New turning

We’re flying south. Above the clouds, you can almost believe the world hasn’t changed. Duck beneath them and it’s a different story.

All the land to the north is either burned to ash or burning still. Kathy reckons it’s only the chain of lochs and rivers stretching across the whole country that’s stopping the flames following us. ‘The Highlands are burning,’ she keeps saying, over and over again. ‘I can’t believe it.’ But she needs to believe it – she needs to believe everything – which is why I’ve told her the truth.

‘The world doesn’t always stay the same,’ I told her before we set off. ‘Every so often it changes. Every so often it turns. I come from an age before yours – an age when the world was ruled not by nature but by charm, which you might call magic. But then the world turned, and the buried bones of trolls became the bones of different beasts, and the creatures I knew as faeries lost their wings and turned to grubbing in the soil. Became you.

‘If that’s hard for you to believe, I’m sorry. But it gets harder. Because, you see, these moments of change – these turnings – extend far up and down the river of time. Before my age – the age of charm – was an age of metal. Before that was another age, and another. Turnings stretching endlessely back into the mist. And in the other direction, the future: all the countless turnings to come.

‘I think that’s what’s happened to the world. The day has finally come for it to turn again. And so it has. The age of charm is long past. The age of nature has come and now, at long last, gone. So we’re into something new. Something the world has never seen before. And we’ve survived it.’

All through this, Kathy watched me. After weeping her way through the night, she’d woken up stronger. She didn’t flinch from my words.

‘So what is it?’ she said. ‘This new age of the world. If it isn’t nature, and it isn’t charm – what is it?’

‘Look around you,’ I said. ‘The answer’s obvious.’

Kathy picked at the floor. It splintered under her flimsy nails. ‘It’s wood, isn’t it? The world’s been turned to wood.’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘What does it mean?’

It was a question neither of us could answer. But we agreed, woman and dragon alike, that we should get as far away from the flames as possible. In a world made of wood, fire isn’t your friend.

‘I want to see London,’ Kathy said. ‘I want to see what’s happened to my home.’

So south we went.

It’s the first time I’ve carried a human on my back. It makes flying hard but not unbearable. My mother did it a few times, both in the world of her birth and in this one. The last time she did it was in what Kathy would think of as the Stone Age, when she carried a pregnant woman to safety when her clan wanted to kill her and eat her. That’s a story for another day, but one I remember well – because I was there.

Kathy. It’s a nice name. It reminds me of my mother’s, somehow.

I’ve lived a long time, you see. Partly that’s the charm I carried through with me last time the world turned. Partly it’s this knack I have for cheating time. It’s stood me in good stead through the aeons and will again, I hope. If I ever get it back.

But for now I’m content just to fly. Mostly I’m staying high, keeping the clouds between me and this strange new world of wood. Altitude makes the air thin, so I have to work my wings harder, but I’d rather that than have to face what’s happened on the ground. It sounds simple when you say it: a world of wood. But, as worlds do, it will have its share of perils, none of which I’m ready to face just yet. I’m just glad Kathy’s mission coincides with mine, at least as far as direction is concerned.

You see, I want to go south too, for reasons of my own. The fresh air is clearing my head. I’m beginning to remember what happened to me before the turning of the world, and why I was down in those tunnels. The memories aren’t happy ones, but they’re ones I have to face. I did things, the consequences of which I’m going to have to face.

And, perhaps, atone for.