She takes me in her hands and I am already hers.


Her eyes are the dusty blue of the meandering Seine. Her hair is the shimmering black of the Piazza del Duomo under a rain-struck night. The Girl runs her fingertips along the rough edges of my stone and inspects the gruesomeness of my fangs with the trusting smile of youth. She is too old to fear me, and too young to know that she should.

The Woman slinks up beside her with a grimace and says, “Don’t you think it’s a little macabre?”

“I think it’s cute,” The Girl says. “In an ugly sort of way.”

“Where would you even put it?”

“My bookshelf, I guess. They’re supposed to be up high, aren’t they?”

The Woman lifts her shoulders. “Well, it’s your birthday money.”

The Girl gives my figure a final inspection. She is surrounded by the ephemera of my humble housing—by swords that have seen no battle and candles that have aided no ritual and crystals that have known no cavern. But the wisdom of childhood allows her to see beyond my beginnings, and the touch of her thumb is reverent as it trails along my wings. She says, “Yeah—I think I’ll get it.”

The Girl’s name is Sara.

I am given a perch in my new domain, a lofted place of honor alongside the treasures of Sara’s history, collected seashells and filled picture frames and a painted music box. I peer at the four posters of a lace-draped bed; at the wide maw of a long-untouched toy chest; at the overburdened shelves of a well-stuffed bookcase. Each detail, I carve into my memory.

A familiar voice finds me then, whispering into the stone tuft of my ear. She is a child, it says.

Another says, But not for long.

She knows no demons, says the first.

A third says, But she will.

I do not need their counsel. This is my kingdom now. In time, I will know every inch. I will know where troublesome spirits cower in the moonlight. Where starlight monsters dig their claws. I will know where shadows lurk, waiting for the sinking sun to free them of their tethers. And I will know Sara. If demons come, they will find me.

Sara sits on the edge of her bed, looking up as I look down. I memorize the smooth curves of her cheeks and the tumble of her hair; she memorizes the carved points of my feathers and the spread of my paws. She says, “What do I call you?” She chews on her lip for a moment of silent consideration, then says, “How about Callifax?”

I have a name.

I have never had a name before.

*     *     *
By daylight, I keep a still watch over my domain. Sometimes Sara opens the toy chest with a touch of embarrassment to rifle through once-loved dolls, wondering why they’ve lost their luster. Sometimes she sprawls across the carpeted floor and fills blank pages with gruesome beasts and dazzling creatures, half-known to be imagined but half-believed to be real. Sometimes her bed grows crowded with other children, giggling and bright-eyed, filling the walls with their whispers.

But it is at night where my work is done—where I can move muscle and bare teeth and stretch wings within the soft matter of her dreams. Her imagination is dizzying as it weaves and knots and creates; I mind that those creations maintain their soft edges. The nightmares I challenge with claw and fang until they wilt away in fear of the ugliness of my face. I leave Sara with only beautiful things—thrilling voyages and harmless adventure, gentle romance and blood-bound friendships. Dreams that allow her to awaken with a pleasant glow.

Sara changes and grows, and so too does the breadth of my watch. A year passes and the toy chest disappears, its bulk replaced by a homework-strewn desk. Two, and the picture books are gone, replaced by thickly-bound tomes. Four, and the sketchbooks are overtaken by the sprawl of a school newspaper layout, photographs and text neatly aligned, edits slashed in red pen. Six years, and The Boy appears.

His smile is nervous at first. Timid. He bashfully calls The Woman ma’am. He carries a guitar into my domain and shows Sara how to play, her growing hands still straining to find the proper strings. Sometimes he brings flowers, or scrawled poetry, or self-composed, saccharine songs, and though he believes them to be gifts for Sara, I recognize them as offerings. Offerings like the hymns written and votive candles lit in honor of my elders.

But my kin are not appeased. They whisper, He must be watched.

Beasts are at his door.

A demon grows within him.

To quiet the voices, I trail The Boy into his dreams. I find the ordinary threads of a mortal subconscious: forgotten exams and missed buses, metamorphosing faces and distorted places. The nightmares, I leave be; he is not Sara, and I do not owe him my care. But I allow his favored dreams to remain, too—those where he stands upon a stage, a guitar in hand and the cries of a crowd in his ears, his eyes blinking into a marvelous spotlight.

To my kin, I say, I have found no demons. His dreams are innocent.

To this, they give no response.

Their silence feels knowing, somehow.

*     *     *
Then, on a rain-soaked and cloud-dulled afternoon, Sara curls on the spread of her four-poster bed with tears tracing rivers down the slope of her nose. Her dark hair cascades over the cliffside of her mattress like a waterfall. Her hand clutches a phone to her ear, and though she speaks to an unseen companion, I like to imagine that she is talking to me.

