The Descent of Dragons

The Descent of Dragons

a Greenmeadows story by Stephen Brooke

“Before man, was the race of dragons. Not formed were they, like men, in the image of the gods, nor were their minds like those of men.

“In those days—”

“Just how long ago was this?”

Ransax looked up from his volume, his annoyance obvious—to those who knew dragons. “Millions of years, I’m sure.”

“Millions?” objected Sir Grissol. “Surely the world hasn’t been around that long!” He noted his scaly friend’s expression and decided to drop the subject. “Well, go on.”

“In those days,” continued Ransax, settling down again to his reading, “only wild beasts roamed the earth. And the gods said, Let us raise up the beasts, so they might know us.”

“You say this is a holy text, Randy?” asked the old knight. “I always thought you dragons were a rather, well, skeptical bunch.”

“Indeed,” replied the dragon. “That does not mean we haven’t our traditions. Though,” he added, with a slight, steamy chuckle, “we may not take them quite so literally as humans do.”

“Hmmph. I do believe that might have been intended as an insult.”

“You are what you are.” Ransax shrugged, his wings stirring up a faint breeze in the study. Dust wafted from atop the high, disorderly stacks of books.

“Our holy texts are repositories of dragon wisdom. And,” he added, “often pretty good stories. We dragons do love stories.”

Grissol Greenmeadows gave him a knowing smile. “This is one human who has learned not to take your stories quite so literally. I realize you like to, um, embellish.”

“Perhaps, a smidgen,” admitted Ransax. “But back to the Draconotheca.

“Many were the creatures they shaped, creatures of the air and of the sea and of the earth. Then of the stock of the weasel and badger, creatures that dwell in the earth, fierce, cunning, they created the dragons.”

“So you’re actually a—a weasel?” gasped the knight. “Everyone thinks you’re reptiles!”

“And we usually do not attempt to disabuse them of the notion. Or we eat them before the subject comes up. But after all, Greenmeadows, do I truly seem very lizard-like? I’m not exactly cold-blooded, after all!”

“Well, I had wondered about the ears,” admitted Sir Grissol. “Never seen a snake with ears.”

Ransax pricked his large fox-like ears. “The better to hear you with, my friend.”

Sir Grissol chuckled. “That’s a good line. Someone should use it in a story.”

“I suppose so. Anyway, your folk tend to confuse us with the wyverns, who are reptiles. To our eyes we seem nothing alike but then you humans all look much the same to us. Incidentally,” added Ransax, “the gods formed your race of the apes. It is rather obvious to my people that they didn’t raise you very far.”

“At least we left our trees,” huffed Grissol. “You still live in a hole in the ground.”

“Ha, quite true, my friend, quite true. I admittedly can’t see you climbing a tree.”

Grissol, for a moment, recalled a much younger version of himself doing just that. Ah, the apples that grew in his neighbor’s orchard! And his neighbor’s daughter who might be found there as well—hmm, no need to mention any of that to this dragon. “So, you were raised up from weasels and we can claim the monkeys as our ancestors. Did the gods mess about with any other animals?”

“There is something about that in here,” replied Ransax, leafing through his tome. “Not much though, as I remember. This book concentrates on my own people.” He stopped and peered at a page. “Ah, yes. There were eagles. Or maybe hawks? It’s a bit unclear. And the dolphins, of course. In other words,” said the dragon, looking at his companion over the top of the out-sized book, “one intelligent race for each of the four elements.”

“Dragons are fire, right?”

“No. Earth. You sun-loving humans are the People of the Fire.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” admitted the elderly knight. With a chuckle, he added, “I could be pretty hotheaded as a youth.”

Ransax was still poring over his text. “Yes, eagles. It makes sense that they would have to be fairly large to be more than bird-brains.” He shut the Draconotheca and placed it atop a tall stack of books. “I shall have to sort these out someday,” he mused. “Speaking of descending, I just received some new barrels of Saragossan wine. What say we go down to the cellar and sample it?”

