When the Dragons Returned

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. At least, not for the last two millennia. However, when they returned, no one was surprised that they came to me first. You see, it’s what I was born for. To finally make peace with the dragons, to defend them from those who misunderstood their intentions. And most importantly, to work together to restore the earth to its original majesty.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning. My name is Trea-Than and I’m 11 years old. According to the elders’ lore, things were very different before The Great Conflagration, or simply the GC, as those in my tribe call it. There used to be things called “cities” and billions of humans crowding the earth.

Billions! I can’t even begin to fathom so many beings crowded onto just one planet. The elders described edifices bellowing great clouds of black smoke into the sky, making it hard to breathe, people dying en mass of diseases and plagues we’ve never experienced, spontaneous fires burning millions of acres of land, animal species being permanently destroyed and the planet warming up so much, that the plants were dying as well.

We suspected that’s what made the dragons come. They sensed that the people were destroying the planet…and in turn, decided to destroy the people responsible. They annihilated almost all humans and human constructs, but left forests, grasslands and animals unharmed. According to the legends, they came very close to certain groups of our ancestors who were actively working to restore the forests, stop the warming of the planet and cure the diseases, sniffed them with their huge, flaring nostrils, gazed knowingly into their eyes…and then just flew off, consciously choosing to spare them. These few remaining people eventually formed our tribe, the Emperians, and sailed off in boats with dragon heads carved into them, to settle on an island that used to be called Iceland. We survive as hunters and gathers, living off the land and the animals on it, giving thanks to the Magic that sustaines us all.

I would sit enamored at the feet of the elders in the gloaming, fascinated by their tales, especially when the green lights illuminated the sky in ever-changing patterns. I listened to the way things used to be and the stories that had been passed down by word of mouth through the generations. I especially recognized myself in one tale about a boy who could charm wild animals and restore seemingly dead plants back to life in a secret garden.

Perhaps the reason I related so strongly to this one narrative is that they spoke about magic in it. Magic bringing a dead garden back to life, magic helping a young boy to walk, magic helping an old man to regain hope he thought he had lost forever. I felt that magic within myself, but dared not talk of it. We had a well known saying among the Emperian, that every child memorized as soon as they could speak. “We do not create Magic, but we celebrate it in all things. And when we need it most, the Magic will come to us.”

I clung to this tale, for you see, this is my story, and those are my gifts.

From the time I could walk, at 7 months, it was reported that I would help the adults cultivate the crops and plant the medicinal herbs. And that any plant I touched produced massive yields of food or flowers. When I was 18 months old, I was bitten deeply on the heel by a 22 foot eel, while wading in the icy waters of the fjord. The tribe was mystified that it had only bitten me, not swallowed me whole, as they were wont to do. As it was, its venom entered my bloodstream, and I became feverish and near the point of death. While delirious, I wandered into the nesting place of a Badgerina.

We humans had not changed much since the GC, except to have our senses heightened out the the sheer need for survival. However, the animals had evolved rapidly to become larger, more dangerous, and some to have the features of many different creatures combined. A Badgerina was a fierce, 4 foot tall animal covered in dense grey fur that matched the cliffs for camouflage, a white stripe running along its back, with long incisors and a spike-ended tail that it wielded with startling accuracy. It had been known to attack and kill full grown men in a hunting party, never mind the infants it stealthily stole from beside their sleeping parents, to be devoured in the night.

Shivering with fever, a small, fearless, determined child, I walked right up to a mother Badgerina who was nursing 9 tiny badgerets. My tribe watched in astonishment as I was readily accepted by this fearsome beast. The mother Badgerina licked my wound, her saliva containing healing properties and curled herself around my shaking body. Two weeks later, fully recovered, she picked me up gently by the scruff of my neck and deposited me in the middle of my tribe. Again, according to the oft-told tale, she gave a friendly-sounding growl, as if to say, “You’re welcome. Guard this little one well.” And with her eyes, she challenged any adult to dare harm me. Then, she stalked back to her young.

