Out of the Tower, Part 1
This story was written as a university assignment for my creative writing course, circa 2017.
Once upon a time, I was told to wait for a prince to come and rescue me from my tower and so I did. I spent my time pouring over the illustrations in the books that filled my room. I drew a ring of pink hearts around Prince Charming’s head and dreamt of the day I would get my own happily ever after. My childhood slipped away from me, and with it went my hopes of rescue.
When I reached womanhood, I took to my bed and watched the hours steal by, eyes fixed on the patch of grey sky I could see through the tower’s sole window, too weary to rise with the sun and too restless to sleep at night. Midnight always found me pacing. I would walk back and forth, circling the room and trailing my white gown in the dust. My bare feet were blue with cold. With the shutters thrown open, the chill air seeped into the room and sapped the warmth from my bones. And yet I would not pull the shutters to.
Feeling cold was better than feeling nothing at all.
One night, when I asked the dragon outside why I was waiting, she only looked back at me with wide, peridot green eyes. She had heard this question a thousand times before. before returning to staring at the sky.
“I imagine that’s not the question you want an answer to,” I said. My gaze dropped to the iron manacle around her neck. The scales had rubbed away where it rested between two sharp ridges, leaving the tender skin beneath exposed. Over the years, I watched the dragon’s shoulders droop under the weight of that chain. “You want to know why you are guarding me when you could be ruling the skies.”
The dragon answered with a twitch of its wings. Years without flying had eaten the muscle from the dragon’s back and left its wings as little more than flimsy white membranes stretched thin between brittle bones.
That was the night I decided I was tired of waiting to be rescued. I was going to rescue myself.
“I have a proposition for you.”
The dragon didn’t move. She was staring off into the forest that encircled my tower. The trees had long since shed their copper cloaks and now stood naked, waiting for the first snowfall to dress their skeletal frames. The beginnings of a path was just visible through their branches – a path I planned to follow.
“I’m going to set you free.”
The words were barely passed my lips before the dragon turned on me. She lumbered right up to my tower, chain knocking against the stone wall, and tried to shove her snout through my window. The flint frame dug into her muzzle and dislodged a handful of purple scales. She snorted at the discomfort. A plume of smoke curled into the room as she withdrew her head. It gathered in the eaves like a ghost.
Once she had settled for resting the tip of her jaw on the windowsill and fixed her golden eyes upon me, I spoke again.
“If you help me out of this tower,” I said, “I’ll help you out of that manacle.”
Something flickered in her eyes – a fleeting spark of hope that was quickly doused with disbelief.
“You can trust me. Please, I need your help. I can’t do this without you. If you let me climb down your neck, I promise will find a way to remove that horrid chain. Don’t you want to fly again?”
Her brow twitched. She drew back from the window and looked up into the pale sky, her eyes filled with the same hopeless yearning I know she saw in mine whenever I looked at that forest path. She looked back at me and nodded.
The descent was harder than I expected. I crouched on the windowsill and peered down at the ground that, until this moment, had never seemed quite so far away. If I fell from this height, it would be the end of me. No escape, and no one to release the dragon either. She seemed to sense the danger too and pressed her shoulder right up against the tower to bring her neck as close to the window as she could. Yet, as I reached out and touched a hand to one of her spikes, she flinched away.
“It's alright,” I said. I ran my hand over the part of her neck I could reach. She quivered under my touch, but I kept my caresses slow and gentle until she no longer winced. Satisfied she had been sufficiently calmed, I drew in a deep breath and, without pausing to think, I jumped.
Fear caught up with me mid-leap. I screamed. The dragon recoiled at the sound. I slammed into her neck, hands flailing, trying to get a hold on her spikes as her scales raked the soft flesh of my arms. She dropped her head and I felt the rumble of a roar gathering in her throat. The earth rushed up to me. I lost my grip on the dragon’s spikes and slipped from her neck, a mere foot from the ground and slammed into the winter-hardened ground. Air rushed from my lungs.
The dragon roared. Sparks shot from her mouth, but there was more smoke than fire and it sent her into a fit of coughing that shook her from snout to tail. When the fit abated, she looped her tail around the tower and huddled against the wall, shoulders hunched, and head bowed.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you." I had to repeat the words three times before she began to believe them. It was a while before I managed to calm her, and even then she wouldn’t even let me come near. She took to smothering me in plumes of smoke and snapped at my feet whenever I tried.
Eventually I gave up on placating her and instead set to inspecting the manacle chaining her to the base of the tower. I hoped to find a weak joint – a link that might be easily broken. But despite years of exposure to the elements there was not even a spot of rust to be seen. The chain was as thick and strong as ever.
I would have to find some other way to break it.
My gaze strayed to the forest path. It was a few feet away. The books I had read as a child told of kind hunters and strong woodcutters who were always willing to give aid to those in need. Perhaps I would find one in the forest who could help me break the chain.
"I'm going to find help," I told the dragon, promising I would return soon. But as I headed towards the path a grating sound reached my ears and her large shadow fell over me. I knew that if I turned around, I would see her straining at the chain, trying to follow. She would never be free if I didn’t go now, and so I ignored her whimpering and walked into the woods.
Continued in Part 2