The Dragon and the Witch

by K. T. Tomb

I heard her. The softness of her voice reminded me of the caressing words she’d used when she cooed me after my birth. My face was wet with tears as I glanced at her body still bound by the curse and encircled by flames. When I moved my eyes back to Tolbalth, I could see those lapping flames in the reflection of his yellow slanted eyes.

  “Why? Why did you do this?” I wanted to scream at him and use the dagger he’d given me to plummet it into his stomach. I could taste the anger on the tip of my blade.

  “I need to explain.” He took a step forward and I took a step back. I didn’t want him to touch me or try to make things right with his lies. I wanted him to give me an explanation, one that would allow me to forgive him, although I could not imagine what would be powerful enough to make me overlook what he’d done.

  “Explain from there,” I said.

  He stepped closer to me. A pain glowed so deep in his eyes that it almost hypnotized me. I didn’t move. Tolbalth had always been my strength and my comforter. He was the one who had held me at night when I cried out because of a nightmare and he was the one who had loved me from the day I was born. Or so I’d thought. I swallowed hard.

  My mother’s voice reached my ears in a quiet whisper. “You know what you have to do, Zadie. Kill him, so I can be free of this curse that stole you from me. Kill him before he takes you from me again.”

  Those words fell heavy on my heart. How would I free my mother if not to kill the dragon who had raised me, the man who had fathered me all my years? I ignored my mother while Tolbalth stepped up to me. His hands reached out and grabbed mine and when he closed his eyes, I saw what he saw. I was once again in the past, just hours before he’d cursed my mother.

  A clan of witches had stormed the cave where a female dragon and baby dragon were sleeping. The baby dragon curled up in his mother’s arms and as beautiful as that was, I saw my pregnant mother lead a group of witches into that cave on the other side of the mountain and kill the dragons while they slept.

  I felt my throat constrict, my mind awhirl with a devastation I’d never known before. I felt a new rage—an anger so intense that I wanted to kill every last witch that had harmed those peaceful dragons while they slept, even though the leader was my mother. And as they tied up the slain dragons and dragged them to the top of Crens Peak, I witnessed my mother double over in pain as she went into labor. With one hand wrapped around her stomach, she told her followers to proceed as she made her way to the very rock that I’d sat just a few minutes prior.

  The vision switched. Through Tolbalth’s eyes, I saw him enter the cave where he’d left his wife and son. I watched him place his long bony-clawed fingers into their blood and raise it to his nose. I saw the way his large body stumbled to the ground and how he sobbed relentlessly at the realization that his wife and child were dead.

  I wanted to run to him and tuck him in my arms the way he’d done for me so many times before. Who could be so ruthless and cruel—who would slay a child while being pregnant with their own? The vision continued.

  I watched Tolbalth take no prisoners that night. He slaughtered them all, one after another, enticed by rage and pain. I saw him stomp on the wooden bowls where the witches had planned to use the dragon’s blood and parts of their bodies for spells—powerful spells. I watched him cradle his slain family in his arms as he released a loud, echoing cry that carried for miles through the forest.

  My mother delivered me and my wails moved through the cave beneath Tolbalth. He heard me. He realized there was yet another witch that would pay for the destruction she’d caused. From my vision, I watched him jump from the top and land at the mouth of the cave where he prepared to destroy yet another.

  I knew the rest. I didn’t need to see any more. I pulled my hands from his, my sobs louder than I’d expected. He stepped back, his head hung low. My mother’s words chanted in my ears: Kill him, kill him, Zadie.

  Tolbalth cocked his head back, ready to do what he should have done eighteen years prior and destroy her, once and for all. But she was my mother and I remembered how much she’d loved me when she’d held me in her arms the night I was born. I saw it in her eyes—in the vision. I couldn’t let him harm her.

