The Dragon and the Fortuneteller
The fair was a joyous thing, all streamers and delights. To look closer was to spy the peeling of paint, the glitter of glass playing at gems, the tawdry tattered dignity of the tents. Those who surged and shoved among there did not look closer, for this was distraction and pleasure and diversion and they no more wanted the illusion burst than they would spy the wires that allowed the conjurer to fly.
The dream would end tomorrow, but for the day the village folk rushed hither and yon; agog at the acrobats, fascinated by the flying trapeze, crowding the sideshows and the tents and buying food that cost them pennies and had been made for a fraction of that. The beer and mead flowed freely to them and their copper and silver flowed freely in return. Even if the fair had seen better days and the village had not, this was a good day for both.
The fortuneteller's tent was busy, lovers and others wanting to hear of the joys of their futures, and no more shadows than those that could give them a mysterious thrill when they walked within the silks and velvets of the place. They were obliged, for she was good at her trade and knew where her own fortunes lay, and as two lovers, arm in arm walked from the tent an altogether different figure entered.
Small boys love mysteries as well as any other, and this one was very small indeed. His thumb was in his mouth, the other hand stretched out toward the glittering light of the crystal ball, its cracks exposed in the sunlight all turned to rainbows and therefore to his eyes more enticing. His feet toddled him onwards.
The fortuneteller smiled beneath her veils, and the darkness of the tent made it secretive. She stood up, and the child grumped as the brush of her silks and skirts eclipsed the crystal. Her eyes were as jet, her hair onyx traced with silver like clouds in a midnight sky, and she had been beautiful until time had stolen it.
She scooped him from the floor as one who has had children her own, and he quite forget the glitter of the glass as the fringe of her shawl brushed his fingers, grasping his new treasure the old quite forgotten. Wrangling the tangle of child and shawl the fortuneteller stepped from the tent. What she sought was easy to spy; in the throng were many women of the age, many women whose hair and eyes were like the child's, and but one alone who moved against the crowd, seeking not the tents but something dearly missed. A wave, a call, and the child was handed back, thanks and pennies exchanged, and as there was enough for a fortune one was told.
"Avoid dragons and kings, they shall bring no good to you." The fortuneteller's foreboding brought chuckles as she pried the edge of her shawl from the child's grasp. The mother laughed, the father thought it a fine jest, and by the morn, if not by the nightfall or sooner the words were forgotten. For dragons were gone and there was but one king now, and dreams and fairs and peace could last forever.
When the sun rose again the fair was gone. Reality returned and words spoken in its absence were soon forgotten. If they had been remembered, maybe things would have been changed, for a longer life for one, or better for another, who can say? But they were not, and things happened as they would.
§
Time passes in its way, and dreams and fairs and peace do not last. Villages thrived and others fell. Kings died and multiplied as they tend to, and fell again. And the circus wended its way onwards, and some joined them, and others left and settled, and the rumours of turmoil and then the turmoil itself caught up with them. The pickings from villages were scant, the towns closed their gates, and it was a scarce stopping place indeed that could feed all their carts. Hunger parted their ways, for a vill that could not feed them all could feed one, and rest a horse or an ox. Some of the circus folk settled and married and traded security and a full belly for dancing in the sky and selling dreams. They left the story, or it left them, and are uninteresting and so no more shall be said of them.
Behind a horse grey of muzzle and thin of rib, the fortuneteller's cart rattled on alone. Its sides were crimson with the memory of paint long peeled to nothing, the iron rims of wheels worn paper thin, but it was serviceable and so it served. The fortune-teller's hands were knarled, her hair a clouded night when moon is full – that is, to say more plainly, grey. Her son, his wife, settled the year before in a vill where his carpentry would see him prosper.
(In a year, a king would sweep through stripping the place of bodies as neatly as any plague. He would be taken, handed weapons he knew no use of, and sent to the front. He would die in the first skirmish, and his son, a babe-in-arms, a year later when the sweating sickness struck. His wife would follow mercifully quick, dreaming of coloured dresses and dancing the sky in her delirium. The fortuneteller would know nothing of this.)
