by Scott Toney
Flight and Cage
The dragon watched the sun rise in pastel pinks and blues on the horizon as the day began. He breathed in the dew that the morning air delivered and stretched out his stiff legs and tail across the cool cavern floor where he lay.
Yawning, his vast mouth opened and closed before he turned to look upon the maiden he had rescued the night before.
The princess lay on a bed of palm leaves where he had set her, her light brown hair curled about her slim body.
He wondered if she would be angry for bringing her here.
“Where…” the girl mumbled while waking slowly in the corner of the cave. When she saw the dragon she was startled and moved close against the cave wall. “Where am I?” she asked.
“I will not harm you.” He backed away to show he was not a threat. “I saved you last night from the man who was chasing you. You passed out and so I brought you here until you would awaken. You are safe with me. We are in the mountains near your castle.”
“Thank you… I guess.” The girl looked less frightened. “What are you?”
“Who am I, you mean?” He grinned. “I am Alexander, a name I gave myself long ago, and I believe humans call me Dragon. I am the only one of my kind I have even known and I have lived a longer life than I can remember, possibly since the beginning of time.”
“That’s impossible, your age I mean.” The girl stood and walked toward him to get a closer look. Her night garments lay around her curves in the beautiful light of sunrise. “Your scales are the color of sapphire blood,” she said as she touched one of his outstretched paws.
Alexander could barely feel her hand there through his thick scaly armor.
“How did you know I needed you last night and where to find me?” She looked in wonder into his now peaceful green eyes.
“I heard you calling for help,” he said. “I hear almost everything. My ears pick up the slightest sounds in all places. I just have to focus in to hear them clearly. I’ve told you my name. What is yours?”
“Lilya.” The princess smiled and sat down, cross-legged, before the mouth of the cave. “Why did you focus in on my cries and not someone else?”
“I have listened to your cries and pleas for help many nights as the men of your father’s castle took advantage of you.” Alexander lay his head down on the cave floor next to where Lilya sat. “I could not take your pain anymore. I knew I needed to help you when I discovered you beyond the castle walls. How can men be so cruel?”
“They are men.” Lilya looked sadly to her father’s castle in the distance. “That is how I have always known most of them to be.”
“Not all men are like them, Lilya.” He looked at her and met her eyes. “I know I am not human, but I am male, and I assure you my heart is nothing like theirs. Someday you will meet a kind-hearted man to rule Cush or another realm beside and you will see.”
“Not Cush!” The girl laughed. “I will never be able to find peace in this place.”
There was a long silence between the two, and then Lilya spoke with hesitation. “Did you have to kill him?”
“The guard? He was coming at me with a sword! And besides, he deserved it for what he was going to do to you.”
“Maybe so. But killing is killing. Please don’t ever kill for me.”
“I won’t unless it is to save your life.” Alexander wanted to change the subject. It had been so long since he had someone to talk to.
“What do you like?”
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“What a bizarre question!” Lilya thought for a second. “I like your smile.”
Alexander’s grin widened. “What else?”
“I like the heat of summer as it warms the gardens around Cush and a brisk rainfall as I run through its cooling spray.” She smiled. “I like to paint pictures of the world around me and the things I see. I like the smiles of children as they play. What do you like, Alexander?”
“I like having you to talk to. I haven’t had company in many years. I like poetry. I like the music of nature and the art of flight.”
“Flight? It must be amazing.” Lilya held her hand out past the cave’s opening to feel the winds outside whip across her fingertips.
“Would you like to fly with me?”
She stood up with light glistening in her eyes. “Would it be safe?”
“How do you think you got here? I’ll hold you in my hand and you will see Cush as you never have before.” In a single motion he stood and cupped his paw for Lilya to climb into.
She grasped on the firm flesh of his hand and lifted herself into its embrace. It was odd to think that such a massive creature could be so caring in the way he held her. She feared all men and the ways they behaved, but she did not fear Alexander.
The crimson dragon leapt from the cavern’s opening, dropped slightly and with a swoop of his wings glided through the open air from the mountain’s face.
Lilya’s hair whipped in the wind sweeping over her, as Alexander pumped his wings again and curved the muscles in them to swoop in a sideways glide. Rows and rows of crops moved beneath them as they flew. The farmers working the fields looked up at them with both fear and awe.
“I don’t come out often during the day,” Alexander told her as he pumped his wings, taking them soaring up into the heights of the clouds. “It’s best that as few people as possible know I’m here.”
White clouds puffed about them as they soared and sunlight shimmered on the horizon.
Faster and faster they skimmed the ocean of clouds below them.
“Woooo!” Lilya called out, bracing her body on Alexander’s paw while stretching her hand down to touch the clouds beneath them. They puffed and swayed about her hand. “This is amazing!” she exclaimed as wind whipped across her body.
The sun shone crisp and radiant in the distance and on the horizon they could see birds soaring.
“Where should we go next?” Alexander grinned.
“Hmm…” Lilya thought. There were so many places that would be wonderful to fly to, but she knew she shouldn’t be too long in getting back to the castle. Then she remembered the canyon along Cush’s border. “How about flying through The Canyon of Eyes?” She smiled while looking up at Alexander’s massive scaled neck.
The canyon had gotten its name because people who went there rarely returned. It was rumored that in the caves that dotted the canyon walls there were creatures that watched for stragglers from the community, torturing and devouring them. This was just a rumor though, Lilya believed, and besides they were in flight and she had a dragon as a companion so she would be protected.
“A beautiful place to fly,” Alexander said before thrusting his wings in the air and cleaving the clouds below as he dove beneath them.
The towns and countryside below whipped by at fantastic speeds, blurring together in a quilt of browns and greens.
The castle was far behind them. “Look!” Lilya pointed to The Canyon of Eyes as it became larger and larger in their approach. Its cragged edges were eerily enticing.
