opened his mouth again, but the dragon cut him dead, ‘–I have no care of its name in the tongue of man, lad, so do not ask me for it.’
The boy swallowed and listened. Stone went on:
‘For millennia the flower elemental thrived with the lizards and the parakeets. Then man came.’ The dragon spat the word ‘man’ as if it were poison. His tail thrashed on the ground behind him.
‘They were there for less than one of your years, lad. Examining, scrutinising, analysing. Hunting. Collecting.’
Jake’s stomach churned from the anger, mournful and viscid, pouring off the dragon.
‘What– what did they do?’ he croaked, unsure he wanted the answer. This wasn’t fun anymore.
‘She was a trusting soul,’ said Stone, and as he spoke Jake thought the elemental looked for all the world as if he were smaller, shrunken somehow. Stone carried on: ‘Of all of us, Jacob, she saw the most in mankind: hope, compassion, care for the lands and the skies and the things of earth and air. She believed in you, a species young and volatile, but she believed nonetheless.’
Jake saw the inevitable shape of the flower dragon’s future banking the past’s horizon.
‘They hunted her?’ he asked, ‘Like the knights?’
Stone gave him an old-fashioned look.
‘She found for herself a companion. A small boy, naive in his way — some might even call him innocent, if they were so foolishly inclined…’ he flicked a glance at Jake, then, confident he wouldn’t be countered, continued, ‘…She told him of her secrets. She was a healer, her flower a cure for many flesh-bound ailments and diseases. She told the boy all of this, of her ways of healing. And the boy, stupid in his ignorance, told his family as though he had not been given a powerful entrustment. He told them in the way he might ask for a sweetie.’
Stone sneered and spat. Jake felt a shaking — a growl — deep underground. He nodded for the dragon to finish his story.
‘The child’s family were men and women of science...’
Jake winced, his own father had been a scientist, a geneticist. The boy found he was holding his breath.
‘Oh, Jacob,’ grumbled Stone, ‘they did not hunt out of ignorance and fear like your knights, they hunted with purpose. Mankind, they surmised, would be cured of many, if not all, of its ills. No cancers, no ravaged bones, no ill humours of the brain and blood. They were shown a medicine with no side effects, no poisons! A medicine for mankind that truly worked.’
‘But that’s a good thing,’ said Jake, weakly. Stone glared at him.
‘The scientists stripped the forest of the flower! Stripped it to make their medicine for mankind! They left not even a root, not even a seed!’
A red flame flared for a second in the dragon’s eyes. Jake winced again. His bones ached, his teeth itched. He felt a pressure in his gut. It must be this light, he thought as he stared at the dragon, but now it looks like he’s getting bigger.
‘They grew the flower in their decorative glasshouses like it was an ornament! At least,’ Stone snorted, ‘they saw in it her beauty! And, yes, her medicine saved millions of human lives… for a short while.’
Stone paused and sighed.
‘The flower was a resource to man, Jacob. To the elemental, it was her life. It thrived only in one place because it could thrive only in one place: on a small rain-forested island amongst the lizards and parakeets. It withered in the scientists’ glasshouses. The harvested flowers mouldered and died – those that were not already used up.’
‘How did she die?’ Jake asked, eventually.
‘As the flowers perished, as their stock perished, so did she. It was slow and painful, like the human illnesses she could cure. She grew weak, pale, barely able to lift her head and eat, until one day she could no longer do even that…’
Stone shook the memory from his head. Jake tried to swallow as quietly as possible.
‘I’m…er… I’m sorry, Stone.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ snorted the dragon. ‘Come, let us go. It does not do to talk of such sadness. Especially when there is sleep to be had.’ He set off waddling towards the field.
They walked for a while; Jake, head bowed and thinking, Stone lost in his own pity.
And it was because Jake was tired that he didn’t think before he said, ‘But… are you sure she’s dead? They took seeds and samples…’
The dragon’s eyes flared white hot. ‘Sure?’ he bellowed. ‘Sure? Once she confided in the boy she lasted only a few short years, Jacob! For elementals this is merely seconds!’
“W-what I mean is… I know the flowers in the greenhouses died–’
‘The flowers didn’t take, lad! They withered, growing for no good length of time!’
‘Yes, yes you said. I know, but… the seeds?’
‘They perished during the scientists’ sea-crossings home. There were none of your aeroplanes back then, lad!’
