by Lyn Worthen
“Ogham,” he called. “I’ve brought Lady Claire to meet you. Have we permission to land?”
“Roddy? Is that you? It’s been a hundred years if it’s been a day!”
A man’s head and torso appeared at the edge of the tallest stone. He sported a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, copper as the setting sun and a long braid of equally red hair hung over one shoulder. He stepped slowly forward, revealing the splendid body of a sorrel stallion.
“Don’t exaggerate, centaur,” said Roddy. “It can’t have been more than fifty years since I brought Deirdre by for a visit.”
“Perhaps so,” said Ogham. “You’d know the flow of human time better than I.” He looked up and shaded his eyes with a calloused hand. “Why are you still aloft? Land so I can meet this newest charge of yours.”
Roddy snorted and flame charred the nearest stone. “By the Old Ones, Ogham. I thought you’d never get around to issuing the invitation.” He settled to the grass in the center of the circle, and I loosened my grip on his ridge and pulled the ski mask from my face.
Ogham cantered over and held up his arms. “Allow me, milady.”
Strong hands grasped my waist and lifted me from Roddy’s back. He set me on the ground, but kept a hand on my arm.
My knees buckled and I fought to stay upright.
“I thought as much,” he said with a nod. “Your first flight? Have no fear, milady, it’s a common reaction.”
Roddy snuffled behind me, and then said, “I promised her breakfast, Ogham.”
The centaur neighed his laughter. “Of course you did. You always arrive at mealtime, you scoundrel.”
Ogham escorted me to the tallest stone and through a nonexistent doorway into a comfortable dwelling. It was a cave, except it wasn’t. The walls were rock and the floor packed dirt, but the room was light and airy rather than dank and musty. A hearth filled the far end and a scarred worktable stood before it.
“Come in and be comfortable,” the centaur said.
Roddy followed me inside and I swear the room expanded to accommodate his bulk. He folded his wings tightly against his golden sides, sat back on his haunches and curled his tail around his toes like a gigantic cat.
I glanced around, but didn’t see anything even vaguely resembling a chair. I’d just made up my mind to settle on the hard packed floor when Roddy spoke.
“Here, my lady. Ogham keeps this stone slab for company.” He moved aside to reveal a bench of intricately carved marble.
“Stone slab, indeed,” I said quietly. “It’s absolutely beautiful.” I traced the interlocking designs with a finger, delighting in the smooth, cool perfection of the seat. “Did you make this, Ogham?”
“I did, milady, long ago… before Roddy left to guard your family.”
At that moment Roddy erupted in a sneezing fit showering the room in a flare of sparks. Ogham and I raced to stomp out myriad small embers before they could emerge into full flame.
Once the emergency had passed, Roddy bellowed, “Breakfast, Ogham. Feed my lady now!”
Ogham scowled at the dragon, but clapped his hands and danced a complicated jig reminding me of a video I’d seen in school of the Lipizzaner Stallions.
A table appeared before us covered in crisp white linen and bearing steaming platters of fragrant food. I recognized oatmeal drizzled with honey, baked yams dripping butter and brown sugar, and loaves of dark-crusted bread, but many of the platters contained mysterious concoctions whose ingredients I couldn’t even begin to guess.
“Wow,” I said, “this looks wonderful, but where’re the bacon and eggs?”
Ogham froze and then slowly turned his head to stare at me in astonishment. “You would eat the young of a bird, or, or,” he grimaced and swallowed convulsively, “the flesh of a mammal?”
“She is human, Ogham. Her ways are different.” Roddy turned his brilliant green gaze on me. “Ogham is an herbivore, Claire,” he explained quietly. “There’ll be no meat at his table.”
“I’m sorry, Ogham,” I said lowering my eyes and bowing my head. “I meant no disrespect.”
“Of course, milady,” he replied, his voice less strained. “Forgive my overreaction.”
“Wonderful,” said Roddy. “Now that we’re all friends again, let’s eat!”
My belly rumbled its agreement and we all laughed.