“I thought this was a cellar,” said Grissol. It was downstairs from the living quarters, wasn’t it?

“I have cellars below cellars below cellars here, my friend,” claimed the dragon. “After all,” he added, with a wink, “I have to hide my treasure somewhere.”

Grissol Greenmeadows snorted. “I keep hearing of this treasure but I’ve never seen any of it.” He rose from the overstuffed chair and stretched. “But I’ll settle for seeing some of your wine right now.”

“Bring along a lamp, will you? I know you humans don’t see that well in the dark.”

Lord Ransax led the way, down a dim hallway and then a stair. “We dragons tend to be secretive about our hordes. In the blood, you know?” he told the knight, with a slightly embarrassed air. “I’ll admit I sometimes go down and sleep on it. It’s a bad habit but it is something my people do.”

“Sounds deucedly uncomfortable to me,” opined Sir Grissol. “And cold.”

“Dragon bodies tend to heat up any space they occupy rather quickly,” replied his host. “Lying on a cool pile of gold can actually be quite refreshing. Ah, here we are.” He pushed open a heavy oaken door. “Hmm, I thought I locked that after the delivery.”

Stacks of barrels and racks of bottles lined the walls of the chamber. It was a well-stocked wine cellar indeed and the knight felt a twinge of envy when he thought of his own few small casks of port.

“The new stuff is over here.” Ransax shook his head. “That barrel shouldn’t be on its end. Monsieur Biber’s delivery men know better than that.”

“Biber, eh? I can’t afford to deal with him.” Grissol ambled over to the barrel, marked ‘M. Biber,’ meaning to put it onto its side—and perhaps sample it. It tipped over readily on its own. The loose lid fell off and rolled across the stone floor. “I say, this one is already drained!”

Ransax looked into the empty keg and sniffed suspiciously. “There was a human in this barrel.” His long nose wrinkled. “Or I think it was a human. Slightly odd scent to it.”

“An intruder?” asked Grissol. “Ah! Your treasure!”

The dragon immediately turned and started for the doorway. “Follow me,” came his curt order. To the right and down stairs hewn from the stone they hurried, Sir Grissol huffing at the exertion of keeping up with the dragon. He had never seen this part of his friend’s lair, nor even knew it existed.

Nor had he ever seen the dragon so focused. “I can still catch the scent,” growled Ransax. “Definitely headed for my treasure chamber. Watch your head.”

The rough rocky tunnel was too dark for Grissol to see any ceiling. Not by the light of the little oil lamp he carried. He reached upward and couldn’t touch it. More of a concern for the dragon, maybe. Ransax halted and looked back at his companion.

“He’s seen it now, and knows the way. I suppose I should eat him.” He gave Grissol a sidelong look. “You would have to go all knightly on me, wouldn’t you?”

“Afraid so, old boy. Can’t have you eating people in my neighborhood.”

“Well, here we are.” There was no door, only a hole in the rock. This was all natural cave down here, Grissol suspected. He held high his light.

With a great foghorn of a bellow, Ransax sprang into the chamber, only to stop short.

“Why that’s no man!” exclaimed Sir Grissol. Before them stood a somewhat diminutive dragon. Diminutive beside the impressive Lord Ransax, that is, who approached a ton and a half in weight. Other dragons, naturally, could recognize that Ransax was fat and old, but to human eyes he was simply very large.

This dragon scaled at maybe a third of that and was several feet shorter. “Draubax?”

It hung its head and murmured, “Hi, Grandpa.”

“So you were in that barrel. And in human form?”

“Yes, sir,” admitted the young worm.

Grissol knew dragons could do this and had seen Ransax as a rather disreputable-looking fat old man on occasion, but had never been there for the actual changing of form. He wondered briefly whether the dragon was just as weighty when it was human. That would have made for a decidedly heavy barrel!

