To Swallow the Shifting Moon

Wesley knew only one truth, and it was as simple as this: that the stars loved the dragon as much as she did. Hiding in the deep woods, she liked to count the stars like she counted the sapphire scales on the dragon’s back, lying belly-down on top of him, singing softly, running fingers over his glimmering armour. For every scale, for every star, she made a wish. Only the dragon and the stars knew all her wishes, and she had two favorites. First, that the dragon be with her forever. Second, that her family never find him.

There was no telling how many dragons mami alone had killed, as she’d been hunting them for the church since before Wesley was born. That was to say nothing of the rest of the Reyes family: papi, her tios, her tias, her cousins. If Wesley had older siblings, she was sure they’d be killing dragons, too. They expected Wesley to kill dragons someday, when she was older. Fifteen was to be her first blood-letting, escorted, of course, by her parents, and with the church’s blessing. But when she looked into the dragon’s deep, warm eyes, sick dread churned her stomach and knotted her bones at the thought of taking his life.

Wesley never named the dragon. Deep down, she was afraid. No matter how thickly she loved him (and her love ran as thick as the dark of a cloud choked night), he was untameable still, and the world told her to hate him. Especially on the compound, which Wesley almost never left, dragon hunting fervor loomed at the center of all things.

Every morning in class, Sister Thom, trembling with elderly passion, decried the dragon menace by stomping her little foot and raising her raspy voice. Their school textbooks decried them just the same. Monsters, they were called. Murderers, feeding on innocent flocks, melting flesh from bone. Abominations spitting in the face of God. In history dragons swallowed whole entire villages, got together to raze cities to the ground and charm the youth to sorceries unspeakable, so that they grew devil’s hooves and raised the dead. In history, war between humans and dragons was a constant, never-ending inevitability. Hunters were thus the so-called last line of defence against the horror of dragons, the salve for a festering wound.

Wesley didn’t want to believe it. She hated that sometimes, when the dragon roared playfully at her, she recoiled away. Even when she lie giggling beside him, rolling together with him in the grass or splashing with him in the river, she nurtured a grain of doubt and fear that never left her.

Most of all, she feared to lose him. He was as much a part of her as the constance of breath. She sang to him to make him grow, and on nights when her home loomed empty and cold he sheltered her against his fiery belly, under his great wing. Wesley sang of old things, of the living earth and of magic and the eternity of spring; songs mami sang to her when she was still small, long before she knew the hatred growing gnarled roots in mami’s veins. The dragon listened quietly, though sometimes it was as if he hummed along.

And softly, softly, like dandelion seeds blowing away in the gentle wind, Wesley would fall asleep at the dragon’s side. She couldn’t remember the last time she slept at home, or the last time her family noticed she was missing. Wesley was good at making herself small and unknowable. Even when she was a toddler playing with her cousins, she could hide for hours and hours and eventually be forgotten. It didn’t bother her. She played with the shadows on the walls made by the shape of her hands. She spoke to the pixies hiding in the cupboards. She told stories to the ghosts in the slats between the wooden boards of the house. Only her cousin Pastor ever found her. Only he didn’t mind her talking to the pixies and the ghosts. Sometimes, he even folded her hands into new shadows. It all felt like ages ago.

Wesley was eight when she met the dragon for the first time. On that day she ran from the empty beams staring down at her, from the silent judgement of starved wallpaper, and wandered deep, deep into the arms of the trees. The dragon was small like Wesley was small, a secret hiding in the shadow of a fallen log, and he nipped at her when she got too close. He couldn’t properly breathe fire then, and the white smoke rings he puffed out of his tiny chest made little Wesley laugh with glee. She fell in love with him in an instant. Not yet understanding that some things were to be loathed, Wesley recalled the stories about wicked witches of old who sang to make dragons bigger and stronger. So that’s what she did. She sang to him. And he grew bigger. And he grew stronger. It wasn’t long at all before he towered over her, before his teeth were the size of her outstretched hand. It wasn’t long, either, before he could spew a dazzling column of flame into the yawning sky. By the time he grew so much, he all but owned Wesley’s heart. No amount of hatred shared would turn her away from him, even if fear nestled in her breast like a baby bird on the brink of falling. Wesley thanked the deep woods for keeping them far out of sight. No towns or cities, no people for miles. Best of all, no compound, no church. No dragon hunters.

