The Girl Who Was Raised by a Dragon
/I
She ascended the mountain as fast as her stubby legs could go. Clouds obscured its peak, and ice left sharp crystals covering the dirt where her fingers gouged for place. She choked on the final screams of her parents. In her nose stank the smoke from her village’s houses. The men who’d thrown the torches had laughed at how easily the houses had caught. How easily the occupants had caught, too. Her eyes still played the scene over and over.
Her foot slipped. Tiny fingers found a sharp rock and stung, but held on. The pain was not so bad. She had pain elsewhere—along her legs and ribs where a falling beam had caught her—but these were not so bad, either. All of her current senses were muddy and distant, like the bottom of the marsh where she’d collected lilies with papa. The only thing that wasn’t distant were the shouts of the men.
The girl pulled up and kept climbing. Soon where there was no path became flat. The enormous stones turned to fine pebbles. Everything was hot up here, so that the ice transformed to steam that burned her eyes. She wiped at them and kept walking. At least the steam would hide her from those below.
The crushed rock led in a narrow line circumnavigating up the mountain. Wyrm trails, her mother would have said. Looked like a wyrm trail. A very, very big wyrm trail.
The girl stopped walking. There was the mouth of a cave ahead. This was where the girl’s senses returned from back there to here. The cave was real. Perhaps it was the realest thing she’d ever seen. Every rumor old Dan Humphreys had muttered at the tavern about dragons, every repeated story the Jerry twins had cackled, trying to scare her; even her brother, who’d told her that there was nothing up the mountain that was going to come swooping down.
Well.
He hadn’t seen this cave.
And the more the girl stared into the cave, the more she realized the cave was staring back.
“Well, well,” the Dragon rumbled. “Look what has crawled from below.”
II
The girl swallowed her fear. Her heart galloped in her chest. “I want you to take care of me.”
“And why,” the Dragon’s voice was a rockslide in a thundering gorge, “would I want to do that?”
“I have nowhere else to go. And,” she added, thinking, “you can protect me.”
“There are other humans to protect you.”
The girl took a step closer to the cave. It was dark as the stallion her father used to own. She could make out the Dragon’s outline, but nothing more. “I hate other humans,” the girl said fiercely. “I hate, hate them.”
“You are too young to know such hate.”
The girl thought of her mother, and the crooning sound of her singing on the nights the girl couldn’t sleep, the tender touch of her hand brushing her hair; her father and the kind words and laughter he always had ready to cheer her up. “I knew love,” the girl said with a sudden burst of insight. “So I can know hate.”
Something in the cave moved. What the girl thought was a rock—it had certainly been too big to be a dragon—actually was part of the Dragon. One of its feet.
It pushed its head out into the light, teeth gleaming white, scales like emeralds, eyes deep orbs that peered down at her from a great height.
The girl tried not to tremble.
“And what,” the Dragon said, “will I get out of raising you? You are small and weak and sickly. I am ancient and wise and have observed many things.”
“I’m human. I can teach you about humans.”
“I have observed humans, too, and know all things about them. So what, I ask again, can you offer me?”
The girl looked back down the mountain. The scrapes she’d received coming up here radiated a fierce heat. She could not see what remained of her village anymore.
“Have you ever lived among humans?” she asked in another burst of insight.
“I have not,” the Dragon said after a pause.
“Then you don’t know everything about us. If you were truly wise, you would know that.”
The Dragon “hmmd” and “hummed”, making the mountain tremble. The girl shuddered when at last he smiled with his great white teeth. “What is your name?”
“Cyrus.”
“I will raise you, Cyrus. But if I do, one day you will hate me, too,” he promised.
“I won’t,” Cyrus promised right back. And at that moment she didn’t care if the Dragon was right or not, for her heart was already stone.
III
The Dragon gave Cyrus a dry spot in the corner of the cave, on a ledge where she could pile furs from the remains of the Dragon’s most recent kills. Like the rest of the mountain, the cave was warm all the time. During the day the Dragon left to hunt and Cyrus foraged for berries and roots and fished in the streams of the forest only a little ways below the clouds, on the other side of the mountain. A couple times she spotted the men from the village, but they didn’t come close to the mountain. Cyrus always ran back to the cave when she saw them.
