by G. Wulfing
III.
Death.
After many long, dark and frigid hours, the sky began to lighten and turn grey. A Winter’s day was dawning, but for the dragon the sun would not rise again until she had found the boy who had rescued her. By mid-morning she curled up in weary, troubled slumber, having searched all night.
When the dragon awoke, she once again looked over the area she had examined; then she flew over the area, spiralling outwards, overflying a larger and larger section of the wood. On her outstretched wings, the first white dots of snow fell.
All that day and all the next she searched, scarcely stopping to rest or refresh herself, eating whatever she came across that was edible. For days she searched, and then for months, and slowly the months piled themselves up into years. Silently and single-mindedly the dragon searched, thinking of nothing but how to continue her quest to find the boy Jack. In a colossal, ever-widening spiral the dragon lived and flew. She hunted over mountains, into valleys, across steppes and grasslands and deserts, over rivers and lakes, forests and scrublands and moors. On dark nights she even dared to search villages, towns, and cities; landing outside them and creeping quietly in to sniff for Jack’s scent. Sometimes she would be made known – usually by the humans’ animals detecting her and raising a noise. Then a few humans would stagger blearily out of their dwellings, armed with clubs and torches, and if it was a city the guards on the wall would shout, “Who goes there?” But the dragon would be gone, flying swiftly away into the night at the first sound of alerted humans.
Over many realms the dragon flew; over kingdoms that mourned the deaths of old rulers and kingdoms that celebrated the births of new ones; through regions with old wars and regions with new peace. Golden suns sank; silver moons rose. Seasons passed; – snow, rain, heat and leaves all fell in their turns, and still the dragon searched, through thunderclaps that rolled from a grey sky as she crested great mountains, and sun that beat down on her back as she crawled through shining golden wheatfields.
On and on she searched.
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One night in midsummer, the dragon sat on a small round hill, a knoll, and gazed at the day-old moon. It hung in a deep kingfisher-blue sky, a thin crescent like a sliver of a perfect pearl, gilded slightly by the sun which had sunk beyond the world into the night. But, seeming still to want to bless the world with its light, the sun shone on the moon, which mirrored the sun’s light in a pale reflection – gilded silver instead of pure gold – as though to say that ‘though it may be night, day is not dead’. Near the moon, on the right, hung the evening star, as beautiful as only a star can be. They were like partners in a dance of forever: crescent moon, evening star. The dragon gazed at them; themselves so far away, yet their beauty right here, right in front of her.
The sky became deeper and deeper blues. The star glinted, the moon glowed, and the great mantle of night drew over the landscape.
And the dragon’s heart grew a few beats older.
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For a creature that has lived for two hundred years, ten years is not an age. But for a creature that is searching for the one thing that made its life worthwhile, ten years is as long as two hundred. The dragon knew that humans do not live as long as dragons. And that they are easier to kill. She had searched the land looking for the boy Jack, the human who had rescued her, and she had found nothing. She could not do anything more. She hoped, with the last forlorn thread of hope she possessed, that he was safe.
Lying in a large, natural, grey stone cave partway down a hillside, the crimson dragon closed her eyes. For the three-thousandth time she relived the sensation of a boy’s gentle hand on her hide, stroking her with the tenderest, most sympathetic caresses. For the three-thousandth time she recalled the boy’s face: the light brown hair, the bright-blue eyes the colour of the sky in high Summer. I am sorry, Jack, she thought. I am sorry that I could not find you. And, deep in her heart, the dragon said, Thank you. I thank you, Jack, for saving me. I thank you for being with me. I thank you for coming to help me. I thank you for … for your unwarranted love for me. I love you too.
It was sunset. Outside the cave the sky was brilliant crimson, the clouds stretched across the sky like great wings, glowing with pure, blood-red colour. The sun blazed above the horizon. The dragon opened her eyes to look once more upon the scene. The magenta light washed over her hide and her yellow eyes where she lay, and filled the grey stone cave with roseate light.
The dragon sighed.
