by Lyn Worthen
Fioruna joins them. She seems now more thin than slender, more wasted than delicate. The black of her long bow is marred and chipped, a cheap stain over common wood. The bow string is broken. Her quiver is empty save for one arrow whose sallow yellow feathers reflect the jaundiced color of her face. That face. The eyes are too narrow, too gray. Her nose slants too sharply, cheekbones angle too high. The neck is too long, too white.
Finally comes Temaloak, his blue aura vanished. The darkness of the night swirls deeper around him. His creatures still cavort in that darkness, though from the look in his eyes, they are his creatures no more. His cloak hangs in tatters from his stooped frame. In a trembling hand, he holds a simple stick.
They stop before me, blank faces searching mine, as if I will give them an answer.
“Mordrag the Mighty is dead. The last of a thing has passed from our world.” It is I who speak, I who tell them what they have done. They look at each other, then cast down their eyes. A shadow falls on us. I turn from them and look up.
To my blurred eyes, a winged shape flickers across the night sky, beating its way to the heavens. Then it is gone, and I am not sure what I saw. Perhaps a star, now eclipsed by a cloud of the night. As I stare upwards, other stars disappear behind more clouds. And the night becomes darker still.
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Jodi L. Milner is a writer, Rubix Cube enthusiast, and educator. Her epic fantasy novel, Stonebearer’s Betrayal, was published in 2018, and her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies. When not writing, she can be found folding children and feeding the laundry, occasionally in that order. She can be found online at http://jodilmilnerauthor.wordpress.com.
About this story, Jodi says: “Saffron Dragon came about after challenging myself to push the boundaries of ‘different.’ A European dragon is the ‘standard’ dragon, so instead I explored the possibilities of using a transdimentional dream dragon. A medieval setting is expected, with all of its Arthurian lore and ironclad knights and princesses. But what if the story was set in the slums of modern day Bombay? How would that change things? Our heroine needed to be unique as well, so I robbed sight from her world and forced her to adapt.”
If you close your eyes, you may discover that you, too, have a Saffron Dragon, there to guide you in your time of need. If you truly believe, it may be so.
Saffron Dragon
Jodi L. Milner
The low whispering is always there, sneaking around in the back of my mind and twitching my ears when I try to sleep. Its deep resonance becomes the backdrop to sweat-stained restless evenings and the dark nothingness of night. When the dreams come, when the fabric between real and not real grows thin and pliant, that’s when the dragon shows himself to me.
His thin membranous wings shine with the finality of sunset. His hot smoky breath like the inside of the tandoor oven where Mama cooks chicken and naan. A tall regal neck topped with a long triangular head, both fringed in scales sparkling with scarlet and gold. Seeing him reminds me of the beauty of colors, something the world has robbed from me.
I remember the first night he showed himself to me. It was the first night after they unwound the yards of bandages from my face, the first night I cried myself to sleep because I knew with certainty that the fire had not spared my eyes. That night my dream grew from the picture of a lush pine forest in a magazine I’d rescued from a garbage pile. The sharp amber scent of the trees filled my nose and sharp needles brushed along my arms.
That night, for the first time, his whispers transformed into words. I knew in the same way I knew the sun gave warmth, that it was his bellowing hum following me through my days and singing me to sleep at night.
“Why do you cry, little one?” he asked with a voice that echoed in my bones.
I turned my back on him, unwilling to talk, unwilling to share the one place I could be alone. In sleep, I escaped the unending darkness of my daytime world. Even when the nightmares came with the memories of flame and burning skin, at least I could still see.
“Go away.” I sniffed and wiped the snot from my nose. “And I’m not little.” I turned away from the dragon in the dream pond and pushed back through the fragrant pines. Faster and faster I ran, needing to be alone, needing to feel alive. No matter how far I ran, the low hum of his voice followed. When I stopped for breath, the fern-rimmed pond lay at my feet. His single immense eye crinkled at the corners as if he were laughing to himself.
