Breathing Fire: Chapter 1

Beathing Fire:  Chapter 1

Allee walked out of the cottage into the hanging stench of smoldering bark and leaves. Unaffected by the thick aroma of destroyed forest, the shrubs and neatly groomed flower bed surrounding Omia’s home made her smile.


She didn’t know why they burned the densely wooded side of the mountain.  Whatever reason, it wasn’t something the older folks shared with their children.  Nor did the children much care except for the endless bonfire smell and faint sensation of heat against their faces when they faced the north countryside.


Peering back over her shoulder, Allee noticed old Omia Applegate watching her from the doorway of her home.  The wrinkled woman dabbed the corner of her eye with her sleeve.  Her mouth was a prominent straight line connecting the patches of wadded flesh that were her cheeks.


The young girl shifted the strap on her pouch back and forth on her shoulder.  It wasn’t heavy but the strap was thin and pulled on her skin when it rode high on her neck.  The old woman had set the bag on a small table in her home and placed something inside while Allee studied the walls full of knick knacks and yarn dolls and drew in the smell of bread cooling on her sill.  But now, outside, Omia’s gaze made her feel as though she were being examined and then, for some reason, pitied. 


It could have been the dirt on her face or the condition of her clothes.  Most who knew her story reacted the same way.  A warm smile and occasionally an extra coin would accompany her fee.  The older folks would adopt her for the short time she was in their home.  Cookies and kind words.  Then send her off into the world with their consciences clear to continue their work until her next visit.


She turned and managed a quick smile and a short wave.  Then started for the kingdom.  Her trip would take most of the day.  Her pace eventually quickened into a run.


Allee swung her fists at the air with short right and left hooks as the green world rushed by with each practiced stride over the uneven terrain.  Even with the pouch slapping heavily against her waist, she could not be slowed down.  She knew every rut and every foothill and every hanging branch on every trail through the forest.  This, though, was not one of the kid games that would burn away a summer day, creating imaginary adventure for the young and temporary quiet for the old.  The other village children were not hiding within the tree line, peeking through the leafy limbs with dirty faces and sly grins.   


If she were any other girl from the village of Wellhurst, instead of the lambskin trousers, she’d have worn a long flowing frock, tan or dark brown that hung to her ankles, frayed at the edges but mostly in good repair.  No, she climbed too many trees to wear the fancy stockings.  Wrestled too many boys for dresses.  Collected too many bruises in her adventures through the wooded valleys to blend in with the girls who knitted the day away, feverishly working needles through cloth at their mother’s direction and approval.


In fact, since the age of only three years old, the directing and approving had been the job of her father when he was in the condition to do so, of course.  Most of the time, left to herself, she just ran and ran as she did now.  And made a decent wage doing so.  Enough to feed herself and Pa.  Enough to satisfy the demands of the kingdom tax collectors.


Up ahead, she spotted two men on her trail.  The trail she only used.  Her shortcut, created by years of cutting through with her own two feet, trampling down the tall grass and smoothing the earth.  The opening was narrow, like her frame, but the men were thick and blocked her passage.  They were dressed like the forest with twigs and branches sprouting out of their wide-brimmed hats and out of their mud-caked coats.  Backs turned, they each leaned against a tree and watched something from the path so intently that they noticed neither her galloping approach nor her stuttered stop.


She ducked down by a bush to the side of the path.  The men were still.  Were they thieves there to take her package, hoping to steal someone’s payment to the king?  Or hunters?  In the past, she had witnessed such stillness in her father during the times that he carried a sword and bow.  Like him, could the men could be hunting boar, planning to take the meat to market?  She’s seen boar, hairy drooling beasts that they are, in these parts for sure but their numbers were less and less each season.  In which case, the men would mean no harm to her.


Allee crossed the path again with small careful steps.  Her elbows dug into her sides and her hands reaching outward, fingers splayed as if the act deadened the noise of her shifting body weight.  She breathed through her nose, watching the men for any indication that they were about to turn their heads and spot her before she disappeared into the weeds again.


The strange men never noticed.


She moved as far into the brush as she could without crunching dried sticks beneath her feet and snapping branches as they reached, like the rail-thin arms of the dead, with the unholy intention of upsetting the concentration of the intruding twosome. 


