A Golden Spark

In a land far, far away, there lived a young dragon who pretended she was part of a tree.

If you had passed through Deep Oak Wood during the old days, you might have thought the thick, high twisting branch was simply another knot of bark, silvered with lichen and bent by centuries of weather. Unless you were a toadstool or a fairy, you probably wouldn’t have noticed how it breathed, slowly and carefully, or how the leaves around it leaned inward, as if listening. Unless you were a wise woman, that is. Or a dragon.

Like Minna.

Minna was perfecting the art of not being seen, a skill she had honed since the age of ten. Once, far to the south, under a sun that struck stone brilliant white, she had flown above the hills of Crete in search of a mate and adventure. On that wondrous isle, dragons had been more revered than kings, their shadows passing over olive groves like great clouds.

Until the kings had come to fear them.

***

It had begun with a tremor and a mistake. Escaping an earthquake with a heart as heavy as a stone was no mean feat, and in her haste, Minna had accidentally trampled an ancient, dying unicorn. She had stepped back, apologising with a lowered head, but the creature proved bitter in its passing. It whinnied curses—that her eggs would never hatch unless she relinquished her love of gold. The words sank into her flesh like cold iron, the gold already lying less easy in her claws.

And the unicorn said something else—words which slipped past Minna’s normally sharp ears. She ignored the spite of the dying, her heart too laden with grief to heed any other warning. She had more important things on her mind.

She mourned Asterion, even as a shadow of the curse brushed at her scales.

He was the Cretan king’s shame, hidden in a labyrinth beneath the palace at Knossos—a boy with the head of a bull and the heart of a poet. While King Minos demanded gold from his people to melt into crowns, Minna would fly low over and sneak into the maze at dusk, bringing wild figs and herbs to the creature imprisoned below. He was frightened of his own strength, half beast but entirely innocent. They were two of a kind: monsters in the eyes of men who feared what they could not understand.

When Minos’s greed remained unsated, he turned on the dragons. His soldiers smoked them from caves, fired their arrows on them in the clifftops, and mounted their horns as proof of power. All were lost, except Minna.

She escaped because a wise woman with emerald eyes pressed her hands to Minna’s snout and commanded her to fly north to a temperate isle. “Become part of that land,” the woman whispered. “Go and make new stories.”

Minna fled under moonlight, her wings burdened by grief. She left behind the labyrinth, and she left behind Asterion—slain by Theseus—while Minos looked away. But she had not left empty-handed. A leather bag clinked softly with the shimmering gold coins she had discovered lying ready to be counted in the palace treasury. There had been no one about so she grabbed them. More importantly, she carried the spark within—the flickering soul of her beloved before he was felled by Theseus’s sword. A spark that needed a vessel.

***

England was unimaginably green. A land of forests, farms, rivers, roving valleys, moors, and bubbling streams. When she reached Deep Oak Wood, following the old woman’s instructions, her invisible cloak was wrapped tight round her—a gift of older magic that answered only to perfect stillness.

She searched until she found the tallest and most majestic oak in the forest. There, she folded herself into its highest canopy, aligning to its knotty bark. She became attuned to the creaking of the tree, the low-pitched hum as its roots complained of the damp soil and leaves that yearned for a glimpse of summer sun. In its branches, she learned how not to exist—appearing only under cover of darkness, when humans rested. Feeling the spark within her growing stronger, she waited until the wind finally spoke her name.

That day, it was so cold, even the tree shuddered. At length, a woman appeared through the twilight gloom, her grey hair bound beneath a woollen hood. She carried a staff etched with scenes of births, deaths, marriages, and bargains made and broken. She leaned against the trunk, rubbing her cold hands.

“I feel your presence, dragon,” she called. “I am Agrea. I have buried kings and unmade curses. You cannot sit still forever. You are running out of time.”

The tree hummed low, soothing the ache in Minna’s belly, where the spark had finally taken shape.

“I know I can’t stay much longer,” she agreed. “Even here, I’ve heard kings punish what they cannot tame.”

“They’ve a talent for it,” Agrea replied, grittily. “Unfortunately, the king of this land believes dragons hoard luck. And rumours of your existence are spreading. Before long, he will ride in with fire and arrows to destroy you. But I will do my best to prevent that. I’m here to help you.”

Agrea worked quickly, binding her blood to the wood. That night, when Minna laid her egg, the forest held its breath.

Only one egg fell onto the moss, dark as rich soil, but veined with a gold light that took a peculiar shape. It did not pulse like a dragon’s heart; it beat with the heavy rhythmic thrum of a bull in a meadow. Minna curled round it, weeping.

“Now,” Agrea said. “You must choose. The unicorn’s curse or the boy’s life.”

Minna finally understood. The gold was the anchor; as long as she held onto it, the soul she carried was trapped in stone. With shaking claws, she unbuckled the leather bag. For a moment, the ache eased—as if something wedged between her scales had been given leave to pass. The gold slid into the roots of the oak, sinking into the earth with a whispered hiss, feeding the tree’s magic and taking part of her grief with it.

The forest woke.

The oak groaned in recognition. Its roots rose like ribs, bark flowing with a glowing resin. The invisible cloak flared out, vast and sheltering. Agrea bowed her head. “This is not my will,” she murmured. “I only translate what the land dares to ask.”

