The Dragon's Daughter

Prologue

There weren't always dragons in the Valley.

In fact, according to the Villagers, ‘T’ waren’t never ever dragons in Our Valley’.

Despite dubious claims from offworlder dragon representatives and dragon committees. Despite a growing mountain of polite, edgy, dispatches, careful letters, even hopeful gifts, outlining dragon lineages and claims to their Valley homeland, the villagers were united in a surly insistence that dragons had never lived there. And further, they must never gain a foothold in the Valley.

The years turned to decades and then to centuries. Never having seen or known an actual dragon, the villagers began, at first tentatively, to whisper and mock, to laugh, then to ignore the foreign overtures. The careful overtures ceased.

Eventually the subject was smothered in resentful silence and defiant forgetting.

One

The Village was close to the Valley, at the far end of the swamps, near to the great, green ocean.

Just one dragon living on their ocean planet, and not even in the valley itself, was one dragon too many. Even if that one attempted poorly to conceal from them what it was by taking human form.

So with little evidence or knowledge, except her ‘foreignness, her difference’ they named her Draig. It was a plain spoken name that represented great strangeness and evil to them. Noone remembered why or what had instigated the feelings of dread evoked by that one lone creature with its stark name. They feared the name they had given to it. They feared the one who bore the name, and they held her in frustrated contempt.

She had offended more than their sense of decency when she took the boy with two faces as her own. When she held him in her arms and let both his mouths suck contentedly at her breasts. As he grew he learned to form a peculiar language of his own. From his two mouths he crooned his own chosen name for her “Rhone, Rhone, Rhone,” he sighed. The sound dissolved into the high rustling branches of the dark trees that surrounded their makeshift home and turned into the steady lapping of the tidal swamps not far from their door. When she was with him she responded to ‘Rhone’, his sweet name for her. Otherwise she gladly answered to the guttural sound of Draig. The name was fierce and free and wild. It helped to remind her there were impossible tasks always waiting for her somewhere in the cloudy distance. The two names together provided a strange comfort that she didn’t question.

She named him Dobhran from one of the ancient tongues because of his joy filled eyes and playful nature, for the pleasure she took from him, and from the love he offered so freely. He provoked unnameable longing in her.

They were content in their small solitary place on the edge of the deep woods. Yet his few encounters with the villagers had been difficult. Most of them turned away repulsed by his physical strangeness. Some started and stared with ill concealed hostility.

Absurdly, she vowed to shield him from all the cruelty that flew and walked and crawled outside their little world that she had made for the two of them. But a mute, wretched part of her collapsed when her mind turned to the distant forces that swirled around them, from which inevitably there could be no escape.

She watched him grow and protected him from the villagers' ignorance and their simple stories. As time passed she cherished and loved him more and more deeply. Until finally she allowed time and love for the child to quiet her fears and to lull her into a dangerous peace.

In her previous journeys she could dimly recall that she had adopted many names and a wearying array of shapes and identities but the one that was real to her now was the blended name of Rhone-Draig, mother of Dobhran the two faced boy, sewer of herbs, teller of fireside tales, fantasy avenger of some far away, long forgotten, evil.

Two

They had chosen to live down in the low dark forest places where odd shaped lizards crawled and pink torc plants bloomed throughout the seasons. It was a dangerous place with moaning winds and strange shadows. They were never troubled by uninvited guests. Every day they swam in currents unknown to the foolish villagers. Together they watched baby birds take flight, only to fall, beaten, to the ground. Their nearest swamp ran silver with the shimmering blood of those poor creatures usually swallowed whole by the waiting gaan fish.

Against all odds in that harsh place one small bird survived. They found him as night fell, in that moment just before the sounding stars screeched in the dark sky.

They took him in, only because her two faced lad insisted. Quickly, it seemed, the bird grew strong and big in their care, though he never did lose his ruffled look or a wariness in his eyes.

He soon grew his strength to fly and a close bond formed between the bird and her boy. In the distance while she was about her chores Draig often heard joyous laughter mingled with the sounds of swooping wings.

‘Perhaps the decision to save the bird was not so foolhardy’ Draig reflected.

