by Lyn Worthen
The bandit leader glared up at her. He was remarkably fearless for someone facing down what he thought was a god. “You want the princess?” he said. “Take her. She’s not worth my life.”
“Sensible,” Xochitl said.
A sharp pain pierced the base of her tail. She hissed and turned, careful not to lance the bandit leader’s throat. One of the bandits, his spear raised high, was backing away as if terrified. Golden blood trickled down the spear’s point. “Ow,” Xochitl said. “How dare you?” The wound was closing as she spoke, but the pain lingered. They needed to get out of here quickly, before the bandits realized they could inconvenience her painfully if they worked together.
“Tell your people to back off,” she said.
The bandit leader sneered. “Kill it,” he shouted.
Xochitl reared up, away from the bandit leader. “Coyotl, run!” she shouted, hoping he’d rescued the princess already and that there weren’t a dozen other captives to slow him down. Men surged toward her, and she reared up on her tail and breathed fire in a broad, flat cone, engulfing all of them. More sharp pains struck her from behind, and she swung around, whipping her tail to knock over a few bandits and send their weapons flying. She spread her wings wide and flapped, causing a gust of wind that knocked over a tent that her fire had caught the corner of.
Then the sharpest pain of all struck her in the chest, and she screamed and grabbed the bandit leader, wrenching him away from the spear he’d pierced her scales with. She flung him away and gripped the weapon’s hilt, pulling it out. It was an ugly thing, its obsidian point dull with dirt, and it smelled rich and sweet with her golden blood. With her ability to heal rapidly, she’d never realized that a human weapon could hurt her. Pain swept over her, dizzying her.
Someone was shouting in her ear, words she couldn’t make out over the roar of the fire spreading through the camp, and there was a thought: don’t die, you can’t die now.
“I won’t die,” she mumbled.
“Fly!” Coyotl shouted, and smacked her forejoint with his open palm. It didn’t hurt, not like the spear had, but it broke her out of her confusion. She spread her wings again and leaped into the sky, beating fast to gain altitude. Soon she’d left the humans far behind.
No. That’s wrong.
Coyotl and whoever he’d rescued would be in danger from those bandits. She couldn’t abandon him. Xochitl turned and dove back toward the forest, scanning the trees for signs of – there. She landed in a mad scramble beside Coyotl, slithering awkwardly to keep up with him. “They won’t stop chasing us!” Coyotl shouted.
“We’ll have to see about that,” Xochitl said. She turned and spat a thin line of fire at their pursuers, not wanting to start another forest fire. Men screamed and fell, and Xochitl let another bubble of fire form in her second stomach. But it wasn’t needed. The rest turned and ran.
Xochitl stopped, her chest heaving as she drew in deep breaths of smoke-scented air, and found Coyotl beside her. He held the hand of a smaller human, one with long, black hair that shone like Ilhuicatl’s feathers. “Is this the princess?” she asked.
“You saved our lives,” Coyotl said. “My father and King Zolin both owe you a debt.”
The sharp pain in Xochitl’s chest was fading already, replaced by a dull ache she didn’t think was physical. “That’s nice,” she said. “But I think I just want to go home.”
# # #
A twelveday later, Xochitl sunned herself on the rocks outside her parents’ cavern and fingered the brownish lump on her chest. The bandit leader’s spear must have been poisoned, she had decided, because the entry wound hadn’t healed smoothly. Now she had a fist-sized scar to remind her of her stupidity.
The other dragons had mostly gone back to treating her like a youngling, except for Pehuani, who taunted her whenever their parents couldn’t hear. Xochitl ignored her. Maybe she’d made mistakes, maybe she wasn’t an adult yet, but she’d done things no other dragon of the flight had managed, and nothing Pehuani said could take away from that.
Something moved on the rocks below. Xochitl closed her nictitating eyelids against the glare of the sun and examined it. She sat up in astonishment. A human, here in dragon territory? And one steadily climbing toward the flight’s caverns as if he knew where he was going. Her eyelids fluttered open so she could see more clearly. Then she slid off her perch and spiraled down to meet him.
Coyotl looked redder than usual, possibly from exertion. “What are you doing here?” Xochitl said.
