D.S.Hale

                                       Sam Sully

 

 

 

 

   CHAPTER ONE

 

 

 

 

            He was the most wily, the most venomously vile creature that ever breathed.  He was a Drake-darshan of the vilest kind.  Born of two Drake-darshans in the Sulpheric Mountains far north of the Icelandic ice floes, further north than most creatures dared travel.  There, in the frozen heart of the tundra, this vile Drake-darshan was born green.  Most Drake-darshans are white, but the few that are born green are taken south and abandoned in hopes they will die in the sun’s rays (for the sun doesn’t shine up north of the Icelandic ice floes).

The sad parents with their sad luck abandoned their hapless child in a white basket shaped from a block of ice and lined with polar fur.  They laid the basket on an icy hillock; the same place they had dropped their first green son ten years previous.  It wasn’t known why the occasional child was born green.  The child just was.  And for this particularly sad family, it just happened twice.

The mother woefully bent and kissed the babe on the forehead and the father tore her away and forced her back across the tundra to leave the child.  The mother cried, but didn’t go back, nor did she try to save the babe.  She knew the law.  Knew that the child wouldn’t be allowed to live.  No green Drake-darshan must be allowed to live.

Drake-darshans were to be white and white only.  A thousand years ago a rare green Drake-darshan had become ruler of the tundra.  He had been the cruelest Drake-darshan ever born.  He ruled nearly fifty years with a heavy hand.  Poverty, fear, oppression, and starvation came to every Icelandic household.

The green Drake-darshan ruler died after many, many years of brutal control.  But the population didn’t forget the green monster, and on the rare occasion when a green Drake-darshan was born, the babe was swiftly abandoned in the frozen tundra for fear the green monster would return. The throne had since remained empty for a thousand years. 

The baby Drake-darshan couldn’t help that he was born green.  He didn’t know of his ancestors.  All he knew was the tundra was cold.  Lonely.  Frightening.  And bright.  The sun hurt his eyes and he cried, and the cry traveled far on the tundra’s winds.

The cry carried across the plains and to the far hills, to a particular, distant cottage.  A widow lived in the cottage.  She was far in her years and lonely.  She didn’t have children, nor family, and her husband died last winter.

The widow listened at the window.  She recognized the wail and knew what it meant.  Very few times had she heard the cry, but she heard it enough to recognize it. 

 This was the first time she heard the cry since her husband died.  She never dared traverse the plains when he lived. 

She listened to the plaintive cry and looked about her one room cottage:  at the unkempt bed, the layers of dirt ground into the wood floor, the broken stool, and the general abuse of her living quarters.  Wood needed chopped.  Meat needed hunted.

Maagasar threw on her wraps and tied on her fur-lined boots.  She took milk from the doorstep and headed toward the sound.  She traveled half the day, guided by the far off cry.  The sun high overhead glinted across the white ice and snow.  Finally, she saw the polar fur from a distance, a small blurb on the flat terrain.  She focused on the abnormality on the horizon, and quickened her pace.

She found the baby none too soon.  The sun had burned its skin, but it actually done more good than harm.  It kept the baby from freezing.  She wrapped him close to her breast and offered it the jug of milk she had brought along.  He drank hungrily, his eyes watching her. 

The baby was a nasty, hardly-bearable shade of green, his body covered with coarse, pig-like hair; except his apple-green cheeks and the back of his green hands.  His eyebrows arched like mathematical less-than signs turned upside down.  His eyes were the color of wet charcoal. 

The baby’s ugliness repelled Maagasar, and she hesitated with the milk.  Did she dare?  She remembered the green monster, the tyrant of old, and the hunger he brought, and the oppression.  She had been a child then.  A very hungry child; hungrier than she was now.   

The baby watched her with those wet, black eyes, then its toothless mouth pulled back, and the wail that she had followed all day, returned.

Maagasar shuddered.  But the cry revived her.  Strengthened her.  She knew what she must do.  There was much work to be done and if she didn’t raise the baby to do the work, she would starve.  Her husband, Dach, had hunted and provided for her, and she badgered him to keep house and keep the fire stoked.  Now that he was dead, she was always hungry and the cottage had deteriorated from lack of upkeep. 

Maagasar carried the baby home and named him Dach because he would grow to replace her husband. 

Dach grew in age and stature.  Drake-darshan children age rapidly, nearly three times faster than the average child.  By the time Dach was toddling around, Maagasar had taught him to wash the floor, clean the toilet house, and make the bed.  By the time he was five years old, he towered a foot above her.  Age had shrunk and shriveled her, until her skin sagged on her bones, and her shoulders bowed. 

Maagasar didn’t love the child.  After five years, she despised him more. 

Despised him because she needed him, and more than anything, she despised him because of his green coloring.  He was the ugliest child, and she spent much of her time finding ways to punish him for his ugliness.  She made sure he understood her revulsion.

She specially cut a willow bough and thrashed the back of his legs when he was too slow to respond to an order, or smacked him across the face when he asked questions.  Insolence, she called it, and quickly made sure he understood it. 

She had a spare bed where her husband had slept, but she made Dach sleep in a wooden box by the backdoor instead, with rags to cover himself.  Her favorite punishment, and an ongoing one, was denial of food.  He wasn’t allowed to eat with her, nor was he allowed to eat from a plate.   He sat on the floor under the table at her feet, and ate the rare gristle, bone, or fat that she dropped for him.  Dach went to bed hungry, woke up hungry.  Dach lived hungry.  Hunger was all he knew. 

 

 

This is that story. 

The story about the most venomously vile creature that ever breathed. 

This is the story about Dach Drake-darshan.