The Dragons of Coyote Valley

There weren't always dragons in the valley. Thomas's great uncle Nunce said this whenever he saw a fresh pair of ears.

It was an idea that sat strangely in the mind, like saying that there weren't always clouds in the sky, or there weren't always fingernails at the ends of fingers. The dragons' presence seemed as ancient as the valley itself.

Uncle Nunce, who was old and hairless and toothless and whose hands tended to tremble, said that when he was a small boy the dragons had been there, but his great grandfather had told him about a childhood when the most threatening thing in the valley had been coyotes, after which Coyote Valley had been named.

The valley's name lent credence to Nunce's words. Why would anyone name an area full of vicious dragons Coyote Valley?

When he said it, usually at Malarkey Eat and Drink where he spent his evenings, there was routinely a chorus in reply. "And weren't those the days!"

The dragons of Coyote Valley didn't come to the town, but they had done away with many a would-be hero in full (usually homemade, not that it mattered) armor, who had decided to rid Rosalind of its dragon menace. Only five years ago, Barry Flosset had ridden southwest with loaded muskets hanging along his horse's flanks, at least a dozen. The town had lost many muskets that day, as well as a beautiful horse and an unrepentant drunk.

Every seven years, during spring, while the birds chased each other around treetops flirting, and the rabbits became so numerous that throwing a net out the window had a non-trivial chance of catching you one, you'd hear the male dragons bellowing in the distance, the sound driving virtually all fish, fowl, and deer north. By the time summer rolled around, there would be five to ten new hatchlings, which would be larger than horses by the time summer ended. They practiced their first hunts on livestock.

Whenever a Dragon Spring was approaching, the ranchers had to make sure there were enough animals for their stock to survive the cull, but did not always succeed. Ry Tombleson had closed his ranch some years back due to the dragons eating every last goat in his field. He now worked on Lawrence Plinth's ranch for a wage. Even when the dragons just ate a few of a farmer's animals, it was a significant financial hit.

"And weren't those the days!"

The days before the dragons came. The better days.

Thomas was going to kill the dragons.

-

Thomas had just had his seventeenth birthday a week and a half before, and had gotten a very fine shirt from his father, a flower arrangement from his sister Leena, and a large polished quartz from his best friend Arnold.

Nicole, though, who Thomas had loved since he was fourteen, who had kissed him just after his sixteenth birthday, and who hadn't spent a full day away from him since then, had given the gift that had stood out the most. A gift that he would never forget. She had fallen in love with another boy.

Thomas rode south toward the edge of Rosalind Village. Well, Rosalind Town now. A census taker had, a few months before, put up a notice to that effect with Queen Colette's own seal. A little over three thousand villagers (no, townspeople) in wood houses extending a few miles into what was once the edge of Furman Wood.

There was always construction. New houses. New businesses. Rosalind had a reputation for being pleasant, festive, and (most importantly) not officially under the Queen's thumb. It sat at the south end of Mattis Peninsula, which had been gifted to King Gregroy Mattis of Prota some decades back. King Greg was an old tyrant, but the peninsula was deep inside of Mariel Kingdom, Colette's kingdom, and had no real governmental center, so Rosalind was less governed overall than most places. One might expect this to attract criminals, and there were plenty of people whose backstory seemed made-up, but order was kept.

Thomas was riding bareback on his donkey, Annamarie, wearing an orange burlap backpack, when he saw Nicole and her new boyfriend Ronald walking up the road in the other direction.

It had been a good ten days since she'd left him, and Thomas was surprised by his own resilience and maturity. Nicole was a part of his past, and he had a bright future.

As he stopped, a pleasant breeze blew over them. The sun had been beating down since early in the day.

"Hey Tommy," Nicole said. Very casual. She had big bright eyes with dark lashes and a sharp nose. Wavy brown hair. She carried herself like nobility, but her bare feet were muddy to the ankles. She was in a sky blue dress with yellow fringe and had lilac flowers tied in her hair. She smelled like a bouquet.

