cw: violence, childhood illness, death of a child, self harm and suicide
In fair weather, an adventurer prepares for his climb. The blacksmith stays up till midnight and sweats over a sword for him. She hammers out the shield and marks it with a sickle for the village and adorns it with silver for their child hero. This is her best work yet. She is sure of it.
The villagers bring some rice wine for the way and pack flatbread and sugar in a satchel for the boy to eat. His mother tucks jasmine in his armour to remind him of her garden, and his father holds her back. His lover cries over him and begs him not to go, for there is nothing to be gained, but he desires glory, and glory he shall have.
With his sword sharp and his armour new, the boy begins his climb. He walks for twenty days and twenty nights and grows haggard against the frigid wind. It howls dreadful tales of dead heroes in his ears, but he knows he will be the one to save his village.
The cold almost takes two of his fingers, and he wonders how long he must climb. He longs for the lover he left behind. But it is all worth it when he stands before the cave. Even though there are no corpses to find, for the dragon must have fed itself with them, there are signs of the dead everywhere. He finds trinkets and old rusting blades. He finds coins and carts, frozen in time, awaiting retribution.
So he faces the dark mouth of the cave and calls for the dragon with a cracking voice, “Out Seyraal. I demand you to come out.”
At first, there is an ancient silence, for here, the world has been unchanged for millennia. Then the ground beneath his feet shivers and rumbles and a beast snakes its head out of the darkness.
It is taller than he had imagined. It is angrier than he had imagined. It looms over him and watches, breath unfurling hot and blistering over his skin.
“Return to your home, boy, and leave me to mine.”
He raises his sword that now feels too small, but if he does not slay this dragon, she will destroy his village. The boy is hardly sixteen. He is young.
He shakes as she devours him.
She is old and this has happened too many times before. She spits out some metal that had stuck in her teeth and it clatters on the ground.
His armour will rust here.
When the weather is beaten and grey, a father begins his journey. He is already worn and haggard by his years of tilling his land and it doesn’t bear enough grain to fill his belly.
He takes with him herbs and a potion for his shattered knee and potatoes to eat on his journey.
His wife tells him there is no need for this. They will move to an unfamiliar home and leave jasmine on an empty gravestone. But he cannot sleep in an empty house. What kind of man would he be if he did not try to draw blood for his blood?
She knows he has not been sleeping at night. Every day, he paces his fields and watches the sky where a shadow covers the moon in a swooping arc, flying closer and closer, and it becomes clearer to him. He is not worried about dying. After him, there is no one to inherit the land. It will flounder until some stranger takes it for himself. So what is the point of all the years it has passed from father to son to grandson?
He says none of this, but she sees he has made a decision. She presses a finger to smooth his wrinkled brow one final time and lets him go.
The climb is arduous and his knee aches bitterly. He just hopes he does not die before he reaches where his son did. For a day, he dreams of gods who squabble beneath the ground. They fight until the ground shakes and homes fall. When he wakes, he takes this as an omen and makes the last of his prayers.
He arrives when the sky is red. There is no bravado or the arrogance of youth. He calls with measure, “Seyraal, I await you outside.”
His voice is thin and the sound waits before it reflects and booms. Seyraal is slower to come out. She trudges out of the mouth of the cave and they regard each other as tired beings for a while before she speaks.
“I have neither a boon nor a curse to give. Leave my home.”
“You killed my son.” He is so tired. He is out of breath and the absence of his son shreds his lungs every day.
“He came to die.”
“I cannot rest knowing you live.” The father came to die, too. He hopes to die there, next to his son, and in some manner, time will fold into itself in this place and he will find his son and comfort him.
Seyraal leans back to sit on her hind legs, “Come then. Get your rest.”
He stands quiet and Seyraal raises a single talon to crush his skull.
After all, she understands.
When the weather is cold and all is night, a mother straps her child to herself and sneaks her way out of the village. She presses her hand to Joren and hopes he will not cry. His body shifts just a little, his soft skin burning hot against hers, like an ember over her heart. He does not cry. He watches and tries to understand. Someday he will be a scholar, she can tell.
Her cousin gives her a mare stolen from a nobleman’s house and warns her of the danger, but he knows he cannot change her mind, so he gives her a satchel of sugar and leaves her on the mountain road.
The mountain is treacherous with winding paths. Several times, she wonders if she is lost, but follows the stars and keeps her faith. She sings songs to soothe her son and hopes he will sing them to his own someday. She whispers the ones that would scandalize a priest.
They travel in the light when it is warm, but they stop too much. Joren cries for food and often for attention or pain. He wrenches and tugs and wails. He cries in anger and pulls hard at her sleeves until he learns no one will respond, and then he sleeps.
