She sits on a pinnacle of honey-combed stone, a finger stabbing insolent into the heavens, so frost-eaten and windworn it seems that the fragile rock must splinter beneath her weight. Maybe it would fall were she not stick-thin, her flesh eroded away much as the rock has been, her skin tanned to the sallow colour of the land. She might have been a carving of the ancient, desert peoples, an earth-spirit or air-walker out of their fire-told tales, shaped by a forgotten hand in the friable, ochre sandstone, but for her wispy halo of hair, bleached white now under the fierce suns, and the bright flicker of her eyes. They say she has sat thus for twenty years, with no shelter under the wild sky, a stylite, unmoving; a saint on her pillar of stone.

Far to the west, at the suns-set edge of the world, is a dark smudge of a city, ten days journey away across the sharp sands on camel-back, only two by skim-raft. Sometimes they venture out here, the tourists, to stare and wonder at her in this barren place, leaving only footprints and litter, or little, senseless scrawlings in the buttery rock. Then again, the dragons are here too, and perhaps it is only that presence which tempts humanity so far from the safety of its city, to squint up into the brilliance of the twin suns and to gawp and cry out at alien, delicate wings dipping through a cobalt sky.

The Dragons of Teusza!

The explorers who first charted this world, those who weighed and measured its grains of sand, and who sifted and catalogued its beasts, birds and flowers - such narrow-souled creatures!- they were blind to the glory of Teusza's winged-folk. Perhaps the dragons hid from them; whatever the way of it, the colonists were on-world for many handfuls of seasons before discovering that they were not the sole owners of Teusza's skies.

Tell then of dragons: sing of their forms and colours!

Yes, sing of the wondrous, liquid contours of them, of the sudden, fierce lightness of them, of the double sunlight dribbling in rainbows along their scales! Two metres long, from lashing tail-tip to the curve of their whiskers. Yes, whiskers, bristling furiously from their narrow snouts, like any Earthly cat. Strap-thin bodies, fluid and seemingly boneless, serpentine and sinuous; large, yet not large enough for any human to dream of riding them, for not even an infant could have clung to such smooth rippling backs. Wings like fragile, rustling paper, appearing too insubstantial to bear any weight, and little, delicate limbs, eight in all, each blessed with a long, six-fingered hand.

Ah, but the colours of them, the copper blues, lethal lead greens and iron-oxide reds! Describe them on paper: black- inked words will never convey their fearful swiftness or their terrible grace, nor tell how the sight of them tears at the human heart, twisting it in pincers of joy.

What supports them in the thin airs of the desert plateau? Certainly not those absurd wings, since they scarcely need to beat them to remain suspended in the ether, floating without effort, sometimes hanging motionless and curled asleep in mid- air. Perhaps they are hollow-boned, perhaps lifted by internal sacs of some light gas. Some have said that they fly by means of mind or magic, and no life-scientist has any evidence to contradict such lunatic supposition, since no dragon has ever suffered capture. No net or trap can hold them, no drugged dart or bullet touch them in flight, not even dead do they yield up their secrets, for no dragon-corpse has ever been found on the bare plains.

Tell now of the ways of dragons!

Tell of how they spiral up through the air, until it thins, rarefies and fails altogether, until they wheel, like a cloud of iridescent soap-bubbles, under the cold, sharp stars. It seems to amuse them to mob the spacecraft that ply to and fro from Teusza, playing chicken with the pilot's nerves, and sometimes riding the fiery bow-waves of re-entry, as dolphins do, careless of the incandescence, the vacuum, the gravity, as if such physical things have no meaning for them. Perhaps they do not breathe. How else could they survive in such harshness? A mystery then, Teusza's mythical creatures, and drawing all the more attention because of that.

And is there no more to tell of dragons?

They have no love for humankind, an opinion they express with needle-tooth and razor-claw if required to, although their preference is to avoid man rather than harm him. Some subtle cunning warns them that to kill their un-friends will invite more determined hunting, so they leave their victims skin- scarred, perhaps missing an eye, invariably alive. The tourists they tolerate, preening and displaying in front of their audience with indifferent vanity, provided that the visitors don't stay too long. Of all humanity, only the solitary woman, the hermit, will they allow to remain in their lands.

What of her, that lonely woman? How does she live in the heart of the desert, trapped on the tip of her pillar?

The dragons feed her, plucking fruit for her from orchards that lie beyond the mountains, bringing her fat, greasy insects that they snap on the wing or choice slivers of raw meat from their prey. Sometimes little troops of them raid the nomad camps to steal fresh-baked cakes or scraps of fish left to dry in the suns. All of this she accepts gravely, eating even the foul without protest or prejudice. Water they carry to her, cupping it in folds of their wings and letting her sip from the saucers of their flesh. The indigenous peoples have built a little shrine at the foot of her pinnacle where they leave food for her when they pass by, their reward a glimpse of the dragons' sky-dance.

