A fantasy short story about magic, dragons, and not believing everything you hear starring a transgender protagonist.
“If you treat creatures kindly they will return the favor.” He watched as his teacher reached out to the dragon. His breath rushed out when the creature’s aggressive scales gently tapped her palm. “No one really wishes to be cruel.”
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There was a dragon in the hills on the outskirts of Kingsbury, and Jarrod was going to kill it.
Not that he was a knight. Oh, no. Jarrod was a Spellcaster and apprenticed to Kingsbury’s resident Spellcaster. His teacher, Leona, said that he had promise and might even be as powerful as her one day. That was high praise from the best Spellcaster in the three kingdoms.
Of course, his teacher also said that power was useless without skill, and that he had a long way to go in that area.
Jarrod first heard of the dragon when a group of townspeople came to visit Leona after dinner one night. Leona sent him to the kitchen to wash dishes so that they could speak to her privately, but Jarrod left the kitchen door open so he could listen. According to what Jarrod heard, the dragon took residence in the hills sometime in the last fortnight. Since then, the surrounding villages lived in terror whenever the dragon flew overhead to hunt. The dragon was huge and red, they said, and local farmers and ranchers had found mangled livestock in their fields in the mornings.
Delegations were sent to the King to request aid, but so far had proved fruitless. He was preoccupied with the war with Clendyne to the south and wasn’t concerned with a dragon terrorizing small farming communities.
Please, the townspeople begged. Spellcaster Leona, please slay the dragon for us.
But she refused.
Jarrod could not understand his teacher. She possessed more than enough power to slay a dragon. Had they not travelled to the north coast last summer, where she slew a krakken? The bards still sang songs about it, and would continue to long after her death. Jarrod could only dream of that level of fame.
Part of Jarrod’s studies was reading about magical creatures. He could tell you about mischievous mermaids and the tricksy Fair Folk. He knew how to defend against vampires and werewolves. He knew that dragons were big, with razor-edged scales tougher than any man-made armour. They spewed fire and some could even summon lightning. But perhaps the greatest danger was that they were resistant to magic.
When Jarrod asked his teacher why she would not aid the townspeople, she told him that the dragon had not caused any harm. No harm! It was terrifying people and butchering livestock. It had to be stopped.
If Leona, Spellcaster Extraordinaire, would not do it, then her apprentice would.
She would be furious if she caught him, so Jarrod waited until she was asleep before creeping across the landing and down the stairs of their little cottage. (That was another thing he didn’t understand. She was renowned and beloved. She could live anywhere and earn piles of gold, but she chose to live in the middle of nowhere in a tiny two-bedroom house). His feet avoided the creaky floorboards with the ease of long practice and he made his way into the kitchen.
Some bread, some cheese, some cured ham. That should be enough for the walk to the dragon’s lair and back again. It wasn’t far on horseback, but he didn’t dare borrow his teacher’s prize mare without asking her. She would skin him alive, or worse, ship him back to his parents in Delphany.
He did not want to return to his parents. They loved him and wrote to him and still called him their daughter.
The front door squeaked when he pushed it open. He froze and held his breath as he listened. But there was no sound of footsteps, and his teacher did not call his name. He stepped onto the stoop and eased the door closed. The latch settled with a click, but he ran down the road without waiting to hear if the sound woke Leona.
The walk was long and tedious. Leona had one lantern, and Jarrod hadn’t dared take it in case she got up to wander in the middle of the night as she was apt to and noticed its absence. But he was a Spellcaster, so he pooled his magic in his hand to create a light bright enough to illuminate the path ahead of him.
He wasn’t sure where the dragon built its lair, but he knew he was on the right track when bones crunched on the path under his boots. He followed the scattered bones up the hillside. The climb got steeper and steeper, until he found the opening of the dragon’s lair.
A burrow had been dug in the side of the hill, recent enough that the black mounds of dirt that were pushed aside were beginning to sprout grass and wildflowers. Jarrod gulped. The darkness in the burrow was impenetrable. His light did not illuminate the far side. There was no sound or movement from within, and Jarrod couldn’t guess how deep it went.
Going inside would be suicide, but Jarrod wasn’t sure what else to do. Wait here for the dragon to pass by? That would be silly. So he gathered his courage and called out, “Hey! Dragon!”
His voice echoed off the sides of the lair. The sun began to rise in a thin red and gold line that broke the horizon. Leona got up with the dawn. She would realize he was missing soon, and he wanted the dragon to be slain before she did.
He wanted her to be proud of him.
The sound of wingbeats made him look up. It was the dragon, descending from the sky toward him. It was coming fast!
The dragon was red as the rising sun, as he had heard. Jarrod’s best element was fire while water was his weakest, which made him a poor match for a dragon. Still, he chanted the incantation for his best fire spell as the dragon came within range.
Fire blasted from his hands and surrounded the dragon in a great ball. The dragon cried out once in surprise before the fire blew off it as though it were nothing.
Jarrod had no time to cast another spell before the dragon was upon. The earth shook under Jarrod’s feet from the dragon weight and the force of impact as it landed. The dragon was three times his height, and its barbed tail swished back and forth like an angry cat. It batted at Jarrod with a paw. Each toe was tipped with claws as long as Jarrod’s forearm. He had an instant to think that he was done for before the ground in front of him exploded upward.
The rolling earth knocked the dragon off balance. Leona took advantage of the distraction to plant her body between her apprentice and the dragon. Her dreadlocks blew back as the dragon regained its footing and roared, a sound of such power and fury that Jarrod cowered behind his teacher.
