Umpa's Song

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. That’s what Umpa said, anyway. For a long time, Bix hadn’t believed him. How was it possible for dragons to simply not exist? The first time she had challenged his claim, she’d been only six years old. Scowling, chest out, her small hands fisted on her hips, Bix had looked her great-grandfather in the eye and boldly stated her disbelief. Umpa Carson was a weaver, after all. A skilled fluff weaver, yes, but also a weaver of tales. Bix knew that Umpa’s tales were not always based in truth or reality, so she had questioned him, argued even. How? Dragons were everywhere in the valley. How was she supposed to believe that once they had not been?

Umpa was rarely serious, but even as a young one, Bix had realized how important what he told her about his childhood was. He spoke of a time, many years ago, when people didn’t even believe that dragons had existed. They thought that they were pretend, like the purple fluff-blasters in one of Umpa’s sillier stories. Umpa explained that when his own father was a boy, there were no dragons in the valley, no dragons in the mountains, no dragons in the entire world. What’s more, they weren’t the only creatures that had gone missing. The oceans, now teeming with life, were once choked with something that Umpa called “plas-ick” but that others simply called “plas.” The plas was bad for the ocean creatures. When they ate it, they eventually died, and then when birds, dragons, and other creatures ate the sea animals, they also got sick and died. Larger beasts – like white bears and bump back whales – had also disappeared, as had every last dragon. It was almost too much to believe. Bix glanced at the sky above her and shook her head. At least five different kinds of dragon were visible to her – including the giant blue-tails. The majestic beasts soared, dove, and maneuvered with seemingly little effort through a series of complex loops and rolls before diving into the water below, and chomping down a mouthful of fish. Over and over, they dove, ate, then dove again.

Umpa had said that at one time, there weren’t even enough fish left to feed the big dragons and beasts. Most sea life, including aquatic dragons and whales had neared extinction as oceans were clogged with plas and other ick. At one time, Umpa claimed, the oceans were so full of plas that you could actually walk across in some places. Surely this must have been a tall tale, Bix reasoned. Even young ones knew that it could take weeks to cross the oceans – that’s if you had a boat, fair weather, a good navigator, and some wind. The idea of something so huge and deadly covering entire swaths of the mighty oceans? Even now, at age 15, she couldn’t quite imagine it. Yet her gran, Umpa’s daughter, was a wise sci-medicine woman, and had taught all of her children and grandchildren the truth about their world’s terrible past. They had all been shown Gran’s treasured piece of ancient plas-ick that she kept in a beautifully woven pouch that Bix’s mother had made from fluff that Bix herself had gathered.

Gran had shown them proof that once, her people had created so much waste that they had nearly killed the world. Plants, animals, trees, entire ecosystems had disappeared under the weight of plas, smoke, and other uck that they, inconceivably, had dumped into the seas. When everything was being choked out and nearly dead, Gran explained, flood waters rose to consume the human cities. As waves closed over buildings taller than the tallest trees – another image that Bix could not imagine – the planet heated, and ice thawed to reveal landscapes that had been frozen for millennia. Several species of dragon eggs had been found beneath the melting ice according to the birthday song that Umpa sang. The eggs had warmed in one of the big fires, and before human sci-meds of the day even knew what was happening, the dragon hatchlings had started to eat the smoke and debris from the fires. With no parents alive to feed the young dragons, they started to eat whatever was easiest to obtain. Back then, as Bix had been told her entire life, what they had the most convenient access to was plas. By the time the humans realized that dragons were real, were back, and were hungry, they were already gobbling up the plas-ick islands off their coast, and creating healthy soil from their waste. The more they grew, the more they ate, then eventually they laid their own eggs, and as plas disappeared as a food source, more plants, animals, and other organisms returned to replace their convenience food. Soon, hundreds of types of fish, flora, and fauna were again thriving, as were the humans and dragons.

