What happens when a fire-breathing pet gets loose?
A surprising and intricate dragon story for your August edition.
Happy reading,
The Editors
She knew she should be grateful, but when the collar shattered, Pet cried. She hadn’t wept in two thousand years, at least not like this, heaving sobs until the ribs under her wings ached and her belly turned sour. Her eyes were so tired that even the living things in the dark grew blurry, and she changed her sleep pattern to diurnal so that she could see her prey. She ate without flavor, wandering the countryside with lazy flaps of her leathery wings, feeling the lack of a collar like a vibrant aura. It threw off her flight, she dizzied quickly and landed frequently, surprising youngsters who watched the goats. The boys stared at her, suspiciously chewing on grass like their wards, but she was too enervated even to growl. So the peace was kept and she rested in soothing mud. Occasionally, she’d kick over a barn when the mood took her, or sometimes set a haystack aflame—but only if there had recently been rain.
She had forgotten what a spectacle she was. The Wizard had always taken credit for her tricks, collecting money from crowds. Sometimes he used her to threaten or impress.
(The way he chucked her under the chin when she flew a loop for him on cue…. The mice he peeled for her so that their fur wouldn’t tickle going down! He was thoughtful, really, even if he’d kept her leashed like a common dog.)
Landing in a village, the women met her eye, accepting how formidable she was. The men grabbed pitchforks and hoes and it made her laugh. Silly men.
(She had forgotten she could laugh. The Wizard liked her glowering. The Wizard liked her mouth shut because her breath put him off his lunch. She had watched him slice the tasteless soft white muscles of the chickens into tiny strips for himself as she salivated for the dense, rich chewy luxury of their tiny hearts and the peppery musk of their other slippery bits. He invariably saved these best parts for her, serving them after his own meal on a carved silver tray he presented piled with bones to give her the pleasure of extracting the morsels with her triple-forked tongue.)
The men poked at her and infinitesimal pains where a grandfather’s magic sword or an uncle’s historic halberd found a chink in her scales reminded her of how vulnerable she had been as a baby.
(The Wizard had saved her, had stood up to the circle of villagers ready to skewer her. She’d mewled in the middle of the courtyard, sand clouding her eyes where the boys had thrown it, angry frightened adults in a ring around her, shaking their heads at the loss of the only dairy cow of the village – how could she have known that villages value some lives over others? She learned only after the Wizard had captured her and named her Pet, she was kept shackled to the wall of his cavernous study—she had never explored the narrower parts of the house when she was small enough to fit through the doors—but she enjoyed his instructions and had learned quickly: this is a sheep, if they have more than a hundred, the loss of one will not hurt them. This is a cow; in the spring there are sometimes calves and in those places you can request the old cow as a sacrifice or offering. This is a child of a human and if you eat it you will be hunted and made an enemy; if you save it you will be venerated as a hero. Old humans can be eaten only if they are alone on the paths in the mountains—if the village has cast them out, then eating them quickly in one bite is a mercy, for they will soon perish of the cold or the heat or in the teeth of lesser predators. When she showed she understood, he would wrestle with her, laughing at her growing strength. If she learned a new trick, he would dance his fingers across the strings of a hollow gourd and his voice would change to music. Her unfettered delight would cause him to smirk, as her eyes rolled back in waves of pleasure. And at the end of busy days, when they were tired, he would take a small book in hand, sit in the soft chair, and beckon her into his lap as he turned the pages, stroking a gentle hand from her head to her tail. Scratching behind her wings where she could not reach--the same hand that might grab the wand to punish her or slap her snout when she was disobedient. He knew her scales were too thick for this to hurt. It was merely a symbol. An indication that he wasn’t pleased. So often. So very often.)
She shakes off this memory of childhood. She looks around for what she needs: water. She scents it in the air but does not see it. Usually a scent this strong would emanate from a body of water – a lake or a river. This scent had compelled her to land in this dusty courtyard, though it meant she would be surrounded by buildings. It made no sense.
