The rain stopped a year ago. The clouds froze in the mountains above Castle Lombro, high above the valley and its villages. All the rain that should have fallen on the dry spring fields down in the valley dropped atop the castle’s crumbling walls, no matter how many offerings Nall brought to the dragon.

After a week, Aiden Stone, the younger grandson of the stonemason, announced, unexpectedly, that he would leave to challenge the dragon. There had been a great celebration. The entire village opened their cellars in an effort to make up for the loss the Stone family was about to endure. Aiden walked around the party cocksure, promising anyone who would listen that he would return. He hoisted the family’s smithing hammer over his head and made threatening gestures at the mountain. The morning following the celebration, Aiden left.

The rain returned. Aiden didn’t. His brother Blaine carved his brother’s name into the stone monument on the outer wall of the castle himself, below the list of prior challengers. He promised to make the offerings for as long as his brother was gone. It was a promise that lasted a month before Nall realized Blaine had forgotten. Nall secretly started taking offerings up to the dragon himself, not wanting to embarrass Blaine, but it was too late. The rain stopped falling again.

When he realized his failing, Blaine didn’t hesitate. Without fanfare or celebration, he set off to challenge the dragon. The rain returned. Nall continued to bring offerings to the dragon, and again, a few short months later, the rain stopped.

The villagers were starting to talk about Nall. Ever since he was old enough to listen, he loved stories about the castle and the dragon who lived there. He asked the older storytellers to tell and retell the tales about the last King of Castle Lombro and his ignominious end. He relished the stories about the villagers rising up to overthrow the tyrant. And he loved hearing about villagers who left every few years to challenge the dragon who lived in the castle and who stole the rain when he was displeased. They were his heroes.

Nall started taking the offerings as soon as he was allowed. It was really on a dare from his best friend Artuin, who liked to make fun of him for still playing Hunting Dragon with the little children around the village, pretending to be a dragon to seek out the children hiding. Why not, Nall thought. He loved the castle and relished the opportunity to see it up close. To touch the monument that was said to be carved with every challenger’s name. To press his ear to the gates to try to hear the dragon’s breathing.

The trail through the mountain pass was steep and made more difficult by the wide basket of bread and dried fish he carried to offer the dragon. When he finally reached the gates, he stared up at the imposing moss-covered wall with his mouth wide open. He reached out to touch the gates, great slabs of iron rusted to a blood-crimson, but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. He touched the monument instead.

It was a large slab of blue stone set into the ground a few feet away from the gate. It was so old that moss had eaten the top of it. Even the names just beneath the moss were so eroded by rain and wind they were illegible depressions in the stone. He imagined his own name there, carved in stone so that only the ages could wash away his valor, and shivered. It was just a dream. He didn’t think he could ever be that brave.

From that visit onward, Nall brought the offering to the castle nearly every week. He stepped aside when a relative of a recent challenger insisted on going for a week or two, but always took up the mantle as soon as they forgot or grew tired of the journey.

The hike through the mountain pass became easier with repetition. Nall’s slight frame didn’t improve, but his legs grew strong, corded with lean muscle. And the number of challengers that had to go up the mountain fell. Nall remembered four consecutive years when the rains stayed up over the castle in the spring until the dragon was challenged, and then a second challenger had to be sent before the harvest because the rains stopped again. But now, with Nall making the regular offering, years went by between droughts. He grew so proud of it that in the rare instances when someone else made the offering, he would sometimes follow them, just out of sight, to make sure that they went all the way to the castle.

That was, at least, until the past year. Three challengers in under a year was a record, and people were starting to comment.

“Is he even taking the food all the way up to the castle?”

“I bet he’s taking it up the mountain and eating it himself. He knows there won’t be enough to go around by the end of the summer.”

“Why doesn’t he just challenge the dragon himself?”

This last jibe was said loud enough that Nall heard it, not that he needed to. He was as distraught as anyone else about the apparent failing of his offerings. He’d thought more than once that it was his duty to at least try. Now that a third challenger had apparently failed, the tiny Ariel Pois who left just before the prior year’s harvest when it became clear her family’s farm was in danger of losing the whole crop, and whose challenge apparently hadn’t lasted the winter, Nall decided it was time for his own sacrifice.

