by GARY DARBY
Right now, we have eight birthers; two reds, five sapphires, and the golden dragon, though we have enough room for twice that many. Four have already given birth recently, and four are still waiting, including the golden. I have to admit that I’m grateful that there are only eight dragon sows now. When the barn becomes completely full, I’m so busy that I rarely get more than two or three hours of sleep at night.
Sometimes, none.
At the barn’s far end, I stop before the giant-sized stall and wait. As usual, the supposedly magical Golden Wind is lying down on all fours, but her head is up, and she watches me as I come up to her enclosure. “What are you looking at?” I mutter darkly under my breath as I stand in front of the stall’s large gate.
I stare at the golden. Her golden cat’s eyes meet mine, and I think to myself, dragon mothers sometimes die while trying to birth their young; what if our golden and the rest of the birthers died while attempting to give birth?
Now, that would be magical.
She finally unlimbers herself and at a leisurely pace plods over. I stick my head through the railing, and she takes in a deep whiff. Then she snorts loudly, blowing my short, brown hair every which way. I back out while she turns and lumbers away. Even though I’ve been in her pen dozens and dozens of times, I have to go through this ritual each time so that her nibs can assure herself that it’s just me, Hooper, the Manure King.
Brushing my tangled hair back down with my fingers, I mumble, “Good thing you don’t have the sniffles, or I’d be wiping dragon snot out of my hair.”
As I enter her stall, I admit, I have to stop and gaze at her for a moment or two. You see, dragon farms such as ours raise red, or scarlet dragons, blue or sapphire dragons, and purple or violet dragons.
Green or emerald dragons, oranges, and yellows are found only in the wild, and sea-blue, or turquoise dragons reside in the ocean. No one raises wild dragons, for as Master Boren is fond of saying, “They are born free, and they will die free.”
But a golden dragon, that’s something altogether different. Our golden, Golden Wind, is not only the only one in the kingdom, she is the most prized and valuable of all dragons, supposedly worth more than all the dragons in the world.
She is also the most feared beast of all.
You see, according to legend, when a golden dragon is born, it portends a great disaster that will befall the land. However, the lore also says that the golden will birth a very special dragon who will save us from whatever calamity descends on the world.
The first golden, as folklore goes, was Star Wind. It’s said that she gave birth to the sapphire Storm Rider, the swiftest dragon of all. Storm Rider carried Palto the Healer from village to village when the Great Plague swept across the world. Thousands died, but Palto saved many, many more than that thanks to the swiftness of Storm Rider.
The second golden, Noble Wind, came at the time of the First Great Wilder Rampage when hordes of Wilders spilled out of the Land Forbidden and raged across the realms. It’s said that Noble Wind gave birth to the mighty red dragon, Crimson Fury. He carried Lord Braveson in the final, victorious battle that felled the vicious Wilder warlord Malonda Kur.
And now, we have Golden Wind and she is the reason that we have a whole company of the king’s knights patrolling the forests that surround Draconstead. Plus, we have almost a hundred drogs that stand guard both day and night in and around the meadows and forests that surround Draconstead proper.
All to protect this one dragon. Naturally, on her long flight to the royal stables at Wynsur Castle the king’s knights will accompany her, and most of the drogs will make the overland journey, leaving us with a handful of drogs and ourselves to protect Draconstead.
Of course, that stuff about the golden being extraordinary and birthing a unique baby dragon is all nonsense, and I believe it about as much as I think dragons are mystical and magical as Master Boren believes.
The sooner they rid Draconstead of this creature and take her to Wynsur the better, and it is none too soon for me. If I had the chance, I’d go just as far in the opposite direction, away from all dragons and away from the Drachen Mensch, or as we’re sometimes called, the Dragon People. True, I’m a Drach, but in name only. I want nothing to do with dragons and that makes me a pariah among my own people.
I learned very early in life to be careful of what I say about dragons and how I act toward the beasts, so no one really knows how I feel. And that’s the way I intend to keep it until I can make my escape.
