Gork, the Teenage Dragon
Gabe Hudson
To Deborah Treisman, Edward Kastenmeier, and Susan Golomb:
With love & gratitude.
The dragon began to belch out flames
and burn bright homesteads; there was a hot glow
that scared everyone, for the vile sky-winger
would leave nothing alive in his wake.
—BEOWULF (TRANSLATED BY SEAMUS HEANEY)
[ 1 ]
HERE BEGINS THE STORY OF HOW I FOUND MY TRUE LOVE
My name is Gork The Terrible, and I’m a dragon.
And here begins the story of how I went searching for my true love and then made her my Queen. And I should warn you that when it comes to dragon love stories, well mine is the most terrifying tale of them all. But also the most romantic. For inside my scaly green chest, there beats a grotesquely large and sensitive heart.
Now some folks get a little confused when they first hear me say that.
And I’m not talking about when I roar it at them and I’ve got my tail raised in a Threat Display and I’m shooting big scary firestreams out of my nostrils. No sir. I’m talking about when I say it real calm and normal, like I’m doing right now. So just to make sure you don’t get mixed up here at the beginning of my story, let me try and make this as simple as possible for you.
My first name is Gork.
My middle name is The.
And my last name is Terrible.
And like I said, I’m a dragon.
Plus I’m a poet.
Now if you happen to be a man-creature here on planet Earth, then you should know I have read your books and stories about my species. And not only are your reports about us dragons wildly inaccurate, they are downright insensitive and repugnant. You man-creatures sure do seem to get a big bang out of spreading ignorant lies about my species. About how vile we are. About how disgusting we are. About how uncivilized we are.
I mean take old Beowulf, for instance. That book isn’t nothing but a pack of slanderous lies about my kind, written by a bum poet who didn’t have the gumption to sign his own name to the book. It’s like even the man-creature who wrote Beowulf knew it was a bunch of flapdoodle and so he was too ashamed to stick his own damn name on the cover. And now you man-creatures go around passing that book off down the centuries as a bona fide classic.
Well if that don’t beat all. Seems to me from where I’m sitting, all’s you have to do is stick a bunch of mean-spirited lies about dragons between two covers and voilà—you’ve got yourself an instant classic.
But you know what? Beowulf isn’t even the half of it. No sir.
Because the most offensive book out there about us dragons is the lunatic rantings of a man-creature that goes by the name of Mr. J. R. R. Tolkien.
Now this nutjob Tolkien’s book The Hobbit is so full of balderdash and nonsense about my glorious species that it makes my toe claws shudder just to think about it. That bastard Tolkien paints us dragons out to be a bunch of ignorant and repulsive savages. Well as far as I’m concerned, this Mr. Tolkien was a real low-hearted sonuvabitch.
Look at how Tolkien portrayed that dragon Smaug in that book The Hobbit.
Ever seen a red dragon? I haven’t, and Smaug appears to be the most slovenly and debased creature in the entire universe. Shoot, like us dragons’ personal grooming habits are so skeezoid that we wouldn’t notice when a scale on our left breast had fallen out, exposing the soft pink skin underneath. And like we’d just stupidly go about our business and leave that soft pink spot on our left breast exposed to the elements. So some little fool named Bard who lives by a lake can come traipsing along and slay us with one well-placed arrow.
Please.
No lake-dweller is going to get the drop on my scaly green ass. With an arrow, no less. Especially not some jerk who goes by the name of Bard.
Shoot, I’ve got so many nanobots in my bloodstream that if I ever did somehow manage to lose a scale, it would regenerate itself before you could even pull the arrow from your quiver. Or pull the trigger on your laser pistol. Or whatever your weapon of choice may be.
So if you’ve come here hoping for yet another tale wherein we dragons are portrayed as nothing more than a bunch of vile wyrms, well then you can do us both a big favor and buzz off. Because I can assure you this sort of old-fashioned speciesism and bigotry has no place here. That whole crusty line of thinking is deeply offensive and strictly for the birds.
Because dragons are nothing if not sacred creatures.
This much I can promise you.
Now I’m only sixteen. And I’m an orphan, on account of my parents died right before I hatched.
But my grandpa is six hundred and eighty-four years old. And my grandpa’s name is Dr. Terrible.
And this right here is the real deal, a true love story told by a real dragon. A dragon who may not be the smartest of his kind, but who is a damn sight more sophisticated and evolved than what Mr. J. R. R. Tolkien would have you believe.
And like all tales told by real dragons about their true love and the quest to find their Queen, this story starts with the first time I blasted fire.
Shoot, every dragon knows the rule of how your proper true love tale’s got to start with first fire.
Now maybe you’re kind of surprised to learn that we dragons have some storytelling traditions of our own. Well get used to it.
Because my name is Gork The Terrible, and I’m a dragon.
And this is my story.
Part I
THE
CLEAR
DOOR
[ 2 ]
THE FIRST TIME I BLAST FIRE IT HAPPENS ON PLANET EARTH, WHEN I AM JUST A LITTLE BABY DRAGON
The first time you ever spit fire is a seminal event in every dragon’s life.
The first time I spat fire, it happened on planet Earth. Yes sir.
Even though my family hails from Planet Blegwethia, I actually hatched on Earth. And my grandpa Dr. Terrible always blames my early feral years growing up alone on Earth for my pathetic WILL TO POWER.
Anyway, I still remember what it felt like to be scrunched up inside the egg right before I hatched. And I also remember what it felt like as I used my tiny black beak to try and peck my way out of the egg, and how each time I poked a hole through the shell a blinding sunbeam poured down in there and made my little eyes blink like crazy.
And I remember how as I pecked away at the shell, I was thinking: This feels very important!
And I was thinking:
Ready or not, here I come!
And if you want to know the truth, I nearly killed myself trying to break free.
There’s even an old Blegwethian riddle that goes like this:
QUESTION: What’s the hardest part of a dragon’s life?
ANSWER: Hatching.
So I just kept pecking with my beak and I could hear the shell cracking and my little lungs were heaving because of how hard I was working, and I felt dizzy. But I kept pecking anyway and then there was a superloud crack! And somehow I managed to break free of the white shell which had been holding me prisoner.
And I thought:
Way to go!
And I thought:
I can’t believe I made it!