©Jason I. Stutz 2008
There is a dragon who lives in the mountains up from the valley and town I’ve lived in all my life. He has lived there, in the midst of a forest whose trees bloom so sweetly that I can scant say emeralds, or anything in this world, would be more beautiful than a single leaf from any of those trees.
And the dragon enjoys this forest all to himself, and no one questions his authority to habituate himself there. On occasion, young adventurers hike up, only to return pale faced, shaking, and they swear never to leave home again. There is a rumor that one (long ago, of course, no one any of us knew) never returned. But that was probably just a tale told for the fearful and the superstitious. None the less, we never bother the dragon.
I cannot help from feeling envious of him, though, and a bit miffed that he takes his home in the most beautiful stretch of our otherwise above-average forest.
I think I’ll go to visit him and see if I might also take respite there.
The dragon idled in the air on his two feet, there, down from his cave, amidst a crowd of small trees. He is watchful, almost always alert. It is a natural state for him, not like us who have to remember to be aware. As he breathed, smoke puffed gently from his nostrils, as would the smoke from a man leisurely enjoying a pipe. As he breathed in and out, and his chest filled out and in, his wings rose up and down, so that he appeared to be hovering there, among the crowd of small trees.
He looked around him, far out in every direction, catching all the trees in his vision until the hills dropped off, as the natural curvature of the earth takes his forest from his sight. He lamented that all could not be his, that he could not breathe the whole breath of that peerless forest into his lungs.
But he looked down into the valley at the town and felt relieved. He saw the families living their lives. Although he felt almost protective of them, on many days, he would rather they would not be there at all. For, if a fire would wipe them out, his precious forest would not be littered by their houses and their activities. But, as fate would have it, Mother Earth desired this town to be ordered there in the valley, with humans in it, living and dying and living their lives, so strangely, as if they did not know what to do and were making it up as they went.
He opened his senses until his inner eye opened. He saw the doings of all the little forest creatures. None of them lived their lives like the humans. Conjoined with their odd, human ways, there seemed to be an extra, peculiar light and energy about their actions. They were humorous, really, for they all acted in their own way as if they themselves were rulers or deserved to be rulers and went about commanding each other to do their own will. Imagine living in a village of five hundred kings each refusing service to another! Madness! How they resented each other, or submitted to each other, or abused each other. But amidst all this, there was some finer quality to their actions: a softness, a tenderness at times, a comprehension, unseen in any of the forest animals.
Sometimes, gazing down into the town, he saw one would just catch the eye of another and an ocean of meaning and mystery emerged in that look. Something springs out of the heart-area of each man as they stand before another- a fountain made of wishes. A universe was born in their awareness.
This and this alone, sometimes caused great pain to the dragon. Of all the things in all of his domain- and he enjoyed them all deeply, deeper than any of the humans ever did or could, he felt- but this, these minute, intimate moments they shared were as though out of his domain, divided from his understanding. And this gnawed at him at times until he could not continue to watch. So, he’d go back to dissolve his feelings in the forest- the glory of his trees and his earth, that earth that the great Mother, in design with God, has given to him to enjoy and keep in his heart.
The dragon sensed activity rising from below. Perplexed, a complex mixture of emotions adorned his posture. His senses blossomed petal by petal, quick, till his inward eye showed to reveal the boy hiking up the mountain side, a booming song of light shouting out from around his heart-area.
~~~8~~~
The woods up here…I can not formulate right words to communicate how beautiful they are to me. The air is so clear, vibrant, fresh. I see why the dragon loves it so. The pines I swish past are soft against my face. I am listening to the birds: they seem to communicate all together and at once, a harmony. Each bird completes his own tiny verse in a great song.
But it is a song that has meaning, not only to them, but to all the forest creatures. Yes- how can I know this, but that I myself understand them?! They are the voice of the woods! Why do we not hear them like this down in the valley in the town where all the people are? Oh, sad that we do not come here. I am going to change all that. Silly superstitions about the dragon being so mean…what frightful beast would choose to surround himself amidst all of this?
The more I marvel about the great beauty of these woods, the more elated I become. I am now rising up to the vale. A light I have never known seems to cling to the objects up here: to the trees, the birds, even the sounds are shown with this light, somehow.
Above the vale, the dragon was watching attentively. Humans usually repel the light up here, and he noted curiously how the boy seemed to attract it to him. He was the brightest object in all the woods. The dragon was angry.
