Ethics of Dragonology: 890UMS

“As we learned last semester,” Professor Ersten continued, “Dragons are primarily carnivorous—wyrms, wyverns, and everything in between.” His eyes suddenly refocussed on the lecture room, his thought derailed by incessant scratchings upon paper.

“Put your pencils down, you fools—you know this already!” he barked. Clearing his throat and readjusting his wiry spectacles, the Professor went on.

“A dragon will absolutely consume anything it deems prey, anything it can fit down its barbed gullet, and anything it simply does not like. Now, who can tell me the three core things any dragon loathes enough to devour without so much as a second thought?”

Silence.

“Come on! This was yesterday’s class!”

Several hands reluctantly snaked up in this, Professor Percival Ersten’s class at the University of Magic and Science: 890UMS, Ethics of Dragonology. 7:00AM on a darkened and chilled late-autumn Tuesday. Here, where the Professor battled unsurmountable odds, where third-year initiates to the druidic order revolted at the slightest hint of their tutors requiring the slightest amount of effort. Where dragons meant nothing, to anyone, anywhere, anymore. Not since they disappeared.

Picking the hand now slowly sinking down, at the furthest corner of the amphitheatre-style room, Ersten called out, “Tom! Enlighten us.”

Tom Littlebee mumbled, “fz.”

“And you were so close to getting a rank A for participation—”

“FAIRIES!” Tom bellowed in wide-eyed panic, startling the round, stripey fellow in front of him who earlier had wandered into not-his-class for a nap. Class 890UMS murmured, one student guffawing a little too loudly over everyone else.

The Professor called out in his rackety voice, “THANK you Tom,” piercing the growing clamour as efficiently as his nails on the chalkboard might have done. “What else?”

“Sand!”

“Ah, yes! Sand! A worthy adversary for a dragon. Though, not one that can quite be devoured, Alexi.” More chuckles. “Next!”

“Rival dragons!”

“Good—especially when encroaching on each other’s territories! Next!” Quiet fell again, speckled with errant whispers and mutterings.

“Really. This is the easiest one. You really can’t get it?”

The quiet turned to absolute silence.

“Alright, I’ll spare you. Humans. Above all, inherent draconic hostility, territorialism, and hatred of small things will always, always, make humans the biggest target, and most viable food source, for dragons.” And, with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye, Professor Ersten continued, “Before the beasts migrated away, across all of history, no human has escaped an encounter with a dragon.”

Every hand in the room shot up.

“Well! Good to see we’re awake.” The Professor paced slowly at the front of the lecture room, looking each student in the eye as he spoke, “Before we continue, remember: this course is on dragon ethics. No matter how much you want to, you cannot ascribe human feelings to a dragon’s soul.”

Some hands lowered, but some stayed up. Tom Littlebee stared at his desk. Professor Ersten glanced at him, regret flickering across his wrinkled, grey-flecked face before he turned and faced his first debate opponent, Sam “Smelly” Mell. Apt name. Good student. Hopeless optimist.

“Okay, Mell. Astound me.”

Sam cleared his throat, once, twice, and again. He must have coughed his tuna lunch up, by the reek. “Professor, what about the dragon, Zhilloff?” Sam pronounced the name well, Ersten thought, slurring the “zh” sound into a mix of “sh” and “j”.

“What about her?”

“Well, she didn’t eat Tom all those years ago.”

“Excellent point, there, Mell!” And then, in an interrogative tone, “Why?”

Sam stammered unintelligibly, then wisely shut his mouth.

A few seconds of silence passed…

And the room erupted into a hundred voices, shouting and shrieking to be heard above each other in the echoing, flatwood-panelled room.

“I heard she thought he was a dragon!”

“Zhilloff was brain damaged!”

“She decided to be his mother!”

One voice piped up, drowning out the rest of the cacophony with a booming bass tone and air whistling between her broken teeth, “TOM MADE IT UP!” The orc was half-raised in her seat, having flung the words out into the room, willing them to ricochet off the panelling, the windows, and the chalkboard at the front of the room.

Tom stared at his desk, his expression an enigma.

