Why is a Lie

“There weren't always dragons in the Valley,” said the Dragon with a sigh. “But to understand how we came where from and when returns us to a time so remote even the oldest of the dragons do not recall it. It exists now only in stone.”

And a tear cascaded from his closest eye and hissed and sizzled into the ground beneath our feet. Knowing what a Dragon’s tear can do to human flesh, he let it fall away from where I stood, and I watched the rocks evaporate where the glittering liquid fell.

“Now come with me to the highest peak and . . . and there I can show you, maybe, an answer.”

“Where – “ I began, but he silenced me.

“No questions now. Not yet. I will show you a record no human can read, and I alone will help to make it plane.”

And he wrapped a claw about me like as though I were a well loved doll and perched me with a caress on his shoulder where the gold scales of his neck met the sable of his back and azure of his chest. I nuzzled my face into the warm scales and felt the depth of kindness in them. And his great red wings parted wide enough to carry a thousand men and women. With a woad flavored spark he rose into the air. Although I knew he’d never let me fall, I pretended to clutch for dear life.

As we flew I saw receding beneath us the Pine and Apple Forest, Low Valley Lake and Drendel’s River winding down from the Sharp Heights, then the arrow straight line of the Court Canal glinting in the sun to the reservoir and Lone City’s Gates.

“Peopled by distant strangers,” said the dragon with a fragrant sigh.

“Ajis,” I whispered to him.

“Hmmm?” he hummed.

“Ajis,” I repeated.

“Why are you repeating my name?” he asked.

“Because I love it,” I said. “I love all the Dragons’ Names. But yours is the best. I remember memorizing them each as a child, out of school, not that I had to: Ajis, Anax, Zevril, Dil, Anaxaformingez, Ournunculaya, Lemnos, Zebec, Quaxil, Daridirad which could always be spelled backwards.”

“And your name’s Dendron,” said Ajis. “Such a human name, for a human soul.”

“Certainly,” I replied. “What else would you expect. I’m human. I may not be much, but I’m human.”

“In form and nature only,” Ajis replied and laughed. We bobbled.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Inside, somewhere . . . deep inside of you, there’s a being, very like a dragon, yearning to burst free. It’s why you try so hard to know me.”

“Are you telling me I’m going to turn into a Dragon?” I asked in astonishment.

At this he laughed without restraint and we dropped several feet in the air before a deep inhale brought a surge of heat down his throat into his lungs and we again began to rise.

“Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “We lose lightness and I fall.” He puzzled my question. “No, Dendron. You won’t turn into a dragon. People do not turn into dragons. Even I think, the cleverest shapeshifters can’t become that . . . become dragons, I mean . . . Flowers Wolves or Coelacanths perhaps, but hardly even a Gryphon, let alone an actual dragon. Nothing so flamboyant will ever happen to you.”

“Then what do you mean?” I asked. “And I’m greatly relieved.”

“I was referring to your soul. You are wholly human, heart and mind and body, but . . . but within you – deep down deeply inside – resides something so ancient that the cliffs themselves wouldn’t know it. You are older than the oldest streams and oldest trees. Older than the wind itself, I think. Not your body. That’s immature of course, even by human standards, given to arousal at the drop of a glance. Nor your ridiculous mind that jumps from topic to topic like a startled sparrow. Nor your absurd heart which falls in love with pretty girls and school mistresses left and right and left again – if you only knew how often they think of you, you’d explode like a jolly rocket – but that’s another subject.”

“What?” I asked, thinking of Vervint and Mikella at the same time. “Who thinks about me?”

“They all do, Dendron. Even the school mistresses.”

“Somas and Thea think about me?”

“Of course they do,” the dragon replied. “They can’t help themselves. You’re pretty.”

“Yes,” I assented. I suppose I am.”

“We’re straying from the topic of your essence,” he sneered.

“Well go on,” I said. “I find myself fascinating.”

“No you don’t,” he said. “You’re too conscious for that kind of self loving. It turns into hate as the years pass.”

I realized then where we had reached.

“These are the Cloud Cliffs!”

“Indeed they are,” the dragon replied.

As we passed through the clouds, I expected a chill to freeze my bones, but the clouds were not clouds at all but rather steam exuding from cracks in the cliffs and as we passed through, they coated me with sweat. That, I thought, explains their permanence.

“Must keep the children warm,” explained the dragon.

"Children?" I asked.

“Don’t worry Dendron, It’s cold enough where we are going. For you, I mean.”

And in a moment we had landed in chilly air on an ice caked cliff edge into which his claws clutched with stern familiarity. As his right wing folded, his left alit and fluttered, and I climbed down its blade and stood on the frozen ground. The roof of the world, I thought.

“Cold,” I said.

“This’ll warm you,” said Ajis and without effort, reached into a house sized outcropping of blackrock jutting from the ground, pinched out a mound’s worth, and with a snort of his breath set it alight before me, more than enough for a welcoming fire. I settled close to the blaze, and Ajis curled his waist and arm about me to form all the warmth and shelter I required from the icy air. As the fire and scaley form warmed me, I studied how the dragon studied me, his gold eyes full of love and sight and knowing, while all I knew was that he could bear silence far longer than anyone, any human I mean, or me at least, for what it mattered. So of course I spoke up first.