Ronald, who was actually shorter than Thomas and narrower in the shoulders, also with a weak chin, gave him a nod and a single wave.

"Where you guys headed?" Thomas said.

"Just taking a walk," Nicole said. "Ronald showed me a frog. He says they're…" she looked at her narrow-shouldered companion, "different than the other frogs?"

Ronald nodded. "The legs are a little bit longer on average," he said to her, and then looked up at Thomas as if he had a lot more to say about it, but did not continue.

"There aren't going to be dragons in the valley much longer," Thomas said, also very casual.

Ronald tilted his head. Nicole squinted. "What… do you mean?"

Thomas couldn't help but grin. "Let's just say that I'm going to be on the lips of everyone in this town soon."

No, my NAME will be on their lips. I won't be on their lips. Oh my god.

A shadow fell over Nicole's face. She turned to Ronald. "Baby, you should go home. I need to talk to him for a second."

"I could…"

"No."

Ronald nodded and shuffled off.

She jerked on Thomas's sleeve. "Get down here."

Thomas did so. Of course Ronald, whose shoulders were no wider than his neck in Thomas's memory, couldn't quite stack up to this clever dragon slayer that stood before her. Christ, his lips were so dry. What if she wanted to kiss him?

"You are not going to kill the dragons," she said.

Thomas shrugged. "I'm not holding a weapon. Who says I even want to…"

"You have a bunch of veinroot poison in your bag. I can literally smell it. If you sweat too much, it's going to soak into your skin and eat it. That stuff is why Plenny is missing fingers!"

"I'm not sweating."

"Yes you are!"

Annamarie nuzzled Nicole, who rubbed the donkey's head and scratched under her chin. A visible cloud of dust fell from her coarse fur. "You're a good girl. Don't let your daddy kill himself."

Thomas took a deep breath. "Maybe just be excited for me? I mean, if I do this, and I succeed…"

"Listen to yourself! You're even saying if. Well if you don't succeed, you're just… ashes. Their fire is magic. It's not like a normal fire."

"Magic isn't real. It's just tricks."

Nicole gave him a withering look. "I can't stop you, but if you die today, I won't cry. I'll curse your name for being an idiot."

This finally gave Thomas pause. "You'd cry eventually."

She looked at him for a long time, and he could not for the life of him figure out her subtle facial expression. Sad? Mad? Secretly aroused?

She kissed Annamarie on the forehead, wiped her mouth off, and said, very specifically to the donkey, "Keep yourself safe. You're still young." Then she walked after Ronald, who had stopped to wait on a bench.

Nicole obviously didn't know what she wanted. She'd once told Thomas that she'd love him until the stars went out like candles. She wasn't a liar. The stars were still numerous in the sky.

Annamarie was plodding after Nicole, and Thomas had to jog after her. "Come on, Ann!" After a bit of a struggle, he got her turned around and swung a leg over her strong back. He scratched her neck. "You're my partner, remember? Let's go become famous. They might make a statue of you, you know? Or at least include you in my statue."

Coyote Valley was to the south, but Longtoes Lake stood in the way, so he went southwest, suddenly very conscious of the poison in his backpack. His back wasn't sweating. Not much. Surely not enough to get through the burlap, soak the poison, and get back to his skin.

That stuff is why Plenny is missing fingers!

That was news to Thomas. Plenny pointed at things with his pinky. Thomas found himself sweating a bit harder, which made him more nervous and made him sweat harder.

He took the backpack off (it really did smell) and dangled it by his leg.

"You know," he said to Annamarie, "This is not about Nicole. I'm basically over her, you know?"

The donkey turned her head and looked at him with one of her big dark eyes.

"I mean, yeah, she's pretty. That's just a fact of nature. Everyone knows she's pretty."

Annamarie put her eyes back on the path. The area south of town was more rocks than dirt, with scrubby grasses and shrubs popping up where they could. The air was tinged with the smell of the sour mint plants that grew there in clusters.