And yes, I do mean to flee from this hellhole and take Scamper and myself someplace where there are no dragons and no Wilders to bring horror and anguish that rips at soul and mind.
My only fear is, does such a place actually exist?
3
I jerk upright and throw my coarse, thin blanket to one side. My heart thuds in my chest, my eyes fly open, and I thrust my hands out as if to ward off some rampaging monster. My heart pounds so loud it’s as if I can hear dragon wings beating in the air above me. Just as they did on that awful night of hellfire.
The nightmare doesn’t come as often as it once did but when it comes, the memory is like dragon fire, burning, searing, and filling me with an anguish that sometimes takes hours before it finally cools down to the point that I can think about anything else again.
I take a deep breath and bury my head in my hands. The early morning is cool, on the brink of actually being cold, but still, I wipe clammy dampness off my face.
A tiny silver sphere of sweat forms on the end of my nose and hangs there for an instant before it drops to the straw. My mouth works, but no words come out, only a guttural groan of pain and loss.
The rustling of dragon scales in a nearby birthing stall causes me to raise my head and the pain in my eyes is replaced by pure hatred. I stare at the dragon, Glittering Wind, a sapphire who stirs restlessly in her giant enclosure before she settles back down on all fours and goes to sleep.
Hate fills my eyes, my mind, my soul as I stare at the foul beast.
I can’t ever forget. I won’t ever forget. I only have one nightmare, but it will stay with me forever.
I hear a faint fluttering high above me. The whiteback morning doves that live in the barn’s rafters are waking, which means that dawn is not far off. However, my day begins well before daybreak. Malo will be making his rounds soon, and I’ll be the first he wakes.
I retrieve my threadbare blanket that I tossed onto the barn’s loose chaff and lie back onto my musty straw bed. I know I have little time left before Malo appears, but sleep is a precious commodity, and I’ll take whatever moments I can get. My bristly blanket used to cover all of me when I was younger, but I’ve grown some, and now it only reaches down to my knees.
But if I curl up just so, I can huddle most of my body under the thin covering. And now that we dragon workers are back to Draconstead’s high meadows, with its early spring cool, sometimes cold nights, I also keep my goat’s hair tunic on at night, with the hood up to cover my head. And I leave my pants and socks, holes and all, on at night, too. Together, they’re just enough to ward off the cold. Most nights.
I close my eyes, but my effort to drop off to sleep is wasted. I hear Malo’s footsteps shuffling through the loose stubble just in time to roll out of bed before he plants his boot in my backside. He holds his lantern high, and I can see not only the leer on his thin, craggy face but the short, finely pointed Proga lance he always carries.
“That’s good,” Malo cackles, the lantern’s light casting his yellow and broken teeth in garish relief. “You’re getting faster.” He shoves the lance menacingly close and smirks. “Better a boot and another bruise than this again, eh?”
My hand goes instinctively to my side, to the fresh wound that still bleeds just a bit and at times feels like someone has put a hot coal to my flesh. The bleeding will eventually stop, but the pain stays for several days.
Malo may be getting old, but he can still move pretty fast, especially with his Proga lan
ce. I’ll take his boot over the searing lance any day. I overheard one of the other dragon workers say that getting bit by the lance was akin to lying naked, “on a fire ant nest for a day.” I wouldn’t know. I’ve never sat or lain on top of fire ants, but I’ve had the lance put to me more than once, and if given the choice, I might try the ants next time.
As for my bruises, yes, I have a goodly collection of black and blue marks. If there were a contest among the other workers who had the most, I’d win easily. Course when you’re a puny runt, and you look like me, scarred arm, leg, and face, what else is there to expect? Still, though my bruises are plentiful, I’ll take them over the Proga.
“Get the cook’s wood and water,” Malo orders, “then start with the yearlings’ paddocks, Wind Fury’s first. The trainers will be working with him first thing this morning.”
He turns and points to the closest empty stall. “Have that cleaned out by noon. The master may be bringing another sapphire birther to the barn this afternoon.”
