Only a few of us are old enough to hear the songs of the mountains, the singular churning notes pulled across eons. I let my fire sink deep into mother, past rock and soil, to reunite with the allfire.
Then, discordance. Wyverns nip at my wings. Annoying, childish gnats, the lot of them. My voice rumbles and creaks with disuse. “What do you want?”
Their chitters halt only for a moment.
“A child,” they whisper too fast, “alone and abandoned.” More meaningless chittering. “For you, great one.” Ah, so their deference has not yet atrophied. They may still be of use.
My slate scales crack as I lurch into motion. Lava runs through my veins and revives my limbs, which sparks tingles that dance at the roots of my claws.
I descend from my cave and enter the forest while the wyverns flutter around my legs. It requires an effort of will not to stomp them, but decorum is the burden of the old. It has been a long time since I last walked among the trees, that living kindle. They brush my shoulders in a hello. I know that some among them rival the age of my ancient bones. I grumble a greeting. It is the humans’ foible to assume that slowness is lifeless.
The wail is a false note that jars my keeled vertebrae. How do human parents deal with such cacophony?
Translucent young wyverns swirl around the bundle of fabric that emits the noise. They undulate their long sinuous bodies like violin strings. Music is instinct; instinct is music.
With a talon, I peel away layers of cloth until the pink blob within is revealed. It is so unaesthetic. Helpless too. It gasps, gargles, and gags on its own spit. A quick hot flame and the baby fat will make it a tasty morsel. But that would be…indecorous.
“Tell me,” I ask the wyverns, “how much time has passed?”
“Centuries, old one,” I piece together from many voices. “By the human calendar.”
“Do they still worship us?”
I cannot decipher the jumbled replies. With a speed that silences even the rustle of the wind through the leaves, I grasp a wyvern and throw it into my mouth. Only a few of them survive long enough to become a dragon. Every bite releases a memory. I see…
…metal and steel.
…dragons petrifying into mountains.
…druids persecuted.
…forests dwindling.
…concrete and steam.
My gasp pulls air over my fire glands and the burning sensation travels down to my stomach. All things end, all dragons know this. But for dragons themselves to end, that is hard to swallow. If the ephemeral engenders appreciation for the now, immortality births the illusion of eternity.
Not yet, though. There are still wyverns, there is still me. Perhaps I should not have eaten the young one.
My earholes pick up on a prattle that does not belong in my daydreams.
The human child tries to curl its chubby hand around one of my claws. It prattles nonsense. I think the thing is female, though I can’t say why.
I lower my snout closer to hers. It—she—does not wail. Instead, she stares at me without blinking. The white in her gaze unnerves me as it bores into my obsidian eyes.
I think of legacy, of mysteries in the night, of mother’s songs. Perhaps legacy need not be constrained to species.
I will call her Lyra. Rolling r, rumbling and rollicking like a rockslide.
Days and nights flicker by like blinks of my nictitating membranes. Lyra grows fast. No wonder her kin chases short-term satisfaction; their existence is but a sigh.
The wyverns provide, obeying without understanding. Guided by moonlight, they venture into the humans’ bleak dens to pilfer clothing and trinkets.
I sing to Lyra and tell her stories that the tide of time washed away. Her false wailing grows into a harmonious voice. She is a fast learner.
“Your, um, greatness?”
The man’s voice—gruff with a squeaky subtone—irks me. It pretends to be knowledgeable without knowing.
But at least the druids have not all vanished; they have gone underground. Blend in during the day, practice the ancient arts during the night. One of the wyverns found Braze, who now shuffles from one foot to the other as he cowers before me.
“You can call me Ormir,” I say. My true name is not made for human tongues and vocal cords.
“Right. Great Ormir.”
Dear allfire, he bows, this scruffy-bearded man in a frayed frock coat. His fingers scramble across the brim of his faded black top hat.
Lyra, meanwhile, is hiding behind my front leg. Her knuckles tap my scales as her mind tries to decide between shyness and curiosity. Even in youth, she understands she cannot stay. Humans are social creatures, unlike solitary adult dragons. I must admit, though, that her presence ceased being a burden a long time ago.
“You will ensure that she receives proper schooling,” I tell Braze. “Music too. She can visit me whenever she likes. And you will treat her well. Or I will find you.”
The druid—what a shell of their former glory!—nods. “Of course, of course.”
I drop a gold nugget the size of his head in front of him. I do not like the greedy glint in his eyes. Once upon a time, druids did not care for those things. It is a myth that dragons hoard treasure; we simply realize that mother provides for those who treat her well.
I twist my neck to look at Lyra. “Time to go, little songbird. Visit me often, you hear? We have a lot of music left to make together.”
She bites her lower lip and sidles away from behind my ankle.
Braze puts his hands on his knees and squats until he is at Lyra’s height. “Hello, Lyra. My name is Braze. Do you want to come with me? I know it’s hard to go, but we’ll come back often, I promise.”
I’m not a fan of that ‘we’, but his voice has changed. Soft. Caring. Perhaps I was wrong about the man.
Lyra looks back and forth between me and Braze, between dragon and druid.
“I’ll be watching, little one,” I say, as much for him as for her.
She decides with a serious frown, furrowed like the strata of a mountain range. I pity the man who stands in her way. “Okay,” she says. “Bye-bye, Ormy. Back soon.”
Her young voice is the crystal clatter of a fresh highland spring.
Time slips through my claws and that inevitable feeling of fading only lessens when Lyra visits. The wyverns frolic when she returns to the forest at the mountain’s feet. The smoky specter of the expanding city haunts our horizon; our world is contracting. They are fewer in number, my young companions. Fewer dragons means fewer spawns. The cycle of inevitable demise.
Acceptance is harder than I expected. More is left in me.
