by Lyn Worthen
The rest of the girls try sitting on the roof, but it’s pretty cold up here, and the slate freezes them. They stand around for a while. When it’s clear my dragon isn’t coming down, most go back into the dorm. Ten takes her dragon with. Before they go, though, I look at all of them. “You can’t tell anyone. We don’t know what they’d do.”
Really, I just want to make sure they stay quiet until my dragon can take me away. I don’t care what happens after that.
I don’t.
The girls all nod solemnly. They’re used to keeping secrets. Not from each other, but everyone knows about the dragons now.
Just Patty stays on the roof, trying to feed her dragon stories. After a while she says to me, “It’s nice up here. All alone.”
I grunt.
“I get why you come up here now.”
I grunt again.
Finally, after a few more stories, Patty leaves, and her dragon curls up to sleep. Finally my dragon lands, and it’s just me and her. Are you hungry? she asks.
No, I lie. Are you hungry?
She comes to me. My head only reaches her shoulder now. She grows so fast. I wrap my arms around her neck, and she rumbles her approval. We hold each other for a while.
I love my dragon because she will never tell anyone when I cry.
# # #
The next day three more girls find dragon’s eggs. Jealousy abounds. I am glad my dragon is mine and no one can take her away from me. I am told the dorm is alive with stories that night. The girls are trying to remember the stories I made up in the grindery. Let them reuse those old things.
I tell my dragon stories no one else has ever known. Just her and me.
And Patty and her dragon, who have taken to the roof.
My dragon snorts at Patty.
Patty sticks her tongue out. “It’s too loud down there now. And my dragon probably shouldn’t go down.” Her dragon is a slightly darker blue, and he looks thinner than mine did at that age. But he’s gotten up to be about mid-thigh height, and Patti hugs him. “What are we going to do with six dragons when they’re all as big as yours?” she asks me.
I don’t answer. What should I care?
We should find a quiet place, a strange voice whispers at me. I jump.
Patty laughs. “I don’t know what I’d do in a place without the Gears. Next you’ll be saying we should find a place without smoke.”
I whisper to my dragon, I can hear other dragons?
Why not? she answers. You can hear many humans. Why not many dragons?
I don’t want to hear any other dragons. Just you.
She rumbles her purr again. I don’t want any other humans.
# # #
I sleep curled up with my dragon. She’s big enough to protect me from the wind, mostly. Patty tries curling up with hers, but he’s just not big enough to give her enough warmth. She’s not feeding him well. The next morning I watch dawn over Londinium. Cold white light shoots through the city from the east, pouring through the thick clouds, making the shadows of the smokestacks even deeper. The Gears pound on, as they ever do, and in the streets people go about their clockwork dance. But above I snuggle into my dragon.
Patty rubs her eyes. “It’s actually kinda pretty, ain’t it?”
I offer half a smile. “It’s only pretty when there ain’t people around.”
“You ever think about taking your dragon and flying away?”
I look at her. I look at her dragon. I lie.
# # #
No one’s paying attention in the grindery today. They all stayed up late telling stories. I really don’t want to deal with the screaming that comes from accidents here, though. There’s plenty of bloodstains on the Gears already. Patty knows it. She’s yelling louder than normal for everyone to pay attention.
The girls that are awake are watching their coal closely. They want their own dragons. Thankfully no one tried smuggling their dragons in this morning. Some of them might have been dumb enough to try, but Patty nixed that right away. Maybe she is good for something.
“Why do you think we keep finding eggs?” Ten asks next to me as she carefully grinds down some more coal.
“I was talking with my dragon about that.”
“Wait – they talk?” she exclaims.
“Yeah. Kind of. Yours probably will today or tomorrow if you’re feeding it well enough. Anyway, we think their mom laid all the eggs in the coal deposit. And the miners just took all the coal out, didn’t notice the eggs, and sent them here for processing.”
“Oh.” Ten grinds away. “Do they remember their mom?”
“I get images of a big dragon every once in a while. I guess they remember things from before they were eggs. I don’t get it.”
Ten giggles a little. “I’m sorry I thought you were sneaking off with a boy. This is so much cooler.”
I look down. Yeah. It is cooler, isn’t it?
# # #
Only two more dragon eggs found that day.
Only.
What has my life become?
Thankfully I don’t have to teach anyone anything anymore. Not so thankfully, soon the dragons will be too big to keep in the dorm. And I’m like my dragon. I don’t like sharing. This might be my last night alone with her.
Well, with her and Patty and her dragon.
