“Oh no,” I said. “I’ve had enough dragon flying for a lifetime, thanks.”
Nevertheless, as time went on, the beauty of the dragon ridges tempted me. I remembered the thrill of my first dragon flight. And more and more, I’d look with envy at the flying dragons, soaring freely above the mountain seas. Until one day, I finally took up the knotted rope and climbed on. I clutched the line that circled its neck, my belly flat against its back, my legs wrapped under its wings, squeezing its sides tightly. And then, it dove off the cliff and lifted through the air.
I could hear Daron laughing as he grew smaller and smaller below me. He raised himself with his staff and shouted up. “Lean with your weight! Squeeze with the opposite knee!”
I pressed my right knee into the dragon’s side, and it careened left, smoothly, easily, the wind flapping beneath us.
“That’s it!” Daron’s voice called.
I knew he wished that he could join me. The young Daron certainly wouldn’t have hesitated to climb on behind me. But he had long since aged beyond such ventures. Although some traces of the red-headed boy remained in him, here and there, he was a changed man. Perhaps, if we had aged together, we would have changed together, molded to each other as one. Alas, the decades yawned like a chasm between us.
I felt as though I befriended a new Daron - an older, wiser, sadder Daron. It was a Daron who taught me politics, new languages, new cultures - who cautioned me against dangers, and who urged me to embrace life’s challenges. Much as a grandfather would his granddaughter. Looking at him was like looking into the future; he was who I would become, an aged monarch of a foreign land.
Gradually, I assumed more responsibilities of the throne. As Daron’s health began to fail, I found myself taking on almost all of his duties. I had already been ruling in his stead for two years when he called me to him, one lonely night. He was lying in his hammock, the priests gathered around him. Candles burned throughout the room in shallow stone dishes.
I saw that he was lucid enough to speak. I laid my hand gently on his. After awhile, he said only, “I’m sorry I made you leave your home. Forgive me, Avril.”
“I’m okay,” I said. But I was afraid. Afraid, because he was leaving me alone in a world that still felt new to me, and afraid that he heard the fear in my voice. It hurt me to know that I was his last regret. “Don’t be sorry.”
In the candlelight, the smoothness of my young hand still lay over the furrows of his aged one.
***
A few days later, Daron passed away. His death came both as a weighted grief and as a surprising relief. His pain was over. His health had been a long decay into the end, and now, he was finally free of the burden that his body had become.
The night of his death, the entire city of Ranoa was quiet. Not even the insects sang. The priests prepared his body in the temple, dressing it in perfume and incense. Prayers were chanted, wishing him a safe return to the Sky God, and thanking him for his time on earth. All the lights in the city were put out in mourning, the only lights coming from the candles in the Temple Palace.
At dawn the next day, we rode our red elephants in a somber procession through the city streets, with Daron’s body lifted on an elaborate pyre. We rode out of the city and through the mountain jungles, dismounting where the bushes thickened. When we reached the dragon ridges, the priests set up Daron’s pyre, fastening it into the rocks so it rose out above the sea waves far below. They surrounded the pyre with carved staves glistening with red garnet.
I stepped forward to give Daron a sky burial. It was a sacred rite reserved only for the divine. I said a few prayers in Ranoan. Then I raised the golden dragon staff and called to the emerald beasts that lined the rocks in their legions. The dragons lifted their heads, crying out, taking to the air. They seemed to know that Daron’s body was meant for them.
We stepped away and watched from a distance.
The dragons converged on the pyre in their numbers until it was buried beneath their green wings. They fought over the remains, their leather wings beating each other. It was a savage sight, seemingly too violent for the peace that a funeral should be. Yet, I told myself, it was no more gruesome than a slow decay beneath the earth. At least, this sky burial was fitting for a child of the Sky God. In this way, he would become a part of the dragons that he loved, his death nourishing their life.
By sunset, it was picked clean. The dragons lifted into the skies, drifting on the sea winds. Their rising wings revealed an empty pyre, bare on the high cliffs. We stood in silence, I alone with the priests, in the stillness of the aftermath. And there, I felt the peace of the funeral, and heard the quiet of the grave.
***
My coronation ceremony was several days later. The mood of the city seemed to rise abruptly into one of cheer and celebration. It was a week of feasting, prayers, and offerings. Farmers donated their best crops to the temple, and merchants parted with their collections of garnet, worth as much as gold in Ranoa. I was even given a mini-pony, no higher than my knee, the size of a dog. These miniature horses were often kept as pets by Ranoans, bred from the slightly larger, wild breeds roaming the lower mountains. Mine was a brown, shaggy creature – plump and well-fed. Its thick coat grew over its eyes, and its hooves made pleasant clicking sounds on the temple’s stone floor.