And so tonight as on many other nights, Wesley lie warm and content beside her silent, slumbering friend, counting stars, speaking wishes, and slipping into dizzy half-dreams. In the peace that enveloped her, she wasn’t to remember that the full moon’s rising would mark the beginning of the twelfth year of her life.

Pastor wasn’t pleased when Wesley stumbled in mid-morning covered in mud up to her knees with twigs dangling in her disastrously braided hair. He didn’t have to look at her like she’d dragged in pig waste on her shoes for her to know she was in trouble. She felt her pallor in her trembling.

“You missed cake,” Pastor informed her. “You missed your whole birthday. Everyone’s out looking for you.”

“I got lost in the woods,” said Wesley. She picked at the twigs in her hair, pushed her lips out in as innocent and distressed a manner as she could. Her cheeks were still babyround and her brown eyes babywide, and she had no qualms using that to her advantage against her cousin.

Pastor shrugged. It was difficult to tell whether or not he swallowed the lie. With Pastor, it was difficult to tell anything. He was six years her senior and no one could properly say if he’d ever killed a dragon or not. Like his parents, he was very secret. Legend had it he was born with a look on his face like he’d seen all the world in a glance and judged it to be insufficient. As far as Wesley knew, he was the only one of her cousins to consistently leave the compound for non-church-related reasons. She knew better than to ask what he got up to. He had always reminded Wesley of the legendary fairy king from the stories her papi told her when she was small - sharp edges concealing mystery and, at the core, a gentle heart. Getting to that gentle heart, though, was a legendary task all in itself.

“Better wash up before everyone gets back,” said Pastor. “They won’t like that you’ve been stomping around the woods all night. Dragons out there.”

Wesley shuffled awkwardly past her cousin in a daze, wondering if he could hear her heartbeat as loudly as she could. It rattled in her skull like the drums of the hunt. No mercy. Then, stopping at the bottom of the stairs, she turned with furrowed brow to stare at Pastor’s back.

“You won’t tell anyone,” Wesley ventured.

In response, Pastor shrugged a second time. Now Wesley’s heart really felt like it would break with the strain of its frenzied rhythm.

“Pastor,” she implored, “please.”

“I won’t have to tell anyone anything,” answered Pastor, “if you don’t get washed up in a hurry.”

Wesley’s thanks left her lips in a breathless rush.

She flew up the stairs and to the washroom at once.

It was easy to scrub the grime from her skin and out of her hair, less easy to scrub it out of her clothes. Wesley shoved the reeking, offending pieces of cloth under her bed until she could deal with them at a more suitable time. She put on the outfit she loved best: cargo pants, black tank top. Simple and cool. Nights were cold here, but days stagnated in stewing humidity under the heavy sun. Not having time to re-braid her hair, she piled it up into a high bun. After she’d done all she could to make herself presentable, she forced a smile into the mirror (more of a grimace, really) and pinched her sun-bronzed cheeks to rosy them. The smile fell quickly enough. She could still see guilt lurking in the light reflecting off her dark eyes. That spoiled everything.

A knock on her door called her to attention. Pastor’s voice came through from the other side.

“Mum’s back,” he announced. “Your dad, too, and mine. Yours wants to talk to you.”

Pastor’s hand was still up, knock-ready, when Wesley opened the door. He gave her a brisk nod and put a finger to his lips.

“Haven’t said a word. I can tell them you’re dead asleep, if you want to sneak out. I’ve also gotten pretty good at pretending to faint lately. Could keep them occupied for awhile.”

This got Wesley to laugh. Some of the tension in her shoulders seeped away. Pastor didn’t smile, but Wesley still somehow got the feeling that he did. He was always like that, expressing himself without expression. Changeable and mysterious, definitely like the fairy king from the stories.

“Thanks, Pastor,” she said. “I’ll talk to papi.”

Pastor shrugged. Stepped out of the doorway. Mock-bowed and stretched out his arms in an “after you” pose. Wesley pretended to curtsy and stepped past him, taking a deep breath and attempting to steady herself against whatever would come next. Pastor did not follow.

Wesley found papi in the sitting room, standing by the window thumbing through the morning’s newspaper. He smiled at her when she walked in.

“Surprised to see you gone this morning,” he said by way of greeting. “Where’d you get off to?”