They say that once a young man came to her pillar and dared to scale it, that the dragons didn't pluck him from the rockface and hurl him down. And is it so?

He was tall and strong, proud of that strength, proud of the stretch of his arm and the pull of his muscles. His name was Tyagi and his skin was black, but his long hair was yellower than the desert. The pillar he climbed for a dare: it took him three hours and much sweat, and he tested himself on the raw edge of fear each time his hand slipped from a hold or the dry rock fell to powder under his fingers. By the time he flopped over the rim of the summit he was near exhaustion, his hands flayed and bleeding, his sides heaving with exertion. All the while, the dragons looked on.

She had been there a little less than a year then. Her skin was roughened yet not dried out by the winds and her hair was still brown, the dry brown of dead autumn grass.

"Good day, lady" panted Tyagi, for her was polite and besides, having climbed so far to view the hermit, he found that he liked what he saw.

Eyes like fallen pieces of sky gazed past him and there was no expression on her face. It was as still and serene as the land is, touched by humanity but enduring.

"You have a fine view!" Tyagi observed, unabashed by her silence, settling himself for a rest before his descent. "On a fine day such as today it's grand to be up here but in the rain and wind, that must be a different matter, and, pardon me for bringing the subject up, what will you do when winter sweeps the plateau with snow?"

The dragons began to sing then, their uncanny purring hymn to the empty skies, and they spiralled up to dance a measure on the wind. The young man had no choice but to watch, as if they had laid a spell on him. She watched also, and did a fragment of a smile touch her lips?

"When the snow falls, they will keep it from my head."

Tyagi started at the sound of her voice, the sound of dead leaves scratching on a pane of glass, the sound of winter's ice strangling the ripples on a lake. She spoke slowly, as if she'd unremebered human speech. The dragons floated close, gazing at her out of one eye and then the other, as if amazed at the sudden rasp of her voice.

"They care for me." This time she did smile, briefly, as if it made her cheeks hurt. "They have done ever since I came here."

Tyagi said softly: "And where did you come from?"

She wrenched her sky-hued eyes from the cluster of dragons and looked at him for the first time. "Everywhere and everywhere. I have forgotten the names."

Tyagi folded his long legs under him, finding comfort on the bare bones of rock in the hope of a long tale. "But you have a name?"

"My father called me Teusza. He loved this world and dreamed of coming here." she sighed and one of the dragons unravelled from the flock and swam over to her, crooning and draping itself across her thin shoulders like a ragged leather cape. Tyagi tried not to stare at it, for the dragons never touched the ground and the legends said that to do so was bane to them. The awful nearness of the beast burned his eyes, much as staring at a light-source will, the play of the sunlight on its red-copper, blood-ruby and rosy-quartz scales dazzling and hypnotic. The woman reached up and scratched its chin absently, the continued to speak. "I was born on the far side of the sky, in a black pit of a city, a cold, fearsome place where we starved and struggled through what passed for life, my father and I, alone. I knew no mother - she left us."

Tyagi let her rest for a little after so long a speech. "Tell me of your father."

"My father was a great man. He was a weaver of tales, a maker of songs. There was a time when we lived at the court of a merchant-prince, a time of riches, comfort and joy, but the world changed for the worst and our fortunes changed with it. My father's skills were belittled, scorned, and he turned his hand to the common trades to feed us, spending his days in mines or factories. For years we survived, sustained by his dreams. Through all the bleak, hungry nights he would sit in the darkness and tell me of Teusza and its dragons." she shivered and the wonder draped about her gaunt body hummed gently to her. "I can still hear his voice, the music of it and how his words would sparkle in the misery of the city. He did so want to come here and I believe he would have, except that he died."

The dragon moaned, somehow in tune with the sorrow in her eyes. Tyagi did not dare to speak, she looked so distant and vulnerable.

"These were his last words to me." Teusza continued. "Go away from this terrible place.' he said. 'Don't let them kill you with their indifference, as they've destroyed me. Leave, and if you can, go to the world that I named you for.' I promised to obey - out of love I took up the burden of his geas. I had to sell his body, all of the marketable pieces, until I had enough money to leave. His skull I had them burn and carried that small part of him away with me. Many more empty years passed before I came here. I buried my father's ashes at the base of this rock, where he may rest and dream for eternity, then I climbed up to get a better view of the dragons."

Tyagi waited for some minutes but she was silent, having reached the end of her history. "And you stayed here?"

