The dragon’s eyes narrowed, following the suit of armor as it clopped steadily along on horseback. Most likely, he was coming for her head. The dragon must have at last stolen one sheep too many, forcing the villagers to beseech some errant knight to end their woe. At least, the dragon assumed he was an errant knight, since his shield bore no coat-of-arms. Unaware of her presence above him, he drew closer; the dragon instinctively tightened her grip on the rocky mountain terrain, as her tail twitched back and forth.
She would need to get even closer if she was going to kill him. The dragon cautiously looked about. A narrow path snaked around the mountain and through the forest below her, but did not provide enough space to land. Ahead of the knight, on the face of a cliff, there was a ledge jutting out. The dragon couldn’t be sure that she would reach it in time, however.
It would have to be done from above. Silently, she spread her wings like two massive sails. It’s a good thing that knights wear those ridiculous helmets, the dragon thought. Otherwise, the knight might have noticed the ominous shadow just above him. Her wings ripping clouds apart like wool, the dragon launched herself even higher. The dead sheep still clutched in her claws bobbed its head as she rose. Once she was high enough above the pinprick knight, the dragon flapped in place, her chest heaving with pent-up adrenaline.
She waited, counting in time with the beating of her wings. One, two—there he was, just the flash of his armor. She bared her teeth, filling the back of her throat with fire. There was discomfort, agony, but only for a moment. The dragon felt heat bubbling under her eyelids, throbbing in her skull, aching for the exhilaration of release.
Then, she paused. Something had caught her eye, glinting in the knight’s silver lap. It was a gauntlet, so brilliant in luster that it gaudily clashed with the rest of his attire. The dragon willed her flames to recede into her stomach—a difficult feat—and allowed a wind current to lift her up. Biting into the icy clouds to soothe her throat, the dragon considered this development.
While it is true that dragons love to set knights aflame, there is absolutely nothing that tempts them more than treasure. Her two most basic instincts scratched and clawed at one another, as sunspots danced in her yellow eyes, transfixed on the golden object. The gauntlet had utterly pierced her with greed.
Suppose she let him go. Just for now. He was coming for her, after all. There was nothing else for a respectable knight to do this far from civilization. So, if she didn’t kill him here, the opportunity would present itself before the day was done. But, if she was too impatient, and gave into the fire itching up her neck, the gauntlet might be lost forever. The dragon shook her head, banishing that thought.
If she let him track her to her cave, she wouldn’t even need to bother with fire—all she would have to do was bite his head off. That would mean she’d lose the helmet, but she had plenty of those already, and his was nothing special.
The dragon licked her teeth. Her throat and temper had now cooled, and she was pleased with her plan. She dove in the direction of home, and as she flew, took care to bend pine trees back, leaving an array of splintered spikes in her wake. This would act as a trail for the knight; he wouldn’t know that dragons were the most elegant of fliers, and would never unintentionally make such a mess. She relished in the knight’s stupidity; dragons absolutely love being clever.
As she continued on her way, swooping down every now and again, the dragon mulled over the one possible hitch in her scheme: the girl, Beatrice.
By nature, dragons are solitary, so the fact that she shared her cave with a thirteen-year-old princess was very unusual indeed. But the dragon had grown accustomed to her presence over the few seasons they had spent together, and therefore made an exception.
She imagined that the knight’s death would upset Beatrice. The girl was awfully sensitive about such things, even insisting that the dragon kill any food before bringing it back home. Explaining that it would taste much better more recently killed had failed to make her budge.
There was also, she knew, the chance that the knight might try to rescue Beatrice. The dragon had heard of knights doing things like that. Beatrice didn’t want or need to be rescued, of course, but the dragon doubted that the knight would be deterred by this.
And there was always the risk that this man was both a knight and a thief (the two often did go hand-in-hand). The dragon certainly didn’t want him capturing any of her treasure, should he somehow beat her to her cave. All these factors now in her mind, the dragon did not feel very clever at all. She had much more to lose than to gain, she realized, for one of the few times in her life. Dragons were not accustomed to an excess of anything, not in a world of swordsmen and heroes. The knight would find his way without her help, she decided. She didn’t mind waiting.
The dragon tasted the air on her tongue, searching for the tang of horse and metal. Not far; perhaps it wouldn’t be such a very long wait at all.
