When I woke up again, I had not moved from where I fell asleep. The healer’s house was far from empty. My Cassia had been moved from the table to a small cot. The cot was beneath a window but close enough to the fire to remain comfortable. She was sleeping peacefully still. The smell of herbs was still strong in the house.

  Out of the door to a bedroom came the sounds of quiet conversation. Shortly after, the healer opened the door and stepped out. I caught a quick glimpse of what lay beyond. A small human child, covered in bandages, laying in bed. Then the door was shut and I was being stared down by the healer.

  “So you’re still here, eh beasty? I’d wondered if ye’d scarper off come morning,” she said before looking over at my Cassia. “More the fool me, I suppose. Dragons don’t leave without their treasures.” I gave a huff, heat coming out of my nostrils. Good. She understood then.

  The healer walked past me and used a metal stick to take a kettle off of a hook over the fire. She carried it carefully over to the table, which had been cleaned from last night’s treatment. The kettle was set down on a thick woven pad which kept the tabletop from being burned. She switched from the rod to a padded mitten and poured some of the steaming hot liquid into an earthen cup.

  “Do you drink tea, beasty?” She glanced back at me. The concept of plants intentionally boiled in water, that by mystic properties was not a ‘soup’, was as strange to me as anything humans did. After tilting my head, I gave a shrug. The healer rolled her eyes before pouring some of the tea into a bowl as well.

  “Well come on then and have a drink. We need to talk.” I didn’t like the sound of that, but I got up and headed over to the table anyway. It seemed I had gone through another growth spurt. When I sat on my haunches next to the table, its top was level with my shoulders. I sniffed at the bowl of steaming tea before flicking my tongue into it.

  It tasted like a boiling plant. I didn’t care much for the plant part, but the hot liquid was a pleasant way to help wake up. After drinking a bit, I looked back at the healer. She was nursing her mug between her fingers, studying me.

  “I’d like ye to listen to everything I have to say, before ye do anything. Can ye promise me that beasty?” The more she kept talking, the more worried it made me. She had, however, earned a large amount of leeway by helping my Cassia.

  “Your gal there is hurt real bad. You know that already, but the wounds aren’t just cuts and such. Do ye understand?” I tentatively nodded my head. “If I gathered what ye said right, the things that hurt her were proper evil stuff. Killing ‘em helped, sure. Good job on that… But they took something from her before ye did. Something that can’t be got back so easy.” My tail flicked against the ground. Whatever it was, I’d hunt it down and claim it for my Cassia.

  “Now hold on, that’s what I mean. Yer already acting fit to burn half the realm down. Take a breath and drink some tea.” I narrowed my eyes at the healer, but mustered my patience and did as she asked. The tea… helped me calm down for some reason. A little.

  “... Do you know anything about ‘magic’, beasty?”

  That made me shake my head. I’d heard the word before, but it was a thing from my Cassia’s storybook.

  “Legends say a lot of things about dragons. I’ve never had the chance to sit down and ask a dragon if they were true,” the healer continued.

  ‘Well we’re both out of luck then. Neither have I,’ I thought irritably.

  “One of those legends claims that dragons are beings of pure magic. It comes to their beck and call without any kind of fancy spells, reagents, or blessing of the gods. Is that right?” she asked me softly.

  It took me a while to answer that. I hadn’t lied when I said that I knew nothing of magic. As best as I could gather, it was some kind of power that let you do things thought to be impossible. That sounded similar to what I had experienced with the vitality of living beings. I was the only dragon I’d ever met, but I had a vast amount of vitality compared to any other creature. I was able to do things that didn’t seem possible for other living creatures.

  My Cassia also sometimes did that with her ‘gut feeling’, but in a lesser way. Was that magic? She didn’t use any kind of spell or blessing. Was the exact placement of sticks, twine, and rocks considered a reagent?

  Tentatively I nodded my head.

  “Good, that might make this next part easier,” the healer said. Something in her expression seemed troubled. She was fussing with the tea mug in her hands. “I need your blood, dragon.”