  I stepped between Tolbalth and my mother. My thoughts were spinning like a destructive tornado. Torn between two people—between a past that I had nothing to do with, I swallowed and sucked in a deep breath. “If you kill her, you’ll have to kill me first.” My voice shook with uncontrollable emotion. Confused, I stared into Tolbalth’s yellow slanted eyes. My heart ached. No more killing. I wanted it all to end.

  “I’ll never hurt you,” was all he could say.

  “Kill him, Zadie,” my mother said. “He took you from me. He stole you from my arms and locked me away. He’s not worthy to live.”

  I swung my head around and growled at my mother, “Shut up. I can’t think.” That outburst even shocked me. How could I stand by and watch the two people I loved destroy each other?

  “It’s the only way to break the spell, Zadie,” Mother whispered from behind me, still trapped in a ring of flames.

  My entire body was trembling. My eyes were a cascading waterfall of tears. “Do I have to kill you to free her? Can you break the spell with words?”

  Tolbalth shook his head. “I will never release her, Zadie. You saw what she did to my family. She deserves to die. She slaughtered my innocent child—my only son!”

  “Then I’d have to kill you to release my mother?” I asked, tears streaming down my face, my dagger in the grip of my hand at my side.

  He gave me one nod. “I’d rather die by your hand then ever harm you, my child.”

  There was no right answer. Piku, my best friend, lay at my feet, dead. My mother, a woman I’d never known, but who’d loved me just the same, was some kind of monster who had killed Tolbalth’s wife and child for their blood to use in spells. And Tolbalth had been my father, my strength. He’d taught me all I knew and all I had become with the love that he would have shown any child of his own.

  I glanced back at my mother, the smile on her lips and a cold nod encouraging me to kill the dragon in front of me. Then I glanced back to Tolbalth, the dragon who’d raised and loved me more than life itself.

  I whispered, “Have you ever hated me for what my mother did to you?”

  A tear slipped from his slanted eyes as he leaned closer to me so that his large reptilian head was level with mine. His eyes staring directly into my eyes. “I stole you out of anger, but I raised you out of love.”

  My mind raced with thoughts of Tolbalth’s child and wife and like a whirlwind, one line of the spell he’d cast on my mother replayed in my head.

  Blood for blood will right the score

  Blood for blood will right the score

  It repeated again and again. And then, I realized the only way to break the spell would be to kill Tolbalth or to die myself. I made up my mind that I was the blood that would even the score.

  Heartbroken, I turned to my mother and sobbed, “I’m sorry, Mother. I’m so sorry.” My eyes went back to Tolbalth and I whispered, “I could never kill you, Father. Never.” I brought the tip of the dagger into the air and whispered, “I love you,” before plummeting it into my own stomach.

  Chapter Sixteen

  There wasn’t as much pain as I thought there might be. But my legs grew weak and a warm sensation traveled from the protruding knife like a burn that spread out on all sides. My body fell back and Tolbalth caught me in his human arms, his face distraught with pain.

  Tears ran down his cheeks onto my arm. At first, I wondered if I’d actually stabbed myself the way I had intended. I could still see and hear everything in the cave. But as each ticking second passed, I could tell that life was slipping from my veins.

  “Father, I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t let you die. I couldn’t leave her cursed.” I swallowed. “I love you more than my own life.”

  “No! This is not how this was supposed to happen. I can’t lose you t
he way I lost my wife and son.” He searched my eyes. “Aren’t you the one opposed to death?”

  I could tell the further I slipped into darkness—into death—the weaker the spell on my mother became. Although I could not see her, I heard her sobs behind the once-raging flames of her tomb. The heat wasn’t as strong. The curse was being lifted, and all I could do was think about how I was leaving my father—leaving him to fend for himself.

  He caught my tears with his fingertips and I reached my hand to cup his face—to console him. “It’s okay, Father. You did what you had to. And I’m doing what I have to.” I struggled to speak. It was hard to swallow. There was no pain, just warmth that made its way through my body. I guess I knew once my tingling fingertips were numb, I’d drift off to the place where Piku might be waiting for me.