…
Landing gracefully on three of her legs, the front left one still cupping dinner, the dragon stalked into her cave. It glittered with treasures long-forgotten by humankind; chalices, crowns, and coins of every size, make, and color sat in winking heaps, and mountains of garnet and diamond reached to the ceiling. There were even a few swords, too old and brittle to be useful, but with gems in their hilts that still gleamed.
In the center of all these riches was a girl, carefully examining the gems that she had sorted into neat piles. Her long brown hair hung in a hasty braid and her pink dress wore a faded hue of finery, but the straightness of her back made it perfectly clear that she was a princess. When the dragon entered, Beatrice broke her concentration with a grin.
“Clover!” she exclaimed, scrambling up. “I didn’t realize you would be back so soon!” The dragon allowed the girl to hug her scaly leg. She tapped Beatrice’s head with her snout, in what she hoped was a similar gesture.
“I thought you said you were going all the way to the old keep? You did, didn’t you? I’m trying to make a new gem-tapestry, but I can’t find any proper amber. They’re all either too big or too small. Did you bring back any?” Beatrice managed to ask all of this in a single breath.
“Just the sheep,” the dragon answered, as she unceremoniously dropped it behind a pile of coins. She hated having to speak; dragons never do, if they can help it. Their tongues and throats are sensitive and crisp—thanks to breathing fire—so words always sound strangled in their mouths.
“Oh.” Beatrice turned back towards the pile of emeralds she had gathered. “I need an amber for the eye,” she explained.
Briefly forgetting the knight, the dragon glanced at the green heap. “What is it?” she asked, cocking her head to the side and squinting.
Beatrice beamed. “It’s you!” she said, as if that were perfectly obvious.
The dragon snorted. “No, it’s not,” she replied, certain that her head was not that large, and her wings not that misshapen. She was just a bit insulted.
Beatrice sighed. “Well, it will be you—once I’m finished with it, and you melt it together.”
The dragon was only half paying attention as Beatrice revealed all that was to be included in the scene. The real dragon was looking about the cave for a place to hide Beatrice and anything else vulnerable to damage. Most of her treasure was so old it would rust before it would break. Perhaps she would need to store away the girl’s most recent tapestry, though. Beatrice seemed quite invested in it, as she was with nearly all of her little mosaic stories. That was something that the dragon could never understand. The gems were nice enough; what was the point of making them into something new? Nevertheless, she didn’t mind scratching them into clarity with her claws, since it pleased Beatrice so much. The first one (a king and a queen) had come out a bit wonky, but the dragon liked to think they were both getting better at it.
“Should we start with the left side now?” Beatrice asked. “I’ve already got plenty of lapis for the ocean, and that’s the biggest part, so—”
“Later,” said the dragon.
Beatrice wrinkled her nose. She made this expression whenever she was frustrated. It usually amused the dragon a great deal, but she had no time for it today. “Knight’s coming,” she added.
The girl froze, her eyes wide. “How did he find us?” Beatrice whispered. “Is it because of the sheep? Oh Clover, I’m so sorry, I know I shouldn’t have asked you to. It was just—I hadn’t had mutton in such a long time, and I thought that—”
“Not because of that,” the dragon interrupted. Of course, it certainly was. Deer, thanks to the proliferation of human hunters, were growing scarcer. And after Beatrice had enjoyed the first sheep so much, the dragon couldn’t resist returning to this food source, despite the villagers’ growing wrath—but the girl needn’t worry about that.
“He’s from that kingdom you were going to. Come to bring you back to the prince, I guess.” The dragon had contrived this lie during her flight, and thought that it was a rather shrewd one. It would prevent Beatrice from heaping blame upon herself—after all, she had been headed to that kingdom entirely against her will—while also ensuring that she would stay as far from this knight as possible.
Beatrice frowned. She was convinced that anyone who might have looked for her, from her fiancé’s or her own kingdom, already presumed she was dead. Besides, with her father gone, the marriage agreement was essentially void. Luckily, the dragon had prepared for this as well.
“I saw his crest,” she continued, hoping that her tone would not betray her. She had difficulty controlling it, having spoken so little before.
Beatrice stared at the mouth of the cave, as if the knight might come barging through at that very moment. Her thin fingers, so clever with a needle and thread, twisted themselves into knots. “You’re certain?” Her eyes were still large, but there was something other than fear in them now, something that the dragon did not like.