That breakfast in the centaur’s cave may well go down in my personal history as the best meal of my life. I sampled unknown but savory foods, giggled, and swapped stories with mythological creatures and discovered friends I’d treasure for the rest of my life.
Ogham proved his bardic heritage by telling me faery tales such as I’d never heard before with an authority born of first-hand knowledge.
“Oh, yes,” he said when I looked askance. “The original bards were all centaurs. We are the originators of the Gaelic gift for gab. The Blarney stone was ours long before the Celts arrived on this magnificent island. The druids co-opted our title when the faery folk retreated underhill, but they were a pale imitation of the great centaur bards.”
“It’s true,” yawned Roddy, resting his chin on his forepaws. “A centaur can talk his way out of anything. Not even a dragon will flame a being who is in the midst of an astounding tale… and centaurs never run out of words.”
“Well, outwitting dragons isn’t much to boast of,” said Ogham, his brow furrowed and somber. “After all, intelligence must be near equal to make a fair game of wits.”
Roddy thumped the dirt floor with his tail barb and the tremor nearly knocked the centaur off his feet.
“Care to rethink your position, horse? I’m not above flaming you in mid-sentence.”
Ogham chortled his high, whinnying laugh and swished his tail in Roddy’s face.
Roddy rose, and for a heart-stopping moment I thought he meant to carry out his threat… but then he glanced at me and said, “I’m sorry to end our visit, Ogham, but I must return Lady Claire to her home.”
With a clatter of hooves and a flick of his tail, Ogham danced the table and its contents away. He knelt before me and bowed over my hand.
“I’m honored to have met you, Lady Claire. I wish you long life and great happiness in your association with Roddy.”
“Thank you, Ogham,” I said, bowing my head before meeting his gaze again. “I’m sure I’ll get used to meeting mythological creatures… eventually.”
“Good-bye, Ogham,” Roddy said, offering me his paw. “Come, my lady. Climb onto my back and we will return the way we came.”
On impulse, I threw my arms around Ogham’s neck and hugged him tightly. Then I scrambled to secure myself behind Roddy’s neck ridge. “Good-bye,” I cried. “Thank you for breakfast!” and Ogham’s standing stones dissolved in a glorious shiver of sensory delights.
Maybe inheriting a dragon wouldn’t turn out to be such a bad thing after all.
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Deanna Baran lives in Texas and is a librarian and former museum curator. She writes in between cups of tea, playing Go, and trading postcards with people around the world.
About this story, Deanna says: “I once read the ancient Chinese classic, Creation of the Gods, and loved not only the cultural and mythological richness of it all, but also the importance of names and rank and relationships. When the opportunity arose to write a dragon story, that was my number one thought: how to give readers a glimpse of that authenticity within my own work.”
I love the juxtaposition of the contemporary narrative voice of this story with the very traditional nature of the tale. It’s a story that deserves to be read aloud – and yes, you’re correct if you’ve guessed the inspiration for this anthology’s title.
Claws of Change
Deanna Baran
There’s never any angst over what we want to be when we grow up, because there’s never any choice. It makes life as a dragon easy in one way, but can also get you down a little. The hierarchy is very strict: you have your place, and you st
ay there, unless you make a mess of your life. Then there’s no limit as to how far you can fall. Our social rank is determined by our body chemistry, but even more importantly, our place in the world is defined by our spirit lineage. The stars, our patron spirits, are the source of our magic, and our magic makes us fit for our place.
My personal name, roughly translated, means Dark Enigma Mystery Arising, and I hail from the clan called the Honorable and Prosperous Claws of Change, under the patronage of the constellation known as the Stern Ancestral Axe. None of that means anything to you, but amongst my people, they’d understand that it means I come from a long line of dragons who kick ass and take names. We’re not important in and of ourselves, but we use our teeth and our claws and our magic to protect dragons who are. I’ve spent the last three centuries in training to finally be permitted to have a real assignment, where I formally enter into a relationship with one of the Brilliant and Serene Ones, am allowed to dedicate the next millennium of my life in their service, and thereby accumulate merit, tap into their high-quality spirit lineage, and gain wisdom and knowledge in exchange for my loyalty and physical protection. I mean, who wouldn’t want all that?
