Many Years Ago, Before You Were Born
After the second disappearance of Margaux Poulter, nothing mysterious or tragic happened in town for nearly two decades. Her severed hands were added to an existing plot in the cemetery, the only remnants in the grave of the twice-taken girl. Proper suspicion was given to the forest, townspeople banning ventures to the woods. But the passage of time built up the collective courage of the town once more, until the beastly threat was again turned into just another scary story to make kids stay in bed. Only Lucie Poulter kept a tight, fearful eye on her children.
Lucie and her son Theo were throwing a delightful birthday party for her second child, who was sixteen years old. Once named Marco, she now went by Lily, after her lost mother. Their small house, rebuilt by Lilian before she fell ill and joined her son’s namesake in the cemetery, brightened the eyes of all entering guests with silver tinsel and white flowers. Even the wallside pile of firewood Lily split glittered with decorative metal shavings in the midday light. Friends and family all gathered, some inside sipping tea and some outside enjoying the breeze. The only person yet to arrive for the celebration was Lily herself.
“Have you seen your sister?” Lucie fluttered from window to window as Theo put the finishing touches Lily’s cake. Blackberry, her favorite.
“Not since dawn. She said something about feeding the chickens.”
She stopped and looked at her son. He pretended to be engrossed in frosting swirls, but the back of his head burned under her stare, as mothers can do. Peeking tentatively up from his masterpiece, he found her shaking.
“Theo. You know we don’t keep chickens anymore.”
Deep in the forest, far from people and chickens, Lily fiddled with the string of small golden numbers around her neck. She’d been preparing for this journey for years, but nervousness still pinched under her fingertips.
As soon as she had heard the tale of her aunt, Lily knew she would someday rescue her. Being a knight and saving the princess was what she had dreamt of her whole life. Lucie had tried to keep the story from her, for fear of exactly this, but Theo had always been bad at keeping secrets. Sweet but timid, he had grown into quite the storyteller. His own encounter with what he called, Mother Dragon, was his most regaled story—the most asked for, once Lily was old enough to ask politely.
“I already lost my sister. I will not lose my daughter to that monster too,” was always Lucie’s stern answer when Lily vocalized her passion. Later, in a whisper, “I already lost my sister. I’ve already lost my wife. I can’t lose my daughter too.” Lily stopped mentioning it after that, but still nurtured the hope in her heart.
Upon her impending birthday, Lily had felt an urgency. Almost itchy. She never told him, but she knew Theo noticed she was going to do something drastic. He didn’t question her, even covering for her as much as his delicate conscious could, when she stayed out late sparring scarecrows or pilfered extra food and survival supplies to hide in the wood stack.
Now, heading into the forest with no direction other than to follow an inexplicable warmth, she realized a silence. Having walked for hours, she’d mastered tuning out the sounds of woodland creatures and rustling nature. That background noise was gone here. She could register only her own heartbeat, thumping strong in her ear, feeling the sound instead of hearing it.
The heat she sought increased. She traveled further, slower, to where the trees were farther apart and dirt floor shifted to rock bed. Her ankles started to feel unstable in her boots as she walked, like the earth below was hollow. She crouched to feel the ground with bare hands. Knocked once, twice. Its minute vibration jerked to a stop just ahead. Lily snuck closer, seeing that what appeared to be level earth was but a trick of depth—a giant worm burrow opened into the ground, its rim stained red.
Terror squeezed her heart, shortened her breath. But her resolve was absolute. She was a brave knight. From her rucksack she pulled a small lantern and her late mother’s wood axe. Once her fire burned, she entered the cavern.
Inside was silent but not quiet. The movement of everything above ground reverberated around her, and the inching of bugs on the hard tunnel walls caused phantom brushes across her skin. Dark earthen tributaries branched off periodically from Lily’s path, but she ignored every chilly labyrinth entrance.
She feared the lantern wick’s end until she caught light that wasn’t hers. A gentle, wavering glow beckoned some ways ahead. After a few meters of deliberation, Lily blew out her lantern and let her eyes adjust to the dimness before continuing on.
The other light grew, and Lily likened it to moonlight, soft and cold, even as the air’s temperature still climbed. She rotated to walk sideways along the wall, sliding her clammy hands over sweating rock. She wished she had real armor, instead of the haphazardly sewn links of stolen clock scraps she fashioned for herself.
Not quite bright but much lighter than before, the hole’s base loomed. Lily slowly lowered to a crouch, removing her rucksack to lay it and the lantern on the ground. Too noisy for a stealth attack, too heavy for battle agility. She moved again with only her axe.
Spying beyond the threshold, she found a grotto ten times taller and wider than her little house. A skylight shone down on a pool of crystalline water, sun rays bouncing off it and the thousands of precious gems and treasure covering the space. No rock could even be seen on the cave floor. The only dark spot in the cavern, just off the center, looked to be a mountain of fabric. An impressive pile of curtains and sheets homed a myriad of frayed, holey, discolored remnants of clothes, and one thin, sleeping woman.