“I have something for you,” Coyotl said, “and something for that big red and black dragon. He’s your leader, right?”
“Our queen,” Xochitl corrected. “You can’t possibly have anything we’d want.”
“Humans believe in paying their debts. I’m sure dragons understand that. Will you carry me up? I didn’t realize how steep a climb this was.”
Xochitl helped Coyotl climb onto her back and flew the short distance to the caverns. The other dragons had seen Coyotl by then, and almost the entire flight had emerged to find out why a human had braved the peaks. Even Ilhuicatl was there, looking impassive and enormous as always.
Coyotl hopped down from Xochitl’s back and bowed to Ilhuicatl. “Your Divineness,” he said. “My father sent me to address you. I hope you won’t take offense that I use human terms of respect.”
“Rational people do not take offense where none is meant,” Ilhuicatl said. “What message do you bring?”
Coyotl shrugged a pack off his shoulders and opened the flap. “We don’t know much about dragons,” he said, “mostly legend, and I’m sure half of that is wrong. Like how you look like gods, but bleed like men – golden blood, but still… Anyway, we hoped you wouldn’t mind that we honor you the way we would honor each other.” He pulled out a gem-studded circle of gold and offered it to Xochitl. “For you, in thanks for my sister’s life.”
Xochitl took it. The soft gold and round, highly-polished blue stones gleamed in the sunlight. It looked as if it would fit neatly over her tail, just above the tuft of feathers. “It’s beautiful,” she said. Treasure was the one thing about human craftsmanship dragons appreciated.
“The other thing isn’t tangible,” Coyotl said, once more addressing Ilhuicatl. “As I said, we don’t know much about dragons. But after what Xochitl did for my sister, my father decided he wanted to change that. He asks that we be allowed to open a diplomatic exchange, to build relations between Xiuhpilli and your stronghold.”
“And why would we do that?” Ilhuicatl said.
Coyotl glanced at Xochitl. “I told him I thought it was selfish,” he admitted. “I think we’ll benefit from the exchange more than you do. But… someday humans are going to realize you’re not gods and will want your territory, and while I think any army would be insane to attack you, you might want allies. And we’d like to be those allies.”
Ilhuicatl’s nostrils flared. “Interesting. And you offer yourself as an emissary?”
“No.” Coyotl smiled. “That will be later. Right now, I’m still Xochitl’s prize.”
Xochitl jerked in surprise. Ilhuicatl sat back and regarded Coyotl narrowly. “It doesn’t work that way,” she said.
“Well, I could go back down and wander around until she captures me again, but I thought this would save time,” Coyotl said. “She caught me fairly, and I think she deserves a chance to prove she can care for me. And she was wounded in my defense.”
Xochitl’s heart pounded until it felt like she’d been stabbed again. Ilhuicatl regarded her with narrowed eyes. The moment stretched on until Xochitl wanted to scream, or fly away, anything to break the silence.
Finally, Ilhuicatl said, “One twelveday. And then you’ll return him to his people. As my emissary.”
Xochitl’s mouth fell open in astonishment. Emissary? Her? “But I’m—” she began.
“Someone who’s proved she can be trusted around humans,” Ilhuicatl said. “We’ll see how far that will take you.”
/> Xochitl nodded vigorously. “I won’t let you down,” she said. “I promise.”
“We’ll see,” Ilhuicatl said, and smiled.
Xochitl backed up half a dragonlength and nearly fell over Coyotl. Hot, embarrassed blood rushed through her. After all that, crushing her prize would be unthinkable. “I made a better place for you to stay, down mountain,” she said. “Do you want to ride, or should I carry you?”
Coyotl reached up for her neck frill and pulled himself into his accustomed seat. “I’ll always choose to ride,” he said.
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L.D.B. Taylor (aka Lisa) is a lifelong reader and writer. The author of five books, her award-winning fiction, memoir, and non-fiction has appeared in both print and online publications. She blogs twice weekly at ldbtaylor.com twice weekly and writes daily from Witt's End, her rambling, perpetually dusty home in the hills of Utah among the deer, wild turkey, coyotes, and occasional mountain lion along with her five children, eight dogs (it’s a long story), three parakeets, half a dozen chickens, and one husband. She appreciates wit, chocolate, hot tea, British accents, cool mountain evenings, kindness, travel, and books by the score.