“I was nervous about my birthday,” Wesley scrambled, “so I walked down to the park. To clear my head I guess. It’s so pretty in the morning, with the dew all over the grass.” She reached, hard. “I...was playing on the swings and I...lost track of time.”

Papi raised an eyebrow but didn’t challenge her. He was lenient that way. Wesley broke the back door once slamming it too hard in a fit of rage after Sister Thom switched her in front of the class. Papi didn’t even blink. He only whistled at the carnage of splintered wood and shattered glass and asked Wesley what she was eating that made her so strong. Wesley was more worried about mami, who walked in right behind her just as the word “time” ambled awkwardly out of her mouth.

“We celebrated without you Wesley,” mami proclaimed. “Nothing like a good search party to liven up a birthday.”

Search parties. Wesley didn’t think about the search parties. It was entirely possible they’d gone looking for her at the park, and she’d just told an impossible lie. She cast papi a cautious glance, but he was back to furrowing his brow at the newspaper.

“Sorry, mami,” Wesley mumbled.

She tucked her chin and tried to make her babyround eyes even bigger.

Mami smiled, though only just, and even that was a slow process. “I can’t believe you’re already twelve,” mami mused. “You’re almost a teenager now. I know I should have asked if you wanted a party first, but I just assumed...Well, either way, I made a mistake. I’m sorry, angel. Forgive me?”

Wesley’s head shot up so fast it dizzied her. She nodded once, stupefied. She expected a stern lecture. She expected the switch. Not this tenderness, or whatever it was. Mami was hard as a diamond, as cold and perfect, a dragon hunter through-and-through. She expected no less from her daughter, and Wesley knew this. The weathered lines of mami’s face spoke of battles fought and battles not yet born, but all of battles won.

“I have something for you,” mami went on, smile spreading. “From your papi and I.”

She reached behind her back and pulled an oblong object wrapped in black velvet cloth from her belt. This object she presented to Wesley with both hands.

“We had it custom made for you,” mami said. “I hope you like it.”

The gift settled in Wesley’s hands with an unexpected and unpleasant weight. Apprehension coiled about her knees, making her wobble. Slowly, delicately, as if dealing with a package of baby scorpions, Wesley pushed aside the concealing cloth.

She couldn’t swallow back the strangled yelp that burst from her throat.

Dagger.

For her twelfth birthday, her parents gifted her a dagger.

Presumably, the one she was to use in killing her first dragon. It was custom for the young hunter’s parents to capture and bind the dragon so that its heart might be more easily carved out. Why on earth they would give this to her now, Wesley couldn’t, and didn’t want to, imagine.

There was nothing special about it. The blade was just a blade, and the hilt was wrapped in red leather. A practical object. Yet to Wesley it seemed as sinister as the jaws of some beast closing in around her head. She even felt the jagged teeth at her throat, the hot, rancid breath burning her face.

Wesley tried not to make her smile as pinched as her insides felt. Her mouth opened and closed, but she couldn’t express her thanks. She had no thanks to give.

“Speechless, I see,” papi said, smiling. “I know. It’s a beautiful piece. Take your time. Soak it in.”

Mami put a hand on her shoulder, kneeled down a little so that she and Wesley were eye-to-eye.

“I want you to practice with it,” said mami. “Get used to wielding it. Get used to its weight. By the time your first hunt comes along, it’ll be the easiest thing in the world. You’ll be doing God’s work soon, Wesley. I’m so proud of you.”

Breath became difficult to swallow. The heat prickling Wesley’s eyes was recognizable, and, right now, dangerous. She quickly rewrapped the dagger and near cut herself on the blade doing so. She fiddled with the small, golden crucifix at her throat.

“I woke up so early,” Wesley choked. “I’m tired. I think I want to nap.”

Mami peered at Wesley for a moment with wide eyes before slowly, slowly nodding. She straightened up, leaned forward, planted a kiss that lasted far too long atop Wesley’s head.

“Sweet dreams, angel.”

Wesley made it as far as the bottom of the stairs before tears unmade her. She felt like a rag doll whose stitches were all coming apart. Bit by bit her features fell away - her button eyes, her stitched mouth, her yarn hair - everything, melting away in a flameless inferno. She climbed the stairs to her room clutching the dagger against her chest, squeezing it so tightly in her hands that they hurt. As soon as her bedroom door closed behind her, she flung the dagger away. The wretched thing slid across the floor and disappeared under her bed with only the whisper of soft scraping to mark its passage.

