Return of the Beasts

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. They came one day, unforeseen, their leathery wings splitting the sky to bring life to the dying and hope to the despairing. They saved us.

And then we betrayed them.

The valley of Dóchas was a dying civilization. Our hunters were dwindling with every journey to find resources, our women were no longer able to feed themselves, let alone the children they were expected to bear. Within a year we would be the next lost civilization – a story to future generations who venture into our valley, deciding where we lie on the spectrum between fact and fiction. No more tangible than the lost city of Atlantis or the towering build of Camelot.

Many had accepted their fate; they lay motionless and amenable to what lies beyond. They had no gods to pray to in their final moments because our civilization had given up on believing in a higher power the moment our people began dying off and slaughtering each other. What kind of gods would allow a plague to wash over an innocent civilization? What kind of gods would allow the resulting thieving and massacres that occurred between friends, family members, and lovers out of selfish desperation, and fear of their own demise? What kind of gods would sit idly by and allow their believers to suffer without so much as an explanation, let alone mercy?

My grandmother, Aife, was one of the despairing by the time the dragons arrived. She had come to terms with the little impact she had made in her short life and did not expect a savior to come for her now. None ever had in the past. She was ready to leave this world, holding on to the futile hope that some forgiving god would take her in and show her something beyond this life, something peaceful and joyous.

Aife had spent her first years of independence fighting for what she believed was the greater cause. The massacring may have ended years ago, but the turmoil that was left in its wake was still seared into the valley’s earthly memory and the hearts of the people unfortunate enough to survive. My grandmother was young during the plague and the massacres, but as she grew older, she felt a burning desire to help. She wanted to reignite the passions of our once strong and prosperous civilization – be a beacon for the lost. She and her group of other bright-eyed, willful fighters – the revolutionists - strove to bring the nation back to life, but those who had lived through their personalized hells were unwilling to trust again.

When the plague first wrapped its talons around Dóchas there was still a belief that we would manage. Yes, some that were not healed quickly enough would be tragically lost but we had the strength and medicine to save most of our people. What no one ever predicted was the bedlam that occurred out of sheer human terror. The fear of being the next soul stolen too early from this world terrified people to the point of sacrificing others for the sake of their own, damned soul. So, the revolutionists, in their attempt to act as a beacon of light for the dying Dóchas, merely became a reminder of the brutality that lies just beneath the surface of every friend and neighbor surrounding you, and their purpose soon died out.

As the fight in the revolutionists’ eyes faded, so too did the hope of a brighter future.

Aife sat alone in what used to be her bedroom as a child. The rest of the house was dust-coated and forgotten – a memory of what was. After her parents succumbed to the same fate that had already taken more than half of the valley, Aife tried to keep their home alive: cleaning each day as her mother would have, and tending to the emaciated crops as her father had taught her to do. But as she grew weaker, and the child inside of her slowly grew larger, she had to save her strength. Three days ago, the reality of Aife’s situation finally sank in.

She had thought many times about getting rid of the child. All it would take was a few potent herbs in a tea. It would take only a few minutes to prepare, and seconds to drink. This time spent and the guilt she would carry seemed far more gracious than bringing a child into this valley – or what would become of it.

As many times as she had prepared the tea she never could bring herself to take a sip. She thought of her friends and family members who had been trying for years to even have hints of life growing within them, but their frail bodies were too malnourished to support any speck of life other than their own. She thought of the pain they would feel knowing she voluntarily halted the formation of a new life. She felt cruel when she pictured the look on their faces, the tears in their eyes as they would tell her “but you were one of the lucky ones.”

Aife did not feel lucky. If she survived the length of the pregnancy, and then of course the birth of the child, she would still be raising it in a wretched world – fatherless and constantly starved. It was these depraved thoughts that led Aife to make the tea one last time. As she stirred the rotten-smelling herbs into a small mug of water, she felt the hairs on her arm begin to raise. The sensation alone caused her heart to begin racing.

Aife likes to believe she was one of the first to see the dragons break through the forcefield of clouds and sky to come down as the saviors of her people. When she tells the story, she says that she never really stopped believing in the gods, and that’s why she was able to sense their presence before anyone saw them. It was what caused her to turn and stare through her window into the sky even before a sharp wing had sliced through the clouds.

Of course, now her stories are simply that – stories. No one dares question one of the only remaining citizens of Dóchas who had seen the dragons peel back the sky, at least not to her face. The years passed peacefully with the dragons and beings who walked alongside them. My grandmother bore her only child under the protection of the dragons, who then gave birth to me many blissful years later.

I came into the world a year before we were abandoned. Only one year before the dragons left our side with no explanation. My grandmother says she remembers the day they left even more vividly than the day they arrived. That they may have peeled back the sky when they came to our rescue, but they crashed back through it to escape our savagery.

