Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology (28 page)

The Dragon of Kou is a shapeshifter, though nobody knows it. He turns into a boy, no older than eighteen in appearance, though he is believed to be older than humanity. He doesn't wear clothes, as he's never learned the use of them, and he speaks with the aged accent of the elderly. He only eats fish and lives in a cave by the sea where no one goes, because no one knows it exists.

Baachan never told anyone but us, because he asked her not to.

That day Baachan had almost run, scared of the strange, naked boy who was watching her from the shadows. Aka still wasn't moving though, behind the rock but looking at the boy as well, anger coming from his nostrils in dark grey smoke. To her left, the mountain burned, and Baachan knew the boy was afraid of it.

She had just opened her mouth to say something when another creature appeared on the horizon, orange as sunrise and big as an eagle, burning like a bonfire. It flew over them without a second look—it
was
blind, Baachan would later discover—but the boy had disappeared the second the creature was in their view, like a rat scared of a cat that doesn't even know it is there.

The legends say phoenixes and dragons have always been eternal enemies or passionate lovers, depending on the version, but they all agree on one thing: phoenixes were extinct centuries ago, before the age of greenhouses and energy made from the earth without damage, when its feathers were used for rituals and its meat was promised to give the eater special powers.

“I never told anyone about her either,” Baachan says in the same tone she will tell us, later, “Don't repeat what you have heard. Guard it safe inside of you, and share only with those worthy of knowing.”

Baachan went after the boy. She doesn't know how to explain why she did, why she didn't force Aka to follow her and runaway, except that she somehow
knew
what she had seen, and that she wouldn't be able to live with herself without knowing more.

The almost empty lake that had been between them was a large oval, so she had to run around its edge to finally get to the woods and then follow the path she assumed the boy had taken. Eventually the earth gave way to sand, and the trees gave way to air, and ahead of her, endless as the universe, the Pacific Ocean stretched with water blue-green like the boy's hair.

Baachan had been to the beach before, on the other side of the country, but she hadn't known there was a beach so close. It was just at the edge of the mountain, hidden from humanity in a way that today's technology doesn't allow.

She found the boy inside a cave just at the corner of the beach, before sand became rocks and air became earth and trees from the mountain. He was at the deep end of the cave, so far away she wouldn't have seen him if it weren't for the almost fluorescent glow of his skin, that now sported some blue undertones beneath the brown colour. Even though he looked very much human, the way he was curved on himself, hugging his knees to his body, was so similar to the way Aka had been hiding behind that rock that Baachan felt nothing but empathy, the fear from before giving way to curiosity.

“'I'm not going to hurt you,' I said,” Baachan tells us, then laughs. “Such a stupid thing to say, isn't it? Why would he believe me? Why would he even care?”

It made the boy at least look at her, so it wasn't for nothing. Some encouraging words from Baachan later, they were sitting one in front of the other in the cave, the boy still naked, Baachan very aware of the white top and loose trousers she was wearing.

Baachan never tells us what they talked about. I think it is too personal to share, something she wants to keep to herself, but I know they stayed there the whole day, that she didn't mention she knew he was the Dragon of Kou although he had been fascinated by her prosthetic arm, asking question after question, marvelling at what we had created.

When the sun finally set, he said it was safe to go out and they went back to the beach. Baachan says we have a pretty night view, especially now that the artificial lights we use do not darken the sky, but nothing had ever compared to the night on that beach, in every shade of dark blue and covered by so many stars it was almost as bright as day under a weak winter sun. It was still too hot, sweat pooling underneath her arms and on the small of her back, but she didn't feel it, too busy watching the Dragon of Kou as he entered the sea, bathed briefly and returned with renewed energy, his hair now matching the colour of the sky.

“He was fascinated by our cities,” Baachan says, looking outside the big windows we are sitting in front of. “The way we mixed nature with technology, the way we used
him
and other dragons to achieve balance.”

The Dragon of Kou wasn't a he. Neither a she, but he didn't mind the way we perceived him. He told Baachan we might have achieved much in making the planet the sustainable haven our ancestors wanted it to be, but that we still had a long way to go when it came to understanding our own humanity.

