Wings of Change

by Lyn Worthen

  After the last pratfall, Mordived sat down hard on his haunches and shook his head like he’d consumed some of the knight’s fermented water.

  “Oh, dear,” the girl said. “It almost looks like he’s had too much to drink. And to think I was frightened of him.”

  “He doesn’t look all that fierce,” the knight said.

  “More like he’s just a baby,” the girl said.

  Mordived didn’t quite like that remark, but in the grand scheme of things it was a very small thing. The much bigger thing, in fact nearly the only thing that reached Mordived’s heart, was that he’d finally made someone laugh!

  “You wouldn’t slay a baby, would you?” the girl asked. “He’s kind of cute, now that I look at him, and slaying a baby and an odd one at that just wouldn’t do for such an esteemed knight as yourself.”

  The knight stared at Mordived, and Mordived stared back. Then he blinked and rolled over on his back. It was a risk, exposing his belly, and he wasn’t sure he could breathe fire upside down, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

  “You’re right,” the knight told the girl. He sheathed his sword. “Sir Dragon,” he said to Mordived. “We will meet again when you are much older and a more worthy opponent.”

  And you, Sir Knight, Mordived thought, when you have not consumed quite so much of your fermented water.

  Mordived stumbled to his feet and took to the air with unsteady beats of his wings. Ever the comedian, Mordived tucked one wing and did an unsteady half-dive back to the earth before he made a wobbly recovery.

  The girl’s laughter followed him as he turned and made his way toward his brother’s lair.

  # # #

  Mordived’s brother was asleep when Mordived landed in the entrance to the cave.

  Gilgamule came awake with a start and drew in a deep breath. He exhaled purple-tinged flames, and Mordived took to the air to avoid getting roasted, calling his brother’s name.

  The flames stopped abruptly. “Mordived? Is that really you?” his brother asked.

  Mordived landed again. “It’s me, your most unserious brother.”

  “What are you doing here? I almost roasted you!”

  “Give me a little credit,” Mordived said. “I make our father angrier than any other son he’d ever had. Don’t you think I learned how to avoid a little fire spat in my direction?”

  “True. But what are you doing here?”

  Mordived explained that he’d run away so that he could be an unserious dragon without having to worry about their father’s ire. “But brother, I never expected to discover a most serious threat to you,” Mordived said.

  His brother growled, a deep grumbling in his throat that sounded much like their father’s growls. “They’ve sent for the knight, have they? Well, let him come. I’ll defeat him as easily as I did the lesser knights back home.”

  Mordived thought it was a hollow boast, but he was still proud of his brother’s bravery.

  “You don’t have to,” Mordived said. “I’ve already taken care of it.”

  Gilgamule blinked. “You?” Then his eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”

  Mordived swallowed hard. “I made him think I was you. And then I made him laugh.”

  “You what?”

  “Don’t you see?” Mordived looked into his brother’s angry eyes. “There’s more than one way to rule the land. Father wants us to rule by scaring men. By killing knights and eating virgins. But virgins are actually very nice people, and up close, knights really aren’t all that scary. Or ferocious. They’re not exactly worthy food to fight with.”

  “Then how would you, my lowly, unserious brother, have us dragons rule the land?”

  This was the hard part. “Who says we have to rule?” Mordived asked. “We have our mountain, and we have plenty of pigs and goats and sheep to eat. I’m sure you didn’t eat all the cattle you slayed.”

  “True,” his brother admitted. “But if I don’t fight knights, who should I fight? What use is a dragon if not to fight?”

  “I hear bears are most ferocious, and they’re bigger than knights, only without the armor.”

  Gilgamule shook his scaly head. “I’m not sure about this, little brother. You might be an unserious dragon, but I have always been a serious dragon.”

  “You have a new land here,” Mordived said. “You can be something better.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A benevolent dragon.”

  Gilgamule looked at Mordived for a long minute. “Is that a joke?” he finally asked.

  Mordived shook his head. “I can be serious when I want to be. At least think about it?”

