Ranger
by Kris Faatz
part 1
Where do you start a story? How much do you say? Especially when you know you might not have much time, and you’ve got to get through to the end while you can.
This will probably be the only story I’ll ever tell. So let me start with what I only learned later: the reason for everything, really.
* * *
The girl’s brother enlisted when she was fifteen and he was barely past the tipping point of adulthood, too old for his parents to stop him, too young to see where his leap would take him. He told his sister he was going to learn how to fly. Land and sea battles were good for the history books — excitement flushed the face so like hers — but the Allies would win because of the planes that skimmed the clouds.
Walking had never been enough for him when he could run. No tree had ever been too high to climb. After he left, she dreamed of him in the cockpit of his plane, cutting through cloudbanks on dragonfly-bright wings. In her dreams, the plane’s shell held out the world.
He was shot down on a summer night over a field in France. After the telegram, with its honors and regret, the girl folded herself into silence. Her parents called out to her, but they had to stumble along under the weight of the burned body in its far-away coffin and the grave marker they might never visit. They hefted that weight between them and struggled on while the girl, quiet, slipped farther and farther behind.
Every night, she dreamed of flight and fire.
* * *
I’ll tell you one thing. It’s a shock to pop into existence. One minute you’re diffuse as mist, nothing more than motes of light and eddies of the background hum of all things. Next minute, there you are. You’ve got eyes and limbs and whatnot. Most of all, you’ve got a mind that shouts as loud as the bang that started the world: What’s going on?
It happened to me, you see. That’s how I know.
I came to me in a dark space, hanging in midair. The wings I hadn’t had a moment before flapped with a noise like tearing paper, trying to hold me up. My body didn’t know what to do with itself, and my mind was busy yelling terror nobody could hear, so those brand-new wings tangled together, and my lashing tail got caught up in them somehow and the whole mess fell out of the air.
I landed on something soft. When it moved underneath me, I opened my mouth to shout with the breath I’d just realized I had, but instead of sound, what came out was a stream of gold fire. That would startle you, too. The thing-under-me jerked away so hard I rolled over.
With a sharp click, the dark vanished. I was in a space full of yellow light, and now I could see what I’d landed on. It looked to be as wide across as a field, made up of squares of all different colors, with a hill in the middle that I must have rolled down. I shut my brand-new eyes tight. The dark seemed safer.
Then the hill started to move. My eyes snapped open on their own, and I watched the hill rise above me, higher and impossibly higher. Something new appeared at the very top, so far away I had to squint to make it out: a pale circle with two small dark pools in it and one bigger one, all open wide and round.
That was my first sight of her. Helen.
* * *
Now, I could tell you what a blank I was in those first moments after I came to be. I could tell you how I didn’t know or understand anything, and how Helen’s thoughts had to link to mine so that her knowledge could flow into me like water into a dry stream bed. That was how I came to find out where I was, and learn about bedrooms and quilts and lamps and nighttime, and even realize the simple fact that the giant rearing above me was a girl. But it would take a while to give you all those ins-and-outs, and I don’t have very long.
So let’s go straight to the moment when Helen told me what I was. She’d turned on her bedside lamp and seen what had landed on her, and she and I had eyed each other, and I had learned a few things from her already.
Her next thought floated silvery into my new mind. That’s a dragon.
A dragon? Interesting. I unfurled a wing and studied its shape. It looked good, not that I’d known a thing about wings before. Her thought whispered, It’s green. Like Christmas trees.
Good. I was learning more every moment. I was a dragon with green wings, and green claws I could flex, and a green tail I could swish back and forth. Then her thought said, But why is it so small?
I examined my wing again. It seemed big enough, but then, everything else around me was huge. Her thought went on, Real dragons are enormous. If there were real dragons, which there aren’t.
A snatch of time earlier, I hadn’t known what annoyance was. Now I felt it bubble in my craw. She held up her hand and looked from it to me. This one could sit on my palm. That’s too silly.