She had left farewells and family, and taken her cart and her horse. The road lay in her blood and her blood sang with it, for it was all she had known and she was too old now to change her calling. Time may freeze the sea, it cannot make it stone.
So the cart rattled on, along the path where the herds only stayed when the pickings were poor in the valleys. And above, in the sky wingbeats shredded the clouds. The shadow that overshadowed the coach, that stooped upon it, was no bird of prey. The teeth in the open jaw were blooded, the dagger like talons ran red, and the great wide wings were black as night and wide as the path.
Here the story should end then, in a crunch of timbers and a cry from horse or woman, and the pitiful final crunching of old bones. It is a tidy, if unkind, end. A blast of fire, a storyteller could regale their audience with, turning horse and cart and woman all to flames to ash to nothing in an instant. Or not to nothing; with relish they may recount the sad remains stumbled on days later, skeletal ribs of timber clawing to the sky and within them, picked clean -
- but as our story does not end here, this would be a falsehood. Wings beat, yes, and a shadow sweeps across the sky and across the land and an old woman looks up to see the shape of death. A flinch in terror, a thin scream, would be allowed, nay, expected. Or upon seeing death, to smile and welcome it as the very old often do. She does neither. Eyes of jet sparkle and vanish behind wrinkles as the old face furrows, something of a half-formed memory dancing out of reach, for memory is cruel to the truly ancient who have too many of them.
But age breeds treachery and wisdom both, and both pulled the reins, and the horse's head, up. If iron-shod hooves kicked up dust as they were halted, it drowned in the dust from wings and talons; wings and talons that carved furrows in the dirt and not in horse flesh. The serpent neck whipped forward, a most inconvenient root snagging a trailing wing, for time enough to plant its face in dirt and roll its own length from the track in a flapping, hissing, outraged, pile.
When it had untangled itself in all its indignant malice, and could tell feet from wings and knew which it should be stood upon again, the cart had rattled off at a smart trot and was gone round the curve of the track. The dragon, for such it was, even if small, could have chased it for dragons have wings and carts do not, but upon the trail it brought itself up short. A scent, oh delicious, oh enticing, assailed it. Promises it made, promises of something new, of something different altogether from the woolly running things that it hunted. The haunch of mutton lay, roast, drenched, upon the trail most invitingly, and the invitation was welcome. The dragon lowered its head, and once it had torn and rended and swallowed and savoured, it had too full a belly to care about carts and old women. Somewhat warm, somewhat woozy for its meal, its head beneath the shelter of wing, its wings beneath the shelter of bushes, it settled itself to sleep.
In the distance the cart rattled on.
§
Scant time passed, mere months, mere weeks, measured in the turn of wheel on dirt. A time when much happened and nothing at all. The number of kings had dropped, for it was not the season for them, and the number of crowned monsters swelled for that was the fashion of the age. A time when villages saw little change, for few were in the path of king or monsters, and both of those are best observed from afar. A time that ended in the crack of worn-through iron and every curse learned in a long life taught to the listening trees.
Rope-bound and sap-sealed, the wheel held but enough to ease and edge from track and to clearing. Time lay too short to reach a village before dusk, but too long to think another would stumble across her and offer aid. Enough time, then, to gather twigs and wood for the fire that would keep four-legged hunters from horse and cart and fortuneteller, though two legged ones were beyond her to dissuade.
Night fell and it fell on black wings, a rush of wind that drove the fire high and set the horse to rearing on its tether. The fortuneteller looked up to the night beyond the fire, and saw that it had scales. It was a stranger guest than any she had expected, but it was a guest and there was no call to be rude.
Her hand turns the spit as the fire dances.