He absently rubbed the donkey's neck. "And if I did kill the dragons, and maybe there was a party? Or like a new holiday? She'd probably dump Ronald, which is too bad, because I wouldn't even take her back. I've moved on. Honestly, I haven't barely thought about Nicole since we left her back there."

Annamarie sneezed and vocalized softly.

"You know, she said I'm reckless and dumb and everything when she left me. But, when I succeed, she'll see that successfully being reckless is the same as genius. Not that it matters what she… you know."

Annamarie really craned her neck now, not to look at Thomas this time, but to look past him. There were hoofbeats.

It was Ronald.

Thomas had Annamarie at a walk, and Ronald was catching up. He was on Liet, Nicole's horse. She was smallish and pretty old. Her coat was gray speckled with white, but with an anomalous orange streak above her right eye. She had on Nicole's well-worn saddle.

Annamarie had fully stopped and was now turning, stomping her front hooves in excitement, braying loudly enough to make Thomas's ears ring. Liet sped up to a light-hearted trot. The two animals were close friends, and hadn't seen each other much since the breakup. Thomas had at one time taken their chemistry as an omen of his and Nicole's compatibility.

No matter how Thomas urged Annamarie to turn back, she single-mindedly hurried toward Liet, and the two animals were sniffing and rubbing against each other moments later, Thomas trying not to look at Ronald.

"I'm to accompany you," Ronald said from his higher position, Liet's back about a foot higher up than Annamarie's, the saddle adding another inch.

Thomas sighed. "Is that a mandate from Queen Colette?"

Ronald chuckled as if they were friends. "No. Nicole wanted me to."

"Do you do everything Nicole says?"

Ronald actually stopped to consider this. "Yeah, I suppose so. She's really probably only asked me to do a few…"

"Alright! I don't care that much." Thomas took a deep breath. "You can sit this one out, Ron. Just skip some rocks on the lake for a while, and when I come back you can go home. She won't have any idea."

Ronald winced, and his head shrank into his shoulders a little, like maybe he thought he was a turtle. "I… try not to lie?"

"At all?"

"I haven't lied in a month."

"A month?"

"My dad asked me if I had killed the raccoon that he'd caught, but I really let it go a few miles away. I eventually told him. He was so angry."

Thomas could not wrap his head around this guy. "You don't lie?"

"No. Very rarely. I don't like to. It feels gross."

Thomas thought this over and then said, "So… does Nicole still like me?"

Ronald cast his eyes down. "I think so."

Maybe it wouldn't be terrible to have a helper. The two young men sat quietly while their steeds visited with each other for a couple of minutes.

"Well let's get going, I guess. Try to keep up."

It wasn't until they had cleared Longtoe Lake and were well on their way to the river, little conversation starters falling out of Ronald's mouth and rotting like apples, that something occurred to Thomas. "So, you're squeamish about killing a raccoon, but you're going to help kill the dragons?"

Ronald was out of sight, riding a few feet behind Thomas. "I don't intend to kill anything. I'm supposed to talk you out of it. I thought maybe if we became friends first that would be easier."

"I don't see us becoming friends."

"It doesn't seem likely, but it seems more likely than killing dragons."

Thomas didn't reply.

An hour later, they were riding at a steady pace alongside Big River. The bridge was built in a narrower spot, maybe fifty feet wide, above some white water. It was old, but it was strong. It had been made by the legendary Jer Terrison back when Uncle Nunce was young, and it was still sturdy and level, wide enough for two wagons to pass.

As they approached the bridge, and the crisp smell of the wet stones filled the air, and the white noise of the water got louder, Liet became skittish.

"She doesn't like bridges," Thomas said, happy to demonstrate Nicole-adjacent knowledge that Ronald didn't know. "You'll have to walk her. Slowly. And keep a hand on her neck. Stay in her sight. Talk to her."

"Okay."

"So, have you touched her boobs?"

Ronald didn't answer right away. "Her udder?"

"Not Liet, Nicole. Have you touched her boobs?"

Ronald nodded. "Yeah. She likes it."

Thomas could feel his face flush. "So, have you, ah… Have you guys…"

Ronald held up a hand. "I told you, I'm honest. Don't ask me anything you don't want the answer to."

