The Dragon's Back Trilogy

by Robert Dennis Wilson

  Finishing that task, he sought a place of barren, exposed scaline on which to empty his family bag (lest he damage a dew-fed plant by its poison). With the morning sun to his back, he squeezed its contents out with enough force so that he could trace the pattern of his lengthened shadow with the moisture. This action was not part of the normal ritual he had been taught, but a game he invented for his own amusement.

  As he watched the River water sink silently into the earth, a flutter of remembered excitement from the previous evening touched his heart and caused his pulse to momentarily race.

  Basking in its drug-like glow he confided to himself, The moss is safely hidden in my pack, yet I can still savor its dream from last night!

  But at that instant, his stomach churned and tightened in a sharp cramp. He dropped to his knees. As he doubled over in pain, Jason leaned forward allowing his hand to touch the moistened earth of the shadow outline he had drawn.

  “Don’t worry, the pain will soon pass!” whispered a barely discernible voice from somewhere close by.

  “What?... Who said that?!” queried the young man, matching the softness and intensity of the hidden voice. Fearfully he cast his eyes from side to side looking for its source

  “I did. Look down, you’ll see me,” said the Whisper.

  “But, I see nothing but my shadow, wet with spilled water!”

  “So it would seem you’re talking to me, then!”

  “My shadow? But, but shadows can’t talk. They’re not alive!”

  “Oh, really? I move. I change. I go and come. Are these the actions of an inanimate object? Perhaps that large hunk of scaline over on your right is talking to you then? It at least has the shape of a man’s head. Would that make it any easier for you?”

  “Sh-shadow? This can’t be happening,” Jason trembled, fear distorting his words. “You can’t move or think on your own. You’re just a reflection of me. What I do, you do. You’re under my control! If I go behind that tree over there you will have to go away because the sun will be blocked!”

  “Yes, it’s true. I am a type of reflection of you. Much like a seed is a reflection of the tree it falls from. If the seed falls on the rock it stays there dead – just like a normal shadow. But if you water it and nourish it, then that dead seed springs to life and becomes a true image of its parent. Jason, you have just watered me. You nourished me by embracing the gift I gave you last night. Isn’t it right, then, that I come to life for you now?”

  “But why have you never spoken to me before? If you’re my shadow, certainly you’ve been around for a long time. Why now?” Jason found the Voice very disagreeable and in spite of its logical reasonableness, he instinctively felt he could not trust a word he heard.

  “Yes, I’ve been here. The reason I’ve haven’t spoken before is you, yourself. You’ve changed. And now, as a result, so have I.”

  “You mean I can hear you now ‘cause I’ve felt the Gryphon’s breath?” The mention of the Gryphon caused Jason’s stomach to churn again. It felt as though a fierce battle raged in his middle. “I thought you said this pain would soon pass? How come it still hurts so much?”

  “Doesn’t the earth have to break open in order for the green shoot to see the light of day? Doesn’t the blossom have to fall off before the fruit will come? Have you ever heard of a baby being born without causing pain? The mother suffers so the child can breathe its first. All new things have a birthing process: a tearing off of the old so the new can emerge. This is almost always painful. As you tear off the cocoon of your youth, you must expect to find some opposition. What sort of a protective shell would it be if all you had to do was sneeze to make it disappear?”

  “But what is it I am supposed to be becoming? I already have been changed. I have a bag of adoption to prove it!”

  “That was only the first change. An opening of your eyes. A first childish look at the world, if you will. It takes more than an infant’s insight to put that brand new world into perspective. What is the purpose of life, but to grow wildly and spread to cover the earth! When this happens it is like wildflowers spreading to gloriously possess a barren field. If life is given, it must be free to spread without fetters and chains. You know this, having been a prisoner before! Life must be free: allowed to dream! That is what you learned. That is also what brought me to life. Before, when you dreamed, you were a dormant seed, still locked within your unwatered shell. Now you have found the Water and it’s time for you to blossom into the freedom of adulthood. It’s up to you to choose!”

  “Your words confuse me!” snapped Jason at the Voice, fighting another cramp. “They seem to be saying too many things at once. Part of me, deep inside, is screaming that I should flee from you and not listen to another word! But where can I run from my shadow? The closer I get to the light, the darker and more pronounced you will become. Now I understand! That’s what my fear is. You are shadow: a thing of Darkness! And so are not of the Light... No, be silent. I must think without your whisper humming in my ears. I said, be silent! See, my master is calling. I must go! It is time I help him break our camp.”

  INTO THE HEARTLAND

  “This fertile area is considered the breadbasket of Dragonsback,” the senior bard instructed his pupil. Having just left the cottage of a very hospitable farming family, they were well-rested and even more well-fed. The sun, warming their backs, had only recently touched the wide rolling patchwork of greens and browns spread before them. Dew still sparkled, like sunlight on waves, from every windblown blade of wild grass and from the leaves and stalks of the farmer’s bountiful labor shivering in the breeze.