Awkward tension filled the room. Ersten sighed. Gazing at the chalkboard where he’d spent hours painstakingly forming Zhilloff’s portrait with his crude chunk of chalk, he recited the line at the front of the Ethics of Dragonology core handbook.

“The rule of dragons is this: The scent of violence will intoxicate the dragon beyond logic, beyond reason. But how, then, do dragons live, in the absence of threat?” The Professor let the words ring out for a few seconds, then, looking around the room, said “This is not a class of speculation, but of science, of proof, of dignity, and of logic.”

Some of the students still stared at him in righteous opposition to his words, but others, a small few, looked ashamed. Avoided eye contact. Fidgeted.

“Tom already agreed to be here for this class, but… Tom, if you are still willing, will you share your story?”

Tom nodded, rose from his seat, opened his mouth, and—

“Down here, Tom, if you please.”

The gangly, black-haired student froze. Then he nodded again with a grim smile, and shuffled out from his desk in the back corner of the lecture room. It had been two full decades since the papers had come out, raving about a little boy lost in the forest, and safely returned after a two-week-long manhunt. And the boy, Tom Littlebee, spoke of nothing to his parents and reporters but the giant black lizard who had found him.

Every student in the class knew the story. Had each been told a different tale of what happened. It was something of an urban legend among schoolchildren now: “Don’t go into the woods, or the big, bad Zhilloff will get you!” They watched Tom descend the steps at the side of the room, hands shoved deep in his coat’s pockets, eyes darting left and right as he made his way to the Professor’s side.

Ersten patted him gently on the shoulder, and went to take his seat in the rickety old chair usually reserved for lecturers’ aides.

The boy heaved a deep breath, gave a shaky smile, and began.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was two. I was exploring our property—you know, the big farm out by Orangerock River? So I was exploring, and I found a shallow part of the river where it borders my parents' farm. It’s dried up by now. But it was shallow, and slow-running, and I got it into my head to walk across. I just kept wading out onto the rocks, further and further out into the stream.

By the time I got to the other side, the water was even more shallow—middle of the day—and I didn’t want to go back yet. My Mum was busy with the farm, and Dad was, well, sick, so it was more interesting to go explore the forest.

I walked, and pretty much kept walking until I got to a big, open, hilly field. I thought I was back at the farm, for some reason, and I ran out to the top of the nearest hill to look for home. It was… beautiful really. I thought a fairy had come to our farm to make all the grass green. But, of course, no one was there. I spent a while wandering around. Nights and days came and went, and I was just so, so hungry. Thirsty mostly.

That’s when she found me. Zhilloff.

“Did you know it was her?”

No. A big, black lizard is all my brain saw—didn’t even know her name. I remember hiding from her at first, behind a boulder in the forest, but she told me to come closer. She poked me a bit with her claws and nose. Breath was horrendous. Like Mell. I think I puked on the rabbit she brought me, ‘cause it tasted even worse. But that also might have been because it was raw. Mum said I had blood on me, everywhere, when I came back. Probably because of that.

Anyway… yeah, so, she brought me to her burrow in one of the hills in the field—I could never find it on my own. She always had to bring me back. Every day she would bring me a little bit of meat, raw, and then carry me in her claws to a different part of the river where I would dunk my face in and drink. There were little iridescent, rainbow fish in the river, and I spent a while flailing after them. I think that’s how I spent my days.

“And you were gone for, what, two weeks?”

Yeah, a fortnight. They started the manhunt on the first night, when they realised I wasn’t on the property. Apparently, Mum said, they didn’t check the forest at first, because they didn’t think I’d be stupid enough to cross the river! Were you in town by then, Professor?

“Yes, I joined the hunt, actually. We checked the bushes along your suburb’s roads, first.”

Yeah. Police checked neighbours’ houses, at the local dump spot, at deeper sections of the river where I might’ve drowned… basically everywhere but the forest.

“Did you try to go back home?”

Not at all! I was two. I just thought that that was what my life was, now. I was having fun at that point, anyway, now that my big dragon friend was giving me food, water, and shelter. Just… exploring. Fishing with my bare hands. Climbing trees.

She left me sometimes, both during the day and the night. I didn’t care. I never said anything to her, I think, but she would always talk about “machines,” and “saws,” and “fire” in the woods.

