High, where the air was thin and cold, she flew once more. With caution at first — was her body and her magic still strong enough? — and then with delight, she swooped and fell, twisting and grabbing birds from the warmer, thicker air (purely for the sport), then soared upwards once more until the sky became an azure blue and her wings had no purchase. The eddies and streams of wind spirits were all that sustained her flight this high. These winds were old friends of dragonkind.

South then, a late afternoon sun on her right. Was the sun watching? It must have been decades since he last saw a dragon fearlessly and openly taking to the skies. Onwards, over grey waves and floating ice, until she was flying above the Island of Volcanoes. Once red dragons had cavorted and bred in the heat of those open-mouthed mountains. Now there was no sign of life on the island but some slumbering, giant trolls. And a Sí tower!

Filled with anger and a desire to pay back the Sí for the near annihilation of her kind, the white dragon dropped like a bolt of lightning. How dare the Sí be here, in the famous home of red dragons!

Announcing herself to the world in this way had not been her plan. A stealthy, night-time journey to a mountain fastness and a cautious recruitment of allies had been her goal moments earlier. Now, a desire for vengeance had taken hold of her and utterly overwhelmed by a release of all the pent-up feelings of years of brooding fury, the dragon abandoned all strategy in order to indulge in the bloody desire to do harm to her enemies.

Fast though she was, she was noticed. A thin bugle sounded, which she could hear, even above the shrieking of the air past her ears. And an arrow, then another, flickered past her. The circular tower rose from a large rock platform at the sea’s edge, like the finger of a giant. It was no wider than she was long, but it was tall. The roof of the tower was slated in a cone shape, with a walkway around its base, protected by crenelated walls. There were two Sí females on the roof, firing arrows at her.

The interior of the tower was too well protected by spells for the white dragon to sense the number of enemies within: just that there were many Sí, both male and female. There were young ones too.

Releasing her loudest warcry, the dragon smashed into the roof, tiles shattering and falling into the sea far below. Her teeth clasped a pole and with a powerful wrench she snapped away a flag of gold and aquamarine. No longer did they dare call this island their own. Then — let the arrows fly, she would close her eyes — she battered a way through the broken roof, the hole sufficiently large that she could put her head through it and empty her lungs with a blast of freezing air and sharp fragments of ice.

Down through the interior of the building went her breath, like an avalanche. And she was pleased. Perhaps that breath of frost had already killed all the Sí young.

— Brothers and sisters, she called to the ghosts of the red dragons, I avenge you.

Eyes still closed against an increasing number of arrows, the White Dragon sought around her for assistance from the local spirits. Naturally, the fire imps, red sylphs and efreeti shunned her. They lived in the fires of the volcanoes and an ancient white dragon was a creature capable of covering even their lands in ice. The trolls would only fear her. But the rocks should be her allies, shouldn’t they?

— Wake, spirit of the granite stones. A dragon calls.

No response. She could feel it though, a very powerful spirit whose reptilian legs stretched deep, deep away to the depths of the island. It was dreaming, always dreaming, as it did for centuries at a time.

— Wake! Throw off this tower.

— Once a Sí queen honoured me. She came here and with soft words, asked me for thirteen garnets from those that surround my heart. I gave them to her and she placed them in her crown. Everafter, I felt the comings and goings of the Sí as the touch of a breeze on my face. Until the queen died and her crown was stolen, melted and the garnets lost. Return them to me and I will aid you dragon.

— Aid me now and I will find your garnets.

With amused contempt, the spirit of the granite receded from the White Dragon, who would have cursed it, except that more immediate matters demanded her attention.

The Sí were attacking her in surprising numbers. A constant rain of arrows smashed into her scales, bludgeoning her and threatening great harm if they could find an opening. There were none, but the white dragon feared even to open her mouth to roar and bite in case a bitter point should find her throat.