  Right away I felt the fire rush up through my veins. My lips drew back and exposed my sharp teeth. The floor got some new tracks carved into it by my claws. I restrained myself, however. Rather than leap over the table, I stared down the healer.

  Asking for my blood brought for a rage that was difficult to control. My vitality, what made me a dragon, was contained in my blood. Every drop of vitality I had gained since I hatched resided there. Giving someone else my vitality would weaken me in a way that I would not easily recover from. If what she said was true and dragons were beings of pure magic, giving up my magic would make me nothing more than an overgrown lizard.

  The healer tightened her grip on her mug but remained seated when she saw my anger.

  “Not all of it. Not even much of it. I’ve… never even seen a dragon before, let alone had the chance to ask for its blood. I know I have made you furious. For that I am sorry… I believe your lass needs it to recover.”

  I narrowed my slitted eyes. She tensed up, but continued onwards.

  “Your lass has had some of her life essence sucked out of her. That is part of why she has not woken up yet. Humans gain some essence as we grow up. We often lose it little by little, as we grow old. If she remains as she is, she may eventually wake up… but I am afraid she may well wither and grow old long before her time.”

  I remembered the rabbit that I had left caged in the Dark Woods. The memory of it withering away into a bag of bones and fur still bothered me. Would that happen to my Cassia, if I did nothing? Still, what this healer asked for was not so easy to give. If my Cassia had asked for it, I likely would have given it gladly.

  This healer was not so easy to trust. There was something in her scent that suggested she was hiding something.

  “Explain, more,” I said with some gnashing of teeth and fangs. The healer relaxed a little.

  “I am no great alchemist or wizard, but almost every legend about dragons mentions that their blood can be used to heal. This could be terrible wounds, old age… or even death. I don’t believe anything so fanciful, such as you being able to bring back the dead.”

  “But… you did say you defeated creatures that were undead. Everyone I’ve ever met who knew anything about such creatures agreed that they are notoriously difficult to kill and even harder to ensure they stay dead.”

  I didn’t care much to remember the Rotting Bear and Vile tree, but I was sure my Cassia had fought the bear and lost. As a skilled hunter, she would not have been defeated easily. I could remember the arrows sticking out of the bear's hide, reflected in moonlight. The healer continued speaking.

  “Certain rare herbs can, with proper preparation, make an elixir that helps delay your lass’s condition. It will not cure it.” She sounded very sure of herself on that point, but she was still hiding something.

  “Seen, before?” I asked, watching her closely. It’s subtle, but there is a twitch in her eyes towards the bedroom door. I turned my head to look at it. The healer stood up from the table and moved between me and the door. She balled up her fists, holding them against her stomach. She wasn’t scared, but she was far more tense than I had seen her before. I stood up on all fours and moved towards her, stopping outside of arms reach. My eyes looked into hers.

  “Show. Please.”

  Human expressions I didn’t know warred on her face. After a long and tense silence, she closed her eyes. When she spoke, it was a whisper.

  “They do not know you are here. Their condition is… delicate. If you frighten them, they may die. You will peek through the door when I say, just long enough to understand. Swear it to me.” Looking into her eyes again, I could see that she was actually afraid. Not of me, but afraid for the one behind the door.

  “I swear.” The words had a weight to them that was beyond sound. I would honor this healer's request, just like I would my Cassia. She seemed surprised by the way I said it. It took her a few moments to collect herself.

  “Come on then beasty. Be quiet as a church mouse,” she said softly and turned away from me. Her footsteps carried her over to the door. I had learned much about stalking prey quietly from my Cassia. My claws did not make a sound as I followed behind her. The healer jumped a bit when she found me silently looming behind her. “Hedge-take-me. Never do that if I don’t tell ye to, aye?”

  I tilted my head, since she’d just had me swear on this. With a huff, I nodded my head.

  “Okay then. Remember, just a peek.”

  The healer carefully opened the door and stepped inside. After a moment, I carefully moved my head to let my eye slide past the doorframe. The room was a small one, but clean. Morning light shone down through the crystal window. For now, the shutters were pushed back to let the sun in. In the room was a cabinet which was closed, a bed, and a small table next to it. The walls were covered in scraps of parchment. Drawings made with a charcoal stick were on many of the scraps. They were crude, done with a clumsy hand.

