The Dragon of Cripple Creek

by Troy Howell

  I said, “And no one else is?”

  “Why should they be?” he snapped. “They have everything else, thanks to Greed. All their bright, noisy inventions they scoot down their roads or their rails. They have the world in their hands.”

  I swept my arm across the golden heaps. “But they have all that because of this!”

  He studied me for a while. “This is not your gold,” he said. A flatness crept into his voice. “No more than bones in cemeteries are mine.”

  I scrunched up my face. “What’s that supposed to mean? Why would you want peoples’ bones?”

  “Are they not valuable?”

  “That’s a different kind of value.”

  “Ah!” He nodded his head in mockery. Only I didn’t know what he was mocking. “Are there not laws against grave robbing, body snatching?”

  “Of course, there are,” I said, perplexed. Where in the world, or under it, was this going?

  “There should be laws against gold snatching.”

  “And why is that?” I demanded, folding my arms.

  “Smile again.”

  “No.” I tightened my lips, thinking, Burn me up. Go ahead, charbroil me. All that’s left will be my gold-capped tooth, if that’s what you want.

  Then I thought, And the gold in my pocket.

  I wished I’d put my hands in my pockets instead. It’d be a dead giveaway now. I swallowed, trying to get my heart back down.

  Ye was as calm as an October moonrise. He said slowly, knowingly, “Tell me the truth.”

  “T-truth?” I stuttered. “About … what?”

  “That gold.”

  Had he waited this whole time to torture me? To watch me squirm? Had he seen through the smoke, seen me pocketing the gold? But I noticed he didn’t say, “The gold in your pocket”; rather, “that gold.”

  If this was a bluff, I could bluff right back.

  “Oh …” I shrugged. I gave him the grin he wanted, minus any mirth. “They put that in when I was a kid. Fell down and broke my tooth. No biggie.” Now my hands went into my pockets, though the sweat on my face itched to be wiped.

  “Ah,” he said again, nodding. And it wasn’t the kind of “ah” you say at the dentist’s. “Here you are, a mere catty of a girl, sliding from the twenty-first century into what is left of my crumpled little world, and you have gold in your mouth.”

  “My dad paid for it!”

  “With what? More gold? They have beat gold into dogs, frogs, birds, cows, bugs, masks, cups, frames, coins, coins, more coins, more coins, MORE coins, MORE coins—” He took a breath, gave a harsh cough, and went on. “Earrings, finger rings, toe rings, necklaces, bracelets, bangles, medallions, trophies, icons …”

  “But thith ithn’t gleed,” I said, pressing my tongue to my tooth.

  That stopped him. “What?”

  “Gleed!” I removed my tongue. “This. Isn’t. Greed. I needed a tooth.”

  “You chose gold.”

  “Gold is pretty. I like gold. You like gold. Obviously. Lots of people—”

  “Gold—girl, kitty cat, thief, whoever you are—”

  His head was closer to mine than it had been before, eyes all cinnamon and sparks now, nostrils flared and glowing, like a fevered horse. His breath smelled feverish, too.

  “—gold is what dragons become when they die.”

  I WAS SPEECHLESS. MY MOUTH SPRANG OPEN, gold tooth and all.

  Dragon gold.

  “You’ll turn to dust,” Ye said quietly. “Bones, then dust. When dragons die, they turn to gold. That is what I am waiting for.”

  Dragon gold.

  Just like that, it all made sense. Everything. His talk about cemeteries and laws and grave robbing and Babylon and Thutmose and greed and value and entitlement. All the gold in the world, from ancient Egypt to Fort Knox, was the remains of dragons.

  Dragon gold!

  It removed my stand-your-ground attitude. It removed my pride. It removed a lot of things. Not only was I speechless, I was breathless.

  It wasn’t greed at all. Gold was rightfully his.

  Then Ye said something I found even harder to comprehend. I had just got used to the fact that dragons were truly real, and then, that dragons turned to gold, and now—

  He said, “I am the last. The last of all the dragons.”

