or
Continue on your explortations
Then my father came in. "Marion, what do you think you’re doing? Shara’s much too young to hold the stone, she’ll break it!"
Don’t fuss so much Glen. It’s survived a thousand years of turmoil, I don’t think one tiny child will break it now.""I don’t know about a thousand years, but I know I want it to be in one piece when Bran comes of age."
"It will. And when his son comes of age, and his too."Of course I didn’t really understand all of this. I knew that father didn’t like any of us children near the dragon stone. He’d scolded my older brother Kale many times for touching it. Bran of course did everything father said, and was almost never scolded for anything.
Later, after Mother had put the stone back onto the cushion on the mantle, I asked her, "Mama, what did you mean a thousand years of tur, tur, what you said?""It’s a long story Shara. The dragon stone is very old."
"Older than Gran?" I interrupted."Yes, older than Gran. Older than Gran’s Gran’s Gran. A thousand years old." She settled herself on the couch in the sitting room where the sunlight was streaming between the drapes and making the dust motes in the air shine. "You see long, long ago there were wonderful creatures called dragons in the world. Dragons are very big and fierce and beautiful. They are covered all over in scales like your father’s armor, only their scales are bright colored and never rust. They breathe out fire that’s as hot as the sun. They are also very wise and know all about magic."
She looked a bit sad then and said, "There are no more dragons alive today. They were all killed by knights and warriors and princes long ago.""But Mama, isn’t Daddy a knight?"
"Yes dear, but there are no more dragons to kill.""Oh."
"Now a thousand years ago when the dragons were almost all gone, but a very few were left, one of them gave a great treasure to a young woman. The dragon told her that it was the greatest treasure of all the dragons, and that they were giving it to her to keep safe until dragons returned to the world. The woman the dragon gave its treasure to was your great, great, great, grandmother, with a lot more greats added on. The treasure itself was the dragon stone. And she gave the stone to her daughter, who gave it to hers, who gave it to hers and so on until it reached me. Someday I’ll give it to you.""But Daddy said that he was going to give it to Bran, didn’t he?"
"Your father thinks that the stone is his because I married him. Eventually I’ll have to argue with him about it, but that is many years off, and I love him too much to fight with him."I still didn’t really understand everything, but knowing that the dragon stone was older than anything I’d ever seen just added to the feeling of awe I had. I would sneak into the sitting room as often as I could just to see it. If I was certain nobody else was around I’d take it down and hold it carefully.
It was red, a perfect clear color more vivid than any ruby. It was shaped like an egg, round and smooth and without facets. It wasn’t perfectly transparent all the way though. If you held it up to the light you could see that there seemed to be a smaller egg of something dark and opaque inside a shell of perfectly clear ruby.I was holding it the day things started to change. It was several years after I first held the stone. The late afternoon sunlight didn’t reach the east-facing windows, so the sitting room was empty and dim. I heard a commotion upstairs, and then Father’s unmistakable tread came down the stairs, hurrying.
I carefully put the stone away and went out into the hall. I was just in time to see Father go out the door and slam it behind him. He never slammed the door, so something had to be wrong. Suddenly the whole house was quiet. I tiptoed upstairs, feeling scared. The upstairs hall was deserted. I was afraid, I wanted Mama to hold me and keep me safe, so I went to her room. Bran and Kale were already there. They were both standing by the bed, looking terribly solemn.I went over to the bed. Mother was laying there, looking very pale, and very old. I put my hand in hers, but her hand just lay there, she didn’t squeeze back. "Mama?"
She smiled a little, and her hand kind of twitched, but she didn’t say anything. Then the door downstairs slammed again and I could hear Father coming up the stairs with somebody else. They clumped down the hall and came to the bedroom. I’d seen the other man before when he’d come to set Kale’s arm after he broke it once, so he must be a doctor. He walked right past me and looked at Mother. Then Father shooed us out of the room.After that nothing was right. Mother spent all her time in bed, and the doctor came very often and looked at her, but she didn’t get any better.
Then one day the priest came instead of the doctor, and Mother was gone. At the funeral her body was laid out so everyone could see it, but it wasn’t her. It didn’t even look like her. For a while I pretended it hadn’t been her, that some stranger had died and Mother was still alive somewhere, but I knew it wasn’t true.That was the first thing that changed. The second thing came just a month later. Father started being away from home for a long time. He would even be away overnight sometimes. His face, already lined with grief from losing Mother, gained more lines. He brought strange people home and they looked around at our big beautiful house possessively.
One day he called us into the sitting room and told us that we were poor now. He’d invested his money in an enterprise that was a fake, and it was all gone. We could each take our clothes, and one important thing from the house, but the rest would be sold.My brothers both looked shocked. They were used to being rich, to going to parties, to riding and hunting with their rich friends. I didn’t really have any close friends, and I was too young for riding. It seemed to me that with Mother gone it didn’t matter where we lived. But there was one thing here that did matter. I didn’t even have to think about the one special thing I would take. I was gong to take the dragon stone.
