by Inez Tan
“I’m sorry,” he said, as he had before, “I can’t imagine what it must have been like.” He searched for something else to say. “I’m not being a good host. Can I get you anything?” She was disappointed in him, he could tell, and he was at a loss.
The rest of their stay was forgettable. He wondered why his parents weren’t as welcoming to Lydia as he’d hoped they would be. But then, they didn’t really know her. Naturally they would be uneasy around a stranger in the house.
It worried him, though. What if her family was just as cold towards him? She had three sisters. He pictured each one disliking him more than the last, like something out of a fairy tale. Shouldn’t he instead have been discovering signs that they belonged together? Why was he having doubts now?
They took his mother’s car to Greenwich. Nate remembered sitting in the passenger seat while his mother drove him to school, music and soccer practice, and everything in between—sleepovers, piano recitals, birthday parties, dental appointments. Now he was behind the wheel, with Lydia in his old seat. He was entering a new phase of his life.
“You’ve been so quiet, Nate,” Lydia said, when they were an hour into the drive. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he muttered. He felt himself break into a sweat.
Lydia gave him a long, hard look, and then leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
She woke up when they reached their destination. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she swung open her door and started unloading their bags. Nate stayed in his seat.
She knocked on his window until he rolled it down. “Nate, we’re here,” she said, with a brittle cheer that failed to hide her impatience.
Nate said, “I think I want to drive a little more.” He gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
“Drive? You just drove all the way from New York!” she burst out. “Where are you going to go?”
He started winding up the window. “I’ll be back soon,” he said, as the window sealed. He could see her mouth moving, and he could still hear some of what she was shouting at him. He started up the ignition.
How is it possible to love another with all of our imperfections? Nate sped through towns without looking at them. He held his foot down on the accelerator and overtook the other cars. He’d thought he and Lydia were right for each other—for more than a year now they had been inseparable—and still there were so many things he could never explain to her. And who knew what she might be keeping from him? They lay themselves bare one secret at a time, but it seemed that there was never an end to secrets.
He thought of Christina, asleep in the backseat of a car, her hair falling across her face. While he was imagining her accident, he had one himself.
Lydia received the call from the emergency room because hers was the number most dialled from Nate’s phone. At the hospital, a man wearing scrubs and a paper mask told her, “He keeps asking for a Chris.”
Nate was 24. He emerged from a three-day coma as though he had merely fallen asleep. He remembered little of the collision; he had eyes only for Lydia, and the suddenly precious prospect of making her his wife. She sank to her knees by his bedside, overcome, when he showed her the ring. Everyone agreed it was a miracle.
Life is brief, yet long enough to precipitate many smaller endings. Nate and Lydia lasted three more years, and then they split the accounts and went their separate ways. Their mutual friends, fearing suddenly for the mortality of their own relationships, sought them out for information. When did you know it was ending? Who was the first to bring up divorce? Do you feel it was the right decision?
“How could we have known before?” Lydia would say, in the same careful tone. “We thought we knew each other, but it turned out that we were wrong.”
“It was just a romance,” Nate would answer. “That’s all it was.”
Romance was good repackaging. Romance was nonbinding and attractive. After all, they were still young and prestigiously employed. Lydia wanted to meet someone new, but she also felt that she didn’t deserve to. She kept accusing herself, and somehow the trail led all the way back to the first awful thing she’d knowingly done. During college, she and several of her friends had gone to the beach. Her best friend Christina was wearing a bracelet from an admirer—whom Lydia, jealously, had liked as well—and although Lydia watched it as her friend disrobed, watched it in the hungry way she always did, she didn’t say a word. When Christina lost the bracelet in the surf, she barely helped with the search. A diver since childhood, she only kicked and splashed, obscuring the shallow water with churning sand.
“I thought people would have swum more,” Christina said later as they drove back to campus. “Especially those of us who brought goggles.”
Lydia’s goggles were peeking out of her bag. She looked away.
She never told Nate, observing on her part his withholdings and refusals. The two had lived together as if they were bound by an unspeakable truce—the fear that the other might uncover their worst. If they hadn’t, he might have admitted how humbling he found her goodness, she could have heard him say that he had long forgiven her. How had they begun to dismantle the unknown between them? They only ever needed to begin again.
The Princess and the Dragon
MOST CHILDREN ONLY hear that they are forbidden to venture beyond the city walls, without being given a reason why. I could have told them. It’s because the walls of stone and mortar are able to withstand fire, and little boys and girls are not.
I am the size of ten men but I have the strength of a hundred. I lie by the gates, across the main road no one uses anymore. News of a fire-breathing dragon can do that for business.
In the city, I hear them whisper among themselves, How can we be rid of the dragon? The king offered half of the silver and gold in his kingdom to any man who would slay me, or else drive me away. He needn’t have bothered. No one could hope to succeed.
Their children ought to be told the truth. I hate ignorance. I detest the ignorant thing I have become, growing sluggish on the people’s sheep. It is an ill thing to prey on sheep—kept sheep, especially. Little by little, my thoughts grow dull. I scratch at my scales. I go for long stretches of time staring off into the distance, attentive to nothing at all.