Bix was not a sci-med like her Gran, a weaver-teller like her Umpa, or a maker like her mumma. Bix was a finder-gatherer, and today she was gathering items for a very special event. Today was Umpa’s 101st birthday and the entire valley was expected to gather in the Zocalo to celebrate and listen to him sing the song of his life. He always included the part about the dragons coming back when he was a boy, and it was her favorite part. She smiled, thinking of how Umpa’s eyes would widen, and his arms would wave in the glow of firelight. She couldn’t wait to see what he added to this year’s life song! Bix noted that the sun was high in the sky, and she needed to hurry if she was going to finish all of today’s gathering. Bix slipped a leather gauntlet onto her arm and returned to her current task – gathering the honey from inside a rotted tree trunk in the fluff meadow. The tiny dragons that guarded the honeycomb within the tree could bite a chunk right out of your finger if you weren’t careful, and they loved to hoard the sweet, golden treasure. Bix knew that the little dragons protected the honey hive, as well as the busy insects that created the sticky treat, but they were easily distracted by shiny objects and lulled by smoke. Bix held up a small, shiny, metallic oval on a chain. She opened it, lit a bit of fluff on fire, and gently swung it in front of the opening in the tree. The tiny dragons grunted angrily at first, then one by one, they stretched themselves out, and hopped or flew near the opening to where Bix held the smoking metal orb. Their tiny nostrils flared as they each took in a snout full of the sweet-smelling smoke and then fell asleep. The fluff smoke did not harm the tiny dragons, but it would give her a few minutes to extract her pocketknife with her uncovered hand, and cut off a large chunk of the coveted honeycomb. Bix knew Umpa loved sweets, and she hoped she could gather enough of his favorites so that her scrub-cook father and uncle could make something ummy for the party.

Bix usually gathered fluff from the slow, fat, flat-faced fluff-comb dragons that snorted through the fluff-fields. As they waddled through the fields, eating berries and anything else that caught their interest, the horns and spikes on the little beasts would catch on the fluff-berry plants and stick to their bodies. Thus, as they walked, they pulled the ripest, softest, strands of fluff off the plants, and it stuck to the tiny barbs on their skin. It was her job to gather the fluff from the beneficial creatures, and carry it home for Mumma to wash, spin, dye, and weave into the softest, strongest, most beautiful blankets and fabric that anyone had ever seen. Umpa was a skilled weaver, but Mumma was truly an artist.

Following a pair of snorting fluff-combers, Bix found what she was looking for – a small patch of ripe, juicy berries. Running ahead of the grunting little dragon friends, she picked several handfuls of the red fruit. She carefully placed her harvest into a bowl that her older brother, Rik, had molded and fired from clay that she gathered from the lake. Rik was turning into a really talented potter, and he had even made the hinge-lidded bottles that her dirty feet were already rushing to recover. Two days ago, she had gathered milk and separated out the thick, heavy, cream, spooned it into the bottles, and then carefully secreted them away to cool, wedged between heavy boulders at the base of a waterfall. As she waded in to retrieve her treasure, Bix gasped at the chill of the water that rushed down from the mountaintop. She also caught a glimpse of her reflection in the calmer waters of the shallow pool beyond the falls. She touched a hand to her wild hair – dark, frizzy, tendrils, sun-streaked blonde, skin brown from dirt, the sun, and from generations of ancestors that had passed down their genetic material, even if they knew nothing of the ways of dragons.

Bix pulled a face, rolled her eyes, and decided that she could probably stand to wash up before the party. She set her gathering bag down, pulled off her colorful, woven poncho, and shimmied out of her shorts. Taking a deep breath, she thrust herself under the water. The shallow pool was warmer than the water under the falls, but still a shock. She quickly scrubbed herself with a bit of mum’s cloth, then swished some water around in her mouth, bared her teeth at her reflection, and artfully fashioned her hair into two braids that she secured with a little fluff that she had quickly wound into a bit of yarn. Satisfied with her efforts, she opened her bag, and dug around until she found a clean dress and put it on, stuffing everything else – including the berries, honey, and cream into the bag. Securing the strap across her body, she started towards home at a light jog. The air was fragrant and alive with dragonsong, and Bix grinned again, trying to imagine an unthinkable time without the dragons that surrounded them every day.

As she approached the stone and wood structure of their home, she could see Umpa working his loom through the open doorway. She rushed inside, waiting until he finished guiding the weft through the strands of thread before enclosing him in an embrace and shouting “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, UMPA!” He grinned at her and exclaimed “well if it isn’t my little bee! What have you brought your old Umpa for his life song feast?”

“All your favorites, Umpa! But you have to wait for the party!” Bix said this in an extra-loud voice so her gran could hear her out in the herb garden, then snuck Umpa a small piece of honeycomb with a conspiratorial wink.

“Ah, little bee, you know what your Umpa likes! Did the little sweeties give you any trouble today?”

“No, Umpa, never! Are you ready to sing your life song tonight? Will you talk about the time when the dragons were gone?”

“Of course! Of course! My story starts when the dragons were just starting to come back by the hundreds. You know that.”

“And how will your song start tonight, Umpa?”

Umpa grinned, clucked his tongue, and you could tell by the way his eyes widened that he was about to spin a good yarn. Then he leaned in towards Bix, and in a dramatic voice, spoke:

“There weren't always dragons in the Valley…”

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Dedication: for OZ - happy 9th birthday to my favorite reader and most honest critic!