  He said it as if he stood on a cliff, staring the unknown in the face, waiting to be pushed. I stared into his golden eye for a long, long time. His eye was so mysterious, so deep, yet so gentle. I wanted to sing to him, soothe him, ask him a thousand questions. But I could hardly think of one.

  “You’re …” I fumbled. “You’re the … There aren’t any more? Not anywhere?”

  The lid closed across his golden eye but did not close out the light, which glowed seashell pink.

  “You’ve looked?” I asked.

  “The whole world over.”

  AFTER MOM’S ACCIDENT, WE EACH DEALT with it differently.

  Dad dug into medical research, looking for any clue that might lead to freeing Mom from her darkness. When he wasn’t at work or sitting with her, he sat chained to his laptop, searching and searching. He was up all night, often till dawn. I don’t know when he slept, unless it was at the table after he’d eaten something I’d fixed, or in the driver’s seat as I pumped gas or got groceries. He wandered in his own subterranean places. You could see it in his face, in the vertical line that deepened between his eyebrows.

  Dillon became animated, a clever comic. He was headed that way before the accident, careening from craziness to seriousness and back again. Mom said that at fourteen he was testing the borders between boy and man.

  “His J. M. Barrie stage,” she said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “J. M. Barrie—the man who wrote Peter Pan, who never grew up.”

  “Peter Pan never grew up, or J. M. Barrie?”

  “Both.”

  Dillon chattered in the wittiest ways, making up words or phrases that deserve dictionary status. Like mobscenities—mob plus obscenities, which means a bunch of cussing coming from a crowd—or godzillion—Godzilla plus zillion, which means lots and lots, or bigger than big. He calls it Dillingo, which is Dillon plus lingo.

  He’d dance across the kitchen with bundles of carrots, or make embarrassing noises at just the right moments, like the time the lady in the bank bent over. He was really funny, but since I knew what lay behind it all, while my face was laughing, I cried inside. He would not discuss Mom’s condition. If the subject was raised, he would shut right down.

  I started journaling.

  In the first few weeks of writing, I discovered something. I discovered that pain is like a pencil tip: The more you write, the blunter it becomes. The pain is still there, but you can divert it onto a page, break it into little stabs and penpricks that help carry the pain for you, like lines of ants sharing the load.

  I’m on my third journal now. My second one’s packed in the trailer. My first one’s inside my pillowcase on the backseat of the car. I don’t want anyone to see it.

  On the first page, there is only one word.

  “YE,” I SAID. “DEAR DRAGON—”

  Ye could have dealt with his loss like a storybook beast. He could have rampaged, shooting flames of vengeance and wrath. Instead, he had burrowed down deep to sleep with his ancestors, the golden relics of his past. He had accepted his fate.

  The last dragon on Earth. He would lie here, too, someday, as dragon gold.

  Suddenly, I pitied him. I respected him, liked him, adored him.

  But there was nothing I could do. I was sorry I’d disturbed his sad sleep.

  “Ye,” I said. “I need to go. I need to go now.”

  I think he was lost in a dream.

  I had nothing more to say. I started to walk away. Out, back into the blackness. Where I’d end up, only heaven and Ye would know. Probably down some blind tunnel, nothing left of me but bones, like the skeleton in the trench. I was overcome by sorr
ow, guilt, compassion—an avalanche of feelings. I was an intruder, hardly a footnote in his long history. I wanted to leave him to his memories and his gold.

  I still had his gold in my pocket.

  His gold, not mine.

  It could be his mother. It could be her heart.

  I was too ashamed to return it. Too ashamed for him to know I’d picked it up. I knew what I would do. I would drop it as I went, somewhere in the shadows.

  Stepping over the turquoise stream, I thought I heard him snuff. I turned, and he started to cough. A hard, harsh, hacking cough.

  My mother had a practice of ending her talks—whether with a stranger or friend or foe, whether there’d been an argument or agreement—with a kind word. She would offer a smile and say something like, “Stay well,” “Be blessed,” “Peace.” I wasn’t going to smile—I was too sorry about the gold in my mouth, the gold I’d once been so proud of.

