreath into the face of the man standing just to his right. He screamed, clutched at the helmet that was melting into his flesh, dropped and thrashed wildly for several heartbeats, then went still and silent. No one came to his aid. I noted with satisfaction that the burly guard's pride was transposed to ashen horror.

We dragons take no joy in killing. But we prize survival. Fear drives men either into hiding or to acts of careless desperation, and is thus our tool. The pride of man wields a more effectual weapon, and is thus our enemy.

The elder leader commanded the guards to return to the watching post. They retreated with palpable relief. Two of them had the decency to carry their fallen companion with them.

He turned to me. “Now, you and I can parley.” His voice held neither bravado nor fear.

I remained silent but settled onto my haunches with folded wings, listening. I glanced at the child sleeping under a lumpy, much-patched quilt, one small hand curled by his cheek.

The elder man bowed his head to me in formal manner. “I am the Story Master of the kingdom of Anad.” He seated himself on a large flat rock near the cot, then continued. “I come to you with a sign.”

I answered warily, “Signs and stories are human fabrications.”

We dragons, unlike humans, tell ourselves only true stories. And for this we have no need of lore pored over in dusty towers or whispered by a hearthfire. We already know all that has gone before. The knowing is in our blood.

And now I will tell a thing much rumored among humans, but little understood. We dragons know what is in the blood because we eat our dead.

After the fire in a dragon is quenched, its flesh is only flesh, mere nourishment. But the blood of a dragon is precious. When a dragon falls, its blood calls out, and we come. We protect the body as we can from enemies, scavengers, even the dirt, until its Drake arrives. As long as one drop of a dragon's blood remains, the body will not decay.

Dragons who have bonded with a Teacher -- Drakes -- have first right to their Teacher’s blood after death. This is how we complete our learning. All the truth of a departed dragon, everything learned from their lifetime of experience and from the lifetimes of their Teachers before them, pours into the living dragon that partakes of their blood.

So it was with me, long ago when I was a youngling Drake and my Teacher lay felled by arrows, in these same woods. I heard the cry and took the blood. Thus my heart beats with generation upon generation of knowing.

And thus I knew that the stories of humans can bring danger to a dragon.

“It is my charge to carry the memory of my people,” the Story Master was saying. “The kingdom looks to me for wisdom." He gestured toward the cot. "When this child was born, many were confused, many were fearful. His own father renounced him at birth—though as you have seen, his mother loves him with abandon.”

I had seen, but not sympathized. It is not in our nature to bond with our own hatchlings. How can one form a genuine attachment with an immature creature incapable of reciprocity? How can one cherish a life that has not yet been lived? Humans claim to love their infants. But what is there to love, truly, but the stories parents tell themselves of who these squalling lumps may someday become? We dragons do not lie in this manner to ourselves about our young.

When a dragon emerges from its egg, it begins alone. The hatchling is guided by the foundational awareness infused into its blood. By this instinct the hatchling avoids dangers, it sleeps, it kills and eats. This is the first knowing: How to survive.

When a hatchling grows discontent with mere survival, and impatient with the pace of its own discoveries, it seeks out a Teacher who will take it under wing and claw. This is the second knowing: How to live. No bond is stronger than that between Teacher and Drake. It is forged by shared experience, reinforced by reciprocal respect and delight.

In time the young Drake becomes a mature dragon and again lives alone, seeing their Teacher rarely. But the bond remains. And when the call goes out that a dragon’s flame has been quenched, their Drake races to take their Teacher’s blood and the truths that endure within. This is the bond of blood, the third knowing: What passes beyond one life.

The Story Master continued, looking from me to the child. “His mother fled to the woods and kept him hidden for four years. But the rumors about him reached my ears. Surely such a birth was not without purpose. I pondered and searched our archives until I discovered it—an ancient tale that revealed the reason."

He spread out his hands. "Thus I had him found and brought here, to you. He is a sign.”

I snarled, impatient with empty words. “So you have said. A sign means nothing unless all agree on its meaning.”

“He is a sign of peace. That is his meaning. Whether you agree is up to you.” The Story Master slowly rose to his feet. He was tall by the standards of men. He bowed low in my direction, then bowed to the sleeping child. “I give you to one another.”

Abruptly he turned and strode out of the clearing, leaving the boy alone with me.

For a long while I sat brooding, listening to the child's slow breaths, searching my knowing.

