Stealing Dragon Magic

If the baby dragon knew any better, which he didn’t because he was too young, he wouldn’t keep waiting on the beach for his mother to return for him. Instead, he cowered under the lone tree, hungry, shivering and so very alone with the ocean breaking gently along the shore. Three days earlier, he huddled safe and warm held against his mother’s belly as she flew them home. But the storm had hit them suddenly, all wind and hard, bitter rain.  Then the lightning struck singeing his mother’s wing. It torqued her off balance. She careened into the sea. Head over tail still fighting to care for her baby. In the uncontrolled descent, she lost her grip. He fell away. He tried spreading his wings, but they weren’t strong enough yet, and he hit hard on the beach while the rain pummeled him like stinging needles. Though he bleated and sobbed, snot running from his nose, no one came. Until now.

Before him, the creature leaned against the trunk and stared at him with her round sea blue eyes. He growled and thrashed his tail. Unlike him, this creature had no scales and no talons, not even a tail. Instead, it had two legs. The silky curls bouncing down its back shined golden like the feeble sun in yesterday’s storm heavy sky. Her soft skin appeared porcelain white. She wore a cloth wrapped around her. A thin silver chain laced in three loops surrounded her neck.

“Sh, sh, sh,” she cooed as she dipped her hand into her pocket and gazed at him with her round hypnotic eyes. 

He opened his mouth as wide as it would and hissed, dug his right foot into the ground and showered pine needles behind him. He thrashed his tail while tiny tendrils of white smoke trailed up from his nostrils. The spines on the back of his neck jiggled and stiffened. He raised his head displaying razor teeth. This creature was fey, dangerous. His mother whispered of them when she sang to him at night as he grew in his shell.

The fey pulled something out of her pocket.  “It’s dried pigeon meat,” she said and lobbed it at him.

Being newly hatched, he burned with hunger. Though he didn’t mean to, he snapped the meat out of the air.

She stepped closer fingering the silver chain around her neck. 

“It isn’t safe in these woods for you,” she said and slipped one of the chain loops over her head until it settled into two larger ovals around her neck. She stepped closer.

In warning, he thrashed his tail against the ground.

She fingered another strip of meat from her pocket and tossed it at him. He snapped his mouth open, again, hunger driven. She stepped closer still and slid her hand over his head settling the spines back. Her hand felt warm like the heat from his mother’s belly before he lost her during last night’s storm, before she flew away from him. The fey reached into her pocket and lifted more meat to his lips.

“I’ve never seen a baby dragon before, such beautiful wings,” she said as the fey stroked his head with her warm soft hand. She slid the silver chain off her neck and slipped it over his, the smoothness of the silver tight against his windpipe. Her fingertips touched his bruised wing where it hit the tree when he fell last night during the worst of the storm while driving rain lashed his tender body and the sandy beach bruised him. He forced himself not to tremble before the fey. After all, his mother had whispered to him in his shell that he would grow into a mighty dragon.

 “I can fix your wing,” she said and turned to go. It was then he noticed the nubs of two wings, which jutted from holes cut into the cloth that she wore. “I know about damaged wings,” she said and headed into the woods with him trailing behind.

They hiked deeper into an old growth forest of Douglas fir and spider ferns that towered over both, more than six feet in height. In a tight clustering of trillium, they abruptly stopped. Before them lay a circular clearing eighty feet in diameter. At first glance, it resembled a clear-cut forest where nursery trees grew, but on closer inspection, he spied cottages made of plants and bark. The entrances cut into the structures revealed the shapes of more fey, larger than this one, who stirred inside. And there on the edges of the clearing snugged up to a fern that was as wide as it was tall stood a cottage separate from the rest. The fey tugged on the chain forcing him to dash to the door.

