Handbook for Dragon Slayers

by Merrie Haskell

  There are more men coming, and I hear their dogs. Enough men, enough arrows and edges, and enough dogs, and I might be in danger. But I’m not in danger yet.

  I roar back, wordless roars. All these men and their edges are frightening. I am not meant for men and edges. I am not meant for walls and rules.

  I am a dragon.

  chapter 29

  I FIND A FALLEN TREE IN THE FOREST—A ONCE-powerful oak that has been ripped up at the roots by a great wind. There is a huge shield of roots and dirt rising above the hollow carved out by the rupture. I slide into this hollow with a sigh, and I nestle against the tree roots. It is not a cave, but it will do.

  I am exhausted, disoriented, confused.

  I lay my heavy head down between my hands.

  There is something I was supposed to do.

  I close my eyes.

  In the distance, I can hear the sounds of men fighting. Edge clashes on edge. I try to block out the noises. I should be running, but I cannot think of where to, until I remember the cave on the other side of the Great Flow.

  It would be hard to run there, with the Great Flow between there and here.

  It seems to me that it is unusual that I can run with ease.

  I flex my right hind foot. It stretches all the way. I bring it up to stare at it. It looks like a foot. My ear itches, and I use this foot to scratch it.

  All of this seems wrong, and seems right, too.

  I do not think I sleep then, but once I put my foot down, the word-images overtake me, and I put my head down again and let them come.

  THE NOISE OF THE distant strife dies away. Creatures approach. My ears pick out the noise of hooves coming. They are hooves shod with metal, but not human metals. I know these hoofbeats, though I have never heard them like this before, with such clarity and at such a distance.

  I listen for the creatures. Horses. The silver horse is one of them, the horse that brings me joy. I know her by her gait. The horses and their riders are not coming right toward me. They are searching. They do not know where I am. They are going to walk by on the wrong side of the tree roots. They will never see me if I don’t step forward.

  My claws itch to possess the silver horse, and it is frightening to me. I want to watch her under the sunlight.

  The riders are calling a name. “Maaah-tilll-daaaa. Tilll-daaa!” It doesn’t seem right, but I know it’s my name. It’s like listening to things underwater. Not in the way the noise is distorted, but in the way the words don’t match up with the way I know they should sound.

  Maaah-tilll-daaaa is my name.

  Mathilda.

  Tilll-daaa.

  Tilda.

  But no. These are not my names anymore.

  One of the horses and her rider are close. They see me. I stand up. I am not sure if I should fight. When I had a girl’s face, I loved both of these creatures, the rider and the horse, but I don’t know anymore what I’m supposed to do. When I had a girl’s face, the things I loved could hurt me by not loving me back. I’m much stronger than that now.

  When I rise from the forest floor, the horse rears and trumpets a warning. The boy shouts: It’s the dragon! The horse backs a step away from me, nose up and scenting the air, but the boy raises his shining edge.

  My head lowers, teeth battle ready. I see the thousand ways to win if we fought. The boy would be easy to defeat. I could just open my jaws and kill him with one bite. I could stab him through with my claws. I could turn aside and whip him with my tail, and break his bones into tiny pieces. I could, if I could figure out how, blow flame to char him to ash.

  The horse might claim victory over me, though. I remember, somehow, that flame does not char her. Whipping her with my tail would not work either.

  But I do not fight them. I cannot fight them. I step backward, then step backward again. The horse advances on me, nostrils still flared and sniffing, eyes wide. I raise a hand full of delicate claws to stop her, even as I scrabble backward.

  Where is Tilda, dragon? What did you do to her? the boy shouts, brandishing his edge.

  What did I do to Tilda?

  The boy tries to spur the horse, but she plants her feet strongly on the forest floor. Go, go! he cries. Joyeuse? Advance! Why won’t you fight?

  The horse drops one shoulder abruptly, and the boy tumbles off, losing his edge to the leaf litter. He rolls to a stop against a tree but leaps up to face me, unharmed, fists clenched.

