The Passing of Ten Hearts

Ten Hearts inched on her belly across the mountain cave floor. She rested her scaly chin on the mounds of gold and jewels. Their power to cool her anger, to calm her with their sparkle was waning. She believed she might be dying.

   She cocked one slitted eye to the ceiling. The other eye was milky and almost completely closed by its third eyelid. She could hear the men and their metal above. Always their movements vibrating through the earth. It had gotten worse in the past few centuries, like wasps that won’t leave the ear alone.

   Ten Hearts hissed a flame to the ceiling. The rock above glowed and she could feel the men running away screaming and making more of their noises. She dropped her chin on the gold again and danced her eye over the jewels wanting to be soothed.

   After a while she dragged herself over to the underground river. Four of hearts had died in the last few decades but she could not bring herself to shed them. They were well below her wings, but she feared she might not be able to regrow them anymore. She knew she was very grey now. The trail she left behind was no longer wet, but littered with dead scales.

   She held her face above the water but could not bring herself to drink. She voiced a cry. A cry that no longer shook her stone walls. The water was dark. The blood of the earth now flowed in it. Slowly the water had gotten darker and darker over the years from the poison that was once the earth’s blood. And the food the river carried no longer came, and what did float by was also poisoned and dead. Ten Hearts looked back to her hoard of gold and jewels, always wanting to be close to them, but laid down where she was, having lost the strength to return to them.

   Time passed and Ten Hearts lifted her head to hear the men and metal tearing into the earth once more. She spun around to her left and hissed at the wall which glowed under the flame. The men and metal retreated again, but they were closer than ever she had known them to be. She had not troubled them for centuries. Why didn’t they leave her alone?

   Then she heard a sound she thought was a trick. A trick she had been hearing for the past century. Men and metal in the air. In the air. Flying, as she and hers had known.

   She roared at the ceiling, with a heat threatening to burst the rock above. But the effort was followed by many gasps for air. Her great body heaving to take in what air still flowed through the cave. She could feel her fifth heart weakening. Soon, she would be half dead.

   She had to shed. If she was too old, she might die from it, as she had seen many others of her kind do so long ago. 

   She looked to her treasure for comfort. Their glow was dwindling. It was dwindling, as here in her cave it depended on the light from her to give it its sparkle. She dragged her body to lay on the gold again. To cool herself. 

   The men could fly now, of this she was convinced. They had summoned some demon to give them this power, and with their poisonous iron metal they flew as her kind had. They would not go away any longer. They would come for her now. They would win.

   She had kept them from her home for so long, and knowing they would one day find a way in she still believed she would fly away and find another home. But now they would fly after her.

   She would die soon. They would get in soon. She would take too many days to shed. She no longer believed anything would grow back from her body.

   She was ready.

   Except for her hoard. After they killed her, they would put her head on some metal, or hilltop. They would take her skin and make capes and coats from it. She had seen this happen to her sisters. Worst of all, they would take her hoard. The men knew not its worth. They did not understand the softness of gold, or its power to cool. They did not know the jewels of peace, or their power to calm.

   An angry tear dropped from Ten Hearts’ good eye and she hissed her flame at the ceiling. She needed air. Lots of air. All the air. Some rocks above did burst and fall. She hissed again. More rocks like dust came down. Some slow cracking sounds were heard from the mountain. Again, she hissed. Her jaw contorted, her pointy tongue protruded, and her chest convulsed. She pushed through and hissed again. A shower of rocks came down. Then, a drop of lava.

   Encouraged Ten Hearts swelled up and loosed a flame the was becoming more blue than red. Now lava spilled down and flowed around her taloned short feet. The grey scales of her belly welcomed the long-forgotten heat. Lava poured in the cave and for a moment she feared it would reach her hoard. Then she knew what she wanted to do.

   She felt the air come in from above. She heard the dull sounds of men and metal. Their voices. Their language. They would be upon her soon.

   She turned to her gold and jewels. It was her time. She would not be taken by men. She would not let hers be taken by them. She breathed a good-bye to her life’s treasure and melted the gold back into the earth. The jewels reached the peak of their brilliance in her breath and then burst to return their lights to the stars above from which they came.

   She twisted herself over her lower body and burnt away what she could no longer shed. Then she raised her wings but a little and used her heat to give them lift.

  When she rose above the mountain top, the men were there riding birds of metal. She spread her wings in full to shadow the sun from them. She took in all the air and roared.

   They fought. And when she died, she left nothing for them. For in the end her flame was white and she let it consume her.

   And in the hereafter she lay among her sisters, on a bed of gold, and both her eyes looked upon jewels.