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"Hello," Tommy says, swinging the rusty sword he'd stolen from a corpse to replace his stick on the way up the mountain. "I'm here to kill the dragon."
The man with gold eyes gives him an incredulous, amused look. "You are?" he asks, balancing the basket in his hands on his hip. "How old are you, now?"
"Six," Tommy says confidently.
"Six?" the man asks, glancing over his shoulder towards the dark, open maw of the cave, and the laundry hanging on the line there, swinging in the afternoon breeze. "Six. Well, that's awfully big and brave of you, but the dragon isn't home right now."
"Not home?" Tommy asks, disappointment coursing through his veins. "How is the dragon not home! When will it get back?"
“Not for a bit, I’m afraid,” the man says, and he is looking at Tommy with a very curious look in his eyes. Tommy holds the sword a bit tighter– sure, it’s not the sharpest thing, but it could get the job done! “I could take a message for you, if you like. Let the dragon know you were here when he gets back.”
“I’d like that very much please,” Tommy says after a moment of consideration, glancing around and letting the sword drop slightly as he thinks about the message he’d like to leave. There’s a tub of water over by some rocks, full of suds, and a washboard beside it. He glances back to the man, the freshly dried clothing in the basket he’s holding, and purses his lips. “Can you please tell the dragon it is very important that I best it in battle? I need to prove to the others that I am not weak, and I think beating a dragon is very strong. So please get back to me as soon as possible, and we can fight.”
For some reason, the man seems very amused by his message. So amused he’s coughing from laughter, and Tommy does not appreciate that. He reaches out with his rusty sword and pokes the man in the leg, only for him to step backwards in mild surprise. Tommy jumps, dropping the sword with a clatter onto the rocks.
“Now then,” the man says. “It’s not nice to hit someone with that.”
“You were laughing,” Tommy says, scowling heavily. “That’s not nice of you .”
“Fair enough,” the man says. “Consider your message taken. Head on back down to the village now, okay?”
“But I spent all morning coming up here,” Tommy complains, and the man just smiles.
“Well then that’s a good day of walking for you,” he says, and gestures lightly with one hand. “Off you go, child.”
“I am not a child,” Tommy says, turning on his heel. “I’m glad to be leaving! You’re mean! A bad, bad secretary!”
“Thank you for letting me know,” the man says, and when Tommy’s a bit down the hill, almost to the trees, he turns. The man is still watching him, one hand cupped over his eyes to block the sun as he watches Tommy go. After a second, Tommy raises his hand in goodbye. The man raises his own in return, and satisfied, Tommy heads down the hill. When he’s nearly back at the village, he realizes he's left his sword on the ground by the man– bollocks!
Whatever. He’ll have to go back to check in soon anyways. He’ll get it then.
“Hello. Is the dragon back yet?”
The man jumps, his brown hair slightly damp but dry enough to be curly. He drops the tool he’s holding, glancing over his shoulder at Tommy with wide, startled eyes. “Oh my– fucking hell, you sneaky little– no the dragon is not back yet. How are you back here?”
Tommy squints. “Well you said to come back, and you’d take my message to the dragon when it returned. Is it back yet?”
“I– no, he’s not, unfortunately,” the man says. Tommy sighs, long and heavy and exasperated, and rocks back on his feet.
“What the heck. How long is it going to be gone, then?” he asks, and the man blinks.
“The dragon isn’t going to be back for a while, you know. He’s very busy,” he says.
Tommy regards him with a suspicious look. “Busy doing what?” he asks.
“Dragon… things,” the man says after a slight pause.
Tommy thinks, and then asks: “Like burning down villages?”
“Ehm–”
“Or rampaging castles to steal their gold? I’ve heard dragons love gold. I even made this dragon a gold piece– I had to make it, see, because I don’t have any gold pieces of my own. But I think it’s rather nice and shiny, don’t you?” Tommy holds up the gold piece he’d fashioned late the other night, slathering yellow paint all over a stone in order to make it look just right. The man reaches out and holds his palm up and open, and Tommy drops it into his hand. He turns it over in his fingers, inspecting it, a quirked little smile on his face.
“I think the dragon would be very pleased with this gold,” the man says. “Would you like me to keep it and give it to him when he arrives home?”
“No thank you,” Tommy says, and the man gives the stone back when he holds his hand out for it thankfully. Tommy’s not sure he’s big enough to fight him for it. “I’d like to give it to the dragon myself.”
“Very well,” the man says. “Anything else I can help you with, today?”
“No thank you, mister dragon secretary,” Tommy says with a grin, then leans to the side as something shiny catches his gaze. “What were you doing?”
“Oh, I was–” the man looks behind him at the sitting spot he’d abandoned, the tools he’d discarded when Tommy had startled him. “I was working on some new clothes. Working some leather.”
“Leather?” Tommy grimaces. “Doesn’t leather come from cows?”
