Dragonkeeper

The dragonkeeper towed a cart bearing his tools for grooming Helios: a large nail file, ten stacks of huge towels, a jug filled with olive oil, and a bucket of oral preparation. He was now slowly ebbing into caducity, yet he kept to his daily duty of tending to Helios, the king’s white dragon. His mother, now dead for twenty years, had never left his father’s shadow after fleeing with the king’s treasure.

Most dragonkeepers unwillingly bore marks that made them stand out in a crowd. Scars from burns had become their badge of class, a distinctive, unsolicited marking from the task of dragonkeeping. They never wore this proudly, for it was a mark of shame. For all the virtues extolled by outside parties on the luck brought by dragons, those who had to contend with dragonkeeping merely spat in contempt. Dragons were only lucky by word of virtue, but never in actuality. These burn scars were not a standard mark, but often the result of the scourge of white dragons who had a harsh disagreement with their keepers.

Though he could still function like a normal citizen, the contractures from his post-burn scars had made his mobility challenging. He had suffered extensive burns from Helios’ monstrous sneeze. He survived, but the aesthetics of his original form had diminished. Half of his face bore hyperpigmentation and altered texture, with contractures from the lower lip down to the neck, which gave him a slurred speech. His disfigurement from burns constituted a huge fraction of his entire body.

He opened the tall iron gates. Untethered by chains, Helios came to him, sniffing, and deduced that what the dragonkeeper carried was not food, but grooming tools. The dragonkeeper raised his hand as Helios lowered his head. His nostrils flared; the hot air smelled of digested meat from the cattle he had consumed yesterday. The dragonkeeper greeted Helios and told the beast that it had been two months since his last grooming session. He knew that Helios understood, but perhaps he just did not care. The dragon turned away and ignored his keeper, stretching his wings like a fan as he yawned, then curled to nap.

Looking at the magnificence that was Helios, the dragonkeeper considered him his achievement in adversity. Helios had come to their doorstep wrapped in a velvet blanket, a mere egg back then—cased in an elongated shell rather than round. The dragonkeeper had held his breath the first time he caught sight of it. It had a rough texture formed by nodes and ridges ornamenting the surface. Such ornamentations provided extra strength to the eggshell; predatory birds and mammals found them frustrating to break.

When the decree of Dragon Preserving Duty was nailed on their door, Clive Maddocks knew they were a family marked for a life of poverty, unless his father decided to come back, return his ill-gotten wealth, and face charges. But his father was a man of strong resolve—right or wrong—and he kept his loot and stayed covert for the rest of his life. The tragic part was that they never heard from him again. Four men in leather brigandines with spaulders came to their doorstep, bringing forth a special token wrapped in a velvet blanket bearing King Waldmunt’s tower sigil. One of them carried a guidon bearing Waldmunt’s insignia. Clive was fourteen then, and as he stood before his mother unraveling the blanket’s contents, she fainted in disbelief upon the revelation that King Waldmunt had bequeathed his rogue father a white dragon egg. One of King Waldmunt’s men unrolled a scroll, reading a proclamation of his father’s grave violation: running away with three-fourths of the lost treasure that the king had commissioned his father and his knights to retrieve during the sack of Argus by the barbaric Castigars ninety years ago. Over the years, his father, in service of the king, had proven himself loyal and trustworthy, undertaking high-risk tasks that required extraction and retrieval in hostile territories. But the glint of gold coins and the glitter of precious stones had proven irresistible to devoted but hungry men. His father declared that the marauding invaders had already squandered a huge portion of the treasure, but in reality he kept it stored offshore in a treasury house that he bribed in exchange for their secrecy. The king’s bookkeepers were not sleeping, and eventually, his father and his cohorts were found out. They had to flee and seek asylum in Grazing Shadows, a neutral city-state that did not recognize Ember Peaks’ extradition laws.

The king had condemned the dragonkeeper to accept the undertaking of raising a sacred white dragon. While this giant reptile was a symbol of sacredness and royalty, in reality, it was nothing more than a vermin of diabolical proportions. Its external dominating appearance, its facet of grandeur, had deceived the line of kings simply because such a creature looked profoundly unusual. Was that not how the Devil deceived humankind? Waldmunt and the past kings must have thought with some reason that such beasts served a high value, but in reality they were just futile ornaments that served the unspeakable dalliances of the royalty and the elite. Because the white dragons were considered sacred and protected by law from labor and hunting, receiving a gift of a white dragon egg from the king was a blessing and a curse—a blessing in the sense that the beast was sacred and carried the king’s favor, and a curse because the recipient now carried the burden of the costly maintenance of dragon raising and a beast he could not give away or put to any practical use.