About this story, Lisa says: “I’ve long been fascinated with shadows, the way the move, their angled, elongated corners; wondering if, just perhaps, they move and flicker on their own when we’re not looking; The Shadow Dragon grew from that interest. What if some shadows are sentient? What if some are visible – to those able to see them at least – as actual objects, as living beings? What if such living, self-aware shadows cast shadows of their own while interacting with humans and other creatures, able to not only manipulate their world, but also the people within it?”
A home occupied by a shadow dragon seems like it would be just this side of haunted; then again, depending on the dragon, it could be amazing…
The Shadow Dragon
L.D.B. Taylor
Rigel had never seen the ocean. She had lived in the Weald her entire life, as had her mother before her, and naturally, her mother before her.
The Angston family didn’t get around much, geographically speaking.
Rigel’s house, which her mother referred to as a cottage and everyone else in the village privately called a shack, was on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, on the wrong side of town, in the wrong part of the country.
Her father had disappeared so long ago Rigel could no longer recall the sound of his voice. Her three older brothers spent their fair weather days fishing or hunting in the Weald’s meandering rivers and dark stretches of trees, their foul ones tanning hides or moodily smoking pipes on the sun porch. While her mother, a sinewy, tall woman with long tangled hair and faded black eyes, mixed lotions, potions, vats of soap, and the most potent hair tonic ever imagined by peasant or king. With regular use it could transform a shiny bald pate into a gleaming crop of glossy hair in just under two months. Rigel had seen the miracle it brought into people’s lives with her own eyes more than once.
(Why this alone had not brought the Angston family wealth and fame proves just how truly odd a place the world is.)
Rigel attended Weald-Down Senior Academy, where she ate lunch alone, endured the cat calls of Blaze Whittingham and his crowd of emotionally bankrupt cronies, and excelled in the arts of oratory, debate, and theatre. She was a beautiful girl, though as is often the way with truly beautiful people she couldn’t see it and thought herself hideous – too tall and too thin. She considered her lush, curling hair a ball of frizz, her large, dark eyes buggy and bloodshot.
(Blaze Whittingham had dreamed of Rigel’s eyes since he was fourteen, and would for the rest of his days. Calling them “luminous” in his sleeping mind, a word he would have blinked at in confusion during his waking hours.)
Rigel’s dreams centered around the long yearned-for hope of one fine day leaving The Weald. Venturing far away, to New York. To New York! Of becoming an actress. Though such yearnings in the stark light of day, or even during hazy, pre-dawn moments seemed impossible. Pipe dreams, castles in the air, the fanciful imaginings of a pathetic fool.
And perhaps they would have been. Perhaps Rigel would, as she feared, have ended her days fashioning soaps, lotions, potions, and restorative hair tonic alongside her aging mother but for one thing. No doubt the sorry miseries of her life would have drained the soul of even the most determined, stout hearted girl, had it not been for the existence of a Shadow Dragon called Bartholomew.
Bartholomew, as he’d told Rigel more than one, considered himself her daemon. A sort of guardian dragon. An absolute blessing. Rigel considered him a pest and a curse, and had since first becoming aware of his irksome presence fourteen years before, at age three. Though, of course, he’d been around long before that.
Bartholomew had sheltered within the worn cottage since its raising nearly a century before, and had occupied the hard patch of ground it stood upon longer than people had lived in the Weald. Watching, always watching, as Shadow Dragons do. But that as they say, is another story.
# # #
This evening finds Rigel alone in her bedroom. Dressed in grey thermals, she’s sunk deep into a tattered, chintz-covered chair, reading aloud to herself, secretly enjoying the rolling cadence of her own voice, imagining herself upon the stage, basking beneath the warm lights. And there, so close she can actually see them, millions of adoring fans teeter on the edge of their seats; caught up in her powerful performance.
“‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.’ Isn’t it beautiful?” Rigel’s voice is hushed, her eyes filled with tears.