Nall knelt to place the offering of bread and dried fish in the creche beneath the gates of Castle Lombro as he had done hundreds of times before. He stood up from the creche and ran his fingers along the flat monument that sat above it. Nall fingered the last three names. Aiden Stone. Blaine Stone. Ariel Pois. The curves of their letters were sharp and fresh and stung him like they were the names of people he failed. Nall could feel the notches made by the chisel, though the fresh white scars of their names were softening into the deep blue gray of the rest of the rock.

Nall stepped away from the monument and made for the castle’s gate. It was his turn to attempt the challenge. He was not tall, or physically imposing, or capable with a weapon. But neither was Ariel, and her challenge kept the dragon satisfied for half a year.

No one knew what challenging the dragon meant. No one was sure why some challengers were successful in keeping the dragon at bay for months or years and others couldn’t manage a week. There were more theories than a tree had leaves, and none of them were as likely as the next. Some claimed the dragon was more satisfied by human flesh than by the offerings of bread and fish. Why then did a mountain of a man like Blaine sate the dragon for a fraction of the time of tiny Ariel? Others thought that the dragon had to be challenged to a game of wits, one that a challenger could never win, only hope to prolong for as much time as possible. Nall thought the world of Aiden, but he had trouble believing that blockhead would have been able to outsmart a dragon for even an hour.

So Nall didn’t know what to expect when he entered the gate. He just knew that the people of Lombro expected him to be successful in some way that others hadn’t been. They thought that because he asked so many questions about the castle and the history of the dragon, that because he showed such interest, that he somehow knew secrets that all the elders who told him those stories missed. He didn’t believe he had any better knowledge about what to expect or how to satisfy the dragon than anyone else. His curiosity and sense of duty had finally gotten the better of him. What happened behind the gate was a mystery he felt he needed to uncover, even if it was the last thing he ever did.

Castle Lombro was in battle with the elements. A battle it was losing. Young trees sprouted right up to the walls. Creeping vines crept up and cocooned the battlements. Two towers had crumbled down, and the other two looked like they were not far behind. Only the barbican and gate stood solid against time. Nall wondered what would happen in a few hundred years when the forest managed to reclaim the castle. If the dragon would be forced to find a new home and remove the curse on their valley.

Nall walked up to the gate and placed a hand on the giant iron door. It was damp, a feeling that made Nall thirsty after weeks of drought in the village. He moved close and had the urge to lick the metal. His face was filled with the intoxicating scent of iron and water, reminiscent of blood.

The door was enormous, at least twice as tall as Nall. He wondered how he was supposed to get inside the castle. The door would be too heavy to move. He thought there might be an opening in one of the walls, where a tree’s roots had opened a hole into the castle, or maybe one of the collapsed towers offered a way in. He knew there had to be a way. No one had left and returned unable to challenge the dragon. No one had returned at all.

Nall placed his hand on the door. It pushed open easily at his touch, like its hinges were greased and it weighed less than a feather. He shivered. As excited as he was to uncover the mystery of the dragon, there was no turning back now. Nall stepped through the door into the ruinous castle with a fluttering heart, afraid, but determined too.

The courtyard of the castle was a dank, depressing place. The ground was a litter of rocks, tumbled down from the crumbling battlements and towers, and the forest’s new growth. Ferns grew in the shade of the walls, and young trees lifted their gangling trunks haphazardly around the square. At the center of the square, among the fight between old and new, stood the dragon.

The dragon was smaller than Nall expected. From the stories he grew up listening to, he’d thought the dragon to be a monster at least as big as the keep, almost too big for the castle to contain it. He’d imagined a beast, violent and rabid. He’d been prepared to jump into a fight for his life, a fight he expected to lose. But the dragon stood barely taller than a human. It sat on its haunches like a cat, its body covered in shimmering, sapphire scales. It looked fat with all the rain it had stolen.

The dragon stared at Nall without appearing to stare at him. Its face was framed on either side by two long whiskers that explored the air as if they were drifting in a breeze. Aside from that, the dragon could have been a statue.

Nall waited for a roar. For the animal to spring at him, to be thrust into combat. His heart was finally catching up with the situation. It pounded in his chest and in his temples. The small leather cap he wore as a helmet was suddenly too tight, and he wanted to rip it off. He unsheathed a sword, little more than a dagger and all the blacksmith could provide him with on short notice. He took a sliding step forward and extended the tip of the blade towards the dragon. He didn’t trust his voice to issue a challenge.

