When Dragons Lay

Too easy. Easy to...

This is what the beast thought. Not in those words, exactly, but in those circuitous brain loops that go round and round, dip and ascend, dive deep and recoil higher, until the obvious drives his next move. One cautionary sieve of constraint filtered the itinerary to allow an unexpected conclusion.

Delicious. Alone. No fight. No screaming mother. No father in fixed in slaystance. No sword-wielding brothers or chainmail'd uncles or androgynous sisters. Her bloodline is absent. Around, he looked around: not worse. Around that: not worse. See, sweep to the horizon, circle back, roll eyes up and down. No smells of them. Too easy.

Too easy is seductive; means a surprise beckons. The sieve worked: his next move was caution.

In all the texts written of dragons of the Nethertimes, none told of the inner workings of the mind of Draco ignium. In the archives of ancient libraries were accounts of learned men's forbidden dissections: convolutions, invaginations, convexities, concavities, lobular clusters surrounding an inner, more primeval dysreptilian mind. There the dissections always stopped.

This innermost primeval mind of a dragon was off limits to vivisection, as exposure to air meant sudden, explosive combustion at the center of a 125-paces-wide sodium conflagration. Or was it carbon subnitride abrading a graphite conscience in the presence of ozone? Or was it just that this innermost troubled mind was so unstable?

No one lived to tell the tale, and the mystery, of why the science of dragon dissections went no deeper, persisted as part of the lore.

It was the surrounding of the upper, more evolved lobular gray matter clusters, however, that inhibited the jump to his next move, normally driven thoughtlessly from the deep dungeons of muscle memory. Thoughts arose, began their circuitous journey, then consulted the primitive part which voted gulping down the human toddler as part of one fell swoop.

It would be easy.

Merely a glide, three cubits high--one flap, really--with an open mouth, then vertical lift into the ill wind to assay reactions from below, perhaps from heretofore absent family champions.

The beast alighted on a large outcropped rock pockmarked with the history of those consumed in prior times. The forest canopy above allowed crisscrossing slits of light to paint the floor with a luminous checkerboard. Cold-blooded creatures of the floor moved from square of light to rectangle to rhombus to circle, each creature chasing the warmth and clarity of a moving geometry. As time passed, so changed each particular resting spot--once bright, now dark; once dark, now lighted anew. The predators who attacked from the dark needed only wait for a passing cloud; the predators who attacked from the light needed only wait for a sound from a shadow.

As in life, he thought. Favorable to you becomes un-; what is un- to you becomes favorable. As capricious as the wind, the shield above as solid as it is false, strewn with colander holes to strain out the doomed.

He looked down to consider her; she had chosen her lighted spot on the forest floor, which made her hair sparkle. Some of the ground creatures shifted from sunlight to darkness without actually moving--due to the capricious beams that danced with the wind above. She remained steadfast and inert.

He was close enough to the child to simply retrieve her with only a semi-outstretched talon. Even for a beast, he knew this was a beautiful human child. Of three, possibly four, circlings around the sun in age, having seen as many fallings of the leaves.

The child became amused. The beast became amused because the child was amused. Nothing, it seems, extends middle ground between two adversaries as the bridging effect of humor understood at a higher level than what meets the eye. The child laughed.

The beast's graphite conscience buffered the oxidizer from his breath as he cackled. The insidious incandescent alchemy deep inside defused, impotent.

The child laughed more, in a continuous quaver that one day would define a giggle. Between them, squawks, chortles, squeals, and snorts evolved into japes: the young girl flapping her arms viciously, huffing menacingly; the beast throwing his head back, as if whiplashing long locks of hair out of his face.

She especially liked that, and ran her fingers through her golden hair to put over her face, then jerking her head to mock, in turn, his mockery of her.

He especially liked that, and he recognized the two-way conversation as communication, the imprint of bonding.

He wondered. Why alone? Easy for me? Low-hanging fruit. No one around. Certainly her beauty and embodiment of flawlessness held purchase on the need for preservation. Must protect a treasure such as this.

He lost his appetite.

