The last dragon of the grove

“If you can’t fit in with the crowd, fit in with the trees,” the Eldest sister said.

They’d lived among those trees before first humans walked the Earth. They’d known those trees before they knew people, before those people reduced their forest to a little patch of green near the sea. The sisters looked like people, talked like people, walked like people, and yet they seemed too indifferent, too separate from them. It was never safe to be an outsider among people. So, when their coast became a tourist destination, the three sisters decided to merge with trees. They hugged the trunks. They grew bark on their backs, their arms, their legs. Bending over paths, they whispered to each other only when the breeze came. Nobody could spot them now. People rarely paid attention to a pine that bent in a peculiar way. They kept their eyes on the sea instead.

“They love this salty liquid,” the Middle sister whispered.

“Of course they do,” the Eldest said, “it’s their home. It’s where they crawled out from.”

The Youngest bounced a pine cone on her hand. “I’ve always thought they simply loved staring at themselves. I mean, they are all salt and liquid. They’re basically walking bags of sea water.” She threw the cone to a squirrel, and sighed, “It’s boring to hug a tree all day.”

The Eldest shook her branches to chase the squirrel away. The squirrel could have drawn attention to them.

“Well, your dragon will surely keep us entertained,” she said.

The Youngest sister bit her lip. They all glanced at a heron in the stream.

Her dragon was a keepsake from the times when one could find a dragon egg in the mountains and grew the creature by themselves. Such dragons usually behaved and followed orders. They also used to fly with other dragons. Her dragon, though, had to stay within the grove, disguised as a heron by the spell that covered the trees like a dome. Recently, the creature started flapping its wings and screeching, calling for other dragons. It didn’t know they were not coming. Everyone left, crossing the mountain ridge when humans first appeared on the coast.

A few days ago her dragon escaped and flew above the town. It swooshed upward, shedding the protecting spell. For those few moments, the sky looked as if the dinosaurs had returned. The sisters spent all days whispering to tourists that the dragon they’d witnessed in the sky was an inflatable toy carried by the wind.

“It’s boring, but it’s safe this way,” the Middle sister said. “Besides, we’ll play soon.”

All three looked at the horizon, where the sun rolled lazily toward its reflection.

At sunset their grove filled with a landslide of people. Wide-brimmed hats brushed against the pines and mattresses squeaked on naked bellies. As tourists raced to claim the best spots for dinners, the grove turned into a swirl of towels, flip-flops and glossy crimson skin. Inside this speckled flood, the sisters stretched, yawned and smiled at each other, scratching the bark under the sleeves. The crowd engulfed and then ignored the three lone figures near the stream. It was time to play.

“Whose turn is it today?” the Eldest sister asked, eyeing the human river. Each sister knew whose turn it was, but even asking about it was entertainment.

“Mine.” the Youngest one clapped her hands.

“I’m pretty sure yours was just two days ago,” the Elder said.

“No, it was yours,” the Youngest said. “That’s when you chose a woman who wished she could understand the language of the locals.”

The Middle sister nodded. “She’s been chatting with pigeons ever since.”

The sisters laughed.

“Yours it is, then,” the Elder sister said and winked. “Don’t pick anything too tricky.”

The Youngest sister winced. Her heron screeched as if it also was remembering its wild flight. The sister didn’t want to cause any more trouble.

The game was a gamble, though. One had to choose a human first and only then waited to see whether the game would happen. If the human’s hand traced a pine needle, slapped a trunk, picked up a cone, their wish would form and glow for the sisters to see. If that human just left without touching anything in the grove, the wish would be gone with them. The sisters would have no chance to fulfill it. The play time would be wasted.

The Youngest sister searched through the crowd for a hand that wasn’t holding ice-cream, corn or inflatables. She also skipped all those with furrowed eyebrows, or those whose shoulders slumped – they probably had too many unfulfilled wishes. She needed something simple. The heron flapped its wings, and as she looked at it, she saw her.

“This one,” she said, pointing.

A toddler in a pink dress wiggled herself free from her mom’s hand and waddled towards the heron. The mom tried to grab her hand, but the child pulled away and started running. Her foot caught in a root. She tumbled forward, planting her palms into the crumpling soil.

Time stopped. The sisters inhaled the evening air as all the noises died away. The ground hummed, vibrating like a string. The wish reverberated through their spines and flashed like lightning in their minds.

“Oh no,” the Youngest sister said. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. She’s so tiny. How could I know she’d wish for that?”

The Middle sister suppressed a sigh.

“She’s a child,” she said. “That’s what kids wish for.”

They watched the wailing girl leave. The whole grove heard her screams. “I just wanted to pet a dragon,” she cried. “I want to pet the dragon!”

“How did she even know this was a dragon?” the Youngest sister said, wiping her face.

The Eldest sister shrugged. “She didn’t. She just saw a big thing with wings.”

The night fell soon over the stream, but they were still there, silent. For the first time in many years they broke the rule and didn’t turn into the trees again. The heron stood lean and tall above the surface, his yellow eye watching them. It seemed content, drying its wings at moonlight. His feathers cast long spiky shadows over the water.

“We could just quit the game,” the Youngest sister said. “We’ll ignore her wish.”

The Middle sister sighed, rubbing her temples. “Wouldn’t it make the whole game pointless?”

The Eldest sister sat with her eyes closed. “Everything is already pointless,” she said.

The heron screamed. Its raspy, ancient voice echoed across the sleeping town.

The Eldest sister rose to her feet, shaking the needles off her clothes. “We’ll let her pet the dragon,” she said.

The whitewashed walls seemed blue at dawn. The streets were usually quiet at this hour, but now the dragon’s tail was scraping the cobbles like a garden shovel. Birds quit chirping as their procession passed. At a corner, a sharp sound cut through the air, as if a large egg had just cracked. The woman who talked with birds had dropped her voice recorder. She stared at the dragon, whose scales reflected sunrise, sending sparkles onto her face.

As they turned the corner, the Middle sister said: “She’s lost to the world now.”

The power of the wish led them to the right window. The dragon’s breath disturbed the curtains. The child stirred in her sleep, frowning. They all watched her as the dragon waited.

“We can’t do this.” The Youngest sister shook her head, saying what everyone else was thinking. “She’ll never recover from that.”

“Maybe it will be all right?” the Middle sister asked, knowing it wouldn’t.

“We’ll horrify her,” the Eldest sister said. “And nobody will believe her.”

“So, we’ve risked it all for nothing?” the Youngest sister asked. “Are we quitting the game?”

The dragon sniffed the air. In all these years it never smelled a child so near. It stretched its long neck into the bedroom before the sisters could react. The giant head hovered above the child’s ear. The breath tickled, so, while still asleep, the girl put her palm on the dragon’s nose and pushed it away. The dragon sniffed the child’s hand and pulled his head back out.

The sisters smiled. The Eldest rubbed the dragon behind its ears.

“Here we go,” the Middle sister said.

“What now?” the Youngest sister asked. “How will we get back unnoticed?”

The Eldest sister looked at the dragon.

“We won’t,” she said.

And as they soared through silk, pink clouds toward the mountain peaks, the sisters watched the grove beneath them. For the first time since bark grew on their skin they saw how tiny their home had become. Surrounded by walls and roads, it was a green drop, quickly fading behind the layers of the morning mist.

Since then, the pine trees turned slightly duller. People no longer saw the heron in the stream. The stream itself dried out. The only peculiar thing about the grove was the coincidence that some people noticed. Sometimes, as one passed through the trees, they could just think of something, and the next moment it would appear right before their eyes.