As it turns out, dragons have hot tempers. I opened my jaws. The fire skimmed past her cheek and splashed against the metal bedframe behind her. With a tiny gasp, barely a sound at all, she sat up straight and pushed the quilt aside. Now I could see her long nightdress, dark blue, with white lace edging the collar. Her thought said, But I dreamed the fire.
Carefully, she reached around to touch the metal where my flame had hit it. It’s hot! She jerked her fingertips away and stared at me again. I stared right back. You, dragon, her thought said. Who are you?
I didn’t know what she meant. I’d thought I was dragon. Her thought said, My name is Helen. She sounded annoyed now, too. Don’t you have a name?
Name. I reached out, sending my thought back along the stream to her. No.
Something came into her face then. I hadn’t known what a smile was. Now, when it disappeared, I wanted it to come back.
She thought, You should have a name.
* * *
The girl had wrapped her quilt of silence around herself and buried the memory of her brother deep in the smothering dark. If she left him there long enough, maybe his face would fade. Maybe the flames in her dreams would wink out.
* * *
Helen couldn’t go back to sleep. Not if dragons are going to fall out of the air. She still didn’t quite believe I was real, but, she said, If you’re a dream, you’re the nicest one I’ve had in a long time. She slipped out of bed. Come on. I’ll show you my house.
Her parents slept in the room across from hers. Their door was shut. Helen’s bare feet made no sound on the wooden floorboards, but my claws tapped and clicked until she told me to ride on her shoulder instead. My mother doesn’t sleep well. We have to be careful.
A few steps farther down the hall, we came to another shut door. Helen’s thoughts said nothing about that one. She hurried past it so quickly that I had to clutch her nightdress to keep from slipping off.
We went down a short flight of stairs, each step cut across with shadow from the banister rails, and along a little hallway to the kitchen. There, the back window looked out across a narrow yard. One yellow-lit window stood out on the second floor of the house across the way. Between the two houses, a single tall tree lifted its branches into the dark. Its leaves rustled in a light breeze.
Helen glanced out at the tree and turned her back on it. I had only known her — and myself, for that matter — for a few minutes, but in that moment, I realized what was bothering me already.
Sometimes she spoke from her mind to mine, the way she had told me what I was. Sometimes I simply knew what she knew. Our thoughts ran back and forth to each other, but in the middle of that stream, I felt something dark and heavy, stuck tight. I could run up against it, but I couldn’t find a way past. Something she didn’t want me to see. What was it?
I hopped down from her shoulder onto the slippery kitchen countertop. She opened a cabinet to take down a glass. Do dragons like milk?
I didn’t know. This stuff isn’t very good, her thought said. She opened the creaky door of a squat white box and took out a jug. The milk poured into her glass with a sloshing noise. It’s powdered, she said. You have to mix it with water. It tastes like chalk.
She tilted the glass so I could smell what was inside. It made me wrinkle my snout. We used to get fresh milk, her thought said, but now that all goes to the...
Her thought cut off. The what? I asked.
Helen took a gulp from the glass. The troops. It was a tiny whisper, rushed out. Because of the war.
Down the hall, footsteps creaked on the stairs. Helen’s eyes went wide. Hide, she told me.
Why?
My mother’s coming. She can’t see you. She’ll be so upset.
I didn’t know why. I was a perfectly decent dragon, as far as I knew, if smaller than most. But Helen’s fear made a mist in the air, so I climbed back on her shoulder and tugged her hair in a curtain around me.
The woman who came into the kitchen was a vague shape in the dark. She wore a long nightdress like Helen’s, with her long hair loose down her back. The thin light through the window brought out silver threads in it. Her slippers shuffled against the floor, quiet and tired. “Lamb,” she said, “I thought I heard you.”
It took me a moment to understand the difference. She had said it. It made a sound. Helen’s thoughts to me didn’t.
The woman said, “Couldn’t you sleep?”