The dragon remained still for a moment, like it was ignoring him, and then stretched. It reached two clawed feet forward in the dirt and yawned. The whiskers appeared to stretch too, extending to Nall like they were reaching out to shake his hand. He shivered, grasped the knife with both hands, and jabbed it in the direction of the dragon.

“That won’t be necessary,” the dragon said.

Nall dropped the knife. Not because he was listening to the dragon, but because never in his wildest dreams would the dragon have spoken to him. Even the stories that claimed the dragon had to be outsmarted or tricked hadn’t prepared Nall for a beast that spoke his language so easily, and with a vaguely familiar accent.

If Nall dropping the weapon amused the dragon, it didn’t show it. It stretched and yawned again and scratched its fat belly. The claws scraped against scales and made a grating screech that made Nall wince.

“I suppose you’re here to remove me,” the dragon said, nonplussed. Like a challenger arrived every day, which, now that Nall thought about it, wasn’t too far off the truth. There had been three challengers in less than a year’s time. Four, now that he was there.

“Well, I’ll be off then,” the dragon said.

If Nall could have dropped his knife again, he would have. He stared dumbly at the dragon and then started to stammer.

“But what about … how did you … where are …”

“Oh don’t tell me you don’t understand either.”

The dragon didn’t sound like it was annoyed. Its mouth opened in what looked like a grin and its whiskers danced. It sat back down on its haunches and rolled its eyes.

“They should really consult their histories down in the village. If they did, they’d know that Castle Lombro must always be inhabited. If it isn’t, the castle summons me, and for my presence, I demand the rain. That is the simple curse of the last king of Castle Lombro.”

Nall didn’t know what to say. He’d never heard anything about a curse or that the castle was supposed to be lived in. The only thing he knew about the king was ...

“The last king of Lombro was overthrown by the villagers centuries ago. He can’t still have power in the valley, can he?”

“Until the last tower falls, and the final wall is worn down by the years, someone must always live in the castle looking over the valley so that the villagers are reminded that they exist at the pleasure of someone above them. Now that you are here, I can leave.”

“But …”

Nall didn’t know what to say. It sounded too simple, and it didn’t explain where any of the other challengers were. Where were Ariel and the Stone brothers? The dragon looked at him through two patient, immobile eyes, waiting for him to finish. It appeared to enjoy Nall’s squirming.

“Where are the others?” he asked finally.

The dragon shrugged. “They left. If you leave, you die. A young man, Aiden I believe, didn’t bother asking what would happen if he left. I was recalled here quite soon after he took residence. His brother had the gall to chase me out of the castle. I watched his body disintegrate as soon as he passed the monument and was forced to take my place back in the square. The girl, however, lasted longer than I expected. I suppose she felt supported.”

“Supported? No one heard from her again.”

“Of course none of you heard from her.” The dragon was enjoying itself too much, and anger was growing in Nall’s stomach, but he knew he needed information. “You are invisible to them now. You’ve entered the castle. They can’t see or hear you. You are just like the last king of Lombro. Present, but not.”

“How could we have supported her then?”

“You continued to bring her food. She must have thought you believed.” The dragon stretched again and stood up, spreading its wings. They were at least twice the size of its body, and Nall could see the sunlight filtering blue through the thin membranes.

Nall thought about all the times he brought offerings up to the castle, believing they were for the dragon. He wondered if Ariel had watched him. If she’d wondered if he could sense her, and he wished he could say that he had. His heart broke for her, and for Aiden and Blaine. None of them understood.

The dragon flapped its wings once, casting up a whirlwind of dust and gravel. Nall squinted his eyes and braced against the gust.

“How am I supposed to tell them?” he yelled over the wind. “How will they know that I’m here? That I have to be here?”

The dragon didn’t laugh, though its voice carried a sting, like it was saying That’s the point. It circled above the courtyard and called out, “You’ll just have to hope they remember.” And then it was gone.

Nall watched the dragon become a dot in the sky and disappear behind the peaks of the mountains. He stared at the spot and watched dark clouds tumble down from the same peak, blanket the sky, and continue down into the valley. He watched the clouds fill the valley and the rain fall like a screen, hiding him from the village.