The dragonkeeper watched Helios with glazed and cataract-ridden eyes behind his thick, opaque glasses. A love-hate relationship had existed between him and the dragon for fifty years. The farm he inherited had become Helios’ realm, his closely-guarded territory that even the dragonkeeper had to tread carefully. He was paying for his father’s sins. He remembered years back accompanying his mother to appeal to the king, arguing they had nothing to do with his father’s thievery. Yet Waldmunt, exercising a false sense of wisdom given his entitlement as king, gave the rationale that a father, especially a knight, would never abandon a waiting family, and that he gave the dragon egg as a gesture of his displeasure. The egg, once hatched and raised, would drain the recipient of resources and assets. In the event that the dragonkeeper’s father kept in touch and learned of this predicament, he would be forced to send assistance in kind by sending a portion of his loot in increments. The upkeep of the dragon would consume and reduce him to paupery in the long run. Unfortunately, Waldmunt’s theory fell short, as the dragonkeeper’s father never materialized since he and his band of rogue knights ran away with the loot. As years passed since Helios transitioned from egg to a full-grown behemoth, Clive had learned to accept his miserable fate and to live one day at a time. Not even the gods themselves had the answers. He had taken dragonkeeping as a mere affirmation of his existing attitude towards absurdity. One lives with high hopes, but expectations often fall short.

He could hear Helios’ heavy breathing as he slowly drifted into sleep, still partially awake as he flicked his tail, using its spaded tip to swat flies. Yesterday the dragonkeeper had run Helios out of his large pen—an enclosure measuring three hundred twenty by two hundred fifty feet and domed at fifty feet. He always made sure that Helios’ pen was dust-free, and that bats did not use it as a roosting place. A mere sneeze from Helios when the beast sniffed dust had led to the dragonkeeper’s near-death immolation. For added measure, he also placed water-filled wooden barrels in the pen in the event of another such humiliating accident.

“Helios,” the dragonkeeper said, “I’m gonna need to groom you. It has been two months since you last groomed.”

Today Helios was agitated. He had been living loosely within the vicinity; the dragonkeeper’s estate sat along the ocean banks of Ember Peaks, famous for its sharp, towering mountains with red-glazed summits from the volcanic magma within its tectonic belts. Helios liked spending time outdoors, spreading his wings and sometimes just foraging on the grasslands. Since he razed an orchard into ashes, his roaming privileges became limited, keeping him confined to his pen, as the dragonkeeper had offered his whole farm as collateral for the damage. White dragons were said to be the most independent, intelligent, and free-spirited of all dragon species, and because of such attributes, they were untamable.

Helios was a leviathan of formidable proportions, like a blue whale but whose dominion was both land and sky. He was slender and agile, with his serpentine frame proportionate to his long neck and tail. Helios was a four-limbed fire breather, with two short back legs and large wings as forelimbs like that of a bat. When not in flight, he used the carpal knuckles of his wings like a cane that efficiently assisted him in crawling. Only white dragons held the distinction of possessing this physiology.

The dragonkeeper walked with a limp as he came closer to Helios. His hard-toed high boots felt heavy, but the extra weight provided a welcome protection. Helios had once stepped on his foot five years ago, when he got spooked while the dragonkeeper was feeding him after a swarm of bats squeaking in chorus flew overhead from the rafter. His right leg was slightly bent at an angle. The immolation from the dragon’s sneeze had eaten into deeper tissues in his lower extremities, notably in his knee where the burn had contracted his flesh, forcing his knee to bend and subluxating his joint.

He was glad that his cottage stood far from neighboring houses. He used to have a brick mansion in the middle of their farm with a hundred cattle, but had been reduced to five dozen. A field that used to be fifty acres had now been reduced to ten, divided for the plantation of corn, potatoes, carrots, and strawberries. He kept the female cattle for breeding, and it all went to Helios’ meal. Other than the dragon egg, the king had confiscated forty acres of the dragonkeeper’s land and required thirty percent of the yield from his remaining ten-acre farm. All this as restitution for the transgressions of his father.

No one would bother asking a dragonkeeper how his occupation was going, for all the citizens in the kingdom knew what such a task entailed. Dragons demanded meat, and the diminishing number of his goats and cattle could not sustain Helios’ diet. Over the years, the dragonkeeper had grown resourceful in providing alternative sources for his dragon’s diet, with the help of other dragonkeepers, as they were all bonded with the common goal of keeping their dragons well. Other than tending to his farm, he hunted game for Helios and fished in the nearby open sea. But as time caught up with him, the skills required for such rigorous tasks were diminishing. While he still hunted and fished for Helios from time to time, he found insects to be a viable alternative. Given that insects have a high protein content and higher feed conversion efficiency, entomophagy among dragons easily caught on. Still, dragons required red meat from time to time, for their metabolism still favored protein obtained from mammals.