  By then the horse has moved toward me, whickering softly.

  I wait. Her nose touches the crown of my head, and her breath is gentle warmth against my scales.

  The boy stares. Joyeuse, what are you doing? he asks, but he stops speaking and comes closer.

  The dragon didn’t eat Tilda. It is Tilda.

  The boy I knew when I had a girl’s face comes toward me. And I let him.

  Oh, Tilda.

  And the boy I knew when I had a girl’s face reaches out and touches the thing around my neck. The necklace made from horse’s hair. He’s so weak, I can barely feel his touch. His hand on my throat is a rabbit’s paw of softness.

  How did you do it? What did you do? Come back to the castle, Tilda.

  His eyes, watchful as a hawk’s, leak water.

  They had the castle under siege for the last day, but you broke it. We beat Sir Egin. He’s gone, fled. Your steward from Alder Brook? He’s here with all your knights and all your neighbors’ knights. Even Sir Kunibert is here. Everything is over.

  I don’t have images for everything he says. It doesn’t make sense, all of it.

  I listen to the horse instead. The horse is snorting at me. I have to stop from reaching for her with my claws. I cannot possess her. She will fight me if I try. She is silver! Silver, which is nearly as good as gold.

  I turn aside my desires. She is not real silver, I remember, and I remember too that once I was smaller than this horse. We are the same size now. I remember that once, I wanted to run like this horse.

  I can, now.

  I start to run, downhill, down the steep gorge to the Great Flow.

  The boy shouts behind me, but his words don’t make any sense. I think once I would have been sad to see water in his eyes. I think once, if I had known that it was I who caused it, I would have leaked water, too.

  It is good to be so strong. Soon, he is gone from sight.

  I do not stop when I reach the river. I remember this water from a time before, and I rear up.

  The great wings on my back spread wide. I have not thought much about them since I became a dragon, but now they catch the air and lift my body.

  I let out a squawk of astonishment as I rise into the air. But then my body starts to drop, and my back claws touch the winter-cold water. I paddle my feet, half running, half swimming, afraid to enter the water—but then I flex my wings and my body rises!

  Up, down, up, down. I skim the surface of the Great Flow, water sheeting from my feet and turning to icicles, until I reach the shore and turn north, north, to the cave.

  I MUST FIND THE other dragon.

  I slink through the cave, inhaling the fading scents of the old fire and sweat from when Mathilda stayed here.

  Tilda.

  I can picture her in my mind. She is small, but many are small compared to me. She is small beyond that, small in comparison to others like her. Her dark-golden hair is short. She hated her hair. Why could it not be red or black or gray? Some color other than gold.

  This is odd. I love gold. It is the most beautiful color, like the sun that feeds the fire in my belly. I can feel gold, I think. There is some in the deep cave before me.

  Tilda-girl and I agree on something else, though. She hated her foot, the twisted foot that made people think and say and do things that they would not do to any straight-foots. I hate that foot, too.

  But I am stronger now. I am a straight-foot now, and I could bite the people who do not like Tilda.

  Where is the other dragon? It is lonely without her.

  I
run through chambers vast and deep, seeing sights with my dragon eyes that I could only dream of as a human. Every rock is rich with color and shape, texture and beauty. But I cannot pause to gawk.

  The only time I stop is when I find the bones of the great dragon. I stop and smell them, but there is not enough scent left to know who this dragon was. I am lonely, thinking of how he must have dwelled here alone. I am more sober but no less urgent in my searching as I go on.

  But when I reach the treasure chamber, where the piles of silver and gold are glittering and alive, I forget about the other dragon.

  This is gold. I want to lie upon the piles, to cover them with my belly, to feel the coins and nuggets shift beneath my scales. I cannot imagine a bed more comfortable.

  But the other dragon is here. She shrieks at me, and comes to fight, her body in the arching S of an attack. I should retreat, but the impulse is too strong. I cannot resist! I snatch a clawful of gold from the pile and, clutching it to my chest, run away.