He hopped down to a cliff just above the boy as he reached near. The boy was startled, but in his current state of mind, he was not afraid. The dragon was a great wonder to him and he took the dragon’s visage into himself.
“Oh! Hello! Uh…well!” said the boy.
The dragon was hypnotic in his motions about the boy, as though initiating a chess match of manners and etiquette. He looked around with his senses; he dug with his senses deep into the forest and breathed a haughty breath. He knew all the forest creatures. He knew the scent of the forest– not only individual smells, but all of the individual smells in his nostrils and lungs were one unified smell with diverse tones, a body, a being all on its own, a friend he always knew.
And the light of this day– only this sun’s particular angle this moment in time could offer its unique ray to the forest as it began to die in the West, never to be repeated in quite this way again. Incredible harmony, a perfect being, this forest, and her keeper, the dragon, together, one.
Something soft, not a feeling of danger, but of something new, rapped in the awareness of the dragon. He felt angry, not knowing why. It was not, he noticed, an anger born of injustice, but a childish anger that one feels when something happens that one does not want or is not ready for, and yet is not wrong.
All in a flash the dragon erupted and spat licks of fire through his nose so much that the flames blackened the boys face. “What are you doing here!!!”
But the boy was elated from his climb up the mountain side. Yes, so elated was the boy that he was simply unable to be afraid! Surely, if there is a good time to die, this would have been it.
Face blackened, smile radiating, huge toothy smile, amaze-eyed, stood our hero, the boy.
The dragon was taken by him- the boy was unfazed by his anger and this made him angrier! He jumped down from his cliff to stand in front of the boy and pressured him with grimaces and the heat of his breath. The dragon remembered the boy he mauled years ago and did not wish to relive that, but his emotions were beyond control. He lunged foward.
Above the boy, a cluster of angels oversaw the scene. As this was not an ordinary matter but a matter of destiny, an angel reached with his mind down into the boy and ‘reminded’ the boy about the ‘myth’ of the dragons violence, about the beautiful forest and how wonderful it would be to gain common enjoyment of this forest. This moment of purposeful thought overrode any fear that would threaten the boy and he with ease stepped out of the way of the dragon’s attack. Silly dragon, trying to scare me! continued the angel in the boy’s mind. What beauty this forest posseses and what sacred joy it would be to enjoy her.
The dragon woke from his anger and looked upon the boy, who was smiling at the dragon, something deeper than the triumph of evading the dragon’s wrath telling in his face. It was a longer triumph, a prophetic triumph, a triumph more deep than his mind could formulate.
Often, it is the smallest of events that unfold in our world that have the largest effects for the changes that us humans go through and must go through, for the sake of our evolution. So much less the big news items blasted over the televisions and radios and the newspapers, but the
tiny events, as when a man and woman share a tender moment, consuming all of their fears and
doubts in the minutest but most meaningful gestures; or, as when a boy meets the dragon at the
top of a mountain, fearlessly, thinking only that the forest is so beautiful and he wished to enjoy
it as the dragon does. Events like this shape and change the course of history in some
mysterious, interconnected way. The branches born by the seed I plant reach very far and
reproduce. These tiny events create precedents, so to speak, for other small, beautiful events to take precedance over the more ugly and harmful happenings. When light pierces darkness, there is a trace of infinity created here on Earth. There can be debate after debate as to what the darkness is, but it can perhaps be told as “the not yet formed,” but it is evil, or maleficient, on the occasion that it pretends to a form not its own, such as untruthful language, or Time itself that reaches away from God and forgets and dies. God: “What from the depths emerges into a shape of something I call upon, into Time, into the Light of day, is positive and good- I am an artist and I knew you before you were even born. Once the fruit of my desire is born, it shows the Glory of Me.”
When an angry man is made to realize his own weakness, he returns to himself and there is a trace of light made in him and that moment can never be forgot. That man, in that moment of realization, has, literally, remembered himself, recalled himself from the void, returned from his prodigial journey through the darkness of rage and depravity to the gates of his own inner light and entered through them, creating a moment in which he remembers his own real nature, ‘how he is,’ unsupposing and good, quite opposed to that anger or jealousy that had led him so wrongly. Let us now return to ourselves, contemplate the light here, and consider this dragon, whom I respect deeply and seek to know, as our boy comes to meet him.
II.
“What are you doing here?” asked the dragon, removed from his anger, meek, but still powerful. “Do you not realize that in one breath, if I chose, your parents would be weeping for you the rest of their lives?”