Then she closed her eyes and again laid her head down on the floor of the cave. Her long dragonish form was draped full-length, wings folded. It lay still.
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“Dragon?”
The young man stepped further into the cave. His voice was full of trepidation. “Dragon?”
Suddenly he rushed towards the long shape. He stroked the face, then knelt and lifted the big, limp-necked head into his lap. He held his hand at the dragon’s nostrils to see if there was any breath.
Through a mist, the dragon heard the voice that she had heard in her dreams every time she had slept for the last ten years.
“Dragon … wake.”
She must be dreaming again. That voice, that touch, that smell … she knew them so well! So many times she had known them, and so many more dreamed them.
“Dragon, please wake.”
They were so real … She wondered why, in this dream, the boy was asking her to wake, but it did not matter: this was only a dream, only a dream; and it would be her last.
“Dragon, you must wake!”
Slowly, the dragon half-opened her eyes. And the first thing she saw was blue eyes, Jack’s eyes, and in them Jack’s soul gazing into hers.
“Jack …” the dragon murmured.
“My dragon.” Jack’s tears welled up and spilled over.
At last, at last the dragon could see him again. She had hoped that, after death, she might see him again; but he looked different; – older; not the way he appeared in her dreams …
“Why are you so much older?” the dragon murmured.
“Because it’s been ten years,” said Jack, tears streaming.
The dragon’s eyes widened. She was still alive. And Jack was here, and he was real.
“I have searched the world for you,” said the dragon.
“I know,” answered Jack, stroking her face.
And the dragon closed her eyes again, utterly happy, and for the first time in ten long years she slept without dreaming, a healing sleep in the boy’s arms, peaceful at last.
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And when the dragon woke, an hour later, a full, brilliant moon was rising; and Jack told the dragon how he had been abandoned by the men, who had kept him as bait to catch the dragon and thus he proved useless when the dragon could not find him; and how he had wandered, trying to search for the dragon but losing his way back to the wood where he had been captured. How he had searched for her, working in villages and farms and towns for food when there was too little where he searched. How, at last, after ten years, he had seen familiar claw-marks in some mud and had followed his guess to where she had gone and had found her, lying, apparently lifeless, in the cave on the hillside. And as he spoke, tears of long, long searching and yearning fell from his face and glittered silver in the moonlight for half a second, before falling out of sight to the floor.
The boy had grown taller and stronger since the dragon had last seen him, and in fact he was now full-grown; but even in the moonlight, and in the moment she had first seen him, the dragon knew that he was still the same Jack. Nothing inside him had changed.
They moved to sit outside the cave, full in the moonlight, and as the boy saw his dragon emerging from the half shadow, half light of the cave’s entrance to sit beside him, he hugged her hard and close. The dragon curled her tail around the boy. And suddenly she remembered what she had thought in the cave before the boy fo
und her.
“Listen,” she said, pulling gently back and releasing the boy, to look at him; “I thank you, Jack, for saving me. I thank you for being with me. I thank you for coming to help me. I thank you for …” And again – for but a second – the dragon hesitated, for great love can be harder to admit to than great wrong. But then she looked again at the boy, her Jack whom she knew, and said, “I thank you, Jack, for loving me.”
And Jack nodded, knowing that words were unnecessary, and they embraced again.
For a long hour or two they just sat on the hillside, as the moon soared higher above them. Then the boy asked the dragon, “Where shall we go now?”
And the dragon answered, “Where do you say?”
The boy pointed straight ahead, at the horizon. “To those distant mountains. Let us go there,” said Jack.
And the dragon nodded. “Then we shall.”
And they slept in the moonlight, curled up together on the hillside.
Epilogue:
Flight.
Gold and brown, like an embroidered tapestry thrown and draped over the earth, like a rich quilt or lush rug, the land was spread out. In the mild, early morning light, a river gleamed like silver thread, as it wound past the bottom of a hill that had a cave partway down its side. Beyond the river were huge ancient forests, their leaves dyed bold hues of gold, orange, crimson, brown and a thousand
