Resting in the Light of Legends

An Experiment with Gravity

At the autumn edge of the woods, a young silver dragon was making a discovery about trees. They were considerably easier to land in than to leave.

Ash had one wing through a fork in a branch, his tail looped around another, and the unpleasant suspicion that his left foot belonged somewhere other than beside his right ear. Above him, a squirrel sat holding a nut. It had not offered assistance. It had, however, offered a look.

“I meant to do this,” Ash informed it.

The squirrel turned the nut over. Apparently the other side was more convincing.

That was how Ember found him: suspended between an ambitious arrival and a very poor explanation. Her feathers shone orange and gold in the evening light, and the grass below her brightened as she settled. She looked at the branch, then the wing, then the foot.

“Which of those did you put there first?”

“It happened rather quickly.”

“I can see why you wouldn’t want to dwell on it.”

Ember was a phoenix old enough to have heard several versions of her own legend. None of them had mentioned untangling a dragon while a squirrel supervised. She asked Ash to stop struggling, then eased a twig away from the thin edge of his wing. When he tried to help by twisting, she stopped.

“If you turn again, we shall have to take the tree with us.”

He held still.

One claw at a time, she guided him free. He dropped the last short distance into the leaves, stood up much too quickly, and immediately sat down again.

“Thanks,” he mumbled. “I was just, uh, testing a new trick.”

“Right. And how’s that working out for you?”

“Still perfecting it.”

He hoped this sounded dignified. A leaf slid off his head and landed on his nose.

Ember checked his wing before allowing him to fold it. Nothing seemed torn, though his pride had suffered extensive damage. She suggested walking to the meadow. Ash announced that walking had been his next experiment anyway.

They went slowly. Ember shortened her stride without mentioning it. Ash noticed without thanking her again; he had used up his available courage admitting he needed help the first time.

At the meadow’s edge, he glanced back. The squirrel was still there.

“Do you think it will tell anyone?”

“Certainly.”

“You could have said no.”

“And begin our acquaintance with a lie?”

Ash gave a small, surprised laugh. The day had contained a painful number of branches, but it seemed it might yet contain one good thing.

The Uses of a Very Old Wing

After that, Ash kept finding reasons to pass through the meadow.

Sometimes he had a question about the wind. Sometimes he wanted Ember to watch a landing. Once he arrived carrying a perfectly ordinary stone, because he had decided it resembled an egg and wished to know whether sitting on it would help.

“Help whom?” Ember asked.

He considered this.

“The stone, presumably.”

“It looks content as it is.”

They left it beside the path. Ash checked on it for three days.

Not every visit required a rescue. That was important, though neither of them said so. Ember showed him where the meadow rose gently into a bank, giving him room to practice small hops without a tree taking an interest. When he grew tired, she told him to stop. When he landed properly, she did not make such a great occasion of it that the next attempt became frightening.

“Again?” he asked one afternoon.

“Tomorrow.”

“But that one was good.”

“An excellent place to finish.”

Ash distrusted this philosophy. He preferred to continue until something memorable happened. Ember had observed that his definition of memorable generally involved retrieving him from it.

“I didn’t survive this long just to get my feathers singed by some overgrown lizard,” she told him when a proposed fire-breathing demonstration coincided with a particularly dry pile of leaves.

“I haven’t actually produced fire yet.”

“Then we have the rare pleasure of preventing a disaster before it develops qualifications.”

He grumbled, but chose a bare patch of earth instead. All that emerged was a faint puff of smoke and an indignant cough. Ember waited until he finished coughing before making any remarks. Even sarcasm, she believed, ought to have manners.

In return, Ash learned small things about her. She liked the sunny hollow when the wind came from the north. She disliked having her long feathers stepped on, even accidentally, and especially when the accident came with an explanation longer than an apology. Sometimes she wanted company without conversation.

This last discovery took practice.

One day he found her resting with her eyes closed and sat beside her. He lasted long enough to hear the leaves move before whispering, “Am I being quiet correctly?”

One golden eye opened.

“Until very recently.”

He settled again. When a loose feather caught on a thorn near her tail, he carefully freed it. No trumpet sounded. No grateful village assembled. Ember merely shifted into a more comfortable position and said, “Thank you, Ash.”

He liked the way she said his name when there was no warning attached.

She liked that he had noticed. Most creatures who recognized her wanted a miracle, an answer, or permission to tell everyone they had met a phoenix. Ash mostly wanted to know whether she had seen his latest hop. It was a surprisingly restful distinction.

Just Ember, Just Ash

One evening, the autumn sky turned the same rich gold as Ember’s feathers. Leaves drifted across the meadow, briefly bright before settling into the grass. Ash had managed a short, straight glide that afternoon. He was trying not to mention it again.

“It was quite straight,” he said.

“So I recall.”

“You saw the end as well?”

“I was present for the entire occasion.”

“Good.”

He folded himself beside her, arranging his tail with unusual care. The evening air had begun to cool. Ember lifted a wing, and Ash moved underneath it with the confidence of someone who no longer wondered whether the invitation was meant for him.

For a while, they watched the light leave the tops of the trees.

“Why don’t you ever burn out?” he asked at last.

Ember tilted her head. “Oh, I do. That’s rather part of the arrangement.”

Ash looked up sharply.

“Not this evening,” she added. “You needn’t evacuate.”

He relaxed, though only a little.

“In my experience, every few hundred years I come to an ending, and then a beginning,” she said. “Fire, ashes, the whole business. It sounds neater when someone puts it in a song.”

“That sounds exhausting. I can barely get through one day without tripping over my own tail.”

“You’ll get the hang of it.”

“The tail or the day?”

“Let us be ambitious. Both.”

Ash pressed his cheek against the warm feathers. He thought about beginnings. His own days were full of them: new attempts, new mistakes, new ways of discovering that wings did not always agree with intentions.

“Do you mind starting again?”

Ember did not answer immediately. He appreciated that. He was beginning to recognize the difference between someone thinking and someone deciding what a young dragon ought to be told.

“Sometimes,” she said. “Being accustomed to a thing doesn’t mean I never find it difficult.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me, if you ask me before breakfast.”

He smiled. She lowered her head until her beak nearly touched his horns.

“You don’t have to master everything by tomorrow, Ash.”

“I’m not repeatedly failing, you know. I’m experimenting.”

“With gravity?”

“Very funny.”

The last sunlight caught the silver ridges of his back. Ember drew her wing closer, leaving him room to move. He gave a long sigh, the sort that seemed to empty an entire troublesome day.

“I think we make a pretty good team.”

“Is that what you call it? I call it keeping you out of trees.”

“Well, yes. But I got your feather out of that thorn.”

“You did.”

“And I’m getting better at quiet.”

“There have been promising intervals.”

His eyes closed. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Ember felt a warmth that had nothing to do with fire. To Ash, she was not a distant wonder passing overhead. He knew where she liked to rest. He noticed when something pulled at her feathers. He had seen her tired, and still came back simply to sit beside her.

“Get some sleep, little dragon,” she whispered. “Tomorrow you can tell me what gravity has done to offend you.”

Ash made a sleepy sound that might have been agreement. Soon his breathing settled. Around them, the meadow darkened by degrees, while the last gold lingered along the curve of her wing.

There would be other landings. Other uncertain beginnings. For now, neither of them needed to become anything grander.

She was Ember. He was Ash.

There was room beneath the wing for both of those things to be enough.