Prologue

The sea wept with Rhys, each wave breaking like a breath he couldn’t catch. Clouds aglow in pink and orange stretched above the western coast of Lanilia. Dawn over the Wilnayan Sea always echoed the blush of succulent fruit to him. Memories bloomed on his tongue, of the sharp, citrusy bursts of sunpearls and the lingering, spiced warmth of mourningberries. Rhys stood, motionless, clutching the flower bud in his hand, rubbing its soft petals. He wondered if he would soon forget the taste of his favourite fruits as well.

“Tidelight’s bloom. To be eaten at sunrise.” The instructions hissed through his mind. “Before it opens.”

Rhys held the charcoal-black flower up against the sun cresting the horizon. Its petals glistened – a night sky speckled with stars. A gift from the sea, to take him away. A forceful wind picked up and a fine sea mist enveloped his body after another tidal crash. He curled his toes at the chill. Then, the first petal peeled open.

He put the entire bud into his mouth and chewed: bitterly herbaceous at first, tolerable until it melted into something pungent and rancid. Rhys stifled a gag with his hand. He swallowed, tears pricking the corners of his eyes.

It would work quickly, he’d been told. His life and memories would burn out and peel away from him like skin on spoilt mourningberries. His body stripped of every fibre meant to hold what he loved.

But beneath the surface of his certainty, a quiet panic rippled through his chest. The waves came harder. The wind intensified, pushing him to stagger back, away from the water.

He fell to his hands and knees, a dizzying, head-pounding spell, and let loose a groan of agony, like something dredged up from the deep. His ears rang, sharp and steady.

Muscles in his back knotted, seized, while bone grinded against itself. It was like his back was contorting to betray its own shape. For a fleeting moment, the sensation reminded Rhys of a time when he’d fallen from a great height and landed on a prickly bush. The almost-memory was quickly washed away when the ocean, once clear, fractured into painful glares of white light.

His back continued to ache while the rest of his body tensed against an icy chill flowing beneath his skin with uncanny purpose. A thin layer of his skin flaked off: arms, hands, chest. Fingers trembling, Rhys touched the cool sting along his face as skin of his fingertips peeled off and twisted in the breeze.

Then, suddenly, it surged. The ache of his muscles, the sting of his skin sloughing off. Bright and violent on his back. Rhys turned, gasping at blue flames curling out of his flesh – flames that burned with no heat. As they licked icily against him, he experienced a terrible inkling that something essential, something he was always meant to have, to know, was fading. It was as if he held both answer and question, but they dissolved before he could begin to grasp what was happening.

A crash of water swallowed his scream, like the sea itself was refusing to let his agony be heard. His skull felt like it was being cleaved in two. As the flames flickered, he whipped his head about his surroundings, unable to discern where he was. A suspicion that the landscape looked familiar slipped away just as quickly as it came. Each time he felt he was nearing recognition, details burned away faster than he could hold them. In the empty spaces they left behind festered a teary panic.

The cold rock cut into his skin when his head smacked the ground. He lay there, motionless, exposed, vulnerable and feeling utterly out of control as his own body raged against him.

Rhys stared at his palm, bloody from where he’d struck rock. The agony in his muscles was finally beginning to dissipate, coils of pain loosening one by one. Where the pain faded, a cold ache curled in its absence.

He felt an ever-delicate prickle on his skin – it had started to rain. The droplets quickened, exploding on the rock like brittle pearls. Rhys’s consciousness waned until a boom of thunder exploded overhead, startling him. But his body was too ruined, too hollowed out by pain to fully respond. Another rumble of thunder rolled over the water – deep enough this time to rattle his ribs. He let it pass, too exhausted to stand, too broken to care. When sleep came finally, it took him the way tides reclaim tidepools – slow and inevitable. But even as the seafoam flowed over him, what lay within remained.

About Not All Dragons:

In a land of magic and myth, Rhys awakens on the shore of Lanilia with mysterious wounds on his back and no memory of his life before. Disoriented, he stumbles on the Mernese estuary protected by the mermaid Delia, who Rhys convinces to help him begin a dangerous quest to discover who, and what, he is as they hunt for the truth beneath story and prophecy. A fascinating and fresh take on dragons and destiny.

David Ly is the author of Mythical Man (Anstruther Books, 2020) and Dream of Me as Water (Anstruther Books, 2022), both shortlisted for ReLit Awards for Poetry. He co-edited, with Daniel Zomparelli, Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). He is the Poetry Editor at This Magazine. More at davidlywrites.ca.

Author photo credit: Joy Gyamfi

Excerpt from Not All Dragons by David Ly

Power Q & A with David Ly