Chapter Seven
Theo
Turning into a dragon had everything to do with anger and fear. Just like Bernard had said, I had to grow to control both.
There was a deep and dark void left in every time of the day. There were sullen moments of remembering him at first, but I realized that Bernard as I knew him never died. He was physically gone, but he still lived through the many thoughts that he carved into my brain. All the things that I could never forget would keep him alive in a world of remembrance.
It was easier to control my fears than it was to control the anger. I grew more familiar with my body. I understood how the process of turning could be a choice rather than involuntary—it had to do with how much anger I devoted to what kind of fear.
It was like a knot or a puzzle of feelings. I had to deal with my emotions in solitude. The willow tree was my sanctuary, and it was where all my toxic emotions were left for dead. I would stay or hours after the sun set, and sometimes I would fall asleep and dream of Elise.
I had always believed that dreams weren’t figments of my imagination like mother said. I felt the truth. I didn’t read it in a book. And every cell in my body vowed that she was present where my soul is present, but only when we were dreaming of each other.
Every time I would find myself in a situation in which my anger outweighed my awareness of myself, I would think of Elise. I would tell myself that if I turned in the midst of a crowd, I could be taken away where I could never find her again.
“I will find her, Mother,” I told Matilda one day. “I will search all the land someday and will bring her home.”
My mother would lift her gentle eyes from her book and would pierce into my soul with her look and say, “Son, there are lands that are no longer lands, seas that are as dead as our king’s heart, and men that have only tomorrow to look forward to. And you, my dear, you are hanging your hopes on a mountain of fantasies.”
Even though my mother knew more than any human who lived in our time, she despaired. I figured it was because she was dwelling in fear. She became afraid of dying and found nothing to comfort that fear, no dreams and no ambition. She told me that when one feared death, one had to wrap himself around his purpose, committing every breath to the purpose of making the world a better place. By doing so, their fear of dying served to inspire them instead of cast them into a shadowy corner, curling up in fear and counting the seconds until they pass.
I had to learn to stop listening to everything that she had to say. That wasn’t easy because she had always been the voice of wisdom in my life, and suddenly she had become a storm of hopelessness, briefly sending its winds toward me.
When the day came, I wasn’t aware of what was going to happen. It was drafting day, and Matilda was crying all morning until I had to leave.
“Theo,” she told me as I stood before her, trembling from the pressure of her tears. Her silence was struggling with her desire to give me her words. “If they take you, just promise me you’ll make your way back.” A round of tears burst through her eyes. “Everyone left, but not you, Theo. Not my boy,” she cried and held me in a tight embrace.
A tear fell from my eye as I opened the door and marched outside. My ragged clothes and the dried purple rose were my only company. But I was reckless enough to also carry with me the note that Elise had left me. I didn’t care if I were killed for it. Men who left rarely came back, and when they did, they were never the same.
The king’s Hawks gathered around the spot where they had killed Bernard. I was enraged, but I had to keep my composure so that I wouldn’t devour their bodies.
I saw many men my age behind the Hawks. Each one had heard their name called. Carriages from the castle waited behind the men.
King Harold was a man of power, and he knew exactly how to use the labor of men to his favor. When children turned twelve, he wasted their infinite potential by working them in the mountains, forcing them to find him the resources that he needed to make his power last. And when they grew into men, they would be drafted into his army, serving outside of the kingdom to expand it through central Europe and wherever his dark dreams lingered.
I knew would hear my name. When the inevitable sound of my name escaped the Hawk’s throat, and I walked the hopeless walk toward the carriages.
It was a sullen day, a melancholic sun, and for the first time in my life when the night fell, I legally saw the moon. It felt different being bathed by the moonlight in a carriage that smelled like the fear of the drafted youth.
“Aren’t you scared?” the man sitting next to me asked with a tremble of his voice.
“I am,” I replied with my eyes still fixed on the blazing moon, “but I’m keeping it inside for when I need it.”
He didn’t understand me, and I didn’t expect him to. Like Matilda always said, men can only be enslaved by a ghost. What they feared was a ghost, whether it was the king they never saw or the place they never went. They dreaded the unseen.
The carriages took us through the mountain ranges and in caves dug by the king’s men. When I saw the castle from afar, I remembered the time Elise and I decided to find the castle. We never made it. We couldn’t climb the mountains, and it took us hours to find the first-dug cave through many in the ranges of the mountains.
Still, it was one of the many things that I wanted to do again once I brought Elise back to the village. Seeing the bright flames that seeped out of the castle windows brought melancholy to my thoughts.
I was afraid of what could happen to Matilda. She had no one to protect her, and she was becoming quite indifferent to people seeing her with books. I had even found her reading outside of the house. Nobody noticed her, but if she had stayed longer, the whole village would have known that my own mother was a reader.
I caught a glimpse of the king’s cape hovering over the walls of the castle above. He was watching to see the arrival of the carriages that came into the castle.
The castle was huge on the inside. Once we passed the walls of the castle, my eyes were met by the vast fields that surrounded the castle itself. Thousands of men were sleeping, some under trees and some on the grass with their eyes bathed by the moonlight.
It was the first time I felt the effect of the king’s power in his own lair. Thousands of men were scattered in his yard as his cape flew over the walls above them.
Little did I know, I was about to be blessed with something the whole of mankind couldn’t dream of—I was about to hear the king’s voice. His face was hidden in the shadows that lay above us as we stood under the balcony of his castle.
Men who were slim stayed to serve in the king’s castle while men like me were taken out to the fields and given a sip of wine.
“Nothing is holier than devotion. Tomorrow I will accompany this great army and will scour the land and bring back home all that would make our kingdom great.” The king’s voice was deep and terrifying.
He spoke with such conviction and pride that it was hard not to believe in him. I figured that anyone who heard his voice must think him divine. Perhaps the villagers had all heard his voice. But I was sure my mother never heard it, nor Bernard.