The weeks went on like this, and slowly, very slowly, Cyrus began to relax. She did not tremble so badly when she took the path down the mountain to the forest. She did not find her cheeks wet from crying as often when she woke in the morning. The agonizing ache in her heart did not hurt quite so much.
She still had nightmares, though. Dark shapes of men against backgrounds of orange, lifting swords, wet with red. Screams. Cries.
Cyrus woke up crying, arms reaching out for where she wished her mother would be. She longed for her warmth, longed to be held by her.
She looked over, off the ledge, at the Dragon curled up and asleep, the massive back of his scales radiating heat.
She slipped off the ledge and tried to curl up beside it, to feel the touch of something warm and alive.
The Dragon moved away.
Again Cyrus tried to touch him and again he moved away.
“What do you want, child?” the Dragon rumbled sleepily.
“I had a nightmare,” Cyrus said. “Can I hold onto you for a moment?”
She tried again to touch him, but failed.
“About your family? And your village?” the Dragon said.
“Yes.”
“Take comfort in this: in the grand scheme of the universe, we are all small. Even the most beautiful cherry blossom withers the next season and nothing remains of that beauty. All things are a fleeting glimpse. All things will be. Because of this, do not mourn what will not be there the next instance.”
The Dragon moved farther away from her. For once, Cyrus thought the cave was, in fact, cold.
“But they were there,” she said at last. “They existed and they mattered, even if everything they mattered to is gone.”
“Perhaps,” the Dragon rumbled.
He turned over, away from her. Cyrus curled up on the ground. She didn’t try to touch him again.
IV
Cyrus was now twelve, and crouched in the berry bushes, the ones that grew thick at the bottom of the ravine. Her hands stung from the prickles of thorns, but she didn’t mind them. She was used to domestic pains; the uncomfortableness of a life on the mountain. In she reached for the juicier berries that hung in the center, amongst the thickest of thorns. When the wind stilled and all was quiet, she could hear the faint sounds of life drifting from the valley below. A new village was growing, in the same place hers had been.
“You should join them,” the Dragon had said when the first of the villagers had began building houses. “They are human and they are safe. I can smell it.”
Cyrus had refused. All she saw when she looked down there was red fire. All she tasted was smoke. She had a home here, with the Dragon. His warmth kept her alive through the winter. His ferociousness kept her safe. His stories of ancient kings and foreign lands and the most miniscule of life taught her things she was sure no human could. It was his rumbling voice that trembled her bones and sent her to sleep on the nights she couldn’t.
No human could match that.
Cyrus winced as a large thorn drew blood. She grasped her berry, drew it out, popped it in her mouth. Sweetness and copper washed across her tongue.
A branch snapped. Cyrus crouched lower. The Dragon could move unheard through these woods, but humans could not. She didn’t think they’d dare come this close, but she could be wrong.
She watched a deer limp out from the trees. Aged, its fur dusted white. It collapsed to its side. Its breathing ceased. Cyrus waited. She waited some more.
At last she approached it. Its ribs stuck out its side, sharp and defined. Wounds that had never healed were covered in long-dried blood. It had fallen in a pose that almost looked as though it’d been thinking of running when its heart gave out.
Cyrus stared at its blank, glassy eye. She stared, and stared, and waited for something intelligent and wondrous to stare back. Like the Dragon’s great eye; so full of mystery and light.
Cyrus began to cry. She fell to her knees. This eye was not light. This eye was dim, forever dim, it had gone out and never would be again, would never be here but someplace else, she didn’t know where, and that scared her so much more than she could say, scared her beyond words and reason.
“I’d forgotten how fragile humans are,” the Dragon rumbled. He was behind her, close enough she could feel his presence, but not close enough to touch. “Fragile and full. You blaze short and glorious.”
Cyrus continued crying. She wished she could stop. She cried until the sun went down and the stars came out.
The Dragon stayed with her. When she was done crying she told him of what her parents had believed things to be, and the Dragon told her what they actually were. He taught her the true nature of things, and how much more wondrous and glorious and terrifying and amazing life was than she ever knew.
He told her of the deepest oceans, and the highest mountains. And finally he told her what he knew of death (which was quite a lot) and of the moon, and stars, and galaxies overhead, reaching into the farthest, deepest parts of space.