“Leather comes from many places,” the man says. “But it can come from cows, yes.”
“I have a cow friend,” Tommy says. “He lives in the village with me, and sometimes I even sleep in the barn with him. His name is Henry, and he’s the best cow ever. He just had his baby, too, which of course is also named Henry. It’s a family name,” he informs the man, who looks vaguely amused. Tommy continues to babble about Henry even as the man sits and picks up his tools once more, watching him work the smooth hides of leather and occasionally punch holes into it, stringing a needle with thread and working to make some sort of clothing. He hangs about, tucking the gold rock into his pocket and eventually just sitting beside the man, still watching intently.
“Can I use the hammer?” he asks, after detailing the entire lineage of his other best friend, Hetta the chicken. The man blinks, then quickly tucks the hammer back into a small pouch he’d been pulling tools from.
“No you cannot,” he’s quick to say, and Tommy is even quicker to pout. The lady at the bakery says he makes good pouty eyes, and then laughs and gives him free food. “Hammers aren’t good toys.”
“I know it’s not a toy,” Tommy reasons. “I want to help.”
“You can help by talking,” the man says. Tommy scowls– he doesn’t want to talk anymore, he wants to make holes in the leather and make a shirt. He tips his head up, up, up, and peers at the sky.
“How long is soon?” he asks, and the man hums. “For when the dragon comes back?”
“Now, I never said he would be back soon,” the man says. “I don’t know when he’ll be back. He might never come back.”
“What!” Tommy whips his head back down, scowling deeper at the man. “Why?”
“That’s how life is sometimes,” the man says, and his voice gets a little bit quieter. “Dragons leave, and they don’t come back.”
“It happens to people, too,” Tommy says after a second. He understands. One time, his mum left and never came back. But she will! Thinking about his mum makes him sad, so he screws his eyes shut and firmly tells himself to stop before opening them again and finding the man staring at him with a strange expression on his face. “What? What? Why’re you lookin’ at me like that? Is there something on my head?”
“No,” the man says, “no, no. Nothing is on your head.” Tommy swats the air over him anyways, just to make sure. The man cracks a smile. “I– I think I’ve changed my mind. Would you like to help me punch the next hole in this?”
“Oh, yes please!” Tommy says. Never mind people and dragons leaving– he’s sure the dragon will come back, just like his mum will come back. They just have to give it some time. He’s okay with waiting; he’s very patient, good at finding things to do. Like punching holes in leather scraps that the man gives him, decorating the worked hide with a smiley face.
Waiting, as it turns out, is for a long time.
“No dragon today,” the man says, and Tommy scowls.
“I was being so quiet,” he complains. But it seems that no matter how quiet he tries to be, he can’t sneak up on the man like he had the second time he’d met him. “No dragon?”
“None at all,” the man says. “Clear skies, sunny as can be. I was thinking about going for a walk. Would you like to join me?”
“I already walked all the way up here,” Tommy laments. “What kind of bollocks fun is this?”
“It’s good for you,” the man says. “And I packed us up a lunch. How does that sound?”
Oooh. Tommy can’t say no to food. “Fine enough! Let’s be off, then! Hup two three four, hup two–”
The man laughs at the walking songs he sings, and Tommy grins.
The day really is beautiful– clear sky, a few fluffy, snow-white clouds peppering the blue as they descend into the woods that make up the lower half of the mountain. While the upper half is spotty clumps of spruce trees and lots of open cliff face and rock, the lower bits are much easier to navigate for Tommy. More forest, with streams and clearings and flower patches that bloom vibrant shades of purple and pink.
“Hyacinth,” the man says as they walk through a looping trail, one that Tommy’s never been on. He reaches down and plucks one of the blooms, fingers deftly snapping the stem and twirling it gently between his fingers. “What do you think of them?”
“They’re pretty,” Tommy admits, bending to stick his nose in one. “Don’t smell like much.”
“Get your nose out of there,” the man says fondly, and Tommy giggles, then sneezes as the petals tickle his face and he reels backwards, stumbling into the man’s legs. He looks up to find the man looking down at him with fondness clear in those gold eyes, and then he leans down to tuck the flower he’d picked behind Tommy’s ear. “There,” he says. “A flower of your own. Come on, now. I want to gather some herbs from along this path, and if we dawdle you’ll be walking home in the dark.”
“Dawdle,” Tommy echoes. “Dawdle dawdle– dawdle–” The man nudges him off his legs so they can continue walking, and Tommy goes, making sure to keep up even if he has to stop and smell the literal roses as they go. This path is carefully cultivated in a way that seems natural; every so often, the man stops and bends to gather some plants into his basket, and each time he explains what it is to Tommy. Wild onion, yarrow, sage. At one point, the man rips some bark off a tree entirely and explains to Tommy it’s called birch, and it’s good for various things. Tommy himself is given a very important job: flower collecting. The man demands a bouquet of every different bloom he sees, and Tommy is quite determined to meet such a labor intensive request. By the time they reach a clearing by a burbling brook, he’s got a handful of flowers, some with dirt-filled roots still attached.
