To Wish for a Blanket

He held his water skins under the falls and stared into the pool. "Leave. Her. Behind."

She crossed her brown arms tight across their child. The gold bracelets framed her bony wrists and called to attention the breadth of their loss. But despite her frail appearance her voice was strong: "I will not, Lat. I cannot."

Her husband's face clenched up and grew red. "We haven't the food to keep ourselves alive, let alone her. Leave her behind, Vel, or I will."

She made no attempt to hide her tears, and said with effort: "Her? Her? She's your daughter! and she has a name! Calla-- and I will not give up on her. You never know what our future holds. Maybe tomorrow we'll catch a dragon by the tail and claim its wishes. I will not give up."

He threw down his empty rucksack and the spittle flew form his lips as he shouted in his wife's face. "Dragons!? Wishes!? Do you hear yourself? This isn't a bedtime story, there's no such thing as dragons and there's no such thing as wishes.... Other than those ones that disappoint."

"I didn't mean it literally, Lat. Only to say we really don't know what the future holds. Circumstances could rescue us!"

His face drooped into a mask of grim fury. "Circumstances have damned us, the plague and the collapse! why should we find mercy when the world withers and wastes?"

Then he cast his eyes on their daughter and said in a voice colder than any she'd heard from him before: "I said if you don't leave her I will!"

And with that he snatched Calla out of her frail arms— the golden bracelets on her wrists jangled from the force.

And their child began to cry. It wasn't terribly loud, there wasn't much life left in her. But the wilted look on her pitiful face showed a depth of feeling: the child, who understood so little, had picked up on the poisonous despair in his demeanor. She felt abandonment and distance in the rigidity of his arms and heard it in the timbre of his voice.

He placed his daughter on a patch of soft moss, and turned back to the trail.

But his wife did not follow.

After a few steps he turned towards her. "Look at you. Look how thin you are. You’re wasting away. You are not strong enough to cross the valley with her. You'll both die. Leave her and follow me, and then at least you and I might survive— when you stop wasting your share of the food on a child."

She was wasting away, because of the two of them she was the only one who ever went hungry for Calla’s sake.

Food was scarce for all of them... But since the collapse, Lat had shown a truth she’d never have guessed when times were good: the limit of his generosity was the first point of true sacrifice.

She turned away. "Goodbye, Lat."

"You'll both die here!"

She made no reply. And finally he said: “well at least give me your bracelets.”

“Lat. You can’t be serious—”

His eyes gleamed, but not with hate. They were full of fear and the greed fear brings. “I’m dead serious Vel. Give them to me.”

“They’re mine, Lat.”

“You and Calla will die here in this wilderness, there’s no hope for you. Staying with her isn’t noble, it just means you’ll starve too…. Either come with me and chance it or stay here and give up, but the bracelets are just about the only valuable thing we have left.”

She looked at their daughter. And wondered how he could bear to hear, let alone voice, the words that were spilling from his own mouth.

“Vel, the bracelets won’t do you any good here in this waste. They might save me though, once I make it to the next village.”

She shook her head, and said, “these were my mothers, and—“

But he grabbed her bony wrists with all too much force. He stripped all six of the bracelets clean off, tearing some of her skin along with it.

She winced at the sight of her own blood, but her tears were ultimately sprung from the fullness of his betrayal.

“Lat please!”

He spat in the dust at her feet. Then he turned back to the weedy path and stalked away East and out of their lives, or what remained of them.

Vel pulled Calla close and soothed her as best she could.

***

As the day wore on, Lat ruminated. The gold in his pouch clinked every step of the way.

He rested a hand on the leather that carried those bracelets. These six treasures would have been enough to save them both. Then he peaked inside.

Five?! There should have been six. Did she sneak one back? One couldn't have fallen out of his pouch... Maybe in his haste he had fumbled one back at the falls.

The bitch! If she had just seen sense and given them over... Or better yet: if she had been willing to lay Calla aside, if she had been strong like him…. then he'd have access to all 6 bracelets.

Now it was far too late to backtrack. And 5 gold bracelets would still be enough to secure his safety in a town on the other side of these wastelands.

But... the bitch! The fool bitch.

His blood felt hot. He seethed. Why hadn't she followed his lead.

He had given her so many chances to do the reasonable thing....

She had chosen wrong. She had chosen to die for sentimentality and now he had to try and put it all out of his mind. No use dwelling on the past.

