Aileen groaned and tried to sit up. Pain shot through her back, as if she had been smashed against a wall. She was afraid to open her eyes. She knew where she was: inside her worst nightmare. She hadn’t even known this was her worst nightmare, until she started living it. She used her fingers and palms to explore the floor around her. Just as she had thought, she was still inside the cave. As she focused on sniffing the stale air and listening to the soft sound of water flowing somewhere far away, Aileen checked her whole body for possible injuries. She moved her legs, and gave a sigh of relief when she found out they were fine, that she could feel them and use them. When her senses began to get used to her surroundings, she opened her eyes.
For now, there was no golden dragon in sight. She was alone in a dark room with a tall ceiling and no windows. She pushed herself up, and moaned in disappointment when she saw she was not in a room, but a cell. It was quite small and cramped, too. It looked like it had been naturally sculpted by water, and someone just added the final touch: a sturdy set of iron bars to block the opening.
“No,” Aileen whispered. “This isn’t happening.”
She stood up, went to the bars, wrapped her fingers around the cold iron, and started pulling and pushing with all her might. The thing didn’t even budge. What was even more worrisome was that it didn’t look like a door. The bars had no handle and no lock, which meant the only way to get out was to remove them completely. That gave Aileen another idea. She took a step back, then slammed herself against the bars. Sharp pain shot through her right shoulder. She cradled her right arm gently, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. Well, that had proved to be an unfortunate idea. She didn’t think she would try it a second time.
“What do I do now? Shit. What do I do?”
She started rocking back and forth, then abruptly stopped. She was behaving like a hopeless victim. Aileen had never been a victim. Not even when she was a kid, way before her mother decided to screw the prophecy and change her daughter’s life completely. Change it not for the better, but for the best.
With trembling fingers, she patted the hip bag. The bottle was still there. Just to be sure, she unzipped the bag and slipped her fingers inside the inner pocket to check the scroll. Yes, it was still there, intact. At least there was that. Her phone was nowhere to be found, though. She had probably lost it at the entrance of the cave, when she had passed out.
Right. She had passed out.
Aileen’s whole body shuddered when she remembered why she had lost consciousness so suddenly. It was the first time in her life when something like this happened to her, and she couldn’t say she was glad to have discovered just what it felt like. When the dragon had stretched its wings and roared at her, she had genuinely thought she would die. She could swear the beast had decided to turn her into breakfast and was getting ready to roast her right on the spot. Apparently, that hadn’t been the plan. The thing had taken her in this cell and locked her up. Maybe it liked something lighter for breakfast and wanted to save her for lunch or dinner? Aileen shook her head. Thinking along these lines didn’t do her any good.
“All right. There has to be a way out of here.”
She started pacing the floor. Her eyes were getting used to the darkness. She liked to believe it was the middle of the day, but she couldn’t be sure. As far as she could tell, her cell was pretty deep inside the cave. The sun never penetrated these walls. The sound of flowing water made her lick her parched lips. She was thirsty, but not hungry.
“I’m not going to die here,” she said, louder this time.
Her voice echoed through the empty halls. For a moment, she wondered whether there was a chance that her team might come looking for her. Then, she remembered they were all probably dead, or held prisoners. In that case, maybe the attackers would venture inside the cave in hopes of finding her? If they really wanted her, or something she had on her, then they wouldn’t give up that easily, would they? She laughed at her train of thought. This was ridiculous. She was actually wishing she were with the men who attacked her camp. Even they were better than a freaking dragon. They were humans, they could be hurt. Aileen had some idea of how she could protect herself against them, even if that idea was just kicking her arms and legs in their general direction. But a dragon? How in hell did one deal with an ancient dragon?
She was going insane. She started pacing back and forth faster, with more determined steps.
“There has to be a way out.”
This time, there was something about the echo of her voice that she liked. Clearly, she was in danger just by being there. The dragon had locked her up for a reason. It would be back soon. Why not now?
Aileen went back to the iron bars and grabbed two with her hands. Her right shoulder was still throbbing from her earlier attempt to break free. She looked between the bars, but it was too dark to distinguish much. More likely, there was only another cold wall in front of her. The cave seemed tall and wide enough for a dragon to stroll down its halls with its wings at least half stretched.
“Hello!”
The echo bounced off the walls, filling the insides of the mountain.
“I know you’re here, somewhere.” Aileen couldn’t believe how bold she was being. “I don’t know what you want from me, but if there’s something you want to do to me, just get it over with. Just…” Her voice broke. “Don’t let me rot in here. Don’t let me die of thirst and hunger.”
