by Scott Toney
Pondering
Lilya stood at the edge of her garden with green foliage gently moving in the warm breeze around her. It had been four days since Thomas’s departure and soon he would return to Cush for her answer. Why had she made him think there was a chance that she would agree to be his queen? Or even to go with him to Havilah? Because you need desperately to get away from this place, your father and his knights, that’s why, she thought to herself.
Lilya looked down to the streets below the castle walls, bustling with life. Venders had set up shop below selling vegetables and various trinkets they had forged in their workshops. She smiled as she watched them gaily conversing in the streets. Their happiness gave her some comfort in this haunting place.
Her sight lifted from the streets, over Cush’s vast forest and to the towering mountain ranges far away on the horizon. Was Alexander there? She walked to the corner of her garden where she found a small cherry tree and plucked one of its delicious fruits, biting into it and enjoying its sweet taste as it passed by her tongue. She needed to speak with him and to ask his advice.
Was it a bizarre thing to seek out the advice of a massive scaled beastlike creature? No, she thought. And Alexander was not that to her. He had become her friend that night he had saved her, and friends were something she did not have many of. She looked out at the jagged, mountainous horizon. “Alexander,” she spoke. “If you can hear me and can come, I need to speak to you and would love to spend some time with you, my friend.”
For a moment there was silence. The warm wind brushed by her face. The market’s hustle and bustle collected in her ears and birds were still chirping all about her garden but nothing had changed. “He has left us,” the words came in a whisper from her lips, and then along the mountainous sun-goldened horizon she saw a winged shape getting larger and larger as it came from the cliffs. Slowly the shape grew as its wings beat toward her.
“Alexander, thank goodness you’re still here,” Lilya spoke.
He dipped from the sky as he neared and skimmed the tops of the forest, causing leaves to churn up about him, his crimson wings reflecting the sunlight. Then suddenly his broad chest arched as he shot high into the sky and then glided down toward her.
The people in the streets had noticed him now and were scurrying for cover. She wished that they could understand that he was her friend and would cause them no harm.
As he came to her his wings beat gently. He hovered with an outstretched paw before her as he spoke. “I would never leave you, princess. It is a pleasure to be in your presence once more. Come with me and we will fly.”
“Alexander,” Lilya spoke, “it is so good to see you.” She stepped toward his massive paw, grabbing onto one of his smooth warm claws and hoisting herself up. There she lay close to the folds of his palm, ready to soar into the sky with him. “Let’s go somewhere where we can talk.”
Alexander’s large crimson head swung from the direction of the garden and up towards the clouds in the distance. “There is no better place to talk than the clouds and sky,” he said in his voice’s deep song. “Only the birds will hear our words there.” A smile stretched across his lips. “And of course they are all my friends and will keep our words to themselves.”
With one strong beat of his wings the pair rose swiftly to the clouds above and Lilya watched as Westwood Castle and all of Cush’s surrounding villages shrunk below.
Up, Alexander flew, bursting through the fog of clouds just above them and then curving his wings as he sent pulses through them, his body cruising gently above their misty white sheets. “What do you need to talk about?” he asked with care in his voice.
Lilya breathed in the smooth air whisking across her face. “Do you know about the young king who came to consider me for his queen?”
“I would like to say that I hadn’t known of him until you just told me, but my ears picked up your voice when you were out in your garden a few days back and I listened to be sure that you were in safe hands.”
Lilya turned now in his paw so that she was no longer facing the wind. Her hair whipped before her eyes. “It’s alright. I had hoped you were listening, just in case I needed you.” She pulled her hair back and pinned it between her back and his paw. “Thomas seems to be a good man, or rather a good boy, but it’s so hard for me to trust any man. And I certainly don’t love him.”
Alexander turned his head as he curved across the clouds and Lilya squinted as she peered into the crisp blue sky and radiant light gleaming from the sun above.
“And yet you left him thinking that you may go with him when he returns. Why?” the dragon asked.
“I don’t know exactly. I guess… I guess that I just started to think that maybe this was my chance to escape Cush and everything that has happened to me here. But trying to escape something is not a good reason to tell someone that you’ll marry them.”
