Dragon Song

by Lorraine Pinelli Brown

Slay, murder, put away the dragon, for Its mouth is

too cruel and Its deeds far too kind.

                                                                                --the people of the valley

The Dragon Song was long, lonely, and lovely.  It could be heard for a hundred miles in all directions.  If it were possible in this land for sound to hold color, this song would brandish the sparkling, silver-blue promise of men's swords before the swords had ever been wielded and bloodied.  And if songs of this kind could have meaning aside from their obvious ones, the song that now rustled the forest trees on this mountain would tell easily of high personal conquest and speak well to ears in the valley and beyond of the handsome, jewel-scaled heroes who were dragons and who didn't mind one bit being colored mostly green.

The Dragon Song was always sung doubly, by twin brothers who lived together in a place of their own imagining, a place where no human would ever dare to tread.  The brothers' blazing eyes were beacons for men on tall ships to wheel from.  It has been said that the brothers' call for milk could whip up enough wind to push a savage sea back to its source.  The brothers were hungry now, as they often were, and all of humankind did tremble at their cry.

"Where are you kids?  Oh, come on now.  You know Mommy didn't mean that before.  She was just upset because, well...." Joan Kittle thought about it.  She didn't really know why she had hit her sons.  Bad feelings sometimes came over her, and at those times, she just wanted to lash out.  Hurt something.  Benny and Mikey, her eight-year-old boys, had just been there again, in the way.

She had stepped on one of their leggo toys, stumbled, and hurt her foot.  The phone rang just then and it wasn't Richy.  He had promised to call after a night of real intimacy.  That was a whole week ago....

Richy had gobbled down the three course breakfast she had provided the morning after and washed it all down with a beer, finishing the bottle in one great swig.  He had put on his belt and shirt and went to work straight from her house.  He kissed her.  "I'll call ya', sweetcakes," he had said.  Everything seemed all right then, and Joan thought she had finally landed a good one from that bar, but no, it wasn't him on the phone.  It was a Newsweek telemarketer instead.  She hadn't heard from him at all since that morning and knew down deep she would never hear from him again.  Oh, she would probably see him hanging at the bar, sniffing around some bimbo, maybe he would flick her a wave with a cigarette in his hand or give her a full look and a nod, if she was lucky, but that's all she would get out of him from here on.  He had gotten what he wanted.  She remembered thinking, as she hobbled toward her boys, that it was probably because he didn't like kids that this relationship wasn't going to go anywhere, then, well...she had hit them.

Joan knew she had to say something nice now or her kids would never come out of their hidey holes, and she would never be able to root them out either, not in this giant relic of a house.  They had been living at her mother's place almost a full year and still she didn't know the house the way her boys did.

She thought she remembered seeing blood on Mikey's nose before he ran down the hall after his brother.  Had she smacked them hard?  She didn't mean to.  She never meant to.

"Come on, boys.  Come out.  Mommy's made something for you to eat."

Their size was large and they could be found easily due to it, which had always been a spear in the side to dragons, but such as they were cursed, so had  they been blessed with the power to change themselves when pursued by crazed women, wizards, and knights with sharp lances.  And during these times when they needed to flee from the enemy, the brothers became as chameleons, blending with their background fully when they needed to.  They could wrap their necks together and appear as two snakes on a tree or tuck their great heads and necks under their bellies entirely and look like lush, green foothills.

Joan heard rustling and whispering as she passed by the hall closet, the one by the front door.  By the look of things, her boys had wanted to leave the house after she had hit them, but they were afraid.  They had opened the big, oak door and left it ajar, probably to make her think they ran away.  She pretended for a second that she was going outside, that her boys had fooled her, then she whipped around and flung open the closet door where she knew they were.  "There you are!"

The boys were huddled between all the shoes and boxes and were hiding together behind her mother's long coat.  A lot of her mother's things still remained in the house and she smelled her lavender perfume whenever she opened things like closets and dresser drawers.  Joan reached way in, took hold, and yanked Benny out by his arm.

"Ow!"  Benny said.  "Ma.  Ow!"

"Leave him alone!" Mikey said, standing up.  He stood stiffly in the threshold of the closet, angry, his hands balled into little fists.  He seemed ready to fight her. 

