Lost and found

It was too dangerous to try and return to the safety of the scrub. The gorgons went that way and, besides, Stripes fled in the opposite direction. Once Runt was absolutely sure he was alone he slowly emerged from under the sacks.

He picked up the dog’s trail a few hundred yards further from the cart. Small drops of blood, starting to dry brown, led further up the mountain. Runt was, at once, grateful the pup had fled, but also worried about the blood, and where the pup was now.

There was a rough trail leading into the foothills of the mountain. Weeds overgrew most of the narrow path but, here and there, bare rock and the occasional drop of drying blood encouraged Runt to push on. He used his spear as a walking stick when the ground became uneven. Later, when he rested, he braided some twine taken from the sacks into a rope and the spear, from then on, was either in his hand or tied across his back.

He was so focused on scouting the trail, straining his eyes for signs of Stripes’ passing, that it took a startled pair of pigeons to cause him to look up. He gasped, and stared, and, for a second, his head swam at the height. Without realising, Runt found himself halfway up the side of the mountain. From here, he saw the scrub stretch away down below in both directions, a strip of brilliant dark green hugging the inside loop of the mountains. He saw the fey-trees, those islands within the Wilds, and the light green pastures of the farmland beyond. He saw the city of Demonia, with the outer ring that clung to the hillside and wound its way up to the white walls and grand towers of the inner circle. He saw the road that led to the port, grey on green, cutting directly through the Wilds to connect the city to the sea.

From here, the road looked like a festering gash on one of the hounds after the wolf fight. Tyron trimmed the hairs one either side of the wound to stop infection. As the wounds began to heal, they scabbed over and oozed. The destruction of the Wilds on either side of the road was like that. The scrub’s various shades of green and yellow became brown, grey, or black where the trees were cut and removed, or burned, or left to rot. It was for the safety of the traffic, of course. Horses, humans, and the cargo in the carts were safe from the wolves when there was no scrub for the monsters to hide in.

The port, too, could be seen from here. Two boats bobbed in the water by the jetty. Several carts were there, unloading their goods into the boats. Trade was the source of Demonia’s riches. They said every aspect of the inner city was lavished with gold. Door handles, helmets, cutlery, chamber-pots – if it could be made of gold there was every chance that it was, within the inner city. The boats took away the wool, wheat, and butter, and they brought back bars of gold. Just where this gold was coming from, Runt wasn’t sure, but there must have been an awful lot of it, if you believed the stories. A jet black, heavily armoured cart, pulled by four imposing horses, sat by the port. Runt didn’t know where the gold came from, but this is where it was loaded, before being towed up into the city treasury.

Runt looked across and up from the port to see the Head of the Dragon. He stood, in fact, halfway up its cheek. This final mountain in the long chain loomed over the waters beneath it. On the other side of the waters, barely poking above the waves, the Tail started the chain again and, from there, the peaks grew up and swept around, forming the near perfect circle of the Dragon-scale mountains.

It was called the head for very good reasons. Whether by the action of the waves, or some vast calamity, the mountain had been hollowed into a half-arch. Below, spears of rock jutted up through the ocean waters. These were the lower jaw and teeth of the beast. Sailors called the dangerous passage “the Drake’s maw” and, every few years, a careless ship would wreck itself against the rocks while navigating into port. The upper jaw of the Dragon’s mouth boasted vast, deadly fangs as well. Stalactites hung over the waves from the inner arch of rock. The boats were forced to sail beneath the shadows of the maw to enter the port of Demon’s Land and, it was said, only the bravest sailors could bring themselves to look up while doing so. The vision of death lurking in the archway above could drive a man insane.

Up ahead, Runt saw the Eye of the Dragon. It glittered in the rays of the sun rising towards midday. Many stories were told of this eye and the reasons why it glittered but, much later, Runt would learn it was merely a rich vein of quartz, a glassy type of rock. Still, without knowing that, and from where he stood, he could feel the Eye’s gaze fixed upon him, frowning at the intrusion. Beyond the Eye, at the end of the arch, the Nose. Plumes of orange smoke occasionally belched from the end of the arch and, it was said, to smell those fumes meant certain death.