“He told me that he can’t give me what I deserve,” she says, rubbing at her eyes. “He said he’s confused about us. And that he wants to focus on his music.”

She falls into silence, listening. I cannot speak in the waking world; I can only watch, and hope that the watch brings comfort. My powerlessness is suffocating.

Then Sara sits up, pajama-clad legs curling beneath her. She wipes her face clear with a broad palm and says, “His stupid music isn’t even that good.” There is venom in her tone, but her next breath comes ragged and wavering. More quietly, she says, “Do you think he’ll realize he’s made a mistake?”

I feel my kin move close before I hear them.

The Boy has a demon, says one. We gave you warnings.

I saw no demons, I say. Only dreams.

It is not so easy to tell the difference. You have not had the centuries that we have.

I say, Even if there is a demon, it does not matter. I do not belong to The Boy. He is not my concern.

The first says, What is your purpose, small one, if not to exorcise?

I have no answer.

In the span of my hesitance, the second says, Tell us when it is done.

Then I feel my kin leave me. Nothing more needs to be said. Orders have been given, and orders must be followed.

In the evening, I break reality’s shackles and return to the dreamscape. A quick sweep of Sara’s subconscious finds the colors dimmed by heartache and the shapes distorted by the grief of lost romance, but there is no damage that will not heal in time. Then I follow the long, wandering path to The Boy’s sleeping mind, the tether between us stretched thin by distance. I find him in the nascent stages of slumber, the filaments of dreams just beginning to weave into something of substance. I prowl and sniff and stalk through those half-formed impressions, hunting out the tainted thing that I am expected to find.

And there, buried beneath the feel of a guitar and the cacophonous cheers of an audience and the blinding beam of a stage light, I find it. Greed, wistfulness, a hope so sharp that it borders on lust. Dreams so rich that they’ve mutated into desires; desires so enticing that they’ve sprouted teeth and claws of their own.

My kin were right.

And I know what must be done.

I tear The Boy from the demon’s thrall, freeing him from the stage and guitar and spotlight, and place him upon a stretch of unshapen space. The Boy blinks at my towering visage with only muted surprise; such is the nature of dreaming.

To him, I say, I am not a dream. It is in dreams that I work. I am as real as you.

He accepts this truth with the trust of the sleeping and says, “But you belong to Sara. Don’t you?”

I am hers. She is mine.

He scans the formless landscape, seeking explanation, and says, “Then why are you here?”

You have a demon, I say. It is my purpose to cleanse you of it.

The Boy’s lips curl in a bemused smirk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Witness.

And then I allow the beast to draw near again, tugging at his imagination. Thrumming speakers, a sweat-splattered microphone, the stretch of a red carpet. Reporters saying, “Can you tell us about the inspiration for this album?” The Boy absorbs the fantasy, then shakes his head, saying, “This isn’t a demon. It’s just …wishful thinking.”

It was once, but it has lost its innocence. Now it will only cause harm.

“Harm?” he says, rising irritation in his voice. “What harm? Look—if this is about Sara, I didn’t do anything wrong. We’re young. Break-ups happen. And it’s not a sin to prioritize my own goals for a while.”

The dream has become solid and untamed. It has harmed Sara, yes. But soon it will harm you, too. It must be destroyed.

The Boy scoffs his disbelief. “Go ahead and try, I guess. This is my imagination. I control what happens here, and I can make you disappear the moment that I want to.”

I say, You are wrong.

He opens his mouth, but before a word can be said, I descend. I take the stage in my teeth, the microphone in my claws, the guitar in my paws. The Boy becomes lost to me; he does not matter. I am concerned only with subduing the demon as it thrashes and struggles and fights. By night’s end, I have left the beast in tatters, mere insubstantial scraps that will drift back into The Boy’s thoughts to become the ordinary, harmless fodder of ordinary, harmless dreams.

Then I retreat, locking back into stone. My kin greet me with muted congratulations, sounding in echoed polyphony: It is done, it is done, it is done. The eldest says, The work is good. Dutifully, I reply, The work is good. I can still taste the demon, stage and guitar and fame, on my fangs. It tastes like purpose.

But then daylight breaks. Sara stirs in the four-poster bed. My power drains and my watch begins. But a final whisper finds me, stealing my satisfaction.

It says, Her time will come, too.

*     *     *
Sara’s tears grow scarce. Her smile brightens, and she laughs without the strain of heartache. Her companions return, now too large for sleeping bags and midnight games that pretend at magic; instead they carry backpacks and binders and textbooks. College pamphlets scatter like leaves across the bedspread, boasting of ivy-traced buildings and sun-bathed courtyards. I know some about these places; my ancestors have long peered down upon such institutions. They are places of dreams. Places, too, of demons.