“I believe,” Baachan says, “Ryu was the first non-binary person I ever met. He would have liked where we are now. He would have liked you, dear.” This is directed at me, and I smile at her, because I really, really would like to meet him. Maybe not in the way Baachan did, but maybe just to talk the whole night, like they did, until they were joined by Aka who had gotten over his fear and dropped himself over Baachan when he finally found her. That was before he stopped and actually bowed—“I have never seen him do it again,” Baachan says—at the sight of the Dragon of Kou.

Eventually, just as the sun was rising, Baachan asked what she had wanted to since the second she met him.

“Why did you run away?”

He hadn't run away. He'd been chased away by the phoenix they'd seen earlier, who'd somehow found her way there. Phoenixes now live on a faraway island, having been exiled by the dragons, which were larger in number. This one was young, according to the Dragon of Kou, had perhaps gotten lost and just now found a place to live and, driven by instinct that was deep buried in their blood, had attacked the Dragon of Kou before he'd had a chance to retaliate.

She'd claimed the mountain as her own and, whenever the Dragon of Kou tried to get past her to fly through his skies, she attacked, setting everything on a fire so bright not even the dragon's strongest storm could quench it. He was too far to control the weather from there, so it had been an endless melting summer for the past weeks.

“He could have asked for help from other High Dragons,” Baachan says with a smile, “but he's a bit of a stubborn mule, I must say.”

High Dragons was a name Baachan learned from him, given to the bigger dragons who are able to control the weather. There is one in each area of the planet, siblings from long passed parents, but Baachan says the one in Africa isn't as big, and the one in North America isn't as beautiful.

“My fellow dragons are suffering from this drought,” the Dragon of Kou told Baachan sadly, “and I remain of no help.”

As soon as the sun had come out, the phoenix reappeared on the horizon, flying high above in a way very similar to that of someone who was blessed with too much of an ego.
 

The Dragon of Kou had to stay in his human form, which he'd never spent so much time in, so the phoenix wouldn't recognise him. Phoenixes were vengeful and impatient creatures, so he was hoping she'd eventually leave in search of another dragon to taunt.

“How long will it take, though?” Baachan asked.

He did not have an answer.

Baachan would not have that. She asked question after question, made plans on sand just to have them washed away by the sea and had to rewrite them. Aka grew them tomatoes, which neither of them ate, and the Dragon of Kou fished, which the three of them dined on.

Still, even though they had a plan to defeat the phoenix, the Dragon of Kou was hesitant. He was not a fighter, because dragons are peaceful creatures who, unlike us, do not go looking for trouble.
 

“But I was not looking for trouble,” Baachan says. “I was looking for a solution.”

So she spoke. She spoke of the fragility of humanity, about how we'd almost made our own planet uninhabitable before someone stood up and said, “Let's fix this.” She spoke of how we'd somehow found balance in the middle of chaos, a solution to the impossible, life where there should only be devastation.

She spoke the truth, because she couldn't not.

That's just the sort of person she is.

The Dragon of Kou was breathing smoke from his nostrils by the end. His eyes, green and not blind, were brighter than stars, almost artificial in their colour, and he stepped away from Baachan without talking, without looking away, breathing once before turning, in front of her eyes, into a serpent-like creature the size of a streetcar and with scales the soft blue of a hydrangea. He floated above the ground, not needing wings to fly, and looked at Baachan with the sort of understanding that didn't belong in a dragon, but didn't belong in any human either.

“He caught my breath,” Baachan says, “and I don't think he ever returned it.”

The Dragon of Kou defeated the phoenix. She flew away mid-rebirth, with ashes falling from the sky alongside the rain that blessed the city and the Dragon Cove for days to come, long enough to help everyone find their feet again but not too long that it caused more damage than good.

“Balance,” Baachan repeats, smiling.

She never told us what happened after this. To me and my cousins, this is supposed to be the end of the story. She and Aka returned and carried on with their lives, with nobody ever finding out what happened to the Dragon of Kou, the ruler of the skies, in those fifty days he went missing.