“Why has he only come now, Clover?”
The dragon growled with exasperation. “Don’t call me ‘Clover’.”
Beatrice spun around, her eyes now fiery with the reignition of their old argument; the dragon had succeeded in diverting her uncertainty.
“Well, I have to call you something. Why not ‘Dragon-Who-Burns-Down-Everything-She-Comes-Across’? Yes, that’s much more appropriate.”
The dragon snorted, though she really didn’t like that name at all. Dragons, of course, had no use for names, though humans, with their flocking together like ants, seemed to have an intense need for them. It had taken the dragon ages to remember Beatrice’s name, something the girl had been so unnecessarily irate about.
“Call me whatever you like,” the dragon huffed, “I just wish it wasn’t a stupid flower.” Beatrice opened her mouth to continue arguing, but the dragon cut her off. “The knight’s coming. Pick up your tapestry.” With that, the dragon strode to the front of the cave to wait, obscuring the waning sunlight with her massive shadow.
The girl continued to mumble something, as she bent down to gather the gemstones in her skirt. She then marched over to her nook in the cave wall, where she kept all of her personal possessions wrapped in a fur-lined cloak, and began to load herself down with the heavy golden jewelry that had been her dowry.
“Leave it,” the dragon said, watching the girl out of the corner of her eye. Beatrice looked up, confused. “What do you mean? I thought we were leaving.”
The dragon sniffed. “No.”
“But…you said that the knight was coming here. He’ll hurt you if we stay.”
“He won’t.”
The girl looked down and rubbed her thumb across her golden necklace. The dragon tried not to become distracted by its shininess.
“Clover…I don’t want you to kill him.”
If the dragon could have frowned, she would have. “He’d come back.”
Beatrice shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t. I know plenty of knights who said they’d killed something, when really, they just hadn’t found it. You could always tell, because they wouldn’t bring any sort of head or claw or trophy back. You see, they don’t really want to fight or kill anything; they just want to say they did—that’s the only bit that matters. And of course, everyone believes them, or says they do, because you couldn’t possibly accuse a knight of lying.”
“No,” said the dragon.
“No what? Please, I wish you’d be a bit more precise with your language, I can never—”
“No—I have to kill him.” The dragon fixed her yellow eyes into Beatrice’s brown ones. “Can’t risk it.”
The girl gaped at her with disbelief. “But…that isn’t fair. He doesn’t know any other way. All his life, he’s been told horrible things about dragons, about how they’re the devil’s spawn, and eat children, and—” The dragon glared at her. Beatrice sighed; it appeared that the dragon’s visage did more to annoy than to terrify her.
“Come now, I know that’s not true, but only because I’ve stayed with you for so long,” she said, looking up at the dragon imploringly.
Manipulatively, thought the dragon. Her plot had utterly backfired.
Sensing the dragon’s simmering frustration, Beatrice dropped her gaze. “I only say all this because I’m sure that this knight—whoever he is—wouldn’t do anything bad if he only knew better.” She bit her lip, again anxiously rubbing her fingers. “He thinks he’s doing the right thing, after all, by trying to rescue me…” The dragon could have laughed at this, had she not seen a realization dance across Beatrice’s suddenly exuberant face.
“Why don’t I talk to him? Yes, that’s perfect! I’ll explain that I’d like to stay with you, and that I don’t want to go back to his or any kingdom. And then, we wouldn’t ever have to worry about knights, or anyone else coming here, ever again!”
“No,” the dragon hissed, hoping that this would be the final word. It was utterly absurd; it wouldn’t have worked even if the knight had been who the dragon said he was.
Beatrice stamped her foot and let the emeralds gathered in her skirt rain down upon the floor. The dragon huffed, but Beatrice didn’t seem to notice.
“Why not?” she cried, much too passionately for the dragon’s taste. “Why can’t you trust me, for once?” She sniffled, just a bit, but maintained her composure. “I promise you, he will listen to me!”
The dragon felt sparks flickering in her throat; this charade had gone on long enough. “Listen to you? Like your family did? Like the thieves did? Why can’t you listen, Beatrice?! They don’t care what you think!”
Beatrice turned pale. The dragon wished she could suck her words back in. This was why she hated talking. It wasn’t like breathing fire. There were always consequences. Whether she was conscious of it or not, Beatrice’s fingers were again playing with her golden necklace, the one that had both saved her life and nearly killed her.
