MAUD AND THE WYVERN – ASHLEY N.E. MURPHY

She had crawled all through this wood and never seen an egg quite like it. It was clearly a reptile egg, but which? She was not afraid that it might be a viper, as those only gave birth to live young. Slow-worms too birthed their babies live, so these could either be eggs of a lizard or of a grass snake. But those animals always laid more than one egg, and this one was the only one of its kind in the entire wood.

Sunlight filtered through a hundred feet of green leaves dappled the tiny ovoid egg’s soft leathery shell. Maud gingerly picked up the egg and held it up to where the sun seemed to be, beyond the canopy of Haugh Woods, to reveal the silhouette of the reptile embryo inside. Maud could make out short back legs and long arms wrapped around its fragile body. A lizard then, but a big one; most lizard eggs were only the size of Maud’s smallest fingernail, and this one was almost as big as a chicken’s egg. Maud placed the egg back in the dirt nest under the shade of a blackberry bush. She said a short prayer of protection to St. Christopher so that no egg-eaters would devour it, then ran away, chasing a small white butterfly.

#

Over the next few days Maud continued to visit the solitary egg until finally she arrived and found the infant lizard licking its eggshell. Its emerald green color flecked with tan and brown concealed it in the green wood. Its back legs were turned outwards, like a common lizard, but unlike the common lizards of the wood, its front limbs had long, bat-like green wings attached. The wrinkly, wet wings did not impede its curious exploration; the baby folded the wings under its arms and lifted them high off the ground so they didn’t drag as it crawled around, exploring.

Maud watched it consume its egg sack, licking its own scales and leathery wings clean. She approached with the patience of one used to the skittishness of wild things--inch by inch, so the creature did not even realize she was approaching until she was quite near, when it let out a little toad-like squeak and ran and disappeared in the underbrush.

Maud came the next day at the same time. It was her habit to finish her morning chores and then disappear to explore Haugh Wood for most of the day, only coming back home with enough time to eat her supper and then do her evening chores. As often as she could, Maud brought the creature goat milk in a leather bottle, which she poured into a low dish. It crawled like a bat--leather wings folded close in, and all four feet on the ground--to the dish, and lapped at the goat milk with its green, toothless mouth.

After many such feedings, the little wyvern was comfortable enough with Maud to sleep in her lap, curled into a small crescent, a smile on its scaly mouth. Maud was able to examine it more closely, and as it grew its features became clearer to her. Its wings, so thin that the green forest sunlight shone through them, seemed useless. Maud examined her wyvern’s thick horny head and long, needle-like claws. She whispered promises to its sleeping, smiling face.

#

“I’ve tamed a lizard.”

On the table was sorrel and chickweed that Maud had foraged for their supper, as well as barley bread and cheese and milk from Maud’s goat. There was no meat today, but the pottage was just as filling. In the same high wooden chair that Maud, her younger brother, and her own mother had once had their first solid foods, Maud’s baby brother smeared blackberries on his face with a happy squeal. 

Maud’s mother wiped the black smear off the baby’s face. “Oh, Maud, how can you stand those creeping serpents?”

“It’s not a serpent, mother, it has two legs. And it has wings like a bat!”

“Did you find a baby bat, Maud?” Maud’s father leaned towards her in interest. Maud was always proud to capture his attention. “Perhaps one that fell from its mother’s back?”

“No, Papa. Its wings are green as the grass.”

Papa furrowed his brow. “It’s a dragon, then?”

Maud sipped pottage from her cup. “No, Papa, it can’t be. It drinks milk and has no teeth!”

Maud’s mother was too busy giving the baby more blackberries and gently encouraging her middle child to eat more to eat her own supper, but she did find time to complain about Maud’s favorite pastime. “I told you Haugh Wood is no place for a little girl. Dragons indeed! Stay home and play with your dollies like a good girl, Maud.”

Maud looked up at the ceiling and shook her head slightly. Her mother never had anything nice to say.

Papa tore a chunk of rye bread with his teeth and spoke around it as he chewed. “Maud, show me where it is tomorrow. I know you have a soft heart for the crawlers of the forest, but if it be truly a wyvern, it could devastate Mordiford, or even go after Hereford.”

