Onomatophobia: A Fable of Healing

A Gift Story for Jessica Neal

The glen was quiet. A dead barren, hidden among the winter pines, snow stifling the few lives that made their way there. Snakes slithered between the rotting roots, and the wiggling butts of boring beetles stuck out of the side of a great, fallen tree. It was once a meeting place for spirits. Now, a silver, grumpy lizard- large as an ox and twice as fat- nestled inside.

Nobody with any sense came to the dragon’s hollow. Unfortunately for many, Teja never had any sense, and refused to find any.

She had vastly under-prepared for the journey- after spending so much time interviewing wayfarers at the Crossroads, where the hostel’s hearth fire was never more than a few dozen meters away, she had forgotten the bitter cold of these forests. The nights had grown long in anticipation of the solstice, and the sun was a distant, diffuse blip each day. She should have waited for summer. Yet, when the skald with the wyrm-tooth harp told her about the nameless dragon in these woods, she could not resist the trek.

Her usual glamour from the Crossroads long-since faded, Teja was maybe the first troll to set foot in these woods in a millennium. Her tail- a wiry, unwieldy thing- drew excited squiggles in the snow as she rounded the edge of the forest. Her nose and chin grew pink from the cold, and her fuzzy ears flicked in the snow.

The lizard saw the woman approach. Powdered snow fluttered away from him as his nostrils flared. He was unimpressed.

“Great dragon! Hear my plea!” Teja’s projected voice- a thing smooth and powerful as cut stone- rumbled through the hollow. “I am Teja of the Crossroads- bard and witch in equal measure. I beg an audience.” She bowed.

The dragon narrowed its eyes vertically, then blinked horizontally. It growled annoyance. “If you beg, then you do so poorly, forest mare.” He spoke not through voice, but through the shrill shrieks of a fox, the sudden cracks of glacial ice, and the sharp whistle of the wind- a language of the elements. “Which of my kin put you up to this?”

Teja’s ears- plumes of snow crusted fur- flicked back. “I was told by a skald. That you were yet unnamed?” She raised an eyebrow. “They had seemed- by all accounts- human.”

“Hah!” His laughter was the crack of a bone in a bear’s jaw. “No human could know me. At least, none living.”

Anybody should have been afraid. Teja’s tail flicked excitedly. “Why is that?”

The dragon leveled his gaze at the troll. Something slithered away from him as he brushed off the layer of snow, and stepped out of his hollow. His movements were silent. “Do you know what dragons are?” He asked, brow raised.

“Depends on the author, I’d say.” Teja mentally flipped through the fragments of epics she’d heard over the years. “Mostly monsters. Fire-breathing, or dripping with venom. Man eaters.”

The dragon circled around the woman, a crescent of silver scales and rime. His voice cascaded as a whisper. “Sometimes.” He admitted. “We are spirits of name. Many are drawn to titles that lead to destruction- Terror and Greed, Discord and Tyrant. Even Emperor. Now long-dead, as they should be. To choose a name is to take it into yourself. To have it take you. This is doubly so for us.”

His tail flicked. His head turned towards the sky. “My mother is Myth, and my father Ambition. My mother is a thin skink, nestling in the cracks of hearthstones of storytellers, gently reminding them the reason behind the stories they mangle.

“Father is a wicked thing- a splinter in the eye of once-reasonable folk. Even now, he brings madness and ruin and, worst of all, art.”

Teja had sat down on a stump at some point. She was scribbling away at a piece of parchment neatly. “You are saying these dragons are around us?” She cocked her head. “How come I’ve never seen them?”

“Because you didn’t know how to look!” He snapped back. His teeth were yellow and broken. “Because you had not yet met Revelation.” With a sudden crack of his tail, the dragon shuffled back into his stump, curled up like a particularly suspicious kitten.

“Is that you?”

“Hah! Never.” He grumbled. “My idiot brother. The one you called skald. He takes to your world and corrupts the beautifully ignorant with sight of things they need not worry about during life. Mortals will meet us in due time.”

“I see.” Teja wondered how long this dragon had spent here alone. He was quite mad. “Then, what is your name?” Her lips quirked. “‘Monologue’?”

“Certainly not ‘Patience’.” He growled. He slowly blinked. “No, now that you are here, you should at least know. I have no name. No title. The one I was to inherit- the one that called to me as a wyrmling. I stopped seeking it…” His scales tightened as he gritted his jaw. “Were I to inherit it, I fear it would be ‘Ruin’.”

