Yalena's Heir

The shrill cry of a small human child echoed through the branches again. Her scent whispered through the leaves in the wind. Yalena glanced down as she flew above it all. Smells were fleeting for dragons in flight. Considering her wingspan, 70 feet (large for an adult female), she covered areas quickly. But it was that cry the pricked her ears. Something about that slip of a scent made Yalena’s fire restrict, meaning it built in her chest, like a bomb waiting and pulsing. Dragons gathered their fire in this way when fearful or angry. For Yalena, she felt a mixture of both.

Perhaps the youngling shall perish soon or be found. However, she didn’t sense any other prey that could put an end to a tiny human. Diving down a little lower, maybe just curiosity, she circled back to fly over again, listening to that cry. It was growing raspy. The wind made by her deep emerald and navy wings wafted up the scent of the child. Yalena felt the fire leap into her throat. She knew that scent, a part of that scent. The fire raged against her insides.

This cannot be, she thought. She swept lower, letting the sky-blue scales of her belly lightly graze across the treetops. The leaves were dry and shriveling. She bent her long neck to peek between the foliage, midsummer’s crown. The fear sharpened her fiery gaze; she saw a curling mess of golden hair. Oh, but perhaps it is.

The scent, now stronger than ever, chilled her inner being, allowing the fire inside to grow hotter, a natural occurrence for dragons to maintain homeostasis. An angry dragon had much fire, but a fearful dragon had the hottest flames. Yalena’s wings, now feeling too cold to fly, began sputtering, sending her down for an immediate landing. She felt the branches scrape against her sides and heard them pop as they broke and split from their trunks. Yalena’s mind was racing, spiraling. The fire begged to be released as the memories tore through her mind.

Four little eggs. Four precious eggs of her younglings, tucked away into the cliff side. Small and round. She couldn’t yet hear their wondering hissing, but she could start to hear their fragile bodies shifting, budding tails tapping against the shells. Hear their hearts and breath. She was a mother dragon… should have been a mother dragon. Her heart pounded within.

Having younglings changed her. Yalena no longer cared for gold trinkets to glisten and invite the light to dance by fire’s glow. She no longer delighted in waiting for human hunters to dare to approach her with their spears and poison arrows. What man wouldn’t give for even three of her scales, the sweating, pathetic things. No, no. When the eggs swelled within her and when she saw them shiny from her womb, she never saw treasure more precious. She dreamed of their hatching. She longed for their little claws to cling to her back when she took them to the sky to let the Sun bless them and for the Moon to hear the wishes of a mother dragon on the first waxing crescent of her younglings’ lives. She yearned to let them sleep under the safety of her wings. But those little eggs were taken.

Yalena leaped from the dusty ground and over the trees. Her wings struggled to beat the air around them. The fire burst from her throat, making a magnificent ball of terror in the sky, like a second sun, for a moment. Taken, taken, and eaten. The younglings were eaten. Yalena’s wings seized and she fell again, crashing through the trees. Her tail thrashed and split a boulder near the now muddied stream which was reduced to little more than a thread of water. The pain inside was unending. She was surrounded by the stillness of the thick trees, gnarled roots, and yellowing moss. Rain had left the ground wanting. The dry dirt was beginning to crack, like her barren soul.

The ruler of the people, the king as they called him, wanted dragon served at his feast to celebrate the birth of his child. There is no delicacy more coveted by men than dragon eggs. It was Yalena’s changed nature, that soft tenderness seen in a mother’s gaze, that led to her own babies’ demise. To be cooked and salted on a plate before the king and his closest kin. Did they gingerly tap against the shells to crack them open? Did they break them open with their foul hands? Did they even feel a grain of remorse when they beheld the boiled bodies inside?

More fire welled within Yalena. Much too cold, inside was much too hot. She felt her body coil. The mother doe. She heard the desperate cries from that mother doe’s fawn, and in that tenderness, that trance of nurturing’s spirit, Yalena swept in to save that fawn from the river, leaving her four precious eggs for a moment. That was when those eggs were taken. She gently held that fawn in her talons and carefully set him down by his mother. They weren’t true creatures of the forest, but fairies in their bestial forms. Fairies tended to resent dragons for their power, but Yalena only saw a mother and her child. Perhaps a dragon’s generosity would teach them something. She then took off in flight, smelling the brine of the sea and tender meat of a marlin on the shore. She had not eaten in days. She had not eaten to guard her younglings, but she left her younglings for that mother doe and babe, and she remembered hunger when the sea tickled her nose. She ate her fill from the ocean, and when she came back, her eggs were gone.

Did the men leave that marlin on the sand for me?

She could never stand the taste of marlin again. Sometimes, the ocean’s salty breeze made her fire well. Sometimes it just took a dream or a taste of the ocean’s bitter water. Yalena was the guardian of her forest, but she could not guard her own children.