Maud’s eyes darted from her father’s concerned face, to her mother feeding her two younger brothers. The middle child saw the panic she was trying to conceal in her expression, and taunted: “Papa’s going to kill your dra-gon! Papa’s going to kill Maud’s dra-gon!”

Papa saw her confusion. “Wyverns are not a plaything, Maud. They grow up, and when they do, they develop a taste for people.”

“Papa, I confess. I lied. It has no wings. I’m sorry.”

Papa’s mustache stretched out over his face as he laughed softly into his cup of pottage. “You made a fool of me, Maud, I admit. I thought you were raising a baby wyvern!”

“Oh, Papa, what are we going to do with this girl?” Maud’s mother hadn’t looked at her during the entire supper. “Tell her not to go into the Wood anymore. Bandits could get her, Robert.”

Maud chewed her salad slowly. I won’t let them get you, she promised.

#

Over the next months, throughout the harvest, Maud continued to visit the creature as she could. However, she was more busy helping Papa harvest wheat and tie it into bundles in the field, and then helping Mama winnow the wheat and take it to the village watermill. All the harvest work had to be done in addition to her usual chores. Then there was the Harvest Festival, and with nightfall coming sooner, between one thing and the other, Maud’s visits to Haugh Wood grew more infrequent.

At long last, one autumn day, Maud found her mother and father both engrossed in their work and with none for her. Maud put some milk in the leather bottle and headed off to Haugh Wood before they could find something useful for her to do.

The Wood was just beginning to turn from brilliant green to a dull green-gold. As she approached the blackberry bush, her eyes darted all around, looking for a spot of emerald amongst all the golden green of the autumn forest. Suddenly, a flash of green arced across her peripheral vision. Maud followed it to the ground, only to see her wyvern, now the length of a cucumber, eating a giant dragonfly and looking quite pleased with itself.

“You’re off milk now, are you?”

The wyvern stood up on its two back legs and walked to Maud like a tame bird, with its leather wings folded against its dappled body. Maud poured the milk into its wooden bowl, but the creature simply looked at the milk, then back at Maud.

“You really are off milk. I’ll bring something else next time.” She sat down, and the now kitten-size reptile crawled into the warm space made by her crossed legs. Warm, full, and content, it fell asleep, smiling, with Maud stroking its scales.

#

Maud managed to bring it some offal and cartilage from the November butchering, but over the winter learned that it would not eat meat from the salt barrel. The wyvern was always happy to see her, even when she could not spare meat from her family’s stores; she assumed it had learned to hunt small forest animals. After the first big snow, Maud found only a small hole under the leafless blackberry bush. She spent more time at home, weaving with Mama and helping Papa repair their home during the short, freezing days of winter.

As the snow slowly melted in spring, Maud’s trips to Haugh Wood became more frequent. Her wyvern had graduated from gliding to flapping to flying, and she had seen it capture songbirds for meals just as a hawk would. It still folded its wings against its body to walk or crawl on land.

One day Maud observed a curious second way that her wyvern could catch its supper. It had glided down upon a particularly aggressive squirrel which was chattering furiously as the wyvern coiled around it, tightening its deadly grasp. The squirrel sunk its strong, nut-cracking teeth into the wyvern’s green sides, and the wyvern instinctively opened its jaws wider than Maud thought possible, like a snake unhinging its jaws. Suddenly the squirrel  went limp. What had just before been fighting ferociously for its life was now just a limp sack of red fur.

After the wyvern ate the squirrel and slinked to its blackberry bower to sleep, Maud noticed that the small flowers and plants near the spot of the squirrel’s demise had wilted. No more grass or flowers grew there all spring.

#

It was the month of blackberries again. With longer days and less work to be done around the farm, Maud was able to spend most of her summer days in Haugh Wood. The beast was now three times larger than the little girl, and had moved from the blackberry bramble deeper into the Wood. Maud had seen it bring down a doe. While it sometimes lay its head in her tiny lap to be petted to sleep, it was often gone when Maud arrived in the morning.

