Chapter Nine. The Dragon and the Knight.
Nine
The Dragon and the Knight.
A flash of the sun saves me.
Just as I’m being consumed, my cloak twisting around my body and locking me up tight, my feet sucked into the Fulcrum with the rest of me certain to follow, a gleam of gold flies by my face. Then there’s an unholy screech that’s so loud, it registers as pain in my ears instead of sound.
The Fulcrum’s grip on me slips for an instant.
And then there’s another golden flare. Another blaring screech.
Now I’m falling again.
I slam into the sandy ground once more, this time landing face down with my hood flopping over my head. As I pull in a breath, I get a mouthful of sand, and through the coughing and wheezing, I try to understand why the sun itself has taken human form—and is defending the likes of me.
Then I turn my head and see … what surely must be a myth.
A dark-skinned knight in golden armor on a blinding white stallion is battling the black band with his golden sword, the blade glinting like fire as he defends me.
He is both grace and strength, subduing his warhorse while he wields his weapon, parrying and jabbing—
All at once, the contamination retracts into the Fulcrum, the discoloration disappearing, the strange snow stopping, the squealing dimming until it can’t be heard over the normal roar of the magical barrier.
My savior reins his stallion toward me and dismounts at the same time, his golden chest piece amplifying the sunset, his striking face set off by the halo created by all the precious metal that’s on his body.
I almost meet his eyes, but catch the mistake just in time. His mouth is moving, but I can’t hear anything except my own thundering heartbeat—
He kneels down and I can feel his stare on my cloak’s hood. “Maiden?”
With a shaking hand, I yank what covers my head farther down—and get sand in my eyes. I’m blinking and rubbing at the grit as I stammer, “You … saved me.”
“Not for long. I know not what that was. Are you from the village Greensward, dreah?”
Little one, he calls me.
All I can do is nod. I feel like I’ve swallowed half the Fulcrum, but that’s only part of what’s paralyzed me. That face I saw in the black band, my name called out to me, those boys now dead, this knight appearing at just the right time …
“We must return you to your family.” He indicates the nearly dark sky with the tip of his golden sword. “You are not safe here.”
Without waiting for a response, he takes a firm grip of my arm and pulls me to my feet. As I wobble, I look at his broad chest. The insignia of the Prosperitus Court is no surprise, and neither is the reflection of my sandy, sloppy cloak.
“My lord,” I croak as I attempt a curtsy.
“Worry not of all that nonsense.”
He half carries me to his magnificently saddled steed, and the horse looks over its shoulder at our approach with disinterest like it’s seen so much, a draped woman who smells of sand is nothing worth reacting to.
As I’m being lifted up and settled behind the saddle, I hear a groan and glance toward the sound.
The dragon remains on the verge of death, suffering and hopeless on the ground. Its great rib cage lifts up as it inhales raggedly, and on the exhale, the beast closes its eyes in defeat—
“Wait!”
Just as the knight puts his boot into the stirrup to mount up, I scramble off the steed and race toward the beast. I hear the knight shouting and ignore him, and I stop just out of reach of the dragon.
It seems even bigger up close, and how beautiful the scales are, each perfectly fitted to the next all over its body, the iridescence still visible even as the green and the purple have leached out.
All of the rows undulate as it respirates unevenly, and in response to me, the winged animal laboriously moves its huge back legs and little arms. When its wing lifts briefly, I imagine him in flight, high above the snowcapped apex of his home, where he seeks only solitude and peace.
I whisper hoarsely, “I’m so sorry—”
“What are you doing! Get away from that thing!”
The dragon’s muzzle curls and he attempts to lift his enormous head as the golden knight skids up to me.
When the court’s warrior takes my arm, I pull myself free. “No! I have to help him—”
“Are you mad? The thing’s not dead yet—”
“That’s the point! I can help him because it’s not too late.”
The golden knight is momentarily shocked by my tone, and before he can recover from the insult to his station, I go right up to the dragon’s head, by his jaws full of razor-sharp teeth and his fire-breathing nostrils.
The creature does what he can to keep track of me, but he’s obviously at the very end of his strength. Kneeling down, I take a deep breath … and stare directly into its eyes—
I suck in a gasp and only have a split second to note the oblong pupils before I’m swept into his suffering.
The pain in my side and left arm is intolerable and my breathing becomes labored, but there are further injuries.
And then I see and feel the death, and it is awful.
The dragon suffers all night long and is toyed with by nuisance predators before his heart finally stops as dawn’s light pours over his broken body.
A ragged grunt is released from the snout, as if my commiseration brings some relief—
My body jerks back, and for a second, I think it’s a spasm from what I’m feeling. But then the knight tries to take both of my arms—
“Unhand me!”