He swept his gaze 360 degrees. He wanted to spot them, her family--deserters, runaways, and cowards. Lurch at them. Make them cinders. After all, both he and the child were creatures of God. How dare they ignore her worth? A female child at that!

It was not lost on him the specialness of the female. He knew all too well.

He looked down and discovered the small girl had crawled onto the rock on which he had made his perch. What do I call you? Call me Dragon; what do I call you? Call me Ezzie. Can you take me home, Dragon? she asked him. The conversation continued without the need for words.

No, he couldn't.

But why, Dragon? Because I am not welcome there, Ezzie. But why? Look at me. I like the way you look. How could that be? Because, silly, you are the topmost point of the Earth--fire and water and earth and...

The beast broke wind.

...and air.

The resulting aroma was of sulfur and methane, wafting malodorously into four nostrils between the two of them, a bouquet of hydrogen sulfide. With this the young girl was inconsolably hysterical with laughter.

Dragons can be hurt, and this is why he dared not search for her home. Yet, she nagged him. Eventually the intuitive conversations strayed from homesickness to the continuity of the days and the quotidian duties to sate hunger and quench thirst. By morning they hunted. By evening he delighted her with his blue-hot breath; nothing they ate was ever raw.

Over the years, she grew up more fine and more beautiful until he didn't know how he could live without his little gnat, always in his ear:

Dragon! Grab me and take me over the mountain, really fast, just for fun. Burn that bush--make it pop. Laugh with me. Play with me.

And he did these things.

Once, on a day that was bright and made one assume everything else in the world was shiny and bright as well, she crawled onto his back, the most inciting thing one could do to a dragon. Someone positioned on his back was the only way he could be slain, of course. That is, no face-to-face confrontation would go well for a confronter. Even if the assailant were lucky enough to drive a sword deep between his eyes, it would breach his inner primitive mind and release the inferno vapors to create hellscape. The dragon-slayer would know immediately what the vivisectionists had learned as their final lesson in life. There would be no winners.

No, to survive slaying a dragon required a shameless ambush of an attack from its backside, to drive the deep plunge of a sword between his shoulder blades deep enough to reach his obsidian heart.

Ezzie, astride, laughed, but a spinal reflex originating deep in the primitive dragon's brain twitched her off as cattle do flies.

No, no, pretty little gnat, off of me. But why? Because it is the position for dragon-slay. Even from me, your little gnat? From anyone. Oh, Dragon, I would never dragon-slay. Perhaps, little gnat, but dragon-slay is when dragons lay.

She slid down the final scales to the ground, her feelings wounded, no less than a dragon-slay, she felt, except it was a type of cut from a dull-bladed sword--though just as deep.

Don't you trust me, Dragon? she asked. I do. But only up to a point, right, Dragon? She had learned the concept of limits and she found boundaries painful. He felt her pain of rejection, no longer sequestered--to just her--as their communication was always empathetic.

No, little gnat. I trust you. All the way, Dragon? Yes, all the way, Ezzie. Then may I?

Just asking gave him another chance to reconcile those limits and a chance at redemption for how he had cut her with the dull-bladed sword. He suppressed his reflex and muscle memory.

Yes, please. Quickly, now child, before I change my mind.

She hand-over-hand grasped the rising scales of his long tail, almost flying, singing happily the entire journey while his black heart lightened a dozen shades. Soon she had resumed her position.

They won't dare attack a dragon with me on your back. Ha! they won't even see you, little gnat. But I want you to take me home, unless you go there without me. Why would I go without you, Ezzie? To burn them, Dragon, of course. Why? For throwing me away. We don't know what happened, Ezzie. No, we don't, but they do and they haven't come for me...so they don't want me. It seems they're happy with what they did and how it turned out. Then never wanted me! I was set out here for a dragon to gobble. But I didn't do that, gnat. No, Dragon, you didn't; you're one of the good ones.

After a pause, I'm the only one, he said in fatalistic hot pokers she felt in her mind.

The only dragon left, he continued, the last of our line, for there is no female.

There was a pause.

Dragon, I know dragons to live forever. Yes, they do, Ezzie. Then why are you the last? Did they all die? Yes, Ezzie. But how is that possible when dragons live forever? No, gnat, not if you kill them. He regarded her tenderly.