She was fourteen when she flew with the dragon for the first time. The night sky so high up bit against her skin, but the dragon’s heat kept her alive. To be that much closer to the stars, a miracle beyond imagination. They did not look any nearer. They hung ever beyond touch, but just the thought. Just the thought of their increased proximity thrilled her to the core. She could almost reach out and pluck them like grapes. As she clung to the dragon’s back, ice wind tossing her hair, she closed her eyes, tilted her face up, and whispered secrets to shining lights. Wishes wrapped in prayer.

Wesley’s laugh as they tilted dizzy circles through the sky was a wild sound unrestrained, the dragon’s roar an echo against the canopy of the moon. They were one, then, a single creature with a single beating heart and one breath, whirling restless against the black. For the first time Wesley knew no fear, not even the back-of-the-mind whispers that told her dragons were the scourge of the earth. The dragon made her free. The dragon made her strong. He couldn’t be the evil the whole world told her he was. He of such an ancient race was so gentle with her, so patient with her awkward shambling, and he listened in such rapture to her sing. They grew up together, raised each other. Wesley knew the dragon’s moods better than her own, felt them deeply as though they were hers.

Tonight, he was playful. The sky freed him as much as it did Wesley, an open expanse to stretch his powerful wings wide without crowding trees to confine him. Wesley felt his strength through the pulsing muscles of his back with every beat of his wings.

Touching down at last, Wesley slid off the dragon’s back still laughing, clutching her splitting sides. The dragon huffed scorching air over the top of her head.

“Are you worried about me?” Wesley asked, smiling wide. “I’m alright. I’m fantastic! The best I’ve ever been!”

She threw her arms as far around the dragon’s neck as they would go and laughed against his scales. His humming shook his whole body, shook Wesley. It was life she felt, and life she loved.

Finally, she collapsed with her back against his chest.

“We should run away,” Wesley mused. “Just you and I. Fly far, far away, maybe into the mountains. Somewhere no one can find us. What do you think?”

The dragon huffed, tilted his head from side-to-side.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

A pause, a series of slow, deep breaths that would have been loud in the evening silence save for the screaming of frogs, and Wesley began to sing. Low at first, the shadow of a melody. The dragon curled his long neck around her and rested his head at her feet, staring up at her with a single, glimmering eye. The melody grew stronger, shaped itself into words that curled into the quiet. Wesley sang a new song, a song of dragons in flight, of chasing down the ever-changing face of the unknowable moon.

She stopped a moment, looked the dragon in the eye.

“Do you think,” she asked, “we could reach the moon? I bet no one would bother us there. And just think. To be amongst all those stars.”

The dragon blinked, slowly. He brought his face nearer to Wesley’s and pushed his large snout against her forehead.

“You’re right,” Wesley conceded, reaching up to stroke the dragon’s chin. “That’s probably just a dream. But it’s a nice one, isn’t it?”

The dragon laid his head back down at Wesley’s feet and closed his eyes.

“Yes, Wesley,” Wesley answered for the dragon in a mock-deep voice. “It’s a beautiful dream.”

Once again, the dragon huffed. Otherwise, he gave no further response.

“You’re the life of the party,” said Wesley. “Really, you are.”

She curled closer against the dragon’s chest and breathed in his warmth, cocooned herself into it. The steady thrum of his heartbeat quickly soothed her into semi-sleep. She dreamed of the dark, the moon turned away from her in its eternal quest for the light.

Papi’s relationship with dragons was incidental. He was born into dragon hunting, as was mami, but he was not as attached to it as she was. It was work for him, nothing more. He recited his prayers before every hunt, went to church every Sunday as was required of him, but by the way he winked at Wesley every time she got bored and started squirming early every service, she knew he wasn’t really invested in it, either. He almost never talked to Wesley about God, or even about dragons, except to share any lore he thought she might find interesting. And she was interested, there could be no doubt. She tried not to show it too much, especially to mami, but papi indulged her fascination.

Wesley learned from him, for example, that dragons, while natural loners, raised their young even longer than humans did. Dragons loved to bask in sunlight and were attracted by shiny things. They only used flame in self-defence or to warm their nests. Some dragons were so old they grasped rudimentarily the fundamentals of human language, and could communicate somewhat.

