Tessa’s Wish

Clouds striped the sky like cords of Granny’s sour-smelling rag mop, the one she used to shoo Tessa outside after lunch. Granny said, “And don’t come home until dark.”

Tessa settled a bookmark in her Hamilton’s Mythology. The librarian wanted her to take the picture book, but Tessa had held her ground. No kids’ stuff for her anymore. She stared at the clouds.

Granny said you could see things in the clouds if you tried. Why not? The Greek gods could appear in puffs of golden mist.

The sun splashed her face. When she closed her eyes, she still saw the sunshine through her lids. She pulled blades of grass to run along her upper lip, smelling the roots with their earthy scent, remembering how Mama tickled her nose with dandelions. She covered her eyes with her hands. In the darkness, she could conjure up her mother by scent and touch. She opened her eyes to search the clouds for Mama’s strong arms or her tangled blonde hair, before illness turned her rosy-cheeked roundness into a sunken-in apple doll. The men in dark suits had buried here on this hill.

Tessa pressed her cheek against the gravestone.  In the coffin, Mama’s cheek had felt smooth and hard and cold like the stone, alien, scented with cedar and gardenias, not roses.

She turned over from her back to her stomach and gazed at the far horizon. More clouds had rolled in, pillows of white riding on top of gray flat bottoms.

The clouds moved together, and Tessa sat up, startled to see something there.  Was it Pegasus, his neck and mane stretching to the farthest hill, his wings aloft, shadowing the fields, shadowing her?

With a roar, the cloud descended.  It was not a horse cloud.  It was a dragon with wings spread like a sky-wide eagle. The dragon breathed out a mist of sharp charcoal breath.

“I knew you’d be here,” the dragon said.

“But I just decided. Granny said go outside and don’t come home until dark.  Granny said go stare at the clouds if I’m so bored.” She scooted behind the marker  “I came here. . .  ‘cause of my mom.”

“What a smart girl you seem,” said the dragon, with a sibilant hiss on the S in seem. “Sssmart Grandma too.”

“Did she know I would meet a dragon?”

“I’m assssssure you sssssshe did not.”

“She’ll be surprised when I tell her about you. You remind me of her, sort of.” She didn’t want to be rude and explain. Tessa giggled at the thought of serious, hard-working Granny hearing about a real-life dragon.

“Maybe you sssshouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“No one believesss in dragonsss anymore.” He poked his forked tongue at the mythology book, tapped his toes. “Except you. The Greeks didn’t believe in dragons exactly.” His fringed eyelids squeezed shut. “Besidessss, I’d rather thisss be our ssssecret.”

The dragon folded his gray wings and slumped his spiked back and thrashing tail against the forest. His toes pointed skyward. Tessa tried to climb his feet, but they were too scaly and slick, his ivory toenails as taller than she was. She slipped and fell, slipped and fell to the boggy ground. She tried jumping from the top of the gravestone.  Finally, the dragon picked her up as gently as a mother robin, careful to turn his lips under to muffle his ferocious fangs. He settled her onto his shoulder, surprisingly warm with tufts of fur there.

“What’s your name, Mr. Dragon?” Tessa asked.

“What’s yourssss?”

            “Tessa,” she said.  “It’s short for ‘Contessa.’ Isn’t that a funny name?”

“I think it’ssss perfect. Your mother had a beautiful sssssspirit,” the dragon sighed. “Oh, and my name is. . .,” he stopped to swallow. He tapped his toes ten times and finished, “Hermes, Hermy for short.” He laughed, a grumbling belly laugh. “SSSSSometimesssssss, I don’t lisssssp.” I need my reminder regimen.”

He inhaled a deep breath. He inhaled the forest and the grass, the other clouds, and Tessa. 

When he exhaled, Tessa cartwheeled with her mother, bouncing from cloud to cloud, marveling at the softness of the spirits in the sky.

At dinnertime, Granny called Tessa’s name, in her sharp, hard voice, “Get on home now!” she yelled from the front porch, knocking her mop on the railing, loud enough for the neighbor to hear. She clumped inside where she peeled a potato and a turnip to throw into the crockpot, grumbling about modern children, esspecccially little girlsssss.