*     *     *
The food in the creche had felt like a lot when Nall was carrying it up the mountain. Looking at it now as his sole source of food, it was pitiful. He was nervous just slipping out of the gate to collect it, afraid that his body would disintegrate upon leaving the castle. His body remained intact, though his fingers and toes tingled the whole time. He couldn’t be sure if that was just his imagination or the castle’s curse warning him.

Nall wasn’t sure that he believed the dragon at all. His body didn’t look any different, and he could still lift the food offerings and open the gate. He wasn’t a ghost. There was no way to test it, however, until someone else came to the castle.

Nall’s stomach dropped. He looked at the food, realizing it would need to last him at least a week. And that was if someone in the village even remembered to bring an offering. He was pretty sure they would, given how recently he left, but it made him nervous now that his life depended on their timeliness. He could recall dozens of weeks when the village elders had to be reminded, usually by him, that an offering was required. He hoped someone would take up the mantle in his absence.

The days crept by. Nall explored the castle that was now his home. The stonework was in dire condition, and he felt uneasy walking through hallways that were partially caved in, nervous that the rest of it would give way and crush him before he had a chance to prove himself. Of the two remaining towers, only one was passable. The staircase of the other had collapsed, and the entire structure held on by a few, small loadstones. Nall thought he could have kicked one and knocked the whole thing down. He climbed the other tower and spent more and more of his time up there. He could see some of his village’s roofs down in the valley. Smokestacks rose like curling arms waving to him, and he saw activity in the fields now that they were getting rain. Seeing the activity made him feel like his sacrifice had been worth it.

The food, carefully parceled out, lasted the week. Barely. Nall went to bed hungry every night and woke each morning before sunrise with an aching stomach. The bread staled to rocks and he spent half a morning gnawing it into swallowable mush. He hid the rest in small rooms, out of sight to keep himself from eating more than a day’s allowance.

On the one-week mark, Nall watched the trail from the village attentively from the tower. It was too far to make out anyone starting on the trail down in the valley, but there were a number of breaks in the foliage and open spaces along the mountainside where he hoped to see someone, anyone, coming to support him.

At midday, Nall finished his last stale chunk of bread and started to worry he’d miscounted the days. He tried to remember something distinct from each day since the dragon left, but they all blurred together. He was positive that he’d partitioned the food in seven equal piles. Almost positive.

“Hello,” a voice called.

Nall froze. His eyes widened and he swallowed.

“Nall? Anyone?”

It was Artuin. Of course Artuin, his best friend in the world, would support him. Artuin might not have had Nall’s enthusiasm for the castle and its lore, but he would want to remember Nall.

Nall tried to call out, but his mouth was too dry from the bread. He cleared his throat and made a noise that was more desperate grunt than reply, and then he ran down the tower’s steps. He rushed around the battlements to a pile of rubble and slid down. He scraped the back of his legs and skinned one of his hands. He ran to the gate and pulled.

The gate didn’t budge.

Nall pulled again, putting all of his weight into it. The gate refused to move an inch. He slapped the iron with his skinned hand and yelped at the surprise sting of pain. He fell back on the ground and held his hurt fist close to his chest.

“Nall?” Artuin’s voice was muffled through the gate, but Nall could still hear it. He called out until his voice grew hoarse and he was just sobbing unintelligible cries. Artuin never responded. Eventually, Artuin stopped calling out. The birds started chirping again, and the only other sounds were leaves rustling in the wind.

Nall stayed on the ground crying until the shadows of the wall lengthened and covered him in cool darkness. He shivered and stood up. There was a faint bloody handprint on the gate, and he touched it. He knew the gate would open for him now, and it did silently, revealing an empty courtyard. There was a tiny part of Nall that wanted to sprint down the path and try to catch Artuin. He knew it was hopeless. Artuin was long gone, and Nall would be dead before he lost sight of the castle. Even if he had caught Artuin, Artuin wouldn’t have been able to see him. The dragon had told the truth. He was trapped in the castle, alone, until he lost his nerve, or the castle deteriorated around him.