He nodded. Breathing hard, he started Annamarie across the bridge. Did he really need Ronald's help? He tapped her neck. "Ann! Fast!"

She broke into a trot, her hooves clapping on the sturdy, fragrant, tar-coated planks. The mist was a relief on his face.

With Ronald nursing Liet across, Thomas could get a good lead. There weren't any roads leading into Coyote Canyon, for obvious reasons. If he got far enough ahead, Ronald might not be able to find him.

He'd been switching which hand held the backpack for a couple of hours, and his shoulders were burning. Bouncing lightly from the trot, it was getting worse. He slipped it onto his back. He'd be at the valley before long.

He aimed Annamarie toward the nearest rise. Once he was out of Ronald's line of sight, he would make a crazy course change, maybe add an hour to the trip, and lose him. And then the man of no shoulders would have to return to Nicole with his tail between his legs.

He was making good progress when he heard hard hoofbeats behind him in the grass, and then Liet was beside them, panting and nuzzling Annamarie for comfort. She was alone.

Thomas looked back and didn't see Ronald at first, but then he saw a crumpled Ronald-sized shape a little over halfway across the bridge. He kept his eye on the heap, but it was inert. He then oriented toward Coyote Valley, told Annamarie to go, and then told her to stop.

He sighed, sighed again, punched his leg, swore, and then turned her around. He left the animals a good forty feet from the bridge, as not to scare Liet.

"Ronald!" he called, and then again as loudly as he could. No response. When he reached the slight young man, he saw that he was bleeding from the side of his head. Looking at the injury, a good gash that split the skin and pushed it a bit back toward his hairline, it looked like a glancing blow from a hoof.

"You idiot," he said, rolling him onto his back. His head lolled, blood running into his hair. It was a lot of blood, but that didn't mean anything. The scalp always bled a lot.

Ronald was wheezing, but at least he was breathing. Thomas slapped him lightly on his cheek, opposite the injury, and then thought of him touching Nicole's bare breasts and gave him a firmer slap.

His eyes opened slowly. He looked at Thomas, looked around at the bridge, at the river, at the horses, piecing it all together.

"What happened?" he said, his voice thick and barely carrying over the rushing water.

"Liet kicked you and ran for it."

He nodded. "She got so scared. I couldn't help her."

"She helped herself."

"Do you think she hates me now?"

Thomas shrugged and helped him up. Ronald leaned against the railing, holding the injury. "I should go back home."

"Are you eager to walk her back across?"

Ronald considered this and sighed. "I guess not. Let's just go."

Liet did not hate Ronald. The two young men rode alongside each other, Ronald pressing a makeshift pine needle and wild onion poultice against the gash.

"You know how pissed Nicole would be if you died on my quest?"

Ronald shrugged. "She'd probably be more sad."

"She gets angry quicker than she gets sad."

"I guess that's true." He glanced upward and his eyes widened. He pointed. "The mother!"

And there she was, against the backdrop of a mountainous cumulus cloud. It was impossible to tell scale from that distance, but you could see in the way she beat her wings that she was just colossal. She was easily recognized because her wings were, proportionally, twice as big as those of the other dragons.

"Is she looking at us?" Ronald said.

"No way. She's so far."

"Dragons are magic."

"Magic is not real."

Ronald shrugged. "Maybe. Eagles hunt from high up, though. Her eyes might be a lot better than ours."

"Well… she's not looking at us. So don't worry about it."

From that distance, he couldn't see the dragon's face at all. If she'd been upside-down, tail up and long neck pointed at the ground, he wouldn't have been able to tell. She was hovering in place, treading air, and her wings were squarely either facing them or facing away, but no way was she watching them.

Even if she could see them, they were just a couple of travelers. Yes, they happened to be off the beaten path, and they were oriented toward Coyote Valley, but there was surely something worth visiting between there and where they were.

"You're sweating again," Ronald said. "Do you want me to hold the poison?"