The bugs bit at his neck, and he took a sip from his water skin as he walked.

He’d be okay.

He’d make it.

But he remembered saying much the same to Vel during the early days of the collapse. “We’ll be alright Vel. You, me, and Cal.”

And again when he’d led them into the valley: “We’ll make it through, you’ll see.”

He whistled an boyhood tune, just to put the past out of his mind. The past didn’t matter now and it wouldn’t ever matter again.

He wasn’t a husband or a father anymore. And when he made it out of the valley And found the first village, he would simply be a refugee with gold to trade. That’s what would matter.

***

Vel couldn’t deny, he seemed right about their prospects. One thing was certain: she didn’t have the strength to carry Calla out of the valley.

And now that Lat had taken her bracelets, she didn’t have anything to trade anyway. So journeying on seemed just as pointless as staying where they were.

She held Calla close. This spot or more specifically: the water fall, met at least one of their needs.

At least they wouldn’t die of thirst.

She just needed to think up a way to keep them warm and then, if fate willed it, find some food.

***

The ground was wetter here. Watery mud sloshed and splashed with every step.

He needed to find a dry place to curl up and sleep, before the sun went all the way down.

Already the orange of the west was dimming and giving way to purple, so it wouldn’t be long.

He pulled his ragged cloak tight around him, and called himself a fool, for Vel’s cloak as well.

As he walked through the dusklight he told himself this thought of wasn’t based in greed, but practicality.

After all, her choice meant she’d die somewhere in these woods. Soon. And then the cloak wouldn’t help anybody.

His foot sank deep into a pocket of chilly mud and he lurched forward—

He landed hard on the wet moss of the trail.

The reeds and the slender, young birch trees on either side of the path swayed back and forth with the waves of his impact.

His face melted into a frown of realization… the ground behaved like jelly in a bowl... because the path had led him into a bog.

He pulled his foot free from suction of the dead-moss and the black water., and stood quite still.

He shifted his weight, and felt the ground ripple. How had he not noticed this sooner?

The sun was making a hasty retreat and a chilly wind now bit at his cheeks. It smelled like sulfur.

He looked back the way he had come from. Shadows between the branches, and the path back looked like an omen.

But the path forward.... would take him deeper into the bog, and he knew the danger there.

He stood there for a time, weighing his options, wedged between the safety or a retreat and the risk of pressing on.

His stomach groaned, and that was a warning unto himself. He knew if he back tracked to search for dryer, safer ground, he'd lean a bit to hard against the risk starvation. Already he'd be cutting it close just to make it out of this cursed and soggy valley-- if he pressed on.

He set his face against the wind, cursed his circumstances and took another step, deeper into the bogland....

But now the last glimmer of sunlight was barely a smolder away in the west, and the gloom of full night lay ahead.

He could not risk the path through the bog in the fullness of dark.

So he cast his eyes around in a pitiable haste. He needed a place to bed down. Hiking through the night was not safe, not viable. He needed to sleep, and laying his head on the cold, water-drenched peat... well that didn't seem an inviting prospect.

He wanted to find something of a hill, an island of truer land in this floating matt of stink and rot.

And there he saw it, a few steps away from the path, past a few red-leafed bushes: A small hillock, just enough space for him to curl up on. And sure to be dry, or atleast dryer than the sogged path.

There was even a low growing hemlock, with dense needled bows growing beside the hill, it would grant him some small comfort and shelter, should the sky see fit to rain.

He made for the hill. Now that he'd acknowledged this intention, exhaustion seemed to permeate flesh and creep into his bones. He'd been walking for so long. And his body was so sore for rest, that he knew to lay his head on a bed of grass and reeds here in the reeking wilderness-- this would be a blessed reprieve from his weary journey. It would be a deeper, fuller sleep than the collapse into a feather bed after a day of farming in seasons now passed.

But his first step away from the trail brought him into knee deep water, thick with moss and mush: a living slush. The gold bracelets in his pouch jingled...

He floundered, swore, caught his balance, and pressed on.

***

Vel was doing all she could to build a shelter, searching in the dark and racing against the cold. She had no skill with this, but she had good sense. She knew a bed of leaves would be softer and warmer than the bare ground. So she gathered as many dry ones as she could find.

She took bundles in her arms and though walking caused her pain in the joints, she made trip after trip after trip up the bank and back looking for more.

She reasoned that placing their huddle against a barrier to the wind would help insulate them from the elements, just a bit.

