The Girl & the Dragon

My daughter sits up in bed, pajamas on, teeth brushed; her head a mess of brown unruly curls. In the bed across from hers, my son also eagerly sits. Both of them look at me excitedly. The room is dark, but my children have no fear. A nightlight’s soft yellow glow is kindled on the far wall, safe and comforting.

I sit between my children’s beds in my customary spot—a wooden rocking chair made years ago by my father. With one leg crossed over the other, I rock back and forth in the chair. My children are waiting for me to tell them a bedtime story. And in my experience, it is never a good idea to keep those waiting for a bedtime story wait for too long.

“What sort of story shall I tell you tonight, my children?” I ask them. “One of ghouls and goblins?”

My son looks at me with wide, serious eyes, and my daughter laughs delightedly, not afraid of such tales of the frightful and macabre.

“No, Father,” she says, still laughing, “tell us a fairy tale—one that is different from any you’ve told us before!”

“One different than any I’ve told before?” I muse aloud to myself. I scratch my mustache, deep in thought, with my head tilted to the side while I think.

I used to be nervous about making up stories on the spot, off the top of my head. But telling my children bedtime stories every night has made me more comfortable with such a form of storytelling. My mother used to do the same for my brother and me. But that was many years ago.

I stop rocking the chair as I catch glimpse of the sort of story that I want to tell. I have the first words, and that’s enough to start. I smile at my children, and then, after taking in a deep, steadying breath, I exhale slowly and begin to speak.

“Once, in times long ago, in a land far from our own, there lived a young girl in a castle by the sea. The young girl was all alone, except for her sole friend and protector—a fire-breathing dragon, fierce and terrible.

The young girl had lived in the castle by the sea all her life, as far back as she could remember. It was quite lonely, living in a large castle all by herself, but then again, the dragon kept her from being too lonely. He was there with her.

For a while, she had thought the dragon was there to keep her from leaving the castle, that he was her captor and she, his prisoner. Perhaps she was a princess and her parents were looking for her. After all, that was how the tales in the storybooks she read all seemed to go. But things are not always what they seem.

The dragon told her that years and years ago when the young girl was just an infant, he found her all alone in the nearby woods. Though dragons are known to be fierce and terrible—and indeed he could be—the dragon couldn’t bear to see the young girl remain abandoned in the forest all alone. And so, the fire drake took her back to his keep, to the castle by the sea. There, he raised her as if she were his own, protecting her and caring for her wellbeing.

How did he know, then, she once asked him, that she wasn’t a princess? Perhaps she was, the dragon allowed, not wishing to break the poor child’s heart. I bet my parents are worried about me, suggested the young girl, and that they’re looking for me, even now, after all these years. Maybe they are, rumbled the dragon, knowing that they were not.

The young girl asked the dragon, her sole friend and protector, if she could head off into the outside world to see if she could find her parents with the dragon’s help. The dragon didn’t know what to tell her, so he agreed, even though he knew in his heart of hearts that they wouldn’t find the young girl’s parents.

She was overjoyed, though, and the dragon saw how much it meant to her. He hoped she would eventually see how much she meant to him. He didn’t want her heart to get broken by the cold world.

As they were getting ready to leave the castle by the sea, the dragon had some words of warning for the young girl. The outside world could be a dark and frightening place at times. He would do everything he could to protect her from that. That was why he had kept her safe in his castle by the sea all these years.

Perhaps that had been naïve of him, though. As much as he wanted to keep her safe, the dragon knew he couldn’t do so forever. Eventually, he’d have to let her go off on her own. But not yet. She was still young. That was why he agreed to accompany her on her quest to find her parents. He was still her protector; she was still his responsibility.

The dragon made the young girl promise that she would listen to him and do as she was told, even if it didn’t make sense to her. He told her that he was trying to keep her safe. She promised she would. And so, the dragon and the young girl set out from the castle by the sea in search of her parents. What a strange pair the two of them made, the dragon and the young girl!

Some of the towns they visited were filled with people who fled in terror at first sight of the fire drake. Other times, the two of them had to run and hide in the woods from brash and foolhardy knights and townsfolk. They made loud, boisterous claims of wanting to rescue the fair maiden from the vile serpent’s clutches, and in slaying it, thus free her from her villainous captor.

They found the dragon and the young girl on more than one occasion. No matter how much she told them that the dragon was her friend and protector, they would not see him as such. He was the dread serpent, the ancient foe. They hurt him with sword and steel, even though the young girl begged and pleaded with them to leave the dragon alone. They would not listen to her, and the dragon was forced to defend himself with flame, tooth, claw, and tail.

The young girl saw now why the dragon had lived all alone in the castle by the sea. The rest of the world hated him and wanted to hurt him, kill him even, just because he was a dragon. That made her terribly sad.

The more she saw of the world, the more she realized what the dragon had spared her from, and what he had given her by raising her in the castle by the sea. Because of him, she was able to see the world clearly as it was, having lived her whole life removed from it. She saw that the outward appearances of certain individuals deceived people and kept them from seeing what was truly there.