She started sobbing. This hadn’t been her intention. Come to think of it, she hadn’t had any particular intention. Maybe, to draw the dragon’s attention, make it come to her and finish what it started before she lost her mind. Anything was better than a slow, painful death. Even to be burnt to a crisp, or eaten alive. She sniffed and tried to control the tremble in her voice.
“If you can hear me, if you understand what I’m saying… please let me go. Please. I-I have nothing to offer you. I will leave and never look back. No one will know you’re still here. No one will know you ever existed. Please…”
Still holding on to the bars, she fell to her knees. She couldn’t hold back her tears anymore. She couldn’t remember when it had been the last time she had cried so badly, with full wails, hiccups, and snot running down her nose and upper lip. She used her sleeve to wipe the tears regularly, but they soon soaked the top of her blouse, where they stopped after rolling down her cheeks and neck. She was a mess. A hopeless mess who was just as good as dead. Every time she had fantasized about what she would do if she was ever faced with certain death, Aileen had envisioned herself as a confident, level-headed warrior. First, she would try to find a way to save herself. If that wasn’t an option, then she would welcome her own demise with utmost dignity.
“Yeah, right,” she said between wails.
She had never felt so lost and miserable in her whole life. She was no warrior. She was just a silly woman who had thought she could change the world by going on an impossible quest and finding a long-lost artifact no one even believed in anymore. Everything had gone so well. Last night, before falling asleep, she had imagined herself in this very cave, studying her surroundings, looking for traps, trying to figure out who or what the Guardian was. Much like Lara Croft. What would Lara Croft do if she found out the Guardian of the treasure was, indeed, a very real, very much alive dragon? She could fight robots. Surely, a dragon would be piece of cake to her.
Aileen was too dehydrated to continue crying. She hadn’t let all of it out, but the thirst was becoming too much to bear.
“Please… just do something, okay? Don’t leave me here.”
She was giving up. No matter how hard she cried or called, the dragon wouldn’t come. It probably didn’t understand her, anyway. It was a beast, after all. Unless…
Aileen wiped her face as best as she could, then rubbed her sweaty, dirty palms on her pants. Carefully, she took the scroll out of her bag, and smoothed it before reading the prophecy for the thousandth time in her 29 years of life.
“In his lair, he never slumbers.
How long he’s lived, he never wonders.”
“It’s he,” she whispered. “Never slumbers, never wonders… The first two verses talk about the Guardian as if he’s a man, not a beast.”
She stared at the scroll for a full minute before tucking it back inside its pocket.
“The story… The real one, the version my grandmother and my mother used to tell me… The Guardian is a man. That’s why Medea betrayed Jason. Because she saw a man guarding the Golden Fleece, not a beast.”
Her brain was functioning at full speed. Finally, after allowing herself to cry and release some of the fear and frustration, Aileen could think again. She had known these things all along, but she was just putting two and two together now. She still wasn’t sure what this meant. Medea might have seen a man when she had arrived in Colchis with Jason and the Argonauts, but Aileen could only see a dragon. A golden dragon with faded blue eyes, so pale that they could as well be white.
“Where is the man?” Aileen stood up and stepped away from the iron bars. “Where is the man you fell in love with, Medea?”
She barely finished her sentence when she heard thundering steps down the hall to her left. Her heart started beating faster, and adrenaline rushed through her veins. She had to force herself to calm down. After all, that was what she had wanted: to draw the dragon to her cell. It came into view, towering over her small frame, and it was all she could do not to scream.
The beast had its wings tucked on its back. Its chest was rising and falling steadily with every breath, and Aileen was enveloped in scorching heat again. It was enough for the dragon to be a couple of steps away from her, and she could feel drops of sweat coming up to the surface of her skin. Great! Even more dehydration! Its large, flaring nostrils released thin threads of smoke, and when the dragon bent its neck to meet her gaze, Aileen had to take another step back. The smoke alone could burn her face. The skin on her cheeks and neck was beet red, and she felt even thirstier than before.
Well, the dragon was here now, staring into her green eyes and waiting. Aileen tried to remember the rest of her plan. Oh, right! There was no “rest of the plan”. She cleared her throat and tried to keep her voice steady.
“Water,” she said. “I need water.”
The dragon blinked unimpressed.
“Right…” She looked down at herself. She was so dirty and smelled so badly that she could barely stand her own body. “I would really like to wash. I can hear water flowing somewhere in the distance…”
The dragon puffed and stepped closer to the bars, its huge nose pressed against the cold iron now.