"My, you've grown," she says, unafraid and it is true. Wings now could mantle dragon and sheep both and still scrape ground, talons a hand's length not a finger's, and a bite to take a head whole not halve it. The dragon is here.
It watches, it waits, it remembers certain aromas, certain tastes and a certain cart that left a certain delicious meat, and it wants. Her feet she finds, somewhat surprised that they are still where she left them, and hobbles to the pile of offal that she has set aside. The blunt snout twitches, the jaw opens, and buries itself entire in guts and waste and brain, before the fortuneteller's eyes. It is a lesson in the ways of dragons; ever hungry and short in patience.
It gorges itself then, on brain and blood and bits and guts, until the ground is quite clean and cat-like it licks its muzzle until the scales shine. So small a meal can do little to slake its hunger, even had it still been small. Swaying upon a frame of cut branches it spies more, the parts and haunches of a sheep, parted and dressed and hanging. Its eyes follow the movement, and then its head, and it crouches, see it crouch, and then -
Oh distraction, oh memory, oh aroma! The fire drew it, its nose led it, to the haunch that the old woman turned upon the spit. With lunge, with snap, the spit was snapped, the old woman's scoldings as unheeded as the burning heat of the meat it chewed upon. When it was quite done chewing, if not quite full, the head snaked forward again in fascination. The meat turned again, upon a new spit, the so-tempting smell quite gone. With no regard for her watcher, the fortuneteller lifted a small pitcher on a long handle and doled a thick and foamy broth upon the turning meat. It was a few long breaths before the scent changed. The dragon held back, its head upon clawed paws, its eyes upon the spit, ignoring the chidings from beyond the fire until it could hold back no more. Meat and spit were gone at a gulp.
Satiated, lazy, eyes lidded themselves as its head tucked under its wing and curled to make itself comfortable, with no care for what may be comfort to those others within the clearing. And it slept.
The fortuneteller tutted to herself, none too loudly, and pulled down the third leg of mutton to soak and dress. Such things made for good offerings for the villages she visited, and if her special sauce made for good sleep and better dreams, in return for that gift she repaid herself with such trinkets and necessities that they would not quickly miss. And as it cooked she drew out the cards for practice, and turned the colours between her fingers, and read them as if the dragon were some villager come for lies she would tell and truths she would hide, and she laughed when she saw the reading. A dragon had little to fear from a knave, and for her own card…. She laughed, laughed, for the Lovers were a card for the young and she was not. The gold-haired half-face of the young man was not a lover for one her age!
When the dragon's eyes opened once, red as the sun that rose that morn, the cart was not there. The old have learned treachery and many other things, and among those is the knowing that dragons are not grateful and often short-sighted. And because the old have learned treachery it did spy, with nose and eye – oh aroma, oh taste – the mutton haunch the third, quite cold and ever tempting, and it tarried quite the while upon it, and savoured it, and licked itself quite clean before the wide wings beat and lazily it strove for the sky. And by then, the cart was quite gone.
§
Time passes now, a calm like the storm's eye before it hits yet harder.
The dragon returns, more quickly than is strictly polite for a guest, landing with a thump that no longer startles the horse, whose eyes are now grey as its coat. It is not an entirely unmannered guest for it brings with it a gift, clenched between talons; a fatted ram, wool stained with blood where it has been pierced deep.
Gift dropped upon ground before cart, before fire, before fortuneteller, it folded its wings. And waited. The fortuneteller tutted, for when the extraordinary occurs too often it becomes merely ordinary, and got to her feet one at a time. The long knife came out and so did the entrails, heart and liver set aside, the rest instantly devoured. The wool came off and so did her shawl, for the work was hot, and both were set aside as inedible by either. She flensed and butchered and cleansed and quartered, until all the parts hung from branches and along that rack, as greedy eyes watched red as the meat, certain herbs and spices were drizzled on the parts.
