The Last Tsar's Dragons

by Jane Yolen

  But he knew that great care was needed now. Though God was known to reward His faithful, He was also known to punish those who begin to expect those rewards. Who think they deserve them.

  Pride and Hubris. Rasputin named the twin devils that he knew he was especially susceptible to. They have brought down many a devoted man. I must ensure I am not another.

  He swore that he would do only God’s work. Sing only His praises. That the women, the power, they meant nothing to him. Merely trifles compared to power and glory of a great and generous God.

  He felt so enflamed with God’s love that he nearly rode the girl a third time. But he recognized it as a trap. The first two dalliances had served a purpose; a third would have been for his own indulgence.

  And I exist only to serve God.

  He stood and stretched, enjoying the play of the many cold drafts in the tradesman’s house across his naked body, then slipped back into his robe. The rough cloth scraped him in places so recently overused, but the discomfort only reminded him of his duty.

  Pain, discomfort, hardship. I will suffer them all and gladly for the greater glory of God.

  He aimed a beatific smile at the girl, but she had slipped into a twitchy slumber. She would not see him leave.

  And she will not see me ever again. She has served her purpose. God’s purpose, he reminded himself. He left a gold coin on the pillow. She would know what that meant. It was surely more than she expected, though perhaps less than she had hoped.

  As he left the tradesman’s house, a cold wind sliced off the Neva and hit him full in the face. He didn’t feel it. He felt only the golden warmth of God’s glorious love.

  Spring would surely break in Russia like the smiles of women Bronstein had known: cautious, cold, and a long time coming.

  Now, however, they were in the deepest part of the winter. Snow lay indifferently on the ground as if it knew it still had months of discomfort to visit on the people, rich and poor alike. But, Bronstein told himself, on the poor even more. The peasants, at the bottom of the heap, might even have to tear the thatch from their roofs to feed the livestock if things got much worse.

  He’d visited the eggs a dozen more times, each visit going by a different route, from every conceivable compass point. Always checking for followers. Always looking for footprints not his own. And always carefully brushing away his back-trail. He spent hours with the eggs, squatting in the cold, snowy field, and talking out his plans as if the dragons could hear him through the tough elastic shells. He had no one else to tell. Borutsch had fled to Berlin, and Bronstein feared the old man had spilled his secret before leaving. But as he—so far at least—had not spotted anyone close by, and the eggs had not been disturbed, he was reasonably certain that even if Borutsch had spoken of what he’d seen, people would have thought him deranged. An old man at the end of his life muttering about dragons.

  But this time. . . .

  Bronstein saw something was wrong as soon as he spotted the lightning-split pine. The ground beneath it was torn up, the leaves scattered. Running up to the tree, he gaped in horror at a hole in the ground.

  It was completely devoid of eggs.

  Mein Gott und Marx, he swore in silent German. The tsar’s men have found them. And they will have broomed away their steps even as I. . . .

  Whether it was Borutsch’s fault or his own carelessness, there was no time to tear his hair or weep uncontrollably, no time for recriminations. He simply had to flee.

  Perhaps I can join Borutsch in Berlin. If he’ll have me.

  Bronstein turned to run but was stopped cold by a rustling sound in the brush behind him.

  Soldiers! he thought desperately. Reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small pistol he’d taken to carrying, he waved it at his unseen enemies before realizing how useless it would be against what sounded like an entire company of soldiers.

  Swiveling his head from side to side as more rustling came from all around him, he came to a grim decision.

  So this is how it ends.

  The gun shook as he raised it to his temple.

  “Long live the revolution!” he shouted, then winced.

  Oh, to not have died with a cliché on my lips.

  His finger tightened on the trigger, then stopped just short of firing as he realized how truly stupid he was.

  A dragon the size of a newborn lamb—and just as unsteady on its feet—pushed through the bushes and into view.

  “Gevalt,” he breathed.