I give a quick nod in acknowledgment and reach for my boots. I have to work at getting my feet into them as the thigh boots are too small for me, but I can’t have new ones till next spring. I’m hoping that one of the other workers will throw away his old pair. Since they’re all older than I, naturally their boots are larger. Still, I’d rather have oversized boots that I can stuff straw into and fill the space to prevent blisters than to have to bend my toes in an awkward, painful fashion all day long.
I’ve thought about cutting the toe ends out of my boots or going barefoot, but neither is something you do when you work around dragons with their sharp talons and their never-ending supply of dung.
Seeing that I have my boots on, Malo moves away, taking his light with him. I don’t rate a lantern, nor even a candle, but in the little hole I call home, I know every part by heart, even in complete darkness. Besides, there’s nothing I need to find, everything I own is on my body, except for my blanket, which I quickly tuck in my little secret hiding spot.
I reach into the straw just above where I lay my head and touch a warm, furry body. For an instant, Scamper rouses, and I say, “In early today, huh?” Lots of times, he spends the whole night hunting and usually doesn’t return until past dawn.
I slide my hand down to his tummy. Nice and full. That explains why he’s back so soon. He probably tried, but can’t put another worm, stickle bug, or maybe a nest of termites in that cavern he calls a stomach. “I’ve got to go to work, Scamp, but I’ll try to sneak something out of the meal house for you. You go back to sleep.”
I can feel him wiggle in delight under my hand before he quickly quiets down and falls asleep. I scuttle out the barn’s side door, my tunic hood still up, and hurry up the path that runs past the meal house to the woodpile. The early morning dew on the grass wets my pants below my knees, and I can see my breath in the air. Even by early-morn starlight, it’s not hard to find the wood as the woodcutter’s been busy and the smell of newly cut timber wafts heavily on the light breeze.
I stop at the woodpile that rises to my chest and stare at the darkness that shrouds Dielong Forest. I can make out the closest stand of birchen trees, their white trunks standing in stark contrast to the gloom of the spruce-filled forest behind them.
Somewhere deep in this same forest was my family’s cottage and I stand staring for just a moment thinking how apt the name is for Dielong Forest, especially when it’s dragons that do the killing. My breath is a short plume in the cool air, and my eyes turn hard as I rub my good hand over my scarred arm. I wonder to myself, what would have been better — to suffer a long death or to live like this?
I don’t have an answer, so I load myself up with split wood to the point that my knees almost buckle. But if I don’t completely fill the wood bin for Marly and Larl, there’ll be no dawn meal for me, or maybe even a middle meal, either. I labor back down the path, staggering under the wood’s weight. I quietly fill the box that sits next to the kitchen’s back door, careful not to wake the two cooks.
They’ll be up soon enough, but if I wake them before Malo does, well, I can forget about any meals for the day, and maybe even tomorrow. I hurry over to the stone-rimmed well. Four full, heavy buckets of water later, I’m done with my meal house chores just as a faint glow spreads across the horizon.
Later, with the early morning sun peeking just over the horizon, I’m in the paddocks. I’ve had my first meal, more bread, cheese, and a piece of turnip. Before I went to the stalls, I dashed into the barn, split the cheese with Scamper and then picked up my dung rake, shovel, and wooden wheelbarrow before heading outside.
To my chagrin, Malo has me take the four two-week-old sprogs with me again. Most likely, for the next month or so, I’ll have these smelly beasts with me most everywhere I go during the day. They’re too young to go to the trainers just yet, so I get to shepherd them around while going about my chores.
Their mothers understand what I’m doing; still, when I approach their birthing stalls, I have to endure several moments of their sniffing, to make sure it’s just me, Hooper. Once I have all four sprogs rounded up, I put them in the barrow and head for the paddocks. They think it’s great fun to ride, but I only do it because otherwise, it’s too hard trying to get them out of the barn.