As I yank out of his hold, my savior jumps back and focuses downward. To my shock, I see my little knife in my grip—an absurd show of self-defense against his armor and his greater power, but I’m desperate and that gives me an edge.
“Go,” I order him over the din of the Fulcrum. “I am nothing to you—leave!”
“You are bleeding!”
Ignoring the man, I kneel once again by the dragon. “I’m going to take care of you. Trust me.”
The beast blinks, the dual sets of lids crisscrossing vertically.
The pulsing vein that runs up the side of the throat is hard to find because the heart rate is so slow and I’m not sure of his anatomy. But I locate it, and keep our stares locked as I lean forward.
I put the tip of my knife to the pattern of scales that are so much softer on the underside of the massive chin.
“I’m coming in after you,” I vow. “I’m not going to let you go and I’m not going to lose you.”
Even though I’ve never actually tried to resurrect an animal before.
Taking my own deep breath, I lock my jaw—
With a hard jab, I drive my knife into its throat, right at the vein. The dragon barely flinches, and as its purple blood floods my hand, warm and slick, I lower myself until we are eye to eye, nearly nose to nose. The head is almost the size of my entire body.
As I stare into its soul, what I foresee changes.
The light of dawn around the body at the moment of death gets sucked down into the horizon, and replaced by a night sky full of stars.
They pinwheel in a fat circle, that strange, new, brightest one the only celestial light that stays put.
And then there is the gloaming, the very last of the sunset’s bloom of peach and pink and orange flaring at the west—
We are here, in this moment.
Right now—
I take another deep breath, and my skin tightens as if my skeleton and muscles are expanding, an anticipation growing inside of me like I’m about to leap.
It has to be just right. A second before, a second after, and this illicit energy I somehow command will not work—
There’s a great burst of illumination and the dragon is suddenly bathed in a mirroring effect that erupts from his body, coating the limbs, the wings, the barbed back and tail. It’s the life force within him, finding physical expression before death ushers in its departure.
They say there is no magic left in Anathos. That’s a lie. Life is magic—
Now.
Catching my breath, I make the sign of the crescent moon and then I dive into the pool of energy headfirst. The shock is always new, no matter how many times I do this, both icy cold and burning hot.
For reasons I’ve never understood, I’m a magnet for the life force; it attaches to me as I swim through the shimmer, heading for the source of the wellspring.
In the center of the dragon’s chest, where his heart is, a breaching has occurred, and as I penetrate the leak with my body, everything that has escaped comes with me.
Now I am in the kwale, or the sacred interior space where the soul resides. I’m standing on a slick, yet solid grounding, and I look around as the iridescent level at my feet begins to rise, everything that has followed me back in returning to where it’s been held—
There’s the tear. Up at the top of the kwale, a breaching that reflects the mortal injury that has occurred, and I extend my hand up.
I cannot comprehend how I do what I do, where the gift comes from, or why I’ve always known my role, but as I present my palm to the ragged hole, it seals up so that there’s only enough of an aperture for the soul to continue to come home.
The level of the silvery effect ascends my body, coming to my knees, then my hips, my waist, and higher still …
reaching my chest, my throat, my chin. I always feel a panic as my mouth and nose are covered, though I’m not breathing in this other realm.
I’m my own energy and nothing more here.
My extraction occurs when the vessel is full, pressure building until I’m expelled as the interloper I am, my exit sealing the hole in my wake—
The reentry into my own body is painful, and I hear a gasp as I draw in air, but it’s from a distance. As I slump off to the side, I’m aware I fall into the sand, but again, it’s a distilled sensation as I hit the ground.
What is clear is that the great dragon explodes into action.
Leaping up onto its powerful rear legs, the wings unfurl to their full span and the beast lets out a stream of fire that I cannot feel even as the flames flicker around me.
His scales are now back to an emerald green and a range of purples that vary from deep amethyst to pale lavender—and on that right wing, the injury that brought it out of flight has an uneven, but fully healed, repair.
The beast doesn’t spare me glance nor growl as he takes to the air, the great buffered gusts as his wings draw down blowing my cloak around my numb body.
Up, up, and away he spirits from the pit in the sand that was his premature grave, and as the dragon soars higher and higher, he crosses in front of that brilliant, troubling star.
The celestial illumination on its scales is a light show worthy of a rainbow, and how I envy his freedom as the creature flies for the snowy cap of home.
Staring out from under my hood, my eyes water from sadness, for I know I will never travel so far—
The golden knight leans over me, and though I’m careful not to meet his gaze, I can tell his noble, dark face is drawn in lines of awe.
“’Tis you,” he says with reverence. “You … are the one I seek.”