"I was carried here by a promise born out of my father's longing. It wasn't my dream, but I was curious to see what had sustained his hopes for so long. Only when I climbed up here and looked out over the desert did I realise the truth of it and know that I'd come home." The dragon blew into her ear, tickling her with its frivolous whiskers, and she laughed, sweet and high as a child would, at which the sepent-thing sprang from her, darting up from its perch and somersaulting suns-ward.

"Scant comfort for a home." The young man brushed the gritty sand from his skin, where it had adhered to and irritated his flesh. "Don't you miss warmth, shelter, companionship?"

"I've friends in abundance." she waved at the dragons, who had moved a small distance away to investigate the arrival of a skim-raft. "I have a name for each of them: the bluest one is Be, the green-and-gold Do, that brown pair there are Dance and Leap. My favourite of them all, my special friend, the largest red who was here just now is called Fly."

Down in the desert the raft had stopped and its occupants were waging war on the dragons. Tyagi looked on in horror at the blue-green stabs of lasers and the little sparkling clouds of propellant gas from hand-held missile-firers. For all the ferocity of the attack none of the dragons appeared to have been touched.

"They cannot hurt them." Teusza said, smiling, as if the hunters were playing a harmless game. "Sometimes I don't believe that men will ever accept that fact."

"Are the beasts then indestructible?"

"The dragons are." the girl said, as if that explained all of their mystery. "They are our dreams."

The skirmish went on for the best part of half an hour, until the dragons tired of dancing targets for the weapons spitting death, dived in close to deliver a few scratches to indicate their displeasure and climbed into the vault of the sky in a lazy helix, like birds slouching on a thermal. The hunters limped their raft back towards the city.

"This is no kind of life for a young woman like you." Tyagi declared. "What if a stray dart or beam should injure you?"

"My friends would not permit it."

Tyagi shook his head. "Come down with me, Teusza. I'll take you back to the city and take care of you - you should have a man of your own and children by now. You deserve more than a stump of sand-blasted rock."

"I have all that I need." she returned, with infuriating content. "For empty years of my life all that kept me alive was the memory of my father's dream. Now I'm living it."

The suns had raced to the horizon and were vying with each other to splash spoonfuls of red and orange across the sky, while one guilty, premature star glared disdainfully down from its zenith, a prim, barren aunt embarrassed by the behaviour of children.

"I must go, before it grows too dark to climb down." Tyagi shivered at the bright edge of the twilight wind. "Please come with me."

The girl merely shook her head. Tyagi shrugged and eased himself past the overhang, but he'd scarcely inched a span down the cliff when a pair of strong, wiry hands caught him under his arms and a second set gripped his belt, lifting him away from the powdery rock. The young man cried out and looked up into the fanged and feline-smiling ruby face of the dragon Fly. The shock of being suspended in clear air and the warm strangeness of the creature's touch kept him frozen throughout the lazy spiral to the plain, although his pulse beat in his throat as a fox might thrash in a snare. As soon as his toes touched solid ground the dragon released him and he could breathe again. He all but ran away from the rock outcrop, not daring to look back until he had covered several hundred metres.

She sat there with the crimson beast draped about her shoulders and when she saw him turn, she raised her hand in a cheery wave.

And did he love her then, black Tyagi, lion-man?

Yes, although he didn't know it. He'd loved her from that first look into the sky-pools of her eyes. Years later he found a girl to wed, with oak-leaf hair and eyes like his rock-bound hermit, yet he knew how he deceived himself and he was never truly happy.

And what became of her, beast-beloved, imprisoned by her own will on that insolent finger of stone?

She sat with the broken land about her, as if atop the mast of a wrecked ship, surveying the shattered spars and timbers, but mostly she watched her dragons. They say she sat there, unmoving, for a century, or maybe more, until a man came and climbed the pillar for a second time. Tyagi's grandson, they say he was, and as proud and strong as his sire. Over many hours he sweated and strained his way up, and when he reached the summit he found only the desiccated husk of a woman's body that fell to dust when he touched it, while the dragons looked on and sang their inhuman dirge.

"And is that the end of the tale?" asked the unborn Child. "Didn't you promise me a happy ending?"

"As the peasants tell it, the saint of the pillar didn't die and to this day she, or perhaps the ghost of her, may still be seen, sitting cross-legged on the buttery rock. Yet others say that she became one of the creatures she so loved, a gold- scaled dragon, and that she remains there still, flying in the dry desert air."

"And is that true?"

"Who can say?" said the Mother, with a twitch of her whiskers and a lash of her butter-gold tail. "No man has ever counted the dragons of Teusza."

© Gillian M. Paddock, 1992.

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