By EDWYN CHOI
There is an old folktale in this village. About a dragon who claimed the forest and devoured men, an evil the village’s elder shunned. Only he remembered the dragon.
He let me lodge at the village when it became clear the snowfall was too thick for travel. He later summoned me to his bedside, where he lay dying.
His breath was raspy. “What do you do, foreigner?”
“I am a hunter. But I am traveling to see a friend.”
“May I see your weapon?”
I unslung it from my back and placed it into his hands. A slender, single shot rifle. Black metal with brown wood. Worn at the edges. Lubricated to protect against the cold.
“What have you killed with this?” he asked me.
“Many. I have harpooned leviathans in maelstroms and beheaded demons from hell.”
The elder paused. He stared at his window. His face was shriveled with time, rivers etched into his skin. His shadow was cast in the snow.
“The village will pay you handsomely if you kill the dragon in the woods.”
“I have not heard of him,” I said.
He nodded. “His name dies with me. And he dies with his name.”
“Then what good will bullets do?”
“He is weak enough to be wounded by lead. Do not let him cry his name.”
He returned my weapon to me and told me how I could find the dragon. I nodded and bid him goodbye. The snow at the bottom of his steps was nearly at my knees. I began trudging back to my lodging. The village was quiet but the earth was loud.
*
The forest slumped with snow. My breath was white against the morning sun and blue sky. As I trudged deeper into the forest it grew thicker and thicker with trees. Soon I was in a maze without walls, trunks topped with green cones in every direction, blanketed in white. Sometimes they were so closely packed together they blocked out the sky. The only sound in the forest was my feet crunching in the snow.
Between my footsteps there was a sudden roar in the distance. It was a faint echo, though it was loud enough to follow. I did not hear it again. As I continued in the same direction, some of the trees were tilted towards me, as though something had swept them. They became more slanted as I trekked onwards. There was a light amid the trees, and I followed it until all the trees were flat on the ground. I entered a clearing, wide enough that it would take minutes just to cross its width, flattened as though the earth had been pressed with the palm of a giant’s hand. The light was the snow’s reflection.
I stood still. There was only a gentle breeze that whistled in my ear, and light, frost wisps floated across the clearing. The sun pierced the empty sky, and the snow glistened.
I heard the dragon first before I actually saw him. A crunch from across the clearing, and the sound of toppling trees: a white squiggle darting out from the dark trees. He roared as he drew closer, and I remembered what the elder had said to me. I unslung my rifle and cocked it. He was quickly drawing closer: he was covered in thick, white hairs, and he had horns stretching out from his head.
I pulled the trigger and the dragon dove into the ground. The earth exploded with snow and ice, and I could not tell if I had hit the dragon. A line of erupting frost was headed towards me, and I tried to reload my rifle as quickly as possible. As the dragon drew closer, the ground rumbled. Taking slow steps backwards, I loaded the bullet right before the ground erupted below me, and I was launched into the air. The snow was red. Everything slowly floated in the air. I could see the dragon in all its detail as it caught up to me: blood streamed down his neck. His face resembled more of a horse than anything — a long facial crest with large nostrils — the only hairless part of its body. His teeth were sharp and fanged; his eyes were dark shadows in the sun.
I fell into the soft snow before he could strike, where my ears were muffled. I saw only the blue sky and the white dragon opening its jaws. The rifle was still in my hand. I aimed it and fired. He fell out of the sky with a jerk, and there was nothing but blue that remained.
I dug myself out of the snow and hobbled to the deflated serpent. Blood pooled under its neck, where its vocal cords would be. I stared at his corpse for a while before I realized I felt warm air push out of his nose. He was alive. I began reloading. His eyes shot open when my rifle clicked. They were round pupils. Human pupils.
He growled and bore his teeth. He coughed up blood. He tried again. This time the sound was more than a growl. It was distinct and constructed. A word. Had I heard his name? Yet I could not understand his breath. I could not pronounce the sounds myself even if I wanted to. My rifle clicked again. He repeated the sound, but it was deaf to my ears.
The rifle jerked as it rang out into the air.
*
The elder had died during the hunt, and the villagers paid me what I was owed. When they asked me what deal I had arranged with the elder, I did not tell them.
There used to be an old folktale in the village, one the elder shunned. About a monster who claimed the forest and devoured men, a monster whose name nobody remembered — who cried for the world to remember his name. But the villagers claim the forest has always been still. Loud with gunshots and quiet with snow.
Writer | Edwyn Choi ’27 | ehchoi27@amherst.edu
Editor | Mike Rosenthal ’27 | jrozenthal27@amherst.edu