I have learned the beauty and specialness of what the female is and what she means. The Creator is a hermaphroditic being, cleaved into male and female. It is the longing for them--to rejoin--that makes them ache when apart, that makes life without the other empty and ridiculous; and that makes them God when they join again.

He knew she didn't understand. He wasn't quite sure himself, but he felt the tugs on his heartstrings knowing that if he were to be slain, it would be as if dragons had never been. He was sure that females were holy and special. And joining with them meant apotheosis, a word that explained it so much better than how he expressed it.

You're alone, too, like me, she said.

And then she cried, and he loved her for it, because it was suffering he saw, coming to him, when usually any suffering he celebrated came from him.

The years passed, but he knew she was approaching that "human" age when she would become fully woman, with hopes and dreams and expectations and a longing to be God-like. And he knew none of it necessarily had to include him.

The forest remained theirs alone. The game they hunted was theirs alone. The time each day was theirs alone, but for her, it was no longer enough.

One day...

Take me home, Dragon! You haven't disturbed me with that request in the longest time, little gnat. Does it disturb you? It used to, gnat. Why? Because some things are left undisturbed. So, it's not disturbing if it's undisturbed? Yes, the beast replied. Dragon, those are two meanings forced into one with not enough room for the two of them; they circle upon themselves to mean nothing. Gnat, not meaning to do something doesn't mean it's meaningless. Oh, now you play with me, with words, and with the sentiments with which they haunt me, Dragon. So this is to be our discussion, our arrival at a decision--contradictions? Nonsense? Meaningless meanings? Before, when I said you could go with or without me; now I say I can go with or without you.

He reared up his scaly head to look at her, straight down into his folded wings where she was snuggled in her favorite position. Their conversations without tongues also meant eyes were not needed. But he needed to look at her--into her eyes--now.

Gnat, he said, I tell you now that you are right that you weren't wanted. Dragon, you have knowledge kept from me? Yes, little gnat. She struggled against him unnecessarily for show, jerking this way and that, climbing out of his wing's embrace as roughly as she could. She slid to the ground. And why have you alone been privy?

Now she spoke with words, articulating sharply, out loud. "Tell me, Dragon. Leave nothing out."

The dragon became flustered, and he let her know it by exploding a large tree beside them, incinerating it. She didn't flinch. They sat for an hour as the large tree was consumed, sparking and popping until it looked like a crooked bituminous stick black as pitch. Do you, beast, think that's the only thing that explodes? We each burn, do we not? Now tell me, Dragon. Leave nothing out, she repeated sternly. He was silent.

"Tell me now!" she vocalized sharply.

Little gnat--Ezzie--I have loved you with all of the power a beast can muster for one unlike himself. We differ, yet I saw it as beautiful when you were sick and succored by my embrace. I saw it as beautiful when you came of age and wondered about your body and its ways. I saw it as beautiful when, not knowing what you meant, you knew so well something you meant, as if it were the word of God. I saw your beauty when headstrong, angry, frustrated, and contrite. These were all reconciliations between species, little Ezzie. You acted out, and seeing it as beauty is all I needed.

But, my dear Ezzie, there are those who can find beauty nowhere on earth, the sea, or the æther. They wonder how they will eat with another mouth diluting the bounty. They wonder if giving a child away will satisfy whatever lurks in the forest, looking for such fodder instead of themselves. And, little gnat, one thing is for sure: if they do this, this child will never return; but they are not vexed, because they can make more children if they want. They know it is easy.

"Take me to these persons," she demanded aloud.

Use our commontalk, our minds, he pleaded. Your words are pointy, acidic, and ugly when exposed to the air like that.

An oxidation that makes things explode.

She remembered. She remembered the warmth of their commontalk flow, from mind to mind, sentiment to sentiment, affection to affection, each a two-way dialogue of communion of warm-blooded creatures who shared a home. And if home is where the hearth is, she need go no further than Dragon.

I love you, Dragon, but you've got to do this for me. I must confront them. I must confront them as an equal of this Earth. They were never to expect to see me again, but they need to.

Then, little gnat, they will. He knew this couldn't end any other way.

