By Jess Welker
Heart thrilling with discovery, Sweetsage bounded through the vibrant forest. She crashed through a hovering coterie of fairies, scattering them. As she dashed through the meadow, rabbits jumped and darted. Behind the cottage, she found Papa chopping kindling.
“I found a dragon egg!”
Papa rested his ax and smiled. “There are no wild dragons around here. It must be a bird egg.”
“But it’s bigger than my head.” Sweetsage tugged at Papa’s hand. “Come see.”
Papa consented to be pulled at a trippingly breathless pace back across the meadow’s rippling verdure and into the woods, which glowed green as if the sun shone through a painted window. Sweetsage sped under a low-hanging limb, and Papa ducked his head just in time to avoid a bruising.
“Here!” Sweetsage flung herself down at the erupting roots of a stout tree that had split into three offshoots. Not daring yet to touch the fragile shell stippled with emerald specks, she caressed the air around it.
Papa crouched, and Sweetsage watched him study the egg. He frowned, and Sweetsage’s excitement dimmed. “Isn’t it a dragon egg?”
“Yes, but Sweetsage…” His gaze left the egg and traveled over the roots and the many trees leaning in close.
Above their heads, a fairy poked her head out of a knothole, watching them.
“This isn’t a fawn tucked in a safe nook while its mother grazes. No dragon mother placed the egg here.”
“You think its mother abandoned it?” Sweetsage’s heart quivered in near sympathy.
“This isn’t a nest. No dragon has been here. The egg belongs to some traveler who dropped it or forgot it…”
“Then it was abandoned.” Now Sweetsage laid a hand lightly on the shell. She imagined the baby creature on the other side curling closer to her comforting touch.
“I’m sure its owner will come searching for it when they realize it’s missing.”
“What if they don’t?” Sweetsage gripped Papa’s sleeve. “We can’t leave it here to die.”
“It…” Papa hesitated. “It may already be dead.”
“It can’t be.”
“When were you last out this way?”
Sweetsage wanted to say, “Yesterday!” but couldn’t. Her verdant paradise radiated for miles in every direction: the pond with its lily pads and tadpoles, the multitude of pine tree copses shaking off blue-green needles, the stream she traversed on mossy stones ten times a day as she crisscrossed the forest, the endless swards and lush valleys…
“I’ll take it home until we know.” Sweetsage bent to gather the egg into her arms.
Papa held her back. “Don’t do this to yourself. Remember the fledging sparrow that fell from the nest? The fawn with the broken leg that never healed? The injured squirrel that the eagle snatched—”
Sweetsage gulped back a sob.
“Please, Sweetsage,” Papa spoke softly. “We don’t need more death.”
She rested her hand on the egg a moment more and pulled away.
That night Sweetsage crawled into bed clutching the miniature portrait of Mama, painted a month before the accident in the sky. Mama was smiling, and the artist’s skill had frozen her just before she broke into laughter. She wore the medal she’d won with her dragon at the midnight fire show, and the dragon’s glittering green wing filled the background.
Sweetsage sighed and sat up to place the picture on the windowsill where she could gaze at it as she fell asleep. She settled the memento and paused to watch the nightlife outside.
Fairies bobbed over the meadow, shot into the air, and generally made nuisances of themselves to the fireflies who never would learn the difference between the intermittent flickers of their own kind and the sparkling glow of the fairies.
A troupe of fairies danced on the surface of Papa’s chopping block, and Sweetsage marveled that they ventured this close to the cottage. In the city, people often found a fairy sleeping in a teacup or watching children sneak candy before dinner, but out here in the wild, fairies tended to keep their distance.
Their dance seemed to throw up living emerald sparks, and Sweetsage tossed back the blanket with a jolt of determination.
“Papa!” She jumped out of bed. “I’m going to fetch that dragon egg!”
She barely heard his groggy, “Wh-What?” from the next room before she ran out the door.
***
In the days that followed, Sweetsage gave the egg the best care she knew how. At night she sang it lullabies and tucked it into the cave-like darkness under her bed. During the day, she picked soft grasses and piled them in warm sunny spots. Always she spoke encouraging words to the hoped-for life. But when she pressed her ear to the faintly textured shell, she heard only silence.
And then it hatched! Startled by the cracking sound, Sweetsage prepared dry grass and blankets on the floor of the cottage as fragments of shell split and fell apart. At Sweetsage’s first yell, Papa had come running but left the door open.
When the little dragon broke free of its shell and lay exhausted from its labors, Sweetsage gathered it into a blanket and cradled it in her arms. The breeze brushing through the door felt like the joy Sweetsage heard in her own voice. “It’s a Smaragdine dragon. Like Mama’s was.”
Papa crouched, frowned, and rubbed a cluster of three light scales on the dragon’s forehead. Their pale discoloring contrasted with the dragon’s darker green scales. He stood abruptly. “It is exactly like Mama’s dragon.” His voice had an odd tone.
Sweetsage dropped a kiss on the dragon’s forehead. “Then I know who left the dragon egg under the tree. I know who this creature belongs to.” She turned a shining face up to Papa. “It’s ours. It’s a gift to us from the fairies.”
Papa opened his mouth but glanced outside at the fairies flitting back and forth in front of the doorway. They had never ventured this close to the cottage.
“Maybe.” Papa knelt again beside Sweetsage and their dragon. “Maybe so.”
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