So she piled leaves in the crook of the roots between two great oak trees. Calla was crying now, and her tears were bitter indeed.

It hurt Vel's heart to hear her please, and she did her best to ignore the sound so she could stave of despair and keep moving on the work to be done.

She tried dragging large stones to mound the perimeter of the ground they'd settle down on, but her arms were simply too weak to move anything so dense.

So she piled fallen, half rotted limbs, in a rough circle. she found a few branches that were light and full, and leaned them against the larger of the oaks, and with her last ounce of strength she placed a few fronds from near ferns to make something almost, vaguely like a leanto-roof.

"Papa, papa!"

Calla was hungry. But the depth of her sorrow went beyond the frantic call for food. She missed her father. Too young to understand that he had left them for good, her little mind bent around one impulse: to call him back.

Vel cried too, and her tears were laced with anger. For she fully understood: Lat had abandoned them. Left them to die. It was bad enough he had left her. But a quiet, impotent rage simmered in her heart. How had he left their daughter? Better that he should have died with them than left her here in the wilderness, hungry, cold, and afraid.

What kind of man was he?

And she had built as well as she could.

Her muscles were sore to the bone, and still their shelter was pitiful.

But she could do no more. She crawled down beside her daughter. Calla was shivering, but no longer crying, neither for her hunger nor for her father.

Vel knew this silence came from Calla's exhaustion. And exhaustion was the foundation of despair. Perhaps the child was too young, too naive to understand or articulate her dwindled hope but she showed the truth of it all the same.

And Vel felt it too, gnawing away at her core. A festering hopelessness, certainty that they would die a slow, grueling death.

But until her heart finally gave out, she'd keep trying. It wasn't to say she acknowledged any true hope. She was simply emboldened by a mother's stubborness and full up on desperation.

But for Calla and Vel, hope was dead. However, the march of doom prophesized the loss of her precious child, and giving up simply wasn't an option she could embrace.

She thought about the legends, the bed time tales her mother had told her: of humans gaining fabulous wishes and splendid riches when they managed to capture a dragon by the tait. But such tales were mere stories for children. Fictions told by mothers who could afford to dream, and heard by children who's eyes still glimmered with imagination and hope.

Those stories had been a comfort and a pleasure to her, in her childhood. Now they were the bitterest of memories. She felt no longing for the better years, only anguish that the life she enjoyed could not be gifted to her daughter. How cruel an expectation, and how miserable a realization: the final death of it all was a sadness and the pain in the moment was a grief. but her daughter being starved of the joys of childhood, that was a tragedy.

They cuddled for warmth and there was only one other comfort: The thread bare blanket Vel draped over Calla. The one she'd been swaddled in for much of their hike.

Calla nuzzled against her mother and said in her child-whisper: Blankee"

***

Lat pulled his foot free, and it came up bare. How a fully laced boot could possibly be stripped from his foot, he simply could not understand. The cold, gritty wet sucked into the void that his foot had made on its retreat, and he knew that boot was gone forever.

Wincing as his bare toes reached down for solid ground, he took another step, but this one was all the worse.

Rather than sinking to his shins, he seemed to break right through the bog layer, and into free water beneath. He fell full forward, landing deep to the waste, with his upper body sprawled across rippling moss. This wasn't a stretch of moss with bits of depth. This was a lake of tannin-leached water, with a scrap of dead vegetation floating atop.

And feeling his naked toes dangle free in the watery chasm between his past and his future, he felt a rush of fear.

Who could guess the depth?

His foot found nothing solid. Nothing whatsoever, aside from swirling detritus and cold, dark water. He cried out and scrambled forward, but the moss before him crumbled and split, and he sank like a rock.

He gasped as he fell into the mirk, but he had the sense, even in his surprise, to hold his breath as the chilling dead water sucked him down.

He opened his eyes, the water stung, it was sour on his lips. Acidic and astringent. But he needed to try and see where to go. He looked and there in front of him: two great lantern eyes, glowing gold before his face. The squinted and gazed at him.

They seemed full of anticipation and he would have cried out if his lungs had the air.

He scrambled back and away from those eyes, the poison water scorching his retinas, he flailed.

And slimey reeds and clumps of rot snaked around his arms and bunched against his face as he fought the bog.

His lungs began to ache. Panic fluttered at the base of his neck like the wings of a bat, flapping in his very spine. He fought for the surface but there was no telling up from down and it was pure luck that his hand punched through the surface into the open air.