Ezzie pulled on his wing to signal him to scoop her up, enfold her in its jointed embrace, and share the night's sweet repose before the excitement to come the next morning.

It was as beautiful a new day as she had ever seen in her fifteen years. The equanimity of the morning, however, was the calm before the storm, amassing a vacuum for the turmoil and maelstrom soon to come. They fed on berries and sipped on their stream water. They talked of strategy silently--commontalked--mind to mind. When they were both satisfied no tangential surprise could spin off an unexpected tragedy, she mounted him on his back.

And his reflexes were at peace with that.

A dragon can hop right into the air, high enough to clear the tallest man, from a sudden flexion-and-contraction one-two combination of its thunderous thighs, and then powerful shoulders torquing the wings to lift it off its feet--all in one beat.

His wings were counter rhythms and rotationally produced a sucking vortex from above, allowing the beast to rise into a path of less atmospheric resistance. Ezzie gasped for oxygen, and the dragon slowed his ascent.

Ezzie's old village was a 30-leagues walk around hills, streams, and forests too thick to penetrate; but as the dragon flies, it was less than an hour away. From their ultimate altitude, the village seemed an ant pile of activity. He circled above the cumulonimbus clouds that seemed the only threat to the villagers below.

"It seems rain is brewing," the man said to the young girl.

"Yes, Papa," the thunder'll spook the horses, f'sure," she replied.

"That's what you concern y'sef with? Well, I shouldn't wonder, should I?"

Ezzie started. Did you hear that, Dragon? Hear what, little gnat? A girl. Speaking. To us, Ezzie? I don't know, Dragon.

With that the cloud discharged from below them, dovetailing with a loud boom. In Ezzie's head she heard a scream. Down below, a father berated his daughter. "A lot of good you do me, sniveller. Just like your mama! Gather your wits, girl!" Then he struck her in the face with an open palm.

Ezzie felt the strike. Aye! What's this? Could that be me screaming? Did you scream, Ezzie? No. No? then how could it be you? But Dragon, how is it I hear someone else?

The dragon thought she might be lightheaded from the thin air, so he circled around the thunderhead and then descended gracefully toward the village. The ants became beetles and the beetles became rats and the rats became hounds and the hounds became the people, identifiable at last.

The villagers, themselves, made an identification of their own:

"Dragon!" screamed a woman wringing clothing, alerting the neighborhood of thatched places they called home. And then the shrieks began, the scurrying launched, and the frenzy ignited, rekindling the ant pile image.

Take me to that girl, Dragon. But Ezzie, I didn't hear her. I don't-- No, but I do, Dragon. Go where I point.

She didn't point with her finger. She willed this way and that, by a certain feel, until she saw a couple of people--an older man and a young girl, apparently father and daughter--waiting out the rain under a barn roof. Ezzie's aim was true, because as they swooped by they could see the two of them through the door.

At ground level, father and daughter witnessed only a swoosh that whistled by them, all but blurred and streaked and unidentifiable.

"What was that, Papa?"

That was me! Ezzie hurled at her, not knowing if their connection was reciprocal.

"Papa! Papa!" she cried. Someone's talking in my head! Am I bewitched from the thunderbolt?"

"No, no, add daft to your stupidity," he answered. "And more so from the loud crash so near. Mine ears ring, as well, but my brain's still there." And then again, "Just like your mama." He looked at her with disapproval, something to which she was immune by now. "Twenty years and you'll be long gone if you don't do it y'sef."

"Close the barn door," she pleaded, intending to put as much obstacle between her and the atmospheric witchcraft as she could. He laughed at her. She leapt forward to close it, then allowed a latch to trip, sealing them in.

"Is that better?" he asked her. "Can you be normal, now? Who am I kidding?" It was too much and the girl began crying. "Oh, God," he grumbled, "here we go again."

Tears welled up and then leaked from Ezzie's eyes.

The rain had now plateaued into a steady, mild sprinkling, as summer cloudbursts often do. The man and girl awaited a certain silence that would signal the storm was well past, allowing them to handle the animals without their getting spooked. The calm began to expand into quiet. The man reached for the door, but before grasping the latch, there was heard a knock. It was a firm, insistent knock, like a knock meant for someone specific behind it: someone who had better answer it; someone who--perhaps--owed someone an explanation.

