The (Alternate) End Of the Dragons.

The year was 1476, February 28.

A flagon of mead slammed onto the table first, then two plates piled with fresh cooked pork, the fat still sizzling and popping.

It was after midnight. The tavern was dark and noisy, but warm.

Val leaned forward, shouting above the din, “I think we have our dragon slayer, Fid.”

‘How could she tell?’ He wondered. He could barely discern her features even though she was sitting across the table from him. Still, he paused and squinted into the smoke-filled squalor of the main room, saw nothing and continued eating. Most of the smoke was from the wooden embers under a bevy of pigs being roasted in large pits out back, with occasional whiffs of tobacco as well. The smell of fresh baked bread permeated the air more powerfully than the aromatic pork. A slight, boney apparition appeared out of the gloom, tossing the remains of the previous patron’s meal into a tin bucket, then dousing the table with water and salt and scrubbing it with a brush that required both hands. A cup of water rinsed it all off. She swept the excess water off the table with a gloved hand, tossing some at him in the process. She might have smiled before hustling off into the smoke and murk, but he had no way of knowing. “How can you tell?” He asked Val.

“I can practically smell him,” she said. Her strange sense was correct, as a tall, unusual stranger emerged from beyond the wick-light, walking slowly. “That’s him,” she said.

Fiditch hailed him. “Oy, stranger, are you looking for someone?”

“Possibly,” he replied. “Be you Fid, the grave-digger?”

“I am,” Fid replied.

“I’m Ernest, Of Feltenshchmere, by the Gelb.” He wore buckskin overclothes, a hairy hat, thick leather boots and gloves.

Fiditch invited him to sit down. “Come. Join us. It’s a large table, plenty of room,” he stuck out his hand, “Fiditch, Fiditch Cloddenhill. Some call me Fid. And this is my partner, Val.” He turned and hollered for service: a fresh cup, more bread and mead.

Before seating himself, Ernest of Feltenschmere removed a sword from his belt, sheathed in a fine scabbard, and laid it on the table, revealing an ornate hilt of royal quality, even to someone who knew nothing about longswords. Having done so, he sat down, tore a chunk of bread from the loaf, checked it for mold, dunked it into his mead, and tossed the whole chunk cleanly into his mouth. “You were saying?”

“How was your trip?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I know from personal experience that the road from here to Bogford is rife with thieves, everything from petty bandits to ruthless outlaws. Yet all your parts seem wholly unscathed.”

Ernest shook his head, ripping more bread from the loaf, holding it up, looking it over. In a loud voice he said, “Perhaps they feared the sword, as well they should. It’s practically sacred in some realms, belonged to a chap named Alfraed, as I understand it." In a lower voice he said, "It’s a fair exchange for a dragon, should one actually exist.” Having mentioned a dragon, he gained their undivided attention. “I’m a stranger here. Tell me. My only interest is the dragon.”

Spitting out a piece of dottle, Fiditch leaned toward the stranger and said, in a hoarse whisper, “We, are the unfortunate landlords of a dragon, Val and I, a sleeping dragon, which we do not want, nor need.”

The stranger, Ernest, did not fully hide his skepticism. Dragons were large, these two cretins could hardly own enough land to conceal a toadstool, let alone a proper dragon. “How big is it?” He asked.

“It’s huge,” Fiditch replied.

“How many heads?”

“Heads? We only know of one.”

“What color was it?”

“We wouldn’t know. Would we Val? It was dark.”

Val shook her head.

“She says ‘No.”

“Do you think it could?”

“Could what?”

“Change color.”

“I wouldn't know. Does it matter?” Fiditch said. "Are you not about to slay it dead?"

Ernest stared at him, “You don’t know anything about dragons, do you?” He shook his head, “The color of the dragon tells me what powers it has.”

Ernest finished his mead, stood and said, “Come. Take me to the dragon.”

“Now?” It was fast approaching 1 a.m.

“Can you show me where you last saw it?”

“We can take you right into its lair, Romeo. But it’s late, cold, bitter, and getting colder by the minute.”