“I sneaked into the winery and hid,” continued Draubax. “I—I wanted to see your treasure! I’ll have a pile like this someday!”

“Ha, you’d probably like to steal mine, boy!” Ransax thundered.

The young dragon cringed. “No, sir, no! I wouldn’t think of it.”

“Don’t be silly,” his grandfather told him. “Of course you would. You’re supposed to! That’s what we dragons do.”

Grissol Greenmeadows, meanwhile, was quietly surveying the glittering heap of treasure. “As untidy as the rest of your place, Randy,” he stated.

“I know exactly where every coin is,” came the reply. “And if any are missing—” Ransax gave his grandson an exaggeratedly menacing look, before whispering to Grissol, “Were that another dragon he would not leave here alive. But Draubax is family. From one of my daughter’s litters.”

“I know where it is also, now,” observed the knight.

“That doesn’t worry me. The butler knows his way down here too. I trust him to be discreet. I tend to be secretive with humans just on general principle and with dragons on long experience.”

He turned back to the other dragon. “It is bad enough, young fellow, that you know about my treasure now. What is worse, I am short a butt of wine!”

“It was only a puncheon,” Grissol observed.

“Well, it still quite a lot of wine,” fumed Ransax. “Wine I paid for!” He regarded the young dragon for some time, apparently pondering. “So what do I do with you? Lock you up down here?”

“With the hoard? He might enjoy that.”

The great dragon started to snicker. It grew into guffaws. “Indeed he would! Well, come along upstairs, boy, and we’ll think about this.”

Draubax quietly followed them back to the library. There, his grandfather suddenly demanded, “Show me your human shape!”

The young dragon eyed Grissol. “In front of him?”

“Think of him as family. Your dear old Uncle Grissol.”

Said uncle harumphed rather loudly. Draubax simply shrugged and slowly began to change, growing smaller, bat-like wings becoming arms, tail and nose shortening. It took a few minutes before a chubby teenage boy, fairly normal aside from his stub of a tail, stood before them.

Ransax looked him over. “Very well. Until I tell you otherwise, you will remain in that form, my boy.” His voice became a couple tones lower and decidedly more menacing. “And you’d better behave or I’ll cut off your tail!”

The lad gasped. In a whispered aside—one the dragon-boy could undoubtedly hear—Ransax told his friend, “He wouldn’t be able to return to his dragon form till it grew back. In a decade or two. It’s sort of our connection to our other self.

“Greeves,” he called. “Come in here, will you?”

The butler entered at once. He gave the naked boy but the slightest of glances. “Sir?”

“The lad here will be staying with us a while. Fix him up with a room, will you? And see if you can find him some clothes.” He turned back to his grandson. “Hmm, you should have a human name, shouldn’t you? Ever use one?”

“No, sir.” Draubax might have seemed offended were he not already so cowed.

“How about Drab?” suggested Grissol Greenmeadows.

“Splendid! Drab you are.”

“Do I have a say?” asked the newly-named Drab.

“Absolutely not. Now run along and do what Greeves tells you.”

“That was interesting,” commented Grissol, once the two had departed. “Always wondered about how you changed. Ha, I guess I still do!”

“Most understandable, Greenmeadows. You see, we don’t change in quite the sense you’re probably thinking. We keep our alternate forms in, um, what you might call another world, and switch them out. What looks like a transformation is really one body going away and another coming.

“Hmm. That actually makes a sort of sense.”

“Don’t I always make sense?” inquired Ransax.

Grissol ignored the question. “Other worlds, eh? I say, do werewolves do the same sort of trick?”

“They do, indeed, except in their case the wolf demon already existed in another world and became entangled with a mortal human.”

“Oh! Hmm, could you cut off their tails to cure them?”

“Doesn’t work quite the same way, I’m afraid. Now what am I going to do with that dragonling? I can’t let him go spreading stories about my horde or how he tricked me. And I don’t much want him living with me, family or not.”

“Your daughter’s boy, you say? Does this mean you had a wife at some point?”