Much like his claws, Helios’s scutes were tough keratin. Modified elaborately, his imbricate platings were arranged in transverse rows parallel to the body. From head to spine, his scutes were larger, serving as body armor and drag during flight. The skin from the inner surface of his scales hinged back and formed a free area which overlapped the base of the next scale which emerged below. This was where ticks would often lodge and gorge themselves on dragon blood, making them difficult to find. The dragonkeeper swept his hand against the scutes and found a few more infestations under the neck and wings. Helios was a healthy dragon, but every now and then would contract parasites from his occasional sojourns from where the dragonkeeper could only guess. Using tweezers, the dragonkeeper grabbed the tick by the mouthpart, where it was entering the skin, careful not to break the parasite and leave its mouth lodged on the dragon’s flesh. He pulled firmly and steadily in an outward, extracting motion and placed the tick in a jar of alcohol. After clearing Helios of ticks, he applied olive oil to the dragon’s sensitive areas near the mouth, nostrils, underbelly, and under the wings.

Then came the dental hygiene. Dragons may look tough on the exterior, but on account of their carnivorous and scavenging diet, they were susceptible to tartar and gingivitis that, if not properly addressed, could advance to periodontal disease that could spread and affect their vital organs.

As Helios curled into a nap, he was half-aware of his keeper’s presence, but had not fully gotten used to the routine. He often curled in a favorable position, with his head laid low to the ground, making it easy to inspect his teeth. Helios had deeply long, serrated teeth designed for tearing through flesh and crunching bones. Not only did his teeth have saw-like cutting edges, but the tissues within each tooth aided in strengthening them for chewing. The dragonkeeper closed his eyes for a while, trying to erase a tragic episode twenty years in the past. He must do this task leaving his emotion by the enclosure gates. He lifted the fold of his dragon’s upper lip, examining the gums. The arrangement of the teeth no longer aligned properly. Some of them had erupted from the wear and tear of feeding over the years.

Helios was calm and relaxed. His mouth was not exactly healthy and he hated brushing, but white dragons, in spite of their toughness, seemed to have inherited a curse of periodontal disease. Given their diet and their propensity to subsist on any available carrion, close proximity to a roaring white dragon was like a brief exodus to a filthy realm in hell.

While the dragonkeeper had conditioned Helios early to get used to the routine of oral cleaning, the beast had never gotten fully used to it. The dragonkeeper took the huge bucket containing a mixture of rock salt, mint, dried iris flower, and grains of pepper, all of them crushed and mixed together to create a thick consistency for cleaning dragon teeth. Helios loved its minty and salty flavor. Using a straight tree branch with a thick, rolled cloth with rough seams at the tip, the dragonkeeper dipped its end into the mixture. He pushed Helios’s muzzle on the front upwards, squeezing and pushing the lips on one side between the back teeth, keeping the mouth open, which often proved to be a gargantuan task, given the size and strength of the jaws. He had to lodge his foot and step on the lower jaw. Helios did not give any resistance. He was in the mood to have his teeth cleaned today, but the dragonkeeper still remained cautious. White dragons were known for their volatile tempers.

The dragonkeeper let go of the upper fold of the mouth and stepped back, jumping, letting Helios get a taste of the cleaning agent. He made a clucking sound as he swept his forked tongue around his teeth. While it did taste sweet and minty, Helios still did not like the aftertaste. The dragonkeeper used his foot to push the lower jaw, lifting the upper lip and Helios complied with a mild grunt. Plaque easily built up on a dragon’s teeth, and scraping it off was too difficult. Moreover, Helios did not like the scraping sensation of the tool implements used against his teeth, and it hurt him whenever it hit his gums. Clive’s mother learned this the hard way twenty years ago, when she forced a scrape of the plaque build-up in one of Helios’ molars. The scrape of the tool upon reaching the base of the tooth gums gave Helios a prickling sensation that startled him, suddenly closing his mouth, with one of his sharp teeth sinking into her shoulder and causing her instant death. Since then, the dragonkeeper no longer scraped the plaque and limited Helios to simple brushing, to prevent or at least minimize plaque buildup.

