and the long, outermost finger of each wing was armoured with a horny ridge running partway down it from the wingclaw. On the dragon’s tail, the spines diminished in size, almost vanishing at the tip, where there was a solid, hard-edged point like an arrowhead. On the neck, too, the spines were smaller, but they grew in size on top of the head to form a horny, bumpy ridge on the forehead, then they shrank and petered out down the slope of the dragon’s nose. The head was narrow and bony, almost fine, the crimson scales turning finer and paler around the face. Jack gazed at the creature in wonder. The dragon was beautiful.
But there were so many scars; so many discoloured patches and missing scales, and tears in the wings. And that wound: it was swollen and weeping, the scales crusty with blood. Jack stood assessing it. It was horribly infected and would not heal quickly. It needed washing and the infection drawn out …
He drew level with the dragon’s head and stood a little beyond arm’s reach. “I’m called Jack,” he said softly. “You need help. I can help you.”
Through the dark haze that had descended on her mind, the dragon heard the gently spoken words. What did this human want with her? The dragon opened her eyes halfway and gazed dully at the human. At first, she barely registered the upright human shape with its light-coloured skin, the light-brown hair and blue eyes. Then she looked again at the eyes. They were bright, the colour of the sky in high Summer, and there was an expression in them, an emotion that did not match any other emotion she had seen in human eyes. It was not anger, nor hate nor terror, nor amazement and horror, nor intent to kill. What was this human feeling? And why had it spoken so quietly? Had it really spoken to her? Other humans had spoken to her, but aggressively, and with abhorrence or vindictiveness, usually loudly. She had rarely spoken back, because they never seemed to hear her.
Jack spoke again, looking into the half-open yellow eyes. “I can help you.”
Surely the human was speaking to her. She answered it, gazing back into those eyes. “What do you want with me?”
The dragon’s jaws hadn’t moved, but Jack had heard her quite clearly and unmistakably. It did not really surprise him that the dragon could talk; he had expected an answer. He seemed to have known from the first moment he saw her that she could talk. “You need help,” Jack said again. “I want to help you.”
The dragon could see that the human wasn’t just repeating itself – it actually had heard her. ‘Help’? “What do you mean?” she asked it.
“Your leg is hurt. You’re dying. I want to help heal you.”
The dragon was conversing with a human, and the human was saying that it wanted to heal her. Impossible. It didn’t make sense. The dragon closed her eyes.
“Can you hear me? My name is Jack, I want to help you. … Are you awake?”
There was no response. Jack stepped closer.
“Can you hear me, – dragon?” he asked softly. It seemed wrong somehow to call this injured, hurting beast by that fearsome, terrible name, but that was what she was. … Or so he had been told. He reached out and carefully, as unthreateningly as possible, touched the dragon’s neck.
The dragon lay limp, waiting for the blow to fall or the blade to stab through her neck.
Slowly, very gently, Jack began to stroke the dragon’s neck with his fingers. After a moment he carefully stepped closer and began to stroke with his whole hand, slow, caressing strokes, murmuring his calming half-mumbles. The dragon did not twitch.
The dragon wondered faintly what the human was doing, moving its hand over her hide like that. Was it some sort of ritual the humans made before killing their enemies?
Jack’s hand felt the smooth texture of the scales, and brushed over the stiff raised welts of scars. Tenderly he traced the line of one with his forefinger, wondering how old it was and how the dragon had received it.
“Dragon,” he said, “you must wake. Is there water near?”
Why was the human taking so long a time, the dragon wondered. It did want to kill her, did it not?
Finally Jack touched the dragon’s head tentatively, near the edge of her jaw. Then he stroked the nose briefly. At last, a little nervously, he knelt close by the large, wedge-shaped head, and lifted it onto his lap. It was heavy and weighed down his knees. It lay on its side, one large eye encased in delicately-skinned eyelids of pink, the line of the jaw long and curving.
What was this? The dragon’s lightless eyes opened.