The flames inside Yalena ravaged her throat. She could not release in the forest, not when the wood was dry and the stream was thin. Eaten. Her eggs, her younglings, her children— eaten. Eaten to honor the humans’ future ruler. It was humans that damned the forest. Orange and black ashes rose from Yalena’s nose. She coiled tighter. That human child, with the king’s golden curls, came from him. Him who ate her younglings. In the ancient days, dragons watched over humans too, and the humans lived in clans. The dragon learned to smell familial ties to identify those of their clans. This knowledge of human scents was passed down, as all dragon knowledge is. But then the humans rebelled, becoming too haughty to have a beast as a protector. Slowly, each clan betrayed their dragon, making the dragons feel unwanted in their own territories.

But dragons still owned their own territories. Ruled over them and made sure there was balance in nature, ignoring humans. Dragons rarely crossed into another’s lands. Dragons always minded where they roamed. It’s at sea in springtime when a dragon can call over the waves and fly above the horizon to do the mating dance, hoping for a partner in the neutral territory. The mermaids would leave necklaces of shells and pearls as offerings and fish and clams near the coastal rocks. Yalena mated the Dragon of the Mountain, a powerful dragon of black and purple scales with six ebony horns. He gave her those eggs, and he would fly to her cliff that overlooked her forest in autumn. He would find no younglings. Yalena only had two full horns and two half ones for her crown. The Dragon of the Mountain was superior, and he could have her wings for letting his young be eaten by the human king. She could be left to live out the rest of her days barred from the skies, away from the Sun and his blessings. Only the Moon could hear her then, and she’d weep to the silver-lit clover blooms until her days of living ended on the cold ground.

Would the Dragon of the Mountain offer mercy if I killed the king’s child? Did Yalena want to continue to live her days? She thought of the lives in the forest; if she could fly and watch over them, living had meaning, but if she was left to crawl and have dust cake her claws and belly, she would prefer to drown beneath the ocean’s waves. Could she kill a child, even if hers were heartlessly devoured? Dragons can have visions of what and who they hold dear; these visions cannot be controlled or prompted. But she had one on the black day, and she saw three helpless, bloated bodies. Their scales made soft and upturned from the boiling water. She was likely spared by the Moon from seeing the fourth. Another puff of glowing ashes escaped with her ragged breaths.

Then, that scent that brought her low and grounded was upon her. She was of the king, but not of the queen. She was born from a peasant’s bloodline. She was tiny, waddling in a stained smock. Red, blotchy cheeks and water-blurred eyes. The child stood and pointed at Yalena. The child did not cry. Perhaps thirst and exhaustion robbed her throat of any more sound.

The child had young, spongey bones and tender meat. Yalena stared into the eyes that the king had given his bastard daughter. The fire in her thrashed. She could singe the child. Or, she could swallow the child and let her cook in her belly’s flames. She could let that child’s skin crack and split from fire’s heat in vengeance of what the boiling water had done.

“Dag-on,” the child said.

Yalena lifted her head.

The child pointed at her again, “Dag-on.”

Yalena looked beyond the king’s eyes. Placed around the little girl’s neck was a silver chain with a dragon pendant. Royalty and nobles hated dragons, but there were peasants who hoped for a dragon guardian again, as men are usually far more wicked as rulers. This child wore the symbol of Rana, the Empress Dragon of the Moon. This child had other scents upon her, too. Yalena felt her body become less frigid. She wore the scent of her peasant mother’s blood. She wore the scent of the human queen’s maid. There was a whiff of the queen, only her grip. The queen had squeezed the child’s shoulder, tinging it with the stink of jealousy’s sweat.

This child was abandoned.

Did this child’s mother have an alter to Rana? Did she burn incense and offer pearls and clams upon it on the full moon? Did this child’s mother fear dragons, love dragons? As a mother dragon, Yalena felt her heart throb. Did this human child’s mother die to save her daughter? Did the queen’s maiden abandon the child in this forest, unable to kill new life?

“Dag-on, help,” the child said. Tears trickled down her cheeks. She gripped the pendant in her tiny hands with blood-crusted fingernails.

Mother human, like the mother doe, needed rescue. Just as her precious eggs needed rescue. No one spared those little eggs. Yalena’s fire cooled within her. Only smoke curled into the air from her nostrils. Yalena stood, feeling her legs again.

“Big dag-on!” the child squealed.

Yalena slipped out her tongue to take a deeper smell of the child. What would the Dragon of the Mountain say if she presented a human youngling? She dared not find out. She sniffed again. This child was untouched by human greed and vice. Pure, young, and loved by a slain mother.

The dragon laid low and unfurled one wing to be a ramp that led up her back. Come, child, she thought. The human child squealed again, rushing to the wing to climb. Yalena rolled the wing in a gentle, waving motion to bump the child onto her back. Naturally, she felt the little fingers grip onto scales.

You’ll be mine, child. Mine, and we will take the throne of the king when you’re grown. We will hide from the Dragon of the Mountain. We will watch the forest together. The mermaids will teach you language. The fairies will teach you human form. I will teach you justice.

Yalena took flight, balancing the child on her back to keep her place. The little girl squealed with delight. You will sleep under my wing, and I will be your mother.