That had been the day she and the dragon had met. It had not been a good day. The dragon hadn’t meant to kill all of them. Only the bad ones. The trouble was, they had all looked bad.
They were all running away, the bandits and the royal family. She had been so disarmed, so frightened—they had all looked so much smaller from above. There had been so much brightness, and sound, that the dragon couldn’t tell who or what was making it and she was so confused and she had only wanted the little gold necklace that she had glimpsed in her flight.
The only thing she could see, her eyes desperately searching for that gilded light, was a girl, with a necklace and a knife on her throat. And that was wrong, the dragon knew, because things weren’t supposed to die when they were so small. And there had been a sword, a twin flash of silver, striking towards the dragon—
So, she had done the only thing she knew to do. She burnt it all to the ground. That was the first lesson a dragon learned, from within the warm confines of their egg. Dragon mothers laid their eggs in fire, a field of fire, so nothing, good or bad, would touch them.
She remembered Beatrice falling before her, after the thief had pushed her as he tried to run away. She remembered Beatrice’s hands—so terribly small—filled with weeds and grass and clover that she had torn from the ground, as she had crawled towards the one being untouched by the flames. She had stared like she did now, straight up at the dragon. She had lifted a green-filled hand.
The dragon had never received a gift before.
And just like that, she had flown away, the girl tucked in her claw like a pile of gold or armor. They flew farther and farther, until the death-screams were so distant that they could have been bird-song, and the fire could have been a sunset.
Beatrice’s hand rested on the dragon’s scaly snout, as she looked up at her with those same begging eyes from that day. Her other hand was still grasping the necklace, which had grown spotted with rust.
The dragon remembered that she was supposed to apologize. That was what she did whenever she said something wrong. It fixed things—usually. She lowered her horned head, and bumped it gently against the girl’s.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Beatrice looked up, so that she was nose-to-nose with the dragon. She smiled, but it seemed to be difficult to do. She raised a hand, and gently patted the dragon’s snout. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she looked sad and faraway.
“You know how grateful I am that you were there that day. The bandits would have killed me if you hadn’t been. And you know I’m so much happier now, with you. I get to do things, and see things, and…I don’t have to be wrong or worry about being wrong.” The dragon knew these words were good ones, but she still felt her spine tense.
“I worry, sometimes, though,” Beatrice whispered. “I try not to, I really do, but I think about that day…quite a lot. And sometimes I worry that if I remember it too clearly…that it would hurt too much to love you, Clover.”
The dragon’s stomach turned cold. It felt as if every flame inside of her, every angry or active feeling, was gone.
“But that doesn’t mean you’re bad—you’ve never been bad. And not all people are bad either. But sometimes, they’re afraid, or don’t understand, or are confused, just like you were. And if they aren’t, I have to believe they can be good.”
Beatrice pressed her palm against the dragon’s snout, harder than before. “Please. Just let me try to reason with him. It doesn’t have to be like that day. I don’t want it to be like that day…”
The dragon blinked her double eyelids. “What if he won’t listen?”
Beatrice said nothing, but continued to stare. Then, in a voice as firm and absolute as the dragon’s, she said “I need to try.”
The dragon could tell, from the way Beatrice’s shoulders and brow were set, that the best course of action had changed. If she hid Beatrice away—the safest option, most logical option—then Beatrice would forever assume that she would have been right, that the knight would have been good, that the dragon had murdered some innocent, misguided man. And this time, the dragon feared, the girl would not forgive her.
But, if the dragon let her speak to him, the truth would be right before her eyes, once and for all, when the knight roughly pushed the girl aside, his cruel sword raised, trained upon a pair of large yellow eyes. Because Beatrice was wrong. He wasn’t afraid; he wasn’t confused. He understood exactly what he was doing. He was being a hero, just as cruel and bloodthirsty as any dragon. The only difference was, a dragon did not claim their evil was noble.
The dragon would then be justified in decapitating him. And more than that, Beatrice would never want to even think of humans again.
There was still a risk, yes, but the dragon’s priorities had shifted. She knew what her decision had to be, and she made it, carefully watching Beatrice from that moment on.