One summer sunset, with bats whirling like acrobats above her, Maud went to the barn to bed down her goats. The barn door had been left open, but that wasn’t unusual, and in fact was one reason why the animals had to be put to bed. She heard frantic bleating inside, as though one goat was calling out in fear. Maud went in.

“Tulip? Captain?”

From the aisle of the barn, Maud’s wyvern jerked its head up and looked at her. Its green smile was smeared with blood. Maud’s wyvern had always had a slim body, but now its back humped up over a bulging stomach. The remaining goat’s frantic bleats bounced off the bleached wooden barn walls as the last sunlight of the summer day slanted in through gaps in the wood slats.

The wyvern began to drag its swollen body through the barn aisle towards the door. Towards Maud. She backed away and let it pass her, dragging its belly, distended with Tulip, back towards Haugh Wood. She then went in to comfort Captain.

What can I tell Papa?

#

Maud’s lies, barely believed from the first (“A bear? In Mordiford?”), fell apart a month later when their neighbor saw her new Welsh black calf strangled and swallowed whole. The woman’s screams were heard for a mile. It was all anyone spoke of: “Did you hear? There’s a wyvern in that Wood. As green as grass it is.”

Mama did not speak a word to Maud for three days. Papa marched Maud to a birch sapling near their farm and made her pull the young tree limbs off the slim trunk. Back in their small cruck house, Mama and the brothers watched as Papa whipped Maud’s bare buttocks. Maud had to sleep on her stomach for more than a fortnight.

Maud tried to mitigate the damage done to local farms by bringing the dragon as much meat, fish, and beaver as she could to keep it fed. Though she searched Haugh Wood, the wyvern never returned to the hole under the blackberries, nor to its newer home deeper in the Wood. She never learned where it stayed.

#

From high above, through bars of iron two inches thick, Garstone watched the green beast advance towards the confluence of the two rivers. It had crawled out of the Wood, surprisingly quiet for a beast as long as two men stacked tall, following what Garstone had thought was a deer trail. The green of its flank was flecked with small spots of brown and tan, so it blended into the Wood like a snake. It could have been watching this watering spot for some time.

Garstone had surmised that dying of thirst in a gibbet might produce hallucinations, but he had not realized they would look so real.

He was suffering from the pain of leg cramps, the muscles bunching and refusing to release. In the cage, Garstone could not stretch them out for relief, so they tightened further. His gibbet was too high up for anyone to give him water, even if they were so inclined--which they were not, because of the nature of his crimes. So when Garstone called out to the little boy watering his sheep at the confluence, the boy followed the local custom and ignored the gibbeted criminal.

“Little boy! Look behind you! Run away!”

Garstone’s voice cracked--he had not drank anything since yesterday morning. All he could do was watch as the huge lizard, with green wings folded into its armpits, walked so unbelievably quietly, until the sheep gave their cry, and it was by then too late for the boy, unless he  went into the river and swam. Garstone watched and wondered why the poor little shepherd, who lived in a town with two magnificent rivers, could not swim.

The beast crawled back to the wood by the same deer path, its belly dragging the ground, full of boy, and the sheep stood around the stony beach, bleating. Had that really happened? Was the entire ordeal--the capture, the sentence, the gibbeting, the leg cramps, the dragon eating the boy--was it just a nightmare?

It seemed real when a man came calling, “Wilky! Wiiiiilllllkkkkyyyyy!” The man apparently knew where to look for the boy, and the sheep were making enough of a racket that the man soon came very close to Garstone’s high iron cage.

Garstone sucked spit from his cheeks to wet his tongue for speech. “I saw it! A green dragon ate the shepherd boy! I saw it! I saw it! I’ll take you to where it went! I saw it leave! Let me down and I’ll kill it! What have I to lose? Please! PLEASE!”

Garstone kept yelling his story and his offer until long after the man had run away from the confluence of the rivers.

#

When she returned home with the scraps meant for wyvern, which she never did find, she discovered her parents sitting together at the table.

“Maud, where were you?”