“Listen to me.” Still caressing the head with one hand while the other kept it on his lap, the boy tried to hold the dragon’s gaze, to stop those yellow eyes closing one more time, perhaps permanently. “I want to heal you. But you must not give up. If you give up, you will die though I do everything in my power. You don’t have to die. You can find somewhere safe to live. But you mustn’t give up.” And that was the longest speech that the orphan Jack had ever given.
And the dragon asked the great question: “What is the point of living?”
The boy looked into that great, slit-pupilled, yellow eye, and saw so much to be pitied, and a soul so like his own, that tears began to well up. The dragon saw the tears, which puzzled her but then seemed familiar, and she saw in the blue, round-pupilled eyes of the human something she had never seen but now identified. And suddenly something happened to the dragon’s eyes that had not happened in over a century: tears welled up in them; but she did not know why.
“Is there water near here, O Dragon?” asked the boy.
“Yes. It is further up the mountainside.”
Jack pointed. “Straight up this way?”
“Yes.”
Jack lowered the dragon’s head back to the ground, giving it a final stroke; and went first to the village to take, unseen, all of his few possessions from his place from his aunt’s and uncle’s barn, along with a bucket and some rags, and several handfuls of herbs from their garden. He left the herbs in the clearing with the dragon, and went in search of the water. The dragon lay still, two dragon-sized tears trickling down her cheeks, still feeling the human’s touch on her hide, and found herself expecting its – the human’s – return.
The boy brought water from the pool and cleaned the dragon’s wound, then bandaged it with herbs to draw out the seeping infection that possessed it. Then he brought more water for the dragon to drink, and asked her what food she required. When the dragon had told him, he roamed the forest until he returned with his tunic full of food, including berries and wild apples for himself. In the few hours of daylight left, the boy and the dragon rested. Then, before the forest grew dark, Jack brought one more drink for the dragon, and they both slept, Jack lying at the clearing’s edge, wrapped in his cloak, a few paces from the dragon.
Though her aching wound was only slightly soothed by the cleaning and the herbs, and though it was new and strange to have talked with a human and to have one sleeping near her, the dragon slept better than she had in weeks.
At dawn the next day Jack woke, fetched water, searched for some fresh, wild herbs, and waited. The dragon slept until noon. When she awoke, Jack washed and rebandaged her leg, then told the dragon that tomorrow morning they would have to move to the pool. “My uncle and the other men from the village will return tomorrow.”
–––––––
At noon the next day the villagers entered the clearing. Three whole days had not yet passed, but if the dragon was not dead, the men did not want to be fighting it in the dark, just as Jack had guessed. The clearing was empty, but for a single wooden bucket in its centre. The dragon, and the boy Jack, were gone.
For a few minutes, the men called for Jack.
“Shall we search for ’im?” one of them asked.
“No,” replied Jack’s uncle, after a pause. “The boy made his choice. He’s old enough.”
“What if the dragon ate ’im?” another speculated. Jack’s uncle shook his head.
“There’s not any blood on the grass,” one man said.
“The boy had a wa
y with animals,” mused Jack’s uncle, as he turned and they left the clearing.
As far as the people of the village were concerned, Jack’s life had ended. They suspected that they would not see Jack again, and in this their instincts were correct. But for Jack and the dragon, their lives were soon to begin.
The dragon had managed, with a great effort, to fly to the pool, so she left no trail in the leaf litter. Jack had watched her go in wonder, then placed the bucket in the clearing and followed, leaving no tracks. From beside the pool he had heard the men calling, and their voices echoing faintly up the mountainside. When they stopped calling, he knew that they had turned away. His decision was complete, and his own. Now only freedom waited.
–––––––
As soon as the dragon was completely healed – a matter of a few weeks – they left the pool, the peasant boy walking beside the lizardlike dragon, and headed deeper into the forest, upwards, further into the mountains. Jack went where the dragon roamed, and ate what she ate, but for the things that he knew to be poisonous. At last one day the dragon asked, “Why did you help me?”
“Because you needed help,” said Jack simply.
And that was all the answer that there could be.
–––––––
One day they reached the top of the mountains. Below their feet were huge, green-forested slopes, stretching down