My dragon’s shoulder is a good foot above my head now. I hope the roof is strong enough to hold all of us. Then again, she’s still lighter than I’d ever think, almost like a bird. Maybe that’s how she flies so well, gliding through the air.
As I come to the roof, she lands as far from Patty as possible. Are you hungry?
No, I lie.
Soon, she answers. Tomorrow. Feed me well tonight, and tomorrow we will be gone.
I don’t even care that Patty sees me crying.
# # #
In the morning the dawn comes over Londinium. The cold, white light pours over everything. Today some gentle snow settles over the city. The Gears seem quieter.
And my dragon seems to smile at me. Are you hungry?
My grin must be so wide. I hug her face as hard as I can. Let’s go. Let’s go now before Patty wakes up.
My dragon kneels before me, and I scramble on to her back. Her pale blue scales are so soft and so warm. I hug her thick neck. I am ready to go.
She stands, and I almost fall off.
I have never been ridden before.
I’ve never ridden anything! I almost laugh.
Hold on. She spreads her wings, so large now, wider than the dorm, wider than I think she would ever need to be able to soar through the sky. She jumps.
And we are flying.
We’re flying!
The dawn reaches out to grab at us, to suck us in. My dragon flaps her wings, and we rise to the heavens. The smokestacks couldn’t reach us now. I let my laugh out. My joy fills the sky. No one can reach us! No one can talk to us! My dragon and I, we are alone at last, and even the sound of the Gears seems so far away. The city is small below us, all snow and shadows, its people vanished in the distance. I couldn’t pick out the dorm if I tried.
Then a shadow blots out the sun. Darkness and cold claim me.
I thought my dragon was large. But this dragon dwarfs the smokestacks. Larger than the Gears that power the city. Larger than my wildest story. She flies on wings that crack the sky. When she lands, the boom of it overpowers the Gears. But even in her size, I can see: She is starving. She looks like Patty’s dragon writ large. She has had no story for a very, very long time. And the stories she grew on made her very, very angry.
I have never heard silence before this. The Gears have stopped. The city has stopped.
Londinium cannot face this dragon.
Her scales are the blue of midnight. Her beak is stained red. Her golden eyes take in everything. And her whisper is quieter than anything I have ever heard, but I cannot turn away. I have scented them from my nest to here. Now. Give me my children.
The silence ends. The
screams begin. This huge dragon waits a moment, a moment more, and then takes a step. A smokestack falls. A fire breaks out.
Fly! I tell my dragon. And she turns and flies away. Her wings beat faster than I have ever seen her move. The wind tears at my face.
This is my dragon. This other dragon may have laid her egg, but I raised her. She is mine.
And you are mine, my dragon answers. I hear her fear. She does not want to be claimed.
I hear another smokestack fall. I am sure the city will not recover. Who could survive without the Gears?
I could.
Of course I could. I was planning to survive without them.
All those people, though. How many people will the mother crush? And if my dragon is with me, far away, will she ever stop destroying the city? How many will die? How many packed in together, sharing sweaty beds in the humidity, laughing too loud with each other, serving the Gears together?
No. It’s not my problem. All I need is my dragon. She can hunt for me. And I can tell her stories. I can tell her all the stories of all the heroes.
Of all the heroes who stood up to the monsters.
Heroes who helped people, even when the people didn’t care.
Heroes who faced impossible odds and had their happily ever afters.
I feel my hands bunch up into fists. I can fly away. All I ever wanted in blue scales. All she ever wanted, in the stories I tell.
I don’t want to do this.
But you are the stories you tell.
I know what would stop her.
She’s angry because she’s hungry and she wants her children. I can solve both.
Turn around, I whisper.
Why?
We can save the city.
Why?
I can’t answer for a moment. She needs a story.
My dragon glides for a moment. She banks, and we race back to Londinium. Back to smoke. Back to people and chaos and everything I hate. Back to face the monster.
Put me down – there. On that roof. Then go get the other dragons.
She lands, her claws scraping against the slate roof. I slide off her back, giving her a brief hug. Come back for me.
You are my human. And with that, she flies away.
My dragon’s mother looms over me. She doesn’t see me. How could she? I feel the heat come off of her. It’s not a comfortable heat like my dragon. It burns like the Gears on a summer’s day. She lifts one claw larger than the dorms. It crashes down on the building next to me. Dust shoots into the air. I hear screaming. Her next step will destroy the roof I stand on.
Are my words enough to feed a creature this big? I’m not good enough. I’ve never been good enough.
I think of my dragon. I’m good enough for her.
