When I came down from Up North it was
because Dad had come to fetch me.
“This is like The Bahamas,” he said to
me. “If you stay here too long, you never return home.”
I thought it was funny how he could
compare a place like that to The Bahamas. One probably stayed because one had
frozen to death, I thought. And I couldn’t help asking him what he had done
there all day when he lived there as a child.
“Did you help Lady Grandmamá and learn from her
or did you sit all day watching the horizon?”
“Where do you think I learned to do
nothing?” was his answer. “It’s not as
easy as it looks. Your uncle Gen was never able to learn. Fidget, fidget!”
“Is it the same here in the summer?” I
asked.
“What summer?” he said. And then he
added, “You know, Arley, some people think I am the son of Julius Caesar and
the fairy Morgana. But no. I was born here. I did her a favor, ages back, and
let him think I was their kid. So, if you ever meet Julius, he may tell you he
is your grandfather. You humor him, will
you? The more grandfathers one has, the more pull one has too.”
“Did you go hunting for the worm’s egg?
Can you lift huge stones with your bare hands?”
Dad rolled his eyes and shook his head. I
was probably asking too many questions.
Once home, Uncle Brightfire told me that
the first chance I got, I had to go have dinner with him and his family.
Dinner, not lunch, because lunch was a hastily eaten sandwich, since his wife
was Pearl, Granny Milksops’ favourite grandaughter, and she went every day to
Aunt Mabelle’s to help her grandma and didn't return till eight in the evening.
So, the first chance I got, I did go to
Uncle Brightfire’s. He didn’t live where I had expected he would, which was in the deep south of Apple Island. His home wasn’t in
Apple Island, though he said his sister had given him an ideal house there,
which his wife and kids made good use of. He himself lived in a hut next to his smithy, in
one of the gloomiest places to be found in Minced Forest, far gloomier than Uncle Wildgale’s moors.
Namely, this is Dragon Holt. It isn’t a bad place if you know how to find
your way there, but it is no place for the fainthearted. The trees there can
turn into dragons, and though they are not infamous for eating up people, their
very presence discourages visitors. It is like…it won’t happen, but it could
happen. That is how you feel there. There is an atmosphere of mistrust. You think they might do something to you any minute.
“How can a wood be a good place for a
forge to be in?” I remember thinking. “That fire…couldn’t the forest kindle? An
accident seems very risky. Still, I suppose Uncle Brightfire knows what he is
doing.”
I had never been to Dragon Holt before, so
when I got there, I waited till the sun had set entirely to enter the holt
showing respectful trust. The trees, that seemed larger than anywhere else
though they weren’t, began to show their dragon faces. Though these were not too discernible in the dark, I guessed their presence was sorely felt, even by
those who can’t see as well as I can at night, for there were these sudden tenuous blasts of hot air in that freezing site that had to be the dragons breathing. If you sniffed that warm air, it smelt like burning wood, though there was nothing aflame in sight. And though not yet fully dragons,
some trees were already baring their teeth. I repeated and repeated
Brightfire’s name in whispers, so they would know I was there because of him,
and did my best to pass without grazing even a twig. This was not easy.
It was winter there, and the snow crunched under my feet. I noticed there were little mounds of slimy dead leaves too, uncovered of snow. No signs indicated the way to the forge, so I just advanced south, hoping it would appear. And then, there where the trees were thickest, I saw a light. I went towards it, and as I advanced, it retreated. And then there was a second light, a little ways off the first. This one was a little larger than the first, but not much. They threatened to go off in different directions and I didn’t know which to follow. And then, aware of my confusion, they began to laugh. I concluded these laughing lights were of the order of will-o’-the- wisps, and that I was being made fun of. And that in following the mocking lights I had made the mistake of straying from my path.
At first these lights were like round,
golden balls, sometimes of red, others of green, and mostly of yellow fire, but then one began to look like the
flaming silhouette of a three year old child. And then the other began to
stretch and to narrow and to look like a five year old’s blazing shadow too. But it was when a third
light appeared, popping out of the mouth of a dragon and already shaped like a child slightly older than the others,
that I decided to speak to them.
“How come you are burning nothing but the
snow under your dangling feet?” I asked.
“We’re melting that, not burning it,” said
the largest light. “Our feet don’t touch the ground. Can’t you see?”
That was true. They were floating in the
air, their feet slightly above the ground, melting the snow beneath them,
but not burning the leaves below the snow.
“Things don’t burn when we touch them,
unless we want them to.”
“Good!” I said.
And then the weest light asked me, “Are
you Arley?”
“Hush!” said the middle-sized light.
“Don’t say a name before its bearer says it. It might not be his and he could
steal it,” warned the middle-sized light.
“That is my own
name,” I said.
“Did you bring the devourer with you?”
“Alpin?”
“He’s just said a name that isn’t his
own,” protested the littlest light.
“We devour things too, when we want to,”
said the middle-sized light, ignoring the little one.
“But we know how to control ourselves,”
said the largest light. “It’s all about control, you know.”
“I suppose it is,” I said. “No, Alpin
isn’t with me.”
“The dragons are getting hungry. Can’t
you feel them stir? Daddy feeds them,” said the littlest one.
“Hush! You’re scaring him. Don’t you
worry. It won’t be you. Can’t you recognize me, cousin? You’ve seen us before.
But never lit up, hey? ”
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