She wonders if she is making a mistake. They told her the fever will pass in a week and it hasn’t. They told her to try yarrow and to rub onion on his feet. They told her to pray and wait, but she can feel Joren slipping out of her hands and she holds on to him in their pocket of warmth.
When they stop for the night, she huddles against a fire to sing another lullaby she crafts out of the air. This one is about a prince who comes down from the moon and gifts a babe to a lonely midwife. The child glows at night and people flock to him but they do not understand why. He speaks soft and melodious so all listen and grows up to be a scholar or a farmer. He doesn’t blaze with anger, never fights in war and ashen the land like gods from before. He builds a quiet home for his life.
When the sun is barely over the horizon, she bids farewell to the horse and offers it sugar cubes and pats. It was a good companion and she hopes the horse will run and survive, but it just settles quietly against an old tree and watches her go.
She climbs up and up, on paths trodden before. She finds remnants of old camps and collapsed tents. Here someone threw away old arrowheads. Here there is a campfire, long quenched.
The longer she climbs, the colder it gets. Ice grips her fingers, but she climbs until the mouth of a cave yawns over her, darker than the night. Jagged teeth of ice extend from the lip and prepare to devour her as all before. There is a mound of armor and charred bones piled next to the entrance, frozen into a grotesque tableau of the ones who came before her and died for their foolishness.
She is just as foolish. She holds a small knife at her side, gifted by her mother and her mother’s mother. Did she think she would slay a dragon?
She calls out with a voice shivering, “Seyraal, I ask for your hospitality.”
Her voice cuts through the silent night, grows and echoes over and over until there is a roar from the darkness, a flicker of fire swirling in an eye and a voice weathered by countless storms. “What do you seek, little one? Have you come to slay me?”
“I cannot fight you,” the mother answers. Her knife is useless against a god. “I come to ask … to beg for your blood.”
“Do you know how many mothers seek my blood to make their sons a warrior and a king?”
“I want my son to do as he pleases, but he won’t live until then.” She gestures to the bundle tied to her chest.
Seyraal’s eyes move sharply to her son for a moment, and then the red-scaled form retreats back into the darkness and the fire winks out. “I offer you my hospitality, then. Come in,”
She presses a hand against the damp wall and enters blindly through a winding tunnel until the world lightens and the wall bends away. There is a soft fire, shaking against the icy wind. Curled near it is a beast larger than her dreams. Seyraal watches over the pit of fire where flames leap and curl around two rounded things, gleaming red and sizzling. Air shimmers over them and bends sight.
Seyraal keeps an eye on them and another on the human that steps inside.
“What did you hear of my blood?” Her voice is smaller now, stripped of performance, stripped of anger.
“Your blood runs with fire. It will make him stronger. Give him life.”
“It is a lie for which you have travelled so far. Some say my blood can only cure if I die. Will you kill me then? Is that why you carry a knife?”
She draws her knife like an offering. “In my line, this is given to a mother when she has her first child. The world is cruel, so she must become cruel too. She must become a weapon and a shield in front of her child. Surely you understand? I don’t have your magic, but I have to try anyway. Surely you understand?”
Seyraal darts closer, corners her in a blur. “You will bring more men to me and my child.”
“I swear I will not.” She breathes raggedly. Each word thrums with desperation almost wrenched from her throat.
Seyraal’s eyes widen, swirling fire and gold. Her mouth pulls back in a scowl. Hundreds of teeth, sharp as a knife, tall as a human, glisten. Her breath is scalding. “You will tell them I am an elixir and they will come to drain my child and eat of his flesh and wear his scales and carve his bones. Do you think I do not know?”
“I will not,” she promises.
“How do I know, little one?” Seyraal growls, moving closer.
“I will give you my tongue.” It slips past her before she knows what she is saying.
Seyraal stops. Her eyes blink and the fire dampens.
This is her chance. She opens her mouth and holds the knife over her lips. “I cannot speak. I will not speak. I told you this knife was to protect my child. He is sick. I want him to live. That is all.”
The dragon inches closer. Her belly presses flat against the ground. Gingerly, her hand rises, and she draws a scarlet line on her cheek with her own claw. The blood swells and rolls and drips to the snow, sizzling to smoke.
The mother jumps forward and with her flask catches the stream. The blood is boiling, and the smoke prickles and blisters her hand, but she holds on and hopes this is enough.
“Thank you.” She looks up into Seyraal’s eyes and finds them warm and expectant.
A hand on Joren’s cheek and another on the knife, she opens her lips and sings her final song.
Vijayalaxmi Samal (she/her) is is calling on you to join in refusing and resisting the genocide of the Palestinian people and all the oppressed peoples all over the world. Wherever you are, throw what sand you can in the gears of the empire. Together, we must resist, resist, resist.
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