“That’s true,” Alexander said, “and it would not be right to do to the boy either.”
“So what do I do? I want so badly to escape this place.”
The dragon swooped down through the sheen of clouds and a vast body of water spread out before them. “If I remember correctly Thomas said that you could come to Havilah with him to get to know him better and see if you would fall in love with him or not.”
“But I won’t. I know I won’t and I don’t want to give him hopes.”
“Is there a possibility?” he asked.
She sat up again in his palm now. “That I would grow to love him? I suppose anything is possible, but I worry about breaking his heart.”
“He is a king. Surely he would understand and respect your decision.”
“You obviously do not know kings like I do, Alexander.” She held out a hand to the winds and felt the speckles of water flicking off of the water some distance below them. “Sometimes their hearts can be the weakest and most intolerable of all.”
“He is not your father.”
“My father and his guards are all that I have known.” Lilya was silent for a moment as they glided above the pure blue waters below. “I suppose I am afraid of Thomas even more because he is a king.”
“Do you trust me, princess?”
The question came as a surprise to her. What did her trust of Alexander have to do with anything? “Why do you ask?” she questioned him.
“Do you trust me?” His deep voice was strong and comforting.
“Of course I do. You rescued me from my father’s guard the other night, and the simple fact that you are close by has brought some comfort to me since then.”
“If you trust me then know this, I will protect you. No matter where you go I will be there to protect you.”
She thought for a moment. “Does that mean you would go to Havilah with me?” she asked. She hadn’t thought of it before but she suddenly realized that she could not leave Cush without Alexander. Even though they had just recently met there was a connection between the two of them that she would not be able to leave behind. Not only was he one of the only beings she considered to be a friend, he was also the only one she trusted.
“If you asked, I would go.” He swooped down toward the waters now. “Think about what you wish to do. I will be with you whatever your choice.”
Lilya lay flat against his palm again, breathing the breeze rushing past her within her lungs. She felt as if she was weightless in his supporting strength.
“Can I show you something?” Alexander asked.
“What?”
“Hold your breath!”
He hugged her close to his chest and dove swiftly toward the waters below. Lilya inhaled deeply and held it just as the dragon boomed into the liquid bath. She could hear the muffled sound of water splashing on the water’s surface above as they glided gently through the underwater currents and she opened her eyes to see sunlight glistening through the blue and shimmering off the scales of fish below her.
Alexander’s muscular neck curved upwards, splitting the water above in waves as
his wings pulsed and sent them soaring high into the sky once more. A burst of steam leapt from his lips before flicking with ash-like flecks of fire and then dissipating to nothing. They were soaring toward the clouds once more.
“Wow,” Lilya said in amazement as she breathed a deep breath. Water whispered like a mist from her clothes and skin as the wind pealed it from her form. “I didn’t expect that. I didn’t know you could go underwater.” Alexander wove up and up into the cool clouds so that she could only barely make out the land below them now.
“I am and can do many things, Lilya, and many things about myself are still a mystery even to me.”
She watched as they followed the line of a river far below them as they flew. “How could that be? How can you not know things about yourself?”
“I can’t explain it. I only have foggy glimpses of memory of being before a small time back. My eyes opened, I was in the woods, and something was calling me. And then I lost the signal, but when whatever was calling me vanished I came to your mountains to try and make sense of it all.”
“And that is when you heard my voice,” she spoke almost to herself now. “Well, it is amazing that you can dive beneath the waves like that. How long can you hold your breath?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “For as long as I like I suppose.”
The river below opened up and connected to another, and there in its largest point Lilya saw a fleet of ships, beautiful and shimmering in the sunlight. She could barely make out people scurrying along the vessel’s decks.
“He’s down there,” Alexander’s strong voice spoke. “We could surprise them and say hello if you’d like.”
Lilya’s heart caught in her throat. “Thomas? N… no, we can see him when he returns.”
Alexander pumped his vast wings and lifted him and Lilya high into the clouds and out of the vessel’s sights. “And when Thomas returns, what will your answer be then?”
10