  With a roar, she is after me, screaming, “Thief! Thief!”

  She chases me through the caves, deeper, then shallower, then deeper again. Twice, her claws catch on my tail. The first time, my tail skids free. The second time, a talon rakes a dozen or more scales from my flesh. The raking feels like fire. I can hear the individual scales pinging off the cavern stones as I pass.

  I drop the coins I took and I howl.

  And I keep running.

  SHE STOPS PURSUIT WHEN I drop the gold, probably pausing to collect it and return it to her hoard.

  Out of sight of the gold, I feel ridiculous and stupid. How could I be so foolish, stealing someone’s gold, just because I . . . wanted it?

  I slink toward the surface, find a small cavern that fits me perfectly, and curl up inside it. The stone is comforting around me, but not as comforting as gold would be.

  I am alone.

  SOMETIME LATER, I HEAR the other dragon’s voice hissing around corners. “Come out, thief, come out . . . ,” she says.

  The voice draws closer.

  “Come out and face your death. Be burned to cinders for your sins. Come out. . . .”

  Later: “Come out, and I will give you gold, little sister. . . .”

  But I know if I come out to face her, she will not give me gold. She will kill me for trying to steal from her. That is the dragon way.

  I lie still, barely breathing. Her voice retreats.

  chapter 30

  I DO NOT DREAM, BUT YET, PERHAPS I DO.

  A human is mewing in the distance; voices bounce and scrape along the walls of the cave.

  Tilda! Mathilda!

  Without knowing why, I slide from my cavern and wend my way toward the call.

  Tilda!

  That is my name.

  I should battle this human, I think, then shake my head hard, trying to clear it of these slippery, dragonish thoughts. I am not a killer. I do not battle humans. I am human, under all this flesh, under all this scale.

  I force myself to draw closer to the call of my name, fighting my dragon fears and dragon thoughts. I come into the brightness of the cave where I once stayed.

  A woman is there. I hiss, neck flat. How dare she invade this cave! How dare she try to steal the gold. That gold is my gold, once I take it from the other dragon.

  But then I see that this is no woman. This is a girl. This is the girl. I grew up with her. She’s the one who rescued me, with the boy.

  Tilda? she says, her weak human voice quavering.

  I nod, not trusting to my dragon voice or my dragon words. I step forward.

  The girl speaks in the human tongue. I have a hard time understanding. But she repeats herself, over and over. Have no fear, have no fear, have no fear.

  I settle into a crouch and wait. It is good to be near this girl. I feel better when I can smell her.

  She goes for a moment and calls outside the cave. A boy comes in. I push my nose into the dirt, to keep myself from snapping my jaws at him. At them.

  The girl stands beside me and has me lift my chin. The boy I knew when I had a girl’s face steps forward. He is kind, I remember, and brave. He kisses me with great solemnity. His lips on mine are a bird’s feather.

  He pulls back and looks at me. I am having a hard time reading his expression. I know humans talk to each other through the quirks of their eyebrows and tilt of their lips as much as they do through words, but I am having a hard time seeing these differences with my eyes.

  He kisses me again.

  And again.

  Enough, the girl says.

  I roar loudly.

  The girl steps back, hands up, a defensive posture. Then she forces herself straight, faces me bravely.

  Tilda! shouts the girl. Stop that. She steps closer to me.

  I am about to strike her with my great and terrible claws when I see that she is clutching something in her tiny hands. Something brown and shaped like a doorway.

  Something I want.

  My strike turns soft, and I reach forward with just one claw, to touch the book in her hands.

  Book. I remember this human word. I remember this book. I remember holding a pen. My pen.

  I reach to take the book from her. She squeaks in dismay as I pluck it from her hands.

  It is so small, so delicate, and I drop the book as I try to open it. I leave it on the ground, pushing at the cover with my claws, over and over. When I peel back the cover at last, I can no longer read the writing there.

  When I try to turn the pages, one rips free and flutters, pierced by my claw.

  The girl cries out, and so do I. I pull back my claws.