The knowing that comes from living alongside a Teacher is like a pool in a cave, deep and still, filled drop by drop by experience and instruction. The knowing that comes from the blood of a departed Teacher is a deluge, a rushing current of truth leaping from generation to generation. It can be difficult to bear.

The moment I tasted the blood of my slain Teacher, my heart had pounded painfully, as if resisting the bounds of a single body. I had felt engulfed and overrun by knowing. For many months I could not rest. I brooded and destroyed and devoured, with no purpose.

One day, circling high over a mountain meadow, I spied a crimson-flecked hatchling stalking a goat. From my vantage I noted a hyena approaching from the other side of the field. Both predators nabbed the goat at the same time.

The hatchling stubbornly kept its jaws clamped on the goat, finally wresting the meat from the hyena, which squealed in frustration to watch the dragon fly away with the prize. But the hatchling could not fly far, being not much bigger than its prey.

“Your determination won you a goat, young one,” I called, flitting over to where it sat hunched over its meal. It growled at me and shoved the carcass behind its little body.

I laughed. “I do not want to take your meal. But perhaps you will take wisdom from me: Better to have the predator than its prey. You settled for a goat, when you could have had a hyena, and thus also the goat that the hyena ate yesterday.”

The fierce-eyed hatchling looked up at me, considering, then ripped off a piece of its catch in offering. “I will eat your wisdom. And you may eat this.”

And so I became Teacher to Galla. For a few treasured years, I poured out ancient truths into my Drake, and Galla poured fresh insight and patience into me. The sharing between us forged our bond. And thus I discovered the final knowing: How to love. I loved Galla with abandon.

Enough inaction. I decided to see this sign for myself. With a rumbling growl, I bent low to inspect the child. He lay curled on his side, his mouth slightly open, his cheeks flushed. I saw nothing remarkable in his face. He was just a small human, whose arms would grow in strength to hold a lance or a bow, and whose heart would grow in hatred for dragons.

I prodded him with a claw. The quilt slipped off and my breath froze.

The child had wings.

They were identical in shape and proportion to those of a hatchling. The boy was shirtless, so I could see that where the wings sprouted from his back the flesh was covered with soft scales, which on a dragon would harden with age. I stretched out one of his wings and it glistened in the sun, as mine did. They smelled of dragon.

This was a new thing to me. I searched the experiences of all the lineage of Teachers whose blood ran in me, but none before had seen dragon wings on a human.

Not my own Teacher, Urtesiye, whose bones lay scattered not far from this clearing. Not Tilbor, who had been scalded by a catapult of hot oil as he flew over a city wall. Not Arinthinae, whose head—sliced off in combat—was rumored to be mounted as an adornment in the king’s banquet hall. Not Morrough, ignobly speared as he drowsed after feasting on sheep tainted with sleeping potion. Not Yoharoumen, who had suffered the worst fate: his wings had been clipped, and he had been locked in a cage and dragged through every village in the kingdom, as he slowly starved.

I stared at the boy’s inexplicable wings and felt a mounting fury. This was mockery, not sign. This was monstrous pretense to our glory. He befouled this proud emblem of a dragon with his humanity.

Sparks blazed as I seethed, “I will rip you from those wings!”

I opened my jaws to tear off his wings and then to devour what was left. My fangs bit into the scales behind his left shoulder. Into my mouth came the taste of blood.

At that moment, the child’s eyes flicked open.

In my surprise I stopped mid-bite. The boy turned his head so that he looked right into my eyes, our faces nearly touching.

“You hurt me,” he said, in a small, clear voice.

I drew back. I could see the blood oozing from his wingblade and I could feel the sharp stinging pain of the wound. Just as I knew the sear of hot oil on Tilbor’s underbelly, and the wilting shame of Yoharoumen in his cage, in this instant I knew what it was to be awakened out of a deep sleep by a stab of hurt and a dragon’s glare.

I felt terror, and I did not know if it were the child’s or my own.

“I want my mother,” whimpered the boy.

I sat back on my haunches, staring at him, still tasting his blood. The boy's life, his small cache of memories, came flooding into me with a rush.

This deluge felt unreasonably familiar. Was this not how it had been when I took the blood of my Teacher and felt the crush of new memories? A known sensation, yet utterly unknown. This new bonding overwhelmed me not with volume but with strangeness.

