The Great Hero is a Schoolteacher

My wings flap in the sunset, but I don’t feel the freedom that usually comes when I fly. Instead, something I can’t explain weighs on my chest, and my scales itch behind my neck. The landscape below looks like it’s burning. Or maybe it is.

It is indeed burning, because I’m burning it.

I breathe fire, again and again, and a whole city goes into flames. Countless smoldering corpses rise from the ashes, with embers for a halo, and their empty eyes curse me. I’m cursed. There’s no escaping my crimes.

I open my eyes and see the night sky through the dormer. How long did I manage to sleep this time, before the nightmare caught up with me again? I push the sweat-drenched pillow away, sit up and stretch. Here, in Carastra, I have to sleep in a small bedroom with a mansard roof. It’s comfortable enough for my human body, but there’s no space for me to turn back into a dragon, and I suppose the room was chosen on purpose. The door is locked and guarded, and no matter what shape I take, I can’t get through the dormer. I’m no longer an honorable guest here. I’m serving a sentence I deserved.

Who am I fooling? I deserved so much worse.

I walk to the window and open it. The familiar round shape of the chapel is a shadow among many more, while lanterns light the courtyard on my right. The peaceful skyline almost makes up for the desolation I made of what used to be a garden.

Except nothing will ever make up for it. Even when I finish restoring the council room to a semblance of magnificence, even when I replant the garden down to the last blade of grass, the dead will never come back to life. My conscience will never be clean. I might never even get rid of the nightmares.

This is why I stopped coming here after the accident. Epona and Sorosiel’s absence was everywhere, their shadows hanging over every light, every life, every word. It wasn’t just death. I’ve seen death more than once, I attended friends’ memorial services and still keep trinkets as souvenirs of our friendship. But pointless, absurd destruction… How can humans overcome such an ordeal so fast?

Esthar told me they don’t have a choice. For a while, I thought I did. I chose to return to the mountains, where change is so slow I’ll hardly notice it, even over a dragon’s lifespan. I chose the comfort of my lair, until a spell came at me and subdued me. And then I took part in the very destruction I wanted to avoid.

I close my eyes, welcoming the night breeze on my skin and scales.

Is Esthar right? Is it selfish of me to wish for a quiet space? We dragons crave familiar settings. We gather what we love and keep it close, to forget how volatile the outside world is. Humans call it hoarding. Some of them, when they deem our collections valuable, try to steal them from us, sometimes killing us in the process.

My lair wouldn’t soothe my guilt right now, but being kept away from it… It hurts. I still deserve that punishment and a hundred more. I let it all happen to me. I should have known better and it will haunt me for years.

Meanwhile, even though I’ve been here for under two weeks and Saegorg is still detained in Abbens, the prison outside Carastra, Esthar has already moved on to something else. Hardly anyone in the palace seems to know what he’s up to, but I overheard a conversation between Nigella and Lord Berg. Esthar’s preparing a betrothal ceremony. This summer, his nephew Gurvan will get engaged to the very princess Sorosiel was supposed to marry.

I wish I could wave the feelings away and only keep an objective record of what happened. We dragons outlive our human friends. We’re supposed to remember. But with remembrance often comes grief.

I sigh. I can see the disappointment in Nigella’s eyes. I’m not the cheerful Kossi she remembers, but smiling and joking would feel disrespectful to the people I killed, to those whose houses I burned.

I need a walk.

The guards at my door startle as I knock on the door.

“What is it?”

“I’d like to go downstairs, please.”

They were dozing by the door and they probably wish I’d leave them alone, but they open and escort me to the stairs. The last floor is unlit, so our lone lantern is the only light around. As soon as we get to the lower floors, though, dim lights help us see the path. The corridors. The paintings on the walls.

“Where do you want to go, dragon Kossi?”

“I think I’ll just breathe in the courtyard… Wait a second.”

There are footsteps down the main stairs of the west wing, so I head that way, closely followed by my untrusting escort. How long will they believe I want to escape, when I turned myself in as soon as I could? I’m staying here as long as Nigella wants me around. I miss my lair dearly, but it’s not about me. I can live with it for a few years.

It’s her. I knew it.

Al appears in the main hall, in a loose nightgown, her brown hair down. She stops when she sees me, and the surprise on her face soon turns into a warm smile.

“Kossi? Can’t sleep?”

Why does she always look so genuinely happy to see me? I nod.

“I wake up every night.”

“Is it a dragon thing?”

“Not really.”

