Madrigal of Misfortune

Mountain Prologue

Tanza lay dying in the snow, and though it was she who lay in mortal distress, the reptilian eyes who judged her were the ones in existential peril. No, not from the disease which she brought to their village. That they would endure with only twenty-three deaths.

But for now—Tanza lay dying in the snow with dozens of jewel-toned eyes upon her. An olive-scaled dragonling claw jabbed the skull end of its staff into Tanza.

She coughed, splattering blood on the snow, and her blood steamed as it met the snow.

The watchers stirred. Sun-blood? From a bipedal?

As if confirming the watcher’s suspicious, the sun burst through the clouds bathing Tanza’s fading life in a warm glow. Not magic, not fate, merely the time of day the sun always passed between the mountain peaks (the reason the dragonlings even traveled to this spot).

But reason and time mean nothing to the masses, and a religious hiss radiated from the ring of dragonlings. This was a blessing of the Sun! A sign!

The elder raised his staff to silence the group, closing his eyes against this decision already made for him.

Then he spoke, “Ituya chi vuu locse aci, ituya chi vuu Eisca e Eisco.”

Scaled tails beat into the snow. “Eisca!” Thump, thump. “E Eisco!” Th-Th-Thump. “Eisca!” Thump, thump. “E Eisco!” Th-Th-Thump.

And so she was named ‘Eisca e Eisco’ or ‘Heart of the Sun’* and in the naming she became ‘known’ to the tribe, becoming their responsibility.

From the beginning, they noticed Tanza held many gifts. Her very breath was fire (for they themselves lost fire breathing long ago, and what else could the mist of heat that escaped her on each exhale be?) Her smooth skin held the heat of a sunned rock and her mere presence could warm a tent without fire. They determined she must be a spiritual guide sent by Eisco, their Sun god. She grew to know the drangonlings, their language, their customs, and become a central figure in their Sun ceremonies. When the elder passed, he gifted her his twin wood staff.

However, truth is an elusive mistress, and Tanza was not sent by the Sun god but by the Moons, by the voice of Listra (the littler moon) she heard in a dream. Every night she would go outside and meditate to her moons—lighter, gentler goddesses than the sun—that granted her their power to raise off the ground, floating in meditation.

All that was left was to continue to wait. For what? She did not know. And she did not need to know—for she had faith.

Faith, she had. But time…

Time blurs convictions. And faith remains ever fickle in the face of monotony.

She faltered but once, tears in her eyes at the base of the mountain, but she went no further. She could not take that final step that would abandon her mission. And paused there, under the shade of a martle tree, she heard a voice “Your eyes are for crying not for seeing. We still have need for you up the mountain.”

She headed back up the mountain to wait.

And so, seven years from when she came, her destiny arrived.

 

She woke with the siren knowledge of a fading moon-dream that she must travel up the mountain with the rising moons. Her friend Ta’bilak cautioned her that many had been lost to the peak in early winter, but Tanza replied “Twa feazci Eisco.” I have the Sun. 

 She travelled up the mountain, taking the steps up until there were no more steps and making her own steps. She paused here, at the upper altar, the farthest up any of the dragonlings ever went. She leaned against the staff, exhausted, and looked up the mountain. The wind bit through her furs, she shuddered with ice crystals on her lashes and numbness at her fingertips. Ta’bilak was right to caution her; she would not make it. One more step, She thought, but her body would not move.

She stumbled, almost falling over, when she heard a voice:

“Just a little farther.” A faint whisper, the voice of the moon! “Drink this.” A leather drinking bladder fell into the snow, and Tanza did not question this gift of the goddess, she drank and felt a warmth travel down her throat and spreading from her heart, pumping through her body

“Twa feazci Aeylos,” she said. I have the Moons. And she did, both moons sat in the sky across from the sun.

Just before sunset she stopped and meditated, lifting off the snow with the goddess’ gift as it started. The red-orange sky cast harsh lines of color along the horizon above the valley. She closed her eyes and waited and tried to clear her mind.

But it was cold, so cold. Tanza scrunched her face against the cold, so cold. The lightest brush of snow felt like sandpaper—harsh, fiery lashes across her face.

Clear your mind. She thought. The physical perception didn’t matter.

But then she heard breathing, fast and shallow.

When Tanza opened her eyes, someone was there, precisely where she stopped. Exactly mysteriously. No tracks led to or from the body just red splatter of a girl dying in the snow.

Stark red hair splayed around a curled and broken figure. She opened glossy irises shattered in the opalescent burst of exposed magic.

‘Shh, child. You will be alright.’ said Tanza, speaking in common for the first time in seven years. touching the girl’s temple gently and feeling burning heat there, so hot that Tanza pulled away on instinct. Or perhaps Tanza was too cold, either way this child needed help.

The child did not speak. Her eyes closed, and Tanza carried her back to the village where the child slept for three days and then she spoke:

‘I do not deserve...’ She would not meet Tanza’s gaze with her power shattered irises.

‘Everyone deserves kindness, child. Even you.’ said Tanza, brushing red hair off the girls’ forehead. 

‘You don’t…’

‘I’m going down the mountain tomorrow, you will join me.’ said Tanza.

The girl paused, then nodded.

And this: This, really, is the closest the dragonlings came to their extinction. A kindness from one monk to a child in their isolated mountains. And oh, how they celebrated it! They sent them off with a joyous roscunza, or ‘passing on’, not knowing that this child brought upon their own roscunza as well.

Fires burned outside every home in the hour of dancer’s light. The sharp angle of the sun set their kwabalt furs aglow, long woven strips trailed through the air in elaborate performance. Beaten iron scales tinkled in time with the drums which called into the night. Whispers called this sun-haired girl the secret daughter of Tanza and the Sun God, Eisco. The hunters fought inside a ring of fire to honor Eisco, each taking their turn against a captured kwabalt. The child looked away when the kwabalt was slain. Its champion stood vigil outside Tanza and the child’s tent to protect them as they slept through the sunless night. In the dawn, every dragonling came to get one last touch of their Eisca e Eisco. The youngest dragonling, A’isca, had its little claw placed on Tanza’s cheek. That feeling of warmth and comfort the hatchling would remember for her whole life, however short that may be…

The next morning Tanza and the stranger descended under the watch of the rising sun with two thousand eyes behind them.

But if we trace the sun back, and this world spins and spins traveling backwards on its course through the universe, we will find that the stranger is not so strange after all.

We will find the stranger in an altogether more pleasant place and wonder...