The Dragon of Westmont

The strangest thing I’ve ever seen?

Well….

When I was quite a bit younger, my wife and I went backpacking through the green plains of Ireland. I’m sure to you it probably sounds like an exotic trip, but it really wasn’t. We lived there at the time and we didn’t have the money to go backpacking through the entirety of Europe like many of the other newlyweds that we knew. It didn’t matter to either one of us, though. We were young and in love and it didn’t take much back then to put a smile on either one of our faces.

As I’m sure you can imagine – the trip was poorly planned. When we got home, we would tell everyone that we found spontaneity to be more romantic than itineraries but to be honest, we were just a couple of fools wanting to see the world – or as much of it as we could. Two weeks after the wedding found us wandering on foot through the middle of nowhere, helplessly lost.

We had a map – but without any idea of where we were it didn’t do us much good. Of course, the town where we finally stopped to ask for directions was a town that to this day, I’ve never seen on any map. It was called Westmont.

It was a charming little town if you could even call it that, with a population that couldn’t have been more than a hundred. There was a little town square, a few dozen little houses, and a street full of little shops that I can’t imagine got much business. More than anything, it was made of hills.

There were bright green grassy hills and gently sloping horizon hills and just about every other kind of hill you could ever imagine, with that sweet little town smack dab in the middle of them all. There was one particularly tall, rocky hill in the slight distance, and even before we made it into Westmont proper that one had struck me as something special. It was.

Within an hour of discovering the place, my blushing bride had decided it would be our new home. We had been looking for a place closer to Dublin where we had met, but I had no trouble picturing a future in Westmont. Had things played out a little different I think it’s quite possible I would still be living there today. We unpacked our bags in the loveliest little B&B and started talking to the locals. My wife frequently stood on tiptoe to whisper in my ear that our dreams were coming true because we’d found ourselves a place to live in that was straight out of a fairy tale. Of course, no fairy tale is complete without a dragon.

The townspeople were very friendly – abundantly so in fact, and within no time at all we felt like part of the community. We took long tours during the day and we’d spend our nights in the taverns, learning about the people and the history. It was our fourth or fifth night before we heard of the “Dragon of Westmont.”

The bartender was the one who initially piqued our interest in the local legend and we spent the better part of a week going around and asking people to tell us the story – finding it highly amusing to compare versions. Everyone knew what we were referring to straight away, but every person told it differently. Some differences were slight, for instance the wingspan of the dragon being five feet as opposed to seven. Some people said the dragon didn’t have wings at all, because (as these same people argued) only Western dragons have wings like in the paintings – proper dragons apparently don’t need them.

There were a few details that all the stories seemed to share. The dragon lived on top of the rocky hill that I had noticed upon our arrival (a hill which for obvious reasons was referred to as Dragon’s Hill amongst the townsfolk.) Apparently there was a cave dug out in the side of the hill where the dragon (and he was always male) kept his treasures (he hoarded gold and gems and the like – as dragons are tend to do) and a little dip on the far side that has the most gorgeous view of the land surrounding it. That’s where he liked to rest after the long flights (because wings or no, the dragon always flew.)

He also didn’t seem to be malicious in any way. No one feared him - though there seemed to be no doubt that he existed. No one ever claimed to have seen the dragon, but they all swore on their lives that he was real and he lived up on Dragon’s Hill.

We found the tales to be delighting, and young as we were the idea of having an adventure such as meeting a real life dragon thrilled the pair of us to no end, so it was easy to talk her into packing a lunch and climbing the hill. We didn’t really expect to find anything – and I for one thought we’d return to find the whole town waiting to laugh and tell us it was a trick they liked to play on newcomers to get them to climb the largest hill.

We set out in the morning and by mid-noon we were kissing on the top of Dragon’s Hill. There was indeed a dip on the far side with a lovely view, but at first glance there were no mythical creatures. We were just unpacking our picnic baskets and discussing the legend, when there came a voice from behind us.

“Did you say dragon?”

We turned, and there stood an old man. There was something about him that seemed off, though he wasn’t threatening by any means – if anything I got the impression he was quite friendly. He was small, not short exactly, but thin – with an almost comically delicate frame. I could tell that he was aged, but he seemed to be in incredibly good health, why, I believe his posture was better than mine was and I was only in my twenties at the time. He moved with the grace of a much younger individual, and his eyes were a bright, almost unnatural color.

“I did say dragon,” she ventured, smiling warmly at the man. “My husband and I are from out of town, and we had heard there was some sort of fire-breathing creature up on the top of this hill.”

“Well, I don’t breathe fire,” laughed the man, “but I am a dragon.”

We were both taken aback by this, but we played along, both under the assumption that we were reaching the punch-line of the joke being played on us.

“Is that so?” I asked, beaming at the man.

“It is, as you say, so.” He sat down next to us and we shared our lunch with him, for we had made plenty extra. We asked him questions about what it was like to be a dragon, and laughed along at his anecdotes. He told us about the secret treasure trove in the side of his hill and described his various valuables in great detail. We drank and ate and enjoyed ourselves for what must have been a couple hours, the man miraculously keeping a straight face throughout the conversation.

“And what is it you like most about being a dragon?” My wife asked, finally. I could see a twinkle in the man’s eye and I thought for sure that we were approaching the end of this marvelous prank.

“Why dear, the flying of course.”

She laughed. “Can we see you fly?”

The smile on the old man’s face widened, and without another word he stood, spread his arms out like a child imitating a bird, and ran with alarming speed toward the edge of the cliff.

It was as if time slowed. I scrambled to my feet to chase after him, my wife following along just a few seconds behind me. I hoped at first that it was still a joke, that we would find a lake at the edge of the cliff just a few feet below that he had leaped into (though we had already taken in the view, and subconsciously I knew that was not the case.)

The side of the hill that he had jumped from was very steep and though the grass looked soft enough, it was so far down that I knew hitting it from such a height face first would be fatal – no exceptions. It’s amazing how many things can run through a human mind in a few seconds when one is panicking.

It occurred to me (too late of course) that the old man might be senile. Perhaps he had grown up in a town that spoke too often of dragons, and believed too much. I felt horribly guilty. I felt like by encouraging him (albeit inadvertently) we had finally pushed him past the edge of sanity. Maybe he really believed he was a dragon, and by asking him to prove it we had sent him plummeting to his death. I could tell by the look of horror on my wife’s face that the same things were going through her mind as we watched his frail old body drop vertically down.

But then, by god, he flew.

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This item was featured in "Fantasy Newsletter (October 26, 2016)" 

It was also selected as an Editor's Pick for the 2016 Writing.Com Anthology

And featured in "Fantasy Newsletter (May 31, 2017)"