by Lyn Worthen
Tonight, the dragon and I sit on the boulders of a far-away sea. His wings are open wide, catching the salty breeze like the sail on a boat. His eyes sparkle with a thousand galaxies. Waves serenade the saffron red sky and break over my feet. My hands smell of rich spicy garam masala, mango chutney, and happiness.
“What would you like to talk about tonight?” I ask him.
“Everything.”
At his word the sky fills with all manner of wonderous things, places, and peoples and creatures I’ve never seen before. I want to know about all of them.
Return to Table of Contents
Jonathon (Jon) Mast has worked in comic shops, window factories, and pig farms. He has been an insurance salesman and a life skills coach, and is currently a pastor. His wife and four kids put up with his constant writing. You can find him at wantedonenewearth.wordpress.com
About this story, Jon says: “Every night I try to write for fun. One night I wrote, ‘Every dragon’s an introvert.’ I had no idea why, but the story spun out from there. I didn’t set out to write this tale… it simply arrived!”
The best stories are those that tell themselves, with the author as a scribe. This story, which is so full of other stories, felt like the perfect ending for this collection – and a reminder that there are dragons all around us, just waiting for us to tell their stories.
A Dragon Bigger than My Stories
Jonathon Mast
Dragons are introverts. Why else would they hide in caves? They hate small talk as much as I do.
But that’s why I love my dragon so much.
I’m up on the roof, looking over gray Londinium. Smokestacks raise their middle fingers toward the sky, belching out their rotten perfumes. The Gears of the city grind out their music over the constant babble of the crowds on the streets below. Tiny pinpricks of snow try to blot out the sound as they pelt my face. My fingers will freeze if I stay out here too much longer. The wind is scattering my long hair and turning my snot to ice. I’m probably not the prettiest girl in the city right now. Or ever.
But I don’t care. I have a dragon.
She told me her name once, but I can’t speak her language. Not really. I tried saying it out loud, but making my mouth say her name was like making a Gear out of snow. It just didn’t work. So she’s just my dragon, and I’m just her human.
There she is. She darts through the pillars of smoke, snatching up all the gulls she can.
I laugh.
After she gobbles up another half-dozen birds she arches into the marble sky and then down toward me. Her almost-white beak seems to curve into a smile as we make eye contact. Her magnificent pale-blue wings flutter as she sets down on the roof, her four taloned feet touching down on the rough slate. Her shoulder comes up just short of my shoulder, and even with all the muscle on her body, she seems as light as I am.
She comes and nuzzles into me. Are you hungry? she whispers into my mind. She doesn’t really use words, but I understand most of what she whispers fine. At least that bit about hunger.
No, I lie.
There’s a rumble deep in her throat. You need food.
I get enough. I glance back at the door that leads to the stairs, back down into the heat and the cram of bodies. I should get back.
I will take you to my home, she whispers. When I am large enough.
I smile and hug her head, patting her curved beak and looking into her golden eyes. I can’t wait.
She sends me a picture. A cave. No Gears. No people. No smoke. Plenty of food. And there we are, me and her. I give her everything she needs, and she gives me everything I need.
Feed me, she pleads.
You just ate!
Feed me. Her golden eyes bore into mine.
And I know what she means. She needs more than the meat of pigeons. I glance again at the door.
Maybe we can take a little time.
I speak out loud, stroking her pale-blue scales, feeling their warmth and their surprising softness. “Once upon a time a girl named Ash Anna was abandoned at an orphanage. But she had been left by mistake, for her parents were still alive and ruled in a faraway land. She told the orphanage mistress over and over again, but no one believed her. Or maybe they did. Because every child in the orphanage was a princess.” And I tell my dragon the whole story, from the grinding poverty and the hard whorl and how all the princesses learn how to make something of themselves, and how they eventually banded together to free the thirty princes captured by the troll.
And they live happily ever after.