Teja blinked. The dragon unnamed nestled his snout into his tail. He was in pain.

She was struck suddenly by a brilliant idea.

The troll snapped her notebook shut loudly, and stood. “Alright! Get up.” She stepped over to the dragon. “We’re going to get you your name.”

The curled ball of scales shook in a sigh. His scowl popped up. “Did you not hear me? I fear I would be like those… those others! Like Tyrant and Discord! I am Ambition’s son! Nothing good may come of me.”

“Nah.”

“What do you mean, ‘nah’?” The dragon’s scales bristled angrily.

“I mean, I don’t believe you.” Teja crossed her arms. “Someone like you wouldn’t be Ruin. Dejection, Laziness, Annoyance, even. But not Ruin.” She looked the dragon up and down. “Your brother must have thought that, too, for him to seek me out.”

A snap of her fingers, and the series of runes carved themselves in rings around the fallen trunk. Space fell in on itself, pulling away at the end of the hollow. Salt drifted in on the wind through it. She was a witch of the Crossroads- all routes ended and started at her fingertips.

The curled dragon slithered out of his hovel, a dribble of poison falling from his hissing maw. “Damn you, girl, that is my home!”

Teja’s ear flicked. “Come on.” She stepped past him, ducking beneath the hollow. The portal wavered- an opaque pool of woad blue. “This connects to the Far Coast- to the home of a good friend of mine. He will undoubtedly know how to get you the name you want.” She poked the warbling portal. It sputtered another gust of sea wind. “Oh, and this won’t go away until I say so. Ta!”

“Wait!” The dragon lunged, but the troll was gone through the portal before he could reach her. His nose brushed the paint-thin sheet of magic, before he pulled away.

---

He growled, and raged, and stomped off. The witch had ruined his home. He prowled the woods, looking for other hollows. They were too small, or guarded by bears, or the stinking lairs of mad druids. A week later, he found a cave he quite liked- except for the drip of stalagmites again and again, through the night and day, in the small places of it he could not reach.

The silver dragon returned to his glen several times in that tortuous week. Every time, the portal wavered back, bright and bubbling. Someone was playing music beyond it, to ensure he’d never sleep in his hollow.

On that eighth day, the creature bit down his petulance, and slithered through the trunk.

He immediately ran into a fishing line- part of weaving canopy of wooden pillars and drying fish that covered the shore. The beach was rocky, and a bit warmer than his forest. His eyes flicking back, the dragon saw he had emerged from an overturned barrel. The portal shattered.

The dragon sighed. “Damn witch.”

“Believe me, when Teja gets an idea into her head, not draug nor giant could stop her.”

The dragon spun to meet the voice, his tail knocking aside more drying racks and barrels.

“Down here.” He looked down to see a man nearly as wide as he was stout. His old face was marked by a barely-survived pox, and his beard blended into the red of his jerkin. He seemed a particularly short human, except in his hands, which held a worn mandolin. In the callouses that clung to his palms and fingers, from which something divine oozed- a fuzzy quality, preventing true perception of whatever was beyond. A craftsman beyond the gods of crafts. A dwarf.

The dragon jerked his head down in the semblance of a bow. “Forgive my intrusion, master dwarf. I simply seek the troll.”

“I’m aware.” His smile was tired as he put aside the instrument. “She has made herself at home.”

He led the dragon through the tangled mess of the drying racks, which were stored in great rows. They held all manner of otherworldly fish- two-headed eels that could swallow the dragon whole were lined up next to finger-sized minnows with birdlike beaks. Beyond the fishing encampment, a river carved a winding canyon through a wet forest. The Far Lands were more alien than even the stories claimed.

Master Kalin- as the dragon soon learned the dwarf was called- lived alone in a cottage laid across a gravel foundation on the shore. It was a simple, single room capped by deep purple shingles, with smoke billowing out the top. Instead of focusing his crafting prowess on the house, a grand fishery sprawled out from it, encompassing as far as the eye could see in either direction. The dragon saw workers operating great canoes in the distance, but could not make out what they were.

Inside, Teja was tending an iron pot by the stone hearth and chimney in the center of the hut. She twirled her finger, magically stirring a stained spoon. Inside, something mulled that was spiced and alcoholic, but by no means appetizing. “You’re finally here!” Her eyes lit up as the dragon nestled in just outside the doorway. “I thought you’d moved on from that hollow.”

