This morning, I was working extra hard trying to clear my duties for the day, hoping I might get to finish early enough to see the last few choices of the day. Everyone would talk about the choices for the next five years. How this blue dragon or that white wyrm approached their rider. Did they go on foot? Did they snatch them from their windows?
I moved the final barrow of split logs, seeing a whole collection of end-pieces, scrappy tops and tree-hearts left. It would be too much work to break them down and feed them into the kilns. Besides, they would give an uneven burn, so I loaded them onto a wheelbarrow and decided to take them to Old Widow Hu. She would be pleased for the free firewood, and Father couldn’t do anything with them anyway.
Mongers Lane was a tight little community, more than just a lane really, but not much bigger than one. The poorest district in the city, with people living in makeshift houses next to each other, cheek by jowl, my ma said. I knew it wasn’t much, but I liked living here. The people were honest.
Old Widow Hu had a hovel poorer than most, a collection of mud and brick walls and wooden beams almost leaning against the stronger houses next door. As I neared her home, in the background I could hear the cheers and gasps as the dragons must have swooped overhead. I knocked on her oddly-fitting wooden door and waited as a breeze blew down the alley behind me.
It took a little while for Old Widow Hu to answer her door, but I didn’t mind. When she did, she peered past me and blinked, then looked at my barrel. “Oh, thank you Sebastian, but you’ve already done me such a kindness,” she was saying in a cracked and croaking voice.
“These are free, ma’am. I’d like to think someone might take care of my step-mam if ever she got older and had no one around.” I heaved the wood onto the pile by the side of her door. I was forced to jump back immediately as a few of the tiles fell off her roof above us.
“Oh, dear goodness!” Old Widow Hu was looking up at me.
She must not be able see me, I thought. “It’s okay, Mrs. Hu. It’s just me, Sebastian.”
“N-no, Seb…” her voice quavered. “I think there’s someone to see you.” She hurriedly stepped back into her hovel.
Oh no. It must be Father. He must be annoyed at me for something.
I turned and came face to face with the long, sinuous, muscular neck and the strong snout of a red dragon. It had golden-green eyes, eyes the color of the sun glinting off polished gold or seen through the leaves of a beech forest at midday. She was beautiful.
How do I know it’s a she? I thought, but I knew. I just knew.
She didn’t look like a dragon to me. She looked—she just looked like herself. Not a thing, not a lizard or a beast. I could feel something stirring in my breast, my heart thumping and a lump in my throat as I raised a hand up to her.
She put her snout on the edge of my fingers, letting me touch the sensitive mouth that I knew surrounded her teeth and then huffed a warm breath of pine smoke and coal-dust over me, fluffing my thatch of hair.
You’re playing with me, aren’t you? I smiled, blowing air back onto her snout.
With a sudden sneeze, the dragon shook its head and made a chirruping noise, oddly musical, like a bird.
“Seb! Seb! What are you doing?” a voice shouted, alarmed and fearful—my dad, his drunken gait exaggerated by the alarm and anger in his voice.
The dragon then did something I had been hoping for all my life, but never expecting. It seized me with its front feet, black talons the length of my whole forearm curling gently against me and not even hurting a tiny bit, and launched itself into the air.
“You’ve got the wrong boy!” I heard my father yell, along with the Old Widow Hu’s reply, “no, I think that it’s got just the right one!”
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