Wesley tried asking the dragon about these things, but he didn’t answer her. He was young, after all, perhaps not much older than Wesley herself. Even so, he seemed to listen when she spoke, so maybe he did understand some things. She assumed, with a gnawing ache, that his parents must have been hunted. He probably hatched alone, then, cold and frightened by the dark. Wesley cried to imagine it, fell asleep crying while she lie hugging his rough back.

“I won’t ever leave you,” Wesley whispered as she drifted off, running fingers over scales. “Not ever.”

He made a low growling noise as she cried, and Wesley thought he might be crying, too. Later, she hung her golden crucifix from a low branch where it would catch the light in the mornings, something shiny for the dragon to look forward to every dawn. When mami asked her at breakfast where her necklace went, Wesley said she lost it playing basketball with her cousins. Mami chided Wesley for her carelessness, but left it at that. Wesley was so used to the lies taking shape on her tongue that they came easy as walking now, yet it twisted her up inside every time. Especially when her parents believed her.

Mami liked to do Wesley’s hair sometimes. Wesley’s hair was long and black, thick and difficult to manage. She would have cut it all off long ago if not for mami’s fondness of it. Having mami fix up her hair was just about the only pleasant thing Wesley ever did with her, and she cherished those moments jealously. Mami sang to her then, and while she regaled Wesley with songs of magic older than time, it was almost easy to forget mami hated magic with a passion only matched by the beauty and clarity of her voice.

“Your abuelita was a witch, you know,” mami said to Wesley one day while braiding her hair into a crown. “Not like the old witches, but a witch all the same. She was a dragon hunter, too, but she could talk to the dragons.”

Wesley froze under mami’s hands. All she knew about abuelita was that she was killed by a dragon when mami was still a baby.

“Your abuelita, she could lure the dragons into carefully laid traps. Your abuelito told me it was amazing to watch…that she’d speak in some language no one had ever heard and the dragons would speak back. He used to watch from the bushes as she talked to them. She could even convince them to lay down and take the knife without a fight. Incredible, isn’t it? She was the church’s greatest asset in her time. I’ve always hoped that I’d be like her, but I’m just an ordinary hunter.”

Wesley recognized the false humility. Mami and papi were among the church’s best hunters, and they knew it.

“Who knows,” said mami. “Maybe it skips a generation. Have you spoken to any dragons lately?”

Heart hammering, thrum, thrum, thrum. Pain twisting chest twisting lungs muscles tensing hands shaking -

“I’ve never seen a dragon in my life,” Wesley said, laughing, nervous, patting the completed braid-crown and pretending to appreciate it in the mirror. “Except for the dead ones brought back from the hunt.”

And how it ate her up inside.

Mami grinned. “I thought as much. Oh, well. Witches are rare enough these days, and usually we have to twist their arms to get them to work with us. Your abuelita was one-in-a-million, I suppose.”

She sounded horrible to Wesley. Who would use such a beautiful gift like being able to talk to dragons just to turn around and kill them? If anything was an abomination, Wesley thought, it was that.

“You might be afraid, your first hunt,” mami went on, “but your papi and I will be right there with you. All you have to do is say the prayers, and hold the knife steady. I’m no witch, but I can subdue a dragon easy enough.”

Dread coiled in Wesley’s gut. The dagger under her bed flashed into mind, as did the dragon’s gentle face.

Mami leaned forward, hands clasping tight to Wesley’s shoulders from behind, and planted a wet kiss on Wesley’s cheek.

“You’re going to be great,” mami said, smiling at Wesley through the mirror. “I know it.”

As fifteen years loomed ever closer, guilt came creeping back like a slug inching its way up her spine. Wesley hadn’t touched the dagger since the day it was given to her. Hadn’t seen it since disappeared under the bed. If she was lucky, gnomes or the like had taken it by now. Even with that hope giving marginal comfort, sleeping on that bed was getting to be difficult; just knowing the dagger might still lie under it, blood hungry, waiting, kept her appetite far at bay. Wesley felt somehow unclean, lying both to her parents and to the dragon. Of course she hadn’t told him about the dagger. She hadn’t even told him who she truly was - the daughter of dragon hunters, people bent on the annihilation of his kind. For Wesley, her time with the dragon was a happy dream, and she wasn’t ready to wake up. She wasn’t sure she knew how.