He turned and looked at his daughter, accusingly, and she looked back at him blankly. "Who's that, Papa?"

"I dunno," he said with irritation. "Could be anybody. Not for you, I'm sure."

Me, that is who. So open this and show yourself!

The girl clasped the sides of her head. "Again! She speaks again!"

The man reached over her to unlatch the door, and its uneven threshold put it into motion on its own, complete with a descrescendo creak that ended to announce the young woman at the door.

"What sorcery is this?" Ezzie said out loud, looking at the young girl. (As young as she, as pretty as she, as tall as she, shaped the same.) "Wizardry places a mirror here," she said.

It was difficult to know who was the most astonished--Ezzie, the man, or his daughter. The man ran to the back of the barn and then returned with a pitchfork. "Be gone, doppelgänger!"

"It appears I belong here," Ezzie said. "No, that's wrong, isn't it? I...belonged here."

"Belonged?" the man's daughter asked.

"Shut your mouth, trollop!" the man commanded her.

"I am no trollop, Papa."

"No," said Ezzie. "You're a twin. My twin!" Ezzie turned to the man, likely her father.

The man dropped the pitchfork and collapsed onto the hay on the floor. He shook his head.

"Twinborns," Ezzie said to the girl. "You are my sister. My name is Ezzie."

The girl checked to see her father was not paying attention before she allowed herself to smile back at Ezzie. "I'm Mila," she said.

"Hello, Mila," Ezzie greeted her back.

"Where are you from, Ezzie?"

Ezzie swung the door wide open until it reached the front side of the barn with a bang. There, huddled silently, sat the dragon, easily the biggest thing on the farm. As big as the barn.

Mila gasped.

"Fear not, Mila. He's our brother."

"How could that be?"

He's my brother, and that makes him your brother, too. Ezzie now spoke with her in commontalk. The man looked up and stared at both of them, now that he could fit both in his field of view.

Hello, Mila, another voice added--a mighty voice. Ezra laughed. She turned her attention to the man. "You!" She shouted at him. He was aback, for it was his daughter's voice, but never had he heard it like this. Never would she have dared. He saw the dragon outside and began to tremble.

In the distance, a commotion of male voices approached, with shouts and curses.

"Your woman bore twins. Twins!" Ezzie repeated. "A blessing, and you threw one away! Even assured yourself of her destruction by placing her where it was said that dragons lay." She looked at Dragon; he looked back. "He does what I want. So tell me why? Why would you throw a child--your own child--away? Your daughter? A twin! Tell me or I swear to all that is holy that you'll boil!"

"Twins are a blessing?" he ridiculed. "A blessing and a curse," he seethed. "It's what killed her--" he jerked his head toward Mila--"her ma." Ezzie took a moment to address this sudden sorrow, long over in this family's story but new to her.

"A blessing," Ezzie repeated, glazing her eyes in grief. She had always longed to see her mother again. One day, one day, she always said.

"A blessing only if they're both boys," he snorted sarcastically. "One girl, well, aye, that happens, but two? At the same time? I have a farm to work, for God's sake. You can understand that, can't you? Anyone could."

The lobules and convolutions in the dragon's brain that held back dark things began to tremble and wobble, no longer able to completely contain the primeval mind beneath them. Shadowy thoughts began to churn, looking for escape.

By this time the townspeople had reached the farm. The menfolk had continued beyond where the women had stopped and pressed onward armed with sticks, swords, pokers, and salt, for which it's been said would burn the beast. Dragon watched as they approached, unconcerned. When they reached within 100 paces of him, they stopped. A priest led the mob of men and suddenly knelt.

"We are peaceful and God-fearing, beast. Be gone. The dragon narrowed his field of vision until it was honed in on just the priest, who crossed himself and began praying in Latin. Ezzie stepped forward ahead of Mila.

"Stop!" she said. "You have no leave to invoke God." The men gasped, seeing both Ezzie and Mila together. While twins were not unknown here, Mila was known to be an only child.