“I still do. We mate for life but can not stand to live with our mates for very long. So we visit from time to time. During the mating season, of course, but also we sometimes simply miss each other and our families.” His sigh might have suggested he missed that family right then. Or it might have meant something else entirely. “I should probably let them know where Draubax is.”

“Drab, you mean.”

“Drab, indeed. It can wait. Annex should keep a better eye on her boy but I remember well how rebellious young dragons are at that age. That’s why a fair number don’t get past that age.”

Sir Grissol had a feeling Draubax might not if he spent much time in the cave of his grandfather. “How about letting him come and stay with me a few days? Get him out of your hair, so to speak. Or scales.”

Ransax gave him a most skeptical look. “Are you sure of that?”

“How much trouble could he be?” At once he told himself it was a stupid question. Teenage boys, whether human or dragon, were, well, teenage boys. “I’ll make him my esquire.”

“That’s rather impetuous. But so be it.”

“If young Drab is willing,” Grissol added.

“Whether he is or not,” came the dragon’s reply. “Greeves! Get that boy in here!”

An hour later, the unwilling Drab walked beside Grissol, who led his horse. He had found the dragon-boy had no idea of how to ride, nor how to do much of anything human. Rarely had Drab been beyond the mountains and the company of other dragons. Greeves had found him a kilt and blouse, both at least three sizes too large, and a straw hat for his big round head. The hair on that head was thick and black. The face below it was sullen.

But he was beginning to take interest in the things they passed, despite himself. Women, in particular. They continued, neither in any hurry, to the River Acerola, the border between Pitanga and Carambola, and the wooden toll bridge spanning it.

“So who be this?” asked the man at the turn-pike, giving the boy a friendly but curious look. Strangers were far from common. Moreover, the lad would be something to gossip about later at the tavern.

“My new esquire, Master Drab. I say, does he get the children’s rate?”

The soldier shook his head. “Too big. That’ll be tuppence for the both of you and a farthing for Battercap. Not making old Batter carry you today, eh? I reckon she appreciates that.”

There might have been a veiled comment on the knight’s ample midsection in that but he chose to ignore it and led boy and horse across. Stepping onto solid ground, he told Drab, “We’re in the kingdom where I live now. It’s not far to my keep.”

“Then we’re not in Grandfather’s country anymore? What’s it called?”

“Pitanga. But you’re definitely not beyond his reach.” He noted the sobering effect that had and went on. “You may be ignorant of most things knightly—or even human—but I think you are an enterprising lad. The way you got into your grandfather’s cave is evidence of that!”

For the first time, Grissol saw a smile on the boy’s face. “It was a pretty good trick, wasn’t it?”

“It would have been if you’d thought it through and had a way to leave his cave.”

“With his treasure!” Drab beamed at that thought.

Grissol didn’t think much of it. An irate Ransax would not make a good neighbor. Drab was looking at women again. Girls this time. From the corner of his eye, he watched a pair pass them on the path.

“I’ve never seen a girl up close before,” he said, perhaps a bit wistfully. “I wonder how they look without their clothes.”

“You’re not the first.” Apparently, along with a human form went a human nature and a human interest in the opposite sex. “You know, they were looking at you too.”

“They were?” He might have puffed out his chest just a bit.

“They were. I would recommend you not show them your tail, however. Here’s my place. Greenmeadows Manor.”

Drab politely avoided being critical of the little manor house. “I’ll, um, live here? For a while?”

“If you wish. There’s really nothing to stop you from changing back into a dragon and flying away, is there? I mean, Ransax might be peeved at your disobedience but he wouldn’t go after you.”

“And cut off my tail?” The boy smirked. “I don’t think so. It might be best to keep Grandpa happy though. For a while, as I said. Are there girls here?”

“There’s a whole kingdom full of them.”

“Good,” said Grissol’s new esquire, and followed him in.

appears in Lands Far Away 2021