The creche was filled with food again, though not as much as Nall would have liked. He was in no condition to be picky. He scurried it all inside and before he let himself think, he feasted. He completely sated his hunger for the first time in a week. After collecting every crumb of bread and morsel of fish and licking them from his fingers, he looked at the pitiful pile that remained. He swallowed and looked at the sky. There were clouds coming down from the mountains. He hoped they would drop enough rain so that he could at least drink his fill to hide his hunger.

*     *     *
Nall settled into a rhythm of hunger and loneliness. He got better at making the offered food last the full week, separating the piles into their own rooms, one for each day. He found it was easier to eat all the food for a given day at once as soon as he woke up. That way he wouldn’t forget whether he’d eaten later in the day and inadvertently eat a second day’s rations.

On the third week, Artuin was accompanied by the grandfather of the Stone family. The old man Stone carried his chisel and hammer and helped Artuin with a larger than normal offering of food. Nall watched them approach from the tower. He could hear the low murmur of their voices but couldn’t make out the words. When they disappeared from view under the wall, Nall ran down from the tower to the battlements.

“How long will it take you?”

Artuin’s voice was so faint that Nall could just make out the words. He leaned out as far as he could from an opening in the battlements. He still couldn’t see them. A tingly, uneasy feeling filled his body, so he pulled back and resigned himself to listening.

“Not long. Aren’t many letters in Nall, and none of them are tricky. Aiden would have been quicker at it, but these creaky hands have still got some skill in them.”

Nall heard the high-pitched clink clink clink of a chisel against stone.

“What do you think happened?” Artuin asked.

The chiseling paused. “Happened? He challenged the dragon. Scared him off, most likely. Hopefully he stays away for a while yet. We’ve got a few more months until harvest, and a drought now would kill the fields.”

Artuin was silent for a moment and the chiseling resumed. When he spoke again, his voice was so low the clinking of metal on stone almost drowned him out. Nall strained to hear.

“Do you really think Nall scared the dragon off? Don’t you remember him? He was … well, he wasn’t the kind to face off with a dragon.”

Nall’s heart sank. Artuin was his best friend in the world. If he was already doubting him a few weeks after he left, who knew what everyone else was saying down in the village.

“The dragon’s gone, isn’t he?”

“Who knows if there even is a dragon? The rain stopped. The rain came back. It could just be coincidence that it comes back after someone comes up here and disappears. Maybe there was no dragon, and he was too ashamed to return emptyhanded, so he ran off.”

Nall screamed down at them and almost missed the old man Stone’s quiet response. “Do you think that’s what my grandchildren did? Ran off in shame?”

If Artuin responded, Nall couldn’t hear him. The old man continued. “You can see the rain caught in this castle like a faucet from the sky. Don’t pretend like you don’t remember. Maybe there is a dragon, maybe there isn’t. All we know is that when someone comes up here to find it, they disappear, and the rain comes back. The sacrifice, and its result, are real. The best thing you can do for your friend is to remember him. If you don’t like thinking about bringing offerings to a dragon that might or might not have killed him, bring the offerings to Nall. Talk to him. He did something very brave, just like my grandchildren. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be called on to make the same sacrifice someday.”

Artuin didn’t respond and the harsh chiseling continued. Too soon, it ended. There was shuffling, some knocking about of tools, and then the sound of footsteps receding from the castle walls.

Nall didn’t move immediately. He felt empty. The old man Stone’s words were kind, but they also passed on a heavy responsibility. Nall felt that he was holding on by the thinnest of strands, and he needed to hold out at least until harvest. It felt like an eternity.

Hunger won out over self-pity. Nall scurried down the battlements and out of the castle. The offered food that had looked so bountiful in their hands barely filled the creche. Some of the bread was already stale, and he threw a roll in frustration into the forest. Nall stared at the empty space between the trees where the bread had flown in horror. One less roll to get him through the week. He hung his head and brought the rest of the food into the castle, chastened. He didn’t even look at the new white scar on the monument bearing his name.

Artuin brought the food faithfully each week. He started bringing other offerings too. A whittled flute, old obsidian arrowheads, a poor carving of what might have been a dragon. Nall treasured all of them. The castle was a barren place. He’d explored everything there was to explore and hadn’t found anything to pass the time. Those trinkets were worth almost as much as the food.

The weeks crawled by. Nall spent days in the tower, willing the rows of green in the distant fields to grow tall. He longed for the day when he would see the glint of scythes swinging and could finally entertain the idea of leaving the castle.