As he crossed the threshold, he shivered with the magic of it. The ceiling soared impossibly high. The crystal of the roof sparkled with starlight. Dark cherry covered the floor of the oval room and tapestries of spun sunlight shimmered on the taupe walls.  Not far into the room sat a chair upholstered in down the blood red color of autumn sugar maples. In the far corner a fireplace burned with cedar wood and the smell of roasting apples and heavy rye bread. Honeybees swirled by a cupboard leaving tiny traces of pollen on the warm air. The fey whooshed past him rushing to get to the fireplace.  She was larger than her appearance in the forest, at least five feet high. He wondered if he would be safe or if he would become the meat that cooked on the spit to go with the apples and bread. The fairy turned to him as she pulled the apples out of the flames. Her teeth as sharp as his. He shivered again.

She beckoned him closer. The fire crackled as bits of flame spit upward toward the flue. The overpowering sweetness of the roasting apples dripping with honey brought bile into his throat. His eyes swirled first red then black then settled into yellow. The fey seemed smaller again and a deep sadness covered her aura in dark blue.

She clapped her hands once then held them to her heart. “You really are a wondrous dragon. And you are right to be wary.” She gestured encompassing the entire room, while whispering, “this is not a safe place for you.”  

She padded to a refrigerated box, gathered several plucked pigeons out of it, skewered the meat, placed it on the spit over the fireplace then turned toward him. “While this meat is cooking, I’ll teach you how to disguise yourself.” Her lips twitched up in a smile. “You know, some brave and fierce dragons can assume a variety of shapes. Do you think you are such a brave and fierce dragon?”

She tiptoed to him, sat on the hardwood floor, legs tucked under. He smelled the sweet golden apple odor of her as she leaned in, pulled the silver chain off him and settled it back around her own throat. "So, if the others find you, they might kill you.” She glanced sideways at him. " Dragons are dangerous creatures. Unpredictable."

He puffed up suddenly and dug his talons into the floor, scraping lines into the cherry hardwood.

"Let’s try now.” She shifted her position. "You can look more like me if you concentrate hard enough." Touching her fingertips to his temples, her violet blue eyes stared into his. "Now, close your eyes." 

He fought the feeling but slowly his eyes drifted closed.             

"That's it. Now, imagine your eyes are more round than almond-shaped. Concentrate."  She massaged with her hands from his temples to his shoulders.  “Now, breathe in deeply.”

He breathed, his chest swelled larger with each deeper breath.  

"Now, imagine your eyes changing to look more like mine."  

Though worry poked at him, he concentrated on the task until the spines on the back of his neck shivered. Small welts formed and then melted along the length of his black body. His front legs stretched as if growing inches in an impossibly short time and his eyes shimmered. He shook his small horned head back and forth, stuck out his tongue. Slight curls of smoke drifted into the air. His body trembled. His eyes stretched, lifted, rounded out.

“There, see.”  She patted his head.  “I knew you could do it. Such a good beginning.”

Exhausted, he slumped on the floor. His body shivered with chills as his eyes blinked and welted and settled back to beautiful yellow reptilian.

The fairy stood to flex her shoulder muscles to ease the tension.  “It is enough for today.”

He rested his head on his foreleg.

“You’ll be tired now,” She glided over to the fireplace. “Why don’t you rest?  The fairy yanked a thick chunk of apple wood from a neatly stacked pile and plunked in into the fire under the roasting birds. “I’ll watch over you while you sleep.”

With that, the fey pulled a hummingbird blue shawl woven with strands of sunlight from the chair and tugged it around him. She strolled to the wall and tapped the edge of a tapestry. The sunlight, which glowed from the wall hangings, dimmed and the light play from the night sky through the crystal roof dimpled the room with starlight.  He tried to keep his eyes on her. He heard the fluttering of wings somewhere, but he drooped too heavy with sleep and his body ached from the concentration, his bruised wing making its presence known. The fairy sat beside him, stroked his head softly. Sleep pulled him closer and as he drifted into its dark embrace, he heard the quiet melody of the fairy’s voice.

She whispered in his ear. “Soon. When you change completely, little dragon, I will steal those beautiful leathery wings. They will look good on me.”