Thomas's shirt was stuck to him. His back was itching all over, like he was being poked lightly with needles. Was that just his mind playing tricks on him?

He handed it over.

Ronald was startled by the weight of it. "How did you get this much?"

"I saved money and let 'Pothy Willy know that I was eventually going to buy a lot of it. It was more than I expected. Backpack was free." He'd told Willy that it was for rats, and Willy did not seem to believe him or care.

"Do you think it would be enough to hurt something that size?" Ronald motioned toward the dragon, who had wheeled around and was descending slowly into the valley like a maple leaf in autumn. The thing was practically all wing.

"Oh yeah," Thomas said. "It's strong. This stuff is how Plenny lost his fingers."

"Oh wow."

The matriarch was often described as, "Bigger than any building, taller than any tree." Maybe the whole backpack would be like a little grain of sand on her tongue. Would it be enough? Would a sand-sized amount do Thomas in?

Also, she may have seen them coming.

As Grasp Hill, which was the nearest edge of the valley, came into view in the distance, Thomas wondered for the first time if what he was doing was wise. He was like a beetle compared to that monster. How would he feel if a beetle was slowly scuttling toward him? Even if it had a speck of poison on its back?

Was he going to die today? Was waking up in bed tomorrow not an option?

But he'd been fantasizing about his triumph for months. Everything he did, there was a little voice in the back of his head explaining how it would be different if he were a champion. A living legend. That was his future. That was the only option. Going back to his old life… he couldn't even imagine it.

He'd found one of Nicole's hairs in his bedroom the day before. Long and brown and wavy. He'd tried to save it, but had lost it right away.

"Onward," he whispered. Ronald glanced over.

There was a patch of tall stones jutting from the ground at the highest point of Grasp Hill, leaning against each other, looking a lot like the fingers of a giant submerged hand. All the kids in Rosalind were taught about the fingers and the dangers of wandering beyond them, but Thomas wasn't a kid. He was seventeen, and he had a plan.

The trees became very dense, and the boys had to backtrack several times, seeking passage for the animals. Even Annamarie was getting frustrated, braying and giving Thomas looks that could brown grass. The boys eventually tied them up in a clearing on a wide patch of clover.

"We'll be back by nightfall," Thomas told his donkey, scratching her chin, neck, and flank.

"She can't understand you," Ronald said, and Thomas glared at him.

Without the animals, progress to and up the hill was quick. As they traveled, Thomas's guts becoming wet and heavy with nerves, the finger stones went in and out of sight through the branches, a little closer every time he saw them.

"Aren't you supposed to talk me out of this?" he said as Ronald helped him over a short cliff.

"I figured you'd get scared, so I wouldn't have to. And this is good bonding time."

"We don't need bonding time. You're my ex-girlfriend's boyfriend. We aren't anything to each other."

"I've heard so much about you, though."

Thomas decided not to ask for details. Don't ask me anything you don't want the answer to.

"We are not hanging out after this."

"You did help me when I got kicked," Ronald said, touching the ugly shining wound on his face.

"I would also do that for a sheep."

He pushed aside a leafy hazelnut branch and there were the finger stones. They were much bigger up close, the tallest one being about fifty feet, ten feet wide at the base, bright white in the sun. Who knows how they'd gotten there or why they were still standing. The two young men reached the summit and beheld the valley.

"This is Coyote Valley?" Thomas said. He had imagined a bowl of land, maybe the size of a small lake, with a family of fat dragons lying around in the center of it, like in a drawing. This was a dense expanse of forest, the hills opposite being so distant that the green could have been grass or trees. He saw no dragons.

He scanned the area, uncertain. The wind shifted, and for a moment he could smell wood smoke.

"Look at that burned spot," Ronald said, pointing a bit to the left. There was a fringe of black and gray char in the midst of all the green. It was just a streak from their vantage point, but it could have been a large area.

"How far is that?"

"I don't know. Three miles?"

Was the burnt-up place where the dragons lived? And what were the odds that such large animals left food lying around, waiting to have poison sprinkled over it?

