Treasure Squandered

“Wain, wain, doe away, tum adain anuva day.”

The words, high in pitch but soft, traveling low over the wet leaves to reach her, roused Yllphaeth from her brooding. Even as she considered the strange language – human, she thought, but not certain the tongue – she instinctively drew back into the stand of pines she’d been pacing, looking for deersign. Her tail twitched and her senses sharpened into the shining point of her best defense – avoiding detection.

“Wain, wain, doe away!” the voice became more insistent, and worse, closer. Yllphaeth rolled her eyes, felt her great ribcage fall into a belabored sigh. If a human wandered any closer, she would be forced to cut her hunt short. A wasted venture dangerously close to the city and for what? Two scrawny rabbits and a bramble of late-ripening blackberries. She glanced down at the purple stains darkening her claws. When had she fallen so far that she began eating fruit? She couldn’t recall. What a laughingstock she would have been, had there been any of her kind left to notice.

“Wain, wain, wain. Wain doe. Wainbow.” The tiny voice began to fade, and Yllphaeth felt her wings unfurl fractionally in relief. They quickly perked back up into ready position, however, as a plump rabbit scampered by, close enough to catch and moving slowly enough that she could probably complete the kill before it left the safety of the trees. Perhaps the day wouldn’t be squandered after all.

She took one tentative step out of the shadows, then another, treading the autumnal carpet softly for a beast of her size. The rabbit, still unawares, had stopped in a clearing to nibble some mountain laurel. Or maybe it was rhododendron, escaped from some suburban garden. Yllphaeth couldn’t tell anymore what belonged where.

She was closing the distance between her and the rabbit; the thing was hopelessly oblivious, not destined to survive this or any wilderness. Three more steps and she could snap it up. Two more. One –

“PEET-A-BOO!”

A small creature leapt out from behind a nearby tree and landed directly in front of Yllphaeth, startling the rabbit and scaring her so badly she nearly screamed aloud. Her jaws clenched protectively against the damning sound, though – couldn’t be too careful with humans apparently around every corner - and a steamy hiss was all that escaped.

Yllphaeth stood stunned, disgusted with herself. Her instincts had fallen so far. How had she not heard this grubling approaching? How had she allowed herself to be seen – not just seen, but caught! - for the first time in decades?

No matter. Not really. This thing was tiny, a whisp, a whelpling. She could handle it. The ancient part of her knew the proper solution: snatch the thing in her jaws like the morsel it was. She salivated thinking of the tender flesh that surely lay beneath the clothing it wore. It was practically still a baby – the fat alone would be more than she’d had to eat in months.

And yet. She knew she couldn’t. Mustn’t. Humans these days valued their young, even the hatchlings, too much. She knew that if the thing disappeared, what was left of her hunting grounds would be filled with men by dawn, and they’d comb every inch of the place looking for any sign of the wretched thing. When they didn’t find it there, they’d keep going, until eventually one of them would find her den. Or worse, would lay their greedy, weak little eyes on her.

And if that happened, she would have no peace, no life at all. If she were not killed – for even in her dragony pride Yllphaeth could admit that humans now had weapons that she was no match for – she would be captured, made a spectacle of, enslaved.

She could see no future this way; by violence or exploitation, humans won every time.

And besides, she told herself to soothe the empty clench in her belly, humans were essentially poisonous these days, their food chain, water, air, everything within reach befouled by their own soft hands.

If it was a human at all.

Its appearance was generally humany, smooth cheeks, all the usual face-bits, two arms and two legs. And yet. The legs were covered in thick tawny fur, to which clung the same stubborn burrs and downy seeds that beggared passage on every pelted animal of the forest.

Yllphaeth lifted her head to observe the creature’s backside, and found that it also had a tail, thick and white-tipped, like a fox.

A halfling?

The creature took a few wobbly steps closer to Yllphaeth, and its stench assaulted her nostrils, overpowering the dank death-scent of the darkening forest. Such a strange odor, too. Like citrus, but overly sweet, and somehow supernatural, not quite believable as having come from a plant…manmade. The smell was of something manmade, probably the same substance that coated the whelpling’s grubby cheeks and fingers.

