It was long ago, in a land over the mountains, through the dark forest. The land was ruled by an evil king, who used dragons to control his people. Because he controlled the dragons, he had nothing to fear. If anyone would even think of rebelling against him, he would send his dragons over there. The dragons would fly in majestically, and set fire to the fields while landing. If the rebels hadn’t surrendered by then, the fierce animals burned down their houses. Whoever would run out, would be grabbed in the sharp claws and eaten. Running away was no option either, because the dragons would just send a flame there and burn the people alive. As you can understand, not many people rebelled nowadays, so there was peace in the land. But not happiness, because everyone was terrified. In secret, some people tried to overthrow the evil king, but without success. The dragons could fly everywhere very fast, and the king had spies all over the land. People got used to it, and silently but unhappily lived their lives.
One of the biggest problems the people had, was that the dragons needed sacrifices. For the dragons to reach maturity, they needed to eat a human child. So every couple of weeks the king’s knights, in their dark red uniforms, rode through the country. At random they selected a farm of cottage, and took the young child if it was there. And if there wasn’t a young child present, they let the dragon destroy the place, not caring whether the family was still in it or not. This time they chose a small cottage on the side of a hill, just outside the village. The people in the village were relieved, because they had never liked the family in the cottage, and also because they had been spared.
A few months earlier, at the side of one of the great mountains, a baby dragon was born. It had a beautiful skin, dark blue as the night sky when lit by a thunder. And the thunder seemed to come from his eyes, because they were clearer than any dragon’s eyes ever before. In his first few weeks he remained in the nest, and his mother would bring food to him, mostly small animals. Soon the dragon, named Fyra, became too large for the nest. One day his mother just pushed him out of the nest, and he fell towards a certain death. At least, that is what you would expect. Because apparently, every creature or animal with wings, instinctively knows how to fly. He flapped his wings heavily, and actually his fall slowed down. He kept flapping, and suddenly he flew! He didn’t fall anymore, and could go up or down at his own command. Instantly he forgot the scare of a few seconds before, because he loved to fly! It was a great feeling of freedom, and he had a magnificent view of the land below him. Fyra grew fast, and became a better flyer every day. Often the villagers down below would see the young blue dragon fly over their town. But they would run away as soon as the dragon came near. Fyra did not understand, and tried to ask them. That made them even more scared, because they only heard him roar. He asked his father:
“Why are the humans afraid of me? I mean them no harm.”
Then his father told him why humans are afraid of dragons.
“We dragons are the rulers of the sky and the lands. Because of us there is peace down there. In exchange for us setting fire to an occasional man hut, the humans on the horses have agreed not to bother us with their sharp sticks anymore. And once in a while they let us feast on some of their own, and humans taste very good!”
Fyra was shocked. Eating a human? He would never do that. They were intelligent creatures, just as the dragons. He would never dream of eating a horse either, for the same reason. Other animals, such as foxes or squirrels, yes, you could eat them, they were stupid things. But humans? No…
The young dragon kept flying over the village, and the villagers kept being scared. And Fyra never got used to it. But time went by, and he grew and grew. By now he was almost an adult dragon. So it was time for his initiation rite. His parents had prepared him for it. It was something he had to do to become a real adult. But they wouldn’t say what it was. Not even when he begged them. So he just waited. Finally the day came for his initiation. They flew over the land, to the forest in the middle of the land. Inside the forest was a big clearing, and that’s where they were heading. In the centre of the clearing there was a pole. On the pole there was something else, but Fyra couldn’t see clearly yet, as it was still early and the sun had not come over the mountains yet. Fyra landed at the edge of the clearing and asked:
“What’s that on the pole? Is that part of the rite?”
He noticed that his parents had not landed. In fact, they flew away.
“This is your initiation rite my son. You have to eat that human child over there and leave nothing but bone, to prove that you are a real dragon. We will return when the sun is at its highest.”
Fyra was left alone. Well, not completely alone of course. Apparently the little thing on the pole was a human child. And he was supposed to eat it. Curiously he approached the pole. He had never seen a human this close. It looked small, very small. Then he remembered that it was a human child, so it was supposed to be small. He sniffed it, looked at it from all around. It had that distinct human smell. It did not seem to move at all, perhaps it was already dead. But when he looked closer, he saw the boy’s chest move up and down gently, so the boy was breathing after all. That made the young dragon sad. He wouldn’t have liked to eat a dead human, but he could have probably done it. But there was no way he would eat a live one! He looked at the ropes around the boy. The knots were too delicate for his big claws, and he couldn’t burn them away for the little man child would not survive. He didn’t know what to do. A ray of sunshine hit his fiery eye, as the sun emerged over the trees at the edge of the clearing. That reminded him of what his parents had said. They would be back soon. He heard a noise, and looked down again. The little boy, he couldn’t have been older than twelve, had woken up. He looked around with sleepy eyes and then froze when he noticed being stared at by a giant creature with fiery eyes and big wings! The boy screamed! After a while, when he noticed that the dragon did not eat him, he stopped screaming and a puzzled look came over his face. He did not understand what was going on. He tried to break loose from the ropes that held him to the pole. After a lot of wriggling, he loosened the ropes a lot. But there was still one knot he couldn’t undo, because it was behind him. All the time, the dragon just lay down, with his head to the ground, motionless, looking. But Fyra also noticed the one knot, and he noticed that the little boy had given up. He sat down, he had enough room to do that now. Slowly the dragon got up, and walked around the boy. The boy didn’t notice, because he had his eyes closed. Carefully, the dragon took the knot in his big claw, and then, with a sudden jerk, he ripped the knot to pieces! The boy jumped up, scared by the sudden force at his back. He moved a few feet, then turned around to see what had happened.