  Laying half upright in the bed was a small human child, as I’d glimpsed earlier. I could not tell whether it was male or female. Such distinctions seemed to no longer matter. The room, while clean, smelled of death. I knew that scent well. It was how an elderly animal smelled before it laid down to die. The bandages covering the child’s body were soaked in a pungent selection of herbs. Maybe it was meant to ward off the deathly odor.

  That the child still lived at all was miraculous. If I had not seen how they still had shining bright eyes above their sunken cheeks and below threadbare hair, I would have thought the child a corpse. It seemed the child could not speak, but they could still smile at the healer as she spoke softly to them. Those shining eyes turned to look at the open door.

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  Before they could spot me, I ducked back. Silently, I padded away from the door all the way to Cassia's side. I stared down at her, still asleep, hunting across her face with my eyes for any sign of that child’s wretched condition. I could not yet detect that distinct odor of death from her. Yet I couldn’t deny that her scent, which I adored, was hollow in an alarming fashion.

  I heard the door to the bedroom shut behind me. The healer walked over to stand beside me, looking down at my Cassia. She didn’t rush me. After agonizing over it for several minutes, I breathed in through my snout and out across my teeth.

  “Show me, what to do.”

  Making a potion looked an awful lot like smashing random herbs together and hoping for the best. The healer had started off trying to explain what she was doing. As she got deeper into the process, her vocabulary became increasingly esoteric and difficult to pronounce. By the time she launched into an explanation of the alchemically proper name of a purplish-brown fungus, I had completely lost any interest in learning potion making.

  I would do anything for my Cassia. Listening to a lecture on the relative properties of two plants that were seemingly indistinguishable from each other tested the definition of ‘anything’ to its limits. At some point the healer seemed to realize that while I had put up a mighty effort, most of the words she spoke sailed through my head without putting into port.

  “I suppose ye don’t need to know most of this. Your part comes at the end, or near enough. Just as well. Those big claws of yours ain’t very handy for mixing a tonic,” she said contemplatively.

  My nostrils had long gone numb from the scent of the myriad herbs that the healer was mixing together. I would happily breathe in the acrid smoke of burning wood any day. Some of the things this healer mixed together with her mortar and pestle made my snout burn so bad I wanted to rip it off.

  “Ye know-,” she continued. “For a beasty, you do an awful lot of things that aren’t to your liking. What’s so special about yon lass that you’d go to all this trouble?”

  The question made me squint at the healer. Her tone suggested she was genuinely curious, rather than saying I was foolish for acting in this way. That didn’t change that it was a stupid question. For such an intelligent human, this healer had some very silly notions at times.

  “Mine,” I said firmly. It was obvious. My Cassia was mine. Therefore, I’d go through all these bothersome activities.

  “... What do ye mean? Yours? Do you think you own her? Like a pet or a toy?”

  I was pretty sure that ‘pet’ referred to the animals humans kept as companions. ‘Toy’ was unfamiliar to me. If I remembered correctly, it was one of the words my Cassia had shouted at me when I had chewed on a chair leg. My Cassia was neither of these and I was insulted that the healer would suggest such a thing. When I growled at her, she planted her hands on her hips. She continued to stare me down, expecting an answer.

  “No,” I hissed back at her. “Is Cassia. My Cassia.”

  “So that’s her name then? Good. I couldn’t call her ‘lass’ forever. What about you? What’s your name?” The sudden change in topic was like a whiplash to my thoughts.

  ‘Wait, what about my name?’ I thought as I stared back at the healer uncomprehendingly.

  “You… do have a name right? What does Cassia call you?” the healer asked, apparently just as confused as I was.

  “Dragon,” I said slowly. By her expression, that was apparently insufficient. “Sometimes… ‘bad dragon’?”