He clawed blindly and by luck or providence found a branch upon which to grasp.

He pulled against it and brought his face up out of the water, then sucked in his first shuddering gasp of fresh, blessed air.

But the darkness of night had deepened in those brief moments of submersion. He could no longer see any stars. And the moon was a shimmering haze.

Then two yellow lamps loomed up in front of him, and they glimmered and danced like candlelights. The eyes he had seen below?

His own eyes hurt so bad, so incredibly bad. They stung. They burned. He clenched them shut and began to sob.

Then a rasping voice cut the night and stunned him into silence: You'll lose your sight soon. These waters are filled with burning. A symptom of the years. Bog waters are a kind of magic you know. What land creatures stumble in, they do not waste away in these depths. Sometimes I look at them, they never rot. They blacken but their flesh remains pliable and whole. Sometimes I place them beside my horde, like little lesser treasures. Lesser in worth as compares my gold and my jewels, but full of sentiment for one like me. It is such fun to watch your kind squirm and writhe as the water seeps into your eyes, your pores, and your lungs."

Lat trembled, his lips tingled. "who-who-who are you?"

The voice boomed with laughter and Lat felt the branch he clinged to and indeed the bog itself sway like milk in a bowl. "Ha! I am a dragon, human! Could you not guess from the first sight of my eyes?"

Lat shook his head, and his blind, blood shot eyes rolled pathetically in his terror. "Impossible. Impossible. It can't be possible."

The dragon chuckled, and said: "Your belief is irrelevant. As is your acceptance. What matters is, I am here. And so are you. And you have something I want."

"Wh-wh- what?"

The dragon sighed, and heat flared from his nostrils. "I said: your belief is irrelevant. As is your acceptance. What matters is, I am here. And so are you. And you have something I want."

"What do you mean? What could you want from me?" Lat tried to pull himself up abit further out of the water. He could feel it sapping away his warmth, and by extension his very life. He needed to get out.

The branch was very slippery and the dragon replied, "I can smell your gold, there in the pouch on your chest. I want it, and I desire that you should give it to me."

Lat knew without the gold, he'd have nothing to barter in the town-- if he ever made it there. And his eyes still hurt. The moon looked like a puddle of light, bleeding messily into darkness. If this bog water had truly burned away his sight, then he'd need every scrap of value he could muster to keep death away for a little while longer.

His lips quivered with the realization that a little while wouldn't truly be much at all. Still he couldn't help but cling to his life, fear of his own death had put him in shackles. Months ago during the collapse, seeing so much death and the ravages of the plague, he'd fallen to the grip of a terrible fixation: his own mortality. his every action was spurred by this overbearing fear. And the gold was a lifeline. He replied, "I need the gold."

The dragon's voice seemed nearly to slither. "You are a fool Eventually you'll die here. You'll sink to the bottom and breath deep the acids of the bog. You'll join my other decorations and I will bluck the gold from your corpse. Or... Or we make a deal. You see we dragons have long memories. And when I fondle and glory in my horde I like to pick up treasures and reminisce about how I gained them. And those that were given are always far more precious to me than those that were taken. So let's make a deal. For the gold."

"Huh?" His mind was slipping. His whole body tense and shivering. He couldn't focus on anything else.

The dragon hissed. "Quickly now, before you ruin this for me! I'll give you one wish, in return for the gold. Give me the gold-- Now!"

His teeth clacked together and every word was an effort, "Get... me... out... of... this... water!"

"The gold first!"

His fingers shook but he forced them to grasp the leather pouch, and tear it away in one swift motion. He tossed the pouch in the direction of the voice, and heard the jingle of the gold as it flew.

The dragon, quick as a snake, coiled him round and tugged him up out of the water and tossed him, dripping, onto what felt like solid ground! Grass on a mound of dirt. The hill, no doubt.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but still wet to his guts, he shivered against that harsh night air.

And his voice cracked and quaked out into the darkness: "Warm-- me up-- I'm gonna freeze-- to death over here!"

The dragon's reply was soft and sly: "You no longer have anything I desire."

Lat heard the dragon slithering away, fetid bog water sloshing in his wake.

"Please! Please don't leave me! Help me!"

Then he remembered, the sixth bracelet: "Wait! Wait, I have more gold!"

The dragon's voice was full of incredulity, but the fac that he replied at all betrayed his greed. "I smell no gold. You lie!"