“Oh, dragon, I am not afraid of you,” and his smile was not arrogant. “How could I feel any fear surrounded by all of this? The tree-leaves alone, this… special bright green, are enough to have me admit to myself that I am already in heaven. What, then, is there for me to lose? My life? I believe I have found it here. What else could my soul ask for but to reside here for all eternity? It would be a gift to me if you destroyed my body and freed my soul to enjoy this place even more intimately, to live in the leaves as they grow, to bathe in the particles of mist, and drink and let go this air even more deeply!!” There was nothing in the great wonder on his face that indicated anything but sincerest rapture.
The dragon, fearful, burst again into anger and went to leap upon him, but as he went to move, his foot slipped upon a rock and he stumbled past the boy and landed on another rock, crunching his shoulder, not to mention his pride- the soft green scales of his face turned red.
Amazed, fear suddenly crept into the boy, as his heart had only happiness and he was not prepared for the reality of the dragon’s rage; he stepped cautiously backwards away from the dragon as he moved on the ground, getting his balance to rise again to his feet. The dragon’s face showed hurt and anger, his eyebrows pressed inward and his toothy mouth trembled.
The angel moved upon the boys mind again, and the boy saw something more in the dragon. There was a deep concern, a welling spring that bubbled in the dragon’s heart. He saw so clearly that it was a spring that it appeared to be an actual part of the forest up here, but a part so personal to the dragon, it seemed to wed the dragon to this place… they were inextricable from each other, the dragon, this forest, this mountain, this particular quality of light that shone everything to be song, as though the dragon himself was formed by the union of all of these elements and was made their gaurdian. His love is so deep for this forest, this mountain, it could rightly be said that he is this forest, this mountain, this sunlight, this spectacular brightness of green.
The boy’s fear subsided with the course of these revelations and only love remained in him. The dragon stood peering awkwardly upon the boy, who moved no further away, even as the dragon neared, a pain in his heart, a mysterious pain the boy could see but not yet understand, driving him upon the boy; this strange, but beautiful boy, who cared not at all if he lived or died, as long as he could stay here in this forest.
Closer, he moved upon the boy, the boy still watching the dragon seeing all of him as from the inside. The dragon’s rough fingers were closing upon the boy’s face, but with the dragon within his reach, the boy knelt to honor him, and hugged his scaly legs with love. The dragon desisted- his arms dropped uselessly to his side. Yay, so overtaken was the dragon that he forgot himself completely, and only the forest, this beautiful forest, remained to him, speaking with his voice the wind and its words tumbling through tree branches and his lips were their leaves, speaking beautiful phrases this world was new to hear: “Welcome here,” they may have said, in not as strange a language.
So overtaken was the dragon that his feet came to rest on the soft ground and his hand moved unconsciously to rest on the boys head, as tenderly as he had ever held anything in his life.
As for the boy, clutching gently the dragon’s leathery knees, he saw only the forest as embodied in the dragon, that spring bubbling soft in his heart, inextricable from the landscape, a part of the landscape itself, yay, the secret, hidden feature of the landscape as it bubbled ceaselessly in the dragons blood, the most beautiful feature in the whole mountain. The boy held and held the dragon and his love deepened and grew.
The angel, satisfied, left them to each other. Truth would guide them now. The dragon forgot the pain that drove him. It rose futily in his mind like a fish leaping above water to catch a hook on his consciousness, but it failed and failed and became so tired that it swam away.
But as the minutes flew by, and the forest rested into a slumber, the boy, without knowing it, fell asleep at the dragons feet. After many moments, the dragon returned to his memory, and felt a sudden lack of pride, embarrassed as this boy lay sweetly coddling his feet.
The dragon’s thoughts returned, he called upon memories of the humans who came here in ages past. They hurt the forest, they polluted it, the happy songs of the birds were choked until they were gone. Even the rocks became impatient and emitted negative magnetism, and ponds where the fishes live clouded over and became oily and dark. The fish hid down below, and so he could not speak to them, but when he did, they rose just briefly and spoke only of sorrow.
The dragon, confused between these memories and this loving boy, freed himself from the boy’s embrace and galloped off toward his cave. A tear welled in his fierce, golden eyes, like a surge of water from a deep, bubbling spring.
III.
The boy is still there, the dragon sees him, and they commense their joined destiny.