  Father pulled me into his chest and embraced me as he never had before. “You’re not going to die,” he choked out. With words I barely heard as I slipped further away from life, I knew my father asked my mother for help. And the weaker the flames encircling her became, the less she cared about the repercussions of stepping through them.

  I heard her scream and saw her patting out the flames that had engulfed her hair and body as she knelt next to me, taking my head in her hands. Large tears rolled down her face as she yanked the knife from my stomach and I felt a rush of wet stickiness soak the fabric of my shirt. But that only lasted for seconds as my mother cupped her hand over my wound. A gold glow filled the cavern and my parents both stared down at me while the distance that once separated us, due to death, was now closing the gap as I felt my energy come back to life.

  I wasn’t sure I understood the magnitude of what my mother was doing at that point until she leaned down and pressed her lips against my forehead. “I love you more than you’ll ever know,” she whispered in my ear. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Then her eyes moved to Tolbalth. “If I save my daughter, the spell will be reinvigorated and I’ll remain trapped. Is that right?”

  He nodded. “It’s an unbreakable spell without a spill of blood.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  The tingling in my fingertips and toes had subsided and I could see my mother and Tolbalth clearly as I regained my strength. My wound was healing. But my mother had thick blood dripping from the corner of her mouth to her chin. She coughed. Her eyes were full of emotional pain and when she spoke to Tolbalth, the sincerity in her voice slammed my heart.

  “I’m so sorry, dragon. Sorry about your wife and child. There’s no excuse for what I did. What we all did.” Tears slid down her face and mixed with the blood ready to drip from her chin. The glow still illuminated the cave. “You loved my daughter like your own. I know because she tried to give her life for you. She belongs with you and it’s my time to go.” She coughed again, this time a deeper, more severe cough.

  “No, Mother,” my shaky voice pleaded with her.

  She reached down and rubbed her hand over the side of my cheek while Tolbalth held my left hand cupped in his. Both of them kneeled while my head rested on my mother’s thigh. “Be brave, my daughter. I loved you the day you were born and I will love you for eternity. You’re beautiful and pure. It’s up to you to fight the evil of this world. It’s up to you, my beautiful daughter…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes rolled back as she fell to her left and landed on her side.

  I sat up, fully healed as my mother’s stomach had taken the wound I had inflicted on myself as her own. Her beautiful hair splayed out around her head and a small smile graced her lips. I waited for her to open her eyes and regain her strength.

  “Mother, don’t do this. Get up! Get up! I just met you. You can’t leave me!” I rested my head on her chest as I sobbed out for her to stay with me and let me love her the way I had always wanted to. But she was gone. I knew death. Even when Piku was shot, I knew he was gone.

  Tolbalth scooted closer to me and wrapped his hands around my shoulders. He rested his head against mine and for a moment, at least in my own world, the three of us were together. All of the evil my mother had done to Tolbalth’s family and the curse Tolbalth had placed on her no longer existed. For the longest time, I cried for my mother, for Piku and for Tolbalth’s wife and child. I absorbed the pain and love that we all shared in one form or another.

  Chapter Seventeen

  We buried my mother near Crens Peak in a small garden of beautiful white, red and yellow wildflowers. I hand-carved her headstone to read: Freed by love and then, the date of her death. Night had come and gone and as the wind blew and the sun shone down on us, I took a few moments to wish my mother a safe journey to her next life.

  My father stood at my side. His large hand wrapped around mine as we both laid her to rest. When I’d shifted to indicate I was finished, he leaned and whispered, “I have something to show you.”

  I glanced up at him—he’d remained a man over the past twelve hours while we’d dug my mother’s grave and cleaned up the cave. “What is it?”

  “It’s in the forest where we battled with the humans.”

  I shook my head. “Father, I can’t handle seeing those men slaughtered right now. Can you just clean up the mess and let me mourn the two deaths I have to deal with?”