It should have been the dragonkeeper instead of his mother. He had volunteered to clean Helios’ teeth on that fateful day, but his mother pulled him away, admonishing him to watch and learn before he could fully win a dragon’s trust. One does not simply put oneself in danger with the false confidence of earning a dragon’s trust that had been in one’s custody for years. Dragons were complicated and so was their temperament. And Clive was aware that for all the suffering and indignation he had borne from raising Helios, he still could not fathom why he remained alive and had reached so ripe an age when scores of episodes with Helios’ maintenance had taken him to meeting Death by the gates of hell. More often than not, he prayed to die under the dragon’s mercy, rather than continue with the miserable existence that fell short of losing the last clothing on his back. By the mere consequences operating on the causality of the dragon’s upkeep, Helios had reduced him into a man burdened with plenty of responsibility until death.

After his mother’s death, he could have left Helios to fend for himself, but then Waldmunt’s men would come after him. Should he flee, he would forever live the life of a fugitive. But he was known as the cringing vermin of the village, who fell short of taking after his knight father. He was a disgrace to his father’s chivalrous lineage, but that was before his father fell from grace. Ironic, that for so much want of suicide he could not do it. The absolute dictation of imposed responsibility from external forces was a matter to contend with. Had he taken the easy way out, perhaps not much would he have amounted to anything, for the king’s men would always be on his trail, and they would never stop hunting him. Either way, an accepted responsibility that pushed him an inch closer to death every day he thought, was far better than to turn his back to it; for in the paradox of wanting freedom, yet being marked for instant death, negated this. Suicide, on the other hand, would deny him any possibility of seeing an outcome—favorable or not—to shape the conditions of his miserable existence. Now it was far better to be a cringing vermin in comparison to his father—a disgraced knight hiding from only the gods knew where.

He was never trained in the art of dragon-whispering, but full well did he know that dragons do not show any obvious signs that they were in pain when something ailed them. Nature did not design them to show any signs of weakness, for it could prove detrimental to a top predator. Doing so was already symptomatic that a dragon was on the verge of losing its vitality, as old age kicked in.

He gave Helios one more round of strokes at the base of the teeth and applied the cool minty solution to the gums. The important thing was to keep the mouth cool and refreshed with homemade oral antiseptic, to prevent any build-up of bacteria that may lead to malodorous breath. It was bad enough that dragons breathe fire; what more of suffering from halitosis?

The king kept tabs on citizens given the task of keeping male white dragons and he enforced a grueling penalty of beheading on any dragonkeeper whose male white dragon died from the lack of care.

He then proceeded to body grooming. In the wild, dragons groomed themselves by diving into the open sea, or rubbing their bodies against trees or giant boulders to maintain healthy scales. While carnivorous or occasionally scavengers, they also fed on the leaves of carpella that were rich in proteins and antioxidants that made their scales shiny. But assisted grooming was said to improve blood circulation. Moreover, shiny scales did not happen in an instant, but it could be achieved faster with human intervention, and any noticeable discrepancies in the skin of the dragon, like lesions or wounds, could be easily remedied.

Over the years, Clive had learned common dragon sense practices that had somehow made him tread more carefully during Helios’ grooming sessions. No one would ever want to do something that they would wish to regret later, and this was a sordid truth that any dragonkeeper lived by—the dos and don’ts in dragonkeeping. He often thought of the worst possible scenario before he approached Helios, and he had to move twice as cautious. Given that Helios was his mother’s killer, the beast was fully aware that his keeper had some secret loathing towards him, and Helios was not stupid to bestow his trust completely. In a way, he was also cautious in his keeper’s presence, fearing that he might stab him at the base of his neck, close to his heart and lungs—the part in any white dragon that was easy to pierce with a long blade.

White dragons were endemic to Ember Peaks. King Waldmunt had inherited these creatures dating back to the First Cycle, when King Ansgar, then searching for a new land, stepped into an uncharted territory replete with red, jagged-peaked mountains. While encamped, he dreamed of a white dragon who told him to establish his new kingdom at the very spot where he slept and demanded the white dragon prove that he was real. Upon waking up, he found his men pointing to the skies, as a thunder of white dragons flew overhead, and Ansgar did not hesitate to name the land Ember Peaks and claim it as a sanctuary for white dragons.

Since then, to possess white dragons was a sign that the monarch reigned with power and prosperity. Still, despite living under the aegis of successive kings, the growing population of white dragons was not immune to persecution from outside forces that were still lured by the prestige of mounting a dragon head on their halls. Given that the monarchy alone could not protect them from hunting and persecution, the succession of kings in Ember Peaks came up with different approaches to preserve the white dragons. It was then that Waldmunt’s great grandfather, Einar the Assuming, imposed the royal decree of white dragon raising on its citizens, both as a contribution to dragon preservation and as punishment. Raising white dragons was costly and only the monarchy and the elites could well afford to take care of one.

