The ancient texts, the stories, the songs, the plays — not one of them had ever talked about this; this act of sheer creativity, of beauty, of pure, unmediated joy. In the legends, dragons were killers, jealous recluses guarding hoards of treasure that they couldn’t possibly ever spend. Like most things he had been taught, Emuel was coming to realise the legends were wrong.
“What are you?” he cried.
Calabash’s voice changed, the clicks and deep thumps coming from its chest now giving way to something more breathy, less frantic. Each new element added to the song’s power. Emuel found himself swaying in time with the dragon, matching its movements exactly, like a snake caught by the gaze of a charmer. Calabash’s wings slowly flapped, fanning Emuel with a cool breeze that dusted the last of the desert from him. When the dragon brought its head low, Emuel leaned forward to look deep into its eyes, and it was then that Calabash let the song tell the dragons’ story.
Deep within the heart of Kerberos, beyond the storms that give voice to its wrath, lies a place of absolute silence, quieter than death, yet it is here that creation begins.
They are tiny at first, no bigger than a thought, because that is what they are; a god’s will. But soon they flicker into true being, a heartbeat clothed in flesh. They hang in the darkness, tiny pulsing lights strung like stars throughout the deity’s firmament. Even now they are calling to one another, the song growing in strength as cells divide and consciousness awakes.
Though these creatures are part of the deity itself, Kerberos marvels at the life within it, at the complexity of thought that develops as the creatures sing themselves into being.
When they are fully formed, the god begins to gather certain minerals from its atmosphere, weaving these around each dragon foetus, until they are encased in rock impervious to all but the mightiest of forces.
It is time to let its children go. Beneath Kerberos’s gaze a whole new world turns, one that has not yet heard the song of its creation. And so, the god sends its children out into the void. Hundreds upon hundreds of eggs hurtle out into space, the vast azure sphere of Kerberos quickly spiralling away from them, only for the larger planet below to gather them into its embrace. With a quick succession of terrific bangs, they hit the upper atmosphere, but it is not this that awakens the dragons, but the heat of the flames that engulfs each egg as it falls, incubating them, completing the life begun by Kerberos.
They seed the earth, the impacts cracking the shells, allowing the dragons to break out and crawl forth. They sing for their brethren, letting the music that filled them in the womb of their god reach out to others of their kind, until they are gathered as one family, waiting for the time when Kerberos will rise over this dead earth and reveal to them His will.
So engrossed was he in Calabash’s story that Emuel didn’t at first notice when the song came to an end. The dragons had settled down and were gazing up at Kerberos. The azure sphere was so close that Emuel could see the lightning storms flickering within the god. All was silent as the dragons waited to hear the voice of their creator. The tattoos still writhed on Emuel’s flesh, as though dancing to some unheard music.
There was a pulse of energy, a pure sheet of lightning momentarily engulfing Kerberos, washing them all in a brilliant radiance that had Emuel closing his eyes and shielding his face. Calabash raised its head and howled, the eerie ululation echoed and repeated across the herd. Emuel staggered as Calabash prodded him with the tip of his snout. For a moment his heart sank as he thought that the dragon was trying to push him away, but then he understood. Calabash was gesturing for him to climb onto its back. Emuel had already ridden the dragon a few times, and the experience had been terrifying; once he was settled, he made sure to press his legs firmly against the creature’s flanks, grabbing onto the bony protrusions that grew from the back of Calabash’s neck.
Emuel’s stomach turned over as the creature lurched forward, but he managed to stay seated. He looked back to see the herd following, the ground they had anointed now churned beneath their feet. Their advance was slow at first but soon they gathered momentum, the scenery rushing by in a blur as they raced into the mountains.
Foothills flashed past at breakneck speed, the dragons easily negotiating the rise and fall of the land as they climbed ever higher. When they had set off, Calabash had led the herd, but now others raced past the dragon and its rider, all respect for their leader forgotten in their urgent desire to reach their goal. Emuel was jerked around on the dragon’s back, though he managed to maintain his hold, even with hands that were beginning to ache from the effort of hanging on. In what seemed like no time at all, they had left the foothills and were beginning to climb the mountain range itself. Calabash didn’t once slow as it threw itself through ravines, crawled along the edges of precipices and curled its way around jagged peaks. For much of the journey Emuel closed his eyes, but when he did open them, once, he found himself staring up at dozens of dragons negotiating the ceiling of a hollow in a cliff face above him. Or were he and Calabash on the ceiling, and the other beasts on the floor? Emuel quickly shut his eyes again.
After several hours the rolling motion of Calabash’s back slowed, and Emuel looked around to find that they were now high amongst the peaks. There was almost no further for the dragons to climb. It was bitterly cold, the air so thin that Emuel’s chest laboured with each breath. He pulled his cloak tighter around himself as the dragons passed through a shallow valley and onto a plateau. All that lay above them now was the wide open sky.
The dragons came to rest here and stood for a time, silently contemplating the sky, before? as one? unfurling their wings. Emuel wondered then why the dragons hadn’t simply flown to this place far above the world. In fact, now he came to consider it, he had never seen the dragons use their wings for flight.
Calabash staggered to the left, momentarily unbalanced, and Emuel realised then that the dragons had never before flown. They were like newly-hatched chicks, ready to test their wings for the first time by throwing themselves from the nest.
The eunuch found that he no longer wanted to be on Calabash’s back, but before he could dismount, the dragon was on the move. Emuel considered throwing himself to the ground, but it was flowing so quickly beneath him that the moment he hit, he’d break every bone in his body. So he clung on, tears streaming from his eyes, as he watched the edge of the plateau rushing towards them.
Ahead, the first wave of dragons threw themselves into the air and dropped from sight. Emuel sent up a prayer, putting himself into his god’s hands, and he was still whispering the benediction when Calabash’s feet left the ground and the sky took them.
They fell.
Emuel clung on tight as the wind howled about them. All around them dragons were hurtling towards the earth. One, with scales the colour of a cornfield, collided with a spur of rock, shattered stone following the senseless dragon down, its useless wings entangled around it. Emuel cried out as he saw more dragons broken on the side of the mountain, unable to bring their wings to bear in time. Calabash hit a pocket of warm air that lifted them for a moment, holding them seemingly motionless as dragons continued to rain down around them, but with a crack and a sudden drop in pressure they were soon falling as quickly as before.
“Fly!” Emuel shouted. “Damn it, fly!”
Not that he expected his encouragement to do any good. However, almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Calabash banked to the right and began to spiral down in a controlled descent. Other dragons were now also gaining the use of their wings, rising on updrafts, or gliding towards the plain below. They began to spread out, breaking into groups of two or three as they dispersed along all points of the compass, calling to one another as they went, their cries gradually becoming fainter and fainter.