Lat trembled, "It's not on me! It's not here. But I know where it is. A sixth bracelet, to match the other five. I'll tell you where, if you grant me another wish!"

Then a rumble of menace, the dragon growled. It was the noise of threat, and the words that came after were taken as promise:

"If I find you in a lie, I will make you suffer."

"No lie, no! Please, another wish!"

"I suppose it depends on the wish. It cannot be too grand, for such a pittance."

"I don't want to die out here... Can... can you protect me and...uh... keep me alive?"

"That is no small wish. You greedy little animal!" The dragon laughed as he spoke, "But I'm feeling... generous. I can protect you, perhaps not from all things. But I can guarantee food, and warmth to keep you in good... health."

Smiling blind, smiling ear to ear like a madman in the darkness, Lat agreed. Then he told the dragon where to find the last bracelet. Back by the falls, where his one time mate and his one time daughter lay in combat against the cold.

And the dragon breathed his magic over Lat's huddled body-- immediately feeling seeped back into his fingers and toes. Numbness at first, but it melted way to a pleasing, reassuring warmth.

The water in his clothes hissed and steamed off him, offering mild heat to the air Lat breathed.

The dragon's voice sounded as though it was laced with a cruel smile, "You will not freeze tonight or any night. This heat will fade quickly, and the hours will drag but now at least you are dry. You will not die to the cold, though it will return to bite at your weary bones. It will be so tonight, and all nights. Neither will I let you starve to the point of expiration. But there is no great rush for food. You can make it a few more days meal-free. But I promise, I won't let you starve to death..."

Lat frowned. Then his frown bled down to a full grimace, accompanied by a moan of disbelief. Dawning realization bloomed in the pit of his stomach, and it nauseating him. But there was nothing for him to bring up.

***

Back at falls Calla and Vel cuddled in sleep. Calla slept deep, in the warmth of her mother's arms, the meagre blanket tucked around her. Vel slept light, her bones ached, and her sking was pricked with cold. She had fallen asleep thinking that perhaps she should gather more leaves, to burrow into, but she'd been too tired to do anything more than think on it, before passing out.

But now, as the night wore on, her mind hovered between wakefullness and sleep.

And the dragon came stalking into their makeshift camp. And he sniffed. He smelled the gold, It smelled good.

He saw two humans asleep in some leaves, but he paid them no heed. He turned his back on them both and ferreted out the gold, tasting the air with his forked tongue as he searched. And he grinned as he drew close to his prize.

***

And Vel dreamed a dream she'd dreamt many times as a child. She dreamed that she caught a dragon by its tail just like in the old stories. And the dragon was forced to grant her every wish.

Only this time the dream felt so incredibly vivid, so real, when the dragon asked, "What wishes may I serve?"

***

When the dragon felt hands grasp his tail, his mind went slack. The gold might as well have no longer existed. He turned and bowed, as was custom. He had never been caught before. He'd resisted capture with his very life, since his hatching. He'd made games of humans and their wishes. But now that he'd finally been cowed, it felt right and just to serve. And beneath his subdued consciousness, he wondered to have been caught by a sleeping human. He hadn't thought such a thing possible, and he mused that he was quite like to be the only dragon in history to ever find itself clasped at the tail by a snoring woman. He had no desire to trick or ruin her wishes. He only wished to satisfy her every command to the excess of her wildest imagination. "What wishes may I serve?"

***

Hovering between the worlds of wake and dream, Vel sighed. She wished for a warm blanket, a blanket big enough to cover them both. And the fluff felt so real and so good upon her shoulders.

And she wished wished for protection, for her darling child. She wished for a home, both warm and safe. She wished for food stores, of cheese and cakes and fruits and salted meats and candies and jellies and grains, that would never ever run low. She wished for everything that would give her child the life she'd hoped for her-- every peace and happiness and security and contentment.

Then she sighed and a tear rolled down her sleeping cheek, because hopelessness was tough to shake, even in the midst of a dream. She rolled over and let go his tail and the dragon slithered away without a sound, forgetting his well earned gold beside the cobbles of her fresh-built home.

That morning she woke and found the dream had stuck.

***

Lat woke around the same time, but to a world gone dark. The sunlight warmed his skin but offered no comfort to his wretchedness nor his despair.

And the rush of the waterfall beside their cottage filled their home with a joyful sound. And as the days and weeks and years rolled on, the abandoned woman and child were quite happily spared the sound of his self-pitying wails rising up on the wind.