Patting pockets to find her flints, she took but a pace towards her cart before the pile was ablaze, and she danced on her toes like a young woman for the hems of her skirts were afire. She beat upon it, trampled it, rolled upon the ground, and once the skirts were quite out she rose unharmed for the four further layers of petticoats beneath were thickened with pockets into which small valuables may be slipped. Her cane was shaken mightily at the dragon, you may be sure of it, and chidings delivered like a fluffed-up hen as her short axe stripped long twigs from a branch: "for I am not wasting my good spit on thee, for I have seen what becomes of it!" The dragon watched, unrepentant, some would say uncomprehending, but most definitely unchided. "One snap and it is gobbled," she pleined, as if it could not soon be her own fate, and bound the mutton to the spit, and held back until the fire was red and low to place it there.
"Patience, patience," she counselled to a creature with little of it, as wide red eyes and wider nostrils focused all upon the spit, and little time indeed passed until her foretelling came to be – snap, gobble, gulp – and the meat was gone, and the spit, and no small part of the fire.
She was a wise woman, and not an idle one, so she placed the next spit - already sensibly prepared - upon the fire, and more of her woodpile beneath it, and put certain parts that she had set aside in the deep coals to roast. Again it was – snap, gobble, gulp – and again, a new prepared spit took its place above the flames as the dragon chewed and sparks came from its jaws.
The sun was down by then, the red eyes beyond the fire mellowed and not malicious, and the dragon turned thrice like a cat and curled up and yawned like a dog and kicked at its head where it itched for the horns were growing in.
"If you're going to be my guest, you should be named," said the fortuneteller, less afraid than perhaps she should be. "I shall name you for your nature, Dragon." It may have been a tone in the voice, a lilt in the accent. It may have been the lack of fear or the food. It may have been the name, for who can tell the minds of dragons, but the red eye opened a slit and the head moved a little towards her, and daring without daring as if it were nothing at all, she scratched gently at the thick scales where the blood red horns were growing.
When it settled its head, and the red eyes were closed, she dug the heart and liver from the flames and made a repast with them from the scant greens she had found. For though the acts of men who wish themselves great my not be known to the small, still like avalanches their effects are felt and villages and towns were being swept from the land, becoming scares pickings. No one thrives in times of many kings, the kings least of all.
Courteously she cooked the rest of the sheep, for it was but manners to make sure her guest had a fine breakfast in the morn, and but sense to make sure it was not her. If the fire would not last the night, the dragon was warm and kept the wolves from her just as well, so she folded her burnt petticoats around her and settled her back to its foreleg and slept.
When the sun rose and red eyes opened, she was gone, and so was the last haunch of mutton for she could make a ham of it and if the dragon was to make its visits habit it was well to be prepared. Dragons cannot count, or did not care to, for the theft went unpunished. The halved torso in the clearing satiated it and after a time it took to sky, and back to where it should have been.
§
There are many ways the story is told from here.
Some say that villagers and kings both grew fewer on the ground, and that most certainly is known. They also say that the sun grew cooler and the sheep scarcer, and one day when the fortuneteller had no mutton and the dragon found none to bring her, or when the secret herbs had withered on the ground, or were merely too few, that the dragon fell upon the fortuneteller and in a snapping of bone and a spraying of blood and screams – oh such lovingly described screams – there would be an end to fortuneteller and tale both.
They may even extend their telling, not content with the foolishness of a dragon thought tamed, to the dragon itself. Those tales tell of a dragon, partial to sheep and to goats, falling upon herds, descending upon livestock, ravaging the countryside and villages until one lone goatherd stands up against it in battle, or mayhap by stealth or tricks, or by poison, and slays the dragon and by its dying breath is slain in turn. Thus the dangers of dragons are doubly taught, and the prophecies of fortunetellers fulfilled, all questions answered, and indeed a most satisfactory ending to please an audience. Storytellers like neat endings such as these, for a happy audience gifts trinkets, and food, and asks the storyteller to stay longer. History, truth, does not.