“I did it!” he says proudly as he sticks the bouquet up towards the man’s nose, watching him stifle a laugh.
“You did,” he says, taking it from him with gentle hands. “Why don’t you go wash your hands and face in the stream, alright? I’ll put these away and get our lunch out.”
Tommy is quick to hurry away, dipping his hands in the cool, clear mountain water. He scrubs the dirt from his hands, rinses his face, and then returns to the spot where the man is lounging and weaving together the flowers Tommy had picked. He’s upset for all of two minutes before the man plops the crown on his head, declaring him king of the mountain trail. Tommy sneezes for the next five minutes and then can’t breathe from how hard they both are laughing– lunch comes in the form of sandwiches on homemade bread, with thick butter and delicious greens.
It is a beautiful day.
Tommy finds out the man’s name a month after his first trek up the hill.
“Gremlin–” he says, and Tommy scrunches up his nose.
“That’s not my name,” he insists, having found the man that morning carving bowls out of wood, using sand from a bucket and a stone to smooth the surface to a waxy finish. Tommy had helped, although the knife he’d been given was significantly duller.
“Then what is your name?” the man asks, exasperated as Tommy scuttles higher onto the boulder and clutches his new knife. Because it’s his . The man gave it to him. And now he wants it back, for some strange reason.
“Tommy,” Tommy insists.
“Well, hello Tommy, I’m Wilbur,” the man says– no, Wilbur says, and Tommy grits his teeth and bares them wide. His fingers clench the knife’s wooden handle harder.
“Fuck you, Wilbur,” he says. “Wilbur, more like Wil-bore.”
“Just give it back,” Wilbur says for the hundredth time. “I didn’t mean you could keep it.”
“Yes you did!” Tommy says, shrill and high. He needs this knife. He needs it, to make his own bowls, and to cut his own food, and to fight off the bigger boys who knock him down and kick his stomach and take his shoes. “You gave it to me and so now it’s mine and no take-backsies! Haven’t you heard of no take-backsies? You’re breaking sacred law! Sacred law!”
“I know what no take-backsies are,” Wilbur says, then crosses his arms and heaves a sigh. “Fine. Keep the damn knife, you brat.”
Tommy slides off the boulder with a shining grin. Wilbur seems unhappy about it, but he lets him keep the knife.
(Later that day, he even gives him a sheath for it, a leather thing that attaches to Tommy’s belt and hangs against his side, just small enough to be hidden under the hem of his shirt if he angles it right. He’s pleased, doubly so when he goes home to the barn and Henry, and when the taller boys come to take the food Wilbur had sent back with him, he pulls it on them. Just the sight of it sends them running– Tommy recounts the story to Wilbur on his next trip, and with a strange smile, Wilbur tells him good job. It’s after that trip that he invites Tommy inside the cave.)
“Wil,” Tommy says. He’s comfy, sitting on a cushion in the corner of the room and with a book in hand, bare feet tucked up against his knees. “What does p– puh–”
“Spell it out,” comes Wilbur’s voice from another corner of the cave. Tommy grimaces.
“P-u-b-l-i-c-i-t-y,” he says, slowly and carefully. Wilbur hums, the sound echoing around them both for a moment before he answers.
“Publicity,” he says, and then emerges from the side room that Tommy’s not allowed to go down. It’s a hallway– he’s seen into it before, the wooden door that covers it not big enough to hide all the craggy stone from his view.
“What does it mean?” Tommy queries.
“It’s–” Wilbur pauses, turning over another book in his own hands. “It means, like, getting noticed. Getting noticed by a lot of people. What on earth are you reading?”
“I’m not quite sure,” Tommy admits, and Wilbur laughs, shutting the door to the stone hallway behind him.
It’s been about a year and a half since Tommy had first stumbled onto the hillside, determined to fight the dragon and met it’s secretary instead. He’d been six then, just a baby, but he’s almost eight now and he’s getting better at reading every day. Wilbur had invited him into his home before winter last year, showing him the inside of the cave and the thick, heavy rugs that keep the stone floor soft and warm, the cushions and bookshelves that are full of stories, the coves of knick-knacks and treasures. This time of year there are herbs hanging from the ceiling in the back, making the whole place smell like rosemary. Bundles of garlic nearly brush the top of Wilbur’s head as he walks over– this cave is very small, and very unfit for a dragon. Tommy isn’t surprised he’d gotten the spot wrong when he was six. He’d been very silly back then.
He still wants to fight the dragon, though. Whenever it gets back. Wilbur had told him after much prying that dragons can be gone for years and years and years at a time, but had said after that that Tommy was absolutely allowed to keep visiting as long as he wanted. And so Tommy had. And Wilbur had started teaching him to read, making him clothes. Tommy even has a bowl here now, and Wilbur had surprised him last Candlenights when he’d gifted Tommy a fork and spoon to wear in the bag on his belt.
