“And you found nothing?” the housekeeper pleaded. Her voice cracked, and she ran fingers through her already disheveled hair. She’d said that the missing boy was no relation of hers, yet she seemed to care for him with a mother’s intensity.
The young fireman drew forward. “I found this. ’Tisn’t much, but it was lying on the edge of the forest at the base of a hawthorn.” He held out a book that had once been bound in fine cloth. The fire had shown it mild mercy. The page borders crumbled in gray flakes, but some of the center still held together.
The fire chief took it and presented it to the housekeeper. “Is this familiar?”
The woman’s fingers trembled as she turned the leaves, watching them disintegrate until she froze, holding a page that remained intact.
“This is the book I saved for him. I left it when I ran to fetch help for the fire.”
The gardener spoke kindly to the housekeeper, “He’s in a better place, Hannah.”
The woman held out her hand as if to push the gardener away, but he took her hand and clasped it in his own.
The fire chief lifted his helmet and placed it on his chest. His crew followed suit. The charred forest behind them snapped and groaned.
The housekeeper breathed twice to steady her voice, then read from the book.
“The wise ones say that suffering and sacrifice are the midwives of beauty and truth. So it was with the new Guardian’s return to the Far Country. He entered his realm with his staff in hand, his crown on his head, and a baby dragon at his side. His people greeted him with tears of joy.
The Guardian knew not how he had crossed into the world. He remembered only that he had gone against his final orders. He remembered surrendering himself to death and fire, all for the sake of his dragon.
A small girl came forward from his crowd of receivers. It was she who had prophesied of his future coming. She took hold of the Guardian’s hand and whispered that this disobedience of his orders had been the truest test. The Guardian had shown by this fourth trial that he would lay down personal hopes of entering his destined land and risk all for the sake of protecting his little Gold Breather. The Guardian had gone against the Keeper’s instructions and proven his steadfast loyalty to the dragons. The aim of the fourth test had never been to shed the dragon’s blood, but to have the strength not to shed it at all, even at great cost.”
The housekeeper paused in her reading, her face softening with some kind of peace as she looked at the gardener. The gardener nodded and she continued reading. Her voice was firmer now.
“The girl kissed the Guardian’s hand with her blessing and, at this signal, the kingdom knelt before him. Then, from the stooping crowd, there rose the King, who had aged just over a year since the loss of his Guardian brother, though many more years had passed in the mortal realm.
He embraced the new Guardian as if he were a friend of old and brought him into the treasure-rooms of his heart.
With the path still lying open behind him, the new Guardian led the Far Country folk to collect the remaining Gold Breather eggs and instructed them in how to build hatch-fires. New Gold Breathers were born, reared, and returned in might and glory to the skies.
The King at last resumed his throne with a heart restored. He reigned from that day forth with courage and mercy. The Guardian, in turn, gave his life to the care of his winged beasts. He replenished his medicine supplies and used his powers to better the Gold Breathers, always a humble servant and student. Not one day did this Guardian spend away from the company of his dragons.
The trust between man and Gold Breather was built anew, and the order of man and magical beast returned to the Far Country in flourishing harmony.
Some say that, as time passed, the new Guardian longed for the world of his birth, left behind forever. Others say he forgot all ties to it the moment he set foot in his rightful home, but both sides believe this:
During his days in that mortal realm, he left signs of himself, signs of comfort and hope for those with hearts that looked for it.”
The housekeeper stopped reading. Her voice had fallen to the barest shred of a whisper. A gust of wind blew a sheet of crinkled paper against the gardener’s boots. He snatched it up and held it out for his companion to examine.
“It’s his,” the housekeeper whispered. She covered her mouth and turned her eyes skyward.
The gardener cleared his throat, then tenderly laid his chin against the housekeeper’s forehead as if they were both quite alone and not surrounded by soot-covered witnesses.
Hesitantly, the young fireman asked if he might see the paper. The housekeeper handed it to him then laid her head against the gardener’s chest.
On the paper was drawn a detailed map with mountains, rivers, forest, a city ringed by circular walls, and rising above it all, an intricate palace carved into a cliff of stone. Whenever the young fireman took his eyes from the forest, the trees seemed to shake in the wind. Likewise, the rivers seemed to flow as soon as he turned from them. Above the majestic scene hung one word in a child’s handwriting:
Home.
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THE END