It is here that The Boy is next spoken of—only one time more. A companion glances up shyly from an unfolded brochure and says, “So. Did you hear that Luis is applying to Southern?”

Sara flips through a folder of color-tabbed pages, her shoulders betraying an underlying tension. With crisp delicacy, she says, “I did not. Good for him.”

A second companion clears her throat, eyes averted with feigned distraction, and says, “Owen told me he’s planning to go if he gets in.”

Sara looks up with a raised brow. She says, “I thought he was taking a year off to focus on the band.”

Second Companion shrugs. “Maybe not.”

“But wasn’t Owen trying to schedule some kind of tour?”

Second Companion says, “Maybe Luis’ parents talked him out of it.”

First Companion mutters, “Or maybe he realized he’s not that good at guitar.”

Sara is silent for a moment. I can see the churn of her thoughts—hope and disgust and a hint, inexplicable, of disappointment. She shakes off the unexpected melancholy with a stubborn blink and says, “Doesn’t matter. I’ll never run into him, anyway. There’s no way I’m staying in-state.”

The voices, they whisper:

The time draws near.

She will grow and leave.

She will no longer believe that she needs you.

We, too, have seen the folly of humankind against demons.

Be wary.

*     *     *
I am not alarmed when boxes appear. My watch stays steadfast as Sara folds clothing and stacks books and wraps delicate frames in paper. The Woman hovers more than she has since the era of the toy chest, wistfully running her fingers along the decorative curves of the bed’s four posts and anxiously straightening the already-taut sheets. With forced lightness, she says, “If you went to Western, you could still live at home. Something to consider.”

Sara neatly wraps charging cords and says, “I know, Mom.”

“You could save money. For grad school, or whatever you want to do later.”

Sweetly, Sara says, “I’m going to visit all the time, you know.”

“I know,” The Woman says, her voice a sigh. “But there’s still time if you want to think it over.”

“I’ll think it over,” Sara says. But I know, and she knows, that this is a lie.

I wait to be placed in a box; to join the collection of her favored things. The photographs at my flank are removed. Then the little blue box of collected notes, the swell of folded paper within straining the hinges. Then a pewter dragon figurine, dull silver and dead-eyed—even it is paper-wrapped and tucked away. Still, I remain on the shelf.

She does not want your protection, the voices say. She is turning her back on your aid.

It has happened to us before, sighs another. So many have left. So many have fled.

They forgot to fear the demons, says a third. So, too, has she.

I say, There is time.

You deny, says the first.

You do not want to believe, says the second.

It is hard, says another. And you are so small. We do not blame you for your weakness.

But you must be strong, another says. For her.

Then they fade, whispering, Do what must be done.

I am left, alone, to peer down at boxes and their taunting sharp angles.

They are right. She will leave. She will leave, and have dreams. Those dreams will become desires, and those desires will mutate into demons—demons that she will sacrifice for, bleed for. And then, when those distorted dreams fail her, they will gnaw at her soul. Even now, she may hold one—a demon that begs her to escape my watch. That tells her she no longer needs to be guarded.

I whisper to myself, Do what must be done.

And when darkness falls, I descend.

I weave through the ever-shifting landscape of her slumber. The fragments of dreams, the seedlings of nightmares. I do not see it, at first, but I feel it—a mutation. Something that has become tangible and sharp and insistent. I slowly stalk my prey, lest my haste give the beast warning, but I hold a perverse hope that it will escape me. Demons must be destroyed, I know. It is why I am. Still—some part of me does not want to take it.

When I find the beast, it comes to me as a tall thing. A tower. No—a skyscraper, locked in by intersecting streets. Sara is inside, hidden within a bustling, cacophonous office. Her fingers tap at a computer keyboard, bespectacled eyes peering at a screen, and a suited woman sweeps forward to say, “I’ve got a story for you, but I’m going to need you to hop on a plane to London first thing tomorrow.”

Then the tallness of the demon becomes wide, long, flat—a stage, freshly shined and aglow in a soft blue light. A wooden podium sits at dead center, behind which stands a beaming man who cradles a framed golden medal in his arms. He calls Sara’s name, and she emerges from the audience with a humble smile, sweeping forward amongst scattered applause to claim her prize.

I witness this and feel the squeeze of melancholy tighten across my feathered chest. This demon will crush her. It will crush her when she leaves home and finds her first apartment in squalor. It will crush her when the boss hands her a red-scrawled draft and says, “The article was okay, but you’re really going to need to work on your sentence structure.” It will crush her when the prize does not come; when no prize ever comes.

It must be destroyed.

I must destroy it.

For her.

I create for Sara a cathedral as grand and striking as Koln or Notre-Dame or the Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar; dark, towering elegance filled with tidy pews and stained glass windows and flickering candles that cast dancing shadows on a tiled floor. Then I take Sara from the demon’s grasp and place her before me, sunbeams through the stained glass panes reflecting dazzling colors off the black of her hair. She is unbothered by the change in place, and when she looks up and finds me above, her lips curl into a smile.

