Dragon Fire

“If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.”
—Chinese Proverb

She awoke with a start, head spinning and back aching, disoriented. She struggled upright, fighting her way out of a blanket that wasn’t her own. Blinking, she looked around in confusion at the multitude of books that surrounded her, the events of the day before coming back in piecemeal chunks. Baffled, the girl looked down at the blanket still tangled around her, and the pillow that had been under her head. The book that had been open beside her was gone, in its place, a huge footprint in the dust. Her confusion fled quickly, to be replaced with anxiety.

He had been here, the dragon. He’d come back sometime after she’d dozed off. That thought was disturbing. He—it—had seen her asleep, had taken the liberty to touch her. Belle shuddered. The image of those two-inch daggers on his paws anywhere near her body was sickening. What was she going to do about this? Belle raised her knees, hugged them to her chest. It was frightening to imagine a predator as great as the dragon that close, and horrifying to hear a voice speaking a human language coming from a dragon’s form. She was uninterested in any more surprises of that nature—his sudden, silent appearance and human voice was enough to have completely unnerved her.

He wouldn’t catch her off guard again! She wouldn’t let him surprise her again—which meant she was going to search his home, find out what she could before he sprang anything else on her. With luck, perhaps she could find something to bargain with for her freedom.

After a light breakfast, which appeared in the corner of the room the moment she thought of it, Belle set out to explore her captor’s home.

It was a gloriously luxurious prison, despite all the dark grey stone that had been used. The rooms were large, beautifully furnished, and absolutely choked with dust. The colors hadn’t faded any, even where the light had poured in. Even the dust, when she brushed at it, obediently came out of the rich fabrics as though she’d spent hours cleaning it.

Why had the dragon allowed his possessions to become so filthy? Especially when it was obvious that cleaning would be remarkably simple. Surely the dragon—since it was apparently civilized enough to require such furnishings in the first place —had enough power or influences to acquire a cleaning service of some sort?

Belle wandered through the great stone halls, perversely admiring the rooms of her new…home? Jail? How could one categorize such a place?

She found the room she was apparently meant to sleep in, where her bag was waiting patiently in the corner—it was strange, though, that her room was so much closer to the library…more so than any of the other guest rooms, it seemed. She took tea there, marveling at the magic that required no more than a wish, even as she distrusted it. The room itself was beautiful, and as far as she could tell, dust-free.

She finished eating, and resumed her exploring. The halls she wandered now seemed darker somehow, and heavier. A scent pervaded this part of the house, similar to the one she’d noticed in the library, the elusive whiff of smoke and roses growing stronger as she continued. Belle came to a set of winding stairs, rather narrow-looking and very dark. Curious as to what it lead to, she started to climb. It wasn’t a long climb, but it was dark, oppressively so. She nearly walked into the door, it was so dimly lit, and felt for the handle. She found it eventually, a great, worked-iron thing that opened at her lightest touch. The big, hardwood door swung ponderously inward.

She stiffened as the room’s chill extended out to her, grasping like the bony hands of a crone. This was almost certainly a cell, though why the door was unlocked escaped her. It wasn’t, couldn’t be, what she’d imagined it might be—the dragon’s lair. There weren’t any jewels or a king’s ransom in gold…nor were there any bones, for which she was most grateful. There wasn’t anything that anyone could truly call precious in the room, except perhaps the silver basin on a table in the corner, which had some rather cleverly worked vines and a rose decorating its sides.

The room, save the bed and the table the basin sat upon, was at glaring odds with the rest of the house. The furniture—broken, ripped, burned—had been pushed out of the way, to the sides of the rooms in useless heaps, as though the perpetrator had acted in a fit of anger or despair. There was a large four-poster bed in the other corner, its heavy drapes tightly drawn against the cold and the meager afternoon sunlight that crept in from the south-facing window. The room was utterly still, and like any other room in the house, choked with cobwebs and dust.

Belle entered, in the grip of a tenacious curiosity. Skirting a mass of twisted wood and fabric, she went to look more closely at the basin. It seemed, to her great consternation, completely ordinary from this angle as well, though there was something about it that bothered her. She brushed her finger-tips over the worked metal, trying to explain to herself why it seemed so very important.

