Gargamax and His KitsCelia Winter
2000 words Gargamax knows it’s spring when he hears that melody again, bouncing off the rocky cliffs that line the valley below his cave. It is a lilting tune, but not slow enough to be a lullaby. He has heard it sung quick and playful or slow and dramatic, all by the same man who is singing it now to announce his arrival, and Gargamax smiles to himself. The humans have arrived in his foothills with a new kit. They don’t come every spring, but if they have a new kit in arms, there they are, as reliable an indication of the turning seasons as the return of birds’ chirping before dawn. This is the fourth human kit that Gargamax has seen and it is chubby, all cheeks and burbling noises as it sits strapped against its mother’s stomach while the little family unpacks their painted wagon in the shadow of Gargamax’s mountain. “What if it hurts us?” The question comes from the third kit, who is bigger now, standing on two stubby legs rather than being held in arms like it was two years prior. It is looking nervously up at the granite outcropping on which Gargamax is perched, observing the return of the little family. At this age, it is hard to tell what the child’s gender is; if Gargamax has learned one thing in his five hundred years, it is that humans are inconsistent at best when it comes to displaying gender, and when one is so tiny it is not worth the effort of attempting to identify it. “He won’t,” the fatherhuman says, looking up at the dragon, resting one hand on his kit’s shoulder and raising the other in a human greeting. Gargamax likes this fatherhuman. Fatherhumans have a reputation of running off and abandoning their kits, but this one has come through the valley with his little family four times. He is always attentive, always gentle and loving as he sings what must be a favorite song to his children and his mate. “How do you know?” Third asks, completely unaware that Gargamax’s strong hearing and lengthy life means he is perfectly capable of perceiving and understanding the question. The fatherhuman crouches down and presses his face into the child’s messy curls, which muffle his words a little, but Gargamax thinks he hears the word “Friend.” *** “You aren’t going to eat them?” Minxy is confused as she stares out of Gargamax’s cave towards the little fire the humans have lit in the foothills. “Are you waiting until the kits are fully grown?” Gargamax has known Minarax most of his life. Their mothers were friends and they learned the ins and outs of flight together, tackling one another out of the sky with playful snarls and hisses as one does in one’s infancy. They could still do that now, of course, but they are older and more tired. Gargamax, at least, has some arthritis in his left wing joint too, which flares on rainy days or whenever he tries to fly like he is still one hundred and fifty. “I hadn’t planned on it, no,” Gargamax replies at last. Minxy lets out a disbelieving chirp. “It’s fresh meat and easy prey. What on earth is keeping you from it?” Gargamax shrugs. That only annoys Minxy further, her tail swishing back and forth in agitation, knocking over a pile of shinies and one of his more recently carved statues which, thankfully, doesn’t break as it thunks over on its side. Gargamax flares his nostrils. “Would you mind? I just finished polishing that.” Minxy doesn’t understand his love of carving, but then again Minxy doesn’t understand a great deal about Gargamax. Indeed, she rolls her eyes and says, “Humans, Gargar. People.” “You know I hate it when you call me Gargar.” A nickname she’d given him when she was too young to fully pronounce his whole name. It makes him feel like a stupid kit and he’s never liked it, though it had taken him nearly two hundred years to tell her so. “You still call me Minxy,” she points out. “You don’t hate that, though.” Everyone calls her Minxy. If anything, he’s shocked when others call her Minarax. Minxy takes the rebuttal in stride. “Fresh meat, Gargamax. Are you well? Did you get stung by that bug that makes you develop a meat allergy?” Gargamax glances down into the valley. The motherhuman is feeding Fourth at her breast; the fatherhuman had the two eldest out in the bushes, presumably looking for berries to eat and Third-- Third is nowhere to be found. *** Gargamax tells himself it is nothing to worry about. He continues a decently pleasant afternoon with Minxy before his guest continues on her journey through the mountain caves towards the dwelling of a young strong dragon she’s hoping to clutch with. She has one more season of clutching, she declares, before she gives it up for good. She has given their kind three young, a fourth will be more than enough. Gargamax has no young, but he’s fine with that. The mess Minxy left in her wake is more than enough for him. He can’t fathom a kit tearing through his cave and wreaking havoc. How many statues would he have to put away? Would he even be able to carve more while it was still in infancy? No, no, a bachelor’s life has always suited him just fine; other dragons’ kits are lovely for a visit and then he can go home to his shinies and his carvings and, in spring, perhaps, his stray humans before they continue on in their itinerant human way. With Minxy gone, he returns to the mouth of his cave and counts the humans. The motherhuman and Fourth are seated between the painted wagon and the fire while Second and First walk along the tree line, hands cupped around their mouths as they shout, “Anemone! Anemone!” The fatherhuman is nowhere in sight, and Third is still gone. He doesn’t like this. Something is definitely wrong. The fatherhuman is never far from his kits this close to sundown. Gargamax looks around his cave and finds a smoked cow whose cuts he had cleaned out a week ago. Gargamax doesn’t much like cow. The texture’s funny. But he had wondered if this springtime would bring