Why There Are No More Dragons In Holy Russia

Over the years, the dragon’s paper wings had crumpled and torn at the membranes, the skin fusing to itself like the waterlogged folds of a desecrated scroll.

When he uncoiled within his oak-root cavern, the pain was so great, he feared his wings’ joints would uproot from their socket. Some nights, he woke with his claws buried in the earth and his breath frozen in his lungs. Certain his wings had come apart in his sleep, disintegrated atop the rotting silk carpets in a shamble of ivory dowels and tattered vellum, inked with a cipher of black mold and varicose veins.

The peasants used to sing stories about him, the dragon with paper wings. But there were no more heroes in Holy Russia to fight him. They had retreated to the mountains, calcified themselves to stone with their regrets and indifferences. And the new generation of dragons that stalked the skies now didn’t have paper wings, but ones of metal.

One such beast’s roar had stirred him from a vague, fanciful dream of feasting on a swan—the snap of feathers against his upper palate and the hot, rich flow of blood drizzling like honey down his throat. When he swallowed, he swore he could still taste it.

He lumbered from his hollow, taking care to move slowly. If he wasn’t careful, he feared a sudden wrong motion might tear him apart. He would have to pick his lost bones and vertebrae from his scatter of tarnished treasures.

Settling on his haunches, he watched as the other dragon swept across the bright blue sky. The sun winked across its eel-smooth silver scales and crystalline eyes.

The undersides of the younger dragon’s wings were each decorated with a black cross pattée, the symbols’ lines so bold and symmetrical, the elder thought they must be painted.

He’d seen that cross before. Centuries ago, embellished on the shields and banners of the roving packs of Livonian knights who’d carried it into battle at Lake Peipus and perished on the frozen surface there.

The Livonian Order had died out with the soldiers of Novgorod, their bones buried in the silt and ice of time. Perhaps this was another crusade, and these iron-winged beasts had learned it was easier to sate their bloodlust when their humans had a likeminded target to point to.

The dragon blinked rheum from his eyes, tracked the line of smoke the other creature left in its wake. White smoke like scar tissue. And the hunting cries these younger, stranger dragons made were all harsh metallic clangs and monotonous rumbles, not the smooth and resonant roar he’d once taken pride in—a sound strong enough to curdle milk and break the water of maidens.

But his paper wings had spoiled. And there were no more bogatyri in Holy Russia.

In a slow, aching lurch, he picked his way through the forest bramble, flattening his wings against his back to avoid snagging them on thorns and branches. Not as though it would make any difference at this point. It had been many centuries since he had last flown. The hero Alyosha had severed his wings’ sinews at the joints, quenched the honed edge of his sword with the blood and venom that ran through the arteries beneath his crimson scales.

The dragon had wanted to be killed after what Alyosha had done to him. He had waited to be killed. He was still waiting to be killed.

Instead of retreating back into his shelter in the rotten crook of an ancient oak, the dragon followed the trail of smoke.

Long after the younger beast had vanished from sight, the dragon continued walking. Slowly. Methodically.

The forest had changed during his long sleep. Winter had become autumn overnight, the leaves in a blaze of colors. Relics of human settlement jutted from the landscape, as unpleasant and snagging on the gaze as dislocated teeth. Here, a hut charred to black spindles. Here, a dirt road. Here, a trench knotted in coils of wire, each cord razored with thorns sharper than blackberry bramble.

A flash of white gleamed through the trees. A building. A carcass.

Out of curiosity, lured by its open doors, he crossed through the threshold of the deserted temple. Ornate tapestries were piled in haphazard heaps on the floorboard, torn from the vault from which they’d been hung. Except for one that remained hanging like a flag, emblazoned with flowers and birds of paradise in gold thread.

A menagerie of animals stalked through the murals painted on the walls—an ox following a lion, the lion tracking the ascent of an eagle.

A sea serpent, a brutish beast of labor, a bird whose golden wings eclipsed the sun.

The building was old, but well cared for. Except someone had broken holes in the masonry with a shovel or an axe, torn at the plaster to reach the foundation beneath. The exposed bricks were raw and red like the cankerous sores that’d opened on the dragon’s underbelly as he’d slept.