She believed the dragon without a single doubt. For not the first time, the dragon felt guilty for trusting her own deceitful nature. But she had little else to guide her. After all, dragons did not love, for the same reason they did not have names; it was a luxury they could not afford. Maybe they did love, before humans invented swords and crossbows and catapults. But the dragon guessed that she was the first one to have a name, and the first one to love, in a long, long time. Perhaps that was why it hurt so much.
…
The mountain air, the dragon noted with a sniff, was crisper than usual, as the sun descended into the horizon. She sat ready to pounce at any moment, invisible in the pine forest just above her cave. Beatrice was just close enough that the dragon could see and hear her; she was not close enough that the knight might glimpse the dragon’s horde when he and Beatrice spoke. The dragon sighed, kneading the earth impatiently, while Beatrice’s fingers ran up and down the gold embroidery of her dress in a steady rhythm.
One. Two—there he was.
The dragon could smell the sweat and metal and horse before she saw the approaching figure. Beatrice would know he was there in a few moments—her senses were not so keen.
The gauntlet was still gleaming gorgeously, even in the waning light of dusk. Perhaps it was even more beautiful. The dragon couldn’t resist giving the southern wind a quick sniff. Even though she couldn’t let the gauntlet matter to her anymore, her instincts briefly seized control of her senses.
Strange—she couldn’t smell gold. Even stranger, she wasn’t very bothered by that. Her attention was entirely fixed upon the knight’s horse, which had halted in front of the girl.
“Hello,” said Beatrice. This was followed by an awkward pause, as she waited for the knight to return her greeting. He struggled to lift the old and rusted visor of his helmet.
When he finally managed to do so, the dragon realized that this couldn’t be a knight. The freckled, sweat-soaked face under the helmet was that of a boy, one who could not have been all that much older than Beatrice. He looked just as curious and confused as the dragon, giving Beatrice a polite smile, and replying, “Hello. Um—what are you doing here?”
Beatrice swallowed. The dragon had been curious as to how Beatrice would explain the presence of a well-dressed girl, alone in the dangerous and desolate wilderness. She wondered just how much of the truth Beatrice was planning to reveal—how much she wanted to reveal. How much she was happy to pretend had or hadn’t happened. Try as she might, the dragon was unable to shake that thought away.
“I’m traveling,” Beatrice said, “with my family.”
Well—that had once been true. It was a good lie. The dragon, however, knew the trouble with lying—especially for one as unfamiliar with deceit as Beatrice—was not getting tangled in your own web. Her tail twitched back and forth anxiously, and the dragon silently scolded it, willing it to be still.
“Well, it isn’t safe here,” the boy said as he shifted in his saddle, clearly unused to the weight of his armor. “There’s a vicious dragon not far from here. You need to let your family know.”
“Oh. No, I—I know about the dragon,” Beatrice said. She continued before the shocked boy could interrupt. “And she really isn’t anything to be afraid of. At least, she hasn’t bothered me or my family.”
The biggest lie of all, the dragon thought sardonically. Beatrice cleared her throat, carefully moving towards her main argument. “I imagine that she’d be happy to leave any other humans be…so long as they leave her be, of course.”
The boy blinked, surprise filling his face. Then, he sighed. “I wish that was the case. But nearly every day that dragon terrorizes my village—home to no one but farmers and simple craftsmen. The beast is so large, that when it flies, it nearly blots out the sun. Then, before we know it, it’s stolen away with another of our sheep.”
“But that’s—that isn’t her fault.” The boy looked at Beatrice with another quizzical expression. “What I mean to say is, the dragon is only looking for food. And there simply isn’t enough in the forest. If there were fewer hunters, she would make do with deer, I’m sure,” she said pointedly.
The boy frowned. “We aren’t the ones doing that; that’s the noblemen.”
“Well…it’s not as if she takes all of your sheep. She leaves you with plenty.”
“One sheep might be one meal for a dragon, but for us, it’s ten meals lost. And with every lost sheep, we lose every skein of wool it could have given us. That means that children will be without warm clothes for the winter, that there will be nothing to sell to the tradesmen in the spring.”
Beatrice scoffed. “One sheep can’t possibly be worth all of that.”
The boy looked down at Beatrice’s dress, his brow furrowed. “Maybe you’d think that—if you have so much wool you can waste it on things like…like little gold flowers.” He then gasped, shocked at his own disrespect. The dragon blew smoke from her nostrils—she did not care for the tone this false knight had adopted.