  So I waved, but I don’t think he saw me. So I called. “Take care of yourself, Ye! You’ve got a nasty cough.” It wasn’t the greatest farewell, but I hadn’t practiced like Mom had.

  He looked up. “I am a dragon,” he said. “It is good to kindle the embers … hrm-hrmm-hrmmm!”

  Then he had a convulsion of coughing, hacking, and choking that was far worse than before. It went on and on and on. I stood helpless, watching spasm after spasm jolt his rugged body.

  “Hrm-hrmm-hrmmmmm-hrmmmmmm!”

  If Ye was the last of the dragons—the last of the last of the dragons—I couldn’t leave him like this.

  Suddenly, his coughing stopped.

  So did my heart.

  He was still as stone, his head fallen, his eyes closed. The silence was deathly.

  “Ye?” I squeaked.

  No response.

  “Ye?” I said louder.

  Nothing.

  Stumbling across the cave, I shouted, “Ye!”

  He heaved a hollow sigh and opened an eye.

  My heart beat again. All I could think to do was what my mother had done, whenever I had a bad cough.

  “Let me listen,” I said, and moved around to place my ear against his bulging, leathery, industrial-size furnace side. He did not protest. I listened, and heard a rumbling wheeze within—like a strong wind with debris in it, or a rockslide down a canyon.

  “Is it serious?” he whispered.

  “Shush,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “Shush!”

  If I listened long enough, I hoped, I could pick up a pattern, see if his breathing was regular.

  Right. About as regular as a cyclone. Not that I could do anything about it.

  I pulled away with a roughened cheek and blistered ear. “I’m not a doctor,” I said, “but it doesn’t sound good.” I came around to his head. His eye was at half-mast and had lost its fire. I laid my hand on his muzzle. I wiped some soot off his nose.

  As I did, a change came over him. He lifted his head, his eye got big, and the light within it grew, like the light of the rising sun. His dragonlight became bright.

  “Where did you get that?” he sang.

  “Get what?”

  “That pearl.”

  THIS PART I CALL THE SHOWDOWN. HIGH noon on Main Street at the bottom of the Mollie Kathleen.

  Ye was facing Me.

  Neither of us was a gunslinger, but the lines were drawn.

  Ye wanted the pearl. He didn’t say so—but I could tell. Girl, was it obvious. He was transformed. It was as though centuries of his life had sloughed off like a snake shedding its skin. The light in his eye was now sweet as day.

  So was his voice. “May I have it?” he asked.

  “Have what?” I said dumbly.

  “The ring. That pearl.”

  “Whatever for?” I had the feeling a weight was about to drape across my back.

  “Is it yours to give?” he suggested.

  “Why should I give it to you?”

  “Do you like me?” He cast his words carelessly, as if this wasn’t critical.

  I narrowed one eye at him. All right—he may have a real bad cough, but he was using his aw-c’mon-insurance-salesman approach again. Was it another lariat? It was definitely unwinding, hovering above my head. I looked straight into his golden eyes to test his blinkmanship.

  I said. “Why do you want it?”

  He didn’t flinch. “It is a wonderful pearl,” he said. Deadpan, no emotion.

  I stepped back, hand on my hip. That brought a wince to his face—the pearl leaving his sight. “Shame on you,” I said. “I know why you want it.”

  “You do not.”

  “Do too.”

  “Why?”

  “One word, Mister Ye. One short word.”

  “Kat,” he scolded, “it is not greed. Greed has nothing to do with it.” He coughed, and I questioned that it was real; perhaps it was forced to draw my sympathy.

  “What is it then?”

  Except for his wheeze, he was silent awhile, his eyes darting now around the cave, now to the hand on my hip.

  It had to be greed. After all, everyone’s greedy for something. Since it wasn’t gold or vengeance or who knows what for this dragon, I figured his weakness was pretty pearls. Possessing mine would fill a yearning for conquest. Isn’t that what dragons were known for?

  While I was having these disenchanted thoughts, he broke his silence.

  “The legend—” Ye began.

  Ah-ha—the one question he hadn’t answered. “The Serpent Mound?” I said.