Two sheep a day are what I get in exchange for not hurting anyone, two sheep a day for doing nothing. It feeds my apathy.
When they started bringing me the pregnant ewes, I knew the flocks were thinning. Next came lame and blind sheep with glutinous discharge crusted around their eyes, and finally old leathery sheep so sick they could not stand.
The people’s representative is the learned fool Algernon. I know his kind. A young man, brought up in a prosperous family. A smattering of education and he thinks he’s clever.
One day, he knelt before me with his face to the ground, pleading.
Please, great Dragon, the sheep are spent. We have offered you every last one, withholding none for ourselves. We have nothing left to give. Ah, Dragon, we have nothing left to give!
On and on like that, he wearied me so. Weak and delirious from hunger, I spat fire at him. Shrieking, he escaped, and others ran to put out the flames in the dry grass. I closed my eyes and came around some time later to his hoarse voice.
Dragon, he called. Dragon!
I opened one eye. His skin was red and blistered, but he no longer seemed a defeated man.
Dragon, mighty Dragon, we have brought you an offering today.
At his feet lay a girl, her hands and feet bound with thin ropes. She was sobbing.
This is Melinda, eleven years old. Dragon, please look kindly on us.
He bent to whisper something in the girl’s ear, but she screamed and screamed until he backed away. I waited until he retreated and the guards barred the city gates. Let him go on hiding his face from his dirty work. One such as he did not deserve to know his own iniquity.
Children. I have no real appetite for children, but I have no reason not to eat them when they are left out
so easily for me. And—memory stirs—I have always hated their crying.
I am becoming more and more what I am. My senses grow keener, and news comes to me on the wind. The kingdom holds a lottery every day to choose the child to be fed to me.
Algernon continues with the introductions. I have no inkling of what gave him that idea, but I’m a good listener.
Gavin, nine years old.
Arabella, five years old.
Malkyn, seventeen years old.
Walter, fourteen years old.
Some tell their children about the lottery, and some don’t, as though ignorance were harmless. But children are curious by nature. They will want to know what the lottery means, whether it is a fun game to play. Tucked into their beds at night, they dream of winning. Just as some of their parents must dream of getting the chance to abandon them.
Someone is approaching, and for once it isn’t Algernon. It’s a girl in a lacy white gown, a circle of rosebuds on her fair head.
My name is Sabra, she says. I am fifteen years old.
She walks right up to me and folds her arms.
Dragon, I am the king’s daughter. I was not supposed to be in the lottery, but my name was called, and so I came. A week ago I didn’t know anything. I only wondered, ever so innocently, why we never had mutton for dinner anymore. I wondered what had happened to one of the scullery maids, the stable master’s boy and my favourite lady-in-waiting. But most of the time I didn’t think about it at all. All my life, I was shielded from the world beyond my chamber door. Then my name was drawn, and all the knowledge in the world could not have saved me. But knowledge is the only thing I can have now before I die, so let me inquire of you—where did you come from? Why are you here?
The townspeople never thought to ask me anything. They merely cowered, cowered behind Algernon, who was obviously no hero either. It’s been so long since I thought of how I ended up in this lonely place. Hunger fogs my memory of everything that came before, and I suspect that I allowed it to, in order to forget something much worse. What I can recall is a long tormented sleep, my body wracked with pain that flooded the darkness until it appeared blood red. I awoke in a daze, with agony in my bones, as though they had been forced to lengthen overnight. Vultures were tearing at my flesh along the cracks between my scales. I writhed and shook them off with a cry, and a bright shock of fire cut through the air in front of me. Around me a forest lit up, and it burnt with a searing heat. I flew by the light of my breath, a torch that showed how brief the physical world is, how fleeting and how frail, as the landscape turned to smoke. Exhausted, I collapsed here, waking hungry to the bleating of sheep.
The sound of men and horses closing in makes us both turn to look through the gates. It has been a long time since such noises were heard in this city. If the king has sent a regiment to win his daughter back, they can have her. No meal is worth that much trouble to me.
But Sabra seems to think otherwise. It’s George and his fools, she murmurs, looking frantic for the first time. They are coming to rescue me.
She looks up at me, trying to be brave, but I see that she’s used up all her courage. Dragon, she says, I would rather die than go with them. If you kill me now, I would be glad of it.
I wait a moment in case any more offers of royal generosity are forthcoming. I would have liked a few cows, at least. The cavalry is almost upon us. She holds my gaze until the riders come into view, and then she picks up her skirt and flees.
Twenty armed men come charging down the broad avenue leading to the gates. They stop before the threshold of the city, awaiting further command. Dirty smoke gutters from their torches. At the front of the pack is their leader, styled as a knight with plate armour and a barred helmet. I am not fooled—chivalry will have vanished from these lands long ago.
He shakes his sword at me, shouting through his colossal headgear.