"What is this?" cried the priest. Ezzie turned to the farmer.

"Yes, what is this?" He didn't answer. She turned back to the priest. "It's his other daughter. We are his twin offspring. But you have never seen me before, have you?"

"How?" hollered the priest. Then, to the farmer, "Why?"

"Tell him why, father," she said, a sneer attached to the last word.

Please don't, Ezzie, Mila begged in commontalk. He'll beat me to death for this. Quiet, Milo! Those days are over.

One of the men hurled a long sword at the dragon, his aim so misthrown that it landed behind the farmer, almost injuring him.

"Lo! Careful," he admonished the man. "And..." to all the men, "we best not disturb the beast. There is neutrality, heretofore, without injury or casualty. I believe we can endure some contrition here and let this beast be on his way."

"And me?" Ezzie responded.

"You, too, lassie. Go with your beast. Leave us here to go about our lives."

"And that's the matter settled, then?" Ezzie goaded him. The man looked at the priest and then at each of the men.

"What say all?" he asked them. They mumbled indecisively among themselves. The dragon kept focused on the men and their weapons and did not notice the farmer slip deeper into the barn. Ezzie began commontalk with the dragon.

And that's the matter settled, then? Let it go, Ezzie. Why, Dragon? That is justice denied. I should burn the lot, then, little gnat? Everyone but my sister, Dragon.

Deep in the dragon's mind his primeval reasoning began to argue. Burn them all. No! You can and you must. They don't help you when they're alive; they can't hurt you when they're dead. To wit, your Ezzie supports it, and no doubt her twin, too.

The farmer had climbed a ladder into a loft that opened to the front of the barn from a window. The beast was as large as the barn, so it was only a sidelong leap onto him. He was armed with the long sword that had fallen beside him moments earlier.

The dragon's instincts, no longer reflexic because of dulling by Ezzie's back-climbing before, took a moment too long to respond. The farmer assumed slaystance and drove the blade home. The dragon stiffened and called out to Ezzie.

Child, child! No, Dragon. Fight them, burn them. Too late. My heart bleeds, and nothing bleeds so much and so quickly as a dragon's heart. No, Dragon. Ezzie shrieked in horror. Mila stood, entranced into catatonia.

One last exchange passed between them, heartfelt but final; accepting but conspiring. Ezzie understood and insensate Mila slowly smiled.

The crowd of men cheered wildly. The priest got on his knees to thank the Lord, the antediluvian battle with the beast having been re-waged and re-won. The dragon slumped and collapsed.

"Now, lassie, not so brash, are we?" the farmer laughed.

"You win, father," Ezzie said. "The dragon will never be the same," she said.

"The same? Why, he be dead!"

"Yes, dead. For now. But he won't rot until you have performed the final rite for dragons."

"Fie! Let it remain here intact to testify what we won this day."

"That's rich because--come the first frost--he will reanimate if you don't perform the final rite. And then he will remember all. And you."

The farmer appeared a little uncertain. "Tell me about this rite."

"You must take the sword that slew him, and you must place it between his eyes and plunge it as deeply as you can. Unless you destroy his mind, he will be back, and I for one don't want to be around when it happens."

The farmer looked at the priest, who nodded. "What harm?" he told the farmer. "You'll have killed it twice. And it's an easy target now."

Come with me, Mila. Where, Ezzie? To the forest. We shall live there--I know how. What about my home? Home? Think about how he selected which one of us to abandon. How did he do that, Ezzie? He didn't, Mila. He just grabbed the one closest. That's how he decided. It was casual, which is why it was so cruel and sad. And you have lived by his ruthlessness, and I have lived without my sister. We belong together.

It won't be as if you've never existed, Ezzie said, hoping somewhere Dragon would hear. You were. And you settled the grave injustice of abandonment of blood, separation of sisters, and the extinguishing of part of Creation.

Ezzie extended her hand and led Mila away. As they distanced themselves, they could hear the hoopla and victory whoops from the men, which seemed to be peaking. They were far enough away when they saw the blast, bright as the sun, three seconds before they heard the detonation and the hot wind that followed to warm their faces.