The Music of the Name

excerpt from The Narrung Sagas, Book I: The Journey of Shadow      copyright Cage Dunn 2016.

The picture wasn’t clear to Gheis, if it had any representation at all, but it was big. Shadow waved him to come over. He placed his pack on one side of Pax, and put Shadow’s on the other side so she wouldn’t fall over. He ran his hand down her face, caressed her cheek, opened one eyelid, looked deeply for any sign of damage or difference, and felt for a blood pulse at her throat. It was strong and steady. His hand lingered, spread over the back of her head, through her hair, felt for swelling or heat. She seemed okay, so he placed her gently back against the tree. He went back out into the sun to Shadow. It was hot; the early sun radiated the heat back from the rocks.

Shadow spread her arms to encompass the placement of the bones. He thought he heard her say ‘dragon’. Dragons didn’t exist. She was nuts. Dragons were only ever in tales, in myths, in the songs of the H’Rucca.

There were so many bones; definitely big. Bigger than any dinosaur bones that had ever been found in Narrung.

“I thought dragons were a legend,” Gheis said. “Is this a complete skeleton? It must have been real. It left a skeleton.” He slapped his hand over his mouth to stop the ramble of words that spilled out. He walked around the behemoth Shadow had created, put one bone close to another, watched as the bone pulled like a magnet, bound itself to the one beside it. He did it again, and the same thing happened.

“Look at this – if the bone belongs in that place, it holds to it. Put them together, Shadow, and see what happens!” He ran around, pushed the bones up against each other, and saw Shadow do the same. A small tremor in his hands – was it excitement or fear? But he couldn’t stop himself. He had to see.

It took some time, and when they finished, the bones were all connected and the standing skeleton was at least ten metiors tall and five times that long, including the tail. There was only one small space separated from the others. A small bone in the left front toe was missing. Gheis and Shadow both looked at that space, then at each other.

 

The talisman came free of its web of strings, and Shadow held it to the empty space. The pull of her one small bone, still in her hand, to the empty space, was more than it looked. She leaned with the strength of it, until the bone leapt from her hand to fill the empty section. The bones on either side melded to it, and the skeleton became whole. It shimmered, silver and white, silver and blue; the colours commingled, swirled around and through and between. The whole skeleton shook; ash-white filaments of light flashed.

The skull turned to face them. A thunderous roar shook the air as the bones of the mouth opened. Sound rumbled through the depression, surrounded them.

“It’s alive,” Shadow whispered.

“Could you not feel my life before?” The words seemed made of steel as they clashed into her mind like a sword fight. “Can you not hear my life?”

Shadow looked up. How had that happened? She had been standing; now she lay on the ground. Gheis knelt beside her, head wobbly on his neck; he held on like it might come loose.

“What do you want?” Shadow asked. The skeleton glistened with light. It became real, fleshed out. The Sheoak became a vague, translucent shape on the other side of the dragon. Shadow could see Pax through the body of the creature; only the bones blocked sight.

“Are you real?” Shadow whispered.

“I am as real as you and your friends are real. However, as you live on only one plane, are you real? If a thing exists in one space and time, is it any less real than a thing that can and does exist in more than one space and time?” The voice was not in her ears, it was in her head, and it was clear that Gheis could also hear the words.

“Please don’t kill us,” Gheis begged. He skittered backwards on his bum, slid away from both Shadow and the dragon. Shadow stood, reached out her right hand toward the dragon. She did not feel the dragon, nothing was solid. Her right hand disappeared into the shimmering ‘flesh’; her left hand fumbled for the talisman, found only the empty cage of string.

“If I kill you, I also kill myself, and all of my kind. I am not yet fully returned to life, though I am not dead – not yet. You will undertake a task for me, for us, and if you complete your task, you will be foremost in the hearts of dragons for eons to come. What I ask of you is most fearsome, most terrible, and you must say ‘Yes’ or all dragons from all times and all spaces will be diminished, relegated to no more than ghosts in the tales of worlds. Will you listen to my words?”