I’m not ready to talk about it in the middle of the main hall, with four guards at arm’s length, so I let the sentence linger. But Al’s brown eyes look straight into mine. She’s waiting for an explanation.

I sigh.

“Whenever I close my eyes, I see the houses I burned, the people running away in terror, and I imagine all the harm I’d have done without you. I keep awaking from nightmares.”

“Without me?”

She looks ready to add something, but she shuts her mouth. There’s no denying she did more than anyone else to free me, thanks to her unique natural power. I see it inside her as she stands here. It’s hard to describe, but it makes her glow, in a non-visual way.

I owe Al what’s left of my sanity, and I can’t find the words to express my gratitude.

“Would you like to talk?” she adds.

“Why not?”

“Then follow me.”

We go to the small dining room, and Al talks the guards into splitting in two groups, one at each door. Then we sit opposite each other at a table in the middle of the room. This way, we’ll have minimal privacy.

“What about you? Why are you awake?” I ask.

She tilts her head.

“My mind’s kind of overworking. I have too many ideas, and tonight, they turned into weird dreams, so I thought I needed a walk. But talking’s fine too. I’m like everyone, I guess, better at working out other people’s problems than my own.”

We talk in the deserted dining room. Al tells me about her projects, how the wallpaper manufacture thing looks like the first thing to do, because it’s a minor point of law and it’s easy to change. She calls it a “quick win”. She talks about other ideas she has, but she needs to discuss them with other people, including Vilo Jozin.

Compared to her projects, my rebuilding of my own damage sounds insignificant. I harmed the people of Brealia and I’ll never repay them for what I did.

She shakes her head.

“But you’re hardly to blame, Kossi! You…”

“Don’t put all the blame on Uturi and Saegorg. I was the one who let it happen. I should’ve known better.”

Then we talk about our homes. My lair, the house she left in her native world. We both miss them, but at least I might go back someday. Al knows she can’t.

“I can’t ever go back to my native world, so I must get used to the fact that my home is here, now. Or it will be, as soon as I find a place of my own. I’m only a guest in this palace.”

“And I’m a convict. No one lets me forget that I’m guilty. I’m the monster who killed people in the moat and who wiped a whole village off the map.”

She smiles.

“If you were a monster, you wouldn’t wake up from nightmares every night.”

I look down at my hands, my human hands. This body is mine, just as much as the dragon form is, but it still looks like a trick designed to make humans believe I’m one of them. I’m not. I never will be. And to many humans, dragons are monsters no matter what.

Al’s voice brings me back to our conversation.

“How old are you, Kossi?”

“Fifty-six.”

“How young is that in dragon years?”

“Young enough to get away with being carefree, until your negligence causes a disaster and a human king calls you out for it.”

I look up at the ceiling with its painted beams. The words I’m about to say I never told anyone, but I know I can trust Al.

“I’m not as wise as I’d like to be. I feel distressed and in dire need of advice, but I can’t seek out an older dragon’s help, because I’m kept here until further notice.”

“But you can seek human people’s help. Mine, for example.”

She reaches across the table. I could move back, but I let her put a hand over mine.

“Look, Kossi, I’m no expert. I’m younger than you and probably no wiser, but I know two things. One, don’t stay on your own. You need trusted friends to talk to.”

“Such as you?”

“For instance. And two, find something that soothes you when you feel down. My thing is baking cakes. There must be a suitable activity for you out there.”

Cakes. I’m not much into human food, but I like the pastries they serve here. I frown.

“Do you think I should try baking?”

She has an amused smile.

“Well, as I just said, you can totally find another activity. Baking works for me. It might not work for you. But I’ll talk to Sirit in the morning, if you like.”

I nod slowly.

“I feel like I don’t deserve it. Nigella’s kindness, your help.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. Just focus on repairing the damage and feeling better.”

“Thank you, Al.”

I still don’t deserve so much kindness.

After another round of small talk, we part, and each of us goes back to their own bedroom. Hopefully, we’ll have some time to practice baking tomorrow. Anything that can take my mind off my guilt will be good.

Even more so if it involves Al.

Will I gather the strength to tell her the truth about my fake declaration, back in Malo? When I pretended to love her, so I could pass her some of my dragon flame?

It wasn’t totally a lie.

I don’t think it was love, as I didn’t really know her yet, and my heart doesn’t yearn for her as I suppose it should, but there was something. Curiosity. The near-certainty that I have a lot to learn from her. She’s a teacher, after all, and she’s as out of this world as one will ever get.

I can’t wait to spend more time learning.

End of Book 1, Save the Kingdom, Save the Dragon!