I wondered who everyone was. No one wore a uniform, carried a wallet, no ID. All of these men and they could only proclaim their selves to each other, scooped up into groups. I thought: it’s a miracle nobody just lies. Or maybe everyone did and I was finally getting the idea. You can just say what you want, you can just say who you are, and be it.
A child soldier ate bread and stew across a campfire from Simon and me. The startling fact was that there were six-year-olds running around places like this—because who else will carverocks for the catapult, light signal fires, scavenge the bodies of the dead? The boy watched me through the flames, fixated while he chewed. I could hear nervous words whirling in his mind. Simon noticed it too and smiled. Finally the boy lifted his bowl to slurp the last of his meal, then asked, loud and in a rush, “What does the dragon look like is it as tall as a tree or even bigger?”
I chuckled. “It’s very big,” I said. “Bigger than a house.”
“Bigger than a castle?”
“Probably. I’d say it’s bigger than the Tower of London.”
“I’ve never been to London what’s London like?”
“It’s nice,” I said. “It’s very noisy. There’s lots of people.”
“I’m from York.”
“I like York.” All I could do was answer his fruitive little questions while a dirge of sadness moaned in my heart. The boy was barefoot and dirty. His cheeks were chapped and glazed. He carefully poked the last of the beans in his stew with a rusty dagger.
Simon had a better manner about him with children and took charge. He said, “The dragon’s big but he’s not very scary. He’s got big, flappy wings and skinny legs like a chicken.”
“I’m not scared,” said the boy.
“That’s good,” said Simon. “Make sure you stay up here on the ridge when he appears, don’t run down with the soldiers. The ground will be too hot, you’ll burn your feet. Stay up here and keep any fire from spreading to the forest. You can make sure our house stays safe.”
“Is that your brother?” The boy pointed at me.
“No.” Simon smiled. “He’s my boyfriend.”
My spirit sailed as high as the banners of war strung aboveour camp, and my spine, caught unaware, shuddered and winced and tried to pull it back down. I smiled but I’m sure I grimaced. I didn’t want to think what I was thinking. I didn’t want to decide what I feared I had already decided. I didn’t know how to be honest with myself and say definitively what I wanted so I thought of only the things that I knew I didn’t want, namely, child soldiers, babies abandoned in forests, heads on pikes, brutality, and ruthlessness—never mind the fact that these are timeless injustices available at any time period—but it was easier for my mind to play dress-up in this blatant outrage, a child soldier just a convenient excuse. I forced myself to think plainly like this and avoid the real question—no, actually skip over the real question entirely and jump straight to a masking follow-up question instead: Maybe Simon would be able to come with me?
A dog somewhere barked. A bone was thrown for it. Somewhere else, a soldier got out a lute and started strumming. Then silently and suddenly, a cruise missile shot across the sky.
It happened in an instant. A fiery line, followed by an explosion. A flash of white. Silently.
Sound was delayed. For two seconds there was the vision before us of the earth erupting, accompanied only by the sweet crackles of campfire and music, the final slurps of soup. Shadows lengthened. Faces twitched. Then when the sound hit: a roar unlike any other.
It was like a chunk of the sun itself. Don’t stare into an open flame. I closed my eyes and I could still see it through my eyelids. Wings unfolding. A neck extending. Talons, horns, and a thorny tail. A mouth opening with a smile from hell. It was like the dragon had simply come home, kicked off his shoes, taken off his coat, slammed the door, and let out a scream.
The soldiers tripped over themselves and onto their horses, gathered their arms. Everyone scrambled for swords and arrows like you would rummage through a cutlery drawer for a sudden uninvited dinner guest. The most inspiring speech Commander Smear could muster now was “Divine,” his face alight with pure white. “This is divine.”
I didn’t grab Simon. Surprising myself, I grabbed the little boy who had been eating with us. But of course he broke free from my grasp, held up his rusty dagger, and charged along with everyone else. I watched him disappear into a tornado of fire, his skeleton visible through his skin.