My memory begins when I was 20 months old, at my Naming Ceremony. Our tribe lives communally, and children are only named after their true nature has revealed itself. “After careful deliberation,” Hearralda, the chief elder, proclaimed, his deep voice resonant above the crackling evening fire, "this one shall be given two names. Her first is ‘Trea’, meaning ‘Fearless Defender of Monsters,’" the elder declared, "and the second name, ‘Than’, meaning ‘Healer of the Earth’”. I clearly recall my birth parents exchanging anxious glances. The last one from our tribe to be named “Trea”, many generations before even Hearralda’s birth, was a boy who had been killed at the age of 13 by one of the monsters he had supposedly befriended and tamed. It was a fierce name, but it suited me.

Incidentally, that was the first night I started having dreams about the dragons. In my dream, I was hurtling at unthinkable speeds, swooping on airy wings above the clouds, diving sideways through the narrowest of icy fjords…all atop the back of a white, shimmering dragon. The sky was filled with smaller dragons, but the dragon I rode commanded them all. It’s wingspan was wider than our greatest fields of swaying wheat, but I felt no fear as it soared and dove. In my mind, I felt only elation, and that we were one creature, melded together.

In the background of my dream, always just out of sight, I could sense sinister forces seeking to invade our Valley. I knew not whether they were human or animal, some odd combination of both, or maybe the things that in the before-times had been called “machines”, that I could never quite fathom. What I did know was that I must never betray my people or the earth from which we drew our sustenance. I never dared to share my recurring dream with anyone, for I already had a reputation as being too ethereal, too independent, and of sharing too many untold secrets with the stoats and hares, the pika and raccoon dogs that lived along the edges of the cliffs, and even the tiny dormice I kept as pets.

Like the animal charmer from my favorite story, at age three, I found a young Gyrfalcon with a broken wing. Even before the dragons came the first time, they were purported to be the largest falcons in the world. However, by the time I found him, an adult Gyrfalcon had a wingspan of 12 feet. I could tell by his pained, trusting eyes that he could sense I meant him no harm. I carefully splinted his wing, fed him every day, and when his wing had healed, I trained him how to hunt such animals as capybara, seals, otters and eels for our tribe upon command. When I was four, I found a baby Badgerina that had been rejected by his mother. I befriended him and also trained him how to help hunt for the tribe. Along with my Gyrfalcon, these two became my closest companions. They followed me wherever I would travel throughout the valley, and slept at my side.

Sometimes, when I was still young and feigning sleep, I would hear the elders discussing “The Deep Things” in hushed voices as they drank their evening ale. My hearing was very acute, and even above the deep, regular breaths I forced myself to take, at a distance of some 30 feet and while swathed in furs, I could discern every word distinctly. "Perhaps she is the one we have been waiting for all these hundreds of years," one of the elders whispered. And in his unmistakable, laughing voice, Hearralda replied, “Mayhap she was dipped in the river Styx. We must beware of that heel of hers!” I drifted into sleep, wondering how a river could be made of sticks?

So, at age 11, while striding through the valley, the wind blowing my light blond hair off my shoulders, with one creature trotting beside me, another swooping overheard through the opening in the cliffs that rose several thousand feet above me, I saw a glint of something white in a sheltered spot below a waterfall. There, although in retrospect it felt like Magic, I wasn’t truly surprised to find the first baby dragon to grace our homeland with its presence in over 2000 years. It was just finishing hatching from its egg. I knelt down, the spray of the waterfall bursting off the mossy cliffs mere feet behind me, and took it gently in my hands. Pullling the last bit of shell away from where it was caught on a tiny spike on its iridescent white body, I asked, “What are you doing here, my little friend?”

I was speechless when it gazed up into my Robin’s-egg blue eyes, immediately changing the shade of its own crimson eyes to match my own, and replied in a melodic, slightly lisping voice, “Greetings! I’ve been waiting for you.”