Here Be Dragons: Chapter One
I don't own Rookie Blue.
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The world was electric.
Air crackled, hissed. Rain fell in hot torrents. Lightning shot white fire down from broiling, maddened clouds; thunder boomed across the plains and valleys and marshes.
Families huddled in their homes. Clutching each other close for warmth, for security, they collectively hoped that wooden doors would hold and rain wouldn't wash away fire-baked mud brick homes. Fires flickered, weak, in hearths and every now and again a figure murmured in the dark and they were reassured that at least there was someone nearby. Someone human. Something to listen to other than the voices of raging gods above.
To the north, far to the north, where a band of mountains black and tall draw a sharp line across every map, there was a town called Blew. Blew was built into the mountain – great caverns gouged from its stone belly to form humble and exquisite homes alike. The people of Blew didn't have to worry themselves about stilt houses that threated to be washed away by torrential rain, but the steady drip of water down the rocks, pooling in the dank corners, rising in the depths… that did give rise to worries murmured in the dark.
In the main cavern, the largest and from which the tunnels branched and twisted into warrens and homes, the people gathered. It was dry there and the floor high. It dropped away at the edge to form what were quickly becoming rivulets and streams surrounding them, encroaching, but that was not something to worry about just yet.
They lit the torches. Each time, a wisp of wind wrapped around the fire and sent it scorching high toward the vaulted ceiling before it disappeared in a tendril of smoke. Pale faces watched as they were lit again and again. Only, the lights were extinguished by that ghostly hand. Again. And again.
Finally, they resigned themselves to the darkness and they gripped tightly to one another – family, friends, neighbours, children held safe in the centre of the group – and they gathered to listen to the water crash down the mountainside and to the eerie shriek of the tempest. But that was outside and could be ignored if only…
"Papa," a clear, sweet voice called out. "Papa, won't you tell us a story?"
"Hush now, little mouse." The reply was quiet but in the scared silence, everyone heard. "You've heard all my stories many times over." Whines rose from several disappointed children.
"Nonsense. You can't have told every story." That was a third voice. "I for one would like to hear another – may it keep my mind from fretting!" That was the leader of Blew – an elderly man respected for his kindness and intelligence. His name was Jonah. Though his voice took the tone of suggestion, there was little room to decline his request.
"Yes, oh please papa." The children attached themselves to Jonah's request. "You tell such wonderful stories."
"Oh please," begged a second child. "I would like to hear a hero's tale."
"No!" another boy said. "A great love story."
"Yes, a love story!"
"I want to hear about magic," one girl said fervently. "And the sky lizards."
"A villain! Evil and dark. And with lots of gory stuff."
"Enough, enough," the man laughed. "Let me think." The clamouring stopped immediately – they didn't want to risk him telling them no – and the man hummed deeply, thoughtful. "I wonder… do you know the story of the Tyrant Queen's defeat?"
"I know only parts," Jonah replied. "But you, Ethan, you would know more than most." He looked out from under thick white eyebrows and a thought passed between him and the younger man. Whatever the thought, they came to the same conclusion and Jonah bowed his head. "Please, tell it."
"Yes! Tell it, please Papa!"
"Please sir," the children chorused, "please tell us."
Ethan cleared his throat and shifted a little in place. He moved his daughter from his lap and let her join the rest, who were watching him with a kind of awe. He didn't notice as he sunk deep within himself; he searched for the story.
It took a moment. Then, suddenly, the words tickled him, clung to his skin with barbed tendrils – not painful; of course, they were not bodily enough for that. But sink into him they did and it was an experience he never quite became used to: wholly other. As was opening himself enough for his audience to see the story that seeped out of him.
He settled.
The listeners closed their eyes. Ethan was a familiar figure in their town – they knew him. Knew that if they would just listen, the words would come to life and they would be carried away. Ethan had a little magic, they knew, magic of a special sort. A gift. A gift that wrought a world wholly unknown to into each mind with stunning clarity that they felt quite at home there – wondering, agog, yes. But a world that was bright and clear and detailed in such a way they felt they were following him as he transported them into his story.
His voice, when he spoke, was soft. Inviting.
"Many years ago, a young woman lived by the fields of what was then an unnamed, unconquered land. She was the daughter of a farmer, a mean man who could not see beyond the posts that marked his boundaries. She, on the other hand, yearned."
The children in the audience shuddered. This was the perfect beginning, they thought, to a great story. A small somebody surely would grow to be a great hero. Little hands clutched at little hands; parents shushed particularly excited bodies.
"She talked to every traveller who passed through, who begged food and water from their little home, and with every word they spoke to her, her appetite grew and grew. She heard of the great mountains from which metal beetles crawled. She heard of factories, the smoke pluming above them in gritty acrid clouds that would settle later on the houses staining them streaked grey. She heard of armoured men and women on galloping horses-" here Ethan tapped a four-scored beat on the rock beneath him and the sounds of hooves filled the air "-that wielded fire and metal and wore on their chests great badges of valour and honour. She heard of glittering oceans and all of the treasures that sail above it and all of these things – the sky, the mountains, the sea, the cities, the people – they called for her in her night mind and her days because she had nothing, you see." The audience nodded. They saw.