Mercifully, her parents never asked her about the dagger after her disaster of a twelfth birthday.

One month before she turned fifteen, Wesley could barely stand to leave her bed, as much as she despised it. The feeling of the mattress against her back was like maggots wriggling. She would only leave her room at night to visit the dragon and cry against the heat of his chest. Sometimes they flew, and all her care remained shackled to the ground; and there that care would inevitably be when she returned. By morning she would crawl back home and stay in bed until the stars were out again.

Quietly, she formed a plan. It hurt her beyond words to have to do it, but she had no choice. If Wesley didn’t run with the dragon soon, they would find him on her hunt, and there would be nothing she could do to save him then. She didn’t need to take anything with her. She only needed find the right time.

By way of excuse for her days spent in bed, Wesley claimed the flu. Mami brought her food throughout the day, which Wesley barely touched. Homemade soups and stews and soft rolls of bread, the heavy scent of which set her stomach aching. Mami’s kisses on her clammy brow never failed to bring fresh waves of tears. Papi brought a stool into her room every afternoon and read her her favorite books, fairy tales, mostly, and dragon lore to supplement her learning. After every story, papi took her hand and held it a while, saying nothing. Guilt writhed.

When Pastor came over bearing a care basket from his parents for his ailing cousin, Wesley dissolved in the face of his stoicism. She wept openly, biting down on her pillow to muffle her sobs. For the first time in Wesley’s memory, Pastor’s eyes widened in shock. He wavered between Wesley’s bed and the door, walked back and forth three times. Finally he stopped in the middle, one hand grasping the care basket, the other stretched out towards the door handle.

“Do you want your…?”

Wesley assumed he was going to say parents. She shook her head emphatically no. It was very good about Pastor that he understood things very quickly, something Wesley always admired in him.

Pastor pursed his lips, nodded once, and quietly closed the door. He placed the care basket down and took his place at the stool by Wesley’s bedside. Without saying anything, he reached for her hand, squeezed it tight. He smoothed his thumb over the back of her palm while she cried. When at last Wesley was empty and weak and trembling, she squeezed Pastor’s hand in return. They stayed awhile in silence. Wesley felt no pressure at all to speak. In that moment, Pastor was another ghost in the slats waiting for Wesley to make contact. Nothing before her time, his quiet seemed to say. Nothing at all, if that was what she wanted. He would leave as quickly as he came if he felt he was not beneficial, Wesley was sure. How like a fairy he truly was.

When at last words did come, they surprised even her.

“Pastor,” Wesley croaked, throat raw from weeping. “What is it like? Killing a dragon?”

Pastor stared at her a moment with nothing in his eyes. No light, no dark, no sense that there was anyone there looking at her at all. His masks behind masks shook her deeply. And then he smirked, one corner of his lip rising slowly as something like mirth illuminated his eyes at last. Mirth, yet there was a bite to it, too.

“Don’t know,” he answered. “I’ve never done it.”

This time Wesley’s eyes went wide.

“You...but you…?”

“I’m not interested. Dragons never bothered me. Never seen ‘em bother anyone else either. All we have are stories and centuries of blood on our hands. No thanks.”

“But your parents, and the church, don’t they…?”

“Oh, sure. They don’t like it. I’m not changing my mind though. Mama and papa, they just don’t talk about it. I’m an embarrassment to the Reyes name. A dragon hunter that won’t hunt dragons! Can you imagine? Anyway, is that what you’ve been worried about this whole time?”

Folding herself as small as possible and leaning into the touch of Pastor’s hand in hers, Wesley nodded slowly. Shook her head. Nodded again. Sighed.

“Pastor,” she said. “Can I tell you something?”

Shrug.

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell anyone. Not a single person. Do you promise?”

Shrug. Smirk. Index finger, double tapped to his lips.

Wesley swallowed hard and searched his face for...anything. All she found was another impassive mask. But he hadn’t betrayed her yet. He hadn’t betrayed her ever. From the way his thumb still continued to run comforting circles over the back of her hand, she got the feeling he never would.

So Wesley told him everything.