  “It represents the legend. Do you know what is in his mouth?”

  “The serpent’s mouth?”

  “It is not a serpent,” he reminded me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “In its mouth …” Not a gold tooth, surely. I couldn’t recall it having anything in its mouth. I shook my head. “What?”

  “A pearl. He is swallowing a pearl.”

  That set me back. Now I could picture the ancient earthwork, winding its way through the woods, its mouth open wide, a circular object inside it.

  “A pearl?” I said, and slowly raised my hand, the one with my mother’s pearl.

  Together we gazed. And as we did, Ye told me of the legend, how its origin had grown out of great misfortune, far back in the dawn of time.

  “When dragons first inhabited the earth, they were so numerous and strong, mortality was hardly a concern. They thought they would live forever. There were sea dragons and sky dragons, land dragons and subterranean. Each dragon shared the characteristics of each habitat—sea, sky, land, grotto—but each one had its own special strength. Then, quick as lightning, a cataclysmic event occurred. Something fell from heaven—Lucifer, for all I know, cast out. The impact shook the foundations of the earth, causing a flood and geological upheavals. In that single blow, nearly all the dragons were destroyed. Crushed, ground to bits, smothered, imbedded.”

  I pictured the poor dragons falling in crevices. “That explains gold veins!” I said.

  “It does,” Ye said sadly. “A few dragon eggs, called hlams, or silent dreams, survived. But ever after, dragons were weaker and far less potent. Whereas the first dragons lived indefinitely—though they eventually would die natural deaths—the remaining ones were shorter-lived. A few eons instead of millennia on millennia. Out of that extant brood, I came. Early on I was told of this legend, the way a human child is raised on nursery rhymes. Perhaps it was generated to give us hope, a recoil, you could say, against the unknown, the uncontrollable.”

  He took his eye off the pearl to look at me. “Do you understand all of this?”

  “Most of it. Yes.”

  “I am using big words,” Ye said. “Potent, extant, generated …”

  “I’m getting it,” I said, telling myself I’d look them up later. I was anxious to hear the tale, though anxious about where it might end.

  “To make it short,” he said, becoming somber, “the legend promises eternal life to any dragon who swallows a pearl.”

  I lower
ed my arm, and he followed it as if it were a falling star.

  “I see,” I said.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “A long, long, long, long life.”

  “Forever.”

  “And ever.”

  His eye was back on mine. We were eye to eye.

  “There is one condition,” he said.

  I wanted to blink, but couldn’t. I was spellbound, waiting.

  “The pearl must be given willingly, or it will not take effect.”

  THE SHOWDOWN, SCENE TWO.

  It was my turn to deliberate. (My turn for big words.) Deliberate: what the jury does when they’re trying to make a decision. The opposite of being trigger-happy, which is what I was tempted to do, without further ado. Cut and run. Fire off an absolute “No!” and get outta there.

  I deliberated.

  If Ye hadn’t been the last of all dragons …

  If it hadn’t been for his gold burning a hole in my conscience …

  If it hadn’t been for my need to get out …

  The commonsense thing would be to exchange the ring for directions. I would help Ye in his hour—or whatever that would be in dragon time—of need, he would help me in mine.

  If it hadn’t been for my mother.

  Promise.

  But if I never got out alive, there’d be no way to keep the promise, or anything else for that matter.

  It was what Dillon calls an oxydox: oxymoron and paradox combined. (More big words.) An oxymoron being two opposing things in one phrase, and paradox being something contradicting itself. Anyway, between a rock and a hard place.

  There was no competition against my mother, even for a dragon. She would win every time, hands down. But I knew her well enough to know what she would do. I could hear her say, “It’s simple, Kat. Which would you rather be—alive and free, minus the ring, or dead at the bottom of blackness, with the ring around your phalanx?” (“Phalanx” is the finger bone—Mom could be specific like that, and anyway, I learned it in science class.) Under the circumstances, she would release me from whatever promise I was sworn to keep.

  There was something else, and I knew all along where my reasoning would take me. If I gave Ye the ring—