Jake’s stomach dipped and churned; the elemental’s anger coursed through his body, but he couldn’t let it lie.
‘Okay, then, but aren’t there still traces in the medicines?’ he yelled.
The dragon stopped dead.
‘Ah?’ he said.
‘She could — she should — st-still be alive,’ Jake stammered.
‘Ah, the medicines? Well, Jacob, the scientists broke down the properties of her flower. This chemical, that. This protein, that. They created a synthetic medicine.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes. Half as effective, but economical to produce. It suited them well enough. People would keep buying a medicine that worked for a short while; who, in their right minds, would keep paying for a cure? No, once they had extracted their knowledge they had no motive in keeping the flower alive.’
Stone drew in a deep breath and let it out in a fine ribbon of smoke.
‘Not even for… erm, I dunno, how pretty it was?’ said Jake, already knowing the answer.
‘Perhaps. If they could have re-created exactly the conditions in which they found the flower… But not, sadly, in this case. Glasshouses were expensive to run, Jacob. And, as I said, it was a long time ago.’
They carried on walking; the awkward silence settling on them again. Jake couldn’t get the image of the flower elemental out of his head. In his mind’s eye she was a dragon no bigger than a horse and as orange and pink as the sunset; her hide rustled with the sound of overlapping petals, and when she moved, the air spilled out her perfume sweet as almonds. He knew, in his bones, her eyes shone like rosequartz, and she was followed everywhere she went by butterflies and bees, beetles and hummingbirds. The rainforest… yes, Stone had already said the word once… cherished her. She lived in a fairy tale land.
And at the end of all fairy tales the dragon is killed.
After a while, Jake said, ‘Is that what you meant when you said no elemental dragon was killed directly by man?’
Stone walked and talked without stopping, without looking at the boy. ‘It is one of the dangers, lad. Of taking a companion. Of trusting mankind.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jake, thoughtfully, then, ‘What did you do with her?’
This time the dragon did stop. ‘Do?’ he snapped, icily. Jake almost walked into him.
‘My dad, w-we cremated him,’ said Jake. ‘It was horrible,’ he added in a flat voice.
‘Ah, I see,’ and there was a small tenderness to the elemental’s tone. ‘Well, she was a flower dragon, lad. We buried her. Deep in the heart of the forests. It was appropriate. She returned to the earth she loved.’
‘Are all dragons buried when they die?’ Jake asked, kicking a small piece of flint that glinted in the moon’s light.
‘I do not know. I have seen only one die. When their time comes, I should imagine some will be sent to the water, others burned. We shall have to see.’
‘I hope not,’ said Jake, glancing up at the sky.
‘Yes,’ said the dragon thoughtfully. ‘I also.’
Above them the
moon shone down marking out a path over the fields, and Cygnus and the Summer Triangle glittered as brightly as any stars could.
The end
###
Endpapers
About the Author
JG Parker has lived and written in London, Sheffield, Edinburgh and Houston, Texas, and now lives in the quiet depths of Northamptonshire surrounded by rolling fields and forests that go on forever and are likely to be home to any number of natural (and possibly supernatural) creatures. Dark Peak is JG Parker's first novel.
Dark Peak. A land of long fields and rough mountains; a battleground where two of the Earth’s protectors meet the worst of humanity’s excesses made flesh. And one of them, Jake Walker, has only had a few weeks to get used to the idea. Luckily, the limestone dragon called Stone has had millennia to get used to it. And that might just be long enough. But it’ll take more than time to beat this enemy, and nothing is guaranteed.
What readers are saying about Dark Peak: The First Elemental:
'I hope this will be the first of many adventures.’
'A Pullmanesque story beautifully landscaped into the UK's peak district, this is an intriguing page-turner.’
'There is an intelligence to this novel that reminds me of the Harry Potter series and Dark Peak has the same kind of building excitement as the plot moves along.’
'Dark Peak is a gripping adventure story with a serious environmental purpose.'
'I was transported by this mystical adventure!'
'This is an excellent first novel which had me gripped from the off.'
'Buy this book and hope JG Parker is already working on a sequel.’
Dark Peak: The First Elemental is the first book of the Elementals series and is available in paperback from bookshops and Stonewood Press directly, and as an ebook. For a sample, visit www.theelementals.net and click on the ‘read some of it’ link (Flash player needed).
Connect with JG Parker Online
Twitter: https://twitter.com/J_G_Parker
Blog: https://www.theelementals.net/blog/
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