  The dragon emitted a sound somewhere between a mew and a hiss and wobbled directly up to Bronstein, who took an involuntary step back. The creature was fearsome to look at even as a hatchling, all leathery hide and oversized bat wings. Its eyes were the gold of a wolf, though still cloudy from the albumin that coated its skin and made it glisten in the thin forest light.

  Bronstein wondered wildly if the eyes would stay that color or change, as babies’ eyes do. He’d heard the tsar’s dragons had eyes like shrouds. Of course the man who told him that could have been exaggerating for effect. And though the pronounced teeth that gave the adult dragons their sinister appearance had yet to grow in, the egg-tooth at the tip of the little dragonling’s beak looked sharp enough to kill if called upon. And the claws that scritch-scratched through the sticks and leaves even now looked as though they could easily gut a cow.

  But Bronstein quickly remembered Lenin’s advice:

  Dragons, like the bourgeois, respect only power. When they are fresh-hatched, you must be the only power they know.

  He pocketed the pistol that he still held stupidly to his head and stepped forward, putting both hands on the dragon’s moist skin.

  “Down, beast,” he said firmly, pressing down. The beast collapsed on its side, mewling piteously. Grabbing a handful of dead leaves from the trees, Bronstein began scraping and scrubbing, cleaning the egg slime from the dragon’s skin, talking the whole time. “Down, beast,” he said sternly. “Stay still, monster.”

  More dragons wandered out of the brush, attracted, no doubt, by the sound of his voice.

  Perhaps, Bronstein thought, they really could hear me through their shells these last few months. Whether true or not, he was glad he’d spoken to them all that while.

  “Down,” he bade the new dragons, and they, too, obeyed.

  As he scraped and scrubbed, Bronstein could see the dragon’s skin color emerging from the albumin slime. It was red, not black.

  Red like hearth fire, red like heart’s blood, red like revolution.

  Somehow, that was comforting.

  The mad monk had heard talk of dragons. Of course he’d often heard talk of dragons. But this time there was something different in the tenor of the conversations, and he was always alert to changes in gossip.

  Gossip is the beginning of history. Someone not alert to it could let history slide past them.

  This particular bit of dragon gossip had something to do with a red terror, which was odd, since the tsar’s dragons were black. But when his sources were pressed further—a kitchen maid, a boot boy, the man-boy who exercised the tsar’s dogs and slept with them as well—they could say nothing more than that. And the dog boy—whose vocabulary was interspersed with dog grunts and growls—sounded perfectly terrified when he spoke to Rasputin about it. Or rather, he tried to speak. He ended up howling like one of his charges instead.

  Red terror! Rasputin tried to imagine what they meant, his hands wrangling together. It could mean nothing or everything. It could have nothing to do with dragons at all and everything to do with assassination attempts. A palace was the perfect place for such plots. Like a dish of stew left on the stove too many days, there was a stink about it.

  But if there was a plot, he would know it. He would master it. He would use it for his own good.

  “Find me more about this red terror,” he whispered to the kitchen maid, a skinny little thing, with a crooked nose. “And we will talk of marriage.” That he was already married mattered not a bit. He w
ould find her a mate, someone who would lift her out of the kitchen, and she knew it.

  “Find me more about this red terror,” he told the boot boy, “and I shall make sure you rise to footman.” It was his little joke, that. The boy was not smart enough for the job he already had. But there were always ways to make the boy think he’d tried.

  He said nothing more to the dog’s keeper. As his old mother used to tell him: A spoken word is not a sparrow. Once it flies out, you can’t catch it. He knew the dog boy spoke in his sleep, his hands and feet scrabbling on the rushes the way his hounds did when they dreamed. Everybody listened in.

  The truth that peasants speak is not the same as the truth the powerful know. Having been one and become the other, Rasputin knew this better than most. He wrung his hands once more. “Find me more about this red terror,” he muttered to no one in particular.

  But even as he asked, he drew in upon himself, becoming moody, cautious, worried. Walking alone by the frozen River Neva, he tried to puzzle through all he’d heard. It was as if the world was sending him messages in code. He asked his secretary Simanovich for paper and wrote a letter to the tsar telling him of the signs and warning him, too.