  This response was apparently amusing. Hysterically amusing, in fact. I had heard my Cassia laugh. It was one of my favorite sounds she made. The healer’s laugh was raw and husky where my Cassia’s was soft and bright. I grew concerned when she kept laughing so hard that she sank to her knees, holding one hand over her belly and the other gripping hard at her potion-making table.

  What had I said which was so debilitating? The healer kept trying to say something, but whenever she looked at me she burst out laughing again. Tears ran down her face. I didn’t understand how the name I’d given would make her sad; except humans laughing was also usually a good thing. The healer was probably a strange woman, even among humans.

  After a good long while, the healer managed to pull herself back together.

  “Oh, oh gods. I can’t… I can’t. I just bloody well can’t. That’s… that’s adorable. Okay. Okay Edith. You can handle this. Breathe in. Breathe out.” The healer did as she’d commanded herself, taking several long breaths. She squeezed her eyes shut for a minute, then looked back at me. I saw her mouth twitch and her chest rise, but she fought it back down.

  “So it's… been just the two of you, aye?” she asked with a hoarse tone. “Out in the woods by yourselves?”

  I nodded my head slowly, baffled by this human’s leaps of thought.

  “Okay… okay that makes sense. So she’s Cassia and you are… you’re the only dragon she’s ever met, aye?” I nodded again. “There are other dragons though, somewhere.” While I wasn’t certain of exactly where they were, I was sure my siblings did exist out in the world someplace. “So if one of them ever showed up, and Cassia yelled ‘Dragon’, how would ye know whether she meant you or the other one?”

  That was a good question. I was certain if my Cassia called for me, I’d be able to answer. It could get confusing for everyone else though. Life was much simpler when it was just the two of us in our Den. We couldn’t go back to it. Maybe, eventually, the forest would recover enough that we could at least visit it, if Cassia wanted to. I suspected she might never want to see it again.

  I looked at the healer and shrugged. I’d never needed a name before. I didn’t know where to begin choosing one now.

  “Hmm, well I suppose it’s not too big of a problem for now. If other dragons show up, we’ll probably have other things to worry about. Maybe talk it over with Cassia when she wakes up.” I didn’t like how casually she used my Cassia’s name. It was too precious, even if she was helping us.

  “You can call me Edith, by the way,” she said as she pulled herself back to her feet. “It’s right and proper that people should introduce themselves to each other when they meet. We’ve skipped a few steps, in the heat of the moment.”

  That sounded like one of my Cassia’s lectures about how to treat a ‘young lady’. This healer, Edith, was not a young lady. My instincts suggested she was perhaps middle aged for a human female. The years of life sat on her heavily, beyond mere scars. It showed in the way she looked at people and the things she didn’t say, though she spoke constantly.

  “Edith,” I said slowly. At least it wasn’t hard to pronounce. Not like my Cassia’s full name.

  “Yes, yes, good boy. You got it on the first try,” she said with a shake of her head. On the floor, my tail flopped without me telling it to. The traitorous appendage. She glanced down at it, then back at me. I said nothing, daring her to challenge me about it. She didn’t, for now.

  After some further time spent grinding herbs together, Edith placed the mixture into a small kettle. It was a strange device. Unlike a normal kettle, meant to pour liquid into a mug or bowl, this one only let out steam. Edith did not try to explain it to me, but she let me watch.

  As the plant liquid heated up, it gave off steam. When it was hot enough, she removed it from the fireplace and set it over on the potion table. She sat it on a tiny table made of iron, which itself was seated on a wide smooth stone. She then lit several candles, which she slid underneath the little kettle on the iron stand to keep it hot.

  The little kettle had a place to pour in the liquid, which she had sealed. Another part of it had a small latch, which could be moved to open tiny holes. This seemed like a bafflingly complicated device to make hot plant water to me, but it only got stranger from there. Edith moved something made out of a material like clear gemstone over the small kettle. When she pulled the latch, the kettle let out a hiss like I did when I was irritated.

  Out of the kettle rose small jets of hot steam. These were caught by the crystal device, which was like an upside down bowl with a long open stick on the side. I watched as the steam filled the crystal, making it cloudy and opaque. Slowly, the steam collected into droplets. The inside of the bowl had a lip along the open face. When the droplets rolled down, they were caught by the lip and funneled down the tube.