Joan lost her temper once again and pulled Mikey completely out of the closet by his hair.  Mikey winced, but he didn't whine like his younger brother.  He never made a sound when she hurt him and that always made her want to continue to punish him even after her anger went away.  Defiance of her was the worst of his many crimes.  Joan twisted Mikey's red, curly hair even more.  She would make him cry this time even if she had to pull out every one of his curls to do it.  "You don't tell me what to do!" she growled.

Benny looked quickly between his mother and his brother.  "We're sorry.  Okay?  We should of put our stuff away like you always say to do." He touched Joan's arm lightly.  He was shaking.

Joan looked down at him.  Benny's eyes were big and soulful.  Such kindness in her little boy, she thought.  At least she had one good son.  Her hard heart began to melt, slowly, like a well-packed candle.  She felt her expression soften.  Benny hugged her legs, hard.

Equal to Mikey's, Benny's blue eyes were beautiful.  Benny and Mikey were identical in every way except one:  Benny was the good son.  "You're darn right you should have, mister," Joan said.  "Look at my foot!"  She let go of Mikey's hair and picked up her foot to show them the bottom of it.  "See?" she said.  No marks were there.  "Look at what you boys did!"  She put her foot down only after making them look at it for a very long time.

Joan needed a drink and she knew it.  It was probably the reason she was so excitable today.  She let out a big, exaggerated sigh, then she shook her head in a "what-EVER-am-I-going-to-do-with-you" gesture.  "Okay...okay," she said.  "Come on, boys.  Let's forget about all this and go to the kitchen and get something to eat." She was thinking more about slipping some vodka into her Pepsi Cola than she was thinking about eating anything.  It was like this most days, since her love life had turned to crap.

She was now living off the substantial sum her mother had left and her inheritance had come to her none too soon.  The father of her boys had gotten on his motorcycle one afternoon, for a pack of smokes, he said, and left her high and dry in Seattle.  She was at her wits end when the call came from a New York cousin she barely knew.  "Come home and bury your mother," her cousin said coolly.  And Joan, being an only child with two small sons, no boyfriend, no money, and no prospects, did.

Joan knew there wasn't much in the fridge, she hadn't gone shopping in quite a while, but she knew there would be some Spaghetti-O's or Froot Loops in the pantry to give them.  She looked at Mikey and saw a reddish-brown smear on his upper lip.  She had bloodied his nose.  She felt sorry suddenly.  Real sorry.  "Peace, okay?" she said to Mikey as she opened two cans of the canned pasta.  She winked at him as she pounded out the contents of the cans into a saucepan with the heal of her hand.

Mikey nodded sullenly as he watched her make lunch.  His stomach rumbled loudly, sounding oddly like a angry roar.

Kron reared his great head.  In his throat, a white-hot flame strained to get out.  Out of his nostrils came blue smoke.  He could burn this mortal up in an instant, once he opened his mouth and exhaled, but this woman uttered in the last seconds of her life the sacred word that saved her:  Milk.  His desire to kill her lessened after hearing it.  His cruel, dragon mouth watered at the sound of it, and he felt the fire in his throat cool and grow small and dwindle into his belly.  He would follow this woman to her farm, where she kept it, watching the roads along the way for armored knights on horseflesh, of course, and drink of her milk.  She would be safe until he had his fill, and afterward for a time, too, as he would be in a better mood all around, but she should not, NEVER, if she feared for her useless life as he knew every mortal did, cross him another time, milk or no.

Joan poured herself some cereal.  As there was no fresh milk, she ate it dry and washed it down with vodka-laced cola.  Except for the boy's slurping and Joan's crunching, she and the boys ate their lunches in silence.

* * *

The parties Joan threw at her mother's old mansion were mainly get-togethers for the people at the neighborhood bar and typically consisted of chips and dip, beer and weed.  Once-in-a-while, there would be harder stuff to be had, like speed or downers or H, especially if new people were coming into the Fickle Pickle and got dragged along to her place by some of the regular crew.  Joan never shot the H like some of her friends.  She couldn't even imagine herself sticking her own flesh with a big, fat needle.  She hated needles.  She didn't much like the head the heroin gave either, but she always snorted a little when it was offered, just to be social.

Joan put Benny and Mikey to bed early when she threw her parties, locked them in her mother's bedroom, the one that had the nice fireplace and the king-size canopy bed, but the boys always watched the grown-up goings-on through the banister until people began passing out and the party got boring.  Joan knew that the boys were not always where they were supposed to be, but as long as she locked them in in the beginning of the night, she felt she had done her motherly duty.                       