Then came the week when Artuin didn’t bring the offering. Nall scoured every room he’d ever hidden food in twice and then tore the entire castle apart. He returned to the creche time after time, hoping he’d just missed Artuin. And then night fell, and Nall’s worry turned to fear. There was no food.

The following week was the longest of Nall’s life. He crept from room to room in a daze, hoping that somehow food would have materialized there. He licked the floor of each room, picking up more gravel than crumb. He sifted through the dirt around the creche. By the third day he’d resorted to eating insects he found beneath the stones of the castle. They made his stomach hurt. It was a different, less insistent pain than the twisting of his empty stomach.

The day that marked two weeks from the last offering, Nall started to wonder whether his dying of starvation would break the curse. If he was going to perish one way or another, it would give even more meaning to his sacrifice if he could end the dragon’s reign forever. He resolved to try. Even if more food was brought, he wouldn’t touch it. The harvest was close enough that the crops could survive a mild drought if he was wrong. And then he heard footsteps and thoughts of food forced any conviction out of his mind.

It seemed to Nall that Artuin took his time delivering the offering. There were a lot of footsteps, sighing, and even a knock on the iron door. Nall pulled on it halfheartedly, knowing that it wouldn’t budge but unable to stop the reflex. Finally, the steps receded. Nall tore the gate open to get to the food.

He forced himself to be deliberate. He only ate a portion of his day’s food, though he could have eaten the entire offering. His mouth was salivating at the remaining pile, and he had to swallow repeatedly to keep from drooling all over it. He separated it into groups and hid them in different rooms, careful to keep a small number of dried fish separate. He needed to build a store for any future week that an offering was forgotten.

*     *     *
Nall wasted away and his clothes hung off him. He became a slave to his food and nothing else mattered. He stopped exploring the castle, stopped climbing to the tower, stopped doing anything that wasted energy. He counted time in how long it had been since he last ate, and how long it would be until he could eat again.

He started meditating in front of the gate. Sometimes he wasted whole days sitting in a fugue, letting hunger pangs wax and wane. More often than he would have admitted to anyone, he came out of his meditations in the castle’s dungeons, picking bugs beneath stones.

Artuin was fairly regular providing food throughout the summer, but after harvest he missed more and more weeks. Nall could never build more than a meager store before a week would go by without an offering and he was forced to eat the last of his food. And then winter came, and the offerings stopped altogether.

A thin layer of snow covered the ground around the castle, and it remained undisturbed week after week. Nall stretched his food down to the last crumb until every morsel was gone. The bugs hid from the cold or Nall had managed to eat them all, he wasn’t sure which. Time grew meaningless in the gray twilight of a starved winter. Nall crouched, shivering in the courtyard, hoping the elements would claim him before hunger. He gnawed on his fingers until they bled, and then he sucked the blood from his torn nubs. He thought relentlessly about escaping the castle, letting his body disintegrate just to make the torment end. He held onto the miniscule hope that by dying inside the castle he would end the curse.

Nall wasted and wilted, but the castle would not let him die. He jumped out of his delirium at any odd sound that his brain could equate to a footstep in the snow. The winter passed and Nall lived on the edge of starvation, suffering, his body eating itself but kept preternaturally alive.

*     *     *
The rain woke Nall. He fought waking, afraid of the hunger pains that came with being conscious, but once he was aware that it was raining, it was impossible to get comfortable. He opened his mouth, hoping that a few drops might slake his hunger, at least for a while, and he realized it did. He sat there like a statue, his mouth open to the sky, and delighted in every raindrop that landed in his mouth. He felt bigger, stronger than he had in months. Somehow, he had survived the winter, despite being forgotten by his village.

Nall kept his mouth open to the sky for as long as the rain fell. He felt like he drank gallons. When the rain finally stopped, he closed his mouth and shook the wetness from his body, listening to the drops buffet against the rocks around him. Which was strange. He shouldn’t have been close enough to any of the walls to hit them. He stretched and felt an unfurling sensation.

Nall looked up at two leathery wings stretched taut above him. They covered half the courtyard like a tent covering. He looked down at his legs, saw claws digging into the gravel, emerald scales glittering with raindrops.