Many recipients of the dragons viewed it more as a curse rather than a blessing, and a number of unwilling keepers had reportedly committed suicide rather than live with the suffering and hazards that went along with dragonkeeping.

This was why the dragonkeeper often raised his hands whenever he approached Helios, to show him that he was hiding nothing. During grooming, he raised the tools to show him what he intended to do. He always kept his movement in check. Kinesic maturity was essential in dragonkeeping. Any unnecessary movement like jumps or sudden jerks could make a dragon suspicious or hostile, creating an unsafe work environment.

Now that he was assured he had Helios’s confidence, he started grooming on the left side of the dragon’s neck. Helios was familiar with the routine as he submitted, lowering his head, resting it on his folded wings, closing his eyes as he felt the brush strokes. He made a loud, murmuring sound like that of a cat when pleased. The dragonkeeper felt for the huge mass of flesh under the thick scales. The thick ventral scales were large and oblong, serving to reduce friction during terrestrial locomotion like crawling.

He had been grooming Helios for years, but had never grown accustomed to feeling secure and safe. Helios had his fits, and the dragonkeeper would never wish to risk his ire. He made fluid movements with his brush and Helios liked it. The dragonkeeper did not rush. One time when he expedited the process, Helios pulled him back using his mouth, his fangs sinking deep into his arm. Thankfully, it did not result in mutilation, but deep scars now ran along his left arm.

Slowly, he signaled to Helios that he would change sides. He took a considerable number of steps back, away from the reach of Helios’s mouth, his wings, limbs, and tail. The dragonkeeper was sixty-four. He did not know if he could still manage to survive a fatal injury from a dragon’s assault. Helios grunted, agitated for him to proceed. The dragonkeeper treaded faster, watching Helios’s movements. His tail twitched and wagged, as if ready to inflict scourge. “Easy, Helios,” he said in a soothing voice, and Helios snorted, emitting smoke from his nostrils. The dragonkeeper rounded to the other side, not wanting to crawl over the dragon’s back. He had done that before, and Helios suddenly flicked his wings, throwing him a few feet from the ground.

Helios lay his head low, and the dragonkeeper signaled to him to lower it more. Using his wings as chin support, Helios rested his head and closed his eyes. He was beginning to feel sleepy, so the dragonkeeper had to work double time. He tapped the dragon’s cheek lightly, telling him to stay awake. Helios’s ears needed cleaning. Much like his eyes, they were located on either side, but they were difficult to see as they were covered with scales. They could be seen with their lobes slightly sticking out of his head, located in the space behind the eyes and thick overlapping folds of long scales under his neck. The outer part of his ears needed cleaning. Like a chicken’s ear protected by feathers, the scales around his ears served as a covering that prevented dust from reaching its inner parts.

Along with his nostrils and ears, Helios’s eyes were placed on either side of his face, with a vision estimated to be fifteen times stronger than that of humans. The level and scope of his vision allowed him an optimal sight that magnified his view of prey. The dragonkeeper’s years of familiarity with Helios had never dissipated his marvel for the magnificence of the dragon’s demonic orbs. They were large for his body size and magnificently mobile in their sockets. Helios could pull his eyes back and down into his bony skull in the event of a threat and push them back out whenever he felt safe. There was an onyx-like sheen to his eyes, which were the size of cartwheels. He had a flat cornea, but the lenses were almost round. Much like smaller reptiles, their eyes had a lining that reflected the light coming in through the pupil, allowing them to see better in the dark. However, this posed a disadvantage at night, since it gave their eyes a fiery orange glow, giving away their location and a chance for their prey to run. This was why dragons hunted or foraged during the day.

The sun hung low. On days when the sun shone brightly, Helios would close his pupil to avoid the sun’s glare. He sometimes slept with one eye open as a defense mechanism, keeping himself on guard for any external threats like hunters or other dragons. He had two eyelids—the outer part that matched his skin closed much like human eyelids, but the second set fascinated the dragonkeeper—they looked like a white tissue that slid over his eyes from side to side, a nictitating membrane that helped protect Helios’s eyes whenever he submerged himself deep in water. They loved water, as they had evolved from amphibious ancestors which left the aquatic lifestyle, developed wings and limbs, and became aerial and terrestrial.

