He settled on the muddy wasteland, his head not twenty paces from me, warmth enveloping me like the precursor of summer. Turning his snout upward, he bellowed—an earsplitting, rising trumpet that spewed blue and gold fire, showering me with blue sparks that teased my skin before winking out. Then he knelt and lowered his head to rest it on the thawing ground. Soft transparent lids blinked over the scarlet eyes that looked straight at me. Waiting.
“Did Aidan send you?” I wasn’t so much speaking to the dragon, as to myself. To remind myself that I was not afraid. Because the rumble of the dragon’s bated fire in the empty night was too huge to leave unanswered. Because if this was to be my last breath, I would hold Aidan’s name on my tongue and his image in my heart as I burned.
My beloved grieves for thee.
Thou art the completion of his heart.
His yearning bade me come.
How did I know what the beast spoke? Not from the unintelligible river of noise and smoke from his mouth. Not from words. But his meaning was as clear as if I’d spoken the words myself. “I’ve things to do,” I said. “The war ...” But I could not lie to those scarlet eyes. “I betrayed him.”
The seasons pass.
The world—this upheaving chaos—will wait for thee.
Come and learn what beauty thy deeds have wrought.
Be alone and broken no more.
The beast extended one massive leg and foot alongside its snout in a position I had never seen. With care, one could walk up the leg to the haunch, where a curled wingtip waited ... to lift me up? Oh, holy gods . . .
And then, as the sharp winds of winter banish the smokes of autumn, leaving the sunlit world bright and hard-edged and new, so did the beast’s offer untangle my last confusion. Clarity. Understanding. I had been changed—altered by these past weeks as surely as Aidan MacAllister had been transformed by dragon fire. And I was afraid to believe what I had learned ... afraid to be forgiven ... for it meant leaving behind all my certainties about who and what I was. I, too, was becoming something new. Something unknown.
“Tell him”—I closed my eyes and began to draw the broken fragments together—“tell him not yet. I’ve things to do. People who need my help. And I need some time. But when winter comes ... the solstice ... when the night is longest and the rivers freeze ... the war will have to pause. And then for a little while ... a few days ... till spring perhaps ... I’ll come. But on that day, oh, child of fire and wind, I’ll walk”—I gestured toward the mountains, the way he’d come, and to the place where I stood—“if you’ll come back here and show me the way.”
Roelan bellowed again, snuffing out my fire while starting three more in its place, scattering rocks and branches and light as he swept his green and copper wings. He circled above me, blue sparks raining from the sky. And I watched and wept and laughed until he disappeared beyond the mountains.
About the Author
Though Carol Berg calls Colorado her home, her roots are in Texas, in a family of teachers, musicians, and railroad men. She has a degree in mathematics from Rice University and one in computer science from the University of Colorado, but managed to squeeze in minors in English and art history along the way. She has combined a career as a software engineer with her writing, while also raising three sons. She lives with her husband at the foot of the Colorado mountains.
TRANSFORMATION
REVELATION
RESTORATION