12 Days of Fiction, Day Two: Here Be Dragons

Nobody in town expected the attack. After all, it had been decades since a dragon had last been seen, much less made any kind of incursion upon a settlement. There had been talks, even, of dragons having become extinct. Most of Dasya’s friends had supported such an opinion, sometimes with a vehemence she suspected was fake.

Her grandma, however, held a different opinion.

“Dragons are not gone,” she had told Dasya. “The day dragons disappear, I assure you, we will know.”

That was all. She always used the same words: “The day the dragons disappear, we will know”. Dasya felt them to be enigmatic, but her grandma never elaborated, and there was the fact that she was old and tended to digress quite often.

Dasya had wondered how old her grandma really was. Everyone in town remembered her as an old woman, though as Dasya grew older, she came to realize that must have been the effect of time on everyone: her friends’ parents had always looked old to her as a child, but of course most were not older than thirty then. Still her grandma had always been there, always with her gray hair, always moving slowly if precisely.

Dasya had never met her parents. And her grandma wasn’t her real grandmother. When Dasya was old enough, her grandma had told her that she had found Dasya in the forest, abandoned inside a basket. A barbaric custom, but still used by families who were too poor to feed just one more mouth. The forest predators took care of them. Her grandma had picked her up and raised her.

And Dasya had led a happy life until, one year before, her grandma had passed away. She had felt sad, alone and abandoned, even though her friends had helped her. Garrard had been particularly gentle and understanding, a fact Dasya had felt thankful for.

Slowly, she grew accustomed to not having her grandma around, and retook her normal life. Until the dragon attacked, that is.

Out of nowhere, the great beast had swooped down surrounded by flame and smoke. Its fiery breath set houses on fire faster than anyone could hope to put them out. A score of guardsmen had shot arrows at the dragon, but failed to penetrate its hide. They died quickly.

Dasya had run towards the dragon’s thundering roar, instead of away from it. The townsfolk kept bumping into her, slowing her pace, but she finally managed to reach the town’s square. The great beast stood there, its wings spread wide, its forepaws holding two people who were bleeding to death, while its snout projected fire and destruction everywhere.

Dasya had remained hidden behind a barrel, staring at the dragon. She couldn’t move; people had used to say that dragons had that power.

And then it had looked at her.

For a second, the dragon had stopped screeching, had lowered its head and its black pupils had become a slit while looking at Dasya. And she had felt naked, her soul exposed to the ancient beast, and Dasya had known that the dragon was a female too, and old, and that her children were out there, far way, and not extinct at all.

And she had fled to the forest.

After the dragon had gone, Dasya had returned to her town, where all there was left were ashes and cinders. A heavy black smoke hung in the air and stung her eyes and throat. Her tears had left dirty streaks down her cheeks as she had stepped on the remains of her house. She thought she would faint when she recognized the charred bones of someone who, mere hours before, had been a neighbour. Then another and another.

No one had been left alive.

***

The next thing Dasya remembered was that she was in a caravan, attacked by a fever, on her way to the Citadel. In her dreams, she relived the attack of the dragon time and again. Someone tried to calm her down and applied damp clothes to her forehead, but she kept relapsing.

Finally she fully woke one day, and she found herself on a bed, in a house she didn’t recognize. Stepping out of bed, she dressed and walked out. Dasya met her savior, Rashid, a merchant and scholar who had led the caravan. Rashid questioned her, but Dasya said she didn’t remember what had happened to her. She felt guilty lying to him, but something told her it was for the better. Rashid was sweet and gentle, and didn’t press her, and offered her to stay for as long as she needed.

Dasya never left. She grew fond of Rashid as he grew fond of her. Rashid often left with his caravans, and always brought her presents from far away lands. Dasya’s preferred presents were books, which she delighted in reading. When Rashid came back from one of his voyages, he presented her with an old treaty on dragons. Dasya felt strangely wary, but she thanked him and kissed him, as always.

Dasy couldn’t understand it, but whenever she thought of reading the treaty, she felt scared. But she remembered her grandma, and overcame her fear.

And thus she discovered the truth her grandma had told her, as the ancient runes in the book exposed:

That dragons never left anyone alive when they attacked.

But they never killed their own.