  The words scratched out onto the page, but while they made perfect sense to Rasputin, schooled as he was in the meanings of magic, he knew he would need more for the tsar to act on than what was offered therein. So Rasputin did not send the letter. Not yet. Once he found out all about this red terror, he would personally hand the letter to the tsar and reap his reward.

  It was past time for his visit with the tsar’s son, and the boy was restless. He snapped at Rasputin, saying, “You are late. No one is late coming to me.”

  The monk made a tch with his tongue, as he would to a badly trained dog, and the boy immediately came to heel. “I was looking for a special treat, little tsar,” he said smoothly. Not that he had any such treat, nor could he afford something the boy did not already have. But it worked.

  “What? What?” Alexei asked, eager as always.

  “We are going to go down to see the dragons, and on the way, I have a very special tale to tell you about dragons,” Rasputin said.

  “Is it about the tsar’s dragons?” Alexei asked, slipping his hand in the monk’s.

  “It is about. . . .” Rasputin thought quickly, remembering the tales he’d heard from the old women in his native village. “About a dragon. But not your father’s.”

  “Oh.” The boy sounded disappointed. “I don’t wish to hear about Chinese dragons.”

  “But these are Russian dragons.”

  “There are no Russian dragons that aren’t my father’s,” Alexei said imperiously.

  “Not anymore,” Rasputin said, mysteriously.

  “Tell me, tell me,” Alexei begged, not a royal command but a boy’s plea.

  “As we walk along,” Rasputin said, knowing the walk would be good for the boy.

  The boy looked up expectantly yet silently, so Rasputin began the tale.

  “There once was a snake that lived a hundred years, and so turned into a dragon. This was in Russia, not China, so it turned into a giant dragon, not a small wyrm like we have now.”

  “My father’s dragons aren’t small!” Alexei said petulantly. “They are the tsar’s dragons, which means they are the biggest—”

  Rasputin smiled down at him. “Of course not,” he agreed, because disagreeing openly with royalty was never a good idea. “But compared to the Russian dragons of old? Tiny things.” He waited until the boy nodded in agreement before continuing. “After one hundred years a snake, this dragon was wild, as well. Untamable. He razed villages. Burnt whole provinces to ash.”

  “Was there no tsar to stop him?”

  “Of course there was! Your grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather was tsar,” Rasputin said, having no idea if it was true. “He rode out to slay the dragon.”

  Alexei made as if to speak, but Rasputin held his hand up to stop him. “I will never finish if you keep interrupting, my prince. The tsar rode out in his shining armor and, avoiding the flames, plunged his great sword deep into the beast’s chest.”

  The boy couldn’t help himself. He burst out, “He killed the dragon!”

  Rasputin smiled. “No. Because the dragon was not only large and fierce but clever, as well. He had taken out his heart and hidden it far away, where none could find it. Or so he thought.”

  “Did the tsar find the dragon’s heart? Did he save the land?”

  Rasputin laughed and scooped up the young prince— but gently. They neared the entrance to the barns. “Of course, he did.” And since they were at the barns now, added, “But that is a story for another day.”

  They went down to the barns, but the dragons were sleeping, or so the barn boys said. And even a tsar’s son—warned Rasputin—dare not wake them. They saw only the tops of the dragons’ sleeping heads. Alexei was more than satisfied.

  Rasputin was relieved.

  The tsarina was waiting for them impatiently, her ladies buzzing around her like bees around their queen. The monk and the boy were an hour past the doctor’s appointment, which had to be rescheduled for after the evening meal. The tsarina was not amused.

  “Insufferable. . . .” she began, tapping the gold watch pinned to the bib of her dress, but then she saw Alexei’s face. It was suffused with excitement, not its usual bleached complexion with fever spots on either cheek. She said more quietly, “My dear son, where have you and the good father been?”