“I tried.” He sighed through bared fangs. “I failed.”

“Good! You’ll never find your name hiding under a rock like that.”

“That was not your decision to make, mare!” The dragon’s growl was a coyote’s screech.

Master Kalin stepped inside, between the troll and drake. “Easy, there. You’re my guests.” He jabbed a thumb to the side of his house facing the jungle. “If you want to fight, then do so out there.”

The dragon bowed his head. “My sincerest apologies, master dwarf.”

“Oh, he gets the ‘master’ treatment, but not me?” Teja’s ear flicks annoyedly. She threw something decidedly inedible into her concoction.

“A right you’ve earned.”

“Enough, both of you!” The dwarf’s voice shook the house, the pillars outside, and the ships in the harbor beyond. It was easy to forget his power. A moment passed. “Good. Now, Teja has told me you are nameless, at your age. Why?”

The dragon’s brow furrowed. “I… I do not want it.” He explained. “On my first quest, after I left my mother’s clutch, I sought all the usual locations for inspiration- the abyssal trench in the Still Sea, the metropolis in the sands, the old aerie where Emperor once built their hoard. I felt nothing.

“Then, as I returned home, I found the battlefield around a broken fort. The unburied wights still fought on the plane of spirits, but all else was ash and cracked bone. The monastery-fortress in the center of it was crumbled- the wine-vats shattered, its garden uprooted, its scriptorium burnt. In that… I felt the call of a name.” He shook his head, trying to shake off the clinging memory. “I do not want to be Ruin, master dwarf. I ran, and hid. It is best for all.”

The dwarf stroked his beard, eyes closed. “Ruin, hm?” He wondered. “That is one interpretation, I suppose. A raw one, yet unformed. Is there no way you could have interpreted that differently?”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed. “Our names are not interpreted, they are found. I felt a hollow pit, a broken grief, and… and anger. What else could I be?”

“Perhaps…” Kalin raised an eyebrow to Teja. “Is the potion ready?”

“It has been for a day.” The witch’s ladle poured it into a wide bowl.

“Good. We should get our answers.”

Teja placed the bowl in front of the dragon. “This potion will whisk us to that moment. You can confront that name- and Kalin here can shape it into something new.”

The dragon blinked at the dwarf. “You can do that?”

Kalin nodded gravely. “A name is a word, and a word is a material like any other. It can be molded, like stone or wood. Though,” he looked down at the burbling potion, “I fear I will not be able to change a word much from its original purpose. We will need to find the right tool to chisel out your name- either from Ruin, or another word you find.”

The dragon contemplated the potion’s shimmery surface. “Will it be dangerous?”

“You’re a dragon. You’ll survive.” Teja sat, cross legged. “If any of us die in there, we’ll just wake up. But, if you go berserk as the evil dragon you think you are- especially while we’re asleep in your memory…”

A heavy moment. The dragon spoke. “You would be risking yourselves for me.” Neither objected. Something like a smile tugged at the dragon’s maw. “Thank you.”

“Well,” Teja scooped out two cups of the questionable liquid for herself and Kalin, and pushed the bowl towards the dragon, “drink up. To a better name.”

---

It was as terrible as the dragon remembered. The smell hit him first, as he awoke at the edge of the monastery’s crumbled walls. Burnt warriors and rust. His scales bristled.

Teja and Kalin were beside him. The world was hazy, but the important stuff sharpened into focus. The tower. The battlefield. The little mushrooms sprouting between broken, chainmail links.

Beyond the physical horrors that the troll and dwarf saw, the dragon’s eyes seeped into the hazy blue plane of the spirits. They were shouting in a language long dead, and dying, then being reborn at the edge of the battlefield to shout and fight and die. It was maddening.

“What are you feeling?” Teja’s hand rested on the dragon’s flank, snapping him out of his trance.

It took a while for the silver lizard to reply. “Pain.” He choked out. “Hate.” Ruin. He dared not say that aloud.

As the words drifted into the air, they settled onto the dwarf’s open palms. In the hands of the craftsman, they were a yellowed clay, the color of the dragon’s bared teeth. Kalin furrowed his bushy brow, molding ‘pain’ into a softer ‘ache’, and sharp ‘hate’ to a seething ‘disgust’. He let them drift back up into the dragon, where his emotions conformed to the lesser synonyms.

