The Last Dragon Is a Lighthouse

How it begins

For six hundred years, the lighthouse had said nothing. On Tuesday it flashed NO across the royal fleet.

Mara counted the intervals twice. She had designed the signal shutters herself, and the sequence was impossible to misunderstand. Long, short, long. A pause. Two long flashes.

On the quay, the visiting admiral lowered his telescope.

“Your equipment appears defective.”

“My equipment,” Mara said, “has excellent manners under the circumstances.”

The lighthouse opened one enormous eye.

Orren lay coiled around the tower, his tail resting in the old dry dock. Beneath his scales, the beacon burned a warm amber. Children learned to navigate by its sweep before they learned the names of the kings whose portraits hung in the customs house.

The admiral presented a sealed order. “His Majesty requires an assessment of the creature's military capacity.”

Mara did not take it.

Orren's eye turned toward her. The amber light dimmed, then steadied. She had noticed the hesitation three nights running. She had blamed salt on the lenses because salt could be scraped away.

“Assessment first,” the admiral said. “Deployment only if necessary.”

A gull landed on the royal seal. Mara found this encouraging.

“Your fleet is blocking the fishing channel.”

“We represent the crown.”

“The tide has never shown much interest in that.”

From the tower came a low grinding sound. Orren was shifting his left foreleg, the one that had not moved since the great storm of Mara's apprenticeship. Under it, a stone tablet became visible.

The dragon breathed once across the quay. Warmth lifted the admiral's hat and turned the nearest puddle to steam.

Mara climbed down into the dry dock. The tablet carried the harbor's founding treaty.

She had copied its first line in school: Here shall a willing light protect all ships.

Beneath Orren's claw, the next line continued.

Until the light wishes to rest.