The boy. At last, (with one final sigh) the divine entered him, a cotton ball of light and consciousness, down to his very core– it then reached out through him and he encompassed all the world. The boy opened his eyes upon the dragon and saw the terrible tension he endures. “Oh, sweet dragon,” the boy said.
The dragon, surprised, at last noticed the boy, his sweetness, his bravery, his confidence and innocence. The dragon loved him. “Why are you with me, boy? What have I done to attract such attention. Are you so enamored with my cliffs, my greens, my animals, that you can not live without them? Come then, be a friend of this forest forever, and come away from all you’ve had below– your mother, your father, your brothers and sisters and friends. Come. I’ll have you and you shall be as my son.”
The boy, deeply touched, retreated none the less. “Oh, no, dragon!” the boy said. “How could I leave my home, my family; and what of Mr. Robert the butcher who feeds even the dogs with his meat; or the lady who sighs in her church pieu for her lost loves even long after all the church-goers had gone; how could I leave my friends who taught me to be not only myself, but everything? How could I?”
“But what about me, child? If the butcher came here he’d kill my beloved animals. If the lady in the church were here, she’d have found her love again, and she would never leave me alone. Your family, your friends, if they trampled on this ground the song of the forest would be dampened to a low, discordant hum. I would not sing my songs any more, could you forgive yourself then? Why? Why should I not sing my native song?”
The boy thought of this dragon, his life, his love. Although below are those I love, they would, in their love, destroy that which embraced them. I would keep this mountain a secret; my friendship with this dragon, I’ll tell no one.’
A day in conversation with our dragon king– guardian of the sacred beauty of the Upper Forest! And now, I descend below. My mother is sure to be worried, and dinner will taste like heaven.
By the time the boy found the mountain’s base, he was so awash in thoughts and happiness he almost forgot himeself. Entering home, he swung the door wide: “Hello, Mother! I’ve much to tell you about my day!”
She seemed more than interested- she demanded explanation. His father glanced at the whipping-board, uncertain.
“I went up to meet the dragon,” said the boy, innocuous. Terror filled, then fled, the room, and in its place, curiosity.
“Please continue, young man,” said the father, flushing red, almost trembling.
“I went up to meet the dragon,” said the boy shyly. And, at last remembering his promise, he quickly altered the story— the first lie he ever told to his parents. “He… he was terrifying. I almost died. He blew a flume of fire from his nostrils. To my fortune, an enormous tree was beside me and I fell behind it just as the first licks of fire drew past me. I felt in their heat a terrible chemical, capable of eating me whole! After much time passed, I peered from behind the tree. The bark was scorched and seething a green, bubbling goop.” The boy’s eyes became shifty. “But, he, the dragon, was gone. I then wandered in the forest lost until it grew dark, when I followed the map of the sky home.”
The boy was surprised at the complexity of his lie. It was not entirely a lie. He left out only the part where he and the dragon fell in love.
Even so, his father looked at him suspiciously. The boy felt his father’s eye upon him.
“You… did not speak to the dragon?” The boy was shocked. How could he know, even, that the dragon was capable of speech.
“N-no, father, I, I did not speak to him… it!”
“He,” his father emphasized, “is quite eloquent, and capable of speaking any language he
chooses.” The boy wheeled nervously in his mind. But that nervousness quickly was lost to the
underlying sense that he shared a very special secret with his father.
“Your mother has some work to do,” said his father, eyeing his wife amusedly. “Let’s leave her be and walk a bit, shall we?”
Now, wonderous, “Of course, father. I’ll always, always walk with you.”
His mother took to her rag and soap, watching her husband and son take arms with each other and go. Secretly, her heart pounded. She thought of the time her grandparents told her about, whispering over the hearth. The forest was as much theirs as it was the gods, and the dragon was lovely and kind. All her life, she yearned to sit amongst the birds and the sweet breezes that blew up there. All her life, she yearned to walk and hear the forest’s song.
The night is cool, and all the stars are claiming their birthright in their plot of sky, saying, “there is no diamond more beautiful than I.” God took them in his hand one night trillions of years ago, seeing how dark was His world, and scattered them like seeds across that darkest ocean; there, blooms of light, they grace the universe, and live to give light and life to new worlds, each one unique. There, to their constant joy, they sing and shine; and tonight, they sing their focused song down to the very bones of the boy, our hero, and his gentle father.
Without any prelude at all, his father spoke. “Be careful of him.”