“I’ve always considered Ophelia a bit of a whiner, actually,” Bartholomew sniffs. Knowing full well Rigel hadn’t been speaking to him, but answering all the same.
During her recitation he’s amused himself by making people puppets on the wall. Bartholomew has a rare talent for creating people puppets. Simply by moving the talons of his fore claws, or flapping the edge of one wing, he makes them look amazingly realistic. Twisting about upon the rag rug, (imagine a dragon doing yoga and there will arise a picture, more or less accurate, of how he looks), he adds doughy cheeks to his creation, a pot gut, oversized flopping ears.
“Do ya see? It’s that git Blaze Whittingham,” Bartholomew chuckles. Puffing his cheeks he blows a tiny cloud of dark grey steam upon the puppet’s face, filling its pudgy cheeks with a muted pink as its blinking eyes turn round and confused.
“I don’t want to look at Blaze Whittingham, or any of them.” Turing away, Rigel lies down upon her unmade bed, hugging her legs to her chest. “I know you were there today, Bartholomew; don’t bother denying it. Haven’t I told you to quit following me?”
“Shadowing you, you mean?” Bartholomew’s smile is toothy. He has sharp, ivory teeth of course, as all dragons have. A bit of steam mingling with the tiniest hint of fire trickles about his lips as he chuckles. “And haven’t I told you it’s my job to shadow you? It’s what Shadow Dragons are meant to do.”
“Well I don’t see the point,” Rigel stretches, wrangles the blanket up beneath her arms, and, despite herself, gazes over at the dragon. I won’t smile at him, she tells herself, biting hard at her lips to keep them under control.
But of course she does.
“You’re incorrigible.” As usual all attempts to make her voice sound scolding are in vain. “Don’t think I don’t know! I saw you light Bill Atkins’ rucksack on fire. And Mr. Clovinson’s shoes – you melted the soles didn’t you? He hadda take them off and walk in his holey stocking feet down the hall!”
“Is that what you think? That I’d stoop to mucking about with such piddling fixings as that?” Bartholomew’s grin widens, wriggling arcs of golden light erupt from the corners of his eyes and his long tail whips from side to side. His shadow-self flattens, spreading itself further along the walls. “Setting fire to rucksacks and melting shoes – as if! When I’ve so many other things to do,
my dearie, as well you know. Important things… things which matter.”
“What sorts of things?” Rigel asks, lowering her voice to a whisper. Painfully aware of the young moon outside her window. It’s just begun to wax, she thinks. Should I try again, ask him again? Before the moon’s pull grows stronger?
No. She almost shakes her head. He won’t tell. Besides, do I really want to know?
Yet she asks again, “What sorts of things?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” the shadow dragon sing-songs. “Or not!”
Rigel flings a pillow at him, watches it hit the wall and slide to the floor where it lies saggy and flat within the bright splash of light cast from her bedside lamp. She sits quietly for a while, thinking. Long kaleidoscopes of words pass through her mind. They have a life of their own, those words. Some are made up of long strips of tie-dyed cloth, some are blazing electric marquees, (she can heard the electricity in them buzzing). Some are scrawled in white chalk upon dusty blackboards, and too many are scratched into the hard dirt of her very own weed-strewn backyard. But no matter how they’ve been made, all of the words are ugly. Red neck, trash, freak, gawky weird-ass poor girl. Rigel watches them form in her mind’s eye, letter by letter, then slowly blinks each one away. Feeling it liquefy as her eyelids close. Tiny, multi-colored drops trickling like tears between her bedroom’s floor boards. Disappearing into the parched dirt of the Weald below.
Blink them away girl, she hears the small voice in her head whisper.
She used to tell herself the small voice belonged to her father. Words long remembered from when she was little. Memories tucked away tight; to guide and comfort her over the years.
But she knows the voice is Bartholomew’s.
She switches off the bedroom light and the room is entirely dark. The thin sliver of moon outside casts no reflection here. The crack beneath her bedroom door reveals nothing but blackness. Sliding beneath the covers, Rigel closes her eyes and immediately falls asleep. She sleeps deep, as she always has, dreamless and silent.
