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I am a dragon. You were bound to find it out eventually. My name, Pewly, is - as are the names of all dragons - imprinted on my body five billion or so times, being forged in tiny letters on every glittering scale. It is a rather handsome body, if I do say so.
When I was young, I lived in the Caves of NoName. They are literally so beautiful nobody could think of a name for them. Within their gashes grew glittery stalactites and rocks full of iridescent gem formations to make a queen gasp, deep, dark pools full of crystal formations at the bottom, and spouting hot springs that we used to lie in when we were feeling ill. The young dragons like myself at the time used to race along the long, winding halls and queer, mushroom-lit tunnels, the old sighed and reminisced in the hot springs or took lazy flights out over the mountains which housed our wondrous caverns.
Man came one day. He was rugged looking for his kind, scowly of jaw and slouching in the way he walked, and his eyes had a surly appearance. Morgan, the master of our part of the caverns at the time, greeted him with apprehension but all the same friendly-like. We had heard of Men and seen plenty when we flew out in search of food or simply a nice breeze, but this was the closest one had ever come to our caves. He walked in boldly as if he belonged there, with a careless step, and this puzzled us as we were every day more amazed by our own home's new rainbows and shadow-play.
"So," he said, "you are dragons, then."
"Yes, we are," Morgan remarked, ignoring the fact that it was actually not our name for ourselves. Men were quick with names, while my own great-grandfather took two years watching a single flower, examining how it grew, how drops of rain rolled off its shining petals and tiny spiders came to play in its pools of dew, before deciding to call it a rose.
"Well, I've come to see the caves," the Man said simply, with an impudent look. "I've heard rumor that they are beautiful."
"They are indeed," Morgan agreed, scratching a wing tip. "They are also our home." He carefully punctuated the last word.
The Man snorted. "Oh, well, then, I suppose I must ask to come here?" he sneered at our Master. My friends and I, who were seated nearby, gasped. Nobody talked to the Master like that.
"Indeed," Morgan replied icily. "But you, though you may ask, will not ever be allowed here. We too have heard of you."
The Man shrugged and left. No more of his kind came to see us for many years after that. But all things change in the world, and we watched the tiny homes of his kind spread slowly over the land below. The green grass was covered at last, and smoke, acrid and queer to our noses, floated up to us every so often on the breeze.
I had reached my half-growth by then. I was rather a dashing young dragon: my scales were green as emeralds, and as shimmery as the waters of a mountain lake I once saw. I polished them carefully each day with my tongue which emitted a sort of veneer when I ate obsidian. My wings were full and papery-thin, so thin you could see through them, but my arms and legs were muscular and very strong, and no one could beat me at sparring.
We were all fascinated by the small humans who lived below us, and it was a favorite thing among the young males to sit with our ladies and look down on their silly doings during the dusk hours. We would cluster about on the edge of the cliffs, digging our sharp-as-knives talons into the soft rock, and curling our wings about the females, and from there we could see much of what the humans did. Gossip from the ever-vigilant hawks and eagles, knights of the sky, fueled our interest even more.
I was out one evening people-watching with my lady of the moment Seyla, when we heard footsteps. "Oh, what if it's that awful man-thing?" she said fearfully. I curled my wings about her tightly for protection.
But it was no Man we saw that night: rather, a different sort of person stepped up onto the cliff edge next to me and saluted. "Good evening, Sir, Miss," he said, looking evenly at us. His frame was soft to see, and his eyes seemed to glow. But it was a friendly light. He smiled at me easily. "Tell the lady not to fear," he told me, "I come of no evil and to do no evil either. Who is master here?"
"That one is named Arel," I answered. It had been many years since old Morgan's death, when the stone that he became crumbled away to dust. "He is in the cave over that way - " I indicated with a wing "- if you can find it."
He laughed merrily. "I can see quite as well as you in the dark, Sir. Thank you." And he bowed again and turned on his heel, to swish away into the gloom of the caves.
Within no time at all, because of their genteel ways and Arel's agreement, we became allies with the elves, for that was what Seyla and I saw that night. They were wispy creatures, soft as the breeze itself, made of starlight and the puddles of the moon - elves are born in moonbeams on nights when Luna is full. But they are also practical folk, and the deal we made was this: they would be allowed to mine our caves - if they asked the owners' permission first - in return for allowing us to hunt in their lands. The agreement came at a good time: Men were everywhere by then, and two of our hunters had been shot already. But the elves showed us hidden places that no Man would come to for a while yet, and we were happy.
Spring came to our mountains, and it was time for the mating. How can I describe our dance? We who spend much of our lives stomping holes in the ground took to the skies. And there, even the oldest of us are weightless, as I found once airborne. It was a dizzying sensation, and I twirled aimlessly in it for a while, preparing. A friend of mine flew lazily by and winked at me.