So let us return, to a fire and a fortuneteller. It has been a cold time indeed; the sheep grew thick coats of wool, and then were taken into shelter where cold fingers of wind and of fortuneteller could not pick it from them. She is frail now. Her horse passed in the last village, and went to the stewpot, for friendship means little to an empty belly. She carries her pack now, for the village had no pony to spare or steal, and it is a long way to the next. Her cart is gone, traded, for without a horse such a stooped woman could not pull it herself, and she is much stooped.
Time indeed has left its mark, and it has been time indeed. Her hair is grey as snow cloud, the lines on her face lie on lines already there. Her eyes are the unclouded blue of endless night, and the fingers that turn the cards are sure, for all they are clawed.
The card they turn is Death. The dragon lands.
Truly time has passed, and it changes the young more then the old, for they have seen less of it. Its wings span the glade from side to side, its head is high as the trees, its teeth are the size of daggers, of smallswords, and the red horns that crown it, that fringe its wings, are sharp and edged and long as spear blades. It lowers its head. She raises hers. Eyes of night meet eyes like burning blood. She has no sheep. It has brought none.
"Dear, dear," she clucks, knowing, wise, old; above all old, "I warned you ware of goatherds and their children." The card she has turned is the Chained Man. The dragon says nothing, for it is a dragon and they are not given to speech. It merely watches and breathes, and its breath is sulphur and smoke. She shakes her head in chiding sorrow.
"I cannot cook what I do not have," she says, and still it moves not, for what can a dragon know of the speech of men? Her hands shuffle the cards again. "Oh, you'll find none on the hillside now," she mocks, most fondly. "They are within the place on the hills, of wooden walls and thatched roof. "
Dragons do not know speech, some say. They are hard pressed to explain then what followed; perhaps a scent on the wind, a sudden noise carried, an instinct, they protest. Well they may protest, whatever they may protest, the dragon's wings sweep, night flies into the sky, and while the fortuneteller gathers her woodpile, that night becomes fire and roars and screams.
Perhaps she thought on the shorted rations given in trade for her cart, perhaps that now the village could spare a horse. It is as well not to guess the thoughts of the very old; they come from places the young have yet to reach.
That night they did not dine together, though each most certainly dined apart. In the morn she left like a queen, if a queen travelled in a cart behind a fine, stout, pony, under shade of a dragon long gone to the skies.
§
And time, time still passes, even for the old for whom it has no more meaning. She was truly ancient now, having outlived kings and villages and circus and husband and children, and perhaps herself. The many kings were now but three, striving for power as plants strive for light, as naturally and as ruthlessly. For the smallfolk, kings were the seasons, and they kept a closer eye on the weather, for weather could be foretold. Kings, like lightning, could strike from a clear sky and without warning and there was little to be done about either. The only truth was that it was wise to hide gold, as it was loved by both kings and lightning, and as she had none, there was not even that.
The shadow of the dragon was felt more than its presence, in the terror of the hillsides when it passed, and the fear when it was whispered off. The trees themselves bowed as it passed, scattering their amber leaves in tribute. The little cart paid little heed to it all, and made its little way to the little space between trees where the snow lay unseasonal and all the leaves had fallen. A well-fed raven perched upon a bough and watched, wondering why this skeleton that moved among the skeletal trees was moving, and if it might perhaps cease such things and obligingly lie still for a bird.
The moon was eclipsed, the stars went out, sparks rose from the fire in a storm. When they could not rise to rival the stars they sank and threatened the branches with flame, and beyond them night settled beyond the flame.
And sniffed.
The fortuneteller smiled, a rictus for there was little flesh beneath that parchment skin, and that skin itself was lines, and all lines upon the skull beneath. Her cane she raised, not in defence but invitation, invitation to the piled, rendered, flavoured, mutton piled beyond the fire.
"Cook it yourself," she snapped in pretend irritation, as the night dripped water from between its dagger fangs and the ground burned where it fell.