  “No, I need you to come with me.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to argue with him. I took one last look at my mother’s headstone and turned to follow him out to the war zone that had started at the setting sun the night before. So much had happened in that time. I’d lost my best friend, Piku, and my mother in a matter of hours. I was drained and wanted to sleep the day away.

  As my father escorted me out to the forest, I thought of a hundred things I wanted to ask him. Like what his son’s name was and how old he had been before he died. And how long he’d been married to his wife. It was odd to think that Tolbalth had an entire life before me, but he did and someday, I hoped to find out more about them and about his life dreams before that night when he’d lost everything.

  “Father?”

  “Yes?” He walked next to me in a sleeveless shirt and loose-fitting pants. He carried a large bamboo stick that he used to assist him in walking, although he didn’t need any assistance. I think we were both just tired.

  “I met a man yesterday, a witch doctor. He told me his name was Chay.”

  “You were able to see his home toward the north between the trees?”

  “Yes.” I laughed. “Has it always been there?”

  Tolbalth nodded. “After his body was killed, his spirit decided to stay here and help me from time to time. He was like a father to me.”

  “Do you find it strange that the man you considered your father was a witch doctor and the man I consider my father is a dragon and yet, witches and dragons don’t usually get along?”

  He chuckled. “Sometimes, nothing makes sense. But that’s what makes this life to remarkable.”

  “How did Chay die?”

  My father thought for a moment and then glanced over at me. “He died the night my wife and son died. He’s the one who brought us to Golth and gave me the spell that I used on your…” He hesitated.

  “It’s okay, Father,” I said. “I want to know everything.”

  “For centuries, dragons were sought out for their blood and body parts, as it was said that a witch could find nothing more powerful than that of a dragon’s blood. Chay protected my family against the witches.”

  “So, what happened to him?”

  “He was killed by your mother and her clan on their way to kill me and my family. They figured if they took him out, then the protection around my family would no longer exist.”

  “And that’s what happened?”

  “Yes, but they didn’t anticipate the witch doctor sticking around in spirit form long enough to give me the spell I cast on your mother. He’s the one who filled my head with those words.”

  I grinned. “He did the same thing for me when I was saving the men in the forest. It was like these words fill
ed my head.”

  “I should hope so. He’s like your grandfather since he’s a father to me.”

  I smiled. “I like discovering new family.”

  We stopped at the entrance into the forest. “Ready?”

  “Not really. I can’t see what was done?”

  “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  “Of course, I do.”

  He reached out and I took his hand. We moved into the forest together and stopped at a clearing. “Where are all the bodies?”

  “Hey!” someone yelled. “Can you hear us? Let us out of here!”

  My head swung up to my father’s eyes. “Are those the hunters?”

  “Yep,” he said, smiling. “You’re hopeless, girl. Every hunter we took down, you turned around and saved. But then, I noticed them walking off into the distance as if in a daze and I realized that you found a way to fix the problem without killing anyone.”

  “You saw that?”

  Compassion filled his eyes. “But Piku was shot and I realized that death didn’t have to be the answer to everything. I saw a pain in your eyes I’d never seen before and as a parent, I never want to see that pain again.”

  I felt the smile tug at the corners of my lips.

  “I’m not sure how you became the woman that you are, Zadie, because your mother’s kind and my kind always found war as the answer. But, I admire and respect the woman you’ve grown up to be. So, do you think you can cast a spell on them so we can set them free?”

  I’d never felt so much love for the dragon who raised me. Tears filled my eyes and I ran to him, jumping in his arms and hugging him tightly. “Thank you! Thank you for believing in another way.”

  He kissed my cheek and placed me back on the ground. “I may be older than you and even wiser at times, but I realize I can learn a lot from you, the same way you can learn a lot from me. I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter.”

  “Father?”

  “Yes, Zadie,” he mumbled as he glanced around the forest area.