Finally, in deep enough to get a glimpse of the sides of their faces, Allee peeked around a fan of broad green leaves and mimicked the stillness of the men.  Their cheeks were covered with wild hair, matted down with more mud, like they had both crawled through the swamp to get there.  She originally thought they clung to small trees for body support, but, as her eyes followed the length of one, it was actually a staff.  With further examination, she spotted an iron blade at the tip.  These men carried spears.  And they smiled.  Big, yellow, toothy smiles. 


Then she saw it.  Actually, she heard it before she saw it.  The sound was one of tree limbs bending and colliding with other branches and vegetation ripping from its grip of soil.  One of heavy deliberate footfalls devastating the green living terrain, followed by a low groan and snort and puff of smoke.


The pyrogon was armored, neck to tail, with two tones of green scales, one shade dark as night and the other the color of valley grass.  Its snout hovered over the bait trap.  Nostrils fluttered anxiously as it dipped into the mash of vegetables and grains.  With the remnants of the whiff caught in its gray whiskers, a long tongue slipped out from between its lips, curled around the mash morsels and quickly sucked them back into its mouth.


Allee watched the beast.  How it carefully picked at the dish.  A nibble here and there.  And those eyes.  How the red eyes scanned the brush for movement even as the body feasted.  “There’s some dainty there”, she could hear her father say as he would mock some of the village girls as they were tutored dinner table etiquette by their mothers.  She would laugh with him, but only for a bit until a little pinch of sadness replaced her smile again.


The strangers wisely remained as statues.  Even if she wanted to leave, she had no choice but to stay until the creature finished and left.  That is, if the men would let that happen.  But they’d be fools to attack this winged beast four times their weight with indestructible skin and breath of fire.  She imagined that if it suddenly chose to unfold those dark wings that the tips may reach the spot where she stood, tickling her nose with the feathery parts.  If this were to happen, she decided right then that she had to stifle a reaction.  Though she could not say, for sure, that any sort of tickle right now would elicit anything resembling a grin.  She thought she might cry instead.


But as it ate more, Allee noticed the alertness fade.  A red eye slowly closed and quickly opened, but closed again like a flame being methodically suffocated.  Soon, it chewed the poisoned pile with eyes half open, swinging its large head around toward the men when it heard their laughter, but there was no recollection, will to attack, or defensive tactic mustered.  The creature slumped as its legs wobbled, but it still chewed what was to be its last meal.


Her hand covered her mouth when a front leg gave away and the pyrogon crashed onto its side.  One wing unfurled and shot straight out into the air, like a single sail of a large green vessel, while the other was trapped under the weight of its scaled torso.  Still, it chewed.  I’ve been that hungry before, she thought.


“No.  Stop,” she whispered.  Then louder, “No! Stop! Stop eating!” Forgetting the hunters close by, she bolted into the clearing.  The beast’s eyes sprung open.  Allee worried it would unleash a desperate attack, but all she saw in the red eyes was fear. 


She grabbed the rim of the bait trap, planted her feet and, using all her strength, dragged the heavy iron dish, inch by inch, out of the pyrogon’s reach.  Muscles still throbbing in her arms and back, Allee raced to the mouth of the beast and, without much thought, reached in with both hands, grabbing armfuls of the half-chewed, poisoned mash from its jaws, dumping it onto the ground.  With the sticky orange vegetable mixture still clinging to her arms, she shook her head and said, “No, don’t eat!”


The helpless creature’s lazy eyes moved from her and settled on something behind her.  Then she felt a hand on her right shoulder as it gathered the fabric of her shirt in a strong grip and pulled her backward off her feet.  She screamed as she landed on her back in the brush, the place from where she once observed.  Her pack rolled through the mud and out of her reach.


He stood between her and the dying animal.  As she struggled to get up, he dropped the heavy tip of his spear on her chest.  He guided the edge of the blade upward against her clothing.  The pointed blade approached the softness of her throat with the directness of a snake ready to strike.  The hunter raised a finger to his lips.  “Shhhhh.  It’ll be over shortly”, he whispered.


The hunter seemed to study her.  She felt his eyes pass over the mismatched skins of her clothing.  Her heavy coat of cow hide.  Lamb skin trousers.  The cotton fabric of her shirt beneath, two wooden buttons fastened the top of her collar.  An outfit scavenged piece by piece without care given to color or texture.  Then his eyes opened wider, taking in the softness of her facial features.