"What does the big one eat?" Thomas said.

"Whales."

"Whales?" Thomas had never seen a whale, but he had seen drawings of them. Another supposedly magical animal. Enormous fish that were said to make ghostly cries under the water. Some were supposedly bigger than sailing ships.

Thomas took a deep breath and started forward, but Ronald grabbed his shoulder. He pointed far to the right, at a short waterfall on the side of a small snow-capped mountain further along the edge of the valley. "If they're like any other animal, they'll want to be near a river. I bet they live right by it."

Thomas nodded. This gave him an idea. After finding the dragons, he could simply drop poison into the water when he saw them drinking. And if it didn't work, they wouldn't know he had been there in the first place.

"I guess I failed to stop you," Ronald said. "If you go down there, I'm turning back."

Thomas shrugged. "Don't tell everyone what I'm up to. I want to surprise them." He started forward. He immediately heard soft footsteps behind him.

"I thought you weren't coming."

"I thought so, too. I can't just leave you alone, though. It's dangerous."

Once they were in the thick of the trees, Ronald kept them moving in the right direction by watching the clouds' movement, which slowed them down considerably. Thomas had been lost in the woods before, though, and knew how easy it was to go in circles. The sting of mosquitos was a constant companion.

They heard the river before they saw it. It was really just a creek, but water is water.

Following the creek instead of the clouds, their progress became faster. The icy slow-moving water was only about thirty feet wide in its widest parts, and the boys waded most of the way. The forest had all the same plants as in Furman Wood, which should have been expected, but reminded Thomas that his quest had only carried him a few hours from home. He was chewing on a handful of clover blossoms, very focused on finding walkways, and wasn't thinking much about dragons, when he heard a sound that turned him to stone.

It was a deep resonant animal sound. Not a roar, but a groan. The character of the sound was neutral and calm, but the throat it came from was very large. He felt the vibration of it on his arm hair and on his eyelashes. His body tried to flee without his permission. He planted his feet and took some deep breaths. He had broken out in gooseflesh. He almost said, "What was that?" but was stopped by Ronald whispering, "Well, we know what that was."

Ronald, who did not seem particularly athletic, jumped up, grabbed a low branch of a fir tree, and pulled himself up. He climbed fifteen feet and then scanned down the creek. Excited, he motioned for Thomas to follow.

Thomas wasn't afraid of heights, but had never been an excellent climber. After a bit of a struggle, while trying not to make noise, he stood about a foot lower than Ronald on the other side of the trunk. After scanning between the branches and leaves for more than a minute, he saw it. Through a small gap, iridescent green and gold scales that were as shiny as jewelry. Mirror-shiny. Small movements of the animal made them sparkle. Once he had the beast in sight, he followed the length of it and spotted part of its head, its chin in the water. He then saw its muscular and taloned rear leg, at least thirty feet behind the head. Now that he could see it, he could smell it. Musky. Spicy.

"This is exactly what I wanted," he mouthed, his heart hammering. How lucky could he be? "Give me the backpack," he whispered. Should he just toss the poison into the water from there? No, it would splash. He'd have to use a leaf to handle it, as he had neglected to bring gloves. He'd be careful.

Ronald got Thomas's attention and pointed at his own ear and then toward the dragon.

Thomas heard it. Children's laughter. Then, after moving to another branch, he saw three small kids, all less than five years old, undressed and splashing. One of them was scooping water onto the dragon's slitted fist-sized eye with two hands, frantically giggling. The monster closed its eye, flipped its fringed ear like a horse, and shook the water off, causing the children to howl with laughter. One of the kids was trying to climb onto its neck, slipping down with squeaks like wet feet on glazed tiles.

"There's kids," Thomas said, dumbfounded. "We should… save them?"

"They're not from Rosalind," Ronald said. "How are they…"

A small rock bounced off of his shoulder, then one hit Thomas on the neck. There were three young men and an older man on the ground behind them, dressed in primitive leather clothes.

"Come on down," the eldest said with no kind of accent, "Or we could bring you down if you'd prefer."