I shout. The first word hurts so much to scream so loud, but she must hear me. She must. “Once upon a time there was a girl who wanted to be alone, but she lived with a home full of people. She longed to find solitude, but all she found were elbows in her ear while she slept and knees in her porridge when she ate.”
The claw before me doesn’t move. I hear her dark scales flex as she turns her long neck toward me. Eyes taller than me narrow.
I don’t have time for relief. I don’t have time for fear. I have to feed her.
“Her mother needed her, though. So every day she swept the house and made the bread and tucked her brothers and sisters into bed. Every day she did what she must.”
She did what she must.
Oh, my throat hurts so much. The words don’t weave themselves the way they usually do; I can tell I’m thinking too hard. I’m trying to make the story cleverer by half, and I don’t have that in me. Not when I face a dragon bigger than my stories.
But I tell her. I tell her what it is to be a hero. To know what you want, to set it aside, to do what must be done to rescue others. Even if it means giving up everything you always wanted. It seems like I tell my story for hours until I reach the conclusion. “And so she stayed in the home, and every day she visited the grave of her mother. There she was alone. But she always went back to the little house to take care of her brothers and sisters, until the day she died.”
And then my dragon arrives. She bears several small dragons the size of cats and dogs on her back, trying to teach them to fly and fly quickly. Patty’s dragon follows on shaking wings. They all land next to me.
The mother breathes in, scenting them. My children. Are you hungry?
My dragon looks at me before answering, We were well fed.
My belly has been sated in small measure. The story nourishes me. Whose human is this?
Mine.
The huge dragon nods. Dragons do not share humans.
And my dragon trembles. We do not.
She raises herself tall in the sky above us. I am hungry.
And suddenly I realize I have not just delayed my dream of running away for a little bit. I turn to my dragon. “No!” I shout. I don’t even care that I’m not whispering. I know she can understand. “I belong to you!”
She nuzzles me. You have told me about heroes. She pauses. I didn’t know dragons could cry. I am the stories you’ve told me.
“Will she take me away?”
Yes.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
We may flee. But everyone here will die. Her anger will be fierce. She is angry when she is hungry.
“Come with.”
She needed to make sure we were fed. Her job as mother is done. But dragons live alone. I cannot come with.
“Find me.”
And now I cry, too. We hold each other.
I am hungry, the powerful, powerful whisper tells us.
“Fine then.” I step away from my dragon. I sniff. Are you hungry? I ask her.
No, she lies.
And the mother picks me up in claws that could house all the girls. She places me on her broad, broad back. Feed me as I fly, she commands. She spreads her wings, wings wider than I can see, and she lifts off from the ground. Nothing this large should be able to fly, and yet she does.
And I feed her. I tell her all my stories.
# # #
I am old now. Probably close to death. The dragon who took me is not. Dragons are as old and as young as the stories they devour.
I have wanted for nothing. Silk clothing and rich food. I have been as alone as I could ever wish.
But I long for my dragon. But dragons do not share food. Dragons do not share their humans.
I have heard that Patty and her dragon now protect Londinium. The girls have grown their clutch of dragons and are well taken care of. The Gears have stopped turning, and people grow things now. I cannot imagine such a place. I asked the dragon who owns me to take me there, but she refused.
Londinium would have been destroyed had I not fed this dragon. And the girls would have died for nothing. I would be happy yes, but at what cost?
And my dragon?
My dragon is out there. I hope she is happy. I hope she found someone to feed her.
I did not find my happily ever after. But I am a hero. They will tell my story until after Londinium has sunk to memories.
I am the stories I tell. And I tell stories of heroes.
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About the Editor
Lyn Worthen has been reading since before she can remember, and began her career as a freelance writer and editor sometime in the previous century. And while creating technical training, product documentation, and marketing collateral paid the bills, her love for the written word ultimately led her back to fiction. She currently divides her time between editing for indie fiction authors, building the occasional short fiction anthology, and writing fiction in multiple genres under various pen names.
Contact her at www.camdenparkediting.com
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Other Anthologies from Camden Park Press
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Sweet Christmas Kisses 5
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Quoth the Raven
Contemporary reimaginings of the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
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Wings of Change
Copyright © 2019 by Camden Park Press
Published by Camden Park Press
www.camdenparkpress.com
Cover and layout copyright © 2019 by Camden Park Press
Cliff by Sea © Vitaly Korovin | Dreamstime
Dragon and Rider © NeoStock
Dragon icon © Quicksilver 77 | Dreamstime