I always tell her stories of heroes. Always. Because I wish I had a hero to rescue me. Well, I used to. Now I have my dragon, and that’s even better.
My dragon rumbles an almost-purr. I am full. She coils up on the roof, her long tail wrapping around her. I almost think I can see her grow. Good.
The stories feed her. And I am the best storyteller of all the grinding girls.
# # #
The dorms are hot, and the humidity clings to me. Three girls already pack into my bed. Ten opens one eye as I try to shove her over. “You wasn’t at supper.”
“I’m not hungry,” I answer.
“Who’s he?” She’s still only got the one eye open.
“He?”
“You’re gonna end up pregnant, you keep going out like that. You know the boys don’t marry us. Don’t matter what he says.” Ten spits out the last words.
“I’m not seeing a boy.” The thought disgusts me. I know some girls hope they can get out by finding some man, but life doesn’t really work that way. Besides, any boy who would look at me that way would probably be mad.
“You’re seeing a girl? That’ll get you ground out so fast!” Ten leers at me.
I hit her.
She giggles, waking the other two.
Of course the story is around the dorm twice before I can fall asleep, and by then everyone’s talking about how I sell girls to upper-class ladies and if anyone wants to get out of the dorms, come see me.
I can’t wait for my dragon to take me away.
# # #
The coal pours down the chute. “C’mon, girls!” cries Patty Rinkin, one of the only ones of us that merits a last name. She’s angry. She’s always angry when she’s hungry, and like the rest of us, she’s always hungry.
We all groan. It’s only the third load today, but the cold is making us stiff. It’s always cold here. Gotta keep the coal from lighting. We stuff what we can into our bags and trudge back to our tables over by the Gears to grind down the larger chunks into usable size.
I shout out over the constant deep rumble, “So Constance, she changes her mind. She lays down the sword. The sunset reflects off it. The Goblin King raises an eyebrow and his blade to strike.”
The girls around me gasp. The stories pass the time. And it’s good to know someone gets a happy ending, even if it’s just made up. Even if I just made it up now. I grab another chunk of coal twice the size of my head and put it against the spinning gears. Black dust fills the air. I cough before continuing.
“Constance smiles. ‘I’ll trade you,’ she says. The Goblin King chokes back a cry of rage. ‘No! You know a goblin can never resist a trade!’ And the girl, she just smiles at him. She finally figured it out. You can’t defeat a goblin with steel, but you can with your wit.”
The coal in my hand sparks. I cut off the story as I pull back. No fires here. That would be bad. Senny was in one of the fires. Now all she does is sweep the stairs over and over again.
I glance down at the coal, and then again.
And I swear.
A stone the color of the sky and the size of my thumbnail sits in the middle of the coal chunk.
Another dragon egg.
# # #
I manage to smuggle it back to the dorms by tucking it up in my mouth. Tastes about as good as you’d expect.
Ten grabs me before I can get up to the roof. “‘Ey! You goin’ walkin’ with the boy again?” She winks.
; “I’m visiting the House of Lords!” I mumble around the egg and trot off to take a seat in the crappery instead. It stinks, but hey, at least I’m alone here. I spit out the egg and spit some more to get the lurking taste of coal out of my gob. Nasty stuff.
It’s the same blue that my dragon’s egg was. The same smooth texture. The same size.
How many eggs do dragons lay? Well, considering that my dragon was the first dragon I’d ever even heard of outside a story, maybe no one knows.
Someone knocks on the door. “Be done in a gear’s turn!” I answer and start putting myself back together, slipping the egg back into my mouth.
Patty Rinkin’s waiting for me, her arms crossed. “Girls tell me you’ve been slipping out.”
I roll my eyes.
“Girls tell me you’ve been seeing someone.”
I roll my eyes again. I don’t want to talk; the egg’s in my mouth and would make me sound funny. Ten might not notice, but Patty would. Or she’d think I was drunk. That would make her even more angry.