A slight rustling from the bed behind her made her jump, snatching her hand away from the basin. She stared at the bed, barely breathing, and like one entranced, walked towards it. Belle watched, her mind almost detached from her body as her hand reached out to grasp the wine-red velvet. A powerful compulsion griped her, made her tug the drape away to reveal what was behind it.

Curled on his side, like an overgrown cat, a man slept. He was long-limbed and thin—far too thin for his height, so that his clothes bagged a bit around his lean frame, showing that he’d never been particularly heavy to begin with. Hair as silver as the moon contrasted against a face that was far too young for such a color, the silky strands splayed long and thick against a royal blue pillow, the rich color making him look even more ill than he already appeared. He shifted again, curling tighter, as though from the cold, or like he was in pain. A low keening noise slipped from his throat, and he started thrashing in earnest, in the grips of a nightmare.

Startled by the sudden violence, Belle stared helplessly as the man’s sinuous body twisted, tangled in the sheets of the bed. Without thinking, she reached out instinctively, to comfort her fellow captive. He jerked at the contact, his thin, sharply angled face tightening for a moment before his eyes fluttered open.

Belle gasped at the sudden whirl of magic, and stumbled back, away from the bed, away from the dragon that suddenly filled it in the place of the man. He blinked again, and turned, catching sight of her horrified expression. For several uncomprehending moments, they merely stared at one another, silver meeting gold.

Slowly, the dragon’s eyes shifted color, going from pewter-silver to black-green, and then to a terrifying flame-orange, shot through with bright, hot blue streaking out from cat-slit pupils.

“Get out,” he hissed, venom on his words as he sprang from the bed, and advanced.

“I—I’m—” Belle stepped back, terrified to the point of stuttering.

“Get out, I said!” he snarled, horror and alarm at being found asleep nearly choking him. Hadn’t she already taken over his library? Must she conquer every part of his prison to be satisfied?

Without another word, the girl turned and fled, slamming the door behind her as a deterrent, lest he try to chase after her. The dragon stared after her, reeling from the shock and blinding loathing for his own abhorrent behavior. Had he truly lost so many of his human manners and become so unpolished that he inspired such terror in the girl-child that had simply entered his room, unknowing and innocent of any deviousness?

With a pained snarl, he spun and lashed out a paw, raking claws against cold, hard stone the way a man might punch a wall in the same situation. His talons had raked four gouges in the granite, far deeper and cleaner a cut than any man armed with mere tools could ever hope to achieve. He gazed at the marks he’d created with eyes gone black from despair.

Good God, what am I? What kind of monster have I turned into? He wondered, considering that perhaps the girl had good reason to flee. The dragon continued to stare at the four tracks in the granite wall, a silent acknowledgement of his curse and the changes that had been wrought that so suddenly made themselves fiercely apparent, so that he could not even lie to himself anymore. What woman could ever find a man, especially a man worth accepting, in what he’d become, and give him what he needed to be freed?

With a snap, his head jerked up, his eyes going green-black again with horror and shock. The girl—Belle—she wouldn’t have—

He bolted for the door, panic blanking all else from his mind. He fought with the handle, trying to work the mechanism to open it, and leapt down the stairs so fast he nearly tumbled down them. The dragon hurried toward the Great Hall, toward the main entrance, and skidded to a halt in front of the open doors, which stood open with an air of silent disappointment. Beyond them, the gates stood open as well, mocking him. His stomach lurched at the sight of them, and at the sight of the long dark shadows of twilight that stretched and outlined her small footprints in otherwise pristine snow. His heart squeezed painfully as the shoe he had been waiting for finally dropped.

And then he remembered. In the distance, he could hear the mournful voice of a hunting wolf, soon joined by others as its pack members joined in the song. His already abused heart froze, and his stomach pinched with fear.

The dragon charged across the courtyard, and leapt into the air, unfurling the gigantic wings on his back and pumping them once, propelling him higher into the chill winter air. He circled once, twice, to gain momentum, and shot toward the invisible magic barrier that trapped him in the castle.

The ripping pain nearly knocked him out of the air as he plunged through gooey magic, struggling as it tried to hold him in. With a final jerk, he found himself free—and falling through the air like a stone. The dragon swept his wings up and down, vision graying as he felt wind resistance on the shredded membranes stretching between the bones of his bat-like wings, and whistling against the ripped flesh of his sides. Forcing down nausea, the dragon directed his eyes down, hoping to catch a glimpse of his wayward girl-child. He had minutes, at best, hours.