Maud looked down and didn’t answer. She kept the strap of her pack on her shoulder; she wanted to wait until they were not watching to put the meat scraps she had tried to give her friend back into the larder, or into the pottage.

“Mr. Wigley came to bring us some news. Maud.”

Maud looked up. Mama and Papa were watching her without blinking.

“It took Wilky.”

Maud stood stock still. She felt the warmth drain from her body. “Wilky?”

“Yes, Maud. He must’ve tried to defend his sheep. It was at the confluence.”

Where the Rivers Lugg and Wye met was where Wilky and Maud had sometimes gone “fishing” with their handmade poles, hooks, and bait. They never caught anything—it was playacting, and Maud was now too old for such games, but for a time Wilky had been her playmate, before both became old enough to help their parents more. Wilky became a shepherd boy, and Maud had sometimes seen him and his sheep in Haugh Wood on her expeditions. They had skipped stones at the confluence during the Harvest Festival. And now the wyvern had gotten her friend.

Maud’s parents watched their daughter’s stunned face. They knew she was suffering; they glanced at each other and without saying a word, they agreed not to punish her further.

“Now that it has tasted human flesh, it must be stopped.” Papa paused, and Maud remembered when he had tried to stop it from developing further last year. “This is now too dangerous. It could come for any of us. I’m going to talk to the sheriff.” Papa strode out of the little cruck house.

Maud felt her mother’s eyes boring a hole into her. “You’ve brought this on us, Maud, and so help me—”

Maud ran out of the house, away from her mother’s anger.

#

The rest of the day passed. The sheep huddled together by the rivers, sleeping out in the open. Garstone envied them.

He tried to admire the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the green forest canopy, acutely aware that this could be his last day. He managed to cram his foot through the bars of the cage, allowing some relief of his leg cramps, but the sharp edges of the iron did not allow for him to rest his legs outside the bars of his cage. He slumped down, his back on the floor of the gibbet, and stretched his legs out above his head. It was heavenly. He slept in this way through the night, waking often to hear the soft night sounds and see the stars before drifting off again.

After an alarmingly small morning piss, Garstone’s gibbet-exercises to reduce his leg cramps were interrupted by a small crowd of locals. The man who had come looking for Wilky led the way, pointing up to Garstone’s cage. Garstone recognized another man, dressed all in black, a haughty peacock feather dancing from his hat. The sheriff.

As the people passed under his cage, Garstone called out desperately, “Take me! I will attack it! If it kills me, that would be a better death than wasting up here!” His voice cracked and he felt the old tingle of tears at his eyes; he hoped his body wouldn’t waste its last drops of precious water on these idiot farmers.

Garstone composed himself and continued his entreaties. “I can kill it! Let me try! You know I can fight, Sheriff.” He saw the people pause, and talk amongst themselves. Garstone felt his legs once again cramping; he could feel his blood hot in his veins as the sun warmed him, but without enough water in his body, he couldn’t sweat to cool himself. He was barely able to crane his neck down to watch the sheriff swagger to the stake in the ground holding the gibbet’s chain. Garstone channeled the pain of his leg cramps into his pleadings for a chance to slay the dragon.

Suddenly the gibbet fell ten feet; Garstone felt his dehydrated body being battered by all sides of the iron cage. As soon as the smelly blacksmith jimmied the cage door, Garstone limped as fast as his cramped legs would take him straight into the rivers. He drank and drank of the river water, fouled by the villages along its banks, until his stomach, ill from disuse, vomited the water back to its source.

#

Only a few hours later that same day, Garstone found himself once again jammed into a cramped space. Still, he considered this an improvement in his fortune. Most importantly, he had been given ale, cider, and some food, making his current confinement far more tolerable than the previous one. Secondly, he had been given a short handcannon, a weapon he had never dreamed of wielding, even in his boyhood. It was a cylinder made of bumpy stone with a few strategic holes bored into it. The handcannon came equipped with three iron balls, gunpowder, a rod to pack the gunpowder, and a special rope called a slowmatch for ignition.