“Girls tell me you ain’t been visited by Bloody Jane for a bit.”
I raise my eyebrow. Like any of them would know if I was pregnant! Or that anyone would ever want to have a baby with me. Or do what it takes to have a baby.
And that’s when I feel the egg heat up in my mouth.
Oh no. Patty’s telling stories. And the dragon in my gob’s feeding on them. It was probably eating all the stories I told in the grindery today, and it only needs a little more. Yep. There’s a seam forming in the stone when I run my tongue over it.
“Girls tell me lots of things, Manda. And I noticed, too, that you’re not eatin’ much. Maybe because you’ve got the morning heaves. Maybe you’re in a family way with no family. And you know the mistress don’t abide by us doin’ any such hanky-panky, does she?”
I spit out a dragon.
Patty screams.
I slap her.
She shuts her mouth. She looks down at the wrinkled blue form I caught in my hands. It’s tiny; barely a tadpole, really. I keep spitting. The stony remains of the egg fly from my mouth. I peer back into my hand. The thing’s wings are wrapped tight around its body so it looks like a long snake. Its eyes aren’t open.
Patty wrinkles her nose. “That ain’t the morning heaves.”
I laugh.
Her eyes snap up at me. “You get this from some gearboy?”
The little dragon in my hand shifts weakly. It needs food. I don’t really have a choice.
I answer, “Let’s go up to the roof. Let me tell you a story.”
# # #
My dragon is displeased that someone else is on her roof. She circles the distant pillars of smoke, refusing to come any nearer.
I understand.
Patty is pacing, stomping back and forth on the roof. Someone’s going to hear the noise and come up. And then more people will be here. Already there’s too many people.
Patty points up at my dragon. “So she’s been flying around up there for how long?”
“About a month. Probably since the girls started noticing I was gone.” I refuse to look at Patty. Instead, I hold the little dragon. It drank in the story. Now it roams the contours of my palm, sniffing between my fingers and looking up at me. I can hear it whispering, but it doesn’t have anything resembling language yet. It’s more like the grinding of a very small gear.
“How come no one noticed him?”
“Her. And how often do you look up?”
“Hm.” She frowns, stops pacing, crosses her arms, starts pacing again.
I don’t want her up here. The back of my head aches. This is my space. My place for me and my dragon. Today it’s not snowing, and there’s a few shafts of sunlight coming down through the clouds. The Gears are loud and tugging their way into my head. At least the crowds of the street seem quieter.
“How do you know it’s a her?”
I shrug. “I just know.”
“What are you doing with her?”
I look up at my dragon. She’s still circling over there, through the smoke, her wide, wide wings like a stab of sky that’s come down below the clouds. “I’m not doing anything with her. She’s her own dragon.” Why should I tell Patty my plans?
She frowns. “So this one’s mine then?” She gestures to the little guy now nestled in my palm and sleeping.
I pull back my hand, jarring the little one awake. “No! You can’t own a dragon!”
“I thought you said that one was your dragon!”
I press my lips together. My space. My dragons. And Patty’s invading all of it, clanging like a gear out of place and the wrong size besides. Gumming up all my thinking, all my hopes.
How can I have a happy ending if there’s another person there?
# # #
Patty and I sort of end it by just walking away. She goes back for supper. I stay on the roof. My dragon comes to me. She isn’t too happy to see the little one in my hand but greets me as always. Are you hungry?
No, I lie.
You need food.
You need stories. And with that I begin. “Once upon a time there was a girl so ugly that no man would ever look at her. But she had a secret. Because no one would look at her, she could do whatever she wanted. So she left the city one day and found a forest.”
My dragon snorts. My story!
I stop. What?
He’s eating it!
I look down in my palm. The little dragon is awake, its long tail lashing, looking up at me hungrily and clacking its tiny beak.
You can’t share?
Dragons don’t share food, she answers, lifting her head with a snort. And you are my human. Dragons don’t share humans.