Throughout the week, hunters also gave up their prize catches. They gathered game from the farthest depths of the jungle, bringing down their quarry with long, horizontal bows, tipped with arrowheads of red elephant tusks. The hunters killed all manner of jungle animals, usually to sell for meat in the markets – wild boars, vibrant birds, monkeys, leopards, even giant tarantulas the size of king crabs. The Ranoan people seemed to eat everything, save for the dragons, their elephants, and each other. Even insects, they plucked from the grass and stirred into their recipes.
The great jungle tarantulas were a frequent gift at my coronation. They were a special Ranoan delicacy, but it was a long time before I tried them. When I finally did, I was surprised how fresh they tasted, like crabmeat. During the feasting week, grand salads of shredded tarantula meat, mixed with green leaves and herbs, were served on large circular stone boards. All food was laid out on the long window ledges of the temple. In front of the dishes, there was much dancing in the candlelight, until dawn finally broke the skies.
On the final night of my coronation, I returned to my room and fell, exhausted, into the hammock. Once, not too long before, it had been Daron’s room, and now, it was mine. Sheltered beneath the arch of the window, I gazed out at my city. It looked like a sleepy city, tired and heavy from feasting. I swung gently in my hammock, cracking open a tarantula leg between my fingers. I dipped the meat in a sweet sauce and savored it as I lay back in a hot night. On the floor behind me, I could hear the soft breathing of my scruffy mini-pony, as it slept, curled on the mosaic tiles.
***
Several weeks passed before I returned to the dragon ridges. The pyre was still there, ringed by the shining garnet staves. I took it down and let it fall, clattering in a long drop to the waves below. The ocean swept it away, and all I had left of Daron were memories.
Loneliness was carving a painful hollow in me. That day, I took a dragon off the ridge and flew it high, until the seas and the green land were like a distant map beneath me. The clouds streaked cold through my hair, as I searched and hoped for a way back to the home I once knew. But no matter how high or how long I flew, the entrance was always hidden, somewhere beyond the reach of my senses. I suppose, it lay above even the range of dragon wings.
Over the years, I would try again and again, each time striving to push my dragon higher or farther. Until finally, my hopes began to wane along with my childhood memories. I would always miss Daron, but the long years gradually smoothed over the pain of his passing, and loneliness no longer drove me into the skies. My attempts to return home became fewer, until the
y ceased completely. As the years grew into decades, I knew that I could never resume life the way I had left it, back in California. For I had already grown into a mature woman, ruled as a queen. Even the English language was fading from my mind.
My teenage years steadily dimmed into the background, as a clouded recollection of time spent in a distant world. Ranoa became the city within which I lived, and for which I lived. Ranoa grew and flourished as I put in efforts to improve trade with the other city-states and to ensure peace. The priests painted murals of my reign on the temple walls, alongside Daron’s reign before mine, and his father’s reign before his.
Soon, the years were passing like days, and all of a sudden, one chilly morning, I woke to find myself an old woman. I wondered how all the days of my life had passed so quickly. The time before me now seemed short, when once, I had looked ahead and seen a whole future.
That misty morning, like so many others before it, I had swung in my hammock, beneath the curve of the window. I looked out at my mountain city, nestled within the green arches of the landscape, and I thought about my youth and the home I had known in my childhood. I realized that I was older than my parents now, the same age as my grandparents. Time in their world had barely passed beyond a few minutes. I had lived nearly my whole life, yet they didn’t even know that I was gone. By the time they discovered, I would have long since passed away.
***
It was the middle of the rainy season when the storm came. But I knew, by looking into the skies, that this storm was different from all the others I had ever seen. Over the mountains, in the direction of the dragon ridges, black clouds were swirling, thick and bestial. Winds swayed the jungle trees, cracking the branches with loud snapping sounds. No rain fell, nor were there any sounds of thunder or streaks of lightning.
The priests came rushing up into my room, their knotted robes flying about their feet. “A god is falling! A god is falling!” they called to me, bowing repeatedly.
I threw my cloak over my shoulders, and grabbed my golden dragon staff.
Together, we hurried to the jeweled temple elephants, riding the red animals away. In the city streets, Ranoans stepped out of their houses, gazing up at the black sky.
Through the jungle paths, we urged the elephants on. At the thicket, the priests waited, while I dismounted and proceeded alone to the familiar dragon ridges. Balancing myself at the edge of the cliffs, I struck the golden staff against the rocks. The echoing sound sent the startled dragons scattering on their wings. They circled above me, reeling with the black clouds.