He didn’t have much time to wonder at the change. He heard the scratching sound of feet falling along the dirt path outside the walls. They paused, and he heard food drop into the creche. It was too late for that, Nall thought. He wasn’t hungry anymore.

Nall waited for the footsteps to disappear and looked up to the sky, wondering if there would be more rain soon. The water filling his stomach was wonderous unlike any meal he’d ever had. It beat bugs, bread, and fish by a mile. He almost didn’t notice the gate silently opening. The wet metal flashed, and Nall got a whiff of the forest.

A boy stood under the open gate. He was familiar, but Nall didn’t see humans the same way he once had. The boy was afraid. His knees shook, and he looked shocked to be face to face with a dragon. He stood his ground. Nall was impressed, though he didn’t hold any ill feelings towards the boy.

“I’ve come to challenge you,” the boy stammered. He swallowed and lifted his foot to step into the courtyard.

“Wait,” Nall said. The boy froze.

Nall didn’t know why he stopped the boy coming in. He knew that the castle needed to be lived in, that the boy should rightfully take his place. A vague memory made him hesitate.

“Why are you challenging me?” he asked.

The boy took a step back, as if his reasons were obvious. “You’re stealing our water,” he said. “The crops won’t grow if the drought continues. I don’t know what you want, whether it’s a sacrifice or a battle or what, but I’m here to give it to you.”

Again the boy lifted his foot to step into the castle, and again Nall stopped him. He narrowed his eyes.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Artuin.”

“Artuin,” Nall murmured. “Artuin!” His eyes flashed. Artuin who had brought him food. Artuin who had been his friend. Artuin, who had forgotten about him.

Nall fumed inside. In a flash he remembered each hungry day, every twist of his stomach, every aching moment he had spent waiting for Artuin to arrive. He had suffered because of Artuin. And he could make Artuin suffer in return.

Nall tossed his head from side to side and by chance his eyes lit on the small, whittled flute, and his anger deflated. Artuin didn’t know he had abandoned him. All he knew was that his friend had disappeared. Perhaps the visits to the castle had been just as painful, only in a different way. Letting him fall into the same trap would be evil.

“Go back to the village,” Nall said. As soon as he made up his mind, he could feel the castle working against him. It pried at his brain and tried to stop him from speaking. He pushed on. “Tell them that someone must always live at Castle Lombro. Tell them that even if they can’t see you, they must feed you. Don’t enter the castle until you are sure they will bring you food. Then I will leave.”

Artuin stared closely at Nall like he almost recognized him. Then he shook his head.

“That’s it?” he asked. “I come in, and you leave?”

“That’s it. Someone must always inhabit Castle Lombro. If you leave, you die, and I return and drink all the village’s water from the sky for payment until another comes to take my place. That is the way it must be until the last tower falls and the battlements are breached.”

Artuin looked puzzled and asked more questions, but the castle was weighing on Nall now. He shook his head and retreated inside himself. He hoped Artuin understood and would listen to him.

Artuin left and returned the next day. It had rained overnight, and Nall was full and strong again. Artuin opened the door, and Nall was ready for him.

“They’re going to bring you food?” Nall asked.

Artuin nodded from the gate. Nall stood and stretched his wings. Artuin flinched and stepped back.

“Can I really not leave after I come in?” he asked.

Nall nodded. “They won’t be able to see you, or hear you either,” he said softly.

Artuin’s face flashed with fear and then acceptance. He lifted a foot and stepped into the castle.

There was nothing else to say. A weight lifted from Nall’s head. He looked into the mountains and saw the clouds there, flowing down into the valley. He jumped and pumped his wings, circling in the courtyard to gain altitude. On his last circle he kicked out a leg and knocked the loadstone from one of the two remaining towers. It crumbled into the forest outside of the wall, and part of the battlements tumbled into the forest below.

“One tower to go,” he called down. He didn’t know if Artuin heard him. Nall wasn’t tied to the castle anymore, at least as long as Artuin remained. He flew up and into the clouds that fed him. Nall never felt the pull of Castle Lombro again. Sometimes, flitting between delicious rain clouds, he wondered whether Artuin still inhabited the tower, alone and waiting for the elements to bring down the final tower. Or if the villagers had forgotten him, and a new dragon of Castle Lombro was now fulfilling the curse.