Lily restrained herself from calling her aunt’s name. Margaux wouldn’t be able to hear her even if it there was no threat of exposure. Double-checking that the grotto was empty of monsters, she tiptoed into the humidity toward the mound of textile. Careful to shift the glittering trove as little as possible, she waded her way over and crawled onto the sheets. She gently laid a hand on her aunt’s bare knee.
Margaux slammed upward, long hair wild as her sunken eyes, pulling her bony limbs into herself. Lily took back her hand and sat very still. She waited until Margaux’s shock turned to relief, to curiosity, to fear. Margaux? Lily asked, just in case. Her aunt nodded, lips chapping open as she parted them to mouth Yes.
Lily signed slowly, not sure how many words Margaux knew. Theo had said that while Margaux was an older child when he met her, she’d spoken like someone his age, and it was clear that she hadn’t interacted with other humans in a very long time. My name is Lily. We met when I was born. I’m Lucie’s daughter. My name was Marco. I am a knight. I’m here to save you and take you home.
Just as Lily had seen her mom do countless times, her aunt started to quiver. Margaux’s mouth guppied, trying to pick words but failing every time. Tears trickled down pale, dirty cheeks. Not sure how to react to her blubbering, Lily just reached for her leg again, pulling towards the exit, and Margaux leaned into her touch.
Come on, Lily urged. Her aunt’s eyes and head flitted around to every tunnel entrance, panicked one might reveal her Mother Dragon, but she followed on her knees nonetheless. When they reached the edge of solid rock, rising to stand, Margaux nearly knocked Lily over in a sobbing hug. Her stale, unkempt scent almost made Lily sneeze, but she held it in as Margaux pet her spine. She was not much taller than her niece, but Lily was sure she could lift the woman over her head with one arm. She peeled her off so they could move on, and it wasn’t until then, arms sliding over each other, that she realized Margaux’s gangly appendages ended at her wrists.
Everyone who knew that Margaux’s hands had been found in the well and buried in her otherwise empty grave, assumed they were only bits left, but Lily hadn’t ever really pictured her without them. No hands to crawl upside-down around her brother, or blind a dragon, or sign. Lily’s teeth clenched. Margaux wasn’t being childish or difficult—she just couldn’t communicate.
Lily had to look away to clear her throat, try not to show how shocked she was by the scarred wrists. She took Margaux by the elbow to lead her into the passageway, but she resisted. Turning back to question her, she saw Margaux pointing at a heap of scales on the ground. She looked back at the tunnel, but gave Margaux the benefit of the doubt that this was important. She bent to inspect it.
The scales were sewn similarly to Lily’s clockwork chainmail, except woven with feathers. A shoulder and chest piece, fit for a large child. Lily recognized it from Theo’s story and attempted to tone down her awe. She straightened again and offered it to Margaux.
Her aunt shook her head and pointed at her. Lily couldn’t contain her grin as she pulled it on over her own homemade protection. It was small over her tan muscles and broad shoulders, but it fit. The scales were smooth as water and tougher than anything else in the cavern. They seemed to glow in the sparkling light.
A glow that did not belong to her shimmered in Lily’s peripheral vision. The air was so hot here, neither aunt nor niece noticed a spike. Lily dropped to the ground just in time for teeth like swords to snap in the space above her. Margaux fell next to her, folded into a ball with arms covering her head.
The sound of the dragon’s hissing threatened to burst Lily’s eardrums as she ducked again, its snout crumpling against the ground as it missed her. The world had been so quiet before and the beast had made no noise coming in. Her temples throbbed against the thunder of her own running and the bustling of gemstones.
“I protect the silent, foul knight,” a voice conveyed in her head, even louder and more unreal. It wasn’t words but it was understood, and very much not her own.
“I need no mortal words. I need only to guard,” it projected again and startled Lily so much that she slipped on a huge pink-and-blue geode. The Mother Dragon was inside her mind.
From her fall, Lily flipped over and swung her axe at the nearest part of the beast, a section of stomach. The metal scraped uselessly against its scales, clanging right off and landing by the fabric pile. Its muzzle rounded its body, spitting filthy droplets at Lily. Nose scrunched and tongue drooling, it prepared to bite.
“Not a knight?” It slowed momentum so only its massive nose buried into Lily’s chest. This close, she could see the difference in its good and bad eyes. The seeing one, with thin black pupil in a globe of gold muscle and crimson veins, was fixated on her. The damaged one was almost all red, pupil broken into brownish halves going in different directions. There were still splinters inside.
The Mother Dragon hissed, rattling its long body around the cave. The pool of water rippled for the first time since Lily arrived. “Smells like knight but tastes like princess. Attacks like knight but looks like princess. Who are you?”
Lily grit her teeth and flung the nearest thing at the dragon’s face, a heavy goblet rushing against its whiskers. It growled and struck again, but this time with more hesitation. It didn’t know whether to kill or hoard.
As it gnashed at her, Lily ran for her axe. She thought that if she could only find a weak point, where the scales were scarcer or thinner, she could defeat it. She slid across Margaux’s sheets and bat the axe blade up under the Mother Dragon’s chin, which only annoyed it.