Helen shook her head, a small quick motion. Her hair brushed against my scales. The woman — her mother — said, “Were you dreaming?”
Helen nodded. Her mother said, “So was I.”
The milk jug sat on the counter. Helen’s mother got a glass, poured herself some, and moved over to stand next to us. Her shoulder touched the shoulder I sat on. I held very still.
The two of them sipped quietly at their glasses. Helen’s hand shivered a little each time she lifted hers. Her mother said, “Sometime, I hope, it gets easier. I have to believe it will.”
Helen nodded again. Her glass was empty now. Her mother said, “Leave that here, lamb. I’ll wash it out.”
The glass clinked against the counter. Helen’s mother put a hand on her arm. “You know I miss you, too.” Her voice sounded as tired as her footsteps, as if she had to lift and carry every word.
Helen leaned forward. Her hair brushed me again as she kissed her mother’s cheek. Then she slipped away, with me holding on tight, along the dark hallway and up the stairs.
What was that about? I asked.
Helen shut the door to her room and climbed into bed. What about?
My first lesson on stubbornness. I perched on her quilt to look up into her face. Why shouldn’t your mother see me?
Are dragons always nosy and rude?
There it was again: her smile. It flashed and disappeared faster than my flame. She leaned back against her pillow, tired now. Mother shouldn’t see you, because... Her thought hesitated. That dark, heavy thing, like a stone in a riverbed, loomed up in front of me. For a while, she went on, Mother saw things that weren’t there. Because she was so sad it made her sick. She fiddled with the edge of the quilt, twisting it between her fingers. If she saw you, she’d think she was sick again.
Sad. I knew all about sad, from her. I could see and breathe it in her and her mother both. You know I’m here, I pointed out.
Yes.
So she did think I was real. I rustled my wings with satisfaction. She clicked the lamp off and slid down, hiding herself under the quilt. I have to go back to sleep. Good night, Ranger.
The quilt moved up and down with her breathing. I watched it and thought about sadness, and stubbornness, and secrets hidden in the dark. It was a lot to think about, for a mind that hadn’t been around very long.
Then I thought about something else: Ranger. I turned the word around, looking at it every which way, tasting it on my tongue. My name.
* * *
Dragons don’t need to sleep much. I spent the night testing my wings as quietly as I could, jumping off the edge of Helen’s bed to glide down to the floor, climbing back up to do it again. After a while, I tried a gentle flap or two and found I could lift myself in the air and move where I wanted to go. Maybe other dragons were bigger, but I would learn how to fly as well as any.
Around the time the sky outside the window began to lighten, I heard sounds from the room across the hall. Someone was moving around. Floorboards creaked. Helen was still asleep, so I climbed up onto her quilt and sat quiet, listening.
“You’re going in already?”
I knew Helen’s mother’s voice from the night before, but I didn’t know the deeper one that answered it. “Might as well. We’re doing inventory today. You go on back to sleep.”
Another creak. “Let me fix you some breakfast.”
“Alice.” The deeper voice sounded worried. “You don’t have to get up. I’ll get a piece of toast.”
“One piece. You won’t even put oleo on it.” I could hear two sets of footsteps now. “You need to eat better. What kind of wife am I, letting you get so thin?”
“Alice—”
“Please, Jim. It won’t take a minute.”
The door across the hall opened and closed. Slippers shuffled away toward the stairs. In the bedroom, the deep voice sighed. I heard it mutter something about “makes her happy,” and then the sound of water running.
Underneath me, the quilt shifted. Helen sat up. Her thought unspooled in my mind. Ranger, you’re here.
I wanted to know how to catch her smile and hold it tight, before it could wink out again. Her face looked as pale as it had when I’d first seen her. I thought I must have dreamed you after all, she said. Like everything else. You’re not a dream, are you?
I could prove I wasn’t. Look here, I said.
Copyright © 2024 by Kris Faatz