To her surprise, Beatrice did not respond in kind. Instead, she looked up at the boy on the skinny horse, and said, “I’m sorry. That was wrong of me.” There was no insincerity in her voice—but there was a great deal of guilt. The dragon’s eyes narrowed.
The boy still gaped. He had been terrified of the words he had spoken, but he seemed even more frightened of the response they had elicited. “No, no, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that…that was no way to speak to a lady.”
Beatrice laughed, and the boy grinned gratefully. “I’m no lady,” Beatrice told him, without mentioning that she was something even more powerful than that. The awkwardness settled, she returned to her goal.
“But still, you must admit that the dragon is only looking for food. She hasn’t done anything to harm you.”
The knight admitted that that was true. “But,” he countered, “you can never be certain of what a dragon will do.”
“Well, if that’s true, then why have you come here all by yourself?”
“I had to.”
The dragon could not help but snort; the self-sacrificing goodness in his answer was clearly anything but. He had to go on a noble quest, had to bring glory, and honor, and all the riches guarded in her cave back to his village hovel. The dragon was pleased that, judging by her delayed response, Beatrice was just as skeptical.
“But…if you think the dragon to be so fearsome, you must know that you don’t stand a chance,” she whispered fearfully.
The boy, however, did not seem afraid; instead, he gave Beatrice a knowing smile, and motioned for her to come closer. The dragon shuffled forwards as well, as far as she dared.
“Because,” he whispered, “I was chosen.” He pointed to his golden gauntlet. “This was given to me by a powerful sorcerer. It may only be made of copper, but it’s been enchanted, with paint mixed with dragon’s blood. Any blade that I wield with this hand will always strike true.”
She couldn’t believe it. Magic blood—the dragon considered that to be the most ridiculous of all the falsehoods humans told about her kind. But it was still a favorite of both storytellers and conmen. The dragon wasn’t sure how it kept popping up, since it was simply and completely illogical. If she had had “magic blood,” she certainly wouldn’t be crouching in a desolate cave, or worrying herself about humans at all.
It was a pity that the gauntlet was a fake. She didn’t wallow in the disappointment for very long, though; dragons were not ones to mourn. She was surprised, however, that she felt sorry not just for herself, but for the foolish boy as well—they had both been taken in by a false glimmer.
Beatrice seemed unsure of whether or not to believe the boy, as she anxiously shifted her weight back and forth. The dragon guessed that she had heard all those fantastical stories as well, and might even take them for the truth.
“Perhaps this means,” Beatrice said at last, “if you were especially chosen…that this is a task only you could complete…gauntlet or no.”
The boy furrowed his pimpled brow. “Yes…I suppose. That’s what the sorcerer said, at least.”
Beatrice pressed on. “And if only you can do it, it must be a very difficult task.”
“Well, yes.”
The dragon realized that Beatrice had led the boy to exactly the conclusion she had wanted, when she straightened her back with an undisguised pride. “I can’t think of anything more difficult than questioning the truths you’ve been taught. You have been gifted a very powerful weapon—perhaps too powerful. In possession of such a thing, would it not become a truly noblesoul to restrain their own might? Perhaps this sorcerer gave you this power—this godlike power—so that you would realize that there is a greater power still.”
“What power?” the boy asked, his eyes hungry.
“Mercy.”
The dragon couldn’t help but be impressed, and a little envious. While words felt like ash coming from her own mouth, they flowed from Beatrice’s like honey. That subtle power was one the dragon could neither wield nor understand. But she was certain that Beatrice had now succeeded.
After staring blankly for a moment, the boy broke into a smile. He shook his head, laughing. “Mercy?” he asked. “When has a dragon ever shown mercy?”
Beatrice seemed to crumple. “But—”
“Yes, I agree, we ought to show mercy to our fellow man…but a dragon…” He paused, and grew serious. “A dragon is beyond mercy, because it is beyond redemption—beyond reason or hope. They, well…they’re monsters,” he said plainly. “Surely you know that?”
“That isn’t true,” Beatrice said softly, but without much conviction. Because he was right, the dragon knew; no member of her kind had ever displayed mercy. Even when she had saved Beatrice, it was really only because of a handful of grass and clover. She wouldn’t have done it otherwise. She would have let her die, the dragon realized with a sinking feeling.
