Older than Wagons, and More Slow

“There weren't always dragons in the Valley,” Old Sulien told me one day, as we stood together on the precipice, looking out over the patchwork of fields and farmhouses entrusted to our protection. He was getting frail now, and seemed not much longer for this realm of solid things. He leant into the gale, anchored by that gnarly old staff of his. It always gave me confidence, that staff, eyesore that it was, and he held it more firmly than ever now, as if borrowing its strength. He was spry, but there wasn’t much of him these days, and even I was feeling the lift of that wind. And there was plenty of me. I pulled my shawl around me and tried to focus on the staff.

“Dragons? Nobody’s ever seen dragons in the Valley,” I replied, scoffing, wondering if I'd misheard. His words surprised me. He’d never been known to speak much, and certainly not without purpose, but his words were even fewer now, and carefully weighed. Up here on the heights it was hard to catch what he said, buffeted as we were by the constant gale that raged against the mountains. He probably said ‘wagons’, I thought. They were relatively new. Maybe not new in Sulien’s lifetime, but newish.

I watched his face as his eyes traced the path of a distant wagon winding its way to a mill on the horizon. Eagle eyes.

“Doesn’t mean they’re not there though, does it,” he replied.

It was one of his riddles, I decided, and shrugged. “I guess not.”

We stood for some time, silently watching the hamlet scene below, he with his cryptic riddles, me with my vertigo. Should I ask? Should I know this? Should I suggest we stand a little back from the ledge?

I was really a terrible apprentice. I should be focusing on the solution, not the myriad potential literal missteps of the situation. I was about to ask if we could sit down on the rock behind us so he could explain what he meant about dragons where I could hear him better, when a gust of wind hit us full on and my voice was sucked right out of my mouth. Which also explains why I couldn’t hear myself scream when old Sulien went over.

One moment he was there beside me, the setting sun glowing in his golden eyes, the next he was gone, leaving little more than a dent in the dirt on the corner of the ledge.

I reeled. A minor whirly wind whooshed up around me (it sometimes happened when I was flustered). The gust was gone, but so was Sulien. And the valley below began to look sick.

No, that was just me.

“Oh!” I said, for want of anything more pertinent. I may have whimpered.

There I stood, alone on the precipice, as moments became disbelief, and disbelief became night. How could I even begin to contemplate life without him? Could he really be gone?

Then I saw it, glowing eerily in the twilight. The staff. It was strange to see it like that, without him attached to it. Especially because it was vertical and floating several feet out from the cliff edge. In mid air. Air seemed to emanate from it in waves. It pushed me backwards, and sent my long black hair flapping behind me in big, whomping beats.

“Wha-” I stammered.

“Surely I haven’t surprised you, Wing?” I heard him laugh. A slow, satisfied laugh, echoing off the basalt rocks. “After all these years. I thought surely you must have noticed…”

I was searching, scanning, scouring the space in front of me for the source of those words. The staff hovered there, but nobody held it. I frowned. It was obvious now. This was one of his pranks. Wizards, I thought.

“Look Sulien, this is not funny,” I roused, shaking my finger. “You come back from there. And for heaven’s sake…put something visible on!”

“I won’t!” he replied. I was mystified.

“Well…why not?” It was disconcerting talking to a hovering wooden stick. I couldn’t decide where to look.

“I’ve been cramped up in that skin for centuries. I will not wear it anymore!” I knew Sulien was old, but centuries was probably pushing it. “Also I lost it.”

I hesitated. Was that...guilt? Was the voice of Sulien embarrassed? Not possible. But it was his voice, there was no question. “Lost what?” I asked.

“The old man.” I paused to let this sink in. The old man was Sulien. He was my mentor, my housemate, and my friend. He wasn’t a… skin!

“Let me get this straight,” I said slowly. “You lost it? You lost the old man? YOU LOST SULIEN!?” There was silence. If the voice had feet it was probably looking down at them shamefully. “And who are you anyway? Sulien if this is a joke it’s gone too far…” It probably looked silly, but I stamped my foot. Nothing happened. There was silence. “Show yourself!” I demanded, feeling even more foolish.