  His brother agreed to think on it overnight, but he had little hope that Mordived’s plan would work. “If men are not afraid of dragons,” Gilgamule said, “they’ll hunt us like they hunt all the other creatures in the forest. We’ll lose our kingdoms. Dragons can only exist with men if men are afraid of dragons.”

  Mordived could think of only one way to show his brother that perhaps dragons, even serious dragons, could learn to live side by side with men.

  # # #

  The next morning when Gilgamule came out of his cave, he was met with a most unexpected sight.

  Mordived was curled up on the ledge outside the cave, and resting between his front legs was the girl. Next to the girl, the knight’s helmet (without an accompanying skull) and sword were placed like a peace offering on the ground.

  The girl startled awake and wrapped an arm around Mordived’s neck when she saw Gilgamule, but at least she didn’t scream. Mordived blinked and yawned. “Good morning,” he said to his brother.

  “What is this?” Gilgamule rumbled.

  “Don’t frighten your guest,” Mordived said. “I had to work hard to convince her you wouldn’t eat her.”

  In fact, she’d accused Mordived of concocting an elaborate plan to provide his brother with a fresh new virgin for an early morning snack. Mordived had only been able to convince her by offering up his neck for the knight’s sword, which the girl had managed to steal from the knight, along with his helmet.

  “Call it a truce, if you like,” Mordived said.

  His brother sniffed. “I wouldn’t eat her,” he said. “Not anymore.”

  Mordived blinked at the girl. She shrugged. “Well, I had to get the sword somehow, didn’t I?” she said.

  “Oh.” For all that Mordived wanted to make people laugh, he was afraid he would never truly understand them.

  “I came to ask you to stop killing our cattle,” the girl said to Mordived’s brother. “We only sent for the knight because you wouldn’t stop killing the cattle. I only ran away because my father was threatening to marry me off so I wouldn’t be a sacrifice to you to get you to stop killing the cattle. If you stop killing the cattle, I can go home and no one will need to send for knights who’ll try to kill you.”

  This time it was Gilgamule’s turn to blink. “But that’s the way the world has always worked for dragons and men,” he said.

  “Why can’t we change it?” Mordived said. “If I can be an unserious dragon and make people laugh, why can’t you be a dragon who rules the land without fear?”

  “If I can’t make the people fear me, what do I do? I have no desire to be a comedian, Mordived, nor would I be any good at it.”

  The girl stepped forward until she was standing right in front of Gilgamule. “You can protect us,” she said. “From things other than you that want to kill our cattle, or from men who come from other kingdoms to take our land. That would be an honorable thing for a dragon to do.”

  “I would still get to fight?” Gilgamule asked.

  “When necessary,” the girl said. “Or you could just fly around a lot and look scary. I imagine both would work equally well.”

  Gilgamule sat back on his haunches. “I once asked you why you couldn’t settle for making people laugh while you ate them,” he said to Mordived. “I imagine this proposal is something like that, only for serio
us dragons.”

  “Serious dragons who have an open mind and a willingness to look not too unkindly on those of us of the unserious sort,” Mordived said.

  In the end, Gilgamule agreed to try it Mordived’s way, on a trial basis. The girl, who was no longer a virgin, took the proposal back to her people, who also agreed to give the new arrangement a try. When they provided Gilgamule with a pig, a goat, a sheep, and a new virgin sacrifice to seal the deal, the dragons sent virgin home.

  Along with the sheep.

  “No dragon likes eating wool,” Gilgamule said. “Even though they’d never admit it.”

  “I did,” Mordived said.

  “You’re not exactly a normal dragon.”

  Mordived thought about pointing out that his brother wasn’t exactly a normal dragon anymore either, but decided to keep the thought to himself. Gilgamule was well on his way to becoming an unserious dragon just like his younger brother. Best not to push it.

  Besides, he had plenty of time to teach Gilgamule proper pratfall techniques, although Mordived had doubts his brother would ever truly learn the wing-that-won’t-work gag. Only a most unserious dragon could master something like that.