Fire washed forest, set frozen trees to torches and to ash, and mutton to cooked through and through. Hobbling to the pile with great alacrity she snatched a leg from the pile, from the great jaws, like one whose life is the least they have to lose. She settled herself before her smaller fire as the trees burned like candles, and gnawed on the meat. When she was done, and it was bone, she rubbed her hands in snow, balling it between her palms until they were clean. Her guest still ate, savouring, and she grinned or grimaced, none can say, and moulded the snow to one hand and let it fly.
True it flew and - oh squawking, oh feathers, oh indignance! – the ball of sheep's grease and snow took the raven quite by shock and from its branch. It shook itself, all ruffled, and gave her a glare that by all rights belonged upon the dragon. She reached for further snow, and it took outraged flight, all affronted, and was gone.
The fortuneteller's cackle echoed after it, but later when all was quiet, and the dragon watched from beyond the fire for it had grown too large for a fortuneteller's potions and tricks, she drew out the cards. Hands cleaned in ash and snow and petticoats shuffled the cards' colours between them and in the firelight all were red as blood. And the dragon watched.
She lay no cards out, made no patterns for a long and prosperous future, or the telling of a fine husband and things that got her trinkets. But one card was drawn between fingers little more than bone and skin upon that, and unclouded eyes met ones as red as blood.
"We shall meet but once more," and her voice was that of carnivals and shrouded tents, and a woman who knew her way. She turned the card upwards and held it between them. "All roads end at the tower."
When she moved on in the morning, the dragon was gone. In the ashes of her fire ashes remained of colours and of cards, for she had no further use of them. And the last of the Tower fell to ash.
§
Time passed so quick that time itself did not notice. Days, not so fast as a week, and by the measuring of iron-rimmed wheels it did not pass at all. The villagers stirred not from the rare village that still stood, for kings may have dwindled, but they had been supplanted by their more dreadful counterpart, queens, and they had less mercy and more reach. The lightning may strike once, but the wildfire burns until all is gone. All, whether village, or king, or tower, or queen. All.
The dragon swooped from the sky, three claws tearing the earth. Upon the fourth lay something, nay someone, cradled as a child holds the butterfly it has stepped upon in the hope it can be made anew. Silver gold hair trailed over black scales, a single pale hand as limp as the butterfly, and as dead.
The dragon creeled. Its nose, most uncivilly, nudged the cart and set it rocking. Dragons and children rarely have good manners, and the fortuneteller bent with age and wizened who threw back the curtain was as ready to scold one as the other. She did not.
The great claw rested its back to the dirt, its treasure presented with utmost care. Reverence some might call it, or the movements of a dumb beast knowing only instinct, but let truth will speak- it was love; love and loss.
The crone blinked rheumy eyes at it, fingers as clawed as the dragon's talons holding her cane as she hobbled through the snow. The dragon's talon tipped in that ancient prayer the oldest' let this not have happened. Yet such razor talons are meant for cruelty not kindness, and the tips dug in the dirt too far and its treasure tumbled, limbs and hair and legend tangled and discarded upon the ground.
The fortuneteller tutted.
She cleaned the wound of blood, and the face of smoke and ash, and folded the arms across the chest, and then she went back to her fire. The dragon keened, and she paid it no mind. She waited, waited as the dragon's keening shamed the howling wind, waited, until it ran out and the wind alone was left to grieve. And she waited.
And once she had waited enough, from the path among the trees there came a very old man. His weight was full on a knarled and knotted cane, his skin papyrus for it preceded parchment and was more frail, and his face lined as dry reeds. He was hairless save those sparse ungroomed threads that straggled the skull, once gold now the colour of dead hay. The voluminous cloak enshrouded him, enveloped his left half, held close by his hidden hand, and from within it as he walked came a clicking of old bones, or something else, who can say? She watched him and said nought.
"Space for a weary traveller?" he spoke, "for I am cold." She said nought, though the wind howled the truth of it and drove the snow to fly. And he drew closer.