The other hunter cackled, drawing an icy stare from his partner.  The loud one responded with a hungry grin.  “We’ll be set for the season, we will.  Enough for an army, she is.”  He clapped his dirty hands in front of his nose and rubbed them together in anticipation.  Then he either sniffed them or said a prayer.  “Your friend, there, will give away our spot.” He drew an ugly blade from a sheath beneath his filthy coat.  “This place will be overrun with the poachers.”


“I know.”


“You know there must be others around.  Maybe a family of beasts. Right?”  He jabbed the blade at the air.  “Riches beyond compare.”


The hunter above her adjusted his grip on the spear.  “Possibly.”


Without breaking eye contact with the hunter, she slowly reached out above her head, feeling for her lost bag.  She had tried to save the creature, but there was no way that she, a skinny girl of seventeen years, could face down these two men.  She wished her father were there.


Then she wondered how it would feel if the hunter pushed the tip of the spear into her throat.  Would there be pain?  Would there be much waiting for death?  And would her mother be waiting for her on the other side?  That thought had comforted her many times, though it more often left her to question what she could endure to find out if the stories of heaven were true?  Stories told to her by her father between gulps of ale and burps of thunder.  If they were true, how strongly should she cling to the harshness of this world?  Long enough to save a doomed beast?


Her brown braids settled back onto the dirt, as her body relaxed.  She turned her head away from the hunter, at first, more to quell her anger than to hide from him.  But then hiding had its advantages.  In her mind, she could remove the hunters from the earth.  As she awaited her fate, she could put herself in a different place.  She had drifted off similarly during fits of extreme hunger and wanting that accompanied the dark times.  If only she could find that hiding place while the world changed and then awaken in a better place.


“Oh child, how you shoulda taken another path this day,” the hunter whispered almost sweetly.  “Not gonna enjoy this one bit.”  He eased the tip a little higher on her chest.


Her eyes fell onto the beast one last time.  All she needed to do was to make a connection.  With the cold blade almost pricking her throat, she slowly exhaled.  Her gaze rode up the speckled greenness of the pyrogon’s long scaly body, up its huffing torso, and along its flaccid neck, stopping on two blazing red eyes. 


Short feathers of smoke wafted from its nostrils as the neck, with a quick twitch of muscle, regained its strength, springing to life, and setting a ripple of motion to the enormous body that followed it.  Four stout legs scrambled to catch the momentum of the creature’s heft as it rose to its full height and sprung forward, claws digging into dirt.


Before the loud hunter could raise his spear to strike, the pyrogon upended him with a broad sweep of its spiked tail.  The sudden blow struck him below the knee, causing him to spin helplessly, like a ragdoll in mid-air, a full cartwheel, landing him nearly on his head.  The spear balanced on its end for a few seconds before finally thudding against the unconscious skull of its owner.  A sharp pop of wood against bone.


Allee reached for her throat, trying to touch a sticky wound and seal her sliced flesh with her hand, but found her neck to be cold, clammy, and unharmed.  Before she could feel any sense of relief, an explosion of light caught her attention.


A coursing stream of hot orange and red flame enveloped the hunter that stood above the girl.  His spear fell to the ground beside her as the man lifted his arms and took the full fury and heat against his animal skin-covered forearms.  He screamed as his clothing caught fire.  Backing away as the fire spread on his torso, he turned and ran.  The rushing air around him stoked the flames.  He moved as if he could somehow outrun them.


With the howls of the hunter trailing off into the forest, the beast turned to her.  She feared any action by her would cause the rampage to continue with herself being the next one burned to a crisp, so she willed herself the stillness of her father during a hunt.





Allee could feel the rush of hot air on her cheek.  She had her eyes closed but imagined the prickly whiskers of the beast merely inches away from her skin.  She tried not to wrinkle her nose after she inhaled and discovered the animal’s breath possessed a sharp, sour stench.  She couldn’t help it.  Her body convulsed as she gagged and coughed on the rank air attacking her lungs.


She bought her knees to her chest and buried her face into the bend in her elbow, stealing looks at her observer as her fit subsided.


The pyrogon backed up, tilting its head in such a way that she might say that it communicated human concern.  Its movements, moments ago powerful and swift, were now fatigued.  The muscles in its neck relaxed and the beast’s head hung low and floated slowly to the left and then right.  The once blazing red pupils of its eyes were now colored a dull pink.


The creature continued to back away.