And then the call came again, and the race. A thrill swept over me, shivering through my bones, as I watched two young ladies I'd known before twirling delicately nearby. My friend Sam came over to catch one and she laughed and dipped away... Sometimes chasing, sometimes being chased, sometimes simply dancing alone or together amidst the shimmering clouds until we came together in a flood of rapture and parted again. Like shining dew we rose and fell, swam the skies on the wind, blasted in and out of clouds and said a gracious hello to the sun.
Seyla, Seyla, where did you go? Chase me where you will, twine your tail with mine and we will roar to the heavens of love and longing. Tiptoe through the shadows, buzz the treetops!... I fell to earth at last, tired beyond meaning. And so I lay for a long while.
Sunset had come, the sky was bleeding yet again, pouring out its woes. The clouds were aflame, and as I watched I saw a few dark forms still swirling among them, those of us who were more experienced, more used to the exertion of ardor. A mourning dove called is sad tone somewhere off in the distance as the final rays of the sun went away into darkness.
With spring came birds. Birds of all kinds, all colors and songs, they returned to our world. Some were mindless idiots like the cardinal, who thinks only of his home and its boundaries, which he never leaves. Others were more intelligent, like the vicious catbird who pecks at intruders no matter what and will pick out the choicest spots for her territory. But I like chickadees myself, the little puffballs who are really quite smart, and the migrant birds.
A hawk came to see us one evening, in the middle of May. They are rather haughty, hawks, being lords of the sky; the only ones higher in rank are eagles. He came escorted by a pair of ravens that accented his tangy brown coat nicely. "I wish to see your Master," he said imperiously to us.
They went down into a lower crook of the cliff, those two, and spoke at length, while we waited. "He looks serious," my friend Dene remarked.
"Hawks are always serious," Malex answered, absently licking a dusty part of his tail.
"Not always," I shook my head.
"Sure, there are a few flukes," the blood-red-scaled dragon shrugged. "But those are all dead before they can cause trouble." I had seen a soft hawk once - he had ran away from his rookery after two years of pretending to be tough as the rest. Spartan, hawks are, drilling daily almost from hatching time. We protected him for a while, until the eagle king sent a message that the gentle hawk must be killed; he was a danger. I sighed.
The hawk and Arel came back at that moment, trumpeting the call for meeting. Heads appeared from caves nearby, and more dragons came, settling quickly till the dust was thick about us. When it had cleared, our leader harumphed again.
"The humans are at war," he said. "Two days ago, this hawk tells me, an army of them many strong was seen marching toward these mountains. They seem to have the impression that we are hoarding treasure here."
"We will call the elves then, for assistance! we need little against a bunch of tiny folk," a young male named Sol cried out. There was a murmur of agreement, but Arel fanned his wings. The hawk shook his head.
"You will find that kingdom divided in this," he said. "Do you not think I went to them first? I received two answers: Lord Selen who inhabits the wood close to your borders will assist you as always, yes, of course. But Lord Veldi has had a long alliance with the human king, and he will fight with them if necessary."
"And so - ?" Malex asked, his voice cool. "Do we even need help against such puny creatures..."
"Puny creatures," our Master interrupted, "who have over a period of only a few hundred years managed to spread themselves far in this land. Puny creatures who can make fire with their hands, according to what the birds say, who can kill with sticks and make little explosions! They are small, but they are many and strong, I think."
He was, of course, right. Soon enough after that quick meeting, only two days later the looked-for armies came marching over the hills just as the hawk had warned. Their bodies were covered in metal plates that looked like poor copies of our own natural armor, and they carried many of the sticks that we knew could kill at a swipe, and many banners floated in the air proudly. They had both the method and the pride to attack us, we saw grimly.
We too had our own forces by now, quickly mustered among the caverns. All who could waited there, lips ready to flame the creatures to death. And among us had come many birds: catbirds and jays, ravens and a few sparrows. "They are small, but they are the nastiest," one of the raven generals told me.
The sights I saw that day as we fought for the sake of our home will never leave my memory. I saw arrows fleet as a dragon in a mating dance tear through the clouds to pierce the hearts of the birds that had so bravely vowed to fight with us. I watched some of my best friends explode in the sky like aerial volcanoes, roaring loud enough to shake the earth. The clouds, the ground, all seemed to be bleeding as we desperately tried to keep them back with our fire and our rain of rockfall.
The war was lost.
I ran with my friends, the last contingency of the survivors, when we saw it was no good. The birds had already begun a rueful retreat; they had lost many. The ground was littered with their bodies. We ran, deep and far into the caverns that we had lived in all of our lives, and we sat in the darkness at last licking our wounds, listening to the soft cries of those of us who had been hurt most. And a rockfall barred us in, as we set up a keening in honor of the great kingdom that had once been ours.