“You are little to me. I’ve seen worlds come and go. I’ve watched suns burn hot and falter and die and new suns replace them. Your life is little.” The eye blinked and within its depths I saw the birth of galaxies and worlds forming in their infinite starry cradles. “How many rotations are you? I dare say only fourteen, maybe less.”
I sat, legs crisscrossed on a mossy boulder and tried to catch my breath. He stared out from the pond, expecting an answer to his question - a question I didn’t understand.
“Well?” He raised a brow. “How old are you, girl? How many times have you traveled around the sun?” The great eye blinked, the white inner membrane flashed in and out.
“Sixteen next month.” I scooped up a handful of small smooth stones from the cold water at the pond’s edge and rolled them in my palm. They reminded me of small, dry chickpeas before they’d been cooked and the hours I’d spent shelling peas and peeling carrots at Mama’s food cart. She wouldn’t be teaching me now. I was as useless to her as a rotten fish.
“You are small for your age.” It wasn’t a question.
I threw a stone in the water and the large galaxy eye turned to thousands of eyes, all staring at me. “Why am I talking to you?” I turned and walked away. Once again, the dream put me back at the pond’s edge.
“You aren’t talking to me. You are wallowing in your own self pity, and I happened to be here craving a decent conversation. You’ve made poor company so far.”
I threw another stone at the pond’s surface. The image of the dragon’s eye broke once more and slowly reformed. “Why me? What would you want with someone like me?”
The eye blinked, slowly, as if he had time to wait years for an answer. “Because you can see me. There hasn’t been someone on your world with that talent in centuries. I’ve missed the conversation. Even if it’s with a petulant little girl like you.”
“Not little.” I spit the words, as if anger would make a difference. “And I have a right to be upset.”
He sighed, forming a smoke-filled ring that floated up and away from the surface of the water. “Pity.”
I watched the ring drift up and gently disperse through the green canopy before turning my attention back to the pond. He was gone. The ever-present hum that had filled the back of my mind since I was born, disappeared.
I awoke sweating and clawing at the thin blanket that had tangled itself around my legs. I expected to see the curtain hanging between my low bed and Mama and Papa’s, expected to see the dark sky framed in the broken skylight, expected to see. I waved my hands in front of my face, desperate for a hint of any movement. Panic built up in my chest like a shaken soda bottle. If the top opened, I would scream. I felt at my eyes, felt the swollen scars there, felt the pain. I clenched my fists tight, too old to cry out for Mama, but wanting her nonetheless.
I listened for the comforting hum, tried to find it among all the other night noise. It had always been there to comfort me when I was upset, to lull me back to sleep when I woke after a nightmare. He was gone. Instead, the drone of flies and the constant flow of traffic pressed through the cracks in the woven panels of the walls and throbbed against the corrugated tin of the roof.
The dream dragon’s absence left me empty and drifting like a plastic bag blowing high above the shanties. When I picked my way down the street next to Mama, children chanted and taunted. Each cruel shout tossed that bag higher and higher until I was lost to the wind and dust.
Mama begged me to eat, to talk to her, to try to dress on my own, but she too sounded lik
e wind. All she wanted was for me to fly away and never return. On the fifth night of my dream dragon’s absence, I caught heard her talking to Papa through the curtain when they thought I was asleep. I’d never make a bride. I’d always be a burden.
Their words filled me with an angry flame. I would burden them no longer. When their soft snores filled the shanty, I slid on a pair of broken sandals and felt the way out the door. Weightless as I was, I made no sound on the hard dirt floor. The cool damp of night quieted the town from the roar of the day. No rickshaw and their chiming bells, no deafening motorcycle roar cut through the sound of crickets and the creak of the huts shifting in the breeze.