I could still taste the first rabbit my Teacher had hunted. And now I tasted the first bite of rabbit stew the boy had licked from a spoon. I knew his mother Saira’s scent, the encircling feel of her arms, and the words to the lullaby she sang to him each night. I heard her whisper his name to him and knew it was Lagom.

But these new perceptions beat against the ageless current of dragon wisdom. Blood bonding only occurred after a death, never with a Teacher whose fire still burned. And only with a kindred dragon. How could such a thing be possible with a human? Their blood held no truth and meant nothing to us. And yet, this child's knowing now pulsed in my veins.

I threw back my head with a scorching roar, but I could not expel the strange new knowing.

Then Lagom sat up, lifted his chin, opened his mouth wide and let out a breathy howl. His wings quivered.

Because we were blood bonded, I could not mistake his action for mockery or empty imitation. I could feel the anguish in his tiny dragonish cry, the raw instinct. And suddenly, in my mind I heard voices.

“Rip off his wings!” The voices spewed from a mob trying to push past Saira into the cottage. “Get rid of the abomination! Tear them off!”

Angry arms shoved Saira aside. Fiery faces rushed toward the cot. Terrifying hands clutched at the wings, pulling, crushing. It hurt.

Blood dripped from the tiny wingblade onto the cot, staining the patched quilt. My vision blurred, and there was the boy, pulling the quilt protectively over his wings, around his shoulders. I felt dizzy, disoriented. My senses had fled me.

Rip off its wings! More voices. Tear them off!

I tossed my head furiously to shake off the sound, but the voices grew in volume.

Quick, get rid of it!

It was then I realized that now this was my own memory, not the boy’s. Clarity returned and I knew. Oh, how I knew.

It was winter. I had first perceived the voices in my midday sleep, coming to me from a great distance, along with Galla’s distinctive cry.

The memory gripped me and would not release.

Instantly awake, I hurtle up out of my nest in a cave deep in the woods. I soon locate the source of the voices, atop a towering cliff where Galla often stands watch for prey.

As I race closer I can make out Galla fighting to free herself from a knot of soldiers bearing the armor of Anad. Jaw muzzled, claws tied, Galla rages helplessly. One wing hangs limp, torn and bloody.

The men spot me approaching. “Quick, get rid of it,” they cry out. "Run!"

I see Galla pushed off the ledge of the cliff, plunging, futilely beating the air with one good wing. All the speed I can muster is not sufficient to bridge the distance in time. I reach the spot to see Galla’s body broken on the rocky ground far below.

I wheel and screech at the men trying to scramble from the ledge. Not one leaves the clifftop alive.

I felt a touch. Lagom had climbed down from the cot and laid his hand, tiny and unnaturally soft, on my folded wing. He looked up at me, tears overfilling his eyes. “They hurt your friend,” he said.

Then he stretched his little arms as wide as they would go across my chest and rested his head close to my beating heart. A tear slid and sizzled on my golden scales.

We dragons do not weep. There is a saying among dragons: Tears quench fire. We feel loss with savage intensity—but we vent our grief by destroying the destroyers. We find solace in our righteous talons and vindicating fire.

And so I had never wept for Galla, as Lagom did now. Whenever the bile of mourning rose in my throat it had erupted over the thatched roofs of a town, or torn into a herd of cows, or boiled into a field ripe for harvest.

I could feel the child’s tears burning through my scales, working their way under my skin and into my blood. I tried to shake him off but discovered I could not move, and his diminutive arms held fast.

All at once an image of a moonlit cottage came to me, as clear to my mind as if it were before my eyes. This was not the opaque vision of memory. This was sight with substance. I looked up as the shadow of a dragon passed overhead.

The roof suddenly burst into flames and I felt the unfriendly heat. I watched the family stumble out, coughing, the mother clutching two children by the hand, the father cradling a wailing infant in his arms and waving off the sparks. The air was filled with screams and smoke as their neighbors all fled their own burning homes.

Mother and father trembled and looked at one another above the sounds of their children’s cries, helpless as all they possessed turned to ash. The hem of the mother’s skirt was charred. Her soot-smeared shawl hung loose and her husband tucked it around her shoulders. I could hear their thoughts: Where can we go? How will we get through the winter?

And resounding like a bell through their shocked anguish, Why? Why? Why are our people never safe from the Golden Serpent?