Though it was clear that the boy would not be swayed, Beatrice still pressed on. “No creature is born evil; no one is—”
The boy cut her off with a sigh. “Then tell me—how can a creature breathe fire, and be anything but evil?”
Her tail flicked, as the dragon waited for Beatrice’s retort. But she waited in vain.
“Now,” said the boy, “you had better get back to your family.” He had once again donned his knightly persona, and removed all interest in discussion or debate.
“But before you go, madame,” he said (rather pompously), “I would greatly appreciate it if you could tell me of anything unusual you might have seen in your travels through these mountains.” He used his unclad hand to wipe sweat from his brow in a grand gesture. “I’ve been tracking the beast’s flight through the trees, but I’m afraid the path’s gone cold.”
Of course he fell for the trap, the dragon thought bitterly. He truly was hopeless—it was almost cruel, for an entire village to hang their hopes upon his unprepared shoulders—or for them to be forced to depend on a half-grown boy with a copper gauntlet in the first place.
“Yes. I—I think I’ve seen her,” Beatrice replied. Both the boy and the dragon stiffened with surprise. “There was a shape, at that mountain over there.” Beatrice’s finger was trained upon a cliff that must have been miles to the west of the dragon’s keep, a place that the dragon had never even bothered visiting before, since it held nothing but the scent of rocks, dirt, and trees. The girl had all but guaranteed the boy would never meet the dragon. The prospect of battle vanished into the air.
Staring at the horizon, as if he could see the invisible tracks left by the dragon’s flight, the boy nodded. “Yes—that would be the sort of place a dragon would go.” He flipped his visor back down, and said curtly, “Many thanks,” before turning his horse around and continuing on his way. Soon, the incessant clop of hooves might have just been the wind.
Beatrice stood still, watching. After it was clear that the boy was no longer in earshot, she returned to the cave. Needlessly, she announced, “It’s all right; you can come out.”
The dragon waited a few beats, just to be certain, then lighted into the air. She landed elegantly at the mouth of the cave and stood before the girl.
“Did you hear everything?” Beatrice asked.
“Yes.” The dragon saw no reason not to admit to this.
Beatrice closed her eyes, her head down. When she spoke, it was with a hollow voice. “You lied to me. You said that he was coming for me.”
The dragon pawed the ground. She wished that Beatrice was angry—anger was something that she could understand. Instead, she only sounded sad. Regretful. It was too much to bear.
The dragon stalked past her. “I didn’t realize,” she spit, “that you wanted to leave.” The words stung her tongue and hung like toxins in the air, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want Beatrice to see what she had done. She didn’t want her to see the power she had given her, the damage that the dragon let her cause. She only wished that she was really angry at Beatrice, for not defending her to the boy, for wanting to leave the monster that had destroyed her life. She tried with all her might, but failed.
“Leave? Why would you think that?” Beatrice leapt up and intercepted the dragon as she tried to busy herself with sorting gemstones.
“If I wanted to leave, I would,” she said firmly. “And I already told you, I don’t want to go back—I could never go back…” Beatrice bit into her lip.
“I’m only upset. If I had known who he really was, I might have been able to help him—I wasn’t prepared for…” She sighed. “I don’t understand why you lied to me, Clover.”
The dragon turned to her briefly, before huffing and turning away. “Dragon’s lie.”
Beatrice glared at her. “Why did you lie?” she repeated fiercely.
Licking her tongue over her teeth, the dragon tried to ignore the girl; that, however, also proved too difficult. Beatrice refused to look away.
“I didn’t want you to go near him,” the dragon said, surprising herself with the truth. “I didn’t want him to save you.”
“Save me from what?”
“Me.”
Beatrice stared at the dragon open-mouthed. The dragon turned back to her treasure, to the cold, certain safety of gold. That was the reason that dragons loved it so very much: it was the only beautiful thing that would not perish with their breath.
“There’s nothing to rescue me from…” Beatrice reassured her. Her words hung unanswered in the air; the dragon was too ashamed to reply. Instead, she pretended to be deeply concerned with separating a ruby from a garnet. Beatrice sat beside her, without breaking the silence, and began running her finger along the golden petals of her dress.
“We can’t have mutton anymore,” Beatrice said at last.
“Obviously.”
Beatrice pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead and her lips together, thinking.
“I wish I had known…I wouldn’t have asked you for the sheep.