For now it was claw and bludgeon, smashing the crenelated walls with her tail — sending one enemy to the ground far below with the falling rocks — and although blind, trying her best to land a blow of her forelegs to crush those within range. These Sí were strong of mind, not one could she read, let alone control. Of course, they were roused for war and this was the least favourable circumstance to try to dominate one of them. But still, it was disappointing not even be able to anticipate their actions by their thoughts.

‘Dragon!’ A warrior’s voice, a female Sí by the scent of her. ‘Síamharaíonnarach may be dead but her alliances hold and your kind cannot prey on the Sí anymore.’ Then the White Dragon felt a sharp pain in her right thigh. Instinctively, she leapt into the air, away from the hurt. A quick glance showed her enemy on the battlements, long black hair streaming into the blue sky, two-handed axe raised for another strike, its blade just as dark as the tresses of her enemy.

What was it? A spirit weapon. And the spirit bound into the diamond edge of the weapon was that of a Dubhpantar.[1] The white dragon beat her wings in dismay. Were the Sí so much stronger now than in the past? Her failure here was demoralizing, but failure it was. With a last mournful wail, she turned and flew west (to deceive those watching her). Thigh aching, heartsore, lonely, the white dragon no longer felt any pleasure in flight. The task ahead of her was daunting. When she could not revenge herself on a tower of the Sí, how could she hope to destroy their entire civilization?

***

The spirit of the tallest mountain in the world, Sagarmatha, was so powerful that to call her anything other than goddess would not do her justice. Chastened and tired, the white dragon approached a saddle between the peaks with extreme caution. This was the proper place for her home. It was remote and at such an altitude that only allies of the North Wind could survive here for any length of time.

— Goddess. May I land on your shoulder?

— You may.

High, high, high above the world, the white dragon found a crevice into which she crawled and began to cry. Her tears were instantly blocks of ice. Her breaths were ragged, gasping howls of self-pity. A thick, freezing mist formed around her.

In time, the pain in her thigh became an ache and the ache merely stiffness. Time that must have been measured in months, not days, for her tears had become an enormous glacier, sweeping down the skirt of the mountain to the valley below. Moreover, one breath after another, an icy spell had frozen for miles around all the brave plants and birds that had previously survived on the mountainside.

— Dragon.

— Who is this? Show yourself!

— The witch.

— How did you find me? What do you want?

— I guessed correctly. I come to offer you some advice.

— Leave here, your advice is unwanted.

— Stir yourself, dragon. You have eggs to lay and hatch and the Sí to destroy.

— I will find you and I will devour you.

— Fly to Carrigtouhill and there take human form and cross to the other world. At Rome you will find an empress who desires to be more famous than Julius Caesar. You can turn that desire to your own ends. Her iron-armoured legions are ready to march into this world and attempt conquest of the Sí.

The dragon did not like the fact that the witch could come close enough to exchange thoughts without being seen. Nor did the dragon take well to instruction. If she could have, the white dragon would have eaten the witch and digested her message along with her bones. For the first time in days, the dragon lifted her head and drew in the air, seeking the scent of this visitor. Nothing. The spirits of the light airs that played on the mountain top only laughed and flew away when asked to help.

Perhaps the witch was already gone. Perhaps she was never present but had used a crystal ball or some other similar device to speak to the dragon’s mind.

When the white dragon lay down her head once more, something had changed. It would be foolish to ignore the witch out of anger and pride. The witch was powerful and had, after all, kept the white dragon’s existence a secret. She was not the enemy. And to lay eggs and breed children, male seed was needed. Perhaps it was indeed time to visit the other world as a female human.

[1] Spirit weapons are extremely rare, for the simple reason that only a willing spirit can be bound into them. I assume too, that the technical aspects of the challenge of making such weapons are such that only true masters of the forge can meet them. I believe this axe to have been the Black Axe of Fionnarda. According to the legend recorded in Mneme Lentulus Samias’s excellent Stories from the Far North, a dubhpantar lived deep in the forests of Fionnarda, yet it was not feared, for it did not hunt Sí. This creature of the night — a spirit related to the black panthers of our world — had a cub.

