The Last Ember
An original dragon tale from the Saturday Lantern.
For ten thousand years, a dragon has carried the first earthly fire behind her ribs. When that ember begins to fail, she sets out on one last flight to find someone capable of keeping the world's flame alive.
Far below, a child has a much smaller problem: the woman next door has no fire.
—
The child had been told not to spill wax on her hands.
She had already failed.
A bright drop ran over one knuckle and hardened there. She tried to scrape it away with her thumb, then remembered the flame and quickly put both hands around it again.
The wind came down the street in cold, rude bursts.
“Stay,” she whispered.
The flame leaned almost flat. She turned her body against the gust.
Behind her, from the open doorway, her mother called, “Quickly now.”
“I am.”
“Don't run.”
“I know.”
“Cup it properly.”
“I am.”
The neighbour's house stood only six doors away. It had never seemed far before.
Tonight every lamp on the street had gone out, first one, then another, and finally the hearths. Her mother had managed to coax one candle alight from the last red part of their own fire and pushed it into her hands.
“Take this next door before ours goes too.”
“Why me?”
“Because I'm trying to save ours.”
This had seemed unfair.
It still seemed unfair.
The stones were cold beneath the child's bare feet, and the wind kept finding the gap between her sleeves and wrists. But the old woman had no fire.
So she walked.
One door.
Two.
The candle guttered.
“Don't.”
Three doors.
Something passed across the stars.
The child looked up. At first she thought it was a cloud.
Then the cloud moved against the wind.
A sound came over the roofs.
Slow.
Deep.
Like a sail snapping, except that no sail had ever been large enough to make the air move like that.
A shutter banged open. Somewhere a dog began barking.
The child stopped.
The candle flame flattened.
She bent over it.
Then the night came down.
Continue reading: The Last Ember in the Saturday Lantern on Substack →
—
Receive the next work
Subscribe free to receive new work from the Lucas Varro Library by email.
More from the Library
Houses of Wood, Light, and Smoke
Some of Angkor’s most intimate ruins do not rise above the ground at all. They are postholes, low mounds, hearths and ponds: durable traces of a domestic city built largely from things that decay. To restore that city is to see Angkor not only as stone, but as wood, smoke, water, repair, and people living within calling distance.
What Stone Brings Forth
I had mistaken a gift for something being expelled.
Beneath the nāga's mouth, a stone garland descended bead by bead. Nearby, a makara opened its jaws and another form emerged. Looking closer, the whole temple began to change: serpent became ornament, ornament became architecture, architecture became foliage.
The forest did not introduce this language.
It answered it.
The Eighth Daughter
Seven daughters have already been taken by Yamata-no-Orochi when Susanoo reaches the River Hi. Only Kushinada-hime remains. The Eighth Daughter retells the Kojiki episode through a family’s waiting, a girl transformed into a comb, and the patient preparation for the serpent’s return.