Suddenly Margaux skid to a halt next to her with Lily’s still-lit lantern held between her wrists and chucked it at her Mother Dragon. The glass and metal burst ablaze right in its working eye. A terrible shriek filled the cavern, echoing off the walls and Lily had to bury her ears in her arms. The dragon thrashed its head, endless body whirling into a circle around the two humans, trapping them, and slammed Margaux down under one of its feet, caging her between its claws.
“Die, knight!” The dragon snapped, teeth snagging Lily’s left arm. “Princess blood?! How!” It seethed, gathering height and bearing over her. She backed up until she risked hitting its torso behind her. She brandished her axe again, her shadow lifting its weapon on the beast’s scales.
The Mother Dragon came down at her again, jaws splitting open. The skylight’s beam shifted against the towering arch of neck, displacing Lily’s shadow next to her. She readied to hit the monster close-range. If it swallowed her, she could cut off its head from the inside. However, as its mangled eyes drew closer, she saw her aim would be off—it dug its teeth just right of her, into its own body, where her shadow stood.
A shrill scream escaped the dragon’s throat as its snout came back bloody, black liquid slopping over the treasure. Its head moved the sunlight again, and Lily watched her shadow jump with her to the left. Raising her axe again, she struck just past the dark shape of herself. As before, the tool bounced right off, but the Mother Dragon still felt it. It sunk its teeth in again, ragged pupils shrinking and dilating in rapid succession as it tried to define knight from princess, person from shadow.
Lily scattered, swiping at scales all over the serpentine creature. Over and over, the dragon bit itself, tearing its own flesh open. It clawed at her a few times, releasing Margaux in the struggle. The woman traveled to every wound the dragon created, shoved crystals into the cuts. Lily wasn’t sure if that was a torture or healing tactic, and decided to never ask.
Exhausted, bleeding out, in pain—the beast finally, as the light above started to fade into dusk colors, laid down its head and its pupils stilled. Lily slayed the dragon. For good measure, after signing to Margaux to look away, she cut out its tongue and eyes, and climbed inside its mouth to slit the back of its throat. No sight, no taste, and bleeding into its lungs—if somehow it lived, it wouldn’t for long.
Let’s go home to Lucie, Lily said after wiping jowl-slime from her body. For the first time since reuniting, Margaux smiled.
They followed the cold through the black forest. Sounds of nature returned to Lily and, under Margaux’s feet, the feeling of creatures living unafraid. Dawn broke on the edge of town, dew twinkling on the squash fields. The aunt and niece tossed their sets of armor and numbered necklaces down Witches’ Well.
The Poulter sisters’ reunion was the hottest news in town. A search party was scheduled to find Lily but before they could depart, Lily returned home with the dead. Porch-dwelling elders whispered about the feral girl, the Dragon’s Daughter, a reminder of old magic in the forest. They croaked about giving her proper suspicion. Parents used Margaux’s story as a caution to their children: don’t wander into the woods, or your hands will get eaten.
Only the kids themselves treated Margaux with proper respect, in awe of her survival, the determination of her family. They surrounded her constantly, asking questions about her captivity and theorizing wild answers in her silence. She couldn’t tell them about her life as a princess, but she adored their shameless attention. After so long without human connection, and from such a young age, their constant gabbing and fearless love made her feel the safe kind of warm.
While Lucie’s heart stayed incomplete without her wife, it healed greatly with the return of her baby sister. She thought she’d surely die if Lily didn’t come back from her rescue mission, and to see both home safely also almost killed her. She’d collapsed in her son’s arms, certain she was hallucinating. Once the truth had settled in, she promptly smothered her daughter in kisses while tripling her chores as punishment.
Lily accepted this easily. Laundry duty was certainly easier than being a knight. For a while she couldn’t go anywhere—the clockmaker’s, the squash farm, the backroad to the cemetery—without everyone congratulating her, thanking her, blessing her. Then, after people started to get used to Margaux’s presence, she became just Lily again. The girl who appreciated her brother, missed her mother, loved her mom, cared for her aunt, and preferred the cold.
The children on Margaux’s wake spun stories about Lily too—the girl-knight whose shadow saved the handless princess from the long, warm dragon in the woods. Like Margaux, she let them hypothesize as they pleased, and their tales eventually overcame the nightmares that the elders warned. They shared it with other children, variations and extrapolations, who retold and mistold it to even more children, then grew up and lullabied their own families with it. The forest again grew safe with time, and kids strayed into the trees, tumbling back out with blackberry stains on their hands and claims of finding little clock numbers under brush.
That’s how old memories become new legends—they start with the young, return to where they came from.
Kylie Ayn Yockey (she/her) is a queer southern creative with a BA in Creative Writing & Literature. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Glyph Magazine, Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, Night Music Journal, Gravitas, Ordinary Madness, Stray Bunch, and Not Very Quiet. She has edited for Glyph, The Louisville Review, Ink Voices, and is the poetry editor for Blood Tree Literature.
Website: https://www.kylieaynyockey.com/