[short fiction] The Knight & the Dragon

THE KNIGHT AND THE DRAGON

Once upon a time, in the sort of land now remembered only in fairytales, there lived a dragon.

She was a curious creature, both in nature and temperament, and she was the only one of her kind.  From the moment her snout cracked through the shell and the light first glinted in her eye, she was on her own.  But she was not sad, because she knew no other way to exist.

She grew up prancing with butterflies and dancing with birds until one day a new creature came upon her.  It was the sound of the metal covering his boots against the rock that caught her attention.  What held it was the spear he carried in his right hand, the staff ornately carved and its tip polished to a brilliant shine; she thought it beautiful.  Not knowing any better, she approached.  She did not understand his expression — eyes wide, mouth slightly agape — and so she did not anticipate his action.  He jabbed the spear into her shoulder.  She cried out, and the combination of the pain in her body and the pain in her heart sent flames shooting from her nostrils and throat.

She curled herself into as small a mountain as she could, nursing her bleeding wound, while the cruel creature burned.  She had not known she could do that.  She had not known she would need to.  The trees around her burned as well.  She turned away in shame and closed her eyes, knowing the companions of her youth would visit her no more.  Her tears fell to the ground and turned hard.

She did not open them again until that sound that had brought such destruction returned and jolted her to alert.  Another creature wore that strange expression as its eyes took in the remains of its brethren.  Its face twisted into something new — and ugly.  The dragon twisted her own face to match it, and she felt the smoke escape her nostrils.  The creature raised its arm and with it another spear.  The dragon raised her head.  She breathed out.  The creature was dead.

Next time she would be better prepared.  She stole the ashen metal from the creatures’ bodies and channeled her fear and hate into the heat necessary to mold the pieces to her body.  Every time a new creature came — and they always did — she added to her armor.  Only one place remained uncovered and unprotected, though it was not for lack of materials.  The clearing was littered with extraneous sheets of metal, and on days when the creatures did not accost her, she fashioned it into wondrous approximations of nature.  Surrounded by blackened bark and trees of iron, their limbs inhabited by strange winged creatures who never moved but always stared, the armor-clothed dragon was a fearsome and beautiful sight to behold.

The creatures who approached rarely took the time to look at what she’d created.  No, they saw her only as a force of destruction, and so they were too bent on destroying her in return to see her true nature.  They saw only her teeth, and her fire, and the hatred in her eyes, and the memories of their lost ancestors clouded their own.  They could not see her beauty, and, quite ironically, they could not see the one tiny area where she was was still vulnerable.  High on her back, a small collection of brilliant, iridescent green scales, strong enough to protect her from the elements of nature but not of humanity, gleamed when the sun hit them.  She hated them, despised them for being a reminder of the tender creature she had been, but she could not reach or twist or bend enough to cover them, no matter how hard she tried.

For years and years, the creatures came, always with stronger metals and sharper weapons.  The sound of their armor always gave them away, so thick was the silence on the days they did not come.  She had grown so tired of the sights that greeted her: the cold metal shards that had become her companions, the vicious visitors with hate in their eyes meant for her and her alone.  The smoke and heat from her own fire stung her eyes, and the ground was covered in tiny, hard orbs — the evidence of her pain.  And so there came a day when she closed her eyes from it all, letting the sounds alert her to the ever-impending dangers but rejecting the images that came with them.  And for many years, this was enough to keep her safe.  Until the day a creature approached whom she did not see coming.

This knight, if he could be called that, having weathered so few years on the earth, was different in many ways.  But he had spent most of those years watching the dragon, and he had seen many of his kind burn under her flames.  But he had also seen many other things that no one else had, for he had come to the land as a boy, a wandering child who had meant to find a village where he could settle and find work and make a life for himself, since none had been bestowed to him at birth.  But it just so happened that, on the way to a village that would have granted him all these things, he stumbled across a clearing of silver trees gleaming in the moonlight, and within them he saw a sleeping dragon.  His cloth-covered feet had made no sound, and so she slept, not peacefully, but soundly.  And because the boy was a stranger and knew no stories of the atrocities she had committed, he watched her with curiosity instead of hatred, awe instead of wrath.  And he knew that it would be a very long time, at the very least, before he would move on from this place.

He stayed alive by pilfering the supplies left by the knights who had come before him.  They always had the finest rations, a last meal fit for kings — a promise of the riches they would receive upon returning to the kingdom with the dragon’s hide.  He was certain he could have stolen into the dragon’s clearing while she slept if he’d wanted one of their discarded spears, but, smart lad that he was, he figured he stood as much of a chance with his as-yet-untested wooden bow and arrow than with the weapons of the dead.

On days when the knights came, he watched the battles, taking copious notes in his mind whilst never doubting the outcome.  On days when they didn’t, he gathered supplies, ate his meals, and practiced with his bow and arrow out of earshot.  His nights were spent watching: the rise and fall of her breath, the dark vapor from her nostrils, the occasional clink of a tear to the ground — and, most curiously, the patch of iridescent green in the sea of armor on her back.  And so it was that the boy grew tall and grew strong and grew into a man.

An age had passed since the dragon’s birth, and the knights of the land, having grown tired of death, had begun to choose other ways to test their bravery.  Finally a day came when it had been so long since a knight had tried his luck that the boy would soon have to move on without their abandoned rations.  He thought of the knights and their hopes for their quests here, and he knew what he had to do.  As the sun fell beneath the horizon, he tiptoed toward the dragon.  She did not hear, did not move, did not see, did not suspect.  It was not until she felt the prick of metal against her back that she knew someone was there.  It had been so long since anything had touched her that her eyes flew open involuntarily at the shock of it.  There this peculiar knight stood, his bow drawn, and the arrow poised to pierce her flesh, to end it all  — her work, her anger, her suffering.  She was so tired.  Her fire had gone out.  She lay her head down on the ground and closed her eyes for what she was certain would be the last time.

When the point of the arrow was withdrawn, she thought for a moment it was done.  She chanced a peek.  The knight — was that what he should be called?  His armor was barely more than rags, and his weapon would burn so easily.  Whatever he was, he stood now with his back to her unarmored spot, his weapon not drawn but ready, pointed not at her but out.  He looked to her, and for the first time she looked into the eyes of one of these creatures and saw something other than fear or hate.  This emotion was just as fierce, and in some ways just as terrifying.  She did not know what to call it or how to feel.

Before she had decided, he reached out a hand, bare-skinned, and placed it on the smooth scales of her true body.  She flinched, but his hand remained, resting firmly on her back.  His expression intensified, and, though she couldn’t understand it, she gave way to it.

Others still came from time to time, having heard the legend and hoping to reap the promised rewards.  What they found was not what they had expected.  The silver forest was there, but it was surrounded by green.  The armored dragon was there, but she did not spit flames in their direction.  And next to her, always, stood a man, his bow and arrow ever ready, offering them a meal given by the forest and cooked on a fire created by his companion, before sending them on their way.

They left with no guarantee of riches, but instead with the notion of having taken away something much more valuable, though few were ever able to figure out exactly what it was, let alone how to explain it.  And so the legend faded into the mists of time, existing for a while in the memories of old men as they warmed their withered hands by dying fires, and finally only in the dreams of curious children, cocooned in warm blankets against the coldest of nights.

© 2011 Elizabeth Ditty