  Over the past several days and nights, the rumbling battle in the pit of Jason’s stomach had gradually subsided (as the shadow had said it would). It now only troubled him occasionally and he had learned how to ignore that temporary discomfort. At the end of every day, whether in house or field, the young bard secretly held the River-softened moss imagemaker to his lips and filled his dreams with the exciting visions it invoked. He found comfort in the action; a familiar habit from his past standing as a rock against the constant changes of his new life.

  In the mornings, however, he carefully avoided painting a liquid image in the soil as he emptied his ‘skin. He did not want to talk to that Voice again. He did notice that, curiously, that the bag took a little longer to empty each day. Like his temporary sickness, he thought this too minor an inconvenience to bring to Nathan’s attention.

  Morning hours, while they walked, were usually devoted to lessons on the cultures, peoples, and places of Dragonsback. Afternoons were filled with music, memorization, and quoted Gryphonsong.

  Today, Jason wanted neither. The food that had tasted so good only moments before, now felt very bad in his stomach. The farmer’s petite wife had smiled at them from under the bright purple of her soft cloth bonnet and served the morning meal with this promise, “We too follow the way of the Gryphon. That which He gives, an’ we serve, has only tasted dew. I hope it’s t’ yer likin’.” And it had been.

  Now, however, pain, like the beating of some great drum, assaulted that freshly filled stomach in repeated waves. Boom! Boom! Boom!

  The pattern triggered a flash of memory from his time in the Orphanage. Mariner priests from the mainland maintained a constant vigil from the heights of Central Isle. From their unseen station close by his place of confinement, they watched over the vessels that plied the bottomless waters of the Bay to see if any of those ships were in distress. If they perceived any danger, they would beat out a coded message on a massive drum, hopefully directing rescue to the otherwise doomed mariners. Jason had never seen that drum, only heard its jarring booms of warning from, nearby his prison, as they rolled down the mountain. Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Silently he suffered. Silently he pondered the nature of the warning that he felt.

  Uninformed and therefore unaware of his student’s divided attention, Nathan continued his lesson: “You will notice, though, that much of this rich land r
emains unused.”

  Jason allowed his attention to raise above his own concerns to realize the surprising truth in that statement. Wide swatches of the surrounding land looked like they hadn’t felt a plow or sickle for many years.

  “Are there not enough farmers to tend all the fields?” asked Jason. Then, in spite of his current aversion to food, he added, “It seems like such a waste to leave all of that ground empty if it is as fertile as you say.”

  “There is more ‘waste’ here than meets the eye,” commented the bard cryptically. “There is more than one reason why the land lies fallow and not one of them is good. First of all, be warned; this is dragon country. The Great Plain that stretches out in front of you is actually a field of conflict, a battleground. On it, the conflicting interests of the Dragon and the Gryphon are tested and proved repeatedly day after day.”

  At the mention of the black-winged terrors, Jason felt a pang of fear stab at his chest. This in itself distressed him as much as the fear itself, for he thought he had left that all behind at the cleansing of his pack. Yet there it was. Fear—that made him cringe inside and want to glance over his shoulders to see if he were being pursued. Fear—that bypassed his mind whispered threatening words straight into his heart forming a terrible song he remembered all too well. That torturous, hateful song had haunted every night of his youth.

  “If you’ll look over either shoulder,” continued Nathan as though he had read his student’s thoughts, “you will see that we are finally free of the mountains and fully out on the low rolling hills of the Great Plain of the Heartland. We have been traversing one of the long hollows between the mountainous spines of the Dragon. See how far those dark scaline crags stretch out into the Plain on either side behind us?”

  Nodding his assent, Jason wondered what mountains and dragons had to do with each other.

  “Look closely at each of those peaks. Do you notice anything different about the side facing out toward the Great Valley that is different than the land between the peaks?”

  Jason turned around and walked backward to examine, first the sky-hugging mountain on his left, then its equally massive twin to his right. Having made a discovery, he turned to walk with his mentor again before saying, “In the pass that we came through (back at the top) and the valley we have been descending for the past couple of days, the land and the mountains seemed to merge seamlessly at each mountain’s base. You could definitely tell the difference between the smoother valley land and the ruggedness of the mountains, but the place where one became the other wasn’t really clear.”

  “Go on,” said Nathan. “What else did you find?”

  “Well, the edges of the mountains that face the Plain are not like that. The lines I saw were very distinct and marked with shadows by the morning sun. It’s almost like there are thin gaps between where the fertile land stops and the sheer rock of the mountains begin!”

  “You truly have your GrandSire’s keen eye for detail. You have seen correctly!” commented the bard enthusiastically.

  Jason briefly enjoyed basking in this praise before he remembered that Nathan’s questions had been pointing in a particular direction. “But what does all this have to do with dragons?” he asked and could not keep the coldness out of his voice.

  “Our enemy, the Great Dragon, has some chinks in his armor,” came the reply. “Through these openings, he grants access to those who would delve deeper into his darkness. The cracks that you saw are filled with caves, vile places of evil where the Dragon guards and nurtures his own. These dens of evil are the fortified base of operations for all who either overtly or openly oppose the Gryphon on Dragonsback. The black-robed dragonmen walk into these openings and out through them fly the dragons.”