I was awakened by the sound of many voices. It was people, I realized, as my ears cleared a little; dragons sleep long and hard when they can and need to. I carefully looked around me and found the cave that I had fallen asleep in now brightly lit. The walls which had been slippery in my youth were dry now: the springs must be gone.
"One-two-heave!"
What a shock I had, when I was lifted not by my own power but by some other force, out into the sunlight again. The valley was long gone. A huge city stood before me, one of Mankind. But what a city! In my youth we had heard tales from the birds and beasts of Man's castle citadels, all stone with flags waving from tower tops, and armies marching out of their huge gates each morn at sunrise. But this was no castle at all: the buildings I now saw were only blocks, tall bricks of stone, some of which could touch the sky. The smaller ones were many-colored like rainbows, and mingled among the towers. Clouds of dust and ash hung over this weird collection, and I heard a great honking like a flight of geese on the move. Tiny things on wheels moved by, in and out of the city.
But then I was turned and saw no more of it, and had to listen again to the sounds of people talking. After a while I could pick up their useless gabber again: "Hi, how are you, did you see that rotted cheese out by 6-7-9?" "No, I was at 5-4-8 this morning dancing in a dumpster with some leftover linguini and the remains of the potato salad." "Oh, so that's where it got to!"...And then there was darkness again.
When I opened my eyes the second time, I found myself in a cave of some sort, the sides squared off and many holes in them placed at regular intervals. Its floor had been polished and was cool to the touch of my feet. Men were moving about. I wondered if this was the inside of one of their buildings. I faded in and out of consciousness.
At one point, though, I came fully awake again and found that I must indeed be inside; there was the moon, glowing full and bright into the odd cave. It gave me great relief to know that at least one thing about this world had not changed in so many years - which made me think about how old I myself must be by now. Certainly I was becoming stone; I couldn't move.
My eye oriented on a tiny spider at last, who had been crawling over my shoulder. The creature started when it saw me watching it and then headed for my ear, going around my snout. "New, here, you are," she said when she reached my ear at last, after what seemed an eternity. "We don't get many dragons now - not real ones. There was the unicorn last week - but nothing compares to this."
"Unicorn?" I managed to say, my voice sounding to me like a weak whisper.
"Yes," she answered, delighted that I could still speak a bit. "I could see you were real by your eyes - life in them, not that the People would notice. Though some..."
"Where are the elves?"
She started. "Oh, well, they - my grandmother told me that she heard that they had died out, mostly, though she says there are some strains left." She giggled a bit. "Sakes, though, who'd want a human mate?..."
She told me much that night, about what had happened to the world since we had left it, about what this city was. She explained "skyscrapers" and "email" and "cars" to me, and a world of other words that spun in my head like a web. "Twenty-four hours of light and noise," she told me, shaking her head. "I don't mind it, but Grandma told me that it didn't used to be like that..." No, it wasn't, I told her slowly, making my creaky jaw move.
As my knowledge of Mankind increased that night, one thought came at last to my mind. What were they going to do with me? The spider giggled again when I said that, and would not answer. No, not yet, she would say... At last dawn came and she had to leave.
Men came into the room not long after she had disappeared, and took me away, and I was put outside again to face more strange sights. Poles reached for the sky, odd black vines strung between them that were covered with birds. The buildings here were suffocatingly close together, I saw, and there were so many people rushing about! They reminded me of a troop of ants, but much less organized. And it was so bright here, with so many signs and letters to look at...
I was rolled up a "street" in this fashion, my own head whirling with the sights and sounds. People stopped to stare back at me, millions of cars rushed by me. We turned a corner.
And then there were trees again, blessed trees. Oh, my heart was glad! I was hooked onto something again, and swung into place among them, and I sat there happy at last, staring around. Green grass surrounded me, and there were the trees too. Not the giant pines and towering oaks of my youth, to be true, but shrimpy little maples and a couple of slim, ridiculous birches met my gaze - but I was glad for anything familiar. And there were birds, I saw after a while, and squirrels...
My thoughts were interrupted by a chuckle, and I heard the voice of the tiny spider in my ear with delight. "See - isn't this better?" she asked. "Thought I'd come along and make sure you don't get lonely. Not that you won't have company after awhile; I'll introduce you to all the families in the neighborhood. We'll have a great time - hey, we can even scare people after dark: where'd that voice come from? they'll be wondering..."
And so here I am in a "park", another creation of Mankind. I have indeed learned the names of all the creatures who live near me, and others come late at night to talk with me - for I am still lucid, thankfully; my jaw has loosened nicely. And sometimes a little child or other will come and talk to me during the day, as if they knew I was alive and real - their eyes say so. I wish that I could tell them my story, reassure them that they are not pretending as the adults say they are.
Massachusetts resident J. A. Howe has been writing science fiction and fantasy for almost ten years now. In addition to writing, Howe enjoy historical reinactments and is a very avid Red Sox fan. For more information, visit Howe's personal web site.
© J.A. Howe
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