Human, then, after all. Of course it was. Yllphaeth hadn’t seen a gnome or an elf or even a blessed dryad for a hundred leagues or twice as many years. Pathetic, wishful thinking once again.

“Whoa.” The humanling said. The word was garbled around one sticky-looking hand that seemed frozen in place in the creature’s open mouth.

It was staring up at her with wide brown eyes that darted to and fro, taking in her broad frame towering above, but finally landed directly on hers and gazed at her, unwavering.

The little imp’s boldness made Yllphaeth’s scales ruckle in frustration. She had no use for this wyrmling; it would bring her nothing but trouble. She needed it gone, out of her half-wild woods, out of her way, needed it so frantically and suddenly that she dropped her self-imposed rules and restraint.

She drew back, filled her lungs with air that stung from the gasoline being burned on the nearby roadway, and roared down at the child.

It looked stunned for a moment, blinked its eyes. Yllphaeth waited for it to turn and run, to leave her to her miserable existence.

Instead, it pulled its own tiny shoulders back, drew in a large breath, and - “ROOOOOAOAAAAARRRRRRR!” - shouted right back at her, forming its little hands into claws to add to the effect. The end of this mimicry dissolved into a fit of giggles, the child hopping about on the moss in its mirth. Finally it looked up at Yllphaeth with a self-satisfied little smirk that seemed to say, That was funny, right?

Yllphaeth, whose desperation had cooled into frustration at the wyrmling, refused this bid for an audience, but wasn’t sure herself what to say to this apparently fearless humanling. Should she try again to scare it away? Head for home and hope it couldn’t follow?

“I Levi. I fwee.” It held up two stubby fingers. “What your name?”

“That’s two,” Yllphaeth sneered. Again, she wondered at the whelp’s impudence, addressing her as though they were equals.

“What?” The child kept its fingers up, looking at her expectantly.

“You said you’re three, years of age I presume you mean, but you’re only holding up two fingers.”

“Oh, you wight! Here. Fitzed it.” The child uncurled a third tiny finger and grinned again, like it had done something intelligent.

Yllphaeth, sure now that the infant would not have the wits to follow her, scoffed and turned to leave. Her tail dragged over the ground, kicking up a fungus-fertile musk that smelled like days long past. Days where things made sense. This day had been so peculiar she began to wonder if she might actually be dreaming, safe in her den.

“What you name is?” The child asked again, shattering her illusion.

Without stopping, Yllphaeth turned her head back, and said, “I’m a dragon.” Perhaps this would be enough to silence the nattering thing.

“I know you a dwagon, silly doose! I said what you name?”

Why had she imagined this would be the end of it? The thing was insistent. And vexing. And now it was following her.

“Ugh.” She snorted, stopped, turned to face it, hoping it wouldn’t come any closer. “Yllphaeth is my name.”

“Ifit?” Tiny front teeth searched for the consonants.

“Yllphaeth.”

“Oh, Ifuth!” Another grin.

“Close enough. Why are you following me? And, why aren’t you afraid of me?” Might as well get some information, she figured.

“You a dwagon!” The grubling beamed, and seemed to barely contain another fit of bouncing.

“Surely you know that means I’m very dangerous. I could, well, I could eat you!” Yllphaeth was astonished that dragonlore was so unfamiliar to this humanling.

The child giggled anyway.

“No I eat you!” and it lunged toward her, making grotesque biting motions with its mouth and grabbing at her with those disgusting hands.

“What? No!” Yllphaeth sidestepped out of the child’s unsteady path. “What are you talking about?” She was utterly disarmed by the nonsensical confidence of this odd grubling.

“Dwagons no mean. Dey nice!” The child had stopped the movement of its maw, but kept approaching. It meant to touch her. She shuddered, and reached out one claw, pressed it to the child’s chest to stop its movement.

Its eyes widened again, looking down at the scaled hand that had finally made contact.

“How do you know all of this…information…about dragons, young one?” Yllphaeth asked, holding the wyrmling in place.

“Dwagon Tales!” the child shouted, flapping its hands in excitement. And fwom da Wescue Widahs.”