I sing to mother and try to charm the allfire. To no avail. It too is retreating. The bright tinkling notes of Lyra’s lyre seize me and drag me back to the present.
“Ormir?”
Her pronunciation is so close to correct, rumbling and resonating at the edge of what is possible with human vocal cords. She must be part dragon.
She pleats her golden hair into one large braid when she visits, which reminds me of a druid queen who died centuries ago. When did little Lyra grow into a strong adult woman? Only yesterday she was a girl telling me how she fought—and won from—older boys who called her names. Only yesterday she was a teenager who got into trouble for stealing textbooks and teaching those less fortunate. Only yesterday she snuck into that dreadful new institution called parliament to argue for labor reforms for women and children. Too many yesterdays, too few tomorrows.
“I am nostalgic, little songbird,” I say. Releasing the word into the world makes it real and, for a moment, I believe my body crumbles into a rubble of rocks. I huff smoke through my slitted nostrils. “Growing old.”
A note breaks; a song suffers. “Don’t say that.” Lyra slaps her hand on the strings. She knows it grates me.
I grumble; the wyverns skitter away. Not Lyra, though. She remains seated on a tree trunk and she—she, the little human I can incinerate with a single breath—stares me down. But fragility threads through her anger, as if I have failed her, as if life itself has failed her. “What is wrong?”
Her stare remains stone for a heartbeat, then it cracks. “I don’t know,” she sighs. “I feel empty.” Her beautiful silver eyes grow glassy with moisture. “Life, human life, is so… unfulfilling. There is so much pain, Ormir. An endless stream of humans ground into dust under the weight of always more and more and more. And for what? More factories and profits? The only time I don’t feel the pressure is when I am composing a song.”
When she says this last part, her eyes regain the twinkle I have come to know so well. It is the only thing I will ever hoard.
“But then the song comes out and it’s not,” she struggles with the words, “good enough. It’s never good enough. I am never good enough.” She stifles a sob.
My three hearts break. I do not know what she is lacking. I cannot know. How can you be in such pain, I want to shout, when your life is so brief? Let the beauty you are capable of burst out of you. I say no such thing; she deserves more than platitudes.
“Stay here tonight,” I say. “Let the songs of the forest and mountains inspire you. Like old times.” Old times? It was barely a blink ago. Not for her, I hope.
She walks over and lays her head on one of my digits. “I would like that.”
Me too.
There is fire and smoke, and they are not my doing.
Clamor. Wyverns in disarray.
Then, a punch in my side.
Lyra screams.
More punches, in rapid succession.
“Armstrong gun,” the wyverns chitter. “Blunderbuss, rifle musket,” their singsong voices tremble. Many of them are wounded. Some have died.
Why am I so slow? Surely I have not turned to stone yet?
I rise and face the armed men. Dozens of them, uniformed and trained. They release another battery of bullets born in a smoldering cloud. One of my scales cracks. Lyra? Where is Lyra?
“More,” a familiar voice bellows. “Keep shooting. We need its blood.”
Braze. Wizened and greyed by the unstoppable passage of time, but influential enough to command a platoon of soldiers. I should have known. The lure of immortality glints more seductively than a mountain of gold.
One of the soldiers screams and falls. Lyra!? She whirls among the men, brandishing a fine curved dagger I didn’t know she carried. Tendons rip, flesh rends, and men fall before this warrior princess. But one of the soldiers—through pure luck, nothing more—uses the butt of his rifle to hit Lyra in the back of her head. She goes down.
For one last time, I shall roar. One last time, I will make the earth shake and the mountains tremble. One last time, before the fire dies.
A swipe of my claw disembowels half of the remaining soldiers while a lash of my tail breaks the ribcages of the others.
I advance on Braze, the only one left standing, red-faced, wheezing, but still defiant. I will enjoy eating him.
“Stop,” Lyra pleads as she gets up. Mud and blood stain her breeches.
She turns to Braze. “Father! Stop!”
The druid—whatever passes as a druid in this accursed age—sweeps an arm. “What? You want me to… in this ruin of a body? Dragons hoard, dear. Maybe not gold and diamond, but they hoard knowledge, they hoard their magic. They know how to stave off the hands of death and if he’s unwilling to tell me, then—”
Enough. Braze’s frail bones crunch beneath my palm as I stomp on him. I can’t let him live; it would instigate others.
Lyra gasps and looks at me wide-eyed, exactly like when she was an abandoned infant swaddled in cloth. Her whites versus my obsidian.
I grunt. The sting in my side worsens. One of the bullets is lodged so deeply that I taste its metallic tang. Viscous, bright orange blood trickles from a crack in a scale.
Lyra swallows fear, anger, and indecision. “You have to go,” she says. “Others will come.”
She is right. The men’s disappearance will lead to inquiries and search parties. The wyvern’s bodies are already fading into the soil; only whispers and rumors will be appointed the culprits of the soldiers’ deaths.
I lean toward Lyra and she rests her forehead on my snout. I close my eyes and command this moment to survive eternity.
“Thank you, Ormir. I am sorry, Ormir.” Lyra is crying.
“No. Thank you, little songbird. You have given me more than you will ever know.” A discordant note dances on the rumble of my breath. “Your song will always be good enough.”
She shudders.
I nudge her one last time and turn to the mountains. Mother, allfire, I am coming home.
We will not meet again, the singing child and I.
I hope she will sing of dragons.
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Gunnar De Winter is a Belgian biologist turned science writer whose fiction has appeared in, among others, Clarkesworld Magazine, Heartlines Spec, The Deadlands, and Future SF Digest. His story “Desert Beetle Song” won Tractor Beam‘s inaugural open call. Find him on Bluesky as @gunnardewinter.bsky.social or on gunnardewinter.com. |