Wilbur was nice like that, even when Tommy had little to offer in return.
“Venison for dinner tonight,” Wilbur says, setting the book he’d been carrying down on the shelf next to Tommy. “It’s the last of the dried stuff from last fall. I’ll have to go hunting soon.”
“Can I come?” Tommy asks. The idea of a hunt– proper, with dogs, maybe, and bow and arrow– makes him excited, bristling. Wilbur just smiles and shakes his head.
“Not this year,” he says. “Maybe next.”
“But I’m big now,” Tommy points out. “Almost eight.”
“When you’re almost nine, you can come,” Wilbur says, then sighs. “Oh, I’m gonna regret promising that.”
“Yes you are,” Tommy says assuredly, looking back down at the confusing pages of this book. The edges are singed, slightly, the cover a bit blackened, but it’s still readable. Tommy wonders where Wilbur got it from, but the question is put out of his mind when Wilbur tugs it away and slides a different story into his hands. The print is a bit bigger when he opens it, and there are pictures .
“Read this instead,” he says. “I think you’ll like it more.”
“Thank you,” Tommy says, because he never forgets his manners even though Wilbur is a little bitch.
The night, when Tommy slips his shoes back on and the bowls are cleaned and Wilbur has lit a fire to ward off the darkness, but before Tommy leaves, the book finds itself in his hands again.
“Take it back with you,” Wilbur says. Tommy stares between him and the book, swallowing.
“What?” he asks.
“Take it with you,” Wilbur says. “It’s a gift. For you.”
“But–” Tommy’s throat gets all stuffy, like it does when he’s sick and Wilbur gets all hovery. Speaking of, the man in question is watching him with mild concern, hand reaching out to hover and then land on his shoulder, gentle and warm. “Are you– do you not want me to come back?”
“What?” Wilbur asks, sounding incredulous.
“If I keep the book then I don’t have to come back to keep learning how to read,” Tommy says, eyes getting a bit wet at the thought. Not that he would cry over Wilbur kicking him out– no, of course not! He’d just miss the comfy rugs and smell of pine and sage, and how Wilbur teaches him to tie bundles of dried sweetgrass into silly shapes. “And if I can’t figure it out but can’t come back and you– and I can’t read it but without you how will I figure it out, or if I don’t know a word, or–”
“Tommy, what– no, I’m not kicking you out,” Wilbur says, impossibly fond but also the tiniest bit amused. “This isn’t a parting gift, I just thought you might like to have a book of your very own. Something to take with you. I want you to come back, of course I do.”
“But what if I lose it?” Tommy asks through his tight throat. It is a very real possibility– the barn, while a good place to nap in warm hay with the smell of cow around him, well. It’s not a very good place for books, Tommy reckons. “Or someone takes it? Or I drop it in mud? You know I love mud, Wilbur, I couldn’t forgive myself if I ruined it.”
“Tommy–” Wilbur falters, opens his mouth, then closes it. “If it’s causing you this much grief, how about you just leave it here then, alright?” Tommy blinks, opens his mouth, but Wilbur beats him to it. “It’ll still be your book, but it’ll just live with me. I can make you a shelf for all your things. How’s that? Then you don’t have to worry about it.”
“It’ll be mine,” Tommy repeats slowly. Wilbur nods.
“Yours,” he says. “It’ll just live here.”
Tommy blinks again, long and slow, and then glances over his shoulder towards the darkening sky. An idea.
“Why can’t…” He pauses. “Why can’t I live here?”
Wilbur seems stunned, at least for a moment. His mouth hangs open, his eyes wide, but then he licks his lips and laughs, runs a hand through his curly bangs and ignores how Tommy scowls.
“No, Tom,” he says, and Tommy’s stomach feels as though someone’s closed their entire fist around it and squeezed. “No. It’s not safe, I’m afraid. The dragon.”
“Right,” Tommy says. “The dragon.”
“I would love for you to live with me,” Wilbur says gently, reaching out with one hand and cupping Tommy’s cheek. His fingers are so warm. “Really. I truly would. But it’s not safe for you or for me.”
“That dragon is gone,” Tommy says, a reminder easily found in the gold painted stone he’d been lugging around for a year and a half. “It’s been gone, Wilbur–”
“But he could come back,” Wilbur says. “Any day. Any time. And that’s why it’s safer for you in the village.”
“Says you,” Tommy tells him. “People aren’t nice there like you are.”
Wilbur’s smile is sad. “I know,” he says. “But that’s why it’s better for you. You’ll understand one day. I promise.”
“Your promises suck,” Tommy says, shoving the book back into Wilbur’s hands before turning on his heel and storming off onto the hillside. Wilbur shouts a farewell after him, but Tommy doesn’t bother to answer. He’s mad, sad– upset for all the wrong reasons it feels like, and all Wilbur can offer is that?