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  David H. Hendrickson’s short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2018, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Heart's Kiss, Pulphouse, and numerous anthologies, including many issues of Fiction River. His short story Death in the Serengeti won the 2018 Derringer Award for Best Long Mystery Story. He has published six novels, including Offside and Cracking the Ice, which have been adopted for high school student required reading, and his story collection, Shimmers and Laughs: Eight Wildly Hilarious Tales, was released last year. Visit him online at www.hendricksonwriter.com

  About this story, Dave says: “Dragons are about as far away as possible from my writing wheelhouse. In fact, my story, A Pathetic Excuse for a Dragon (Fiction River), was the first dragon story I ever wrote. I wasn’t expecting a follow-up until Lyn asked me (twice) to submit to Wings of Change, and my brain finally kicked in with this story. I hope readers have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.”

  All I can say is that I could barely stop laughing long enough to type the acceptance letter for this one. It’s just good, old-fashioned, teenage fun – dragon-style – and I don’t regret pestering Dave for it one bit.

  Dragon Jet Propulsion

  David H. Hendrickson

  There once was a young dragon by the name of Cedric. By dragon standards, he was average in almost every way. His length, from his well-rounded snout to the tip of his thick gray tail, measured 17.2 feet, precisely the norm for a dragon halfway between infancy and adulthood. His leathery gray wings extended 14.7 feet from tip to tip, similarly the exact norm. He had the same white underbelly, gray eyes, and thirty-two teeth as almost all dragons. Even his intelligence scores hit the bulls-eye of average.

  In only one way was Cedric remarkable. When it came to flying, which he loved to do more than anything else, he was almost the fastest of his clan.

  Almost.

  Cedric beat his wings with a ferocity almost unsurpassed in the land.

  Almost.

  He would soar through the air, the sweet fragrances of trees and flowers filling his wide nostrils. He would lean into the turns, taking them more tightly than almost every other dragon. And he would ride the updrafts of the Northern Cliffs, letting them lift him almost to the peak of Mount Entadre itself, after which he would plummet down the its South side, his speed bending the trees below him with its force.

  A smile would almost form on his lips – almost! – until he reminded himself that smiling increased wind resistance, especially if his teeth were exposed, and would slow him down. So he only smiled on the inside.

  Every day he would practice, not really thinking of it as practice. Cedric was just doing what he loved, which was to fly. And fly as fast as he could.

  Only one thing robbed him of the joy he felt as the air rushed over him and he heard the clap of compressed air beneath the powerful beating of his wings. Cedric finished second in every race.

  Life could be worse, he told himself. He could always finish third or fourth or… last. Not everyone can finish first, he told himself. Not everyone can be the champion. What makes a competitor strive to finish first is because it’s hard, because it’s rare, and because not everyone can do it.

  Cedric told himself all these things and knew them to be true. Even so, he still felt the joy of flying, and especially the joy of racing, leak away every time he finished second among the young males of his clan. (The females were far faster and raced separately.)

  Cedric didn’t hate finishing second simply because he wasn’t first, wasn’t the champion. He hated finishing second because it was always second to Araknar, son of the leader of their clan, a powerful dragon known for his moments of cruelty to maintain his stature, a cruelty that Araknar seemed to have inherited. When Araknar defeated Cedric in a race – and this is what Cedric truly hated – Araknar taunted Cedric mercilessly.

  “Not bad for someone of your heritage,” Araknar would say, baring his sharp teeth in a sneer. Then with a patronizing pat on Cedric’s head, Araknar would add, “You did the best you could. Don’t be discouraged.”

  Of course, the message there was to be totally discouraged. Cedric’s best wasn’t good enough. He was second rate, at least compared to Araknar and his magnificence, so he shouldn’t bother trying so hard. It really wasn’t worth the effort.

  And when Cedric tried even harder, awakening before dawn every morning to practice the race course in the darkness of night, refusing to accept his fate as forever second best, Araknar grew even more cruel. As he neared the finish line, comfortably ahead, he would flip over on his back, exposing his white underbelly, stretch his wings out wide, and yawn. Winning was so easy.