There is dust and more dust. No water. Yet, she tastes the deep cool liquid on her tongue. Pet knows it to be clean and cold. But where is it? A girl on the cusp of womanhood follows her wild gaze and speaks sharply to the other villagers. Pet tilts her head, narrows her eyes, looks at the girlwoman, and tastes the air. The girl redoubles her shouting and waves her hands in a frantic dance.
After looking from the girl to Pet and back to the girl, the men lower their weapons. A reek of trepidation rises in the clearing as the sharp tips of shovels and swords lower. Pet sees their fear as a cloud of orange dust, like mites or flies. The scent of it fuels a forgotten rage in her, fires up a furnace that she hasn’t used for a hundred years or more. It is instinct to react this way to fear—she is unable to control it, even after all this time in the Wizard’s care. She has tried.
To be more pleasing to her Wizard, she has changed everything. When he is pleased with her, he places the flat of his palm on her cheek and strokes soothingly. When he is truly delighted, he presses his lips in a rose on her face. Times like these, his eyes shine with seeing her value. She is reflected in his eyeballs. She is not alone in the world. She belongs.
Ironic, this name, Pet: He is deeply absorbed in his important work and only pets her when he wants a favor.
(He was. He was deeply absorbed in his important work.)
The womangirl was small but fierce. Dark hair fluttered waist-length and free, and her eyes glinted with curiosity. Her skin rippled with sunlight and smelled of plums. She had woven shells and bones into her hair that clattered pleasingly when the girl moved. Her feet made no sound on the hard packed dirt. Her hands moved like dragonflies: quick quick slow and then stopping altogether. They moved again: quick quick slow. A baby cried in a woman’s arms behind the girl. The older woman slipped the baby deep into softness to stifle her cries. The baby suckled peacefully and this gentle sound reawakened Pet’s torturous thirst.
She screamed and the villagers clapped hands over their ears and cowered. All except the girlwoman.
(She was so small and after removing her from danger, the Wizard fed her and then slipped the pretty collar around her neck with great love. She remembers bending down to accept the gesture. Remembers a momentary thought – just a flash – wondering if she should trust this Wizard, but believing in her heart that he wanted what was best for her. In truth, he wanted what was best for himself, which meant owning her. She knew that now. Did she mind being owned? It was hard to know. She had only been free a few days. Finding food was difficult. Remembering the rules was difficult. The rules had changed, perhaps. She felt continually disoriented in this, her freedom.)
As she paced within the tight circle of villagers, the cloud of trepidation blossomed from the men. The mercury in her blood flowed faster. She felt the quick course of the silvery white rush. She remembered her weapon. If she sent the mercury out through her face glands, it could deflect and defend her. If there was open flame nearby, the stream would become toxic, exploding in a reaction that could render a whole village dead in minutes—unless there was a strong breeze (or a Wizard) to move the airborne poison to another location.
Without breaking eye contact, the womangirl indicated a structure in the center of the village—a round squat house with a peaked roof, smaller than a cow. She held out her palms as if to say wait, stop, no, and walked closer to the tiny house-like oddity. Pet’s desire for the water she smelled kept her riveted.
The girl pulled a rope and pulled and pulled. The scent of the deep water made Pet dizzy and she swayed a little on her feet. The village girl eventually made some sounds that brought four villagers to her aid. A bucket sloshing water – a bucket! Sloshing water!—emerged from under the peaked roof and was brought before Pet, who drank and swirled her sinewy neck to the little house, nosing the roof off and thrusting her face into the delicious coolness below. But the water was low – too low to reach – and Pet reared her head back to growl. She knew that patience was called for. She did. But the water was so close! Perhaps if she could just dig it out she could be sated and go.
The village women were grabbing younger people to themselves and turning to run.
The running was everywhere, like a scattered ant nest, swarming. Men picked up their pitchforks and discarded halberds and shovels and some of them ran, and some stayed to poke at Pet’s tail. Pet flicked them off like the flies they were, a nuisance. The water was just there, and the digging was fast and easy in the dirt. Yet, she had somehow collapsed the top of the tunnel into the bottom and rendered the water unreachable again.