“I'm sorry, who exactly is telling you these tales? And where?” Yllphaeth found, to her own surprise, that she was genuinely interested in the answers. This child was so confident, so casual in its approach to what had to be the only dragon it had ever laid eyes on, given their sparse population. Could it be that humans were in fact spreading dragonlore again, but had simply gotten it wrong? It should scare her, this possibility, but it thrilled her more. Even if the scholarship were hopelessly incorrect, humans teaching their babelings about dragons could mean a path back to relevance, to integration into to this strange world. As much as she had not missed being hunted, it would be nice to be feared again, or even worshipped, she thought, for there were always some whose awe fell to that side of regard.

“On da tee-vee!” the child supplied cheerfully.

“Oh, yes. It would be, I suppose.” Char and choke it all. She should have known.

Though she kept herself hidden from them – a refugee in her own ancestral home – Yllphaeth knew much about humans and their modern technologies. As the lands around her became empty of farmers and fiefal lords, and filled up instead with factories and their slews of ant-like workers, so too had her dragony methods changed with the times.

When gold went out of fashion as a currency of human nations, she’d adapted the curation of her hoard accordingly, first amassing the coins of various lesser metals that came to replace it. Besides, this had happened before, not in Yllphaeth’s lifetime, but in that of her mother and grandmothers: the shift from obsidian and finely carved wooden icons to bronze daggers and ornate jewelry, and from there to Yllphaeth’s beloved golden ornaments of all shapes and sizes, and shining jewels faceted just so, and weaponry of strongest ferrous. What constituted a respectable trove morphed alongside the methods and modalities of available treasure.

And so as Yllphaeth had aged, she had come to accept that the most valuable objects in the latest iteration of this world were articles of electronic technology. After collecting what she thought was a proper number of non-functioning Atari consoles, video cassette recorders, and the like, she finally got bored enough that she decided to see what all the snort and smoke was about.

It had been difficult getting electricity run to her lair, but she’d managed it. As an added boon, the team of linemen she’d gotten to devour after their work was completed had been delectable. That was shortly before she’d given up humans as a food source. The rise of electronic media had brought increased scrutiny of disappearances, and it was around the same time that the toxicity of human flesh became unignorable.

Now the top stratum of her treasury was littered with watches, cellular phones, tablets, and computer screens. They lay there blank as shingles, no glitter at all to them, all plastic and so ridiculously fragile that Yllphaeth couldn’t even properly perch astride her cache as she scanned the cable channels in the evenings.

Disappointed, and if she were honest with herself, feeling defeated - what had she become, that she had been defeated by a human, much less an infant one? - Yllphaeth turned and continued her slog back home. But not three strides in, she heard it again.

“Tan I touch you stale?” The little voice now came with huffs of labored breathing inserted between its words as it struggled to keep up with Yllphaeth’s strides.

She ignored it, kept moving.

“Tan I touch you stale pwease?”

She quickened her pace. Heard small, underdeveloped feet struggle to do the same.

Then, a nearly breathless and yet voice: “Tan I touch you stale pwetty pwease? PWETTY PWEASE I SAID!”

She halted, turned so quickly the thing ran into her.

“What? What is it that you want?” She glared downward.

“Touch you stale!” It beamed upward.

“My what?”

“You stale!”

“My tail?” Why on the great green planet was she entertaining this?

“No, you stale.” Growing frustrated, the child pointed to the scales on Yllphaeth’s haunch.

“You stale,” it said loudly and slowly, as if Yllphaeth were the problem in this miscommunication.

“My scale? You mean my scale?” Yllphaeth said.

“Yeah, you stale. Tan I touch?” the wyrmling repeated.

The child’s hand was already hovering close, and its face was flushed with anticipation and the effort it had taken to run after Yllphaeth.

“Certainly not. It is a dishonorable thing even to ask. You may not touch my scales, or any part of me.”

She turned to leave again.

A few steps in, she realized she was listening for the hurried shuffle behind her. And it wasn’t there. She paused for a moment. Nothing. Good. The child had finally gotten the message.