He scowls the whole way back.
When he returns (and he does, of course he does, who is Tommy kidding, Wilbur is the best thing that’s happened to him ever) he finds a new bookshelf sitting beside the others. Wilbur shows him the single book on it, explaining with a smile that it’s Tommy’s, for Tommy’s things. He shows Tommy how to carve his name into the wood and with a careful hand, he writes out the letters T-O-M-M-Y, grinning. Wilbur donates a few more books to fill in the shelf, and after a long moment of consideration, Tommy pulls the gold stone out of his pocket and places it there. Wilbur raises a brow.
“For safekeeping,” Tommy explains, and the older man just nods.
“I think you’re my brother,” Tommy says one day in the clearing Wilbur loves to eat lunch in. The woods are foggy this morning; Tommy had come early to visit Wilbur and show him the new things he’d gotten after a man in town had hired him for a quick job. He’d gotten real coin for it, actual money, and had promptly spent it on some food and other trinkets for himself. And something for Wilbur, too, of course.
“What?” Wilbur asks, and Tommy makes a face.
“Finish chewing,” he instructs, because Wilbur always hates it when Tommy talks with food in his mouth, the prick. “I think we’re brothers.”
“Don’t say that,” Wilbur says, then chews and swallows insistently. “I’ll cry,” he says, much clearer now.
"Want to know a secret?" Tommy asks.
"Sure," Wilbur says. Tommy hums.
"You're the first brother I've ever had."
Wilbur's smile is sad when he answers, sad enough that Tommy doesn't press. "I'm afraid I can't say the same. But you are very good for never having been one before."
Yeah. He doesn’t press. “Brothers,” Tommy says once more. “B-r-o-t-h-e-r-s.”
“Yes, we both know you can spell, now stop saying that,” Wilbur hisses, reaching out to bat at Tommy’s shoulder. “I will cry, you enormous douchebag.”
“Don’t call me names!” Tommy cries. He’s almost nine now. Wilbur owes him a hunt. “I’m being nice!”
“Gremlin,” Wilbur taunts, one of his favorite insults to use. “Child, infant, raccoon–”
“Raccoons are cool,” Tommy pouts. “Like moths. An’ cows.”
“Point still stands,” Wilbur says primly. “Besides, teasing is a brotherly thing to do, isn’t it?”
“Didn’t you just say not to call you my brother? What kind of logic–”
Summer turns into fall, turns into winter, into spring. Again and again, the years pass. Wilbur puts off Tommy’s first hunt until he’s eleven, on the cusp of twelve– he’s upset about it, but not too upset, because Wilbur’s been teaching him how to fire a bow and arrow since he was nine, and now he’s eleven and he’s awesome at it. He knows the forest around Wilbur’s cave like the back of his hand, after spending hours upon hours meandering through it alone while Wilbur does whatever Wilbur does. He spends so many of his days up here now it’s a wonder he hasn’t just moved in– when he asks, Wilbur always shuts him down. Says he’s safer in the village below.
(He’s not sure Wilbur’s right about that. The more time Tommy spends on the mountain, the more whispers he hears whenever he walks into the bakery or general store. He sees the way people look at him. It used to be pitiful, but now it’s just suspicious. He thinks he’s not very safe at all, but Wilbur refuses to hear him out, so here they are.)
Tommy’s first hunting trip goes well. He doesn’t kill anything, really, but Wilbur does. Wilbur’s a very good shot and has even better sight– he sees things Tommy doesn’t, and tells him with a smile and a ruffle of his hair that next year, Tommy can do just as well.
After hunting lessons comes butchering lessons. Tommy hates butchering lessons.
Eleven, to twelve, to thirteen. Tommy celebrates his fourteenth on the mountain with Wil, pastries from the bakery in hand. Wilbur apparently hasn't had sweets in years. Tommy is more than happy to share, and in the midafternoon sunlight they laugh and eat, frosting on their faces and stupid jokes on their tongues. It starts as a joke, but by the time Tommy is fifteen and has long since made his first kill while hunting in the woods, long since outgrown the bullies in height but not in muscle, Wilbur is his brother. His shelf fills with stupid trinkets and things that mean everything and nothing. A birthday gift of lapis from Wil, that gold stone he’d painted when he was six, books. So many books, although he isn’t an avid reader, but Wil insists.
And he learns things about Wilbur too, over the years. The fact that he likes to sing but hates it when people listen. How he writes songs and poetry and stories all his own, weaving fanciful tales for Tommy to hear when he gets tired of watching words dance on a page. He’s a good cook but a shit baker, and is a great shot with a bow and arrow. He refuses to come into town. He refuses to let Tommy stay permanently. He cries when Tommy calls him brother, but ruffles his hair anyways and teases him for slip ups like Wilby .
Ugh. Tommy is never living that one down.
