The Saint of Dragons

The Woman who Fell in Love with a Dragon

The boy and his father had docked the Ship with No Name in New
York Harbor and made their way quickly—Simon would say too quickly—through the streets by taxicab to a perch in a giant tree in Central Park.

Aldric scaled it quickly, but Simon struggled with the climb. No one
could see them because they were so high up, and the tree was deep
inside the park, thickly covered in autumn colors.

Aldric St. George had set the area up nicely for their needs long
before his trip to the Lighthouse School. Stuck away here and there
among the branches were little gunnysacks of food and water, small
flashlights, a clock, some books, and below, at the trunk, two comfortable easy chairs that Aldric had salvaged in a trash bin off Park Avenue, and which would serve now as a place to sleep, something Simon found depressing.

Lodged in the tree were two old brass telescopes, positioned to see in every direction around the Park.
“What are we looking for?” Simon wondered.

“The signs. He’s been here, you can tell. Lurking.”

“How do you know?” Aldric’s eyes passed over the people below. “You can see it in people’s faces. Everything weighs heavy on them. Their hearts beat slower. The fire that drives them through life is burning low. Look at
them, Simon. Nothing reaches past their sadness—not the landscape, not   the movement of the city, not the souls around them…. They’ve lost
something and they don’t know what it is. Some haven’t noticed what’s
missing inside, but they know enough to suspect that the city has stolen
something from them. You can feel their anger. These people don’t want
to be alive anymore. The gloom is falling down around them like rain.”

Simon looked. He saw ordinary
people, doing ordinary things.
Aldric pointed down. “The cabdriver at the corner, yelling at the
woman crossing. The old woman in the gray coat. The priest. Don’t you
feel it?”

Quiet filled the tree as Simon tried to sense what his father described.
The city was just a city. Finally he had to admit, “All I see are a bunch of
ticked-off New Yorkers. I thought that was supposed to be pretty normal
here.”

His father frowned. “These are the signs of a Dragon presence. Be
alert to them. Now, then: Over there, on the eighteenth floor of that
building, is the home of a woman named Alaythia Moore,” said Aldric
with a touch of sadness Simon didn’t quite understand.

“She lives there alone, and rarely has visitors. She works for a modern art gallery. She is an art curator, and an artist in her own right, I understand, though I’ve never seen any of her work. She’s too shy and private to show off her own paintings.”

Simon started to swing his telescope toward her building, but Aldric
stopped him. “No, no, no! You can’t stare in people’s windows! Don’t
you have any manners? Watch the street. We don’t bother the lady!”
“Then why exactly are we hanging outside her house?”

Moving to his own telescope, Aldric answered him. “Because she is in great danger. She doesn’t know it, but the Manhattan Dragon has taken an interest in her.”

“The White Dragon?”

“The very one. He is sending his paintings in the mail, for her to
display in her gallery. And she has found them to be to her liking.”

“Hmm,” said Simon. “Are Dragons very good at painting?”

“Don’t be absurd,” snapped Aldric. “He uses enchantment to lure the
woman in. She can’t help herself. The paintings are magic. He’s fallen in
love with her.”

He’s not the only one, thought Simon.
“Is she pretty?” he asked.

“Dragons don’t like ugly women,” answered Aldric, “unless it’s
dinnertime.”

Simon laughed. His father didn’t.
“When a Dragon falls in love with a mortal woman, it is a terrible thing,” he told Simon. “Worse if he decides to marry. When a Dragon takes a human bride, he bathes her in fire, consuming her ever so slowly,
until she is burned away. It’s an elaborate ceremony, a show of ultimate honor. The beasts have a strange way of showing respect.”