She resumed her walking, only to be interrupted a moment later by a shriek, loud and high as a banshee.

She turned. The child was right where she’d left it, but had fallen to the ground, feet and hands splayed out limp, and it was wailing like it had lost its mother.

Which she supposed it had.

This thought struck Yllphaeth like a rock to her thick skull.

She glanced back the child’s way, allowed herself to appraise it in greater detail. It was dressed warmly, appropriate for the season, and its clothes seemed like they had been clean when first put on. Probably not abandoned then. And it was too young, by human standards, to be banished.

The babeling must be lost. It must have wandered off from its caretakers; this behavior would certainly fit such an impudent, bothersome child.

In which case, perhaps this disruptive encounter could come to favor Yllphaeth after all. She reconsidered what she knew from her television viewing habits: children were indeed considered to hold the highest value these days. They were treasure in and of themselves. Even the ugly ones. Even the loud and nettlesome ones. And parents would give anything to recover a lost child. She had seen stories of children taken and used as leverage to orchestrate a trade. A ransom was standard, could perhaps even be demanded in the form of tangible, cold, shimmering gold bars. A long overdue addition to her hoard.

It would depend on her acting quickly enough, and cleverly enough, to avoid what she had previously held as a foregone conclusion: the search party, the discovery of her lair, the final knell in her long, withering life. But she believed she could pull it off. She felt more awake, more alive than she had in decades, thinking of the trickery, the risk, the craftsmanship the job would require. Resolved, she strode back to where the child was still whimpering on the wet ground.

“Humanling,” she addressed it. It didn’t look at her. Snuff and smother, what had it said its humany name was? “Levi.”

“Uh huh?” The whelp lifted its head, looking at her with renewed hope in its tear-filled eyes.

“I think you should come with me. To my – to my house. It’s getting dark.”

“Weally?” The thing had no survival skills. It was already clambering to its feet, the fox tail on its pants now smeared with leafmold and mud.

“Yes, I think it’s for the best. Don’t you, young friend?”

“You my fwiend!” The child glowed.

“Yes, that’s right. I am your friend. Now let’s go see my house, shall we?” She indicated the direction with a wave of her head.

The child began to trot alongside her. She was stunned at how easy this would be. Then -

“Ifuth, I hundry.” How quickly a pout had replaced the content on the babeling’s face!

“You’re hungry.” And how quickly Yllphaeth had adapted to the creature’s malformed speech.

“Yeah.”

“I am too. Do not worry, there is plenty of food in my den. We will eat when we arrive home.” It was a lie, but a necessary one.

“But I hundry now. Need a snat.” Levi stopped walking. Then sat down, arms crossed and face dark and closed.

“Okay fine. I don’t know what a snat is, but do you like blackberries?” she asked.

“Yeah! I wuv bewwies!” Just like that, the child was back on its feet and moving. Very well, Yllphaeth thought. I can accommodate a small demand if it means we keep moving.

The blackberry patch she had raided earlier in the afternoon required only a small deviation from the quickest route home. When they arrived, she gestured with her wing at the bramble.

“Where da bewwies?” the child asked, staring stupidly at Yllphaeth.

“Right here. Can’t you see, grubling?” Again, she indicated the plants and their proffered fruit. Levi didn’t move. Yllphaeth sighed and bent to select a berry. Perhaps he needed proof they weren’t poisonous? She popped the berry into her own mouth, exaggerated what she hoped was a humany-enough smile on her face.

“See? They’re good.”

“Bewwies on da twee?” The child pointed, awestruck, at the bramble, and stepped forward to take a closer look. It occurred to Yllphaeth that this was the first time Levi had seen a blackberry patch. Char and choke, these humans had really done themselves in with their quest for convenience. She was doing this babeling and its parents a favor keeping it alive at all.

Resigned to the task, she plucked another berry and offered it to the child. He took it straightaway, of course, no sense of danger, and shoved it in his mouth. Yllphaeth wanted to be disgusted by this display of animal greed and slobbery, but found herself amused instead by the joy that overtook the small, expressive face. She made a note to be more grateful for the existence of the forage in the forest; it was certainly coming to her aid now.