  We’re trying to turn you back, Tilda, the girl says. We’re trying. Kissing Parz didn’t work, but . . .

  I stare at the book, at the torn page. I dig my claws into the earth of the cave floor, willing myself to stay still. I fight the urge to flee deep into the cave. I stare at the book. I stare at it and remember writing in it.

  I’ll never write in it again if I retreat into the cave.

  Tilda, the girl says. She squares her shoulders and comes closer to me. She takes my forefinger claw into her hand. I let her, though it’s hard—hard not to run away, hard not to hurt her.

  Father Ripertus rallied Alder Brook and released Sir Hermannus. They came for you. All of Alder Brook came for you, Tilda. Do you understand? They came for you. The knights sworn to Alder Brook besieged Thorn Edge. They were about to break through the gate when you broke it down from inside.

  Tilda, are you understanding any of this?

  I do not really understand it, no. I do not have the best pictures for her words, and no smells, and no sense of north. It is a strange way to talk.

  I find her presence soothing, though.

  She takes a deep, gulping breath, hands in fists against her thighs. If this doesn’t work, we’re trying Horrible next, she says. She grasps my jaw, quick as a warrior, quicker than I can draw away, and kisses me on the mouth.

  There is a long, frozen moment where I think that time has stopped. Judith’s lips are touching mine, and I can hear her pulse. I can see inside of her, can see her thoughts racing. I see her fear and revulsion for the dragon shell that surrounds me. I see the love and compassion for the whole world, which she has carried around with her her entire life. The whole world, including me. Sometimes I exasperate her, but this, she thinks, is how sisters would feel toward one another, in spite of unstoppable devotion and caring.

  She loves Alder Brook, loves it deeply, and cannot understand how I forgot to love it, too. It’s where we were born, yes, and it’s where our families are from, but that’s not a reason to love it, not on its own. But it is the place that made us, made me and made her. And if I don’t love myself enough to love Alder Brook, don’t I love her enough to love it?

  She feels as though she stands eternally at a crossroads. She cannot make any decisions until I grow up. If I never marry, she will never marry, or put it off for a long time, anyway. This is hard,
because she has already chosen the names for her children—special, secret names that she does not give to kittens or baby goats.

  I see all of Judith at that moment; I see all of her, love all of her, comprehend all of her. When her lips touch my scaly mouth, I see through her eyes: I view my dragon’s body, with my straight, powerful limbs, my magnificent wings, my curving teeth, my sparkling eyes. But she does not see power and straightness and magnificence; she smells char on my breath and sees death in my claws. She remembers the dragon at Wood Ash slashing her leg, the fire of that pain and the fear she would die; she remembers being trapped in the cave with the young dragons; she remembers bearing the heat of flame while I crouched behind her. She is terrified, in this moment, to be pressing her lips to my muzzle.

  She sees beyond this, though. And I see through Judith’s inward eyes as well as her outward: I see all of myself, all that she loves and hates but mostly loves about me. I see the Tilda she believes I am, clever and resilient, surly but loving, stubborn and strong. She never pitied me for my foot the way she pities me for my dragon’s body, the way she pitied me when I tore the page from my beloved book just now with my clumsy claws.

  In that moment, my choices are clear, my thinking is clear. I either flee this kiss and live forever a friendless dragon, or I let the kiss return me to the feeble form I was born into. Books, pens, parchment, castles, manors, domains, accounts, pfennigs, marks, twisted flesh, painful sores, metal horses, my friends, my mother, my enemies: all weigh in the balance against freedom and gold and strength, brutality and loneliness and darkness.

  Images fight with feelings. It is impossible to know which is best.

  But the choice is mine.

  So I make it.

  The world shatters.

  chapter 31

  IT HAPPENED SO FAST, I DIDN’T HAVE A CHANCE TO really understand it.

  The scales flew from me like beads yanked off a string, and I burned! How I burned. I roared, but my roar shrilled away to a scream. And that’s all I could understand of it, before I realized that I was a girl again, and naked.