And then, the heavens cleared. High in the distance, I saw a figure dropping out of the blue sky. It careened down in a wild freefall, until the swirling dragons swept across its path, snatching the figure onto its first dragon flight. The person clung on, the same way I must have been, all those many years ago – small, high, and fragile, flung about on the winds of a foreign world.
I raised my staff to bring the dragons back to the ridges. As I watched the figure riding in, I felt a slight sadness. It had been over two decades since my last dragon flight.
When the dragons landed, the figure collapsed onto the rocks, shaking. Through the green jostle of dragon wings, I saw the girl. The amber curls of her hair shone bright in the sun, like honey.
She was stammering profusely. “She came… I think she came this way.” She peered down the long drop to the ocean far below, and I knew what she must have been thinking.
And then, before she even lifted her face to me, I realized who she was. She was as young as the day I had left her, an entire lifetime ago. It was as though she had stepped from the rusty pages of my memory, back into my presence, fresh and vibrant.
She was still crouched on the ridge, clinging tightly to the ground. She raised her head and looked at me, and there was no sign of recognition.
For a moment, I stared back at my sister, Ashlie, the girl who would one day become the next queen of Ranoa. I wondered what kind of ruler she would be. I knew her temper, her energy, her fervor. She would not be the calm queen that I was. She might even marry a priest, giving rise to a dynasty – a thing that hadn’t been done since the days of Ranoan mythology. Ranoa was a city that had remained much the same for over a thousand years, and I wondered how it would cope with change.
Before me, Ashlie’s eyes were terrified. Sweat soaked her honey-colored curls. My own hair had long since lost its color, and was now a lengthy sheen of white. I had not seen myself in a mirror in all my Ranoan days, and I wondered how I must look to her.
Leaning heavily on my staff, I moved forward, through the crowd of dragons that filled the ledges. I brushed past their leather wings, bent down, and pulled my sister to her feet. I thought hard for the words before they came back to me. And then, they tumbled out, in a sentence of rusty English.
“Welcome, Queen of Ranoa.”
***
When I thought she was ready, I had revealed my identity to her, much in the way that Daron had revealed his to me. It was over a supper of food and drink, with my cell phone propped up, old and worn, on the window ledge.
She didn’t need me to say the words. Like me, she figured it out on her own. After awhile, when she had recovered from the shock, she took out her own cell phone, and flicked it on. It was still a shiny silver. The screen glowed with the last message that I had sent her - my final words to her, bright in the dark.
“I got your message,” she said, then gave a short laugh.
My message had made her realize what I was planning to do. Speeding to the Gate, she had summoned up the courage to follow me through.
And now, six Ranoan years later, she is on the verge of becoming queen. She would make a strong and courageous ruler.
Curled in my familiar hammock, I feel comforted that I leave my city in her hands. I smell the sweet scent of the burning incense, and hear the rustle of the priests as they drift along my bedside. Beyond the window, my city slumbers. I wonder if I will see it again in the dawn, this strange city that I have grown to love. The insects sing their grass songs. In the black sky, the moon is a long crescent, shining above the dark curves of the mountains. And somewhere in the distance, children are laughing.
Daron should not have been sorry that he had persuaded me to come here. For now, I realize it is here that I belong; he had led me home. He had wanted a more meaningful existence for us beyond the Gate, and he had received his wish. Life here is simple, pure, and beautiful.
Though my memory of him is faded, what I do remember is utopian. Perhaps, only in this way could he have remained perfect to me. Only through utopian memory could we have loved each other through all our lives. For otherwise, we might have lived together in a reality that would have torn us apart.
I feel I’m standing before the Gate again, about to follow Daron into an unknown world. But this time, it is a portal through which we all must enter. And what lies on the other side of this gate, none of the living knows. Maybe I will see Daron there. And perhaps, this time, we will have the chance to grow old together.
It will not be long before Ashlie presides over my sky burial. Fitting that I will be carried from this world by the dragons; the same creatures that had brought me here, down from the sky, will be the same creatures that will carry me away.
I am ready for my next dragon flight.
About the author
T.L. Rese was born in Houston, TX. When she was seven, her family moved to Upstate NY, where she grew up before moving to California when she was eighteen. Specializing in epic fantasy, she now has a PhD in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London, and a BA in English from UC Berkeley. Her hobbies include travel, photography, piano, and horseback riding. She can be contacted via her blog: https://www.tlrese.wordpress.com
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