"And one day, this young woman, she happened upon her great adventure." Ethan paused to gather his thoughts. He drank a little water. Licked his lips. "She left early one morning," he said slowly, "with no thought that this day would be any different. Everything was the same. The sun had risen over the tree-backed mountain, the bugs set up an insistent music, the grasses rustled in accordance to the wind. Only," he smiled as he watched the children, knowing how much delight they would take from this, "she found as she entered the mountains that a great rock fall had occurred overnight and not only were they blocking her path, but they had trapped a young dragon."
One of the children – the girl who had begged for a story of sky lizards – cheered. She was shushed crankily by the young boy next to her.
"His wings were trapped beneath great rocks and all of his moving and tugging had done nothing but tear at the tender skin there. And he did not want to break his wing so all he could do was call out and ask for held from passers by. When she happened upon him, she agreed to help for a price, a boon. Now, keep in mind that this young dragon could not have been much older than a century. He was brave and full of trust and did not yet know that humans are cunning and powerful and not to be trusted. And this young woman…she could not have been further from trustworthy. Not with what he promised to her for her help."
"What happened?" a small voice ventured to ask when Ethan paused.
"What did he promise her?"
"Was it money?"
"Jewels?"
"Was it a map?"
"No, no. None of those things. In return for his life, she asked him to share his dragon fire with her." Gasps rose at that. "She freed him and upon testing his wings, sending him soaring high up into the sky and wheeling through the currents there, and finding that he was as hale as could be expected, he dropped once more to the ground and, puncturing her skin with his teeth, he bonded with her and shared his mind and power and it was from that bond that the Tyrant Queen was created." Ethan ignored the trembling in his hands – he did not tell his audience everything that he could see, knowing that the scorching fire and blackened remains of bodies and livestock and homes, of piles of rotting corpses, of wailing children and mothers without children that tore at their skin in empathetic agony…these things were too horrific to tell. "She laid waste to the land," was all Ethan told them. "From the marshes in the south to these, the great northern mountains, she conquered and built her throne and empire from the ashes."
"How?" That was the boy who had asked for a villain. A dastardly villain, who burnt great swathes of land, sounded perfect to him. "Tell us more!"
"Another time, perhaps. But tonight is not her story. Tonight belongs to a different story. We move forward," he said, "a generation. The Queen is older now but still young with the vibrant power of her dragon. And this is where we meet our hero."
"She's back."
That was the whisper that travelling up and down the county and right to the Queen's ear.
"She's back. The Princess. She's back."
What they weren't saying, of course, was that she had gone down, been taken down. That the Queen's forces had shot her out of the sky when she moved a touch too close to the border. That she was back, tied up and unconscious. Or at least, she had been unconscious earlier. Later, following a bowing and scraping man who looked at her with perfectly veiled disdain, with her hands tied behind her and with seven guards spread about her, she was most definitely not unconscious. She strode – slightly unevenly, given her injuries – down corridors that were once familiar to her and the whispers of that Princess spread again, out of the palace and down into city streets.
"Did you hear?" they said to one another. "She's back. The Princess is back."
The responses were varied. "Should have stayed gone," a few grunted. Some eyes brightened with hope; others remained dimmed, hopeless. Most nodded and pretended like it wasn't news – no need for the gossips to get a big head, was there? Another lot of them muttered darkly. That whole family was good for nothing, nothing except death and slaughtering and more heinous crimes had ever come from them.
But none of those whispers were heard in the palace. The horde of servants – hell, the palace itself – seemed to hold in a collective, worried breath. What would happen next?
The man – still bowing and scraping – opened quietly the door to the throne room. That, the Princess noted, still hadn't changed. It was intimidating with tall walls and dark colours that made a visitor – suitor, pledge, knight, visiting king, whoever – feel like they were suffocating. The throne was exquisitely carved – from the long bone of a dragon, or so it was said.
They hurried into the room. She was pressed down to her knees and though her heart violently rebelled in her chest – no submission, it rioted, no weakness – her legs trembled and she could not resist.
"She has returned, your Excellency," the man pronounced. He flung himself down in front of his ruler and waited with bated breathe for the next command.
He prayed silently that it wouldn't end in his death.
"Leave us," the voice said. He did.
With a nod, the guards left too. And it was just the two of them. There was no sound save breathing. There was no movement save that phantom touch of eyes, searching, examining. Judging.
Her head hung low with exhaustion, blood and grime caked her skin in some gory form of art, sweat cutting streaks through the layers. She did not look up. Not until slippered feet – golden slippers, cared for feet – came to a stop in front of her and the prick of a sword forced her chin up, so very slowly. They searched her face, her eyes. She was grim and worn and weary but they look over that now foreign face as though it hadn't been murder and seven years gone that had changed it.
"On her knees? Dripping with blood?" one of the boys asks. "She doesn't sound like much of a hero."
"What do you know? I bet you she'll pull her sword out and run the Tyrant Queen through. Lots of heroes play pretend."
Ethan waited out their chatter but finally he cleared his throat. "No, you are right. She doesn't seem like much of a hero. Not weak and pale and trembling and forced to her knees. But remember well her name. She is-"
"Gail."
The name is said without fanfare. The palace shuddered in response – that was a name it had not heard since one echoing booming shout seven years ago. It had been forbidden, secretly, never expressed by the Queen. But when the beheadings piled up and each of the bodies had one thing in common, having mentioned the name of the wayward daughter, one learnt quickly that it was, in fact, forbidden.
"Your Excellency," was the flat response. Not Mother. Never Mother again.
"Welcome home."
So, what did you think? Continue? Happy reading, readers :)