Pastor was the first person aside from Wesley to ever meet the dragon. The dragon threatened to maul him. The dragon threatened to incinerate him. He was a stranger, and one so close in Wesley’s space that the dragon may have felt a bit protective, or so Wesley thought. The dragon did, after all, put himself squarely between Wesley and Pastor and roar into Pastor’s face. Despite everything, Pastor laughed. Wesley couldn’t recall ever hearing him laugh before. There was a wild joy in the sound, as frightening as it was thrilling. It was lightning hollowing out a tree. It was fireflies settling softly into their graves.

It occurred to her that she ought to know Pastor better, being that she grew up with him, but he taught everyone around him the meaning of elusive. She recalled a time when she was five and she scraped her knee falling off the tire swing when it snapped clean off the old branch it was secured to. Pastor was only eleven, but he snuck the both of them out of the compound and took Wesley for ice cream and a movie. It was the first movie she ever saw, but Pastor made sure it wouldn’t be the last. No, no one could keep a secret like Pastor. No one could evade eyes like Pastor, not even Wesley. From that day Wesley scraped her knee on, ice cream and a movie became a weekly thing for the two of them. That is, until Wesley met the dragon. She could never recall seeing Pastor much after that. It was as as though he dissolved into the air, became the dust mites drifting in the sunlight. They’d been so close, once, and Wesley was starting to remember why. Even back then, though, she couldn’t claim she really knew him. Still, she realized with glowing warmth that there was no one she trusted better.

After hours of quiet talking and hands placatingly outstretched, Pastor was finally, finally able to lay his hand on the dragon’s snout. Pastor murmured words Wesley couldn’t hear, but the dragon seemed to like them; he hummed deep approval and settled into his haunches like a comfortable cat, allowing Pastor to run his hands over his scales as he pleased. The sun was setting, the moon rising, but it had been a long time since Wesley had seen the dragon in anything remotely resembling daylight, and the glow of light off his sapphire scales speckled Pastor’s body like stars.

“He’s beautiful, Wesley,” said Pastor at long last. “You’ve got to protect him.”

“Yes,” Wesley whispered, knowing full well that she would. “Yes.”

“You’ve got to get him out of here.”

“Yes.” She choked on the brittle lump that rose in her throat. “We’re leaving tonight. I’m going with him.”

Pastor flashed her a grin, stepped closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders. Light reflected off of the dragon’s scales still danced over Pastor’s right side, reminding Wesley once again of stories of the fairy king. Pastor was as wild and unknowable as the fairy king, as gentle and yet as frightening in his unpredictability. The fairy king built a legion in one day to tear down an empire of a thousand years, simply because the emperor bragged too much. Yet even as he led the legion, no one ever saw him. The fairy king spoke through shadows playing on the water and through the flutter of dragonfly wings. If ever the fairy king existed, Wesley thought, it was Pastor, the walking secret.

“Of course you’re going with him,” Pastor agreed. “You’re basically one person, the two of you. Separating you would be out of the question.”

Wesley smiled. Of course Pastor would understand. Pastor always understood.

“I was thinking,” Wesley admitted, “of going to the moon.”

“Then go,” said Pastor, “to the moon.”

Wesley threw her arms around Pastor’s neck and hugged him so tightly his bones cracked. But that didn’t matter, because he held her just as tightly, so tight he lifted her off the ground. The kiss he pressed to her temple was quick, near an afterthought, yet Wesley felt it with a weight like aching. If Wesley ever had an older brother, she would have wanted it to be Pastor. He was different for certain, strange, even. But so was Wesley.

What a charmed life she led! A dragon before her, a fairy king behind her, and her whole future spanning the stars.

Onto the dragon’s back now, climbing, climbing. Pastor on the ground below, staring up, getting smaller and smaller, now a speck, now a memory. Wesley wouldn’t have wanted to leave her woods any other way. Pastor’s grinning face and the lingering warmth of the barely-a-kiss was a good way to say goodbye, to all of it. It was an image and a feeling she would cherish forever.

As the dragon soared ever higher, cutting sharp through the cold, Wesley spread out her arms to catch the stars. Her fingers brushed them into chiming bells. The moon loomed before them, waxing, waning, gone one moment, full the next. The closer they got to it, the louder Wesley laughed in its face. Welcome me, she thought, or don’t. Either way, I’m home.

The dragon washed the night with fire and painted the moon’s light ember. Wesley tilted her head back, opened her mouth wide, and swallowed the moon whole.