His favorite color is teal. His favorite flavor is chocolate. He likes wine but doesn’t drink when Tommy’s around, and has a penchant for anything shiny. He’s artful.
He’s Tommy’s best friend. Tommy thinks he’s Wilbur’s best friend, too.
Tommy should be used to it by now, of course. He’s read enough stories where this happens– all good things must come to an end. The age-old phrase, the storyteller who foreshadows tragedy through laughter and light. But life isn’t a fairy tale, and Tommy had thought for once that maybe, he could be happy too. Years had passed and nothing had gone wrong.
Until he wakes up one morning to a pounding on the barn door.
Henry is long gone– Henry the Third is his pillow instead, and groggily, Tommy makes his way over to the barn door and slides it open. There are people outside in the early morning light, torches casting flickering shadows over their faces as one man steps forward.
“Tommy?” he asks.
“‘S me,” Tommy says sleepily, reaching up to rub one eye.
“We have a few questions,” the man says, “about what you do on that mountain.”
It was only a matter of time.
The forest floor pounds under his feet, oxygen burning in his lungs as he runs uphill. He’s been making this trek nearly every day for the past few years– he’s healthier than most average people, and he knows the terrain well. All of this plus the adrenaline shooting through his system is an advantage, but Tommy knows he’s going to need more.
Pounding, pounding, until the trees fade away and it’s just stone, now. Stone and spruce and there, on the side of a mountain, is the mouth of a cave. The clothesline is up outside, an axe sitting underneath it and firewood stacked up to the left. Tommy vaults over a boulder and screams Wilbur’s name as he approaches, gasping for air.
Wilbur appears in the opening as he gets closer, and Tommy doesn’t slow down, not until he’s slammed into Wilbur’s chest and the older man’s arms are around him, Wilbur’s voice panicky and reedy as he questions him. Tommy can’t hear him over the blood rushing through his ears, but he gasps and shudders for air as he tries to slow down, slow everything down. He just needs a minute. He doesn’t have time.
“Tommy,” Wilbur pleads. “What’s going on?”
Tommy is out of breath, and panicking mildly to boot. It takes him a second.
“They were asking–” he says, letting go of Wilbur and staggering back, hands on his knees as Wilbur clutches his shoulders. “They were asking about the dragon, and what I did up on the mountain all these times, and so I told them the dragon was gone but they didn’t believe me, and so I told them about you and they–”
“You told them about me?” Wilbur asks shrilly. The sheer panic in his voice seizes Tommy’s heart and he looks up, stares Wilbur in the eyes.
“Was I not supposed to?” he gasps, chest still heaving. Wilbur, all of the sudden, looks incredibly frightened. Tommy’s breathing starts to flatten out, but his heart is still racing.
“I–” Wilbur lets go of him, runs a hand through his hair, and glances around the cave. “I– it’s– it’s okay. It’s okay. Are they– are they coming?”
“Why do you think I ran so fast?” Tommy asks, and Wilbur looks even more frightened than before, eyes wide and gold glinting as he glances one last time around the room before he shuts them, and takes a deep breath. “Wil, I’m so sorry, I didn’t–”
“You didn’t know,” Wilbur says, and Tommy knows from his tone he’s already been forgiven, but that doesn’t make him feel any fucking better about it. “It’s okay. You need to go, Tommy.”
“What?”
“You need to go,” Wilbur repeats, ignoring the indignant sputtering coming from Tommy’s mouth. “You need to leave, and hide in the woods, and not come out for a week. You can. I know you’ll be fine. Hang about the clearing we go to for lunch. Okay?”
“Wilbur, what?” Tommy asks, whirling around as the older man starts picking things up and putting them back down again, finally all together giving up as he heads towards the wooden door in the back and the hallway Tommy’s never supposed to go down. Even now, as Wilbur throws it open and heads down the first part of the stone cavern, he stops, lingering on the doorway. Habit, even though Wilbur’s never been violent about enforcing it. Tommy’s just been a good listener. “Wil–”
“Tommy,” Wilbur says, and he turns, one hand coming up to cradle his face. It’s a gesture he’d been doing since Tommy was small, and there’s comfort in it, in how Tommy leans his cheek ever so slightly into his warm touch. Wilbur’s eyes are hardened when they meet his own. “Go into the woods. Don’t come out for a week. And don’t follow me down here. If we split up, it’ll be easier. Understand?”
“Wil,” Tommy says, and then, “I’m scared.” He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t get it, at all. But Wilbur is looking at him with so much fear layered under the facade of bravery, and Tommy is scared right alongside him.
“Go,” Wilbur says. “It’ll be okay.”
And Tommy has never had reason not to trust him.
He goes.
He makes it three steps outside the cave’s entrance. There is still laundry hanging from the line, a shirt and pants.
“Hey!”
It’s a group of people from the village– no, it is a mob of people from the village. A true mob, with swords and machetes and scythes and pitchforks. Tommy runs, but he does not get far.