At last he taught her of things down here, the language of the trees and the rocks and the river that would all speak to her if only she knew how to listen.
She fell asleep to his rumbling voice trembling in her bones.
V
There was a boy in her woods.
Cyrus assumed he must have been from the village. It had grown so much that it pressed up against the woods. Any day she expected the villagers to begin cutting the trees. The Dragon hadn’t seemed worried. To him, humans had come and gone. Many times they had come to the foothills of the mountain, but never had they progressed any farther. Cyrus had argued with him that this time would be different, but he was as stubborn and immovable as always.
But back to the boy.
Cyrus stayed light on her feet, making barely a rustle as she crept closer. At seventeen, it was harder to fold herself amongst the branches than it had been when she was a child. Still, the boy did not notice. Humans from the village never did.
He chopped at one of the younger trees. A sapling. Cyrus closed her eyes and listened, just as the Dragon had taught her. She could hear the sapling’s screams. She could feel its agony. This boy was causing it pain. This boy….
Cyrus gripped her bow tighter.
She couldn’t.
She must.
The deer’s dead eyes.
The light fading into darkness.
The loneliness.
The screams.
She must.
She nocked an arrow, drew the string back, sighted it.
The boy turned. Cyrus saw the sharp planes of his face. The glisten of sweat on his brow. The way he bit his lip right before he swung. All this she saw in clear, perfect detail, in a way she knew she’d never seen it before but couldn’t explain why. Couldn’t explain any of this, and certainly not this new, exciting, terrifying feeling taking residence in her chest.
The boy swung the axe. He lay it against a rock to sharpen it. Swung again. Sharpened. Tested the edge until his finger came away wet with blood at the slightest pressure.
Cyrus’ arm shook from the strain of holding the bowstring taut but never loosing.
The boy smiled at the sharp blade. The terrifying, wonderous feeling within her increased.
Cyrus slipped away.
***
“Are you sick?”
“I’m fine.”
“You look sick.”
Cyrus rolled farther over, so the Dragon couldn’t see her face, so she could push down this new feeling threatening to consume her. “I’m fine.”
The air stirred as he breathed in. “Mm…human. I see.”
Cyrus let out a whimper of fear and terror and joy. She saw the boy’s face again. She felt the press of the Dragon’s warm body against her back. The first time he had ever comforted her in such a way. That was strange, and wonderful, and terrifying, too.
VI
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Cyrus waited until the boy—not a boy anymore, but nineteen, like her—put the axe down before she stepped out.
The man’s eyes moved to her. To her knife. She expected him to run. To yell. To attack.
He smiled.
She had not expected that.
“The watcher in the woods,” he said. His voice was deep. “I wondered when you’d show yourself.”
“You didn’t know I was here,” Cyrus protested. “I’ve been watching you for a while.”
The man nodded, conceding. “I didn’t know it was you, but I knew there was someone.”
“How?”
The man’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “The wind told me.”
Cyrus had not expected that either. She tightened the grip on her knife. She raised it higher. “You need to leave.”
“Why?”
“This is my mountain.”
The man looked around. Looked back at her, but still didn’t look afraid. “Why?” he repeated.
She could not say. Could not say that she had watched him for the better part of two years. Had even wanted to see him, and on the days she hadn’t she’d felt inexplicably disappointed…
The knife trembled in her hands. “You need to—”
“Would you like some food?” The man indicated to a knapsack set beside a skin of water.
Cyrus blinked, overwhelmed at how wrong everything was going from how it had been in her head, and at how all right she was with that.
She slowly lowered her arm. “Okay.”
***
They talked most of the day, about all manner of things. And when the sun sank low Cyrus slipped away without a goodbye, but returned early the next morning to find the man there, eager to continue talking as though she’d not interrupted them.
She taught him of the true nature of things, the language of the rocks and the river and the beating heart of the trees. He told her of the village where he lived at the base of the mountain. Of his brothers and baby sister whom they all adored, and sickly father and hardworking mother, and of his work.
Each day, she slipped away and each day she came back wanting something that she wouldn’t even admit to herself. As he spoke, she watched his hands, calloused with use. His face and the quick, easy way it cast her smiles.
Each day she woke up happier, though she couldn’t say why, even if she was honest with herself and admitted it. It was nothing but the nicer weather; the brighter sun, the ripened berries, the wind that carried the smell of juniper up the mountain.