Have you ever tried to herd cats? Same thing with baby dragons, only worse. Cats mill around a bit but definitely will stay out of harm’s way. Not these four. If I don’t keep a sharp eye on them, they’ll head in four opposite directions including into Wind Boomer’s stall where one misstep from the big crimson dragon and we’d have a squashed, dead sprog. Not to mention that if that happened, I might end up with no head.
Lord Lorell takes raising his dragons very seriously, and his dragon workers had better, too — or else.
Once inside Wind Fury’s pen and after closing the gate, I dump the sprogs to one side. To me, a newborn sprog’s head looks like their mama sat on it. Sort of flat and with four little nubbins marking where their horns will grow. Between squashed head and its back end is a fat toadlike body that ends in a snippet of a tail that reminds me of a writhing worm caught on a fishing hook.
From head to tail end, each of these sprogs would match up against a good-sized watermelon in size. They’ll grow to be a hundred times bigger than what they are now, of course. They grow so fast that it won’t be long before I won’t be able to pick any of them up.
And they smell.
Think of a rotten egg the size of a melon. Ugly, stinking, and something only a dragon mother could love.
They don’t smell all that much better when they’re adults, either.
I can’t wait until they’re a little older, and then the dragon trainers get to be their constant companions. I hate being around dragons as it is, but the birthing season is the worst.
I get busy as Wind Fury, a red dragon from last spring’s sprog crop, has been busy, and my barrow is almost full of muck before I pause, lean against my rake and glance toward the rising sun, a deep reddish orange against the dark-blue sky.
I once saw something called a tangerine, down in Draconton’s market. A fruit it was and supposedly, it had come from far south of here but its color was the same as this morning’s sun.
High overhead, the sunlight paints a few remaining wisps of clouds the color of a chestnut horse. The clouds themselves look like a horse’s tail and streak the blue before rushing away toward the east.
I can’t help but think that if I were anywhere else but here, it would be a beautiful morning.
But I am here in this dragon hell-hole and as I take my eyes off the sky, a dirt clod comes sailing past my head and before I can duck, another thick chunk of sod catches my ear. The sting is enough to make me whirl angrily, but it’s the laughing faces that bite even more.
“Hey, sausage boy! Or, should we say ‘quack, quack, mama duck, get your head out of the muck’ and back to your job.”
Hakon and Arnie, the two novice blacksmiths, lean over the dragon p
addock’s top railing and grin, or rather, sneer at me.
“Eaten any sausages lately?” Arnie snickers. “Roasted over an open fire maybe?”
Both boys snort and jab each other with their elbows. Dragons may be at the top of my hate list, but I admit, Hakon and Arnie come in a close second. “Why don’t you two go nail a couple of head rivets in those skulls of yours,” I retort.
Hakon and Arnie look at each other in puzzlement. “Did the walking sausage,” Hakon sputters, “just try and make a joke?”
“It was a joke, right?” Arnie says ominously, his eyes hard and cold.
“Of course,” I quickly reply. “Everyone knows your heads are too thick to drive a skull rivet through.”
The two glance at each other, unsure if I was poking fun at them or not. Hakon runs a hand through his stringy red hair and points a finger toward the stockade’s far end. “Hey pooper scooper,” he chortles in his reedy voice, “you missed a big pile over there.”
He leans farther over the rail, his eyes narrow and threatening. “And I better not be stepping in any of it while I’m working either if you know what’s good for you.”
I turn to see what he’s pointing at, a slurry mound large enough to fill one whole wheelbarrow, just left by the crimson who casually plods away, oblivious to the extra work he’s just given me. I screw my mouth to one side and what little bravado I had toward Hakon and Arnie slips away. “I’ll take care of it,” I mutter.
“You better,” Arnie says and then juts his square chin out at my four little companions that huddle at my feet. “And make sure you clean up after your little ducks too, or you’ll get what you got last time.” He pumps his fist in front of his ruddy, pimpled face to drive the point home. Laughing, the two jump down off the railing and tromp off.