“So I’m ancient?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“Your soul is ancient,” said the dragon. “More ancient than even a dragon’s. I sensed it when your mother brought you to your FirstYear. The others also saw it. After the Greeting, when you’d left . . . after the formalities, Ournunculeya voiced it first. You didn’t hear. Your mother, I think, did hear, or sensed in our senses, the strangeness. Whether or not I’m sure our words would have hardly surprise her.”

“I could hardly remember this,” I said. “I only just learned to walk.”

Again he laughed, but this time only a little. Since no longer in flight and just resting, his breath required no conservation. Something in what I had said just didn’t strike him as funny. A second tear squeezed from the sharp corner of his left eye and sizzled with a glitter into the snow and ice and the stone beneath them, hissing like a vat of passing snakes.

“You know that most humans despise us,” he said.

“So I’ve heard,” I replied. “Although I don’t always believe it.”

“Oh it’s true,” said the dragon. “Most people hate and fear us.”

“I just don’t understand.”

“Hatred,” the dragon mused. “Its name is nothing. The blank patterns behind it form most of your history, but the word itself bears no semblance to its power.“

“But not us,” I said.

“No,” Ajis went on “Not you. Not any of you. Not the people of the valley. You see us as allies.”

If possible, the silence seemed to grow more silent at this insight, and I didn’t dare break it, but Ajis saw the fear in my eyes, and he resumed.

“The people of the valley,” the Dragon explained. “You come from a thousand dark unwelcoming homes. You’ve recruited your citizens from the legions of the most unwanted.”

“So I understand,” I said. “But I was born here. I know very little of the world.”

“Oh, but you will,” said Ajis.

I glanced towards the edge of the cliff. “Why did you bring me here?”

“What did you ask?”

“All I asked is why.”

“Why is a lie,” said the Dragon.

“What?”

“Why is a lie.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “How can a question be a lie?”

“When it’s the wrong question.”

What happened next defied explanation, but all my questionings died. Ajis lifted his magnificent tale and it shown for a moment like a golden pillar at the awestruck sky as I held my thoughts and waited. And then with the force of a meteor, the tail drove into the icy stone beneath our feet. A geyser of steam shot into the sun and the mountainside, ice stone and permanence tore open as if forged of flimsy shreds. A great fissure opened in the stone, and looking down, I saw thousands upon thousands of bright and shining orbs of solid light in so many shapes forms and colors that I had to close my eyes against the dazzle.

“Breathe,” commanded my companion. “Breathe and nod and open your eyes and look down. You will adjust to the sight or go mad. Either way I can teach you.”

My breath slowed and I opened my eyes again. The depths below glittered with unimaginable lights and shapes and seemed to descend forever into the earth as if to suggest these strange objects populated the entire Encircling Range.

“What are they?” I asked, but already Ajis sensed so many of my thoughts.

“Yes,” he replied. “They are millions. Every mountain about the valley contains them, every cavern, every fissure, every shaft contains thousands and they run deep beneath the mountain roots. Their real numbers uncounted. Now, answer your own question.”

“They . . . they are eggs. They are Dragons’ Eggs,” I whispered, unbelieving.

“Can you hear them?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “That hum, that whisper, that endless song! I’ve always heard them. It’s just . . . clearer here.”

“They sing to each other,” the dragon explained. “A song that never ends . . . it was so long ago . . . so very long ago . . . for reasons no one understand, the Gods in Their infinite wisdom or the one God or Goddess in Her or His infinite wisdom, or simple biological evolution in its grand haphazard plan granted us the gift of speech.”

As my eyes adjusted I studied the shapes and lights and realized they didn’t drive me mad.

“Why is a lie,” my companion repeated. “When and how and what, they are the useful questions. You see, once upon a time, many eons ago - the human race has only begun to trace it - the Earth was ruled by reptiles. Great giant beasts roamed and swam and flew and fought. For hundreds of millions of centuries they dominated this world and our race flew free among them. Then quite suddenly, sixty-five or six millions of your years, they all quite suddenly died, or rather died out . . . quite suddenly . . . quite suddenly . . . and no one really knows the reason why. Your science calls them dinosaurs and props up many theories as to their obliteration. The most recent is an impact from the sky. But its a question no one answers, an answer no one knows. For all I know the theory is correct. Quite suddenly . . . quite suddenly . . . No creature with a body weight above a hundred pounds survived that decimation. What your science cannot know . . . or rather tolerate . . . is that one of those species may have survived. Your race is used to reptiles as tiny, cold blooded, irrelevant things that slide under rocks, think nothing at all, and avoid you. No human scientist can tolerate the reality that a reptile might speak, have a wingspan wider than the greatest bird, blood as hot as fire, or a mind as sharp as a lexicon of agonizing insights.”

“Oh dear God,” I whispered.

“Or God or Gods or Goddess, or the force of random chance,” the dragon replied with a fragrant laugh.

Snuggling against his tail, I let my legs dangle over the edge of the humming chasm and savored its warmth and hum and power. I gazed up at my loving friend and waited. Ajis laughed again.

“And thereby,” the dragon said. “Thereby hangs a tale.”