It all became obvious. The boy needed not question his father, as it was apparent, already, that his father knew the dragon- had, even, a history with him. His admiration for his father instantly molted into love. He felt their bond deepen as they spoke.
“But why such gravity to your statement, father? What is on your mind?”
“He is a dragon, my son.” The boy, perplexed, walked ahead a few paces. His father watched him, smiling softly, proudly. His father looked skyward. A star he loved many years ago, when he, himself, met the dragon, announced its purpose again, this night and twinkled tellingly for the sake of his eyes. “All is destiny,” he said, amazed, loud enough for his son, if his ears were open, to hear. They were. The boy let this saying sink in to his heart as he walked forward.
“All was written long ago,” the boy, or something above him, spoke within himself.
IV: Later- Not quite heeding his father’s words...
The dragon has become quite affectionate toward the boy. The boy, inebriated in his kindness, begins to speak perhaps too freely. Half-heeding his father’s words of caution, the boy questioned the dragon. “My father says to be wary of you,” says the boy. He became, suddenly, quite nervous. As he said this, he felt it a betrayal of his father, and he felt, if his father is right, that he is suddenly quite vulnerable.
But the dragon looked upon him, quizzically, concerned, and looked into the colors and layers of the boys being. The dragon, who understands himself already, breathed in through his nose, smelling deeply the boy. He smelled all, his boyhood and birth, his relations with his family members, his acceptance in society, and yes, he smelled, in the boy, his father, who many years ago was also so brave as to ascend this mountain to speak to the dragon.
The dragon’s tough heart jolted and, in the portion of his heart that knew the boy’s father, remembered, felt a loss, and became enraged. While, yet, the dragon, externally, and outside that portion of his heart, was cool, or was warm- as he was before, and open to the boy- now, as was the boy to him, he was wary, holding back a portion of his mind in a cove of darkness.
‘Wariness’ cloaked them like a magician’s hood. In case of violence, each calculated his own victory— victory born of (what else?) the dark imagination that rises like smoke and ash from fear. All this happened in a few seconds.
The tension became insurmountable and obvious. They mutually decided to part for today. As they walked away, there was a tug on each their hearts for each other. The boy looked back over his left shoulder for the dragon, only to notice that the dragon had done the same. Their eyes met and softened. This was a more proper goodbye. Soon, they thought to each other, we’ll meet again.
And the boy descended the mountain as the dragon watched. When the boy was only a small speck near the base of the mountain, the dragon turned back to his forest. The sun fell between the wood and circumnavigated him like a mother’s hands, embracing him with all it fell upon: the wood, the leaves, the birds and animals rustling about preparing for night. It is easy to forget all else below when all of this sings within his heart, a symphony whose notes lift him in a constant crescendo of his existence, at once with all else.
The boy remained behind the dragon’s present thoughts, a beautiful, bright shade of love, drawing all of this moment into its hue. He remembered the boy’s father, now. How could he have been so blind? He would have noticed if the boy had acted on some other’s agenda, if the boy set up to the mountain to fulfill his father’s dream. He would have known.
No, thought the dragon. The boy has acted on his own will. This radiant shaft of light found its target in my heart.
But this divides him, now. The boy’s father was the last to know him, and failed as all the others had. He had wanted the forest, and the dragon would not relent. The dragon recites to himself from his memory, his litany of the boy’s father’s sin:
The boy’s father’s pure intent failed him just at the moment I thought to offer my peace. At that very moment, the boy’s father stumbled, as from this mountain’s peak to his lower nature; and those lower, attendant wishes had surely been percolating beneath his consciousness the whole time, only to then rise up to his lips for him to taste. Forgetting himself, he licked and salivated over the thought of gaining possession of this forest, and worse, the glory it would bring him in his society. The dragon hung his head from his lithe shoulders and somberly put aside this thought as though putting away a written public record of a crime.
A little more detail of that critical moment in the dragon’s and boy’s father’s life:
Feeling stunned, betrayed by the boy’s father’s hidden greed, the dragon rose up and towered over the boy’s father, giving him no more than an instant to retreat. Fire flew from the cavern of his heart out of his mouth and nose, and rage and rage and rage completed him, sending the boy’s father tripping and screaming down the mountain, all courage stunned and lost. Shameful tears streamed down the boy’s father’s face mirroring the banks of the now anxious streams that flowed from the mountain spring.