But one day she returned from bathing in the undercurrents to find Dobhran levitating high above the ground under the tutelage of the damn bird. Her heart leaped unpleasantly as she surveyed the scene before her. Only recollection of a harsh discipline prevented her from moaning her distress aloud as she strode across the clearing deliberately snapping a twig underfoot to herald her presence.

The bird glanced nervously in her direction breaking concentration and causing Dobhran to to fall in an untidy heap, all legs and arms askew. He scrambled up unhurt looking guilty on both his faces.

“Hey Rhone” he said softly, his voices like sweet reed music.

“Hey yourself” she replied in a low, controlled tone “get busy with your chores”

She turned towards their small hut, throwing a hard glance in the general direction of the unkempt bird who was attempting unsuccessfully to appear innocent.

As she entered the dark of the dwelling she could hear them mumbling to each other though their exact words escaped her.

‘No matter what they’re saying’ she thought ‘I’ve let it go too far, and now I must act’.

Rhone-Draig had known from the beginning that trouble would surely come along with the scrawny useless creature. They should have left him to the gaans, to gasp and struggle and die an awful death, just where they found him on the edge of the swamp.

Weren't the Villagers afraid enough of their strangeness? Did they have to add to the fear by wasting time, and courting disaster, with soiled bits of false wonder and old magic?’ Draig stifled an urge to scream out her own fears. How often had she told him’ “You must never practice magic so close to a body of water. If the magic works then it is surely strong enough to be discovered. Such strength is impossible to hide.” But Dobhran, the two faced boy who had become a son to her, had wanted that foolish bird with all his child’s heart and it had seemed a petty thing to deny him the company of another living creature in his loneliness.

And now that she forced herself to an unwilling honesty, there had been other signs lately that had caused her unease. For months the swamp had been creeping closer to the door of their hut, leaving, as it receded, dead creatures, tortured, mangled beyond easy recognition. Only a week ago in the hot still midday, the wind had suddenly risen and begun to whisper half formed words in a language that she groped to recall with growing dread. During her last visit to the Village there had been uneasy whisperings of foreigners, off worlders, showing sudden interest in purchasing large tracts of surrounding land.

So now the price would have to be paid. Too high a price for the sparse comfort the damn bird had provided Yet in her heart she knew it was wrong to make the bird solely responsible for her growing distress. She had known this day would come. No use whining and sighing over the inevitable.

With a trembling hand Rhone closed the door behind her. It was going to be a long night and she had some difficult decisions to make.

Three

Evening had fallen by the time Dobhran came whistling home, clattering noisily, carelessly slamming the door to the entrance of their hut.

“Chores all done?” Draig enquired carefully, her back to him as she stood at the basin scrubbing roots for their late meal.

“Yes, done.” he replied. She couldn’t tell his mood or what he might be thinking.

“Well, wash up. The food will be ready in a few minutes/”

The evening passed quietly as hundreds of them had passed before. Dobhran reading from his thick worn out books and Rhone sewing an article of clothing for the coming winter.

“I’ll go up now,” he said, turning suddenly from his books.

“As you please” Rhone responded in a neutral tone that betrayed nothing of her churning emotions.

She kept her face turned away from him, not even allowing herself the luxury of a last look as he casually left the room.

Soon the house was engulfed in shadows. It was high summer, still light enough to meet her needs. Coins to pay for false light were hard earned in these parts and it had been their habit to save them for serious purposes. She had no need of sharp sight from her human eyes for what she had to do now.

She took her green cloak from where it hung on the peg near the door. It was the darkest, heaviest one that she owned. She moved as quietly as possible, filling her pack with dried edibles. But before it was properly filled she stopped abruptly. Anyone watching would have seen that she trembled constantly as she made her preparations. And if that watcher had known anything at all of Rhone- Draig he would have been surprised. She was not a creature to flinch in the face of danger or to betray her feelings, even in private.

Draig had sensed for many years that this time must come. Now the moment had arrived, she found she was completely unprepared to part from Dobhran. Yet instinctively she knew that if she valued his life, as well as her own, there were no longer other choices left to her.

With growing sorrow and familiar hopelessness she whispered into the silence of their cottage.

“Farewell sweet Dobhran. Farewell Rhone. Draig’s time has come around again”.