She needed a break, but she needed water more. The frustration made her howl and shake her head and flap her wings and many villagers went flying. Once Pet realized she was causing mayhem, she stilled her body, contrite. She missed the Wizard. There was never a question of doing the wrong thing when he was around. The girl with the kind and wise eyes was nowhere to be seen, had Pet killed her? It was horrible to be free. Horrible. She went back to digging, tears dripping onto the sand. She blocked out the noise behind her, the fires lit, the torches.
Pet focused on the water. Now that she had decided she would ruin whatever needed ruining, she broke large pieces of the narrow enclosure, throwing them wildly over her shoulder, probably breaking the structures in the village as a consequence, but she didn’t care. She was lonely and missed her Wizard.
(He had been awful to her, awful. He had a spell that would make her stop breathing and he would use this until she fainted if she so much as growled at him. Yet, he played such beautiful music for her when she did what he preferred. But when was the last time he had played this tune? Fifty years ago? Seventy five? She remembered it like yesterday, but there might have been months, even years when he forgot about her and went on his journeys alone, telling her she would just slow him down. And then the day she broke him. How he had hated her, how he had hissed I knew I should have killed you, how his skull had crumbled underfoot, how she had flown into the sky like a new star. She had done this. She had freed herself. Did she regret it?)
The water was better than she had dreamed. The cold rush down her long throat was clean of fish, clean of silt; this water was rock water from deep in the earth, she had never tasted anything so delicious in her life. She drank and drank and drank in joy and drank some more. A sound brought her to her senses and she paused in her lapping to listen.
It was music. The sounds that the Wizard gave her when he was most pleased. A warm glow rushed from behind her ears and down her long neck and spine. She sighed. A breeze played across her wings, coaxing her to flight, but the music held her. There, in the shadow of the church spire, the girlwoman ran nimble fingers over taut strings held in a white ribcage. Pet sighed and stretched her wings above her head, fluttered and slowly lowered them to her sides. She settled on her front feet and hunched over her hind feet, nesting in the dirt of the courtyard.
The girl’s music danced in the air, streaming like cool water over Pet’s back and upturned face.
This. This was what freedom could bring. (If only the Wizard’s words didn’t pop up and ruin everything; if only he would just stay dead and leave her heart alone.) Her head swayed back and forth with the melody, and by this time, the womangirl had closed her eyes, so she never saw Pet’s adoring and grateful gaze as the enormous dragon lofted herself up into the sky. She only knew that years later, when the Great Beasts came to repossess their lands, she and her children were miraculously spared from the fires; no dragon would harm them.
It is possible that some humans would have found this new life intolerable, sequestered as they were at the apex of a bare mountain with only a goat and a sheep and a cow and some chickens for company, the seven of them in a tiny cottage, wedged high on a rock. She wrote songs to honor the rest of the village burnt en masse. Everyone they had ever known melded into a towering pile of charred limbs mixed with the burnt rubble of their homes and the sickly-sweet roasted scent of their farm animals. The massive dragon that kept them sometimes brought them treats: a cat, or a large door, or, more recently, a large, illuminated book, and seemed to honestly enjoy discovering the humans singing.
Was it good that they had been saved for this fate? It was a question Sandella often pondered as she turned the pages of the book, waiting for her power to grow.
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M. M. De Voe once ran away with a group of jugglers. She has also danced for the Pope and ridden on the top of an elevator. She can be read in various anthologies, literary magazines, poetry collections, horror magazines, sci-fi dailies and on her free weekly Substack called “This is Ridiculous.” Kirkus Reviews called her story collection (A FLASH OF DARKNESS) “ominous, masterfully-crafted psychological fiction.” Follow her @mmdevoe on Twitter or @femmekafka on Instagram or mmdevoe.com. She is the founder and Executive Director of Pen Parentis, a literary nonprofit for writers who also are parents.