He sobbed and sobbed as he ran and ran and ran, down the mountain to his parent’s home, taking in all the beauty he could to keep for his memories. For, he knew, as he ran, as his heart was breaking more and more with every step downward, that this would be his last time upon the mountain.
What the boy’s father realized and did not anticipate back then, is that the more he gained the dragon’s trust, the more difficult it was to maintain it. He felt, once he was within that trust, that he had by default won his prize. At first meeting, the dragon suspected him and forgave his inconsistencies until the father’s love was proven. But, once the dragon welcomed him into the firey cave of his heart, even a momentary lapse was call to battle. The dragon, being a dragon, could not be quelled. His heart is tender, untrusting, raw. This makes him care and love with immense strength, and also, it makes him so violent if offended. But, now, the father understood. The paths to the mountain top are steep, dangerous, and so it is with the dragon’s heart.
IV: Later— the boy is king...
The boy felt within him all the turmoils and inconsistencies of the town’s people down below. By now, they all recognized him as their king. His bravery was born of love. His guidance was at one with the laws of mercy and truth. He did not use power to come down on people, but he, instead,listened to the heart within each of them, and offered what he felt was true, knowing that it was God who resided within them when he looked at them.
He felt no disharmony between himself and God, only an ever-present annunciation, “I am as I am,” and that infinite in every direction- a light and intelligence, softly but firmly aware of himself, holding the law at the center of the universe as his very bones, expressing it with his hands, his voice, his mind, his every action. Yet, the boy knew only, still, that the mountain was beautiful, and that there was an ever-increasing, wordless, reason-less feeling within him that his people were given by heavenly Will to enjoy it.
Still, he knew: the people are selfish because of the fear they learned to abide by; the people deceive out of their own goodness, and how hypocritical this is; the people turn their backs on their word because they will themselves to forget it; or they become hungry and tired and seek momentary advantage to supplant this. Sometimes, they become so corrupted by suffering that they do not set themselves straight, and relent to a path that is unbecoming to their light, and hurtful to those in their midst. Still, he was not troubled by the divide between what they will enjoy and the obstacles that kept them from it. He only sought the solution how to marry them.
He talked long and long with the dragon, day after day, and found his dearest fulfillment in the hours present with him. Each day he ascended the tough mountain, finding it often more difficult then the previous day to ascend. The paths changed of their own accord, and sometimes beguiled him. He found that if he was thinking about reaching the mountain top, and hurried in his thinking and imagination there, the correct paths would evade him, he would be disoriented.
Only when he settled down in himself, and let go of that exclusive but unimaginable moment of union with what he dreamed of 10 minutes hence, or a week, or 10 years, and he instead listened to the great voice in the center of the forest (the yet unreachable center) that drew him there from the beginning, unbeknownst to him; and he listened to the birds that sang like a choir of God’s angels shouting their joy through tiny, powerful hearts; and he listened to the wind that blew in the trees, and the foot patters of animals behind the bush, and the chirping of insects; the way the tall grass felt as it caught playfully on his feet as he walked; and the sun, its particular hue this day, as it diffused through the clouds above, or bathed the whole mountainside in its gold- then, only then, could he find his way.
One day, after finding his way to the mountain peak at the beloved feet of the dragon with even more difficulty than usual, the boy did something that irritated the dragon. It is not important what it was. What is important is what ensued.
The dragon ruminated angrily in the vicinity of the boy, yet
not confronting him). The boy, realizing, noticed the fearful urge in him to win the dragon’s love, but instantly gave up, and he felt quite relieved in so doing. This, it so happens, was exact same point upon which his father fell from the dragon’s grace.
The boy sat smiling humbly on the floor of the forest. Red, yellow and green leaves formed a mosaic out around him, like ringed ripples on a bejeweled pond. The coat of light that has huddled around our hero since the day he was born, when God decided to take aim upon him and put it in his code to build his own ladder to heaven, did not fly from our hero now, like it did his father. He simply let go of any thought of anything.
The leaves felt soothing beneath his hands, moist and clean. The birds that exhaled the song of the forest sang, apparently, the boy’s favorite tune- did it ever cease to please the boy? Never.
What is this dragon doing? asked the boy. I see only love for him but outside of his cares he sees only a gray ghost of images, empty figures lashing upon lash in the air. Inside his cares, the gold from the sun imbues everything; the air, even if cloud dimmed, still lingers with light and invokes the memory of the sun in anticipation of its return. And the boy is its witness: everything is patient exultation. The boy loves the forest, and, he is increasingly aware, the forest is him.