Ernest unsheathed the four foot sword and held it above the table, the flame from every candle in the room fought for the privilege to be reflected in the blade of that beautiful sword. The entire tavern went quiet. No further action was required to induce the couple to lead him to the dragon without further delay.

They reached their destination in the full of dawn. Ernest shed his cloak and tossed it across the back of the rented horse, then peered through the mist at their destination, it was a cockeyed thing, a cemetery in the moor. Leaning headstones amid lumpy hillocks and gates entwined in ancient vines, some of which had been so firmly embraced, as to be pulled out of skew and joint; open graves and piles of dirt so black, one could scarcely imagine a more thorough, compulsory, decomposition.

And yet, the graveyard was in disarray.

The fog returned to obscure the view, even thicker than before.

His two dirty guides seemed stunned by the sight themselves, which confirmed Ernest’s intuitive supposition.

“There’s something amiss here, isn’t there.”

“It looks abandoned—but it isn’t,” Fiditch swore. “This place is well-kept… Or was.”

“Tell me what happened again.”

“We were just digging a sample grave…”

“A simple grave, go on.”

“No, a sample grave, Val likes to practice. A simple grave too, it was near to completion when the bottom of the grave fell out from under us. “And there we were…”

Val hissed. “There I was.” Those were the first three words she had uttered in Ernest’s presence. He thought she was a mute. “In the midst of a great cavern, a vast cavern, right under our blood-thirsty feet. Can you imagine?” She looked down. “It’s right under us.”

Ernest nodded, looking around too. “And?”

“I’d only fallen one or two meters and landed right on my feet. The ground was soft and forgiving. There was a strange light in the cave and me eyes were adjusting when the ground moved, rising to meet the roof of the cave. I feared meself in for a-mushing and hollered for Fiditch to save me, I did.”

“And why didn’t you fall in?” He asked Fiditch.

“I was sittin’ on the lip o’ the grave, and she hollered all right, but I told her later, I couldn’t see a thing. For all I knew she could’ve fallen straight to hell.”

“And yet I was just below the hole I fell through,” Val pointed out, “and this great, big, fancy head swings around out of the darkness, as if it was in a daze, and opens one of its’ great eyes. I'll never forget it. It was about to take me to a better world when I gathered me wits and leaped…”

Fiditch interjected, “She jumped straight up out of that hole this high,” he indicated a height equal to hers, “and I snatched her out of midair.”

“I be fuzzy on the details," Val added. “I just jumped, next thing I know, I’m hangin’ in the air and he’s got me by the scruff of my coat.”

“Thank the Lord Almighty,” Fiditch added, “or she’d have gone right back down into that hole and I probably wouldn’t soon be seeing her again.”

Val scratched an armpit while Fiditch gazed at her affectionately; Ernest scratched his head. Whether it was clear to them or not, the dragon had deliberately ejected her. “When did this happen?”

“Three, four nights ago. We were surprised you turned up so soon. We only just put the word out a day or two ago.”

“And you haven’t seen it since then."

“No. And it’s just as well. People are touchy about dragons around here. Don’t know why. Don’t care to know." He looked around nervously. "I see you brought that magical sword.”

Ernest looked about, spotted an old stone greenhouse surrounded by brush, covered in vines, a couple of cracks in the mortar, the door ajar. “The sword is for people, not dragons, Fiditch, and it isn’t mine anyway, so I’ll be leaving it with you. It’ll be worth a million pounds someday. Or more.” Pointing at the greenhouse, he said, “That looks more suitable, be a good fellow and fetch me that pitchfork, will you please?”

Fiditch’s eyes grew wide. “You intend to slay that dragon with a pitchfork? We could well have sold tickets for a death as spectacular as yours will be.” Fiditch turned to Val and added, “I have mates in Spitmore would pay with glee to see this fellows offing.”

“Hangings are still free,” was her retort.

“I’ve no plans to murder it,” Ernest said, “I just need something to poke it with.”

“And then what?” This was Val, the voice of reason. “We need to take cover, Fiditch. The look in that creature’s eyes? Would turn stone to water and back again.” She began looking around for cover, none too furtively.

“Let me explain something to you two,” Ernest said, after retrieving the pitchfork himself. “Different dragons, have different powers.” He’d already explained it five times on the way here last night, but they were ignorant, impoverished grave-diggers.

