flash fiction
dragon’s tongue
Cicada shriek and the bare trees tremble, blazing in the sun like an engorged eye. I stare at my ruined garden and swing wide the gate. Only one plant still stands, my last dragon’s tongue, the soil all about trampled and strewn with twisted roots and limbs.
Claw prints lead to the briar-and-nettle fence. Bloodied fur dangles there and I smile. I retrieve a trowel and pot from the garden shed and gently uproot the plant: its red-speckled leaves droop and stinging hairs writhe and flutter in the wind. I hold it aloft and take inside where I set it on the mantelpiece beside my parents’ twin burial urn.
“And you’re here why?” Liana says, hunched beside the fire outside her hut.
Night’s fallen. I tremble from the long, steep climb.
“My garden’s done for, but I’ve saved the last dragon’s tongue.”
The door ajar, wreathes of green mist spill out, redolent of lavender, mugwort, sienna, rose.
My nose quivers and eyes tear. Liana herself smells of clay, ash, woodsmoke. I try to stroke her long skeined hair, but she swats my hand away.
“Stay here,” she scolds and goes inside.
Back home, I lock my doors and sprinkle demon pepper and spark grass throughout the house. I throw back the curtains so there’s no shade anywhere. Then I sit, rocking in my chair, eyes wide, as my dragon’s tongue shrivels and fades. My parents’ ghosts appear and return my stare, passive and accusatory.
~
Liana and I were once brother and sister before our parents sold her to the local sorceress. That was years ago, and now our parents and the sorceress are dead. I used to bring Liana tomatoes, figs, beets, squash. Now I flay tree bark, cull moss and mushrooms, parboil twigs and grass. I dream of the creature, fat and dozy in her lair, her beefy brood guzzling at her teats.
~
I follow the creature’s scent back to her den. She’s gone but the pups peer blind and blinking, squirming and mewling. I’ve brought cuttings of dragon’s tongue so they’ll think I’m their mother. I crawl inside and the creatures nuzzle against me. Gently I squeeze their soft
skulls until their brains burst through. Then I lick the skulls clean, smack my fingers, sigh, and lean back, hugging the dead pups to my chest.
~
“You’re back,” Liana says.
I set a bowl of fungi, lichen, and locusts before her, which she begins to munch on. I tell Liana my dream.
“Not good,” she says and spits. “The creature’s also dreaming of you. Soon she’ll be on the hunt again, and who do you think she’ll go after?”
Next day her hut’s gone, fresh scat strewn everywhere.
~
I follow. The trail narrows, a knife-edge above the canyon. The cliff’s volcanic tuff is riddled with pits, dents, shafts. Petroglyphs—starred, whorled, wavy—catch the falling light. Our forebears once lived here and their spirits wander the canyons and mesas. Atop the cliff, ancient stone houses gleam like rotting teeth.
After sunset, I find shelter in a cave. I’ve brought my dragon’s tongue replanted in my parents’ urn. The ashes prove magical: new tendrils slink along the cavern floor and twirl about my limbs, and hairs no longer sting but caress my neck and face. As I sleep I feel a long, sinuous tongue press against my lips.
~
The next day I emerge in bright light. I’m plated with dragon’s hide, my feet and hands grown claws. Wet, nascent wings sprout from my shoulder blades, and I reek of spore, mud, placenta.
The trail’s gone, but I scuttle up the cliff, lizard-like. One great stone tower juts above the rubble. Flames encircle it, and from the tallest window, Liana appears.
In her arms, a clutch of dragon’s eggs. I clamor atop the mesa. An iron portal set in scree leads to the tower. But am I too late?
~
We played here, Liana and I, years ago. Knew almost every cleft, niche, passage, rung. Scrawled graffiti, gathered relics, communed with ghosts glad of human company, even children. But they warned us to avoid certain places—nests, burrows, roost—where even they dared not go. Liana, always the more adventurous . . . .
~
I scramble up the tower stairs, walls warping, smoke raveling. At the top Liana perches beneath burning timbers. Her fur’s sleek and new leather wings beat against the roof. Beneath her scaly feet a litter of offspring slither from shattered eggs.
“What now, brother?” Liana asks.
Strange to call me that. It’s hard to believe we’re kindred. I recall our parents, startled and purblind throughout our raising, grateful when the sorceress took Liana, puzzled and frightened when she didn’t take me.
“And what shall they call you?” Liana continues, beak aimed at the hatchlings.
~
The dragon’s tongue. The creature in its lair. Ash, urn. A tower ablaze. All inscribed together, same petroglyph, a helix of love, fear, and endless permutation, each unknown to itself, bride and groom meeting for the first time, always.
~
I take another step and join Liana—and our children—beneath the fiery rafters.
First published in Danse Macabre.
Artwork: from Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652). Reprinted with permission from The Public Domain Review.