I didn’t tell anyone, I just took it off the mantle and put in into my bag. Father noticed immediately that it was gone. He knew I was fascinated with it, so he knew where to go."Shara, did you take the dragon stone?"
"Yes.""Why did you take it? You should know better by now."
"But Papa, you said we could each take one important thing, and that’s the one I’m taking.""Nonsense. The stone must be sold. We are in debt, and I’ve already found a buyer for it."
But you promised! You said we could take any important thing, and I want this one! Besides, it isn’t yours, it was Mother’s, and she said it was going to be mine!"Father looked as if he was going to yell, but then his expression changed and he smiled. "You’re just as stubborn as your mother was. Very well, keep the stone. It will take some explaining, but the buyer is more interested in the house itself."
They packed up the few things they would be taking with them and left the house for the last time on a bright sunny day better suited to a picnic. They went on foot for the first part of their trip. Unable to bear living among those who’d been his peers and would now scorn him, Father had decreed that we should leave the city. We’d managed to scrape together the funds to buy passage with a caravan that was going out into the country.In a tiny town in the middle of nowhere mother’s family owned a farm. Gran had lived there for a long time, but she had died a year ago, of ordinary old age, and the farm passed to us. Father had meant to sell it, but he’d never gotten around to it, and now it was the only thing his creditors would let us keep.
Father and my brothers didn’t much like the trip, though Kale made friends easily and soon knew everybody in the little caravan. I was a bit scared of the large, rough men and their equally large, rough wives, but the country we passed through was wonderful. There was grass and trees every where. Birds sang, cows in fenced pastures chewed contentedly, and once a fox ran across the road right in front of the lead horse and spooked it into rearing up. Nothing like that was in the city. Nothing lived there but pigeons and cats. And of course I had the dragon stone. I took it out often and looked at it. Out here it seemed even more beautiful than it had looked in our sitting room.The journey seemed to last forever as the caravan wended its slow way across fields and through forests. We camped at night under the stars, which Bran complained about, and I could tell Father wanted to, but Kale had started enjoying himself, and I thought it a wonderful adventure. I slept well, even on the hard ground, and I dreamed. I’d never dreamed before, or at least never remembered it if I did.
The dreams were strange and vivid. In the dreams I could fly. I would swoop over fields, skim the treetops above a forest, and soar up over the tops of the mountains. I felt so free, so happy, as if nothing in the whole world could go wrong.I dreamed this almost every night as we made our way across the countryside. I grew to look forward to sleeping. Only looking at the dragon stone gave me more pleasure than those dreams.
And then, when we had almost reached our destination, I saw the dream while I was awake. I was looking at the dragon stone, and suddenly I saw the world wheeling below me, tinted red by the stone. For just in instant the real world was gone and I was flying. Then the wagon came to a sudden stop and I was jolted back into reality.Why had the wagon stopped so suddenly? I looked up and saw a group of ragged men, a few on horses, most on foot. Several carried torches and all were armed. They rushed forward all at once, brandishing weapons and yelling. I was frozen by fear, unable to move. Father though leaped forward to meet one of the torch-bearers. He used the whip he’d had for driving the horses, lashing at the man with it. He managed to get the bandit around his feet with the whip and the grimy man fell over with a startled yell. His torch flew out of his hand and tumbled end over end. I watched it come. It seemed to be moving in slow motion. Then it hit the side of the wagon and everything sped up again. Flames leaped up where the torch had struck, licking greedily at the wood of the wagon. Bran leaped out of it, tugging me after him. Kale was ahead in one of the other wagons.
All around us men were shouting and screaming. I saw one of the wagon drivers fall over with blood all over him. Next to him a bandit was crawling across the ground away from the wagons. And now more and more of the bandits were going away from the wagons. None of the people from the caravan chased them.A sound like a crack of thunder when the lightning is almost on top of you sounded behind me. I spun around and looked at our wagon. It was burning fiercely. Suddenly I remembered the dragon stone. What if the sound I’d heard was the fire’s heat shattering it? A second loud crack followed the first. Then I saw something moving in the fire. At first I thought it couldn’t be real, but it crawled out of the flames and I could see it more clearly. It looked a bit like a lizard, but its head was shaped differently and it had wings.
In a flash I knew what it was. A dragon! It spread its tiny wings and soared up out of the fire, following the sparks upward into the sky.I’ve married too, and have a beautiful little daughter. I’ve already begun telling her about the dragon’s egg and the little dragon, the only one in the world. When it flew off I thought I’d never see it again, but it came back to me. It was alone and lonely and I was the only creature in the whole world it knew.
Sometimes I wonder about the irony of it. That a knight’s daughter should be the one to bring back the dragons. What would Father have done if he had known? There’s no way to find out what might have been, but I wonder.I’ve cared for the dragon the best I can, but it’s still a baby. Dragons seem to grow slowly. Someday my own little daughter will take the care of it from me. We will hand the dragon down for another thousand years if need be. The time doesn’t matter, the hardships yet to come are nothing. For there is a dragon in the world again, and I’ve dreamed its dragon dreams.