  “To the dragons, Mama,” he said, adding quickly, “and I learned about my great-great so many times great grandfather, who saved the land from a great dragon. He was so heroic. I want to be like that.”

  She turned to Rasputin, “What nonsense have you been filling his head with?”

  “Heroism in a princeling is never nonsense, Majesty,” he answered solemnly. “And it gives him much to live up to, don’t you think?” He gazed down at the boy fondly, his hand familiarly on the child’s head.

  “And look, Mama,” Alexei said, holding something up to her in an unusually grimy hand. “A strand of hair from one dragon’s head. I should like it in a locket to wear beneath my shirt always, to remind me to be brave.”

  “Remind you. . . .” She looked at her child, who was already braver than she had ever had to be. She hoped he never had to have more courage than to face the doctors with their little probes. Or the sudden losses of blood that came with the terrible disease her ancestors had gifted him with. And the swollen limbs and bruises as large as summer plums.

  “Of course,” she said, careful not to shudder as she held out her hand for the dark hank of hair, before handing it quickly to one of her ladies. “Kita will have it set in a golden locket for you, a masculine locket. Yes?”

  Kita curtseyed and held out her hand for the disgusting piece of hair. She, poor thing, had no ability to control her shudder at the touch. The tsarina gave her a look that might have frozen a dragon in its tracks.

  Then the tsarina turned. “Such lateness will not happen again, Father Grigori,” she said to Rasputin. But her voice was warm enough to tell him he had been forgiven.

  He put his hand over his heart and bowed, gifting her with that wonderful smile, and a wink for Alexei.

  It was an unorthodox thing for a priest to do. But Alexei looked so happy with his whole adventure, the tsarina didn’t have the heart to scold further.

  But as the evening wore on, she thought more and more about her precious Alexei being brought down to the dragon pens. It really was the height of arrogance and irresponsibility for the monk to expose him to such beasts. For beasts they were, and useless beasts as well, now that they never seemed to find any Jews to kill. How could Rasputin—her beloved Rasputin—betray her like this?

  She didn’t know the answer to that, of course, but she knew who would.

  Nicky, my darling, Nicky.

  She would tell him of the monk’s overreach when he returned from the front. He would tell
her what they should do.

  Bronstein was exhausted. The dragons were needy, greedy things, big as cattle now but with the manners of kittens. Soon that last would change. He had to train them before then.

  And they were so endlessly hungry!

  He spent most of his days gathering food for them: scraps from the fishmongers, offal from the slaughterhouse, bones from the butcher. Even chickens, alive or newly dead. His excuses were varied: hounds to feed, dinner parties, food for the poor. A few of the butchers may have guessed at the truth, but it was too outlandish an idea to be believed. A Jew raising dragons? Now tell us about the German who hugged his children, or the Cossack who hated vodka. So what if it was the only answer that made sense? It still made no sense at all. So to stamp out any last doubts, Bronstein had to make some of that true so as not to start even more rumors. He made sure to be seen throwing parties and feeding the poor—but never so much that there wasn’t anything left over for his dragons. And once he was even seen running a pack of hounds—stolen of course, and fed to the dragons after—like some English lord a-hunting. It seemed endless, the subterfuge, the drudgery, the fear, though he knew it was not.

  The dragons honked at him when he returned and butted him with their bullet-shaped heads. After feeding them, he had to fix the fences they’d trampled or burned and collect the larger dragons who had wandered off. He had a few boys from the village who helped him, but it seemed that the only ones trustworthy enough to recruit were mostly useless when it came to the actual work.

  And there was so much work!

  Bronstein was not afraid of work. But this wasn’t his kind of work. Writing, editing, running a newspaper—he could do that for sixteen, eighteen hours a day. But this was peasant’s labor, all sweat and slop, so much heaving, hoisting, and hosing down . . . it was really too much!

  But help is on its way, he thought, taking out his watch and checking it. In fact, I have just enough time to clean myself up before meeting their train.