I am George of Wormingford, the king’s chosen champion, sent to defend these territories and to save her royal highness, the princess Sabra. For your unholy crimes, monster, we ought not to let you live. But if you lead us to the princess and fall down at my feet in surrender, perhaps I may be moved to spare your life.
Heavens, I think, he cannot be serious.
But he is, and when I don’t respond, he raises his sword above his head and kicks both heels against the sides of his horse so it rears up, whinnying. His men all follow suit.
Before they can reach the gateway, I engulf the entire party with a crackling cone of fire. The men throw up their shields, only to drop them with stricken cries as the metal begins to burn red. The horses shriek and bolt; some riders fall and are dragged through the streets, or trampled by terrified hooves. A few of the men manage to get nearer to me, but when I knock them aside with my claws, they scamper.
It doesn’t demand much from me, but I was tired to start with. My eyes are closing before the last man is out of sight.
Sabra creeps over. She has stayed close this whole time.
Thank you, Dragon, she whispers.
Were I not exhausted, I would have said, It wasn’t for you. Three or four of George’s men lie dead at my feet. I suppose I will have to deal with all of this later.
Sabra has brought me a wooden bucket of water. There appear to be some weeds floating on the surface.
Drink this, she says. I added some herbs that will cure a sore throat. She smiles up at me shyly.
I drink the water and doze until I hear her set the bucket in front of me again. The plants are useless, but the water is fine.
When I’ve quenched my thirst, I started tearing into one of George’s men. The armour is a pesky inconvenience. Sabra sits by my side, watching.
You must be wondering who George is, she says thoughtfully. He is a minor noble from the province neighbouring ours. A year ago, he asked my father for my hand in marriage. He has some money, but little else to his name. Father refused him. I was relieved. I have no desire to marry and mother children. Least of all for anyone who holds as high an opinion of himself as George.
She shifts in her seat and continues, Meanwhile, you arrived. It wasn’t long before a lottery was established to determine whose child was to be your supper. Names were inscribed on pebbles and thrown into a pit in the middle of the city square. This was done in the presence of all the townspeople, so that no child would be excluded—except for me. No one would dare suggest that the king’s daughter be sacrificed.
So imagine everyone’s surprise when a week ago, my name was drawn. I was told of the bloody deeds that marked our town, and my world was shaken to the core. For six days I wept. Do you know, our town has a name for the time children get before they are sent to you? They call it the week of fancy. The shopkeepers ply us with all the sweets and cakes we can eat. We are given every toy we ask for. My old nurse pulled me aside on the first day. She told me, This time is a gift. Us older ones, we don’t know how or when we will die. Sabra, my sweet, it’s much better than you realise. I was not consoled, but I thought, There must be something more I can do.
On the seventh day, I took action. I searched out Algernon, the man whose charge the lottery was. I threatened him at knifepoint until he spilled every secret. George had paid him a handsome sum to include my name—he’d bought himself an opportunity to play the hero. I made sure that no one would suffer again because of Algernon’s cowardice. And then I came out here, freely, to face my fate.
Now she senses that her talk wears on me. Sleep on, Dragon, she says. You and I have nothing but time.
The food has been gone for a while now, and no further offerings arrive. Heaviness settles into my bones, which sleep does nothing to dispel. I had thought I would simply fly to another place when pickings grew scarce here. Now I doubt that I would get very far.
Sabra is not doing well either. Her dress hangs off one bony shoulder. But she keeps talking, like someone in a trance.
My old nurse used to tell me stories, she says, distantly. My favourites had witches and dragons.
You know, witches were always born witches. No one asks how, or why. But dragons were originally people, who were turned into beasts as punishment for their wickedness. I’m no stranger to wickedness. I killed Algernon and spread his organs on the ground for the birds to eat. But now he’s killed me by sending me out here. A court of law might find me justified in my actions. I don’t think I am. We’ve all done such terrible things.
She sways, plucking at the front of her dress. This is a wedding gown, the same one my mother wore. I never knew my mother. She ran off when I was a baby. I used to think she was watching over me. I used to hope that one day, she’d come back. But even George won’t come back for me now.
She regards me with narrowed eyes. I don’t suppose you have anyone coming for you?
Then her whole frame shakes with laughter. Oh, heavens, she gasps, I’m talking to a dragon.
And should I, who have spoken with a mighty dragon, surrender my personhood and my will just as I grasp them for the first time? Should I become a wife in exchange for bread, or should I starve as Sabra?
Sabra has been talking like this for hours, turning in circles, shredding the edges of her gown.
Should I go back home and live, only to be bartered away again to the next man who claims me as a prize? Will I be trapped bearing children, nursing offspring, never to choose my own way in the world? Ah, it is bitter, bitter to choose between death and life!
Her crying, as weak and as pitiful as a baby’s, resounds through my thoughts, my dreams, my memories. They resurface now that I have little else to keep them down. I am weak, I am pitiful, holding my baby in my trembling arms. I am laying her down, I am leaving everything behind, save for my guilt and the echoing torment of our tears.