They tear through Wilbur’s house– Tommy’s house, their home, with brutal efficiency. Tommy is forced to watch as one man holds him in place, arms locked around him like a cage of muscle as he’s forced to sit there and view this awful thing. They tear the bowls from their places, clattering along the floor. Books are thrown about, rugs lifted up, the cushions thrown this way and that. Tommy fights, at first. He draws blood with his teeth, scratches with his nails and screams and cries and curses every person out. He sobs when they find his shelf, his name carved into the wood on the bottom by a shaky eight-year-old’s hands, and as someone tips it over. The planks crack and smash as they hit the stony floor of the cave, buckling, and his small trove of treasures scatter across the floor. The rock painted yellow rolls until it’s at Tommy’s feet, and he sobs hard.
They ask him about Wilbur. He shuts his mouth then, only opening it to spit in their faces and heave sobbing laughter as they grimace at him.
“A lost cause,” someone says as they pass, and Tommy stomps on the toe of his captor’s boot. The man holding him winces, but barely. Tommy refuses to give anything up. He refuses.
He prays that the dragon comes back and burns the village down. He tells them as much, only to get laughed at.
“Son,” one of the older men says, one of few who had hung back and not participated in the destruction of Wilbur’s home, “the dragon has been back for years.”
“What?” Tommy asks, vision blurry through tears. He can’t wipe them away– his arms are pinned to his sides. The older man’s face scrunches.
“Did you not know?” he asks.
“Know what ?” Tommy demands.
It is then that all hell breaks loose.
The first evidence of hell is the fact that the ground shakes. And it does not stop shaking, not for a minute or two, and everyone immediately dashes for the exit. In the mad rush for the mouth of the cave, Tommy weasels his way loose of his captor, darting out because fuck if he’s getting caught in the rocks that fall from the roof. The ground shakes and sends them all to the ground, stumbling out into bright sunlight. Tommy is certain he’s scraped his elbows and knees, but even as the tremors subside and people shout around him he doesn’t stop– he moves to get up, feet scrabbling at the loose stone underneath as another tremor shakes the earth. In the distance, he can see the treeline.
Just make it to the treeline.
He gets four steps in before another tremor shakes the earth below them– this one shorter but much, much stronger than the first. Tommy is sent to the ground again, and people scream.
A shadow blocks the sun.
Tommy looks up, and there it is.
The dragon he’d been waiting for these last ten years– the dragon he’d been hoping would show up, the dragon who had slowly migrated to the back of his head as a childish fantasy of glory. A story Wilbur had helped cultivate, starting with the silly tale about him being the dragon’s secretary so many years ago. Tommy stares as the beast emerges from somewhere higher up the mountain, wings spread gloriously wide as it swoops down low across them, then turns back around and up. It lands, another tremor cracking the earth around them, and people scream as it perches just above the mouth of Wilbur’s cave.
Tommy scrambles backwards, the people from the mob shouting and organizing around him, but all he can do is stare.
It’s beautiful. It’s scales are a golden brown, honey colored in places and in others, shining like the brightest of golds. It’s teeth are fucking huge, claws even bigger, gripping onto the boulders and cracking them with it’s strength. It’s eyes are–
It’s eyes are gold, and they meet Tommy’s with the same amount of fear and desperation that Wilbur had just looked at Tommy with.
“Somebody fucking shoot it!” someone shouts beside him, around him, and Tommy heaves a breath as he shoves himself to his feet, staggering forward and slamming a hand down on the first crossbow he sees. The bolt hits the earth instead of the dragon, and Tommy is thrown to the side as people shout at him. The dragon roars, a warm tsunami of air stopping them all in their tracks for a moment. Tommy glances up again and to the heat gathering around the beast’s mouth, how it’s eyes glint with anger, and he turns back to the mob.
“Go!” Tommy shouts. “Just fucking leave!”
They don’t listen.
While the people fight hard, they do not fight bravely. A dragon is a terrible foe, and Tommy wonders what the fuck he’d been thinking at six years old when he’d decided he was going to be the one to slay the dragon at the top of the hill. Him, with his rusty sword and a stick from the woods, against something so massive and terrifying? He is witness now to its destruction, and he can’t say he isn’t impressed. The dragon lands among the people and that action alone crushes more than a few to oblivion– Tommy is already running for the treeline, hands and feet scrabbling at rocks and throwing himself over boulders. The dragon seems to know where he is and for some reason (a reason he will not think about right now) avoids those areas. People are already fleeing down the hill anyways, screaming in terror as the dragon warms up its breath and sends leagues of fire down after them. Many get caught in the inferno. Tommy will not forget the smell any time soon, or the sound.
It was a mob, and now it is gone. The battle takes minutes. Some people get lucky hits; the dragon bears a few cuts here and there on it’s shining scales, a crossbow bolt and a pitchfork wound in the heavy meat of its breast. But those who managed to hit the beast are now surely gone, and Tommy is left standing at the edge of a smoldering treeline staring out at a field of burnt corpses.