The boy has not till now felt his heart expand and turn to a gaseous-gold, like a planet being carried into existence as a new sun. The boy is the forest; the forest is him.
The dragon, realizing, stepped around, gawking at the boy. Still in his same humble posture on the forest floor, the boy’s light, which had clung to him like a white cloak, now reached out from him to every edge of the forest- golden rays, a son of the sun, holding every life and space equally; unpossessing, all possessing light.
The dragon looked down on his own body, into the fiery cave of his heart, and there, to his shock, he found a living hologram of the boy, alive in those flames, equal to and as real as who sat before him there on the ground.
The dragon felt, from his arms, sprout the first white feathers, and from his shins, white and gray. His nails, dark black like perfect iron, fell back into his toes. If anyone could have guessed, this was the dragon’s only weak spot: the bones of his feet were terribly soft. He had not evolved to such a state of hardness- this was the final thing. But now, his feet, extracting the strength from his tallons, were strong, stable, enduring.
His feet were light, playful springs attached by golden strands to his heart, in which now the boy sat playfully musing upon a new species of flower that asudden sprung up from the ground before him and cheerfully announced its name.
The dragon’s heart seized seeing the boy in it; a helpless cry of love etched upon the dragon’s wrinkled face. The dragon wept and laughed simultaneously.
VI: The boy’s father ascends
The boy sat. Hours turned into days, days into weeks, weeks into months. He sat. He was nourished by the forest. He was the forest, as was the dragon. The dragon had no need to feed on any life, there, for he was the life. And so it was, now, with the boy.
Down below in the town, the people became worried- his father, especially. His nights were haunted by his failure with the dragon, his terrified flight back down the mountain, and he feared the same for his son. Weeks went by, then months. The boy had never stayed so long.
The boy’s father had to, now, return.
At daybreak, he drew up his rucksack from the cedar closet and filled it with a day’s bread, cheese, and water. As he walked through the kitchen, his wife noticed his face showed a sadness, a resolve, and the faintest excitement. She with clearest green eyes carressed his cheek and his eyes shown back to her, clear and brown.
He walked out the door, his boots felt good on the ground. His legs, they felt lighter than they had in years: Downright springy, he thought, amused. He walked to the mountain and began his ascent.
As he neared closer to the top, the memories returned. His clarity of thought is what he remarked upon the most. His mind was a light, clear vessel and all of his thoughts were revealed to have a relational movement toward some unending conclusion, like schools of fish swimming delighted toward a light they’ve always known- a light that was hidden in a cave out of view. It was his only to let them, and this, he saw, is what is called freedom- the freedom men have sought since men first took up a hoe and settled upon the earth to gather and live amongst other men in comfort and ease.
He had forgotten who he was. He marveled at how much he had changed, grown, matured. An adult! he laughed. He regarded himself, his ways with people, his failings and weaknesses, yet also his goodness, his humor. He liked himself. He liked who he had become, since last he knew him.
Next, he thought of his wife and it was as though his heart would burst and tears flowed from his eyes! He felt a sudden tenderness for her. The tenderness was a river that emerged in his consciousness, one that had been building in strength down below his awareness: the frailty of earthly love, the tragically inevitable “death-do-us-part,” but yet how precisely it mirrors eternity.
Next, the fish of his thoughts swam at last to his son. Like a shot from the sky, his thought of his son stood him in his tracks, a force came upon him, he endured a blow to his chest like a powerful wind and his mind was shook like a tree whose leaves were all taken from it. The cave that hid the light blew open and the fish sped into that light that emerged. A voice: “Father!” heard in the air above him, around him. “Father, I am here.”
His eyes moved instinctively up above, a cluster of boulders were a little cliff underneath a grove of small trees. He walked the path upward. His legs became tired and sweat poured from his brow. Soon, everything ached, his joints (his knees, and wrists and shoulders and jaw all ached) and his breath was constricted and tight.
His muscles all tightened around his ribs until he could hardly walk anymore, but a few more steps, he thought- a few more steps- there, he saw through blurry gaze his son, beaming brightly atop the stone. He couldn’t focus. His head was dizzy and the forest swirled around him, flashes of green and notes of birdsong spiralling in his ears.