  “The tunnels and caverns of my dream from Scalina!” exclaimed Jason, terrified to think that what he had seen might actually be real.

  “You were not ready to know it at the time, but, yes, that was a true vision.”

  Jason fought to keep a hold onto his reality. This news sent his head spinning. On top of that, the pounding pain in his stomach had returned and the stabbing fear in his heart had intensified. He felt weak and barely able to keep from visibly trembling.

  “How do you know these things?” he asked, but then sudden insight gave him the answer. “You’ve been in there! You’ve been inside the Dragon and you made it back out?”

  “On several occasions, the Gryphon’s Son, our Swimmer King, has directed me to enter the Dragon to ‘snatch from the flames’, as it were, some poor individual who had been taken captive against his or her will. By the strength of the Son alone I have lived to tell others of the experience. It is never a thing to be done lightly.”

  “I don’t know much about dragonmen, but how can anyone hope to stand against all those dragons that I saw in my dream? There must have been thousands of them and that’s only from one cave in one mountain! How can we hope to hold out against all of them when we’re right here on the Dragon with them! The Swimmer and the eagles are way out there somewhere in the Gryphonsland. I used to have nightmares of dragons attacking me. The eagles never got there in time.”

  “Jason, son,” said Nathan and he stopped walking to put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, “as a bard you are supposed to be a dispenser of truth, but it appears to me that you’re missing a big part of the picture. Yes, the Dragon and his hordes, walking and winged, are very powerful and very dangerous, but they are still only created beings. And, no, they weren’t originally created the way they are now. The Dragon led a rebellion against his Creator and now is forced to carry on his back, not only all of his followers but also all of mankind whom he persuaded to join in his rebellion. But, in spite of all his might and size, he is still just a created thing. Listen to some Gryphonsong to help put things in their proper perspective:

  “‘Give thanks! Give thanks! Give thanks to the Gryphon,

  Who made us fit for an inheritance of light;

  Who changed us to stand with His Son in His kingdom;

  And delivered us out of the power of night.

  Once we were slaves but the Son bought our freedom.

  We all were polluted, but He made us clean.

  He is the Firstborn, the Cause of creation,

  And the visible Image of the Gryphon unseen.

  ‘By Him came all things that live on the Dragon,

  All things in the Sea, and in Gryphonsland.

  Whether shadow or substance, throne or dominion,

  Principalities or powers: ALL were made by His hand.

  All things were created for Him and by Him;

  He holds them together; He is their Plan.

  He came first and, as the Great Bridge Builder,

  Was the First to cross live into Gryphonsland.

  ‘He is alive, He is forever,

  He is the Firstborn to rise from the dead;

  So that in everything He’ll be preeminent,

  For the Son is the First and He is the Head.

  Give thanks! Give thanks! Give thanks to the Gryphon,

  Who made us fit for an inheritance of light;

  Who changed us to stand with His Son in His kingdom;

  And delivered us out of the power of night.’” 5

  Unaccompanied by instrument, Nathan’s rich voice rang across the Plain. The song, so regal and majestic in its demeanor, reminded Jason of ceremonial trumpets playing in some official procession.

  “I see my error,” whispered the young bard contritely. “When Kaleb and I lived in that tower, our whole world consisted of only that one room and the limited portion of the world we could see out of our tiny window. Now the Dragon has become my room and I have been trying to fit the Gryphon and His Son into that tiny window. How small I have made them! How far away! When all along They were bigger by far than I could ever imagine and much, much closer, too! How tiny now is this room. And how full of the Gryphon!”

  Nathan kept his hand comfortingly on Jason’s shoulder as they w
alked in silence. Jason wept for many steps before he realized that most of the discomfort in his stomach had disappeared.

  Finally, he felt ready to hear the rest of Nathan’s lesson.

  “Thank you, Master,” he said before adding, “You said this area is a battleground?”

  “Yes,” replied the bard, “a very active one. You see, the Gryphon’s Son, by His right as Creator issued each family in Dragonsback a large plot of land in this area. Each plot is subdivided into parcels owned by the individual members of that family. So it is that every person on Dragonsback owns, by birthright, a piece of ground capable of sustaining him or her if that ground is properly tended.

  “The problem is, most people prefer to live in cities and no longer tend their fields. Some, because of pressing debts, have leased their land to their creditors. Because of the teachings of those who serve the Dragon, many have even forgotten that they even own a piece of this Heartland, so it has never occurred to them they need to watch over it and tend it. Parents have voluntarily allowed their children’s lands to be placed under the control of those at the head of the River or under the schools they control. After all, they say, it is too much of a bother in this modern age to tend a garden, when others can provide the food for you. And so, because of this neglect, we live in a world that is outwardly rich, but inwardly filled with hidden beggars near to starving!”

  In this well-dewed place, Jason would expect that even the fallow land would be green with grass and bright with flowers, but much of it appeared brown and barren, as though it had been sown with salt. As Nathan talked, the younger bard walked off the path into one of the barren areas only to crash painfully into an invisible barrier.