I think a lot of the humanity I saw in the world of 1300 and 1301 was my own projection. How I chose to see things was largely dictated by my needs of survival. I had to believe there was a reason for my initial capture and beating in Greenwich—a brutal misunderstanding, sure, but at least a form of understanding had occurred in independent minds. I told myself over and over again that surely my perceptions were biased and I just didn’t understand where everyone else was coming from. I’ve done that my whole life actually—expected more from people, convinced of a greater substance operating within them that I just didn’t understand and someday, with the right amount of empathy, would. But I realized then, as I watched hundreds of men throw themselves headfirst into a rushing flood of lava, that there wasn’t a single thought in their minds. Like time itself, their standard mode of operation was to press forward unceasingly.
The horses swelled and burst like powder kegs. The men first lost their legs and arms like twiggy little spiders, then their stubborn torsos, their screaming teethy heads, their battle cries transforming into frothy childlike hoots. With Prince Edward,we had caught the dragon at the tail end of its cycle, but now the dragon was white-hot, electric even, his eyes white like meteors, his fire and lava a pole, a sword, a constant funnel of destruction, turning and swirling all over the place like the hands on a mixed-up clock. The future and the past collided. I jumped out of the way of a flaming Toyota, a rapid splash of melted computers, a radiator, an oil barrel, a garden trellis.
Soldiers fired arrows, but these evaporated in midair. The catapult fired a boulder but it crumbled apart like tossed sand. Still it was the first thing that had managed to touch the dragon and he paused. He licked clean his teeth like a dog and looked along the ridge, taking in all the archers and their fruitless arrows and a second wave of infantry getting ready. When the dragon noticed me among the lineup, I swear he winked.
“We’ve got to get back,” I said to Simon. I pulled him by the arm, hauling us away. “Get down!” We jumped off the ridge of the crater into the forest just as a mouthful of new molten lava flew through the air. Trees caught fire, the crater began its expansion. We lay flat on the ground as the earth shifted and sunk like a porous blanket. What had been stable was now slope. Uprooted trees, rocks, animals, soldiers all tumbled down around us, falling into the dragon and his swirling vortex drilling deeper into the earth. Some soldiers took advantage of the slope and came sprinting down it, their gallantry undeterred. A new infantry charged out from the forest, another hundred men ready and willing. They sprinted and tumbled, others simply leapt and soared. Another hundred men, then another hundred men. An endless supply of brawn. The men in the battalion, the men in the nightclub, the men at the office—all they could do was press forward. All this death, all this destruction—the pointlessness ofit was just as the dragon had explained. It felt the same as it had then. It felt the same as it did now. This was the past.
For the first time in a year I thought about Pringles. I thought about a Big Mac, a bacon and egg McMuffin. I thought about Snickers chocolate bars, Maoam Pinballs, Jaffa Cakes, a double-shot espresso and a flat white and a croissant and pizza and Greggs and Pret and Diet Coke, sertraline, Adderall, paracetamol, finasteride, and cigarettes, and clotted cream on scones, muffins, pickles, pornography, and couches—I hadn’t sat on a couch in a year, I hadn’t been comfortable in a year and I wanted to check my email, I wanted to charge my phone, I wanted to watch TV, take multivitamins, take photos, take drugs, think about going to the gym, text people I hated, forget birthdays, drive a car when I knew I could walk instead. I wanted to smell petrol and polluted rivers. I wanted palm oil and corn syrup. I wanted an army of British bankers and Californian private equity vampires, not these unshaved, unwashed barbarians.
“I have to go,” I said.
Simon didn’t hear me. He was coaxing a lamb into his arms to save it from tumbling into the dragon’s void. It was bleating and dangling from a ledge. Simon reached and flexed. Debris continued to fall. I pulled myself up, then reached and grabbed Simon and the lamb and together we scooted carefully away, finally reaching a point where the ground evened out. The dragon already sounded farther away from us, his destruction echoing up from the deepening well as the avalanche of men continued. Different factions huddled and shouted orders, made plans and arrangements, which proved futile once they started charging and the ground slipped out from under them. Instinctively—I don’t know what instinct—I stood up and went to follow them, taking a step toward the dragon. Simon grabbed my arm and yanked me back to the ground with him. He clutched me to his chest along with the lamb and I couldn’t speak, only strain. Something was fanning its wings inside me. “Just stay, George,” Simon said. I think he even said “Shhh.” There were dents and divots where our clunky armor pressed against each other. The lamb’s tight little curls reflected in them.
“I have to go,” I said once more.
“Go where?” said Simon. “We have to get back to the smallholding. We’ve got to get out of here. There’s nothing we can do.”