“Love is fleeting,” the Dragon rumbled as she prepared to step out for the day. She had woken up earlier than usual. The sun was brighter than usual, that was all.
“I’m not in love,” Cyrus said.
The Dragon peered into her from where he lay curled and resting at the back of the cave. His eyes were endless twirling galaxies. They were knowing. “Love is fleeting. All things are fleeting.”
Cyrus hitched her bag up her should. “I’m not in love.” She thought a moment. “But these moments are infinite. They are beautiful and glorious while they’re here.”
“Soon…” the Dragon rumbled, “soon he will want you to leave with him.”
Cyrus turned away from him, scoffing, because she might not know the truth to how she felt about many things, but she knew the truth to how she felt about that. “I will never leave here. Not even with him.”
Yes, the sun was brighter today, Cyrus thought as she stepped outside. It’d put anyone in a good mood.
VII
Cyrus curled tighter in her bed and cried. She was not embarrassed. Not to do something she hadn’t since she was twelve. She cried until her blankets were damp, wept until she had nothing left.
“What is it, child?” the Dragon rumbled. The heat from him warmed her back. At twenty-two, she was no child, but to him she always would be.
The Dragon pressed closer. His scales brushed her as they’d only done a few times before. “Speak, child.”
“You were right,” Cyrus said around her sobs. “He wanted me to leave with him.”
And it had been perfect, too. That was the worst part. They were talking, as they had almost every day since that first. And then he had grown serious, then he had shown her the flowers, then he had asked her to come home with him. Forever.
“I hate them,” Cyrus whispered, even as her heart betrayed her. “I told him no.”
“He cares for you,” the Dragon said.
“I don’t care for him!”
“You will have to leave here eventually.”
“No, I don’t. I’ll always be here with you. I hate him. I hate them. You’re the only one I need.”
The Dragon was quiet as the last few tears escaped down Cyrus’ cheek. “I see,” he said. “I see.”
His presence was so warming it was making Cyrus’ eyes heavy. She would not leave. She would never leave. The Dragon was the only one she needed. Not men with kind smiles and laughs, who had shown her that not all humans were bad, whose stories always made her happy, and who…
She fell asleep with a smile on her face.
***
And awoke with a start.
She didn’t know why. And then she did when she shivered. The cave had never been so cold.
She rolled over, the blankets slipping off.
The Dragon was gone.
Cyrus blinked at the place he usually coiled sleeping, trying to fill the space with her vision of his remembered form.
“Dragon?” Her voice was lonely. “Dragon?”
He had never left without telling her.
She rushed outside, but there was no sign of him there, either. She tore through the woods, yelling, searching in the sky, before at last returning to the cave and sitting at the entrance to wait.
***
The sun came up. It blistered her skin but she didn’t move. She grew thirsty but didn’t drink, hungry but didn’t eat. She—briefly—thought of the man and his easy smile. How nice it would be for him to be here with her.
The sun went down, and still the Dragon didn’t return.
The next day came and went the same.
By the third day, Cyrus could stand it no longer. She stretched her aching bones. She drank. She ate.
Then she returned to the entrance of the cave and wept.
VIII
“Don’t go too far,” Cyrus said.
Her children laughed as they skirted through the trees ahead of her. They obeyed, but they were wild spirits, almost as wild as their mother had been. Beside her, the man—her husband—squeezed her hand tight. He smiled.
They often walked this way through the woods at the base of the mountain, heading between the villages. They never went near the cave.
During the walks, Cyrus would stop and show her children a particularly beautiful flower; would point out a stunning songbird. She taught them the language of the trees and the rocks and the rivers that would speak to them if they only knew how to listen.
This time they stopped so her children could gather firewood. Her husband told them of how he’d done that; until a girl from the woods had distracted him.
Cyrus looked up at the cave. Through the years her hate had transitioned to understanding tinged with bitterness. On the nights when the winds blew hard from the mountaintop she imagined she heard the Dragon’s thunderous voice. She remembered her time with him, time that would eventually fade away, lost when she and her husband and her children and their children all faded to dust. When there was no one left to remember.
But she remembered, too, that some moments were infinite.
Written by Sean Fletcher
May 2020
Art credit Phillip Morales