To Jarrod’s astonishment, his teacher bowed to the dragon. “Forgive me, Friend, for the behaviour of my apprentice,” she said, and her tone was both respect to the dragon and muted scolding for Jarrod. He withered a little – he knew that he could expect a tongue-lashing later.
But he had to stand up for himself. He was trying to do good! He was trying to help people, and make his teacher proud! “But Master, the townspeople said that the dragon was killing their animals. They’re afraid. I just wanted to-”
He stopped short when she fixed a look of muted fury on him with one brown eye. “And because something is frightening to others, that means it deserves to die?”
He knew what she meant. People who didn’t know her often found her tattoos and piercings, scars and dark skin scary. “No, but they said-”
“And did any of them say that they saw the dragon kill their animals?” She straighted from her bow and approached the dragon, which had stopped hissing and waving its tail. It stood still as she held out a hand to it, palm outward. “Dragons don’t eat livestock, fool. They know it draws negative attention from humans. It was most likely the mountain lion that air-headed mayor kept as a pet and released when it ate his dog.”
Jarrod opened his mouth, then closed it again. He had heard the gossip about the mayor’s mountain lion, both when the man first acquired it and again when he claimed it had “escaped”. The townspeople kept their children indoors for a week because they were terrified the mountain lion would eat them. The timing matched up. But.
“It attacked me,” he said, stubborn.
Leona’s shoulders rose and fell in an aggrieved sigh, but she did not look away from the dragon. “Of course it did. Here you are, about to invade his home. And who struck the first blow?”
He had no response to that.
“Is it a crime to defend your home? That’s what you meant to do by coming here. As for the townspeople, they don’t understand the mystical creatures of the world. They don’t even understand Spellcasters like you and me, though they’re happy to make use of us.” The dragon watched her and made no move to attack as she approached. “If you treat creatures kindly, they will return the favour.” He watched as his teacher reached out to the dragon. The dragon leaned forward, and Jarrod inhaled sharply, certain it was going to breathe a gust of fire and burn his master to ashes.
His breath rushed out when the creature’s sharp scales tapped her palm. “No one wishes to be cruel.” Leona rubbed the dragon’s nose. “What a beautiful colour you are! I haven’t seen a dragon as red as you since I left my homeland. The ones around here tend to be more blue or purple. My name is Leona, and I am the Spellcaster around here. May I be privileged enough to know your name?”
Although her back was to him, Jarrod could tell she was smiling from the tone of her voice. His stomach twisted that she seemed to appreciate this big brute of a creature when he had tried for a year to get her to care for him as something other than a nuisance that broke into her home and refused to leave without mastery of Spellcasting.
The dragon pulled away from Leona’s hand. Jarrod tensed, certain that this time it really would tear her to ribbons, but instead it took two steps back. Its shape swirled and shifted. Jarrod watched with open-mouthed fascination as its outline shrank and formed into something more familiar.
The dragon was now a young man, his skin as dark as Leona’s own. His hair was in a multitude of tiny braids the red of hot coals while his eyes glittered like golden sparks. Not the amber eyes of a cat or wolf, but true molten gold. It was mesmerizing. Jarrod didn’t dare get close. And when the man smiled, Jarrod half-expected his teeth to be pointed.
The dragon-man bowed to Leona. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Spellcaster Leona of the Hills,” he said, and in his voice was the musical cadence that could still be heard in Leona’s voice though she’d left her home country over a decade ago. “I am called Kipkirui. And what may I call your apprentice?”
Those unnerving eyes landed on Jarrod. His went dry. He could not speak. Leona sent an exasperated look over her shoulder at him, then turned back to Kipkirui. “He’s called Jarrod. We again apologize for the trouble he has caused you.”
This time the look she sent Jarrod was one that warned him not to disagree or say something stupid. “Yeah, sorry,” he muttered, rubbing his arm.
Kipkirui smiled at him as well, and Leona took that as a sign that she no longer needed to defend her apprentice. She went to fetch her bag from where she’d dropped it when she came to Jarrod’s rescue. She slung it over her shoulder. Jarrod watched her and did not notice that Kipkirui approached him until Kipkirui was in front of him and holding out a hand.
“We must start over. I am happy to meet you, Jarrod.”
Jarrod squirmed but could see no way around it, so he clasped Kipkirui’s hand and shook it once before dropping it. He mumbled something that might have been agreement and stared at the ground. Kipkirui towered over him even in human form, which was annoying. Jarrod wished he could be so tall.
“What brings you to these parts, Kipkirui?” Leona returned to them and shot Jarrod another look for being rude again.
Kipkirui took his eyes off Jarrod long enough to answer her. “Well, I am an adult now, so I had to leave my parents’ burrow and find my own. I heard that the flowers in this country were beautiful, so I thought I might settle here. I do apologize if I frightened anyone. Humans are more used to dragons where I’m from.”
Leona grunted in agreement. “That’s true. I heard that humans and dragons used to be on better terms here, but that ended because King Lennox tried to eradicate them from the land. That was about… six generations ago? He didn’t succeed, but…” She shrugged. Public opinion of dragons remained smeared by his campaign. “Anyway, you’re welcome to come to my house. We can have a meal and Jarrod and I can show you around.”
Horrified, Jarrod stared at her. Invite a dragon into town? What was she thinking? Just because Kipkirui could take on human shape didn’t mean he looked human. If Jarrod encountered him without knowing that he was a dragon, he would have assumed Kipkirui was one of the Fair Folk.
But Kipkirui agreed. “It would be a pleasure,” he said. And Jarrod knew better than to argue, so they went back to Kingsbury together.