His horns were curved and ridged. They were hollow with a bony center that attached to the skull and grew continuously. They tended to curl rather than point straight out. Unless causing health problems, dragon horns needed trimming. It had been four years since Helios’s last trim.

Filing the claws came next. Over the years, Helios’s claws had grown to a long curve that measured a foot. No dragonkeeper in his right frame of mind had ever dared to trim a dragon’s talons, for this could mean instant death. White dragons would have none of it, and they would not hesitate to dice any human in a single swipe at the instant suspicion of any attempt to trim their claws. A dragon’s claws were vital to its survival—one of their essential tools along with their fire breath. Claw sharpening was the part of dragon grooming that came with a huge amount of angst and risk. Though dragons were famous for their tough exteriors, they tended to abuse their talons, perching on varied surfaces and fighting with other dragons, being active hunters and scavengers. Sharpening their talons was not necessary, but excessive use would wear them down in the long run.

He lifted his custom-made claw file, a tool dragonkeepers used to gently grind down and shape the edges of talons. This nail file was made from a solid board an inch thick, one foot in length and four inches in width. Wrapped around it was a coarse abrasive paper used by carpenters to mechanically finish rough surfaces on hardwood. The abrasive paper was made with impure crystalline rocks spewed by Mount Vile, making this grooming tool a rare and expensive commodity, but a must-have for dragon keepers.

Then he raised and waved his claw file in front of Helios, who gave him a passive, evil look, as if to say that he may proceed, but should the dragonkeeper make him bleed, the price would be dear. Helios never ever felt sorry for his keeper—old, impoverished, and nearly bankrupt from sustaining the upkeep of a useless giant. How many dragonkeepers had taken their own lives, the dragonkeeper had no idea. Some of them would rather opt for death than to live forever in a life of poverty, caring for an ungrateful monster. But Helios, despite his impetuous mien, had become a lifetime vocation, like a hermit who had taken a vow of solitude to care for the mountains he inhabited. Helios was bestowed against the dragonkeeper’s will, and in the course of his ordeal with the dragon over the years, seeing him grow had provided an unwanted fulfillment. One could say that the dragonkeeper made for a pathetic hermit, withered away by the time spent tending to a labor with no expected returns. His concealed hatred of Helios, and his father’s sudden propensity for greed, had won him that blasphemous penalty, in which his whole life became the collateral in exerting for an accomplishment that rewarded nothing, but that intrinsic idea that he was paying for his father’s sins.

He would never fully understand the nature of dragons. He had thought of killing Helios a number of times back when the dragon was still a youngling, but the threat of the proclamation nailed to their door made him lose his nerve every time. Helios had probably thought of killing him on a number of occasions as well. Why he did not was beyond his keeper’s comprehension. Perhaps Helios would rather kill him in increments, a slow demise; he would not hesitate to scourge the dragonkeeper upon meriting a disapproval.

Filing claws was the part of the grooming the dragonkeeper liked the least. He slid his hand on Helios’s left hind leg. He had to pull the leg since the dragon’s underbelly rested over it, and Helios allowed him. Helios lay on his side as he stretched his wings, fanning them. The dragonkeeper did not waste time. Squeezing the back of Helios’s hind leg along the tendons as he took a stool and sat, he rested the hind leg on his lap. Helios had five digits and the dragonkeeper gently protracted one of the claws, the one from the tiniest toe, and proceeded filing. Helios’s foot weighed against his lap. “Helios,” he said, “I do not know if you could understand me, but please do not, for the love of everything decent, inflict harm on your keeper, in the event that this grooming accidentally takes an untoward incident that is not to your liking. I shall exhaust all the means to be gentle, and trust me that I have no intention of hurting you at the least, so please I expect you to extend the same courtesy.”

Helios snorted, keeping his eyes closed. Then he twitched his leg as the dragonkeeper told him to hold still. His heaviness aggravated the dragonkeeper’s anxiousness to get the task over with, as he thought of safety. He looked at the inclination of the claw. It had curved long enough with the tip close to touching under the toe. It required clipping, but Helios would not like it. His claws were pure, tough keratin. As the dragonkeeper clamped his hand softly against the huge toe, he noticed that the claw was sharp enough to slice him in half. He squinted as he angled the claw to a horizontal level. Using the whole length of the file, he performed the work with slow, firm sweeps along the edge of the claw, exerting enough pressure to smoothen the edges, as he turned it over and gave the same number of strokes. He made his filing with free, easy movements back and forth. Helios twitched again, and he warned the dragon to hold still or he might accidentally file close to the base and make him bleed.