The young girl began to see the dragon’s words to be true. The world was indeed a dark and frightening place at times, as were the people who lived in it. And yet, there were also kind people as well, who reminded the young girl that the world wasn’t nearly as dark or frightening as she thought.

There was the old woman, whom the townspeople accused of being an evil witch all because she dabbled with herbs and poultices. She was the one who helped the dragon recover from his wounds at the hands of the knights and townspeople, preparing remedies from forest plants. She taught the young girl some of what she knew.

There was the man with a twisted spine, whom the townspeople laughed at, reviled, threw rocks at, and forced to live in dark and damp places. He had smiled kindly at the young girl and offered her and the dragon a place at his fire to rest from their travels, warm themselves, and hide from the wandering knights and townspeople.

There was the giant, whom the people feared would gobble them whole, and so they forced him into the wilderness with torches and pitchforks. He had given the young girl and the dragon food from his garden because he saw they were hungry and in need.

Throughout their travels, the young girl and the dragon met people, both good and bad, but they never did find the young girl’s parents. It was as the dragon feared. He didn’t know how the young girl would react when she realized that she wasn’t a missing princess and that her parents weren’t looking for her. They had abandoned her. It looked as though the young girl’s heart would be broken.

One night, many miles from the castle by the sea, many nights since they first started out on their journey, the young girl and the dragon sat out beneath a field of flickering lights, the stars in the night sky overhead. They were tired and hungry and felt rather defeatedly glum.

The dragon asked the girl if she still wanted to continue her search, because he would look with her as long as she wished, as long as it took, but she shook her head.

“No,” she told him, “I don’t. I know now how foolish I was, to hope that I would find them.”

“Not foolish, child, never foolish,” the dragon said softly. “It is never foolish to hope. I wish that you had found them, I truly do.”

The young girl looked to the dragon, to her friend and protector, and smiled faintly. She smiled because she finally understood. She reached up to place her hand on the dragon’s scaly shoulder.

“I was foolish,” she admitted, “because I thought I had to go looking for my parents. You’ve kept me safe from the dangers of the world and raised me right in the castle by the sea. You’ve been a true parent to me.”

The young girl stared up into the starry sky, quiet for a moment. And then, she said in a soft whisper, “Strange, how I’ve spent my whole life wondering and searching for something that’s been there right beside me the whole time.”

She leaned up against the dragon’s shoulder and asked quietly, “Can we go home now?”

The dragon closed his eyes and smiled, warmed in his heart of hearts. “Yes, little one,” he said. “We can.”

“But you must promise me something as well,” the young girl added, hesitantly.

“What is it?”

“You were right. There are monsters who live in the world, but there are also kind souls, living alongside them. It isn’t good for us to hide away from the rest of the world, we’re a part of it too. Promise me you’ll try to live in the world once more. Don’t be afraid. When I’m all grown up, I’ll be the one to keep you safe.”

The dragon looked at the young girl, his sole protector and friend, and he smiled. He promised he would. And all was well. The End.”

I finish my story and fall silent. My children are still awake. They don’t fall asleep during the telling of my tales. That gives me some small measure of confidence in my abilities at least.

My daughter looks at me with a small smile of understanding, but my son is frowning. I can see the questions forming in his mind. He was born to question a great many things, that son of mine.

“Father?” he asks haltingly, “what was the point of that story?”

There’s always a point to stories, or so I’ve been told. Sometimes, as one who tells stories, I believe it. Other times I think that it is a point enough that stories exist.

My daughter looks at me like she knows, so I gesture for her to answer her younger brother. Both of my children are clever, but she sees something in stories that even I don’t always see, some things I’m not even conscious of doing. Only ten years old, and she already sees it. She’ll grow up to be a better storyteller than me, I’m sure.

“We asked you for a fairy tale,” my daughter says, “one different from any you’ve told before. You decided to tell it differently from how we would expect such a story to go, at least.”

I smile at her, at my clever child, and nod. By now, my son has caught on as well. All he needed was a little nudge in the right direction from his older sister.

“And that’s why you added the part about things not always being as they seem, right?”

I smile at him and nod as well. They really are wonderfully clever, my children. I try to leave them enough in my stories to find the hidden meaning if they’re clever enough. Which they are.

“Until tomorrow night, my children,” I tell them and tuck them in before kissing them both good-night. “I love you.”

I leave the nightlight on in their room and close the door quietly behind me. I pause in the hallway in reflection. I don’t always know why I tell the stories I do. I can’t honestly say why I told them this one tonight. Some of my stories are happy, and some of them are sad. I’m not sure what this one was. Perhaps it was a mixture of both, because stories, true stories, are like life. They’re bittersweet. Smiling, I walk down the hallway toward the kitchen, where I know I’ll find my wife sitting, correcting her papers for the day. And me? I think I’ll sit down and type up a story. A story to remind us that just as there is darkness in the world, so too, is there light. And hope. Hope always remains. Hope of a good and happy ending.

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