By Blair Arsenault
The author has written several children’s stories about Hal, a young dragon whose mother is red and father is green. Hal’s green with red ears.
JILL felt it coming after the “feed-of-worms event” that elevated her son Hal to cult status among his peers. She could read body language like Welsh monks read Latin.
Sometimes she noticed Hal swaggering or staring extra long at his face in a pond or an empty-castle moat. He’d move his ears one way, then another, and admire his emerald-green eyes.
Vanity, Jill knew, threatened all dragons. It made them rash, silly and insufferable. Of course, dragons reached such haughtiness from the many times they saw their fierce images adorning medieval heraldry – on ship pendants, military flags, tavern shingles, shields, coats of arms, even jewelry.
Pride precedes a fall, Jill thought.
Vanity hit the fan one day when Hal asked about body art.
“What are you getting at, Hal?” A throaty edge in Jill’s response suggested welling unpleasantness.
Hal sensed peril. “Some dragons at school wear body art and do a little jewelry. Some hairy ones have mullets.”
Blingless, Jill reasoned that being a red dragon already represented the essence of bling. Why should she degrade herself with jewelry or tattoos?
“Hal, come and sit on your rock. I’ll explain as best I can so that even a young dragon understands. Failing that, maybe your father can talk sense into you.”
Bart, Hal’s dad, slumbered nearby, but lifted an eyelid when half-hearing the expression “body art”. He, too, disliked bling. He even hesitated to munch on the passing bejeweled gypsies. The mere thought of a dragon with piercings or tattoos affected him on a cellular level. Presently, all his cells quivered. Distrusting himself, he decided to let Jill handle this.
“Think of this as a mild confession, Hal. When still a little dragon, the only red one in the shire, I started feeling superior to green dragons. Self-obsessed, I tinkered with body adornments to accent my uniqueness. Once I wore woad lipstick and a goatskin hat to school. My dragon friends guffawed and hooted. On the way home, I looked at myself in lake water and saw how outlandish my arrogance was.”
“Mom, times change. Lambton wears a necklace of knight’s vertebrae. Other boy dragons, too...”
“Hal,” Jill interrupted, “by their bling, ye shall know them.”
“Pardon?”
“I hate to downgrade others, dear, but little Lambton has issues.” Jill’s tone came from a murky zone between severity and sympathy.
“What’re issues?” asked Hal.
“That’s therapeutic new-speak for complicated problems,” Jill said. “His family’s dysfunctional, even for dragons. Remember the time your father and I returned from plundering a castle in Essex, and how tired we were? I’ll tell you why.
“Instead of going for the larders and cattle, Lambton’s degenerate dad headed for the cellar and got into the mead and wine. He drank flagon after flagon, went cross-eyed, pranced along the castle ramparts singing bawdy songs and fell into the moat. We hauled him out, no easy task when toting off the Lord Griffton on Wye’s oxen.
“Meanwhile, Lampton’s mother loaded up on the chambermaids’ perfumes and ribbons. She showed up later wearing a crinoline. If they behave this way in public, how do they act in the cave?
“It’s no wonder Lambton turns to bling and tattoos to save what’s left of his....”
“Mother, I just want a tattoo on one ear saying ‘alma mater’. That means ‘bountiful mother’. And on the other ear, ‘pater fortis’, meaning ‘brave father’. In dragon school, we do a little Latin with Ms Guinevere.”
Bart opened one lens on his left eye.
Surprisingly, Jill teared up at the “alma mater” notion. Intuitive pragmatism usually fortified her against maudlin sentiment. She recovered by pretending to clean cave dust from her eyes.
“Hal, bling suits Bohemians, reactionaries, marginal-type dragons and humans. And it’s dangerous too. Remember when we surprised a brigantine of pirates foundering on the Wessex coast. You gulped one down too fast, his earring bauble caught in your throat and Bart had to do the Heimlich maneuver? We nearly lost you because of a criminal’s silly bling.” She rubbed his ears affectionately.
“Jill?” She saw Bart standing beside her. “Hal and I have somewhere to go.”
“As you wish, dear. Don’t be late for supper. The ox is putrefying.”
When Bart and Hal emerged from the tattoo parlor, Hal had the pinkish insides of his red ears tattooed. The tattoos showed only if someone peered straight into his ears. In one red ear, in green ink, was “pater fortis”, and in the other, “alma mater”.
That evening, Bart told Jill that when he’d heard Hal ask for a “pater fortis” tattoo, pride and gratitude had filled his veins and swelled his heart. Jill decided he’d surrendered to his own vanity and used his son as a proxy. She didn’t tell Bart this because, like many male dragons, he often misunderstood his own emotions and impulses.
The seaside evening brought quiet and a glorious sunset. Jill tapped her claw to the strains of a tribal anthem barely audible, even to Jill, from a distant castle’s great room. In the meadow, a million little creatures went about their buzzing, crawling and flying business. An atmosphere of lush fecundity prevailed for all with the wisdom to see.
Jill and Bart watched Hal splash about on the salt-marsh estuary, only his red ears and six wings visible as he practiced opening his eyes underwater.
Jill murmured: “He’s eating a crustacean. I hear the shell cracking. It’s a clam.”
“You’re amazing, Jill,” said Bart.
“Yes,” agreed Jill, without a trace of irony.
“Hey, what’s that on your lips?”
“Oh, just a little woad,” replied Jill, turning a shade redder.
“Blue becomes you,” said Bart. Moments later, he asked, “Should I get a stud in my ear? Just a small one?”
“Bart, I despise jewelry on male dragons. It makes them look shifty. Besides, don’t encourage him.”
Jill peered towards the lake. Hal had caught a sturgeon and held it up for Jill and Bart to see. Jill clapped, and Bart yelled, “Woohoo!”
To distract Bart from bling, Jill said, “A colony of Asian marauders has arrived a few miles up the Scottish coast. Let’s swoop down on them and have some Chinese food.”
“Good idea, Jill. We’ll bring one back for Hal.”
Jill placed a claw on Bart’s arm, and said, “This time, check for earrings.”
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