I knew in my blood this was no memory belonging to the boy. And I had never witnessed such a scene, nor had any of my Teacher forebears. Of course, I had burned many a village from above. But I had never seen the firebreath as this vision presented, as if walking among the humans, knowing it through their senses. I had never met this family. How did I see their faces and hear their thoughts? Where did this knowing come from?

Lies! I told myself. Untruth!

We dragons have a saying: “Falsehoods have no scent.” We do not claim to know what eludes our senses. We do not seek to deceive by telling events that had never been, as if they had really occurred. I could not claim this knowing as truly what had been.

Yet this vision had occurred, in my mind, as powerful as a memory. I could smell the acrid smoke, taste the charred flesh in the air. And that made it a kind of truth.

I wanted to shake the earth with a roar, to unfold my wings and rise above this cursed clearing, to obliterate this deceit with a breath, but I could not move. I could not act against a truth that had no scent, except in my mind. All that was left in my power was to echo: Why, why?

Why were tears wending down my neck, a crystal trail blazing across my golden scales? I, who had not wept for my Galla, now overcome by sorrow for these shivering, frightened, soot-drenched strangers! For these humans -- branded one and all by the blood-guilt for Galla's death!

What kind of knowing could track the sense of this?

Lagom's voice startled me, muffled by my scales, as he gripped me still in his fierce embrace.

"You hurt them. I made you see it."

My body trembled. My words trickled out in a whisper. “I do not understand!”

Lagom stepped back then, and lifted my paw in both his tiny hands, unheeding the sharp talons that could spill the lifeblood from his wrists with one twitch. His wings fluttered out as he twisted his head upward. His eyes looked into mine.

“I will teach you, Esa,” he said.

* * *

And so we became Teachers to one another. We were Drakes together, discovering how to live through the wisdom of the other. We grew to love one another with abandon.

We did not live side by side, though we met often. I returned the child to his mother Saira to be raised in human fashion, so that when he came to see me, he could teach me their ways. And I taught him all I knew of being dragon.

I never saw the Story Master again. I knew that he brought Saira and Lagom to another hidden cottage even deeper in the wood, and that he visited them there from time to time. I flew far and wide, hunting game and occasional cattle, but ceased my despoiling village raids.

One day, when Lagom was nearly grown in the span of a man and his wings nearly grown in the span of a small dragon, he flew to me in the clearing in the woods. This was our customary place for meeting.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought, Esa,” he began, settling his wings about him and sitting on the flat rock. “Someday I will die, probably long before you, and you must not eat me.”

I had already concluded this. But I waited for his wisdom.

“As I have taught you,” Lagom continued, “it is the way of humans to give our bodies to the dirt, so that our substance can nourish the growing things we need for life.” He paused. “Plus, my mother would never allow it.”

I snorted.

“And you realize I cannot … take your blood, if some calamity befalls you.”

This had not occurred to me. Many generations of humans pass within a dragon's natural lifetime. But the violent end of so many of my kind should have prepared me for this possibility. It disturbed me.

For a dragon, to pass with none to take their blood is a final death, a grievous and lonely death, with only the void beyond. I had already lost the blood bond I should have shared with Galla. I could not bear to lose another.

“My truth must not die with me, Lagom."

Lagom took up my paw in his hands, no longer tiny but still frail-looking beside my weighty claws. He touched my talon to his chest. “The truth of you will always live within me,” he said.

I bowed my head and enveloped him with a gentle breath. This was a good knowing.

After a moment, Lagom went on. “But for my children, and for the generations to come …” He reached into his satchel and brought out a quill, ink and parchment. “We must write down your stories—everything you know from your experiences, and from all the Teachers before you. You will speak and I will write. That is how your knowing will live beyond your body, and mine.”

He waited patiently for long minutes while I considered. This writing was an unknown land, where no wisdom of my forebears could guide me. But we had made a new wisdom, Lagom and I, so I listened and weighed what it spoke.

Finally I gestured for him to spread out the parchment on the rock. Then with a talon I ripped deep into the skin over my heart. Drops of blood splashed onto the parchment, sizzling and steaming.

I lifted my head and roared, shaking the trees. A swirl of birds erupted in a cacophonous echo.

“Now I am ready to share my story,” I said.

Lagom nodded solemnly. “All is as it should be.”

He held the quill poised over the stained parchment. I began, and he wrote:

We dragons …