Aileen studied its face, trying to figure out what was going through its head. When its golden eyes sparkled with something between lust and hunger, a chill ran up her spine, making the little hairs on her nape stand on end. This was bad. She didn’t want that kind of attention from her captor.
“Please? I-I don’t know what you’re thinking… I don’t know how to communicate with you. But if you understand me, then please… just let me go. I’m of no use to you.”
The dragon did the unthinkable: it licked its thin, scaly lips with the tip of its forked tongue.
“Oh shit… you’re not thinking. No!”
She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself, stepping farther away from the bars. From the way it was looking at her now, it was clear the beast was contemplating turning her into a gourmet lunch. Or dinner. She couldn’t be sure what time it was. A couple of minutes ago, Aileen had thought she was ready to die. Burnt, eaten… it didn’t matter, as long as it was fast. But that was before she had realized that the prophecy and the story of Medea said the Guardian was supposed to be a man, not a dragon. Maybe, it could be both?
“Listen to me. I-I didn’t know you were here. I mean, I knew the myth was real, but I didn’t expect the Guardian to be… well, you. I thought the Colchian Dragon was a metaphor for something else. The tears… they could have been just drops of water from… from that river or waterfall I can hear from here. The Golden Fleece… I never expected to find an actual piece of golden fleece. It had to be a metaphor, too, right? But now that you’re here and I’m actually looking at you, I don’t know anymore. It’s like everything I learned about the myth of the Golden Fleece was wrong. Both the textbook version and my family’s version. Or… not completely wrong, but so, so muddled.”
The dragon blinked patiently, as if it was listening to her. Seeing some of the hunger in his eyes was gone, Aileen took a deep breath and continued.
“On the one hand, the textbook version says Medea helped Jason get the Fleece by putting the Colchian Dragon to sleep. On the other hand, my family’s version says that, yes, Medea did put the Guardian to sleep, but the Guardian was not a dragon, he was a man she had fallen in love with. And because she loved the Guardian, she tricked Jason into giving up on the idea of killing him. She put him to sleep, but didn’t take the Fleece. Instead, she used her magic to create an artifact similar to the Golden Fleece and gave it to Jason. He never knew it was fake. But, you see… these two versions are so different, yet they have enough things in common to make you think…”
The dragon’s eyes turned to slits as it studied her carefully. Aileen risked taking a step towards it. The heat of its body almost knocked her back against the cave wall. The thing was more of a living furnace than anything!
“I don’t know what I was expecting when I started on this journey. The Guardian could be a man who died a long time ago. Maybe I was expecting a puzzle I had to solve in order to get to the Golden Fleece…”
That was the wrong thing to say. Apparently, the dragon didn’t like the idea of a man who died a long time ago. Or, maybe it didn’t like the fact that Aileen’s intention was to steal his treasure.
“No!” She waved her hands in front of her as a sign of surrender. “No, I don’t want to steal the artifact, whatever it is. I… I know that in order to get to it I would have to kill you. I don’t want to kill you, really. I wouldn’t even know how.”
That didn’t seem to convince the beast. It rose on its hind legs, spread its wings, then fell back on its front legs and blew red, scorching fire through the iron bars.
Aileen was present and fast enough to run to the farthest corner of the cave and curl up in a ball against the cold wall. She covered her head with her arms, and made sure only her back faced the dragon. She couldn’t know if this position would protect her, but that was her survival instinct kicking in. The flames licked at her back, setting her blouse on fire. She screamed and hurried to take it off. Only in her sports bra, she couldn’t tell how bad the burn on her back was. All she knew was that she could feel nothing but pain. She threw the blouse she had been wearing as far away from her as possible, then looked into the dragon’s eyes.
“Please don’t… Please…”
The beast’s chest rumbled, and Aileen understood it was getting ready to blow fire a second time. And this time, it had actually stepped even closer to her cell, and its nose was peeking between two bars.
She had to do something. Anything. But what? By now, she had a vague feeling that the dragon understood her perfectly. Otherwise, why had it listened patiently when she spoke about the myth and its two versions, and why had it gotten angry when she hinted at the possibility of her stealing the fleece? But what could she tell it so it would spare her life?
The dragon drew a deep breath.
Aileen unzipped her hip bag and, with trembling fingers, took out the tear-shaped bottle. She squeezed it in her sweaty palm.
The dragon pushed its nose father between the bars, apparently to make sure the fire got to her this time.
“Wait!” Aileen screamed, holding the bottle in the air. “You saved my life! Your tears saved my life!”
The clear liquid at the bottom of the bottle sparkled in the dark.
The dragon blinked in surprise, closed its mouth, and withdrew.