The young dragon was lying down again, with his head on the grass. Looking curiously at the boy. The boy returned him a curious look. The young boy was sedated when he was brought here, so he didn’t know how to get home. After standing there for a while, with the dragon still doing nothing but stare at him, he slowly moved forward. He made sure the pole was always between him and the dragon. Still the dragon did not move. The boy took a deep breath, and walked past the pole, towards the dragon’s big face. He reached out with a shaking hand, and touched the dragon’s snout. The dragon looked at the hand, and then emitted a low, pleasant growl, as if to say he liked it. The boy petted the dragon, and decided to walk around it, as the dragon still showed no intention of eating him. He walked around the dragon in a circle, and admired the beautiful creature. Especially the color of its skin. The dark thundering blue. He had almost finished his round, when he – and the dragon – heard a noise in the sky. It was midday, the sun at his highest, and that meant the dragon parents had returned. Fyra immediately closed his tail around the boy, and with his claws picked him up and threw him on his scaled back. The boy held on, as the young dragon started running and flapping his wings. Fyra flew away fast, in the opposite direction of where his parents were coming from. The parent dragons landed, confused. And ashamed. Because this had never happened before in all of dragon history. And now it happened to them. They would be the laughing stock of all other dragons.
In the next weeks, the dragon and the boy were hunted upon. Not only by the other dragons, but also by the dark red knights. They had to run and fly many times, and often they were almost killed. But eventually they were left alone, as they moved nearer to the dark forest. They found an abandoned cave, were the foot of a big mountain was covered in trees. There they lived for a while, feeding of the little animals around them, and the berries on the bushes. The dragon would catch the animals, and offer them raw to the boy. He tried them, but they were horrible! Then the boy remembered that his parents cooked the animals on a fire. So he gestured to the dragon to breathe fire over the dead fox that lay in front of them, and the dragon did. But unfortunately the dragon overdid it, so after the fire was out, there were only small black and burned remains left. It took another fox, two squirrels and a small deer, but finally they got it right. With a gentle breeze the dragon baked the small deer, that the boy held out on a stick. And it smelled fantastic. The grease dripped down from the deer and made both young ones become very hungry. With taste they ate the well baked deer, and the young dragon Fyra decided he would never eat a raw animal ever again! For some weeks, everything was fine. They enjoyed each others company more and more, and the young boy especially liked flying on Fyra’s back. Luckily Fyra also really liked to fly, so together they did it as much as they could. One night, as they were roasting a wild pig, they heard a noise in the woods below them. It was the dark knights. They were patrolling the area and had seen the smoke and fire, and were coming up to catch, or even worse, kill them. Quickly the boy mounted the dragon, and he escaped just in time. The knights could still see the tail disappear above the trees as they entered the cave. Knowing that in a matter of hours some dragons would be there to search for them, and this time they would not give up, Fyra flew into the dark forest. Because it was almost getting to dark to see anymore, they had to find a place for the night. The young boy looked around and spotted a clearing not far from where they were flying. They landed there, and immediately the dragon curled himself up and fell asleep. All the flying had tired him. The young boy found a place between the dragon’s legs, and also surrendered to dream land. In the middle of a dream where he was flying high in the sky on Fyra’s back, he was rudely awoken by a scream. A group of wolves had sneaked up on them in their sleep, and the leader had bitten in Fyra’s wing. He had broken it. Fyra pushed the boy behind him, so he was between him and the angry wolves. Even with one wing out, the dragon was still a tough opponent. And this the wolves soon found out. One by one they were severely wounded either by the dragon’s fierce claws, or his scorching fire breath. Finally the wolves that still could, retreated. Fyra killed the other ones, as they had no chance of survival anyway. The young boy tried to take care of the dragon’s broken wing. He put some branches next to the bone, and tied them up with the ropes with which he himself had once been tied. He had kept them and carried them with him all the time. Now they came in really handy. But unfortunately this fracture meant that they had to walk the next days, because Fyra couldn’t fly anymore. What were they to do next? They went back to sleep, but kept one eye open, you could never know…
In the morning – they had both fallen asleep, because they were very tired – they woke up, hungry. They really looked forward to the small wild pig, but of course they were forced to leave it behind as they fled. They got up, and then suddenly the boy stood still and pointed to something at the edge of the clearing. There stood an old woman. She must have been over a hundred years old, and she was very ugly. Her body was bent over, and she wore a torn and colorless dress. With a squeaky voice she said:
“Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Gisela, and I have a surprise for you!”
The first surprise was, that they both understood her. But they had a feeling that was not the surprise the old lady had in mind for them…
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten