Элизабет Бир - The Best of Elizabeth Bear

She choseto trust the dragon.

She chose to have faith in winter. In danger. In the fire as old as time.

She chose to seek you. She chose to reveal herself to you.

She loved you, and that last thing, she could not have chosen.

That last thing just happened.

Things just happen sometimes.

“So youcame here,” the dragon says, when her muscles have relaxed and she can stand straight again. She turns, so her back warms, too. The heat is so delicious she’s not quite ready to get dressed yet, and put that layer of cloth between herself and the warmth of the dragon’s skin.

“I came here because you are the only dragon left.”

“I am the only dragon ever.”

The knight-errant turns back to the dragon and stares.

“Dragons live forever,” says the dragon. “It would be a terrible thing for there to be more than one.”

“How can that be?”

“It simply is.”

“But where did you come from?”

“I made myself,” says the dragon. “A long time ago. By deciding to exist, and take up space in the world.”

“Is that all it takes for you to be real?”

“Are you the litany of things you have accomplished?”

The woman is silent for a while. Then she says, “Yes. That is how we make ourselves real. That is what we are.”

The dragon does not need her. The dragon is complete in itself.

One cannot fail to love a dragon. One might as well fail to love the moon. Or the sea. Or the vast sweep of soft silence over a headland, broken only by the unified exultation of a rising flock of birds.

It wouldn’t matter to the moon. And you couldn’t help but love it anyway.

You couldnot have chosen to love her, either.

That just happened as well.

Her nakedness. Her courage.

Her tender, toothsome fragility.

Her decision to be vulnerable before the perfect terribleness of you.

She was graying. She was dying. You warmed her with the heat of your body, the furnace contained within.

You folded her in wings against your hot scales.

You made decisions, too.

Flight isa miracle.

She cannot breathe, where the dragon takes her. It is too cold, and the air is too thin.

But she is strong, and she is flying, and she can see the whole world from up here.

You werefascinated for a while. For a little while. A dozen years, give or take a little. You are not particular about time. You are a dragon.

It seemed like a long time to her, probably—living on a mountaintop, watching the seasons turn. Singing her songs.

The songs stopped amusing you as they used to. They all sounded the same. They all sounded… facile.

Armored, though she was not wearing any armor. Any armor you could see. Perhaps the armor was on the inside.

The possibility made you curious.

So you set her on fire.

Because you were curious. And because you were a dragon.

She issinging when the dragon sets her on fire. Its head looms over her like a rock shelf. The snow falls all around her, but not behind, because that is where the bulk of the dragon’s body is. It is like being in a cave, or under an overhang.

She never will remember, later, what she is singing right now.

The great head shifts. There is a grinding sound like rockfall. The head angles sharply, and she thinks rockslide , and the snow falls on her body. It vanishes when it touches her, leaving little dots of chill and wetness on her skin.

She just has time to marvel at how cold it is once the dragon pulls away from her, when the muzzle tilts toward her, the massive jaw cracks open, and she looks up, up the beast’s great gullet into a blue-white chasm of fire.

“Why didyou set me on fire?” the knight cried, burning.

And of course there is no easy answer.

You burned her because fire is what you are.

You burned her because your gifts come wreathed in flames, and your heart is an ember, and your breath is a star, and because you loved her and you wanted to give her everything you are.

You burned her because you love her, and the only way to love is to take up space in the world.

You burned her because she was vulnerable, and you are a thing that burns.

You burned her because the truth, the nakedness, the sensibility had fallen out of her songs.

You burned her because you are what you are, and because there was no reason not to set her on fire.

It isnot a small fire.

It is a fire fit for a dragon’s beloved. It rolls down the mountain in a wave, in a thunderclap. It billows and roils and when it has passed it leaves cooling, cracking slabs of new mountain behind.

She stands atop the mountain, burning. Her skin crackling, her flesh ablaze. She turns; she sees where the fire has wandered. Has swept.

All the trees lie combed in one direction, meticulous. As if a lover had dressed their hair.

Here youare in the wreckage.

You live in the wreckage now.

It is a habitat for dragons.

She doesn’t hold it against you. Well, not for long.

It is the nature of dragons, to incinerate what they love.

The brokenwoman still loves the dragon. She still loves her. Even though the dragon has broken her.

She can always, and only, be a broken person now.

She can be the woman the dragon burned.

The woman who is burning.

The woman who will be burning still.

The flameswere better armor than the armor she took off for you. Nothing will pass through them.

No one will pass through them.

Not even you.

Not even her love for you.

The flames would keep her safe inside.

The burninglasts. The burning continues.