Then the most amazing thing happened. I’ve seen a lot of amazing things in the course of my training. I’ve seen purple fire, and faces in trees. I’ve seen hay bales levitate! But none of the quirky little anomalies of my previous life could have prepared me for the vision that manifested at that moment in front of me.

It wavered like a mirage.

And was at least the length of twenty arnos (1).

There before me in the golden sky, a monstrous, shimmering, copper scaled dragon wavered in and out of the dusk lit mist. Its head was broad at the temple, and its bearded chin arched inwards above a noble stretch of light, shimmering neck. Ancient, intelligent eyes stared down at me with a piercing gaze interrupted, to my surprise, by a flicker of too many eyelids, at least two on each eye, one shutting in the usual horizontal direction, the inner set closing vertically, like curtains at a window. The vast, dinner-plate-sized irises beneath them were alive with sparks of burning, intense copper gold.

I’d seen those irises before, and I realised now they were his. The impossible, atrocious creature in front of me had Sulien’s eyes, though when they were smaller they only looked magical, and tended to discourage prolonged eye contact. At this new, unthinkable scale it was like staring down a house fire.

“I AM SULIEN,” it said. I was leaning in that direction anyway. But the sheer horror of those words coming from the dragon in front of me, the timbre in that newly amplified voice of his resonating right into the marrow of my bones, left little doubt. My open mouth said as much.

“He isn’t lost,” the terrible voice went on. “I didn’t lose him. I just sort of…dropped the old skin somewhere down there.” The dragon, that is, Sulien, glanced down at a distant tangle of blackberry bracken lining the base of the cliff. I looked down over the edge, but couldn’t make out anything in the fading light, just masses of thornbush and shadow. Somewhere down there was a missing body. Belonging to nobody, apparently. Some old man. “I’m sorry,” the dragon added. I was too shocked to say anything. After all, he was a dragon.

As we walked back down the mountain side, Sulien at my side, sheepish and chagrined, some of my initial shock started to wear off. It was replaced by a mixture of curiosity, outright horror, and annoyance. This new, metamorphosed Sulien was a wonder to be sure, entirely terrifying, and had completely ruined my seating arrangement for the upcoming Council of Realms.

Also, strangely enough, despite his increased size, my old master seemed to have a lot less gravity about him. As he gambled down the mountain beside me, one could say ‘frolicked’ even, it began to feel as if I’d suddenly become the unwitting owner of a very large, very deep voiced puppy.

Eventually my curiosity won out. “So, you were saying?” Sulien looked at me, his large, scaly forehead crinkling quizzically. “About there not always being dragons,” I explained. “In the valley.”

“Ah yes,” replied the dragon. “I had an interesting history lesson prepared for you. I intended to reveal the dragon thing gradually. I was worried you’d be shocked.”

I looked at him. “Oh, well, thank you very much,” I said.

He chuckled. “How could I resist? Surprise is so…delicious!” I stopped in alarm, and took a step away. I wondered what dragons like to eat. He only laughed more. “Oh Wing!” he sighed happily, “you have so much to learn!” He snorted another laugh and steam poured out of his nostrils. I waved away the smoke and started to march down the mountain again. I did not intend to be eaten, but even less so did I intend to be the butt of his jokes. Sulien had changed, but it was obvious I was still a source of amusement for him.

I made my way down the narrow path. In the half light it was hard to see, but I knew it so well I could practically walk the way blindfolded. In fact, he’d made me do it last week. Sulien was still chuckling to himself and was there galumphing along beside me whenever the path widened.

“What did you mean then? What was here before dragons? And when did they…when did you arrive?”

“Before us, there were Basilisks,” Sulien replied with a reptilian hiss, sounding more than a little competitive. “Nasty creatures. Not particularly friendly to folk such as now populate this valley. It was a dark time. We arrived with the dawn, and chased out each and every one of them. We brought the possibility of peace to this realm. Then we made it our business to keep the enemies of peace from ever coming back.”

I nodded approvingly. “There are more of you then?”

His eyes flashed at me with a rewarding shower of copper sparks. “Indeed. Here in this valley there are many of us.”