Growing up in the world I still see now, it was hard to understand why my mother and grandmother defended the dragons. Many people in the village felt as though they had been abandoned and once again dismissed the idea of any divine powers coming to their rescue. Tales began to form about the plague and the massacres, but as the years went on and the stories grew more twisted by each person’s inclination to tell their truth, the dragons became the villains.

To the children of a more modern Dóchas, dragons are demon beings – slaves to the gods of old sent down to bring plague and war upon the innocent. The dragons are to blame for everything our valley has lost, and there are too few members of the original group that introduced the great beasts to our land to convince anyone otherwise - Although my grandmother still advocates for the dragons to those that will listen.

When I was young I remember asking her why the dragons left: “What did we do wrong?” I would whine, begging her to share this part of her story that she had always been reluctant to talk about. I never was given a full answer. My grandmother kept the woes of the dragons close to her chest, as though she was scared this small piece of information would act as fuel to the flame of hatred towards the creatures she loves. Instead, my grandmother would respond with tears pooling in her eyes, threatening to fall down her soft cheeks, “Humans are selfish. They will take from you until you are hollowed out and defeated, and then they will throw you away with the excuse that you never gave enough. You can never trust them, Sairsha.”

When my grandmother died, so too did the stories of the dragons. Before she left me she reminded me that she would finally be taken in by Araawn, the god of Death, and would be at peace with the life she had lived. My grandmother tried to encourage my mother to continue the tales – the right tales, and to fight back against those who tried to demonize the beasts that saved us. But my mother lacked the fighting spirit that had helped my grandmother survive her first few years of independence with the revolutionists.

My grandmother did her best to instill the ancient beliefs into my mother and me, but my father, a supporter of technological progress and reclaiming our society's greatness through financial growth, tended to clash with her ideas. He believed the key to our better future lies in skyscrapers and capitalization, not sharing stories of what used to be. “The past is done, we have nowhere to look but forward,” he would say to my grandmother, interrupting what he described as senile rants.

Now it was just the three of us. Our valley has quickly progressed from single-story, tattered houses to two or three-story duplexes intermingling to make room for the drastically climbing numbers of people. The streets were always bustling with carriages and busy workers on horseback going to their jobs to make our valley just a little bit more efficient. Many say Dóchas has evolved for the sake of progress, but my grandmother would say it was at the stake of magic and joy. I can’t say I have an opinion either way since this is all I’ve ever known.

My grandmother’s stories had been fuel for my imagination, but reality pours in like a flood – filling you up and leaving no room for questions and mindless wandering.

When I turned 16 I began working in a steel mill as a millwright. I spent my days disassembling, assessing, and reassembling on repeat. There was no room for error and minimal room for creativity, but the job paid well and made my parents proud. This was my stepping stone toward a career.

Five years later, here I am, doing the same thing. The only thing that’s really changed is my outward appearance.

Along with finishing my natural stages of development and filling out a bit more than I was at 16, I had grown muscular and hardened due to the strenuous lifting and constant heat that entombed the steel mill workers from dawn until dusk. The flames that once stung my eyes have become a natural part of my day-to-day routine. My once tender, honey-toned skin, has grown rough and speckled with stark-white scars – reminders to not get too close to the furnace. Within my first year of working for the mill, a spark had shot out from the Bessemer converter and landed on my hair. I only noticed the smell at first, but by the time I realized it was my own hair on fire, it was too late to save it. I’ve kept my auburn hair, the hair of my grandmother and mother, in a cropped style from then on, although I spare some length in the front, which swoops across my brow – an attempt at sparing some feeling of femininity.

I had a routine, I was secure, and I had a viable path for my future. I was content. This is what life was supposed to be for a woman my age. I would find a partner, have children, and they would be granted the ability to follow the same routine as their parents. This is life in the valley – this is progress.

What was not supposed to happen was me coming home one day to a scorched and clawed lawn. What was not supposed to happen was me entering my empty house to kindling curtains and furniture, or a blistering heat that stung my face and hands. What was not supposed to happen was me tripping over an iridescent scaled tail, twice the size of my upper arm only to have it sliver away in a serpentine manner.

I followed the movement of the tail, which was white most of the time but seemed to shift into different colors that brought unique feelings of nostalgia. Silk blue - like the sky just before sunrise. Aquamarine - a reminder of the waves as they crash into the shore just before you set sail. Hints of violet - reminiscent of the crisp moonlit nights in November and December.

My eyes were guided up the length of the color-shifting tail which seemed to grow endlessly. Its growth was finally halted by the attachment of a body, one which I feared to continue starting at.