When the king’s men burst into the clearing, they found nothing. No dragon, no egg, no woman.

The shell did not crack so much as unfurl, like a ripening fruit splitting to reveal hidden light. From the shards of gold and dark earth, a child emerged—not a baby, but a presence born of the forest’s very pulse. Not a beast of the maze, but a boy with sun-bright skin and eyes the colour of olives. The earth trembled softly beneath him, bending to absorb his walk, yet his hands were as gentle as the moss beneath his feet.

The tree rustled with joy.

After Minna had recovered, she carefully cleaned him. Then she allowed Agrea to cover him in a woollen blanket and fed him broth from a bowl. A little later, he stood in the clearing, breath misting the chill English air. He reached out a small, trembling hand toward the oak, and for a moment the forest was silent, acknowledging its new son. But the air was also heavy with something as yet unacknowledged.

An exhausted Minna coiled at the top of the tree. Her scales shimmering in the faded light, she felt the weight of the two unhatched eggs pressing against her.

Eventually Agrea called up to her. “The bargain is struck, but it is not finished. The gold has fed the roots of the tree and the boy has been given breath. But the land of his spirit is not this green forest. He is the child of Crete, partly descended from royal blood and a spark that crossed the oceans. To keep him here is to let him wither. Even so, the tree demands the boy stay with me —at least until he is old enough to choose what he wants. And you …you must pay what you owe—the tree demands another toll for hiding you.”

Minna’s heart constricted. “What toll remains?” she rumbled, the sound vibrating through the wood. “I have cast the gold into the dirt. I have let him go.”

“You must return to the beginning,” Agrea replied, discerning eyes reflecting the truth of the ages. “The earthquake in Crete has settled, and the tyrant Minos is a feast for worms. But the land is hollow—it lacks the true dragon spirit. The eagles who were once your loyal friends are suffering—they call out for you. You must carry the remaining eggs back to the white stones and broken labyrinth. You must be the bridge that joins the old world with the new.”

Minna looked down at the boy. Was that a faint recognition flickering in those beautiful olive eyes? She hoped he saw not a monster but a shadow that had once brought his father figs in the dark.

“I cannot leave him,” Minna gasped, the smoke curling from her nostrils round the branches like a shroud.

“You are not leaving him,” Agrea said softly. “You are freeing him. Here he will become a spirit of the field. Look!”

Agrea raised her staff. The boy’s form began to shimmer, blending with the twilight. His skin, once bright as sunlight, took on a pearlescent sheen. From his brow, two magnificent horns began to grow—from the very gold Minna had reluctantly cast into the roots. They glowed with a soft, inner light that did not burn. He let out a low, resonant sound—a call that was half-human song and a bull’s half-lowing. He turned and bounded towards the edge of the wood, his horns lighting the way through the thickets. He was no longer a boy to be hunted, but a guardian of the forest, a spirit that the king’s men would never catch, for he was now as much a part of the wind as the dragon was of the tree.

Minna let out a long, mournful whistle. She reached into the hollow of the oak and retrieved the two remaining eggs. They were heavy and warm, pulsing with a rhythm that matched the distant thrum of the boy’s hooves.

“A woman of the shore will meet you when you arrive in Crete,” Agrea promised. “I will watch the boy here. Now, go before the moon sets and dawn reveals your true form to the king’s men.”

Minna unfurled her wings. She hardly cared if she was seen. A forest dragon she might be but she was also the proud mother of Crete.

***

The flight back was long and bitter. The salt air stung her eyes, the weight of the eggs against her belly like the weight of the world. After many weeks and adventures along the way, the jagged coastline of her beloved island finally appeared, it looked nothing like the empire she had fled. The palace of Knossos was a jagged tooth of broken marble, with only some of the red pillars standing. The sea had reclaimed the lower harbours, the silence as thick as wool.

She landed in the centre of the ruined labyrinth. The walls were tumbled down, the secret passages open to the sun and stars. There was no gold here now—only the scent of wild thyme and the tang of the tide.

As the sun began to rise, the woman with emerald eyes approached from a broken pillar. Her features were like Agrea’s, but her hair was the colour of sea foam. She held a staff made of driftwood.

“You have returned,” the woman said. “The price is paid.”

“In full.” As Minna placed the two unhatched eggs onto the white stone of the palace courtyard, she felt immeasurably lighter. As the curse of the unicorn finally dissolved, there was only peace.

But then she remembered her son. “He is safe?” Minna asked, her voice a low rasp, thickened by worry and longing.

The woman nodded. “English eagles have seen him on their travels and carried word back. He runs in a field of green, under a sky that does not know his name. He is known as the golden-horned bull, the luck of the north, and is visited far and wide. At first, people tried to take him away, but he always eludes them. And these …” She pointed to the eggs, “they will be the new kings of the south, as is their destiny.”

Minna laid down on the sun-drenched stone. She watched as the first rays of the Cretan sun washed over the eggs making them glow with a soft, hopeful light. Far away, across the stretch of ocean, she imagined she could hear the heartbeat of a boy with golden horns, guarding a forest of ancient oak. Maybe one day, she would return.

The dragon closed her eyes, and let the world fade into stillness.

And that is why, even now, the old people say the oaks listen, and the ruins remember—as if the whispers of dragons and children never truly leave the earth.