The Truth Mirroring Ceremony takes place in the Hall of Celestial Purity once every hundred years. All warrior-class dragons in our quadrant receive their lifetime’s assignments then: those who are assigned to earthly geographies, those whose place is amongst the heavens or under the sea, and those whose role is to protect a Brilliant and Serene One with their very lives.
The Ceremony is carried out by two of our greatest sages: the Master of Righteous Things and the Master of Imperial Horizons. That’s their magic, figuring out what our purpose in life is supposed to be. Everyone knows what their general purpose is, even before they’re born, and then they’re raised up in the paths and the knowledge that’s necessary for it. But it’s not until the Mirroring Ceremony that you are steered into the specific paths that the heavens have ordained for you as your destiny. It’s kind of nice having your destiny all spelled out like that, instead of having to muddle around trying to figure it out on your own, but anyone who knows anything about the heavens knows that it has a sense of humor, so you can never be sure until you’re sure, and you never know what Heaven will ordain for you until it’s been ordained.
That’s not to say you never have a clue. I had a deep-seated suspicion that I would be dedicated to the service of a dragon from the Graceful Sea of Integrity lineage, because ninety-nine times out of one hundred, that’s what dragons from the Honorable and Prosperous Claws of Change lineage get matched with. We’re super-compatible with each other. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s natural to expect it since it happens so frequently. The only dragon from our lineage who was young enough to lack a sworn, dedicated warrior was an elegant female named Beauty Bright Prosperity. She wasn’t exactly my friend, because the different ranks and classes weren’t exactly encouraged to mingle, but I liked her enough. From afar.
It was my turn. I ascended the dais and submitted myself before the two Masters and awaited their decree. They did their usual divination with the Great Pearl of Celestial Honor to determine what Heaven willed for me.
And they pledged me to the service of Muddled Puddle.
I almost didn’t catch what they said. It registered in my brain like they were speaking a foreign language, and I had to stop and adjust my thinking to comprehend what was being talked about. Muddled Puddle—!
I broke protocol by raising my head just a fraction of an inch, and slewing my eyes through the opposite ranks of Brilliant and Serene Ones, who were waiting to see if a dedicated warrior would be granted them this century. I had absolutely no clue who Muddled Puddle was supposed to be, or what clan he was from, or anything, but I picked him out through a swift process of elimination, and the fact that there was only one dragon present who was staring at me in horror as he ascended the ceremonial dais to receive my oath. That’s not to say that either of our expressions actually changed, because dragons are too well-bred and enlightened and disciplined to be subject to such open displays of weakness, but I guarantee you, if we were human, we would probably both have been running around in circles waving our hands above our heads and screaming.
There were several in the audience who were equally surprised. There were a few intakes of breath, a slight rustle of scales as a few dragons fidgeted for a better view of what kind of nonsense was going on with the ceremony. Yup. That was the dragon court’s equivalent of mass chaos going on, right there.
I had been wasted on a nobody. I, who had trained so hard to be the best, and for what? Someone who had almost certainly made a wreck of their life in order to be known as Muddled Puddle, because in case you haven’t noticed, dragons have a fondness for flowery phrases. It’s practically impossible for a dragon to call something by a nice, normal, short name. In order to get a downright ugly name, someone important really has to hate you. I had no clue what his clan was, or if he even still had a spirit lineage, or if even the stars had kicked him out and cut off his magic. And somehow, that was even more disconcerting, because, as you’ve noticed, lineage means a lot to dragons. We can trace our own, and we can trace everyone else’s in our quadrant, and we know the source of our powers, and we know everyone else’s powers through and through. Strangers don’t exist in our world, unless they happen to be visitors from another quadrant.