Driven by some nameless, sorrowful compulsion, the dragon paused to lightly bite at a brick, gum it as if whetting baby-teeth. He expected the block to taste like blood. Instead, the dark, loamy taste of soil filled his maw, and he spat into the dirt. A string of yellowed saliva oozed down his chin. When he swatted at the moisture, his claws raked off a crust of dead scales and mite feces.

The far wall contained a vestibule and an ornately carved cabinet reduced to splinters. Vellum scrolls lay in a heap, stomped underfoot and torn.

There was nothing else to see here, and the sight of the damaged scrolls upset the dragon. His wings flattened against his back in sympathy.

As he emerged from the ruined temple, the snap of a twig underfoot drew his gaze across the forest glade. He thought of feasting on a swan’s downy underbelly. Of tracking a deer through the snow and burying his snout in its steaming entrails.

A pale face peered at him from between the leaves of a guelder rose bush.

It was a girlchild. Older than an infant, but not by far. Some parent or caretaker had bundled her in wool and fur to shield her from the autumn cold and plaited her curly black hair.

The dragon wetted his teeth, his gullet dry and cracked. For months, too achy and fatigued to crawl from his shelter, he had preyed on the insects and rodents that found shelter in his root-studded hollow.

Once, an abandoned doe had nestled up alongside him in his sleep, perhaps mistaking him for some long-petrified formation—no different than the ancient heroes who had relinquished themselves to stone out of lack of relevancy. The rapid, liquid beat of the deer’s heart had roused him from his dreams.

After gorging himself on the doe, he had clutched its skull against himself and wept, filled with the bitterest sorrow for something he couldn’t name. Something he had no words for.

“Devochka.” His voice came out strained and splintered. He tried to smile, but his maw was not built for it. “What are you doing alone in the forest?”

The girlchild blinked in wonder or curiosity. No fear in her gaze. Black hair and eyes the color of storms.

"Where are your parents?"

She didn't answer.

"Can you speak?"

“Ikh bin farloyrn,” the girlchild said, and repeated it when the dragon didn’t answer. Toddled forward and reached for the dragon’s broad, heavy head.

The dragon rested his chin on the ground, maw closed. Steam wafted from his nostrils as the girlchild curled pudgy fingers around his splintered horns. He allows the child to test the dull tips of the fangs that grew from his maw in a crooked jumble, pet the expanse of scales between his lanternlike eyes, splay a clammy palm to catch his breath.

Ikh bin farloyrn.

He had heard that language in the centuries past, spoken in hushed whispers from figures seeking refuge in the trees, nameless strangers shying from the hollow percussion of musket blasts, or the crack of a Cossack’s whip and mocking laughter. A young woman fleeing through the forest like a heron in flight, barefoot and half disrobed, begging someone to save her. Anyone.

When the woman’s pursuers had finished with her, the dragon had crept out from his hollow and like a carrion feasted upon the bones and flesh they’d left. The first warm meat he’d eaten in months. And he had hated himself for his callousness and indifference.

Ikh bin farloyrn.

He didn’t know the language well, but he knew enough to understand those three words.

I am lost.

He thought to ask where the girlchild’s parents were. Except he had watched this story play out many times before.

A low ache radiated through the dragon’s spine as the girl grasped at his wing. Before he could stop himself, a low warning hiss escaped his teeth.

The noise should have frightened the girl. Except the child’s eyes were already swollen and red, and old teardrop tracks cut through the dirt smeared across her cheeks. Likely, she had stopped crying hours ago, and perhaps began screaming, and perhaps began whimpering. And now, just looked at the dragon as if expecting the dragon to help her. Or devour her, perhaps.

In the cavern formed by the oak tree’s roots, there was plenty of room. Berries to pick in the bramble, ripe indigo plums and savory chestnut meats. A tsar’s hoard of jewels and coins she could play with, velvet tapestries adorned with bullion, kolts of gold and niello to weave into her curly hair.

“I am lost,” she said one last time.

At first, the dragon didn’t know how to answer in her mother tongue. Then the response surfaced from the well of his memory, unbidden. Some recollection of an exasperated, relieved father carrying his weeping daughter through the forest’s deepening shadows, and how much the lonely dragon had wished to be carried as well. By who, he didn't know. He didn't even know the circumstances of his own creation.

“You are not lost, child,” the dragon said. “Not anymore.”