Dinner—a stringy, bitter-tasting chuckwalla lizard caught earlier in the day and roasted over a campfire—was done. The dragontamer stood, threw the leftover bones and gristle into the dark, and wiped his hands on his grimy, dusty pants.

That was awful, he admitted. Let’s not have that again until tomorrow night, shall we?

All right, he agreed. 

The dragontamer was tall and thin and, despite years of living in the desert, he had burned red instead of browning like his wife and daughters had. He squatted by his pack, opened the front pocket, and took out a small wad of tissue-thin paper. In the same pocket, he found a pencil much too small and thin for his sausage fingers. He sat down by the fire again and from one of his black, pointed boots, he took a knife. The wooden handle of the knife was engraved with a seven-pointed star. The knife had two blades, side-by-side. He started to sharpen the end of the pencil, whittling towards himself.

“You shouldn’t do that like that,” he heard his wife’s voice say in his head. “You might cut yourself.” 

Yes, you’re right, he replied.

He finished without cutting himself and put the knife back in its boot-sheath. He crossed his legs under him and began to print.
 

April, 1884

My dearest Juanita,

The dragontamer picked up his pencil.

Well, that was the easy part, he thought. What do you want to tell her, boss? 

He rubbed the scruff of his beard with the dull end of the pencil.
 

I hope this letter reaches you and finds you well. 

That’s true enough, he thought. What next? 
 

Tomorrow, I will head south again and give this letter to a Diheneh family I met a few days ago, and ask them to bring it to the trading post at Scorpion Tail.

His breath made little white clouds that quickly vanished into the dark.

Go on, boss, keep writing. I can’t wait to learn what it is you’re going to actually say to her.
 

I have not found a dragon yet, but I am hopeful that will change soon.

The dragontamer crumpled up the paper and threw it into the fire. Watched it burn.

Put the pencil to the paper again.
 

April, 1884

My dearest Juanita and my lovely girls,

I hope you are all doing well without me. I am far away and I miss you all very much. 

He threw that in the fire, too. Better think about what you want to say before you try to write any more, boss. That paper’s expensive. Juanita traded a hair brush for it, remember? 

I remember.
 

April, 1884

My dearest Juanita, my darling Isabella, and my delightful Alijandra, 

Hopefully, this letter finds you soon and all is well at home. I have 

“I have” what? he wondered. What is it I actually have? Or did you mean, “I have” as in, “I have been out here for weeks, so long that I have honestly forgotten how long it’s been?”

But don’t stop there, boss. How about, “Tell To-Ho-Ne that she was right: there are no dragons out here anymore. Not that I can find, anyway. I haven’t seen one. No tracks, no scat, nothing.”

Good. Honest, at least. But let’s not forget: “I’ve left the Diheneh lands and am now in Uupohna territory, and if any of them find me, they’ll probably use my innards to decorate their chief’s pueblo before they bash my head in with a club. Because it hasn’t rained, I haven’t bathed since I’ve left home. I have one meal a day and it’s usually lizard or grasshopper, and if I’m really lucky, I get about four hours of sleep a night. How are you and the girls, dearheart?”

He folded the paper and put it and the pencil in the pocket of his shirt.

He leaned closer to the fire, holding out his hands to warm them. 

A huge puff of wind snuffed out the campfire with a wuff. 

Without thinking, the dragontamer rolled as something swooped out of the sky. The dragon was long, longer than a pine is tall, and thin, no wider than the base of a tree trunk. Its hide was colored in fat bands of red and purple broken by thin rings of black and white. It had no legs. Its white, feathered wings beat like those of an enormous bird as it turned and came back.

Venomdrake, oh no oh no it’s a damned venomdrake, the dragontamer thought, his shaking hand fumbled with the holster on his belt.

The dragon hung in the air, a few feet over the ground, its tiny red eyes boring into the dragontamer. Its pointed purple tongue flicked out, tasting his scent. The dragon itself smelled like spoiled milk and rotten meat. The dragontamer’s eyes watered from the stench. 

Get the damned pistol, fool!

The dragon shrieked, a sound like tin being torn in two. Hovering perhaps ten yards away, it snapped at the dragontamer.

Shoot it shoot it shoot it!

Finally freeing his pistol, the dragontamer fired, a gyro-jet whooshing from the barrel like a firework flare and missing the dragon. It exploded like a miniature star being born in the desert, the blast knocking the dragon out of the air, crashing it to the stony ground.