My memories beckoned me to follow the path that led under the high stretching overpass where the flowering weeds sprung up in tufts. On nights like this, fireflies danced there. Young children crept out of their homes to watch. Older children found friends to kiss in the dark corners. I listened for the busy road. After having been there so many times, I was sure I could find it in the dark.
The twenty-minute walk stretched on longer and longer. I lost track of the sound of the road, the moan of the wind on lowly huts and broken homes. Where I should have heard the joyful laughter of children, I heard the dark whisperings of tired working men and woman hungry for sleep. I hadn’t been out alone since the accident. The razor wire sharp fear of being lost ate at my gut like worms. I hurried faster, hands outstretched, as if by some magic my feet would find the path to the shelter of the overpass on their own.
A hand grabbed mine. I jerked away.
“Come girl. This no place for you,” said a man’s voice, slurred and rough from whiskey and cigarettes.
“No. Not going.” I crossed my hands tightly around myself. If he wanted to grab them, I wouldn’t make it easy. No sir.
“How a blind girl get this far into this part of the shacks is beyond me. You lucky no one try take advantage of you.” The hand snaked up and gripped my elbow. “I take you some place safe, then find your home come morning.”
The kindness in his voice and the warm night air pushed my dragging feet to go along with him. We crossed into a space smelling like men come home from hard sweaty work, cigarette smoke, and cheap beer.
He guided me past murmuring talk, bumping me against hot bare arms until we reached the hard echo of a corner. “Lay down. Sleep here ‘til morn, then I’ll get you home. Alright?”
The blanket he dropped next to me was stiff with dirt and coarse with dog hair. And like a fool, I slept anyway.
The dream dragon loomed above me taller than the half-rotted spindly palms dotting the shanty town. When he roared his mouth stretched wide, showing two rows of gleaming sharp teeth. The sound filled my head, my chest, my feet, made them solid once more. The airiness of the past few weeks blew away leaving me no longer drifting.
Gone was the lush forest from before. Gone was the pond that sparkled in the moonlight. In this dream space great mounds of sand heaped and flowed as far as I could see. Above, an inky black sky dotted itself with billions of stars. There was no moon. The dragon curled up on a pile of shimmering white.
He looked down his golden nose and sniffed before laying his head down to make his eyes level with mine. “Foolish girl.”
I ran my toes through the silken grains, letting my feet sink in the warmth. “Why did you leave me alone?”
“I never left you. For those days you wallowed and moped, I watched on, hoping to see some sort of spark that you were worth saving. Your choice to leave, misguided though it was, showed me you still have that spark.” The dragon blinked and gazed up at the stars. “I hated doing it. I’ve been with you since you were born.”
The sand beckoned me to rest. I let myself sink into it. “You were testing me?”
“The only way to see what someone is made of is to let them walk alone for a while. You just happened to walk into a dangerous part of town. We must work on your judgement,” the dragon chided.
“Are you upset with me?”
“I should be. You’ve been my hope for a while now and you go wandering off and get lost.” He grunted and wiggled deeper into the warm sand. “The man who found you is kind. The other men he lives with are not. You must leave that place.”
“And go where? Like you said, I’m lost. If I try to walk home I might fall into a ditch. Get eaten by a crocodile. Then who will you talk to?”
“If you stay here these men will hurt you. They might kill you. I can see it in their hearts. They’ve done it before. Wake up.”
“Once I’m awake what am I to do? I can’t see, remember?
He pierced me with his gaze. “Do you trust me?”
“Not really.”
“You are going to have to.” He extended the hooked barb on the end his wing toward me. “Take hold. I will stay with you.”
I wrapped my hand around the barb. It pressed into my palm, thick as a broom handle. As I did, the sounds of the men’s shack returned, the smell of the filthy blanket, the damp coolness of the dirt floor beneath me. Bottles clinked as men spoke in quiet voices. The flick and click of a lighter was followed by fresh cigarette smoke.
The barb pulled, up and away from the men. The dragon’s hum filled my head and his thoughts flooded my mind. Don’t let go. They can’t see you while you are with me.