With Lilya held gently in his paw, Alexander swooped to the side then upward, and then dove into the open canyon. His wings almost stretched from canyon wall to canyon wall but he had just enough room to soar in their opening.
He dove deep inside and Lilya marveled at the shimmering gems along the cavern wall as they flew. The place radiated in the sunlight and sea water glistened in the canyon’s bottom. Beyond the canyon stretched the Caspian Sea.
Alexander slowed his flight so that they could both better observe their surroundings.
Sunlight reflected in mirror shimmers along the stone walls.
And then it caught on something that made Lilya’s heart race. Were those shimmering orbs that the sunlight bounced across in the caves, eyes? “Do you know what creatures live in these caves?” she asked her companion as they flew past where she had seen the glowing things.
Alexander grinned as he flexed his wings and curled them up out of the canyon’s depth
s. “Humans,” he said simply. “Ones that do not wish to live under any monarch’s rule and so they choose to live in a place where most of humanity dares not venture.”
Lilya thought on this for long moments as Alexander skimmed the water below them. Many times she had wanted to run away from Cush and her father, but she understood that was not an option she had to choose from. Her father and his army would hunt her down and drag her back to the castle. Could she ask Alexander if she could live with him in the side of the mountain? Sure. And she knew Alexander would protect her, but she could never ask that of him.
Instead, she lay out on the dragon’s palm and stared up at the sky moving by above her as the dragon flew them up from the canyon’s depths. “I should be heading to the castle,” she said. “If I don’t go back soon my father will send knights to look for me.”
Alexander curved in the winds and jutted toward the castle. “I’ll be listening for you in case you need me,” he said. “All you need do is speak my name and I will come.”
“Thank you. That means a lot to me.” Lilya watched as the castle grew in the distance. “Can we do this again sometime?”
“It would be wonderful to see you and to be able to talk to you again. Anytime you want to see me just call for me and I will come.”
Lilya was comforted by what Alexander said. She liked that he wanted to see her again not for her body but for her friendship.
“Hold tight as we land,” he spoke to her as they neared the castle. It was difficult landing with only three legs, but Alexander smoothly moved his wings to help him hover in the air and clutched the earth below with his claws as he cradled Lilya in his fourth paw.
The ground shook as he clutched to a stop in its soil. Several knights, who had been talking by the castle’s front gates, came running toward them.
“I need to go before they reach us, but call for me when you want to see me again,” Alexander spoke to her while softly laying the top of his paw against the ground for her to step off.
She stepped off gracefully, her gown flowing in the breeze, and turned toward him.
“Fare thee well, sweet lady,” Alexander grinned and swooped in a bow.
“Fare thee well, good sir.” Lilya returned the smile and turned to walk toward the castle doors. As she did so, the knights who had been approaching them reached her and one of them stretched out to grab her. She avoided his grasp with a shutter and ran for the castle doors.
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Alexander’s eyes ignited with white nova flame as he met the knights’ eyes. His claws burst into the earth below him. He knew that without even saying anything he was showing them that he was now this girl’s protector. They were to leave her alone.
“Until we meet again, Lilya!” Alexander called out to her and with a flap of his wings ascended backwards into the sky, rocketing toward his mountain home.
The knights quivered in their armor and one of them fell to his knees. The beast had spoken their tongue.
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In her tower room Lilya stood, peering out its far window toward the vast mountain range in the distance, longing for something that was there.
It is ironic, she thought, that most girls dream of being rescued by a knight and swept away to a world where they can be free. Here I am, the daughter of a king, and I was rescued by a dragon from the dark desires of a knight. Certainly she was an unusual princess.
She longed so to leave this place. Lilya hated thinking of her father as a bad man but the things he let his knights do to her made her view him as such. How could he let them take advantage of her?
Could she ever escape this place? Could she call to the dragon and fly away forever on his wings?
Knock! Knock! Knock! A fist pounded against her door. Through the gaping hole, that the knight had kicked in it the night before, she could see the flow of a purple silk robe.
“Who is it?” she called out, afraid it might be another knight who’d come to use her. No, they usually come at night.
“Lilya! I need to talk to you!” a voice called through the door to her. It was her father. The ornate wooden door brushed open slowly and the king stepped into her room. His face had been unshaven for weeks and his eyes sunk in with black. His purple silken robe draped about his form. He moved with frailness.
“Where were you this morning, girl? We discovered one of our best knights incinerated beyond the castle walls and were afraid the same thing had happened to you.”
Lilya’s body relaxed, as she was relieved it was only her father who had come to her door. “I awoke early and went outside to explore,” she sat down in a chair by the windowsill. He must have been so drunk last night that he doesn’t remember sending that same knight here to take advantage of me.
“It’s good to see you and know you’re well.” The king closed her door with his bony hand. “I have other things to speak with you about.”
A strange look was in his eyes. Lilya stood and backed closer to the wall but the king stood still.
King Abishan took a moment and then sat on her bed. “You are of age to marry.” He looked into her eyes. “And it is in Cush’s best interest for us to take advantage of that.”
I will not marry any man. I would rather die first, Lilya thought. She said nothing, out of fear of her father.
“The young king of Havilah will arrive within a day’s time to decide if you are worthy of being his queen. Havilah has more riches than we could dream of having in Cush and its king would surely pay a fine dowry for a bride. The maids will dress you in your finest clothes and make you the most desirable girl in all of Cush. When he arrives, do anything he asks.” A pause of chilly silence passed between father and daughter. “Please him. If you do, his riches will open for us.”
Lilya stood, shivering against the wall in stunned disbelief.
The king rose from her bed and left the room.
Lilya’s eyes welled up until the tears overflowed onto her pale cheeks.
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