  Underneath the end of the tube, Edith had placed another small device made of this crystal material. It was held upright by a small wooden holder. Bit by bit, the drops rolled down the tube, filling the container. Eventually the steam ran out. Edith doused the candles. With her hands, she delicately tapped on the bowl with the tube until every last drop had fallen into the crystal container.

  With incredible care, she used melted wax from the candles to seal the liquid inside. The mixture had a color that was like a green gold. In the mid-day sunlight through the window, it seemed to shine softly. The container was just over half full. It was similar in size and length to Edith’s first finger.

  “So that’s it then. The last of it. Hopefully it’s enough,” she said quietly. She could already feel my gaze on her, so she didn’t wait to explain. “I said these herbs were rare, dragon. Once upon a time, I could venture into the Cursed Forest and find more. You and I both know that’s not possible any more. I’d been saving what I could for the child. This is the last I had. You can sniff around for more, if you think I’m speaking false.”

  I didn’t have a reason to disbelieve Edith’s claim. While I didn’t care to know about potion making, I had recognized some of what went into this mixture from my time hunting in the forest. She was right. The Dark Wood had claimed almost all of it.

  “That brings us to what I need from you, dragon. Three drops of blood,” she said carefully. That made me suspicious. There was one child and one Cassia. I did not know much math, but I could count on my claws and three was more than two. I did little to disguise my suspicion.

  “I’m confident in my potion making skills, dragon. I’d bet my life on them. But I’ve never made a potion with dragon blood in it before. I pray that I’m right, that this will heal them… but I don’t bet with other people’s lives. Just my own. I’m going to test this by drinking it.”

  That sounded stupendously stupid to me. Madness, even. I whacked my tail into the floor, spread my wings and growled to let her know just how dumb that idea was.

  “Yes. I know. If I had an apprentice and they suggested such a thing to me, I’d box their ears and make them clean the outhouse for saying such nonsense. But…” She held the small vial tightly to her chest in her hands. “We’re out of time, dragon. We won’t be able to find any more herbs and we don’t have another way to safely test this, before that child’s time is up.”

  “I know that I told you this was for your Cassia. It still is. You’ve every right to be angry with me, for using it to help someone else without asking,” she said softly. “But please… they both need this.”

  I flapped my wings in frustration. Damn these humans and their emotions. I would never blame her for what happened, but if my Cassia had stayed by my side, she might not have gotten hurt. Now Edith was doing something stupid on someone else’s behalf. My Cassia would be furious if this woman got herself killed trying to heal her.

  Did we really have no other choice?

  The boiling frustration inside of me hissed out through my teeth. It was hot steam, as if straight from a kettle. My tail hit the floor harshly several times. More grooves were added to the floor as I raked it with my claws. Flapping wings buffeted Edith as I let my anger at this situation erupt out of me.

  It took a lot of hissing and growling before I calmed down. My wings folded onto my back and I shook my whole body to release some of the tension. Edith watched me silently, waiting to see what I would do. At no point had I hurt her, but this display had certainly strained the accord between us.

  “If… Edith die,” I managed to hiss out. “If die, then what?” I felt it was a perfectly reasonable question. If Edith got herself killed, what was I supposed to do without her? It didn’t seem likely that another healer like her lived around here.

  “That’s… you’re right to ask that. If I perish… then the child likely shall too. They are too frail to be moved. Neither you nor Cassia would be to blame for that. This whole village has already given up on the child. They have already mourned their death. Mine would simply be a foot note on that sad story.”

  “As for you and Cassia… There is a man I know that lives in the nearest city. His name is Mortimer. He is eccentric, but he knows more about what afflicts Cassia than most. You will be able to find him if you look for an old man with a long white beard and no other hair on his head. He wears spectacles, which are like tiny windows over his eyes. He lives in an old house by itself on a hill in the city. If anyone else can help you, it is him.”

  Edith swallowed with her dry throat and seemed to muster her courage.

  “So, Dragon. Will you allow me to do this?”