Garstone was inside an old cider barrel which had been pierced at all angles by sharp knives and half-swords pointing outward, and plenty of handcannon-sized holes had been bored into it. It was placed by the confluence of the Rivers Lugg and Wye, and Garstone was sealed inside. The plan (devised by the same rat bastard sheriff who had sealed him in the gibbet) was for the dragon to be enticed by the delicious smell of Garstone, approach the barrel and be shot by the handcannon. Garstone would then be a dragon-slaying hero and would surely be pardoned and spend a glorious night at the inn, fucking and drinking. And if not, he would still have the handcannon. When Garstone tried to devise an escape plan using the handcannon to hold the sheriff and villagers at bay, perhaps until he could find his mates down the River Lugg, his mind kept lapsing into daydreams of triumphant dragon-slaying, a pardon, and a night at the local inn. I need sleep.

The barrel lay on the stony beach of the confluence, and Garstone tried not to be nostalgic for the gibbet (from which he had great views, and really this bucolic little town was not a bad place to spend one’s final moments, except for the dragon) (and it was so hot in here; at least in the gibbet he could feel the breeze) (and besides he could stretch his legs a bit through the bars of the cage, but not in this damned cider barrel) (at least it could have been better quality cider, at least) until suddenly Garstone noticed that the songbirds had ceased their calls. Then he heard the distinctive rustle of bushes being pushed aside.

Garstone peered through the holes in the barrel towards the little path he had seen the beast use the day before when it ate the little shepherd boy. The monster looked far larger from his ground-level view than it had from that perch above. Its forelegs were splayed out to the sides, with the green wings folded up underneath. Powerful pectoral muscles rippled under green scales at each bow-legged step. The barrel was directly in between the dragon and the water.

Garstone fumbled on the bottom of the barrel for the powder, briefly scorching his hand on the lit end of the slowmatch cord. The dragon was moving too fast. He poured the gunpowder down the cylinder of the handcannon, counting out the measure of powder: “One, two, three, FUCK.” The powder fell through a touchhole onto his pants. He had forgotten to cover it with his thumb.

The dragon had reached the riverstone beach. Garstone’s hair rose towards the dragon, pulled towards the airholes by the beast’s inhalation. It was smelling the barrel. It could smell Garstone.

Second try with the gunpowder. His thumb covering the touchhole, Garstone whispered: “One, two, three, four.”

He suddenly gagged as the stench of rotting carrion filled the small cider barrel. He felt the barrel tilt slightly, as though the riverstones under him had shifted. Some powder fell out of the bag. “Fuck!” The light inside the barrel dimmed to blackness, the only light coming from the slow burning ember of the slowmatch cord. The holes that had let in the golden afternoon sunlight had been covered by hexagonal emerald scales.

Garstone was aware that all around, on all four sides and above and under, he was surrounded by dragon. He suddenly, for the first time in months, felt cold. Oh God.

Stoppered the powder. Found the rod. Packed the gunpowder. Garstone used the barrel overhead as a hammer, jamming the rod deeper into the gunpowder. There were three or four loud, repetitive bangs as the rod hit the wood. He knew the dragon could hear him.

Hissssssss. The dragon was now trying to peer inside the barrel. Garstone could not look away from a black pupil surrounded by a circle of sulphurous yellow, then the iris pattern of black and orange. Garstone packed the gunpowder into the handcannon harder, banging above his head on the inside of the barrel as the eye, as big as his head, watched his efforts.

Suddenly a hole opened up above him, a long slit through which Garstone could see the sky. The barrel was breaking. It was squeezing the barrel.

Garstone pulled the primer out of his pocket and tried to pour it into the primer hole in the dim light of the barrel. He felt wetness on his legs. No one would mock me for wetting my pants as I’m staring down a dragon. But it was dripping from above. It was blood. The dragon was cutting itself on the knives jutting out from the barrel. And still it coiled.

Garstone remembered the last ingredient: the slowmatch. If it had gotten wet, he had no way to light the gunpowder. A corner of Garstone’s mind began planning: What if the blood put out the slowmatch? What if I can’t find the flint and stone? Can I light the gunpowder with a spark?