I wanted to run. Despite everything my grandmother had told me about the beasts she held dear to her heart, I could hear the opposing voices of younger, angrier, louder villagers filling my mind: “They are demons,” “Evil,” “We were abandoned.” My eyes were halted at the dragon’s chest as I recounted all of the cruelties in my head. The scales seemed to shimmer, even in the darkness of my family’s home. I was too afraid to look up any further, too afraid to see my new grim reality snarling down at me.

“Aife, is that you? Please, don’t be angry.” A soft voice seemed to float into my ears, one immune to the raspiness of age and wear. “We need your help. Please.” To hear this voice plead to me felt shameful, as though I didn’t deserve to hear its gentle cries.

“Aife,” it plead again, and that’s when I realized. I glanced up at the face of the dragon, and upon our eyes meeting the beast took a step back, its tail curling around itself a defensive manner. Now that I could see the entire body of the dragon, I saw how restricted it truly was in my family’s home, having to keep its wings low to the ground, mere inches from dragging on our rug; its neck curved at an unnaturally low angle, with a dramatic swoop of the neck aiming to avoid crashing into any of the hanging light fixtures; and even the dragon’s legs bent at a near 45-degree angle. In any other situation, one where I was not fearing for my life, I may have laughed at seeing such a large beast try to squeeze into a space that suddenly felt ill-equipped, even for a human.

“My name,” my voice rasped as I began to speak, sounding as though I had not utilized my vocal cords in weeks. “My name is not Aife. It’s Sairsha.” As uneasy as the dragon’s presence made me, I had an avidity to see it at its full height.

The dragon craned its neck to meet my eyes, although only one of its eyes was staring me down a mere foot from my face. I held my breath, not wanting to disturb the air around it. “Your eyes are different,” the voice floated towards me, filling my senses. “How long has it been?” With this question was the first sign of the dragon's voice wavering. Although my first instinct was to assume I had misheard the shift in tone, I could not shake the feeling that the dragon sounded bereaved.

Unsure of whether to answer, I let a long pause fall between us. When I finally had to unleash my held breath, I had no choice but to answer. “I’m her granddaughter. Aife’s granddaughter. She passed six years ago.”

The dragon studied me for a moment. “I don’t believe that’s completely true,” the dragon's voice dripped with amusement as it answered, returning its head to tower above me once again. “We need your help and you have a lot to learn, Sairsha,” The dragon began to shift, its wings starting to rapidly buzz as if they were growing impatient. “Did Aife teach you how to ride? Are you prepared to leave?”

I shook my head instantaneously, not stopping until I felt queasy. “I can’t go with you. Wherever it is you’re going. I don’t know who you are or how to… to ride anything other than a horse.”

“There isn’t time for this,” the dragon spoke, its wings beginning to stretch out once again, as though they were irritated and tired of maintaining their composure in this tight space, although the voice remained calm and collected. Watching resulted in a mixed feeling of anxiety and confusion, forming a pit in my stomach that made it hard to continue speaking. “I really can’t go,” I said gently, trying to appeal to the beast’s softer nature, “I have a job, a life, a family. I can’t just leave them to help someone,” I paused at the word ‘someone,’ not knowing what to replace it with. “Someone I don’t know.”

“But you do know me. I can feel it,” The dragon’s words plead with me, although the voice maintained its aplomb tone. When the dragon saw my refusal to budge, despite my feelings of self-doubt and fear, its serpentine tail, which now seemed somewhat prehensile, wrapped around my stomach, heaving me off the ground. The beast swung me up so we were eye-to-eye once again. “If you will not come willingly, then I will take you by force and leave you nothing to return to.”

Before I could gather enough breath to respond, the dragon’s tail flung me towards the ceiling. My head flew back at a sudden halt, and black splotches scattered across my field of vision. Despite their presence, I had no difficulties seeing the dragon fill its chest with a magnificent breath of air, and released it as a bluish-white flame that made my eyes water. I cried out, feeling the piercing sensation that pained my throat but couldn’t hear myself over the monstrous roar the dragon let loose as it crashed through my ceiling and began to fly upward – away from my burning home, away from everything I know.

As we rose higher and higher, rapidly approaching the clouds, I felt my arms begin to go limp, then my legs, and finally I lost consciousness altogether.

This is where my story begins. But the stories of those involved much earlier – their lives began millennia earlier than yours or mine and would span far beyond our inevitable deaths. I am merely a speck in the lives of the dragons and the gods – a smudge on their timeline.

So no, there weren’t always dragons in the valley, and for many years we thought there never would be again. They came one day as a blessing from the gods that the people of Dóchas had given up on long ago. They came to save us but had to flee from our greed-ridden fists.

But now they were back, and they needed our help.