He exerted his task with utmost vigilance, assuming the role of a blacksmith sharpening a blade against a whetstone. He worked with four fingers on his left hand, after his burn welded his pinkie and ring finger together. Even his handling of the file must not leave any room for error. With his right hand, he grasped his tool firmly, close to the edge, with his other hand loosely holding the tool behind his right hand. He performed the same process with the rest of the claws and so far, Helios was not complaining. As the dragonkeeper performed his filing strokes with caution and accuracy, dust of keratin fell on his feet, as he shaped Helios’s talons to the most suitable curve that would allow him to achieve the most optimal results in using them for grabbing, perching, or fighting. At the same time, the dragonkeeper was on guard as he watched how Helios was behaving. Dragons could be fickle-minded and any sudden change in their mood would prove costly, at worst fatal for their keepers. There was nothing in his tools that could prove useful for defending himself against the lash of a spiky tail or the hellish scourge of a fire breath. “Relax now, Helios. Enjoy the pampering that I provide,” he told him.

The sun was setting high now and the dragonkeeper was glad that he managed to finish filing the claws without any untoward incident. It was now time for the other hind leg. He took his position from the other side as he sat on a stool and took the other leg. As he looked at the resting dragon, he observed that his horns and spurs also needed some filing. He was not sure if he could finish it within the day, but the claws, on account of their indispensable use, took priority. He filed in one direction, smoothing out the sides of the claws and angling the file on the edges with a single repeated downward motion. Then he made a side-to-center motion, to smoothen the rough and whitish abrasions on the claws. He kept reminding Helios to hold still, as he swept the file over the tip of the claws. The dragonkeeper held the hind leg more firmly. Helios showed signs of agitation. He was impassive as he wandered his eyes over the open sky. The dragonkeeper’s hands had become unsteady as old age caught up with him, and his eyes were already stricken with cataract. If not for his eyeglasses, his farsightedness would be an added liability.

A flock of herons flew overhead, veering towards the river at the foot of the closest mountain. As the dragonkeeper took a better look at the task at hand, filing at the base of the biggest claw, Helios grunted and angled his head close to his keeper, giving that devilish stare. His toe was swollen. Close inspection revealed that he had an infected wound. “Hold still, Helios. I’m trying to help!”

A splinter from the poisonous rosidia tree was embedded in his large toe. The bark of this tree had been used by knights as an arrowhead, and its toxin content had been proven fatal to humans. While not fatal to dragons, it could result in swelling and discomfort. The dragonkeeper gave credit to Helios for not exhibiting any signs of agony, but this concealed vulnerability of pain among dragons could be detrimental to their keepers, for they were not predisposed to guess if a dragon was unwell or not, unless they rendered close inspection—something they always did not have the courage to do.

He loosened his hold on the hind leg, easing the pressure from his grip. Under Helios’s threatening growl, the dragonkeeper said that he would pull out the splinter, otherwise Helios would be spending his days walking with a limp. He had no idea if Helios could understand him, but he took faith in the belief that dragons were smart creatures. Helios, for all the kindness and care he had given him, made a hostile stare before looking away, as he tensed his hind leg in preparation for the extraction. With his arm, the dragonkeeper gripped the upper part of the leg close to the hock, as he reminded the dragon that it might hurt a little. The splinter must have been stuck in his toe for days. He licked the tips of his fingers as he prepared to pull. With his ring and index finger assisting his thumb for a vise-like grip, he held the tip of the splinter and gently pulled. Helios grunted in pain. The dragonkeeper managed to pull the splinter out an inch, as pus oozed out at the edges of the wound. He pulled again, and it occurred to him that the splinter was longer than he expected. Helios grunted and his tail flicked, threatening to hit the dragonkeeper, who thought of pulling the splinter quickly, for the slower he extracted it, the more pronounced the pain. With a quick yank, he pulled the splinter. Howling in pain, Helios made a quick jerk and flicked his tail, hitting the dragonkeeper on the side, sweeping him off the ground. With luck on his side, he landed on a stack of bale. He did not move for a few minutes, laying on the toppled stacks. His side was stinging from the lash, and he might have broken a rib or two. He spat straws and coughed as he felt his side, pressing on the lower area that made him squirm. He searched for his eyeglasses, beating away the bales of hay. His search made him grow desperate at every minute of not finding them. Those convex lenses in whale bone frames were hard to come by, and at the rate that Helios was reducing him to paupery, he doubted he would be able to afford a replacement. He postponed searching as he coughed and cleared out the blocks of hay over him, trying to collect his bearings as he rose with effort. As he stood with his hand pressing against his rib to ease the discomfort, Helios looked at him with condescending indifference. The dragonkeeper picked up a rock and threw it at Helios, but the dragon was quick in his reflexes and managed to dodge.