Now, living in the passage tomb of a nearby hill was a cyhyraeth. Her cave witnessed nightly feasts during which wicked and cursed creatures cavorted to unearthly music. And it seemed to the cyhyraeth that the hall would be enhanced by the presence of a dubhpantar that she had tamed. So she stole the cub away, intending to bring it up and keep it beside her throne as a guardian and a symbol of her cunning.

One day, when the greatest of the hunters of Fionnarda was deep in the forest, she sensed a great sorrow. Not a leaf stirred, not a blade of grass moved, yet she felt the presence of a weeping spirit.

‘Why such sadness?’ said the huntress aloud.

A cyhyraeth has taken my cub and keeps it in her hall, where I cannot enter for it has been warded against me.

‘If I release your cub from its enchantment, what will you give me?’

Anything.

‘I will do this. And in return, you will bring up your cub to adulthood and when he is grown, you will come to me and be my axe blade for as long as I live or until I bid you gone.’

Agreed.

The huntress made her way to the passage tomb of the cyhyraeth. Before entering, the Sí placed around her waist a girdle of hazel. She tied up her hair with leather made from the hide of a pure white doe and she smeared the juice of rowan berries on the soles of her boots. Then, in the company of werewolves, banshees, ghosts and slaughs, she entered the hall.

A merry dance was underway among participants. Perhaps ‘intense’ would be a better word than merry for participants who hated one another and whom with fixed smiles plotted one another’s downfall. Especially, they hated the newcomer, whose thoughts could not be heard, who could not be seduced, and who moved feely over ground that sought to trap her.

Not a drop of wine passed the huntresses’ lips, nor a morsel of food. She politely declined dances. Until at last the hostess came over to stand before her, skeletal body clothed in sumptuous dress.

‘Well met, stranger. Why do you not join in the festivities? Your behaviour is an insult to my hospitality.’

‘We both know that your hospitality would trap me here, an unwilling guest to entertain your company until I died of exhaustion or was devoured by them.’

‘So, what is it that you want, Sí?’

‘The dubhpantar cub.’

The cyhyraeth gave the huntress a long, cold look.

‘And what do you have to trade for it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then why should I give it to you?’

‘So that I do not destroy you and your hall.’

The cyhyraeth laughed and so did her company, some a little nervously (one, a werewolf, promptly left). ‘Do you know how many Sí have died here already?”

The huntress paused a while as if in thought. ‘Thirty-two.’

‘Indeed. And all them thought they could best me.’

‘All of them were tricked by your illusions. But I have come prepared and I have a question for you. Do you know who carved the stones that make up the walls of this chamber?’

'I do not. But they have housed me for centuries and they are no enemies of mine.’

'A thousand years and more before you came here, this was a temple to the moon. And one of the moon’s own daughters was laid to rest here by the spirit of the hill, Bryn Gwelw. A spirit who still, every eighteen years, seven months and six days, meets with the moon. You would not see this because over the centuries the entrance to the tomb no longer quite points to the moon as she reaches that moment in her endless cycle.

— Bryn Gwelw, spirit of the stones. I recall you to your duty. Honour the moon. Preserve this place in quiet and respectful silence. Drive out the cyhyraeth and her profane company

To the alarm of the cyhyraeth, her hall suddenly transformed. It shrank dramatically, the walls rushing inwards. All the gold and silver ornaments and all the food and drink disappeared. The music stopped. And then began a shaking and a shuddering; rocks the size of fists flew from the walls and struck so hard upon the company that their bones broke. And as they all fled or were beaten to death, the cyhyraeth turned to curse her opponent.

Like the clash of mighty teeth, the roof and floor around the cyhyraeth sprang together and smashed her bones into dust.

When the last rumblings of the cave were ended, all was still. Moonlight from a full moon lit the corridor that led to a chamber in which lay a stone coffin of a beautiful female demi-goddess. And the huntress held out her hand to the spirit cub that cowered there against the far wall.

— Come with me little dubhpantar. Your mother awaits you in the forest.