the humans even though they hadn’t come last year. Sometimes they skipped a year between kits. The last time they were there, when Third was the kit in arms, they had been very appreciative of the smoked cow. So Gargmax takes it in his jaws and leaps into the air, gliding gracefully from his mountaintop cave down to the motherhuman, who bursts into tears the moment he lands and deposits the cow at her feet. First and Second run to her at once, their gazes on Gargamax curious but unafraid. “Anemone,” the motherhuman sobs. “Anemone has disappeared.” Gargamax stares at her for a moment before it solidifies. Anemone is Third, the one who was afraid of him, and the motherhuman is telling him this because she, like her husband, believes Gargamax to be a friend. He’s unexpectedly touched at the confirmation of this. Four smoked cows to the stray humans in his foothills and they think he is trustworthy, friendly in a way that triumphs over his dangerousness. Gargamax rears onto his hind legs and takes off, his arthritic wing joint twinging. Anemone. Third’s name is Anemone and he will help them come home to their family. *** It’s not hard to find Anemone. They are crying, lost in the woods. Where their father went north, the kit went west. What is difficult, Gargamax realizes, is that Anemone might still be afraid of him. That might make them run away, and if there is a struggle, they are so small they might end up hurt. Just because they are no longer nursing in their mother’s arms doesn’t mean they are as big as First and Second, whose names he should try to learn at some point. Gargamax lands as carefully as he can. He hates landing in the forest; he is too big and invariably crushes some trees which they do not deserve. However annoying trees might be—and trees are very annoying—they don’t deserve to be unceremoniously crushed under his heavy, scaly body. “Sorry,” Gargamax hums. His spoken Treesh is better than his spoken human, but that’s because trees don’t have mouths and thus don’t have pesky vowels. The trees do not respond. Trees are snobs about his spoken Treesh, so he can’t tell if they are angry about their peers’ destruction or judgmental of his intonational hums, but Gargamax still manages to get them wrong after all these years. It takes him a moment to realize that, despite the ending of the falling trees’ echoes, the woods are silent now. Anemone has stopped crying. Afraid? Gargamax can’t tell. How the flight are you supposed to convince a terrified human kit you’re its friend? The only experience he has with kits is Minxy’s and they always instantly tackled him in joy when they saw him. Their mother told them he was their friend and that was enough. The kit’s father said he was their friend; their mother had sobbingly told him what had happened, completely unprompted. But how to make the kit believe it? Gargamax feels lost. “It is unpleasant to lose our community members thusly,” a tree begins to hum at him in angry Treesh. “We recognize the way life goes; we know you are big and we are close. But it is not—” The sound of one tiny hiccup. Did Anemone hear the humming of this tree? “I will plant saplings and spread your seed,” Gargamax promises. That usually got the trees off his back and made him feel a little less guilty for crushing them. “Ten seeds for each felled tree.” Another hiccup. “Twenty,” the tree buzzes angrily. “Done,” Gargamax agrees without really paying attention. His mind is racing, fully focused on tiny little Anemone. Then, he hums completely differently than he had just a moment before. Not Treesh words, but a melody, a tune—a tune a child would find as familiar as Gargamax did when he heard it again for the first time in two years. The fatherhuman’s favorite song. Gargamax is better at humming songs than speaking human or Treesh, and he’s always heard that music is a language of its own, more powerful than words, as strong as magic. He hums the whole thing through twice and is halfway through the third when Anemone emerges from the underbrush, eyes red from many fallen tears. Gargamax stays still as a tree. “Are you my friend?” Anemone asks. Gargamax nods. Dragons don’t nod, but this is well known human body language. “Will you take me home?” Anemone asks next, their big brown eyes welling with tears once more. Gargamax nods again and crouches down, flattening his wing and ignoring the arthritic twinge that shoots into his shoulder so that Anemone can climb onto his back. *** “Again?” Minxy is sitting near his shinies, trying to keep her newest young from knocking over his statues. Anthrax is twenty now, but still an absolute immature menace. Gargamax likes him, though the way he likes all of Minxy’s kits: as glad that they go home as that they come to visit. “Again,” Gargamax shrugs, looking happily down the mountain. It is the first spring that Anemone has come with a kit of his own strapped to his chest as he booms his father’s song out through the foothills. His mate looks nervous as she takes his hand. “It’s fine, Merlin,” Anemone tells her as he leans over so that his beard brushes the shell of her ear, but the dragon on high can still hear every whispered word. “Gargamax is my friend.” Gargamax chuckles, ignoring the sound of a shattering statue behind him. He hums, his own voice echoing off the foothills too, winging his song and his friendship after all these years to Anemone. |
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Celia Winter
Celia Winter is a Chicago-based, award-winning knitter whose bachelor’s degree in history only tangentially helps her in her career in Data & Analytics. Her speculative and romantic fiction has been published in Plott Hound, Heartlines Spec, The Dark, and several anthologies. When not knitting, she can be found writing; when not writing, she can be found bothering her two fluffy cats.
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