“Wait.”  Allee struggled to get to her feet and, once there, she scanned the vegetation for her pack.  She found it a few feet away unharmed.  She slung it onto her left shoulder.  Then, in one swift motion, she tucked a curl of brown hair back into the band holding her ponytail, and wiped dirt from her trousers.  “What are you going to do?”


It stopped short of the tall grass at her words.  Eyes fixed on her, it snorted, letting loose a puff of purple smoke the size of one of the loaves of bread that cooled on Omia Applegate’s window sill.  Allee doubted that those two things shared the same aroma.  The cloud then dissipated.


“They will hunt you still.”


She didn’t expect the animal to speak back to her, but she hoped, at least, it would understand her.  She studied its posture, the eyes, and subtle movements.  This was how she taught herself to read her father, whose responses were known to be even less clear than a puff of smoke and twice as toxic at his best times. 


“Those men.  They want you for your skin.  Do you know that?”


She had seen men adorned with pyrogon scales marching through the village many times.  Swaths of the speckled green armor were worn on the chest and back, attached by leather straps.  On the thighs and shins too.  Those struck there with a sword could laugh at their attacker. They could grin as arrows bounced off their chests.


She noticed the beast tilt its head again, in response.  Then it stepped gingerly toward her.  The eyes were not locked on her anymore.  It took another step.  The pyrogon now looked past her into the denseness of the forest that choked the path. Then craned its neck back toward the clearing where the body of the unconscious hunter lay motionless in the weeds.  It sniffed the air, as though it’s goal were to smell his dreams.


“Listen, I have to get to the kingdom” she said, shaking her bag.  “You should go and never come back.  You hear me?  Now you’ve hurt somebody, possibly killed them.  They will find you.  Bring larger numbers.”


It had been fifteen years since the kingdom warred against the pyrogon population, driving them back into the mountains.  Surely, any act of aggression would bring the armies out again.  Even though the beast defended Allee and itself, that would not be the story told by the hunter to the king.


“Do you understand?”


She wasn’t sure that she needed to thank the creature for saving her from the hunter’s spear.  After all, it was she who interceded on its behalf first.  And would the animal even understand her appreciation anyway?


At that moment, she heard movement beyond the small clearing.  It rustled and snapped and shuffled.  Allee looked to the spot she thought the sound came from but found herself tracking multiple locations as the noises skittered back and forth among the trees.


The pyrogon, however, was not fooled.  It lumbered forward, each shift of body weight an obvious chore.  Allee waited for the ferocity from before to return to it’s stride, to show in it’s gaze, but it’s gait was a limp imitation and the stare was only remarkable for its dullness.


“You’re still dying,” she blurted, with the last word coming out in a coarse whisper.


The beast continued its approach, tipping it’s nose upward while sniffing the air.  Too wobbly to threaten with speed, it still had size.


It was then that the girl knew the scent the pyrogon followed.  It was one of burnt hair and skin.  She knew this not because she could smell it too, but because, at that moment, the hunter emerged from between the trees.  He gripped a long bow and he had an arrow already pulled back, prepared to fight.


“You must go!  Fly away!”, she said not knowing if it had the strength.  “Even if you defeat this one, more men will come.  They will find you.”  She set her hand on the thick part of its tail.  “Go,” she said, quieter still.


The creature hesitated, turning its head slightly to catch the girl in its peripheral vision.  Then, it lowered its hind quarters until the rear of its torso touched the ground.


It took a few seconds but Allee soon understood the beast’s ultimatum.  It would go if she left too.  All she needed to do was climb up on its back and hold on.


“I will,” she said, adjusting the strap on her pouch to make sure it was secure.  Then she stepped up, wedging her foot into a crevice between the scales and climbed, one foot after the other, until she straddled the rough greenness of its back.  Its armor felt softer than she expected.


She watched the hunter, as the Pyrogon did, seeing his arms shake, muscles burning from holding the bow back.  She saw the sweat running down his dirty face, soaking his beard.  She noticed the cooked skin on his fingers, bloody and split, like charred sausages, as he clutched the weapon.  Allee was certain that her father would have admired him as a warrior.  She pitied him, for his goal was only death.


“Leave him,” she said while stroking the back of the beast with her hand. 


The beast spread out its wings.  The man flinched, but held his arrow in place.  Shielded by the enormous wingspan and the armored torso, Allee pressed herself against its scaled spine.  Holding on so that she wouldn’t be thrown off by the violent flapping and rushing air, she watched the ground leave her.  The hunter became smaller and smaller.