I know that is a lie.

He returned to her. He returned to her, and Baachan only made it back home days after the rainfall, with a lighter jump in her step. At some point my mother and aunt were born, twins but for the colour of their hair. And, I daresay, it wasn't the last Baachan saw of the Dragon of Kou.

He keeps returning to her.

Why wouldn't he?

After Baachan finishes the story and tells us to scatter because she's going to cook, I head outside to my own pet dragon, Ichigo, who's flying around in happiness with the bright days of sun we have been getting lately. I play with her for a while, then we both head inside and have dinner. Baachan soon retires to her room, absentmindedly brushing her hair, no longer plain brown like most everyone else's but light grey as smoke. My cousins and I will spend the night on the floor of Baachan's one-bedroom flat, having been left here until the morning while our parents enjoy a childless double date.

While Aiko and Rin arrange themselves in sleeping bags, their matching orange hair—the same colour as their mother's—looking like sunset on the wooden floor, I head to the bathroom for a quick shower. When I return, I pass Baachan's door and, listening very quietly, I can hear the soft sound of two pairs of footsteps walking around the room.

Across the hallway, I catch my reflection in the open windows that every floor in Baachan's building has, large and opening up like a bay, filled to the brim with ferns and flowers. There is a rose growing almost at the top, right beside my head, and the faint pink colour of its petals matches the colour of my natural, never dyed hair, the same as my mother's.

About Caroline Bigaiski

My career as an author started at the tender age of five, when I wrote a fantastically embarrassing tale about GOOD VS BAD featuring hair clips and twin sisters. Since then, my interests have broadened to include fantastical literature, diversity, romance, and epic tales of friendship. When I'm not writing, I can be found trying to complete a Bachelor of Letters, working part-time in a publishing house, reading more books and fanfiction that I probably should, and binge-watching shows on Netflix. The short story “Dragon of Kou” is my first published work.

Deep Within the Corners of My Mind

by Cj Lehi

“It's definitely a dragon,” Imre said, looking at the satellite image on the wall. He waved his hands in front of him, held them still, and pulled them apart, like stretching a thread. The image grew larger exponentially, as if we were diving toward the ground. Outlined on a bare patch of mountain was a long, thin line in emerald green, like a scar on the hillside. It started narrow, bulged slightly, and tapered off again, like a snake that had swallowed a large rat. I checked the scale guide on the bottom right. According to that, the snake would be about thirty meters long. A youth. Immature. That was a blessing, anyway.

“I don't see any wings,” I said, getting to my feet. My right hip twinged, and I rubbed it with my free hand. Grimacing, I slurped in a sip of coffee, cooling it as I drank. Imre shot me an annoyed glance. I ignored him, advancing on the wall for a better look. I was not losing my eyesight. Not. The wall was out of focus.

“Sometimes they take those,” Imre said. “You know how people love trophies.”

“Those are some big trophies,” I said, but he was right, and besides, generally speaking the only thing you could readily detach from a dragon was the wings. Everything else resisted you like titanium and decayed like warm jello. “How did they kill it?”

“That's what you get to find out,” he said, spinning around in his chair and picking up a chit, which he tossed to me. I let it bounce off me and onto the floor, without any attempt to catch it, keeping my gaze on the wall. He scowled and bent to retrieve it where it had rolled under the desk. I set the coffee down on his flat back, pinning him in place for the moment, ignoring his surprised cry. I raised my hands, then pushed them together, and we rocketed upward in the picture until I could see a town. Some distance away, and not a very large one. I did it again, Imre spluttering and hallooing from under the table. I smiled, but only because he couldn't see me with his head under there.

Timisoara. Finally a town big enough to give me bearings.

“Csilla,” Imre said, his voice now containing some real exasperation, “will you kindly remove the coffee from my back?”

I did so, and he crawled back out from under the desk, took the chit and tucked it into the breast pocket of my shirt. Maybe I was imagining it, but he might have kept his hand there a little longer than was strictly necessary.