After several more blackberries – and excepting one that Yllphaeth accidentally clipped in half with her claws that set Levi hurling the pieces across the clearing, screaming something about No bwoked bewwies for me! – she announced it was time to walk home.

“I tired, I can’t walt now.” Snuff and smother, this child was impossible.

“Oh yes you can, come along.” She reached out her hand, gentled her claw under the hem of the child’s jacket and pulled it forward.

“No!” the imp shrieked and fell to the ground again, tears once again arriving instantly to furnish another tantrum.

“Fine, fine! Stop that, please. I-” Yllphaeth weighed her pride against her desire for the weight of gold added to her cache, found it an easy calculus. “I can carry you.”

“Oh, yay!” the child flew into the air like a springtime frogling. Yllphaeth once again marveled at the turn in its emotions – fussier than the weather on the ancient coast.

She bent low, instructed the child where to put his grungy shoes on her immaculate scales – actual gold, cool to the touch, heavy in the hand – and with a little shifting and compromising, settled it onto her back.

“Otay, I weady to fwy!” Levi shouted dramatically.

“We won’t be flying,” Yllphaeth said flatly, bracing for another round of upset wyrmling. It arrived as expected, and the child kicked against her sides and banged its head against her spine. It didn’t hurt, but Yllphaeth worried the babeling might hurt itself, endangering her plan.

“Listen,” she said in the most soothing voice she could muster. “I wish I could fly. I love flying. But it’s not safe.”

“Oh,” a long sound of acceptance, even interest, from her back. She kept talking as she resumed her progress toward home.

“Yes. Imagine, Levi. I could be hit by an airplane.” The child giggled. Not really Yllphaeth’s intended effect, but it worked.

“I could…get blown around by the wind!” Hysterical laughter this time.

“I could be attacked by a goose!” Less laughter this time. Then, a thoughtful pause.

“I sowwy, Ifuth.” The voice was small, and genuine.

“Sorry for what, youngling? You have done nothing wrong.”

“I sowwy you can’t fwy. I know you sad about dat.” Levi leaned his warm weight against her spine, and Yllphaeth felt, or maybe imagined, the brush of a small hand patting her scales.

“It otay. You fwy adain one day. I pwomise.”

And even knowing that this was unkeepable, completely unreasonable vow, Yllphaeth felt that the child meant it, and felt herself soften toward it, just a bit. She would ensure its safe return to its family.

On she strode, pleased at the increased pace now that her burden was tucked safely behind her wings. Levi also seemed happier and was back to asking questions.

“Ifuth?”

“Yes, young one?”

“I sleep dere? In you house? Wiss you?” Yllphaeth had to admit that some of the child’s inquiries were rather astute.

“Eh - yes. Yes, you will. Just for tonight I think.” She glanced backward nervously, worrying that the child would be scared by the knowledge that he would be in a strange place.

“I take a bass at you house?”

“A what?”

“A bass. Wiss bubbles? You wash my hair?”

“Oh. No. No baths at my house.” Hoping this was a chore the child disliked, she added in a chipper tone, “You will skip bath tonight!”

“Oh.” An incorrect calculation then. But before she could compensate, the onslaught continued.

“Where I will sleep? Wiss you?”

“Yes, you may sleep in my nest.”

“Hooray! You has turtley? You has horsey? In you ness?” What odd questions. Yllphaeth took a breath, reminded herself to be patient, thought of gold glittering in the sunlight.

“No, no, there are no turtles or horses or anything like that in my nest. No…animals will bother you while you sleep.”

“Where Horsey? Where Turtley? Where my HORSEY?” Wrong instincts again, she lamented. Levi’s panic, meanwhile, was increasing, and she could feel the youngling fidgeting on her back.

“Who I tuddle wiss? WHERE MY BLANKEY IFUTH?” The child began again to throw his head against Yllphaeth’s hard scales, apparently unable to contain the rage and fear of being without…whatever these items were.