“He was right about me—I didn’t know how much the sheep meant to them. I had so much wool I could waste it on tapestries,” she said with a smile. “But he was wrong about you.” Beatrice rested her chin on her palm and glanced up at the dragon. “You aren’t evil. You wouldn’t have even taken those sheep if I hadn’t asked you to…but the boy wasn’t evil either.
“He doesn’t deserve to die. You don’t think he will, do you?” she asked the dragon anxiously. “I tried to send him somewhere without any dangerous creatures. You don’t think he’ll—”
“I won’t let him die,” the dragon assured her. She would keep an eye on him. In a few weeks, she could guide him back home with another false trail; he would likely have given up by then. Even with her back turned, the dragon could feel Beatrice’s smile.
“Thank you, Clover.” She leaned against the dragon’s flank with a sigh. “He was wrong about fire too, you know. And I wish I had told him the truth about it, even if he wouldn’t have understood.”
The dragon shrugged. “He was right. Fire destroys.” What she exhaled was death—mindless death at that. Judgement that didn’t discriminate between good and bad.
Beatrice rolled something sparkling in her palm. “Yes. I suppose it does. But…well, when I think of fire, I don’t just think of that. I…I do, but…”
The dragon realized, upon catching a glint of gold in the corner of her eye, that the object Beatrice was mulling over was the necklace with her family’s crest upon it. “I also think about how warm fire is, and how it’s what cooks our food. And I think about our tapestries—how we use the fire to melt them together. And I think about how it saved me.” Beatrice’s voice was lower now, but still perfectly clear. “Not just from the bandits. From everything.”
Her thumb paused on her family name, making it disappear. “I hated everything,” she whispered, as if she were still afraid to even think them. “I hated the dresses, and the manners, and the silence and the cold. It was all I’d ever known, but I still hated it. I hated the man who taught me the lute, and how he would touch my waist when he didn’t need to. I hated riding a horse with my legs over the side, so I couldn’t go as fast as the boys. And I hated how afraid I was—every day. And I hated my father.” A tear rolled down her cheek, and landed on the necklace, the one that the king had measured her worth by.
The dragon remembered hearing him order his men to protect the dowry, but not his daughter, after the thieves had arrived, but before the fire had. Beatrice dried the golden crest with her sleeve, and the dragon realized that she could never know how painful it was to be powerless. How awful it was to be just another treasure.
Beatrice stared ahead, at something long gone, that the dragon was glad she could not see. “I hated that I couldn’t hate. And I hate—I hate it so much—that there’s still so much hate inside of me” she said. Her voice was thick with tears, and the words came out as roughly as the dragon’s. “They’re the ones that put it there—all that awful hate—and now they’re gone and I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want it anymore…I don’t want them here anymore!”
She let out a heavy breath, and the dragon wondered if Beatrice was imagining flames springing from her mouth, burning everything to the ground that refused to stay ash. The dragon wished she could tell her that that wouldn’t work; everything she had ever burned buried itself into her scales. Someday, perhaps, she would be so heavy that she could not fly. But Beatrice was different—and she wouldn’t, she would never see her chained to the ground. Silently, the dragon lumbered towards a large pile of gemstones.
Beatrice lifted her head. Wet tracks marked her face, but her eyes were now dry. “Clover, what are you doing?” The dragon continued to search, her eyes darting quickly about for something. Something small, but so, so important—there.
Gingerly, the dragon batted the tiny jewel from the pile, and pushed it in front of Beatrice. It was a tiny amber sphere, precisely the right size and shape for her tapestry. Beatrice knelt down beside it, and placed it in her palm.
The dragon considered again the image of herself that Beatrice had made, that she hadn’t had the heart to dismantle for its own safety. It didn’t look so bad. But maybe that was just thanks to the setting sun, which refracted through the emeralds in a hundred different shades of green. The dragon thought that it would look better when it was melted down.
Beatrice let the amber roll in her palm, as it too shown with light. Then, with care and precision, she placed the gem on the head of the dragon. Among the green, the small amber was something explosive, deviant, wild. Something surrounded, cornered, and free. The dragon couldn’t say how it made her feel, until Beatrice whispered, “It looks like fire.”
It looked alive. And it looked as if this small, glimmering creation, this gemstone dragon, could have burned every stitch of a cruelly-threaded world, and built a new one in her own image.
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