Benny had learned to pick the locks on most of his grandmother's old-fashioned doors and was teaching Mikey to do the same.  Joan locked them up a lot.  The boys escaped a lot.

It was 11: 30 on a school night and Joan had had people over twice already this week.  "Which one this time, Benny?" Mikey whispered as he watched the grown-ups from the top of the steps.

"The tall, blond one, lighting a roach," Benny said.  "He'll be the last."

"The last standing or the last to follow Mom to her bedroom?"

"Both," Benny said.  "You know, I think she really likes this one."

"Yeah," Mikey said.  He put his hand to his mouth and snickered.

Kron roared his disapproval and snapped his great tail on the ground which gave off a thunderous noise and vibration, beginning an avalanche on the other side of the mountain.  Many who lived in the valley there were crushed to death by falling stone.  His brother, Heron, weeped openly for the vast loss of life, but whenever dragons weep, openly or not, diamonds fall to the ground and corrupt the innocent.  That which was left of the blameless valley, all those who had stuffed their vests full-weighted of dragon tears, had been said to have become as hard and as cold as the very diamonds themselves.

* * *

Her boys were growing so handsome, Joan thought, as she looked at a recent photo of them stuck to the refrigerator door.  It was hard to believe they were already ten.  The freckles on their noses and cheeks were disappearing and they were shooting up like weeds.  She laughed to herself after thinking that.  Ma loved to use that expression when talking about children, she remembered.  Her mother even said that about her.  "Yeah, shooting up like weeds...shooting up like weeds...," Joan said, over and over, stuck on the sound.

She held a smoking joint in one hand while she used her other to pour herself a beer.  She frowned.  The kitchen table was too cluttered.  She pushed dirty dishes, empty cans, and old newspapers away to make a clean spot in front of her, some of which fell to the floor.  She looked at her watch.  It was 6 am.

Joan kicked off her high heels and rubbed her feet together.  They ached from all the dancing she had done.  She noticed her right big toe had popped through her fishnet stocking.  Darn it!  she thought.  Wearing stiletto heels was a mistake, even though they did make her legs look great.  Billy loved to throw her around the dance floor, make her dresses fly.  She should have remembered what a showoff he was and have gone out with a heel that was lower.

She looked at the joint and blew at the lighted tip to spark the embers.  She inhaled the extra smoke though her mouth.  "If Ma could only see this here weed--and right at her own kitchen table, too," she said aloud.  "Church-goin', bible-thumping, Ma."  She threw her head back.  "Ha!  She probably would have one of those stroke things--like an...apoplex...eepoplex...an apoplexy.  Yeah."  She took a deep drag on the joint that was nearly burning her fingers.  She looked at it again, then she sang to it. "Rollin', rollin', rollin'...keep them dollars rollin'...."  Joan bounced in her chair to the beat--so happy.

There would be an endless supply of booze and drugs for her, she knew, now that every last legal paper had been finalized, and she would want for nothing now--except for a steady man to love her.  This last thought surprised her a little, but yes, that is what she really wanted, underneath it all.  Hell, she would give up all the money and the damn kids, too, if only she could have this one single thing.  She needed someone, anyone, to show her real love.  The love of the heart she felt she deserved.  All the "good" men seemed to be missing at the moment though.  Just her luck to know where all the bad boys lived.

She shook her head.  Joan thought again about inheriting nearly four million dollars.  There was no need for her to work ever again.  That, at least, made her feel whole.  "Cheap Irish witch!" Joan said.  "Dressed in rags your whole life and made me do the same."  She feigned her mother's Irish accent.  "Hard as nails ya were and never a kind word for the only one born to ya.

"Forgot to disinherit me, didn'cha, Ma?" she said to the air.  "Or maybe you just thought you would live forever.  You were cold enough to freeze Death!"  Joan laughed long and bitterly.  "I got it all now, don't I though?  You hateful crone."  She swayed in her chair.  "Whoopsy!" she said when she almost tipped out of it.

Joan looked around, embarrassed.  The pot was overwhelming her.  She put out the joint by dropping it in the open beer can.  It went out with a hiss.