A memory flashed in his mind: the moment he fell from the dragon’s grace. He saw that moment as the dragon saw it, stunned, betrayed, and the selfish greed that had lurked beneath his every action: his pride at his deception. It had lurked like a shadow hiding in the dark until it emerged that moment- he saw the ugliness upon his face. And the dragon, stunned, betrayed, and how a tear leapt from the dragon’s heart like gasoline and sparked those fires of hatred that chased him as he ran. He felt, at last, not resentment for the dragon’s unforgiveness, but remorse.
His head cleared at once, and he found he had fallen to his knees, and the mossy rock he thought he caught himself upon was the dragon’s stoney, feathered foot. The dragon, unable anymore to harvest fury from the past, saw the boy’s father from within him. Thoughtlessly, the dragon placed his hand upon the boy’s father’s head and held him there lovingly.
In the air above him, around him, the dragon’s voice: “Many will not survive it.”
The boy’s father was stricken suddenly with a grief that rose quickly and made him moan aloud and cry, and it killed a part of his love- then, dead, he remained, awed, his knees pressing into the earth, standing tall. The dragon then turned in his melancholy from the boy’s father who’s head was upon his knee, and walked slowly up.
The boy’s father, awed so much that he was unable to fear, stood in that time-warped moment, and redrew for himself the dragon with his eyes: the feathers, the feet, the gentleness, the sadness, and deeper than that… love. At that final word, as on cue the dragon turned and gazed back at the boy’s father. The dragon’s emotions surged. He remembered how he cared for this man when he was a boy, even with his selfish incredulities. He thought of the forest, his forest, his “I am.” He shook his head like shaking off future pain, and the boy’s father knew- a compassion, a stinging, ironical, twisted braid of love completed his thoughts with the dragon’s.
Affirming with his gaze what the boy’s father understood, with his eyes, the dragon, pointed the boy’s father to his son, sitting atop the boulders, sheltered in a grove of small trees.
Many would come, and few would gain access to the highest plateau.
The People Climb
A few, as the dragon prophesied to the boy’s father, did die on their ascent. Their heart’s presented themselves to their own consciousness and the consciousness of the dragon, and instantly imploded for lack of center and truth.
Others could be found meandering in the middle portion of the mountain, as the paths changed according to the spirit within them. Years later, hundreds of the towns people had become semi-nomads, searching day after day for the paths to take them either to the top, or back to their village below. A cult arose amongst a few of them who realized the connection between their hearts and minds and their ability to ascend. They came to know themselves as “The Meanderers.”
The boy could come and go as he pleased. The dragon, unimpressed with the forest below, stayed where his home had always been.
Sometimes, on the boy’s descent or ascent, he would catch a Meanderer by the ear and implant the seed that they needed to grow within them, and often, in time, this meanderer would alas clear entry to the top.
Once at the top, the fine air sustained them, and their thoughts, profound drops of honey from heaven, nourished their souls. But it was necessary that they descend again, for their bodies could not yet handle breathing that fine air constantly. What this meant, however, is that they would often become muddied in their thoughts again in the coarser air below, and forget the clarity and purity of heart that drew them upward.
So it became a continual practice, to at last ascend, and then descend, and then learn and relearn how to ascend once again, until many became masters at this art and could ascend and descend as freely as the boy or the dragon could (if he so choosed).
The irony of this mastery is that as they trained their minds and hearts to serve their eternal spirit, the bodies changed as well to be able to breathe the finer air at the top as long as they so chose to reside there. But most, attaining this degree of adaptation, chose not to stay because they soon realized that they would become vulnerable to the air below and weak if they did not exercise their practice on a regular basis.
For some this presented a very profound problem, as their bodies had become accustomed to the finer air moreso than the coarser and if they went too long without “the exercise” (as it became known) they would weaken in the lower air and become again forgetful about how to return at the same time that their body could not digest properly that coarser air. A few of the great ones died there, suffocating on the lower portion of the mountain, unable to ascend, gasping like fish removed from the crystal clear lake of sky that they called their home, sadly dreaming until their final breaths of that pristine air above, the brightest shades of green, the birdsongs, the dragon who had become their friends, and the beloved Son of their people, the boy.
Afterword
When first I told people about this story, they all suspiciously sought to identify who the dragon is in my life. My mother was certain the dragon was her mother; my one date with a certain goddess, she thought the dragon was me!
But we are all the dragon, nature’s perfect gardener realized. And yet they didn’t guess the dragon is noble. There is a reason for his anger, and for protecting what was his alone. Only when there was a way to invite human company on condition of their heart’s purity, could it happen.
Stutz's Fairy Tales and Poems 