What am I supposed to do?
Get that other one. The dirty one. She’s good enough for that. She stalks off to the other side of the roof.
I set the new dragon down on the slate. It paws around in a circle a few times and then looks up at me. “Wait here,” I tell it, and turn back to the door. I take a deep breath. I can send Patty and the dragon down to the yard, but so many of the girls go back there, if nothing else than for the crappery. They’d be found out so fast. The only place for them is here.
The only place is here.
I look down at the dragon again. All right. Fine. But only because of the dragon.
# # #
Patty stumbles through a bunch of stories. It’s clear she has no clue what she’s doing. She keeps going backwards and retelling things because she gets it wrong or forgets something or adds in random details. The stories are twisted, stunted, angry little things. Not the kinds of stories I like. It’s like she never listened to me when I told my stories at the grindery.
Ouch. That one hurts. All I am is my stories. I got nothing else. I don’t have looks or strength or money or friends or even a chest, really, but I can tell stories. That should be enough.
But if someone doesn’t listen to my stories, I’m nothing.
My dragon can tell I’m anxious, though, and she nuzzles into me. My stories are enough for her. And at the rate she’s growing, maybe just a few more days and she can fly me away to wherever this cave is that she remembers from before she was an egg.
How can you remember something from before you were an egg? I ask.
She blinks. Can’t you?
# # #
The Gears seem louder at the grindery today. Maybe my ears are already adjusting to the forest I’m looking forward to. I call out over the noise, “And Tristam stood before the Aeropterex. He drew his Gearblade, the metal lengthening as the machinery locked into place. ‘Return Dulcet to me!’ he cried.”
Ten screams next to me. I jump to my feet, ready to pull her back from the Gears. Did they snag one of her fingers? An entire hand?
But all she does is hold up a piece of coal.
No. Another dragon’s egg.
She peers at it, and the other girls gather around. “It’s so pretty!” one says. Patty hops down from her coal chut
e. “Get back to work! Back to work!” she hollers until she sees what Ten holds. Her eyes dart to me.
I shrug.
But it is no longer just a stone in her hand. Its nature can’t be hidden. It ate too much of my story. It shakes.
She drops it to her table.
Around us, the Gears continue to turn.
The blue stone cracks open and a tiny dragon emerges. It stumbles around the work station, trying to find its balance.
Half the girls scream and back away. The other half step closer and exclaim over how cute it is.
I imagine what my dragon would say. Not cute. Regal.
I see Patty sigh. She raises her eyebrows at me.
Oh, no. She wants me to explain. She wants me to tell them. I don’t want to. I can tell stories. But then they’ll pelt me with questions and they’ll pry into my space and maybe that’ll mean more people on the roof and my dragon won’t come to me while they’re there and I need my dragon
Stop.
You can do this, Manda. Just tell them the story and feed the baby dragon.
Fine.
And so I say, “Girls, this isn’t the first dragon that’s come from the coal. Let me tell you how I found my dragon.”
# # #
She’s really not happy. Neither am I. Patty on the roof was a grinding Gear. Now a whole cacophonous Machine sounds in the back of my head, at my temples, through all of me.
All the girls are on the roof.
Their prattle drowns out the Gears, the crowds below, everything. I can’t hear anything else.
My dragon circles the rising smoke again. And all the girls ask their questions. They’re mostly good questions. I still want them gone. I answer what I can.
Yesterday’s dragon snuggles up against Patty. He’s grown to be about the size of a cat, though a very awkward cat. Apparently Patty’s stories didn’t feed him as well as my stories nourish my dragon. I take no small pride in that. Maybe you are the stories you hear.
The new dragon rests in Ten’s palm. Since she found the egg, I guess it’s fair. And really, I only need one dragon, as she reminded me yesterday. Ten’s a better storyteller than Patty, too, but still not as good as me. She’s telling stories about tricksters. Those are good. Not as good as hero stories, though.