Benny dashed behind the wall that separated the kitchen from the parlor before Joan saw him.  There were tears on his cheeks.

It was good the boys weren't up yet, Joan thought.  She didn't want them to see her this way.  She summoned her will and tried to sober up.  Focus, she thought.  She righted herself square in the chair, and with one eye closed, attempted to read the paper like it was her thought to do when she first came home.  She unfolded it, became more serious about reading it, then opened her closed eye.  She had wanted to get something to eat, read the news, and go to bed in that order, but she had seen the fresh six-pack of Coors Lite sitting in the fridge and then she started thinking about her hard-hearted mother and her one last beer had turned into all six cans.

Heron, the younger of the dragon brothers, was the kinder.  He would not torture his meals before devouring them, like his brother, Kron, nor would he only half burn mortals to see how long they would scream and run around before falling down dead.  And when he saw a hobbled horse or a sick human, he would make it his business to always kill them swift and clean, putting them out of their terrible miseries forever and immediately.

Benny and Mikey had been growing themselves up, going to school, feeding themselves, keeping up appearances.  As time went by, Joan did less and less in the house and for them.  The house wreaked sometimes of accumulated garbage and unwashed clothes.  Mikey cleaned then, forced Benny to help him, but Benny cleaned only what he had to.

Joan leaned forward and rested her head on her arm.  She sighed contentedly as though snuggling into a soft, feather pillow.  She would rest here, she thought, just for an hour.  Her legs just now felt too rubbery to make all those steep stairs.

Mikey came down to the kitchen in his choo-choo pajamas, rubbing his eyes.  "Hey, Benny," he said.  "It's your turn to make breakfast."  He glanced at his mother.  Joan snored.  Saliva leaked out the side of her mouth.  "Mom high again?"

Benny didn't answer and wouldn't look at his brother.

"What'cha doin'?"  Mikey leaned on the table, peering.

Benny continued to stuff paper in Joan's clothes, around her, and underneath her chair.  He frowned as he worked.  He had also taken kindling from one of the fireplaces and two small logs from out on the porch and put them where they would catch fire the quickest.  Joan never moved.

Benny went to the tool draw where the lighter fluid was kept for the barbecue, opened it, and squirted his mom all over until the whole can was empty.  Joan made a face when she felt the cold wetness of it, mumbled something and lifted her hand but fell asleep again when her son stopped squirting her.  "It's okay, Mom," Benny said, kindly.

"Nice job," Mikey said.  He folded his arms and stepped back, clearly admiring his brother's hard work.

When dragons weep for the ones they love, they pretend to be hard, even as diamonds tumble like boulders from their great dragon faces.  No wail nor sob will come from their considerable mouths, nor howl nor blubber, even though, inside, their magnificent hearts are cracking.

"Stand back, Mikey," Benny warned.  He opened a matchbook from the Fickle Pickle Bar and tore off two matches.

"Do you think the whole house will go up?" Mikey asked, his eyes suddenly sparkling.  His pupils narrowed and elongated into high-sighted reptilian verticles.

Benny shrugged, then he climbed up on the kitchen table.

The dragon brothers sang a song that was long, lonely, and lovely.  When they were through, Heron looked down upon the sickly woman kindly, took a deep breath, and exhaled.

************************

Lorraine Pinelli Brown is a poet, article, and short story writer who has finished her first novel [which was accepted and published this May by Sam's Dot Publishing].  She has placed work with Potpourri, Space & Time, Anotherealm, Bewildering Stories, Fictionwise, Futures Magazine, Nature's Corner, and other literary, genre, and special-interest magazines.  Lorraine has become interested in drawing.  She illustrates some of her own best-loved tales in pastel and colored-pencil.  Her most admired

writers are Henry James, Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling, and Edgar Allen Poe.  Her most-liked,

contemporary story-teller is Steven King.  TV shows that made her want to be a writer:  Twilight Zone and Outer Limits.

The Puppets of Low Magic, Lorraine Pinelli Brown's small-press best-selling novel of courage, friendship, and witchcraft in the 18th Century, is available from The Genre Mall.  Just click on the cover icon below to place your order.

As The Crow Flies, Lorraine Pinelli Brown's short story of a witch trying to deal peacefully with her tyrannical husband, and illustrated by Marge Simon, is also available from The Genre Mall.  Just click on the cover icon below to order a copy.