His eyes found the slowmatch. Though the rope was now wine-colored with the dragon’s blood, the end of the treated rope still glowed orange. It was just an ember. But it should work.

The wooden staves began to groan. Garstone felt the sides of the barrel moving towards him, as though to crush him. The dragon was going to squeeze him to death, despite the knives injuring it. The staves above his head split into two, and Garstone saw the sky, then the black and orange eye. The dragon was going to watch him die.

Garstone pulled his hands above his hand, so they wouldn’t be pinned to his sides as the animal’s coils tightened. There was no need to worry about the holes in the barrel any longer. Garstone pointed the muzzle of the handcannon at the gold and black eye, and touched the lit end of the slowmatch to the touchhole.

KER-BOOM!

The gold and black eye exploded in a shower of blood and a clear, viscous liquid. The coils loosened, and Garstone fell down onto the bloody riverstone beach.

“Ah-ha! I killed it! I slayed the dragon! I killed the beast!” Garstone looked at his trophy, the orange of the remaining eye dimming to tan. Surprisingly, that reptilian smile was still on its scaly face. Then its huge sides heaved, as it drew its last breath, and exhaled, opening its jaws so wide Garstone could see past its dagger-like teeth, its serpentine tongue, and down its foul gullet. He saw its throat muscles contract from the inside.

A warm and humid vapor poured over Garstone, warming his skin. But his lungs began to burn. The air was toxic. Garstone took a step towards the river, away from the beast’s corpse, but found his legs would not obey him. He fell onto the bloody beach, his lungs burning within. The last thing he saw was the grey and red riverstones. These are perfect skipping stones.

#

KER-BOOM!

The elder of Maud’s two younger brothers immediately stopped chattering at the baby. The two young boys looked expectantly at her. She was in charge of the two boys, as Mama and Papa had gone to the Mordiford town square that morning.

The color drained from Maud’s face. They fired a cannon at it?

She had to go to it. “Don’t get into trouble! Stay away from the hearth, and don’t let the baby go out of your sight!”

“Maud! Don’t leave us alone! I’m scared!”

Maud ignored him and ran outside, in the direction of the confluence of the two rivers.

But she was too late. The huge green beast lay still, and only a few feet from its head was the convicted criminal who had until recently been gibbeted high in the air, a warning to other river pirates. Maud concentrated her focus on the body of her forest friend. One side of its face had been blown off. Even from a distance, and even now, she could see its friendly, scaly smile.

From the direction of Mordiford town, a small crowd of about a dozen adults walked towards the beach. Maud saw her Papa and Mama leading the way. The adults pointed to the two corpses at the water’s edge, then they noticed Maud, standing on the path leading to her farm.

Her mother yelled, “Maud! Who’s watching the boys?”

Maud took one last look at the body of her friend, and at its blood spilled on the stony beach. St. Christopher, you are a bastard. Then she turned and walked back home.

#

On the banks of the River Lugg, some years later, emerald sunlight filtered through a hundred feet of green leaves, falling on several women gathered together at the water. Chemise sleeves rolled above the elbow, shifts held above the knee with a knotted fist, the women slapped clothes on rocks and rubbed at them with washing bats. Shadows of ancient trees of Haugh Wood sheltered them from the hot summer sun. The quiet chirps and music of birdsong were drowned out with gossip, teasing, and laughter.

Suddenly a woman shrieked, then laughed, her sisters joining her in their laughter.

“A newt!”

“Ah, newts!”

“Kill it!”

“Don’t let it happen again!”

The women took their washing bats and wooden-soled shoes to the tiny amphibians, most of which were able to scatter into the dense underbrush. The women tripped, falling into the water with splashes, laughing harder at their sport.

“Oh, Maud doesn’t want to!”

“Going to take it home and sleep with it, Maud?”

She simply watched, crouched in the softly flowing river, as the newts were crushed into black smears on the river-worn stones.

Ashley N.E. Murphy

Ashley N.E. Murphy has been published in Fudoki Magazine and Tether's End. She is also the founder and editor of Sundial Magazine for historical fiction. At home in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania, she lives with her husband, daughter, and animals.