The first thing Mirren dropped was the kitchen knife; she let it fall so the blood spattered the twilit grass, turning it a dusky purple. She didn’t break stride, but walked on, her bare feet cool in the damp grass, her wet arms glistening in the light of the rising moon. The blood reached to her elbows and as she raised her arms to the sky she smelt again the metallic tang. It smelt good which was strange as she loathed the old corpse smell of the Butcher’s shop.
At the stream, she waded into the shallows and dipped her arms into the clear cold, watching the blood spin and spiral away like the ink blots Lucy Cheatham said the psychiatrist would show her.
‘To see if you’re mad,’ she’d said authoritively to Mirren in front of an open-mouthed crowd in the playground. ‘Me Ma says no one minds so much when a little kid says they’ve made friends with a dragon, but if that kid grows into a bigger kid and sits and waits for the dragon to come back, then that kid’s probably a bit…’ she tapped her head with her finger and let her face go slack, ‘…special.’
Mirren had flinched at the word. She’d been called it before by Mr Greaves the Butcher when he’d come to check on Mirren when her Ma was out; he’d sat her on his knee and told her he believed she’d ridden a dragon because she was so special, and it was a shame no one else believed what she said, and happen no one would believe anything she said ever again, and why didn’t she stroke his puppy, which wasn’t a puppy at all.
In the playground, Georgie Mason had stuttered as he’d said, ‘Mirren’ll probably see a… a dragon in the… the ink spots,’ and everyone had laughed. It’d been a big moment for him. Mirren could still see the dopey smile on his face as he’d looked round at the laughing faces. As she stared into the bloody water at the spreading wings and the curving tail and the stream of fire, she wished she could tell him he’d been right.
Dress trailing in the water, she staggered out onto the far bank and clambered over the fallen birch tree. As her palm rested on the peeling bark a sob escaped her and she closed her eyes letting the memory take her: the black dragon coiled around the weathered rocks on the hilltop, his feelings spilling into her as if they were her own. She felt them still: something lost that weighed like rocks in the heart; a sadness that made it hard to breathe; a longing for home so deep it spanned the space between the stars. For a long time they’d looked at each other while Mirren swayed with the largenessof it, trying to grow so she could fit it in. Then, slowly, she’d sat down beside him, her back resting on his scales which warmed her from the fire that burnt within. They’d sat there as night came to join them, and when at last he’d lifted his great head, she’d felt the gentle question, the hesitant invitation like a light in her mind, like a swirling of stars, like unthought possibility.
She’d climbed on his back.
Oh, the wild, sweet joy of it. Flying on the night’s wind, the village so far below her she could cover it with one hand. If she closed her eyes she could hear the stars singing. If she opened her heart, she could feel the universe flood in. When he’d landed, and she’d slid from his back, her arms clinging to his neck so she could feel the rumbling heat that smoldered within him, she’d known he’d come back for her. She’d known it! She felt his promise, warm as kindness, rare as truth.
And so she’d waited.
She’d waited so many long, long nights. Why hadn’t he come?
In her dreams, he always came back.
She slid from the fallen birch, grazing her thigh so it beaded with blood, and began to clamber up the hill. As she climbed higher, her lungs straining, her muscles burning, she felt the wind’s touch, brighter now and wilder, catching at her hair, tossing it around her face. Pausing, Mirren took out her Ma’s gauze scarf, red as her blood-soaked dress, and held it out so it kicked and snapped in the wind. It was the scarf her Ma wore to the Black Bull. The scarf the men glanced at before checking their wallets. The scarf Lenny Greaves, the Butcher’s son had wrapped round her neck at school as he’d pushed her up against the bike shed and made her body ugly with his damp, pinching hands. ‘Me dad says he bets you’re as good as her,’ he’d sniggered, but then the teacher had come and given them both a detention.
Mirren let the scarf go, and watched the wind take it up, up twisting it into a Y, an N, a question mark.
Yes.
Tonight she’d do it. Tonight, she’d burned her boats. Tonight, she’d wait and if the dragon didn’t come back… Mirren thought of the high rocks and the steep fall below and peace filled her spacious as a mind without thought.
The last thing she dropped was the note Ma had left that evening.
Gone to the Black Bull.
Back late.
Mr Greaves’ll look in on you.
Be good.
Ma
She screwed up the torn envelope in her fist, hurled it as far as she could, then turned to face her last climb..
The great rocks were weathered smooth and cool beneath her knees and palms as she pulled herself up and up until she reached the place where she’d made friends with a dragon..
Why hadn’t he come?
On the highest rock, Mirren paused, breathing in the sweet honeysuckle scent of the wind, her arms outstretched like wings, and felt the prickle of starshine on her bare skin. In the southwest, the full moon was rising, a soft amber-gold.
Why hadn’t he come?
She looked up into the night as galaxy upon galaxy was revealed, as the Earth spun away from the sun. A mystery so deep you could drown in it.
Taking a slow breath, she held the moon’s gaze and leaned into the wind….
But … what was that? Mirren let out a sob. Could it be…? A darkness across the moon. A dragon, black as night-shadow, beating his ragged wings, come to take her home.
Author: Author of three picture books, Little Grey and the Great Mystery, Are You Sad, Little Bear? and I Imagine, Rachel Rivett has an MA in Writing for Children. She is delighted to have short stories in anthologies with Mother’s Milk and Retreat West. You can find her at www.writewild.weebly.com