"You have a fire," he said, and though she spoke not a word the fire rose and crackled loud in the silence.
"May I share your fire and not be cold?" He was passed the dragon now, too old or too cold or too uncaring to pay it heed, and this third time she said nought, but shuffled across to make space were she sat on the log by the cart.
He sat, creaking and clicking, in the firelight, and as snow melted from his tattered robe it showed itself damson, or the memory of it. She tutted.
"A most unappealing guest I have for my evening," she pleined, and tutted again.
"And ill-mannered company for mine," he rejoined in the same nature.
"Ill-mannered?" she huffed. "Ill-mannered!" she cried. "I ill-mannered when I've a guest that shares a the warmth of my fire, and the shelter of my cart, and brings nought to me but himself!" The old man poked the fire with a stick, and looked long upon the dragon. It could have been firelight that played upon the fortuneteller's face, or a smile, or both perhaps.
"That brought itself," she decreed, triumphant. His turn to smile, for the lips moved for what could be seen of them.
"Then let me give you a tale for your fire and your cart. I fancy myself something of a tale-teller."
"If your face was half as sweet as your words, good company would you be be indeed. So tell me your tale." And the old man thought for a time, and set his feet closer to the fire and the warmth, and he began.
"It comes to my mind that I know a good tale for the evening. A tale of a time when the earth was flat, and the gods were crystal, and there was a goddess on earth, dark of hair and blue of eye, and her unmortal undemon lover, and they were more fearsome than demons and dragons."
"But the world is not flat," she said. "And there are no goddesses. What fancies you have!"
"Ah but that tale is over," he said. "Perchance I know another tale, of a mortal girl violent eyed and gold of hair, and her lover the dream-mad prince with dark hair and blue eyes, and some would say they had been lovers before and he changed his colours for hers and sought her when she wore his."
"If they were mortal," she cackled callously, "they must be long dead, if they ever were at all."
"They are, perchance," he said, "and perchance not, for mortal souls alone are eternal and love is one of the immortals." And there was a silence. At length she spoke, and her voice was much unlike her own.
"It seems to me," she said, "that in that time when the world was flat, the honey-haired girl spoke clearly to her suitor that if she were now mortal that that should be the last lifetime they would spare for love for she had too much to learn, too many lifetimes to live, and a journey to resume. And that lifetime was spent."
"But the world is no longer flat," he said, and his voice too was quite changed. "And is there truly no more to learn of love in a world where the sun is not a disc of beaten gold, and the moon not to be reached by wing?"
"Truly," she spoke, and smiled.
§
In the morn a brave few from the village came to the clearing, for there had been keening and voices and noises that kept them away. In the bounds, the cart stood alone, and a pony roamed alone, and a body lay tidied and alone, and the marks of dragon's talons scarred the earth. They took the cart and tended the body, some great lady no doubt, and burned her as was their fashion, and raised a cairn and a statue which was not their fashion but they feared the dragon. And in later times people would travel to see the marvel and to pray, though they knew not who they prayed to. That story is its own.
Some telling the tale claim that the dragon rose again to the sky, the body of one it treasured above all taken in its claws, never to be seen again. Others that it discarded the body, or ate it, and flew to deserts or mountains to live out its life like any of its monstrous kin. The statue stands against the lie: again they would rush themselves, to find a story that contains itself and all the endings.
The dragon flew, and it was seen, and that was truth. Some said it was slain, and that was but spoken wish. Some said that it carried a body in its claws, and they spoke from the memory of what it was known to carry. Some said it had a rider, and they were keener-eyed, and sharper of memory. The few, those of sharp eye and no self-delusion, spoke of what they saw and were hushed: two riders, a banner of black hair, and a head crowned with gold, or maybe red, or halves, and they were quickly hushed and rarely quite the same.
And they flew from shores, and knowing, and history, until that time when whim or chance should part them. And where that story ends, who can say? For love, and souls, are eternal.