Of course, later I found out she left me to kill people who were destroying her territory. Or hunting her down ‘cause they thought she ate me.

“D’you reckon you ate any of them?”

“Shut up, Landon. Inappropriate.”

No, it’s okay, Professor. I, uh… don’t know that everything I ate was entirely just… small forest creatures. Didn’t think about it. Try not to think about it anymore. Zhilloff treated me… I guess, sort of how I treat my dog, Aster. I feed and water him, talk randomly to him, take him out to poo.

“Like a pet?”

Oh, I don’t know. A bit more than that, like, closer to equal, like, a small, dependent friend…

…

“You okay, Tom?”

Yeah, sorry. Lost in thought.

“No need to apologise. Lots to think about. Actually, we’ve discussed how wyverns like Zhilloff communicate mind-to-mind. How did it sound? Fierce? Raspy and growly?”

No, she… she sounded like my old granny. Melodic, deep. I can’t remember her precise words, exactly. I got the impression she thought I was escaping human lands, so that was confusing—

“Escaping?”

Yeah, I think sort of like how, um… You know how the dragons all migrated, what, like, five years after what happened to me? I think… maybe they were—Zhilloff was escaping us, and was going to take me with her.

“Did she say that?”

No, no… I’m just… theorising, I guess.

Oh, yeah, so at the end of those two weeks, Mum crossed the river, too. She said she called out to the forest, in the night, and Zhilloff appeared to her as a mist, or in the mist or something, sitting atop the hilly field I’d seen the first day—covered in clouds. And Mum, she… she bowed. Cried. Worshipped, maybe, from what she told me. I don’t know what Zhilloff understood of it all—maybe all of it, maybe nothing.

Whatever the case, Zhill woke me up before dawn, and I was tired and crying. And I followed her out of the burrow, over the hills, and far away, in the distance, was my Mum, crying, too.

Mum picked me up and brought me home. I didn’t understand why Dad wasn’t there, but I told her some stuff, and more, later, when I got older and understood a bit more.

Then the reporters came, and said Mum was lying to evade her “neglect” once Dad had died, or that the neighbours were actually harbouring me the whole time, or that—

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Thanks Tom. The stories, you know, don’t overwrite what actually happened, and I thank you for giving us your account.”

Tom nodded solemnly, and climbed back up the stairs, and slowly settled himself back in his seat.

“Ethics is not about rumours, and dragon ethics is not about gossip, blame, or speculation, as I’ve said. Consider what you know of the biology and physiology of dragons. Their need to eat to survive, their quickness to anger. Their magic, and their mind. Consider, also, their territorial behaviour, and how easily they de-territorialised themselves by migrating to who-knows-where. Consider Tom, who was not, in fact, eaten, and who may have even had the chance to travel to a new continent.”

The class now pondered Professor Ersten’s words in silence, though he swore he could see a gleam, or wetness in Tom’s eyes.

“Humans and humanoid creatures—fairies, orcs, dwarves, goblins, and gnomes—all have taken something from this land, and all have shown relentless violence against the territories guarded by great beings of magic. Is it so strange to think, then, that dragons have their own ethical code, their own system of philosophy—one that does not hinge on bipedal beings? Who are we to enforce our values, our wants, or even our needs upon them? Who are we to give them the voice or emotions of Man? Alas, they left before we realised we were wrong, and they left before we could rewrite our confounded textbooks! There is a stain upon our image of dragons—a stain of anthropomorphic, human-centric design!” The Professor hurled his chalk stub at the chalkboard, where his artistic rendering of a wyvern with blank, white eyes snarled down at the room.

“This University is determined—I am determined—to reckon with our misunderstandings of the past. Your one assignment for this semester will be to write a 20-page report investigating the connection between a dragon, Zhilloff, and her land. You will have access to our history books on what we have learned about Zhilloff over the past thousand years—I advise you to read these. I also advise you to think carefully about whether they are accurate, and, above all, to search for the truth.”

Professor Esten smiled. “In your final year as druid initiates, you will venture into the Zhilloff forest yourselves, and work with the University’s conservationism team to restore the land. Hopefully, one day,” he paused.

“One day, we might even bring the dragons home.”