“This dragon, the one you’ve disturbed, appears to affect time.”

The two grave-diggers looked at each other, then at Ernest. “What, master Ernest, is a ‘time?”

He dared not show them his chronometer, but they understood time. He said, “Remember what you did before you were grave-rob, grave-diggers?”

Fiditch shrugged. “I remember suckin’ on me mudder’s teat?”

“You don’t remember what you did before digging graves?” He suspected they were playing dumb.

Val laughed. Ernest jabbed the pitchfork in the ground. “See this handle?”

“Oye, yessir,” they both nodded obediently.

“This handle, is ‘now.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And everything over here, on this side is before, ‘ere now’ and everything on the other side is what’s-to-come, or ‘after’ now.”

Their faces looked troubled. “What’s on either side, then? What’s up? What’s down? What’s out here?” Fiditch asked.

“Look,” Ernest said, his patience at an end. “The longer I delay collecting this beast, the further he takes us into the future. This is no detriment to me, or him, he's a dragon, I have special permissions from the Dragon Relocation Corp. I can go to any era, or time I want to, but you two? You’re stuck wherever the dragon leaves you,” He consulted a device in a pocket, “It seems the British (that's you) have bested the Spanish Armada, you expanded but now the American colonies are in revolt, in another few minutes, you could end up in the midst of a world war, and it shouldn’t be necessary if I just get on with it.”

“Ha!” Fiditch said. “A world war is it now? And we have no revolting colonies, anywhere. He folded his arms across his chest. “You keep the pitchfork—and doon what you willest doon, but please give us nae more of your unnatural soothsaying, Sir Ernest.”

Ernest swore under his breath and yanked the pitchfork out of the ground, striding out among the headstones. He gravitated toward the most disturbed of the recent graves and tossed the pitchfork precisely through the hole and into the chamber and into the hide of the great a-mythical beast. It stirred, groaned and burst effortlessly through the ground and earth, then it rose, spilling dirt, headstones and rotted coffins to the ground as it unwound itself to its full height, like a fantastic double-helix. It issued from its’ maw an ear-splitting screech that seared the heavens with sound, then clapped its jaws a few times as if it had a bad taste in its mouth.

Fiditch and Val lay on the ground in the fetal position, eyes pinned shut, hands covering their ears as the creature loomed over the three of them.

“What do you want?” The dragon said, in a deep, melodic voice.

“I’m here to rescue you,” Ernest said.

“Oh.” The dragon replied, swinging his great head lower, to get a closer look. “Okay, that’s good. You wouldn’t believe what a nightmare this place is…”

Ernest shook his head and raised his voice. “Please. You don’t have to tell me. I know. Wonderful planet, dreadful inhabitants. I have to hear it from every single dragon.”

“No. I don’t think you understand, this planet is horrible! War, pestilence, plague, superstition, ignorance, greed. Over and over and…”

So there was a second head. Ernest held up his hand to both heads. “Please. Stop. I know. Can we go now?” Time was accelerating. Two more world wars had come and gone while they stared at one another, and the dragon finally blinked. (Having finished taking a huge and rarely discussed dump.) “Okay. I’m ready.”

No one ever considers what comes out of that end of the dragon.

Hand upheld, holding his nose with the other, Ernest snapped his fingers and they both disappeared.

With the sound of shuffling cards, two-hundred-thousand days and nights filed themselves into eternity as the dragon’s artificial time-warp snapped shut. Val and Fiditch raised their heads and pushed themselves off the ground, brushing the dirt from their breeches. The first thing that terrified them was the keening roar of a giant silver passenger jet on final approach to Gatwick.

When it had passed, Val was unperturbed. Where they were, she couldn’t say, but wherever it was, the priceless sword had come with them.

Is it true?

On a hill overlooking Shallowford sits a solitary cemetery with no more than three-dozen graves. It’s hardly worth the trouble, but two of the headstones placed side by side claim that the occupant was born in 1461, the other headstone declares that the occupant was born in 1460. The peculiar thing is that both headstones give the date of death as 1985. The headstones are fairly new too. And no on knows anything about them.