The dragon could breathe once more. “Thank you.” He repeated. “This is not easy.”

“I couldn’t imagine.” The dwarf said. “Come. You said you sensed your name inside. I’ll be with you.”

The dragon climbed the ruined wall with his great claws, leaving handholds for the witch and dwarf to follow. The lizard lamented how easily they passed through wilted gardens, and into the stronghold itself. If there were more barriers, if they had to climb more walls, maybe he could acclimate himself to each scene of ruin before he went to the next.

They moved through the destroyed brewery, where their hard work spilled from broken kegs. Kalin had to mold ‘anger’ to ‘indignance’.

Then, the scriptorium, where knowledge was turned to ash. Kalin then formed the spiky clay of ‘despair’ to ‘dejection’.

Yet, he had never been to the last room, but he knew what was there. It was where Ruin truly lay.

The acolytes’ quarters, where the young were hiding from the battle. The door was broken. The dragon saw the spirits cowering. Kalin could find no way to lessen the knotted ball of emotion into anything else other than pure rage. The dragon’s roar shook the dream.

Ruin transformed. Spikes poured from his back like a mantle of thorns, and tears of dust fell from his eyes. He grew larger and larger. The keep shattered under the weight- and, somewhere in the dwarf and witch’s minds, they knew the slumbering dragon was similarly crushing the tanning racks that surrounded it.

“I can’t change this!” Kalin cried, dodging a flailing strike of Ruin’s claw. The black ball of a word writhed in his hands. “Teja! Get me another emotion to work with!”

Ruin now towered above the witch, reaching the height of the monastery and then some. He half-howled, half-sobbed into the sky. Anyone of reason would have run away.

Teja leapt forward, onto the dragon’s hand. Ruin tried to shake her off, but she held on stubbornly. “Please! Come back to us!” She cried. The scales- as large as dinner plates and sharp as daggers- cut open her arms. “You can’t be Ruin! It won’t help them! It won’t help you!”

The monster howled, and killed her with a tearful bite.

Teja awoke in the lopsided cottage, as a sleeping, gargantuan Ruin thrashed in his sleep outside. The tanning racks and front of the cottage were crushed beneath its weight.

Teja pulled an unconscious Kalin away from his thrashing, then rushed out the door- towards it. The thing’s head was as large as her body, but she clung onto its snout. “Listen! You aren’t Ruin! You want to help! I know you do!”

The head flung her off, and she landed hard against the rocks. Once the wind was back in her lungs, she grabbed the head once again. “You mourn for them! That you couldn’t help! This pain is normal!” She gritted as she held the head down with all of her might. “Listen to me! You are the son of Ambition! You are the son of Myth!”

The dragon’s thrashing had slowed. The vibrato hum of Kalin’s magic- somewhere in the dragon’s mind- was working. She had given him something to work with.

“Imagine beyond the grief! Imagine what will help!”

The dragon grew smaller. The spikes split into thick plumes of sage flowers, purple and fragrant. He shrunk, the sharp scales turning to blunt edges, each a reflective teardrop.

“You are the good that comes beyond Ruin! I beg you- imagine! Make it true!”

The dragon opened his eyes. He was larger, with great wings formed of bandages and wood. His eyes were mirrors, and his teeth silver. Moss dripped from his jaw like a beard. In his presence, the cracked house and destroyed tanning racks twisted back into place, lines and screws snapping back, as if they had never been broken.

Kalin slowly awoke inside his house, and Teja knew it was over. “A bit risky at the end there.” She smiled. “But I’m glad you pulled through.”

“As am I.” His voice was the waves against the softest parts of the beach.

Teja smoothed out her clothes, and stood up straight. “Well, now that that’s all sorted.” She smiled and extended a hand. “My name is Teja, witch of the Crossroads.”

The dragon bowed his head, his wings extended. “I am that which comes after Myth and Ambition have led to Ruin.” An air of announcement- of magic from a time before there was anything other than magic- filled the cottage. He was making his choice. “I am the mended bone, and the sprout after wildfire. I am the food served by a grandmother, and the sight of the grandchild grateful for it.” He smiled. “I am Healing. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

---

Thank you for reading! This short story was written for Jessica Neal for the Fantasy Gift Exchange, organized by Emily S. Hurricane. Do check out all the other creators and their stories through Emily S. Hurricane’s master post.

Jessica Neal

Emily S. Hurricane

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