“Do we have a choice?” Shadow knew she would do whatever this creature asked of her. Her heart beat steadily, at a rate deeper and richer than ever before – aliveness came with this feeling. This creature opened her body and mind to a magic she could not just feel in the air around her and on her skin, she could breathe it, taste it, bathe in it. She wanted it – all of it; the promise, the task, the completeness she envisaged as she became whole with it.

“Are you using magic to make us want to do this?” Her voice sounded high as it drifted between them like puffy wisps of cloud. The air became solid, more difficult to breathe.

“You have a choice – we do not. You are the one we found, the seed of our recovery, and if you choose not to become all you can be, we will not force you, nor will we use our magic to influence you.” The air shimmered, gelatinous, as she continued. “What you are feeling, what you are seeing, is what you can be – your true self. You, also, are trapped into your half-life, and by the same . . . thing that trapped us. If you free us, you also free yourself to become as one with dragon magic – maybe more, if what I feel is genuine. You would unbind yourself from your limited human mind and body.” The voice became softer; a musical note of wind through the sheoaks, the slide of waves on the sand, the cascade of water over pebbles. “But there is another. You can choose; allow the other to take your place.”

Shadow looked up at the skull, outlined in scales of crystal, colours that reflected the light in a myriad of hues: salty green, ocean blue, foamy pink.

“How can we be sure of what you say?” she asked.

“I can bind my kind to the promise I make to you – I represent all dragons on this plane – by giving you my name. Do you want to be bound to me by knowing my name?” the dragon-shape replied.

“How would I, we, be bound to you by knowing your name?”

“As my name in your mind binds you to me, so it binds me to you. You have a ritual for bonding to a partner?”

“Yes, marriage; promises made from one to the other for life,” Shadow said.

“It is the same. A bond entered into for life; bound together in mind and body, soul and spirit, life and death, never to be broken. The gift goes both ways, protection of my secrets for the protection of yours. Do you want to be bound to me by my name?” she asked again.

“But even marriage can be undone – there are ways people can become unmarried.” Shadow felt for something she should say to protect herself. The foreignness in her mind drained her of the sense of logic.

“Is there more to it? Can the contract be broken? By you? By me? How would I know if you are only telling me what you think I should know?”

“I have been with you since you wore part of me close to your heart – you know my spirit – and I became part of you; I did not know this would happen, but we are already bound in spirit at least. My name would enable you to enter my mind and seek the truth for yourself. Do you want to know my name?”

“I will say ‘Yes’ with one condition: I want to see the truth of what you say. I want to see only whole truth – no deception, no half-truth. And I don’t want to lose myself.” She hadn’t meant to say that. “Can you agree to that?”

“You are wise to be cautious. I will give you one key,” she hummed a tune, a savage clash of tinny cymbals, “to hold in your mind all you do not wish me to see, and I will give you my solemn oath not to cause you harm, or to change anything that is not mine to change. I will not attempt to sway your mind, or own your thoughts. It is a contract. Will that do?”

Shadow nodded.

“I agree also. It is done. My name is . . .” a series of sounds, musical and loud, scales both harsh and soft; the music lilted and roared through Shadow’s mind. “As this name is not able to be spoken by you, you can call me Iranisa, but my name is the music, the song, the sounds. Open your mind to me and touch my shoulder.” The dragon moved closer, grew larger in front of Shadow. She reached out her right hand, and leaned it onto the now substantial shoulder of shimmery feathered scales.

With her eyes closed she hummed the name music. It brought her consciousness into another realm – the mind of a dragon. Pathways that wandered through a garden. Not a garden of plants – a garden of memories. She gazed at the moments in the dragon’s life. There were many things so foreign she could not believe they had ever been real. Maybe dragons had an imagination and a dream world too. Her mind travelled through trails of fire gardens, stone and gem gardens, and finally to a deep grotto. A place of meditation and peace. In the centre was a small yellow glow. When she came closer, she saw an egg, illuminated from within.

“This is you. Your song is here.” The music swirled and gathered colour, became a shape, a flower gem, blue, mauve, and pink striations that matched the music. “Your name is Iranisa,” Shadow whispered.

* * *  Not the end.

Book II: A Dragon Dream is the current project, due out before end December.