I frowned at him. “What here, in this valley? You can’t mean…in the shape of humans?” He said nothing, but his eyes burned all the more. I stopped suddenly. “Jim Grim!” I exclaimed. “Obviously he’s one of you. Always knew there was something odd about him! Not just the shape of him either. Always so been so…smug!” Sulien seemed to smile. “Let me see…Harriet O’Hair, Sigourney Upwhite, Haggerty the Choirmaster of course. Wait -- surely not old Bob Wormwood!” I took his silence for assent. Old Bob Wormwood and his crazy dreams.

I walked on through the darkness, all the odd, niggling doubts I’d had about some of the townsfolk suddenly crystallizing in my mind. The sideways looks. The uppity attitudes. The recurring shop fires. It wasn’t me, I realised with relief, it was them! I racked my brain for more suspected dragons. I spent a lot of time with the oldies, and they were all a bit odd. Of course, I’d always taken their eccentricities for typical elderly abandonment of social expectations.

“Who am I forgetting…” I said. There weren’t many old people left. Was every elderly person in my village secretly a dragon? “Marta Barny!”

“No,” came the reply.

“Surely!”

“Not so far as I know.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Just angry then?”

“Just angry.”

We were nearing the outskirts of the village now, and the forest was thickening. As I watched another ancient pine topple sideways in wake of that very long tail of his, I decided we had better lay down some guidelines. Or at the very least, revisit the rules.

“Am I still your apprentice?”

“Of course,” he replied, his eyes narrowing, both ways. “If you can keep up.”

I took offence, naturally. “Oh I can keep up, never mind about that,” I replied. “I’m just not entirely sure how this will work. I mean, I don’t think you’ll fit in your old bed. And I have no idea what dragons eat but I won’t be serving anything remotely questionable. And if flying is on the syllabus, that’s a flat no.” Sulien said nothing, merely chuckled to himself, and stopped to scratch the back of his ear with his hind leg. It would take me a while to get used to that, I decided.

“As for everybody else,” I went on. “They’ll be fine once the first shock of it wears off. They’ll understand. I mean, they loved the old man, everybody loved him. Nobody knew what to say to him and mostly they hoped he wouldn’t actually speak at the village meetings but they loved him all the same. He was just…Old Sulien. They got used to him being there. Protecting the realm, you know.”

“I’m still here,” said Sulien. “I can still protect the realm.”

“Sure, sure you can.” We came to the bridge that led to the highway. It was too narrow for both of us, so we walked across single file, me leading the way.

“It wasn’t like it was going to last much longer anyway,” sulked Sulien, creaking across the bridge behind me.

“What’s that you say?” I asked.

“Nothing,” the dragon replied.

I was glad Sulien was still committed to protecting the Valley. I’d only been his apprentice for 13 years, and I’d spent the first 10 learning to cook, read and tell the difference between loamwart and bristleberry, and was nowhere near ready to take over doing what he did. I didn’t even know what he did. I knew how to open and close a chant, how to predict the seasons based on the positions of the stars, and when to proclaim a public holiday, but I was pretty sure there was more to the position than that. Especially now there were ‘Basilisks’ to consider.

But as far as I knew there were years of training in front of me before I was initiated into the sort of secrets the protectors of the Realms liked to keep secret. I thought about the big Council of the Realms we were hosting here in our village next month. Maybe that’s the sort of thing they talked about in those big secret conventions. Basilisks. And Dragons.

We were nearing the village boundaries, and I was distracted from my thoughts by the sight of something dark darting between the trees where the forest met the fields. Sulien and I both froze. There was a soul chilling scream, and a loud bang, and the sound of many villagers rioting. Possibly with pitchforks. Something told me I was in for a long night.

***

(1) As is customary, our region has its own unit of measurement engraved into the wall at the entry to the town hall. The arno is said to be the exact distance from the underside of the founding chieftain’s nose to the furthermost tip of his outstretched thumb. Why that might be a useful metric has long been lost to lore, popular theory has it that his arrowsmith used it to make sure his arrows were the right length. I liked to think Arno was an artist and could frequently be seen holding his thumb out in front of him.