Yllphaeth stopped walking and twisted her head around, preparing to comfort Levi though feeling at a loss for how to do so. In the same moment, the child, bright red face and wild eyes, threw his head against her once more. The shifted angle of her spine, however, caught Levi’s forehead just wrong, and she felt the child start to slip. Desperate hands with their own tiny sharp claws grabbed at her wings, and though the scald ripped through her nerves, she moved with rather than against the babe, caught it, and lowered it to the ground.

The sun was setting. Yllphaeth was failing every test required to keep her quarry satisfied until it could be turned into treasure. And though she was loath to admit it, even to herself, she had started to see that even keeping the child away from home long enough to make a ransom was cruel. She couldn’t explain it. She didn’t like the grubling exactly. She did like the way she had felt in the time that had passed since she first met it. She had been startled, scared, frustrated, and angry, certainly, but she had also been surprised, curious, and alert for the first time in recent memory. She found herself, if nothing else, grateful to this wee dirty creature who had disrupted her day.

“Levi,” Yllphaeth began. “I think we need to get you to your house. So you can see Horsey and Turtley and Blankey.”

Levi sniffed but nodded.

“Where do you live?” This was too much to hope for, Yllphaeth knew as soon as she asked, and besides, she couldn’t very well deliver the child to its doorstep. So she cut off the resurfacing overwhelm already threatening, saying, “Never mind that. I know where to take you. We will find someone there to take you home.”

The answer had come to her unsought. It was obvious. She only needed to take the child to the edge of her woods, to the closest human location. It was tiny, it would be noticed immediately and taken to find its family, so long as the people it encountered were of the decent sort. To ensure that, she’d have to stay and watch, hidden of course.

The trek to the edge of the park was dreadfully swift. Levi held on tightly and said little; Yllphaeth could tell from the heft of his body that he was nearing sleep. When the blare of the tall false lights was easily visible through the trees, she furled one wing around the little body and set it down on the ground one last time.

“Listen to me, youngling. You must walk in that direction. I will watch you to make sure you are safe.” She pointed a claw toward the playing fields in the near distance, where the shapes of adult humans were tossing flat disc-looking objects to one another.

“Goodbye Levi. Go with care.” Yllphaeth found she meant the benediction.

“Bye Ifuth. See you tomowwow.” She decided not to correct the child, and in a moment of inexplicable indecorum, also decided not to pull away when it leaned forward and opened its arms to embrace her neck. No one watching would have noticed, it was so small a motion, but Yllphaeth felt herself nuzzle into the warm, sticky cheek pressed close to hers.

He stumbled at first, then began walking in earnest, following her direction. As Yllphaeth had expected, it wasn’t long until one of the humans on the pitch saw the small form and ran over to meet it. She stayed in the shadows, but kept watch, kept her promise.

“Hey man, there’s a kid over here,” the grown one shouted back at its playmates. Startled by the loud voice, Levi stopped walking and looked back toward where Yllphaeth stood, and she was surprised to feel a deep pain knowing the child could not see her in the dark of the trees, would not know she was still watching over it.

“Oh my god, I think that’s the kid on the alert!” The oaf kept yelling, pulled a glowing phone out of a pocket.

“Are you Levi? Dude, call 911 and tell them we found him.” That was enough proof for Yllphaeth that the child was in good hands. She began to pull backward deeper into the treeline, but broken sounds still reached her across the empty field.

“Hey buddy, you’re safe – home.”

“What – looking for?”

“Fwend in dere.” Somehow the child’s delicate voice traveled the distance intact.

“Guys – says a friend - dragon but it – creepy perve. C’mon let's – ”

Yllphaeth felt as much as saw the piercing blades of smartphone flashlights drawn, foisted her direction.

The great dragon turned then, and fled. Her ancient feet struck the soft ground, pushing her back to safety with the same silent strength that had carried her lineage through umpteen apocalypses, countless rulers and infinite cycles of the seasons to reach this point.

When Yllphaeth reached the scab across the land that was the clearcut path of the power lines, she stopped. No sound reached her now. In the midst of that silent corridor of ruined forest, she hissed adrenaline out of weary nostrils.

Then, without knowing what she was doing or why, she stretched her wings to their widest, pushed off the nubbed ground, and, low and quick, for the first time in many human lifetimes, she flew.