Hannah Moore

The Quiet Ones

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. A long time ago, the wide delta lay spread below table top ridges high above, oats, corn and wheat patchworking the land, embroidered with pockets of peas and beans, and trimmed with fruit trees which blossomed pink and white each spring, and mellowed to yellow as the men and women of the valley turned the rich, silted soil ready for winter planting. Feast days in the valley, where food was never scarce, were richer in music, dancing and song, as no one feared the hunger of the coming months. No one remembered that now. There was no one to remember it. The story was that after the Silver Wars, the twelve dragons of Lashkan had been banished to the island, where they had lain down side by side and end to end, and with one spell so fierce it had used up all the magic left in the world, been turned to stone. An eternal punishment for an eternal slight. Never mind they had all been on the same side.