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One night in the city, months ago, while foraging for the pup’s meal, Runt was forced to hide from a terrible commotion. A group of people were walking together, calling someone’s name.

“Ruth, Ruth!” one older woman cried while twisting her apron in knots. “Where could my poor little girl be?”

The others in the group were Ruth’s older sisters, brothers, and an aunt. They spread out and looked in all sorts of places while the mother grew increasingly frantic. She literally wept for joy when, calling out from across the way, a trooper appeared, carrying a lantern in one hand, and holding a small girl’s hand in the other. Ruth, it turned out, was picking dandelions down by the water hole and lost track of time. The small girl gave the trooper a necklace of flowers to thank him for the light.

The woman then proceeded to yell at the poor girl all the way home.

Runt knew just how the mother felt when, as he rounded the corner of the track, he found Stripes dashing and splashing in a shallow pond. The dog’s tail wagged excitedly as he pounced, pawed, and snapped at the water.

Only minutes before Runt had been preparing himself for the worst. In his mind, he imagined finding Stripes on the track, bled dry from the gorgons’ attack.

“Stripes! Get here!” Runt yelled. The pup nearly tumbled over in his haste to turn and greet his master. Runt tried to growl again but found it difficult to stay angry. Stripes licked his face from top to bottom before rolling over and demanding a tummy rub. His tail wagged so furiously now that the dog’s entire rear end wobbled. Runt saw the red spot on the dog’s shoulder. It was only a small nick and had dried to a scab nicely.

“Well, we’ve both been a bit lucky there, haven’t we pup?” Runt said, laughing and rubbing the dog’s belly.

They rested through the hottest part of the day by this small pool of water. Runt ate some of the forbidden fruit stored in his leather pouch and, like most times, only realised he ate too many after snoring himself awake hours later. They sat in full shade now. The sun, moving westward, fell behind the mountains which began casting their long fingers of shadow across the Wilds and into the farmland beyond.

Only one patch of trees, Runt noticed, remained fully in the light. The sun still blazed in the gap between the head and tail of the dragon. It illuminated the road, the carnage of cleared trees around it, and the Wilds to the left and right of the destruction. The head threw terrifying shadows across the port.

The boy and his dog sat somewhere beneath the magnificent eye of the dragon. If he craned his neck, Runt could just make out the glassy rockface far above. He would learn, much later, the pool they sat near was called the Lake of Tears, laying, as it did, directly below the eye. The pool collected the teardrops shed by the giant eye of the beast. Of course, the tears were simply water. And they didn’t fall from the eye itself, but from a natural spring somewhere up above where the water oozed out of a crack in the rockface. Runt could picture Greybeard, sitting by the campfire, explaining both sides of the tale. And he always used to finish by reminding the children “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

It was the gorgons who named it. In times now forgotten by all but a few, those abominable creatures walked this trail to the lake when the need arose. It was they who fashioned the track, long ago, now grown over with weeds. In ages past they would walk, in single file, up the track, to sit around this lake and sing. Yes, they would sing, and to a passer-by it would, no doubt, sound like one hundred screaming children rattling one hundred metal buckets filled with gravel. But they sang, nonetheless, and to the gorgons it sounded just as it should.

They sang, it was said, to appease the dragon. In gorgon tales the dragon was not dead. It was not choked to death on its tail, as Greybeard told. According to the gorgons, the dragon slept, and waited for the world to end. At the end of the world the dragon would awaken and shudder violently, and belch fire, and vomit flaming rock, and cast destruction across the island of Demon’s Land, and all would be burned, and all would be lost. Occasionally the dragon would dream, and take fright, and breathe gusts of orange smoke out its nose. Whenever this happened the gorgons would march up the mountain, and sing to the dragon, and soothe it back into a deeper sleep.

All this happened a long time ago. The gorgons no longer followed the old ways. They drank, they fought, they swore, and they hid from the world in their tunnels of rock. The track was overgrown. The ancient customs were forgotten. But the dragon still dreamed, and occasionally took fright, and breathed gusts of orange smoke out its nose. Only, no one came any more to sing, and soothe it back to sleep.

Orange coloured smoke could be seen billowing from the Dragon’s nose almost every day now. Humans, with their short and fickle memories, assumed it had always been that way.