A short story about dragons

Socotra is an island in the Indian Ocean, located in Arabia. If you’ve read „One Thousand and One Nights” that takes place more or less in that area, you know that it used to be a land of miracles, magic and wonders. Now there are many miracles in Arabia, for example there is the tallest building in the whole world (it is really very, very tall), but there are also sad places where it is extremely difficult to live and people run away from them, even to distant Poland.

But the island of Socotra did not become one of those sad places, because in the ancient times it was inhabited by dragons.

It was in the very distant past, when there was still a lot of magic in the world. Dragons, being dragons, were evil, dangerous, and not well-mannered. They ate people and goats whenever they wanted, they burned villages (often by a complete coincidence, because their young were just learning to breathe fire) and generally they created lots of problems for everyone.

At that time, Socotra was ruled by the wise Queen Bilqis, who was also a great magician. After years of magical research, she managed to cast a very difficult spell that robbed the dragons of their power. And then she gave them a choice: either they had to leave the island and never come back, or they would stay forever, but then they would have to be in a different form, safer for the other inhabitants of the island, and they would have to help people.

And the dragons, although they liked to breathe fire very much, loved their homeland even more, so they agreed to the conditions of the queen. And then Bilqis turned them into trees.

Such dragon trees look very strange. Their trunks are a bit like a dragon’s paw with scales, and they are endemic, which means they grow only in Socotra. (Of course, you can probably also meet them in some botanical garden, because someone once brought one from Socotra, but that’s like with an elephant: you can also meet one in the zoo, and we know that elephants feel better while trumpeting in the savannah). And just as humans sometimes donate blood to those in need, dragon trees also donate dragon blood when needed. And dragon blood, as you can guess, has great power. You can smear your face with it when you lack strength or self-confidence, and then you gain the strength and courage of the dragon for a moment. Or you can paint a house with it, or at least a part of a room, and then it starts to resemble a dragon’s lair a bit and it is easier to collect treasures there. And when you are a woman and have a baby, you can dissolve the dragon’s blood in water and drink it, which stops the bleeding and as a result, the baby can enjoy having their mum much longer. So the dragons abide by the terms of the contract and try very hard to help as much as they can.

Of course, dragons are also very wise, so if you have a problem, you can go to Socotra and listen what the trees are saying – who knows, maybe they can help you. That is why, for example, I wanted to find them.

But to get to them, you have to cross the mountains.

So we drove a car through the mountains. They were quite high, and we were going higher and higher, through winding mountain roads, because the roads in the mountains always go up the slopes and therefore they are very, very narrow and winding.

And it just so happens that Muslims live in Socotra, and they are very religious people. And where there are deeply religious people, there is usually the devil who is happy when believers do evil deeds. (Therefore, sometimes, it is better to avoid very religious people, because who would like to meet the devil. Nevertheless, often those people are also very nice).

And the people of Socotra are really nice, so the devil there has really hard time to persuade them to do something evil, and has to resort to various tricks. And this time he came up with an excellent idea: he hid a piece of a mountain road. He did it because he knew that people would be very scared that the road disappeared, and when people are afraid of something, it often happens that they will do something wrong out of fear.

And it so happened that at that time we were driving through the mountains. And we came to the point where the road ended. There were only clouds beyond. Imagine that: the road abruptly ends, and further there are dense, tangled, gray clouds.

Other people also stopped in that place, because it was impossible to go any further. Some of them said that they were waiting already second day and nothing has changed.

And then our driver Ali said: let’s have a tea with them.

And there was a house nearby where all the travellers sat and waited. Flowers were painted on the walls, colourful rugs and pillows were placed by the walls, and someone cooked warm, sweet tea. They did it partly because such are the customs in that area, and a little because they didn’t want to be afraid. And when you sit in a nice company, in a nicely decorated room, and have a cup of warm, sweet tea in your hand, there is usually nothing to fear.

But if one looked outside, they saw a very scary view: by that time the devil had already hidden all the roads and all the mountains. We were left on an island in the clouds: we couldn’t see anything else. We didn’t even know if we were still in our world, on Socotra, or the wind carried us along with this house, carpets and tea to some completely strange and distant dimension.

And then our brave driver Ali said: „yalla yalla”, which – thanks to my excellent knowledge of Arabic – I can translate as „enough of this! After drinking so much sugar in the tea, we are not afraid of anything! Let’s face the devil’s tricks.” So we got into the car and drove into the cloud. Brave people are not afraid of devilish illusions and know that there is always some right way forward.

Of course, it is very difficult to fly a car through the clouds when there is no road. After all, it was just an ordinary old, quite rickety car, not some plane with a modern navigation system. But Ali knew the mountains by heart and knew how to avoid the peaks without seeing them. Though he probably wouldn’t have got anywhere and we would have been lost in the land of clouds forever, had it not been for our guide, Eisa. A guide is someone who always knows where to go or drive, even with his eyes closed. And Eisa was a very good guide, because he could point us in the right direction even when he was asleep (the gray space outside the window made him extremely sleepy and he could not help himself in any way).

So Eisa slept in the backseat, but whenever Ali took the wrong turn, he snored loudly: Khhhrrrrr! And then Ali turned the other way, which was always the right one.

And so after an hour or two we made our way through the clouds and reached a valley where the road appeared again. It led us into the ravine, where a crystal clear mountain river flowed over shiny, multicoloured pebbles. Brisk crabs run on the riverbed, palm trees cast shade on its banks, and dragon trees grew on the high slopes of the ravine. The sun was shining merrily over us.

Driving through the ravine, we reached a forest of dragon trees, and there we met Muhammed, who grew up in that area, so he knew the dragon language a bit and knew how to talk to the trees and where it’s best to whisper to them so that they can hear well.

And then Muhammed revealed a secret he had learned in his childhood. In fact, dragons, when no one sees them, can free themselves from the spell: they turn from trees to winged creatures and circle over the island. And if you’re very smart, you can get a glimpse of it at the last moment before sunset. You just have to hide well, because the dragons must think that no one is watching them.

So we learned that the dragons shouldn’t notice us, but they have very good eyesight. Fortunately, Muhammed knew all the bottle trees in the area. And such a tree looks a bit like a thick golden bottle, and if one finds a proper one, even I can hide behind it so well that no one can spot me, not even a dragon.

And so at sunset, we saw dragon silhouettes soaring into the sky, and then night came.

And that’s the whole story. I have described everything exactly as it happened. Perhaps events from the ancient times may have been presented here not exactly precisely, but who knows what really happened in such a distant past? Only the dragons, I suppose.