I had no clue why Muddled Puddle was so upset. He didn’t have any business being upset with me; he was getting the better of the deal, getting the top warrior of this century’s graduating class. At least he knew who I was, where I came from, what I could do, and all that, presuming he wasn’t such a pariah that no one would actually talk to him. I wondered vaguely if Beauty Bright Prosperity was upset that she was going to get paired with someone else, or if it was all the same to her. My working hypothesis was that that was what upset Muddled Puddle: usually a female warrior is pledged to a female Brilliant and Serene One, because, you know, Reasons and Propriety and stuff.
All this time, I stood before him and the two sages, and my mouth was reciting my Pledge of Perpetual Harmony. All of my inflections were correct, and all of his responses were correct (at least he wasn’t a total bumpkin!), but we both could tell that neither of us was looking forward to the next thousand years. The two Masters worked their share of the allegiance-and-fealty magic as though nothing was wrong at all, and I swore on the Pearl, and he swore on the Pearl, and I officially had a liege lord, and he officially had a vassal sworn to protect him. I was now permanently linked to his lineage and his magic, except I didn’t know if he actually had any to share, because usually all that stuff gets said, and everyone ignores it because everyone already knows that stuff, but here I actually wanted to hear it, and there wasn’t a peep about where he had come from or who or what he was connected to.
I followed him back to his place to wait for the remainder of the ceremony to complete, standing respectfully and alertly behind him. I wouldn’t dishonor myself in public, or even him, because dragons have manners, and we don’t throw fits or start arguments in public, especially in the middle of a ceremony that only takes place once every hundred years. But I remember precious little about it, except noting that Beauty Bright Prosperity was paired with Admirable Sea Cicada (of the Respected and Faithful Fangs of Military Glory clan) (under the patronage of the Ox-Tail Hammer constellation), which was cool, even though I knew I could take Admirable Sea Cicada in a fight eight times out of ten.
And when the ceremony was over, I followed Muddled Puddle to a small pavilion in the midst of a dense undersea forest in the middle of nowhere, which seemed to be the living quarters that His Honorable and Virtuous Majesty had granted to him. No servants, no courtiers, no family, no nothing. Just the two of us.
“May I ask the name of your patron constellation, that I may make a thank-offering for having been taken into your household?” I asked him formally.
“My patron was the moon,” said Mu
ddled Puddle. “I was the king and the patron deity of a vast mountain lake in a country thousands of miles from here, as had been my father and my father’s father before me, stretching back twelve generations. I committed certain Crimes Against Order by improperly withholding the rains, and in his infinite wisdom, the Jade Emperor allowed my throne to be usurped by my kinsman. My kinsman was not permitted to kill me, however. He bestowed upon me my current derogatory title and sent me into exile to contemplate my disobedience. I preserve hope that I will someday be permitted to serve the Jade Emperor once more as the king and patron deity of my rightful territory, the Luminous Heavenly Jewel Lake.”
Actually, it took me about twenty years to discover that much about his story, because dragons aren’t in the habit of crying on each other’s shoulders when they’ve been wronged. Especially to social inferiors. The fact that his life was entrusted to me probably helped me find out that much so fast, because it was kind of important to be aware of his background, in case anything ever happened. But I was greatly intrigued to discover that I was now connected to a lineage that took its magic from the moon. Yes, Muddled Puddle was temporarily cut off from that magic, but all it would take to get him his magic back – and get some of it for me as well – would be to get him reinstated upon his throne.
# # #
It took me another twenty years to discover that the reason for his horror during the ceremony had been because, as a king and a local god, he already had the service of a dozen vassal warrior generals pledged to him. All of those faithful servants had been wiped out during his kinsman’s violent usurpation, and they had perished defending their liege lord. So it had triggered a few unpleasant memories when he discovered it was the Will of Heaven that, despite his isolation and his being a stranger in a strange territory, a new warrior had been pledged to his service. So that helped me not take his reaction personally, because, I admit, the memory of that initial reflexive attitude of his had bummed me out for a few decades.