“Damn you, Helios! Damn you!” the dragonkeeper screamed at the top of his lungs, despite his stinging injury. “All these years. All these years I tended to you! I had sacrificed and had given so much for your benefit. And this is the thanks I get!” He searched and picked up another rock. “Is this the thanks I get!” He hurled the rock, but this time Helios did not budge, and it hit him on the forehead. He made a grunt.

“Ha! You’re trying to alleviate your guilt by letting me hit you? Is that how you repay your keeper? Why don’t you just kill me instead! I’ll consider it a blessing, and I shall be eternally grateful. Go ahead, kill me! Kill me the way you killed my mother, you ungrateful bastard!” He stood with his arms spread as Helios took closer steps. With his eyes closed, he could feel Helios’s heavy breathing. He expected the dragon to eat him, to crunch him between those blades of teeth. He had done minor offenses against Helios in the past, and they were not even intentional. Surely, hitting the beast with a rock merited an execution. Helios’s breath was very heated, and he was probably planning to roast his keeper first. A well-roasted human would make for a great feast for a dragon.

But with his scaly muzzle, Helios merely nudged him, as if telling his keeper to leave. Helios had lost the mood for grooming. He nudged his keeper again, beckoning him to leave the enclosure.

But the dragonkeeper just stood his ground, still waiting for a scourge. He challenged Helios to a staring contest. He wanted Helios to know that he was no longer scared, that he wanted the dragon to give him the death that he rightfully deserved. Helios stared back, his keeper’s miniature form appearing inconsequential to his sight.

“My service to you ends here, Helios. I’m done. I’ve got nothing more to give. It’s time that you pay me back. Make it swift. Try to finish what you failed to accomplish before. Burn me alive. You have my permission to immolate me!”

But Helios would have none of it as he broke his stare, curling back to resume his nap. The dragonkeeper cursed him again and Helios retaliated with a piercing scream, and lashed his spiky tail thrice on the ground.

He gave up on provoking Helios to bestow an execution. With great effort he picked up his tools and arranged them on the cart, towing it as he closed the enclosure, leaving Helios to his nap. At the very end of this fruitless labor, the dragonkeeper thought that perhaps he could be rewarded in the next life; if the netherworld did exist and only if the gods themselves did not put weight in the merits of the sacredness of dragons. But who was he kidding? Now, more than ever, while he was still breathing, he needed a reward or even a consolation; and such consolation did he receive, the intangible honor of raising a “sacred” creature—this was one consolation for the idiots!

Inside his cottage, he removed his tunic and lay flat on his back on the hard wooden bed. He had lost his nipples from the burn contractures that left vitiligo patches on his chest wall and depigmented patches on the whole of his back. He held a bottle of ale and drank his pain away. When the alcohol began to kick in, he pulled up his blanket and went to sleep. He had not eaten lunch that afternoon.

He was awoken by a loud rap on his door. His side was still smarting when he rose in haste and got dressed. He opened the door to find Helmut Balder, his closest neighbor whose small farm stood five kilometers away. Balder carried a burlap sack on his shoulder.

“Clive Maddocks!” he said. He was stocky and middle-aged and often wore a heavy wool robe his wife spun from their herd of sheep. The dragonkeeper could well guess the intent of his neighbor’s visit judging from the urgency in his voice.

“What is it this time, neighbor Helmut?”

Balder opened and poured out the sack’s content before the dragonkeeper’s feet—a mutilated head of a horse.

“That’s my best draft horse,” Balder said. “I saw your dragon circling my barn the other day. I found his head near the woods. I don’t need proof that it’s your dragon. How many times have I been here before with a mutilated head of a sheep, a cow, or a goat? Your dragon doesn’t like eating heads.”

The dragonkeeper pulled a stool as his side continued to sting. As he stared at what remained of Balder’s horse, he said, “A cattle for your loss then?”

“Will you throw in a pair of chickens, for the inconvenience?”

He assented.

“You look sick.”

“I groomed Helios.”

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“I often hurt myself when dealing with that brute.”

“I’ll come back with my wife. Let me see what we can do. Take a rest for a while.”

“I appreciate it. One more thing, would you mind terribly searching for my eyeglasses among the stacks of bale in my dragon’s pen?”

“I don’t want to get any closer to that dragon.”

“Never mind then. But thank you.”

Balder helped him to the bed and then his neighbor left. The dragonkeeper fell asleep thinking about driving an iron spike into the base of Helios’s neck.