She says, “What are you doing here?” Her voice is affectionate. Warm.

I say nothing. I am surprised to find that words fail me.

She takes a step deeper, her footsteps echoing off the magnificently lofted ceiling. She says, “I haven’t seen you in my dreams for a long time. I must be feeling nervous about moving. Is that it?”

It is not. But I say, Yes.

“It makes sense. Mom’s freaking out a little. But I guess you’ve seen that. It’s a big change. I guess I’ve been feeling stressed about it, too.”

You do not need to go.

“I do,” she says. “There are things I want to do with my life, and I can’t do them here.”

Others have left the protection of my kind, and they found no peace in it.

“Peace isn’t always enough,” she says, smiling. Smiling as though I am the one who is naive.

It is enough, I say. And I must protect you from the things that would shatter it.

“I’m pretty sure you’re about this big,” Sara says, making a four-inch space with her thumb and index finger. “So I don’t know what you think you could protect me from.”

Your dreams, I say.

She laughs. “That’s silly. Dreams are harmless.”

They are not. They are not, when they fail.

She considers, then says, “Okay. Sure. I guess that’s always a possibility. But it doesn’t do any good to be afraid of something that hasn’t even happened yet. Otherwise I’d never leave. I’d never do anything.”

I feel my claws sink into the floor. My teeth clench, tightening in anguish and resistance and instinct. I shake my head, feeling the dissonance like mites in my feathers. I am stone; I cannot feel pain. But the knowledge that Sara intends to leave my watch is an itch unresolved—a torment, swelling from paws to wings to beak, rising like bubbling magma with no release.

I beg, If you must leave, then take me. Take me, so I can keep my watch. I can hold the demons at bay. I will keep them from overwhelming you.

Her smile is sad. “I don’t need to be watched anymore, Callifax. I need to get used to handling things on my own, dreams and all. Don’t I?”

I hear my kin whisper: If you cannot handle the task, small one, then we will.

I bring my gaze to Sara’s. Her eyes, curious and intent, hold mine. I see the faded innocence of her childhood, leaving only a sliver. I see the turmoil of her future, glistening with the pain of shattered expectations. My ancestors draw near, their dissonant whispers growing louder in my ears as they await and anticipate my failure, ready to sweep in should I disobey.

But they are not Sara’s. I am. The work is mine.

So I say, I am sorry.

And descend.

The skyscraper wails in my teeth as it is dismantled floor by floor. The stage and podium bleed out through my claws. The framed medal is torn into shreds that flutter throughout her dreamscape like wafting ash. And with the scraps of dismembered dreams still clinging to my fangs and feathers, I hear the whispers of my elders—the ones who have done this work for centuries, for millennia—saying, It is done.

It is done.

It is done.

*     *     *
Morning comes.

Sara stares at boxes. She considers them. Nothing more is added.

Days pass. With some hesitance, she removes things from their tombs. Photographs replaced. The pewter dragon returned. Toiletries extracted. Clothing unfolded.

The Woman smiles, but the smiles are uncertain. She says, “I know I was sort of against this whole move from the start, but—you’re not doing this for me, are you? I want you to make your own choices.”

“I know,” Sara says. “I just don’t think I’m ready.”

“You’re sure?” The Woman perches on the edge of Sara’s mattress, fussing with the bedspread. “I’m happy to have you at home, of course. As long as you need. But you seemed so excited, honey.”

Sara sits next to The Woman, eyeing the carpet, and says, “I was. But it would be a lot of money, and I wasn’t really sure what I would be going for, other than just to go. So maybe it’s better if I stay here for a little bit longer. Just until I figure out what I want.”

The Woman says, “And what you want isn’t journalism?”

Slowly, Sara says, “I don’t why, but the idea just doesn’t excite me anymore.”

The Woman cups Sara’s face in her hands, looking into the dusty blue of her eyes. She says, “I know you’ll find something that does.”

Sara nods her subdued agreement.

“And this is really what you think is best?”

“It is.”

The Woman stands, adjusts the fluff of Sara’s pillows a final time, and retreats. In solitude, Sara sighs, neither unhappy nor content. It is an empty, meaningless breath. The whispers say, The work is good.

With some hesitance, I say, The work is good.

Then Sara folds her legs upon the mattress and lifts her chin in my direction. I think she sees me. I know that I see her—my small cathedral, masked as a human. My castle in need of guarding. Still here. Still with me. Were I not stone, I would have felt my spine straighten with renewed vigor. I have fulfilled my purpose. I have kept her safe.

The work is good, I repeat. Then louder, with certainty, I say to my kin, Yes. The work is good.