A Dangerous Magic

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Most people think they arrived there around the time of the Great Fire. Many believe the dragons caused the fire during their migration to the Valley. Only I know the truth.

Only I know how, two decades after the Great Fire, dragons were born out of an act of desperation, fear, grief and love. Later, I moved the dragons to the Valley, hoping it would be a place of safety. But they soon grew out of my control. I could no more keep them safe than I could protect anyone who crossed their paths. What a mess I had caused!

Actually, I had been trying to clean up a mess. Prevent it, even. I knew, the moment the princess made her request that she was dooming thousands of innocents to death and I tried to save as many as I could. Princess Adra never meant for her words to set in motion the awful events of that day. Her mother had died hardly a year earlier and her father, already ill in his mind, fell victim to the wiles of his grief. Nearly twenty years of memories were erased so that he believed that Princess Adra, the spitting image of her mother, was his bride-to-be. He was confused when she rebuffed his romantic overtures and swore to win her heart again. Princess Adra, with the support of her father’s councillors, held him off as long as she could. When it became clear that the king would have his way, she attempted to slow him down by making impossible requests.

First, she asked for three dresses. One was to be as golden as the sun, one as silvery as the moon and one was to glisten like the stars. When the king accepted this challenge, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Surely he would never be able to produce such gowns. I suppose that we underestimated the king’s love and persistence. I suppose that we thought that the tales of the weavers in the North were just tales, or at least histories so old that their secrets had been lost. We were wrong. Barely half a year later, the king presented Princess Adra with all three dresses. They were so, so lovely. And so damning. We all held our breath to see how the princess would respond. How could she respond?

I wish that someone – anyone – else would have responded to the king. One of us should have stepped in and said … something. To this day, I do not know what. But I know that, royalty or not, the princess never should have been left to carry the responsibility for her father and the kingdom on her own. Maybe, others, like me, thought that we could step in later, quietly, in the background, and fix things from there. Bram has admitted to me that he thought so. The hiddenness of our roles and our plans gave us a false security, so we did nothing.

Thinking back, I believe that Princess Adra always knew that this moment would come. Her father’s love for her mother would drive him to fulfill her request and Adra would be alone in responding. She must have spent the months that she had gained for herself deciding what to say, deciding how to appeal to any part of her father that might be stronger than or separate from his love for her mother. She never confided in me, nor Bram, nor anyone else. If she had, maybe we could have stopped her, or figured something else out. But she didn’t, so we didn’t, so she made her request.

“My king, if it pleases you, there is one more thing I must ask before I can agree to this marriage. A bride, after all, must look magnificent and a queen must rule over all in her lands. So I ask that you provide for me a cloak of all kinds of fur. Every animal in your kingdom must contribute to it.”

I froze. Everyone froze, even the king. Icy fear blasted through my veins and I thought I might be sick, but I could see what she was doing and clung to the hope of her logic, awful as it may be. Years ago, Princess Adra’s grandmother had told her and Bram the story of how their fathers had met and been saved from the Great Fire by the mythical Allerleirauh. I had heard the same story from my mother. She had seen the goodness in their young hearts and so had asked of them a vow to always protect the vulnerable, particularly the young animals with whom they had been saved. The king and Bram’s father had made that promise. Now, Princess Adra was appealing to that vow in the most perverse way possible. It was a vow older than any the king had ever made to his queen. He had always lived by that promise before.

I stared at the king, willing him now to keep his promise to my mother. He fought a difficult battle within himself; I could sense it. But when he reached for the charm worn around his neck – the one meant to remind him of that promise, the one that had been passed on to Adra years before – and did not find it, I knew that the battle was lost. With no thought for anyone else in the throne room, I turned and fled. Behind me, I heard the king’s hard voice say, “I grant your request. On the day after I present the cloak to you, we will marry and you will be my queen forever.”

I allowed just one sob to rack my body before bursting out of the castle and continuing my breakneck pace toward the city wall. My human lungs and muscles screamed, but my desperation screamed louder. The moment I found myself alone on the road out of the capital, I allowed myself to transform. My breathing eased. Each step carried me farther. My coat of every fur streamed in the wind of my running. I began to circle the city, widening the circle on each pass. When I came near to any animal, I cried out an alarm, begging them to get away, to hide, to save themselves. Some could not save themselves, so I had to pause and carry them, the way my mother had carried all those young animals during the Great Fire.

The Protector magic that I called upon allowed me to go for days without food or sleep as I carried out my mission. But I was only one Allerleirauh and the king had sent out hundreds of men to slay innocents for the princess’s cloak. I could not save them all. One day, I was in a small wooded area when I realized that several of the king’s men were hunting in that area. They startled a deer and she bounded away, drawing their attention. She had left her fawn in a tiny knoll where it should have been safe, but one of the hunters charged through the bush after her and would have tripped over it. I lunged for the fawn, covering it with my body. The hunter, unable to see us through my magic, changed course just subtly enough to miss us, but as he did, I saw with horror that another hunter was about to unwittingly crush a nest full of eggs. There was no way I could get there in time. Always before, I had been able to trust my instincts and protect the creatures under my charge. But this time I could not and I panicked. I thrust out my forepaw and desperately shot my magic towards the eggs. It was a move I had never made before and hope to never make again. There was no intention in that shot of magic, other than to protect, so I wasn’t exactly sure what was about to happen. The hunter’s foot came down on the eggs. He stumbled and nearly fell, but barely glanced back as he continued racing after the deer.

As soon as the men were out of sight, I lifted myself away from the fawn and moved towards the eggs. They were completely unbroken. The shells looked almost like stones. When I lifted one, it was shockingly heavy. I knew that whatever creature had laid these eggs would no longer recognize them. I would have to assume responsibility and care for whatever hatched from them – if anything hatched at all. So I carefully picked them up and set out again. The fawn I left there, knowing that the hunters, crashing through the wood as they had, would never catch the mother. I wonder now if they were truly bad hunters or if they had been protecting that deer the only way they knew how.

Weeks passed. Thousands of animals were saved or found protection on the other side of the borders surrounding Kirassa. Thousands more were sacrificed for the princess’s terrible cloak. On the day it was presented to her, my eggs began to hatch. I watched as cracks appeared, then grew bigger, then finally split the eggs into pieces. Tiny, down-covered creatures fought their way out. They were exceedingly ugly, as are nearly all creatures that must fight their way out of eggs. I didn’t recognize them for what they were at first. But as their bodies dried and they stretched their limbs, I finally realized the awful power of the Allerleirauh. Our fear creates dragons.