The dragon turns, chest heaving, smoke billowing from it’s nostrils, and locks gazes with Tommy.
Carefully, he steps out from the treeline and into the ruined battlefield. Steps around corpses and the moaning remains of what will be corpses, bodies too burnt to be human anymore. He knew these people, once. He’s sure some of them escaped, fleeing down the hillside, but none of that matters anymore. He’d known them, but then they’d come into his home– Wilbur’s home– and destroyed everything. He steps around them as they die and keeps walking, right up until he is face to face with the dragon. It lowers its head, bending down to meet him as he approaches. Gold eyes meet blue, and Tommy reaches up a sooty hand to scrub the remnants of tears off his face. He’s sure he looks like a mess. He can’t find it in himself to care, not when he’s staring down a beast.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, voice cracking. It echoes across the way, above the crackle of fire.
I thought you knew, the dragon says, and it’s strange. It’s mouth doesn’t move, but Tommy can hear the words all the same.
The dragon has Wilbur’s voice.
“Maybe I did,” Tommy says. The air is dry, all the moisture burnt out of it. His throat hurts. “Maybe I knew and didn’t want to admit to myself. But why– why this?”
They hurt you. They came to kill me. Destroyed my home when all we were doing was living peacefully.
“Was it all a lie, then? About the dragon coming back? You were here the whole time, after all–”
No. No. There was another dragon. He could come back eventually, but… Wilbur’s voice sighs, heavy and deep. I don’t think he is coming back.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Tommy asks again, and his voice cracks worse. He reaches up, because it’s Wilbur and Wilbur wouldn’t hurt him. His hand touches scales– they are smooth, and warm. One of them is chipped. He drags his thumb over it, the scale bigger than his hand even when he spreads his fingers wide.
When you were smaller, I didn’t want to frighten you, Wilbur admits, letting Tommy run his hands over his scales and shutting his huge eyes. He sounds tired. You were so insistent on fighting the dragon. And then when you got older, I figured you knew and just didn’t want to say anything about it. I would’ve told you, but what we had…
“It was nice,” Tommy says. He swallows. Wilbur’s head shifts and he turns, the muscles rippling under Tommy’s hands as he does so. But he doesn’t move– he just shifts to blink his eyes open and look at the mouth of the cave behind them. “I’m sorry.”
It isn’t your fault. It was going to happen someday. Wilbur sounds resigned. Besides, that wasn’t the entirety of my home. There’s another cave, further up. Larger.
“I never thought a dragon could fit in that one, honestly,” Tommy says, and Wilbur chuffs, an amused noise that makes his whole body shudder with movement. Tommy glances down at his feet and lets his hand drop. “Wil–”
Get on my back.
“What?”
Get on my back. I’ll bring you up, and I’ll change back and explain everything. I’m not used to being like… this for so long. I’m used to being human. Wilbur blinks at him, long and slow, then dips his head like he’s gesturing. Come on. Haven’t you always wanted to ride a dragon, not just defeat one?
“I haven’t defeated you,” Tommy says weakly.
No, but I am quite tamed, Wilbur shoots back, and he snickers despite himself. Tommy hesitates for only a moment, because this is Wilbur. I will protect you, the dragon says softly, and it’s enough to convince him (because the evidence lies around them in strangled cries of death.
The village had never been kind to Tommy, only tolerable. Wilbur, however. Wilbur had been kind.)
There’s a spot on his back where Tommy fits perfectly, like a strange piggyback ride. Tommy settles into the dip of his scales and fits his hands into them, holding tight as Wilbur raises his wings and takes off. The trip is short and isn’t really a flight– just a short movement as they go higher up the mountain, but the air is cool against Tommy’s face and he gets a bird’s eye view of the land around them. A swath of burnt forest and ground directly below, and the village in the distance. He raises his head a bit higher, fear leaving him and turning to wonder. The world goes on forever into the distance, forest and plains and fields.
“Wilbur?” Tommy shouts over the rush of wind, the sound of Wilbur’s great feet hitting the ground.
Yes? Wilbur asks. Are you alright?
“Fine,” Tommy assures him, patting the back of his neck. The shock is starting to wear off– he blinks, swallows. “Just– thinking.”
About? Wilbur questions. There is another cave mouth up here, much larger than the one below, but definitely connected. Wilbur meanders towards it, shifting underneath him as Tommy holds on and stares back into the horizon.
“You say dragons sometimes don’t come back,” Tommy says out loud. The air is thinner up here– he has to take longer, deeper breaths to feel normal. “What if we went out and chased after them instead of waiting?”
Wilbur is quiet for one long moment.
Not the worst idea you’ve ever had, he says, ducking his head to enter the cave. And you’ve eaten mud.
Gripping the scales of his brother– dragon, human, who fucking cares – Tommy laughs.