The cool air of almost morning greeted my face as we passed through the doorway. The sounds of the men faded into nothingness.
As we walked the quiet streets, the dragon’s hum summoned dreams I’d abandoned after the accident. Dreams of a future, of a career, of a family, of ever being happy again.
You can still have these dreams. I’ve kept them safe for you.
“How?” My toe snagged on the edge of a stone. I clung tighter to the dragon’s barb. “Without my sight I can’t go to school, can’t read from a book,” I hated the tears that began to flow. “I can’t even find my way.”
Do you believe you have to do this alone?
The question pressed hard against my spine. Papa insisted his children must find their own success, no one would do it for them. Not him, not anyone. I’d assumed for years it meant not getting help. Figuring things out on my own. I’d spent my childhood fighting to do everything on my own, without help, and had always been praised for it.
The dragon pushed my understanding, forced me to admit my own foolishness. “Why didn’t you help me understand this before?”
You weren’t ready.
The garbage-strewn lane turned onto a new path worn smooth underfoot by countless feet. The sickly-sweet scent of rotting fruit faded to that of clean dirt. Water flowed somewhere nearby.
“And why do you think I’m ready now?”
Because you tried. You wanted something, and you tried to get it, even when there was no chance of success.
“But it was such a small thing. All I wanted was to get away and go somewhere that made me happy.”
Yesterday you refused to put on your own shirt.
I remembered with shame how Mama had begged me to dress myself. “But that’s because it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going anywhere…” My thought trailed off. Yesterday there was no future, no reason to try, no point in living. When Mama and Papa talked of what they were going to do with me, they were worried. I didn’t want that. I never wanted to bring them the kind of anguish I heard in their voices. I was like a poorly set bone. Their words caused me to break again so I could heal properly.
And now you have desires. You want.
“Why is that important?”
He guided me down another lane, one where the walls were so close my heartbeat bounced back at me.
Simple. You can’t have what you don’t want.
His voice has grown quieter, the pauses longer between his replies. He wouldn’t say it, but the effort to keep his physical presence in my world cost him.
“You will be leaving me soon, won’t you?”
Yes. You are nearly home.
The air feels familiar here. I smelle
d the charcoal from Mama’s tandoor oven. I heard the lilt of her and Papa’s voices. Mama’s voice rasped. She’s been crying. The dragon’s barb slipped from my hand. In the back of my mind his soft hum began once more, so quiet I almost couldn’t make it out.
I lifted my hand and followed the familiar woven wall until I reached the doorway, where I stopped to listen.
Mama stopped talking, as if her words were cut from her mouth. Her arms wrapped around me, frantic, like a bird. She couldn’t stop touching my face, my hands, the edges of my collar. Papa sniffed and wiped his eyes and nose with the handkerchief he always keeps in his back pants pocket.
Her questions came one on top of another, tumbling from her like travelers exiting a train station. There wasn’t time to answer one before the next had pushed it out of the way.
“I’m okay. Really. Nothing happened to me. I had to go, but I’m back now.” My answers tumbled out just as fast, trying to soothe her.
She finally calmed and clung to me as if determined to show how much she wanted me there. We both stood there in silence until Papa gave a quiet cough.
“I’m sorry, Papa. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He set his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze as if to say all was forgiven.
I stroked Mama’s hair where she’s pressed herself into my chest. “Mama, I want to help you cook. Do you think you could still teach me?”
She nodded. Of course she would help. I’d been a fool thinking she’d refuse.
The days passed, and my hands turned capable under her guidance. I learned to kill and clean the chickens, to cut the vegetables, to stir and taste the thick curries, to peel and chop potatoes, and the hundred other skills necessary to work with Mama and prepare the foods she sold on the side of the road. The dragon hummed, content, painting the backdrop to my days, guiding my path, and filling my dreams with endless color.