Reload reload reload kill it kill it before it spits if it spits we’re dead we’re dead we’re 

Screeching, the dragon hauled itself into the air and frantically winged off, disappearing into the night.

Gone, gone, good, good, the dragontamer told himself. Coming back? No. Scared it. Scared it off. Which way did it go? He looked around, noting the mountains in the distance, the position of the two moons. West. West and north. West and north. Okay. All right. 

He paced, his breathing slowing. Okay. All right. He re-loaded his pistol. Holstered it. Took it out. Checked to make sure it was loaded. Put it away again. Okay. All right.

Its wings blew out the fire, he told himself. Using the moonlight, he gathered the remaining wood. He found the fire-starting gel in his pack and squeezed some onto the wood; immediately, it burst into the flame, and he had his campfire again.

That drake could have killed us easily, boss. But it didn’t. It was just trying to scare us, he realized. 

Right you are, he agreed. But why? 

Female, he told himself. And gravid. Trying to chase off intruders in her territory before she lays her eggs. It’s the only reason that makes sense. 

He looked around in his pack, found his pipe and pouch. He looked, but the pouch was still empty, just as it had been the night before and the night before that. If there’s anytime I could use a smoke, he thought, it’s now.

He sat for a while and watched the fire. Every so often, he would look west and north.

Could be roosting anywhere. Drakes keep a big territory. Likely to be miles from here. Many miles, he reminded himself.

True enough, he agreed. But they like mountains best. Nearest ones are…

Nearest ones are halfway to the Korakahu nation. That’s a long walk across hostile ground. And even if you find the drake, she’ll be in a mood if she’s brooding eggs. 

He watched the fire for a while—how long, he didn’t know. After a while, he took the paper and the pencil out of his pocket.
 

April, 1884

My dearest Juanita, my darling Isabella, and my delightful Alijandra, 

Hopefully, this letter finds you soon and all is well at home. I have 

He looked west and north again.
 

I have found a dragon.
 

Far, far away, the roaring ocean wind blew another dragon—the little milky-green dragon, with eyes like pearls—through that same cold night.

It had been four days since the little dragon had left the island of Imbyrria and its flocks of nesting mollymawks. She had stopped only to dive into the restless waves to gobble down a fish, or a sea jelly, or even a bit of kelp, if she was hungry enough. When she had finished eating, she would thrash at the surface, long tail whipping back and forth, body wriggling like a snake, until she heaved her front part out of the water, and then the wind would return and scoop her up again and send her soaring on her way. 

On and on, the wind had carried her, sometimes high above the great gray ocean, sometimes so low that she had to close her eyes against the spray of the waves. She had slept—dozed, really—only a few minutes at a time, eyes half-open, ears half-listening to the roar of the wind. Yesterday, three days from Imbyrria, the dark haze that she had seen from so high above her home had appeared, growing larger and larger. 

Land.

As the fourth night had risen out of the east and swallowed up the land awaiting her, a small yellow light had appeared. The light grew larger and brighter as she hurried on through the dark sky, over the churning sea. She urged on the wind, and finally, at last, it carried her to the end of the ocean. 

Before her was a wide bay where scores of metal-clad ships, some of them venting white steam into the sky, lay at anchor. The light she had followed was hundreds of torches on tall iron poles rising from the ground. A great camp of recently-raised wooden buildings sprawled across the shore. Long piers were beginning to stretch out over the water, towards the waiting ships. And men, men everywhere, thousands of them, sawing, hammering, hauling, shouting, swarming. 

The wind swung the little dragon high over the camp. The men were hacking and pulling down the great, towering trees beyond the camp: it would be unwise to rest there. She flew back out over the bay and saw that the ships, too, crawled with men. Hissing, she glided down over the water, splashed into the surf, and waded ashore. There were many large rocks nearby, and she crept into a pile, then curled up and looked out. 

Most of the men were brown-skinned and wore deerskin loincloths, fringed leggings, and elk-hide moccasins. They were chained together, and their hair had been shaved: many had cuts on the sides and tops of their heads. The men were bringing down trees, hauling them towards the shore, cutting them with iron axes, fashioning them into boards, nailing them together, raising more buildings, extending the piers. 

Other men, bronze-skinned, with dark hair, watched over them. These men wore long brown coats over brown uniforms and boots, and their caps had the emblem of a black swan. They carried rifles and pistols and long steel rods. 

The dragon watched for awhile, then laid her head down to sleep. There was still a long way to go, and she would be on her way in the morning. She paid the men no further mind. 
 
 

© Kenton Kilgore, March 2007