  Lately, he’d turned to toying with Cedric, letting Cedric take the lead, the two of them far ahead of all the others, giving him the illusion of false hope. Araknar would even adopt fake looks of concern on his face and in his eyes for Cedric to see when he glanced back. All the while, Araknar was really just coasting, “drafting” off Cedric, letting Cedric break through the wind’s resistance for both of them before slingshotting past in the final turn in Green Valley leading to the finish line.

  Cedric hated that glimmer of hope, that feeling that maybe this one time he might win, that he really had a chance, only to have Araknar crush every last ember of that hope, and then smirk at the finish line, gloating with pompous superiority.

  “You didn’t really think you could win, did you?” Araknar said. “Sometimes, you are such a silly little dragon. Why would you ever think you could beat me?”

  It was a good question, and one for which Cedric had no answer. He had no hope of beating Araknar.

  Until one day Cedric stumbled onto a plan. It came to him quite accidentally, a few hours after one of his meals. Cedric thought it might just give him a chance. Maybe, just maybe, he’d wipe the smirk off Araknar’s face. If he failed, Cedric knew he’d be the laughingstock of the clan. In fact, even if he succeeded, he might be the laughingstock.

  But it would be worth it.

  And so, two hours before the biggest race of the season, Cedric put his plan in motion. By the time he set down at the starting line, the first pangs of doubt filled his mind even as pangs of another sort filled his body.

  What had he ever been thinking? But there was no backing out now. What was done, was done.

  He and the other nine contestants, including, of course, Araknar, took off at the designated signal. Cedric felt sluggish, but even so, by the time they turned to skim just above the waters of Dragon’s Bay heading for the Northern Cliffs, he and Araknar had separated themselves from the rest of the pack. Araknar had taken what was by then his usual position, immediately behind Cedric, drafting off him to both conserve energy as Cedric fought through the wind currents and also to taunt him yet again. Arakn
ar even broke into a dragon nursery rhyme about a poor dragon who could barely fly but was beloved anyway by his parents.

  This extra indignity made Cedric even angrier than usual, so much so that he almost unleashed his plan prematurely. But Cedric restrained himself and waited until they drew near to the Northern Cliffs. With the last of the blue waters of Dragon’s Bay zipping past below him and the rocky cliffs mere seconds away, Cedric banked up. The updrafts hit him and carried him upward, first at a modest angle, then steeper and steeper still until he was vertical, shooting up the cliff face toward the peak of Mount Entadre. Behind him Araknar also climbed, singing his mocking nursery song.

  It was time.

  Hours earlier, Cedric had feasted on a seemingly endless meal of beans. Red beans, black beans, kidney beans, and more. It was not a favorite food of dragons, and certainly not a favorite of Cedric’s, but its unique quality offered the promise of victory. Now, Cedric took a deep breath, and unleashed his secret weapon. A gaseous cloud shot out of his hind parts.

  Cedric shot upward.

  Behind him, Araknar cried out in dismay. But Cedric was just getting started. There was lots more where that came from. Again, he let loose. Again, he shot up the sides of the mountain with a speed he’d never before achieved.

  Dragon jet propulsion.

  From farther and farther behind, Araknar choked and gagged uncontrollably on Cedric’s exhaust.

  Cedric navigated the summit of Mount Entadre, then plummeted down the gradually sloped South side, not letting up on the gas as he raced over the treetops now only a blur beneath him. He fired his last salvos as he entered Green Valley though Araknar was nowhere to be seen, and took the final tight turn alone, streaking toward the finish line.

  Cedric crossed the line not only in first place but also in a record time for male dragons of his age. As the hundred or so adult dragons gathered in the Green Valley cheered, Cedric felt a great warmth wash over him. It might be the only race he ever won – Araknar could always adopt the same technique, though his vanity might prohibit it – but finishing first even just once was good enough.