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There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. According to legend, they used to burrow in the mountains, but migrated here to escape The Machine. Now, they enslave us humans.

I am held captive in a tower by one dragon only. My knight in shining armor is a teacher of English (who is not my husband). The lips of that teacher once suggested I learn how to pimp a butterfly in order to be set free.

He gets married in three days (not to me).

As a child, I believed in the crystalline fairy tales of knights climbing towers via ropes of flaxen hair. I believed in the action, adventure, and tension of fairy tales. However, my story is real. I’m imprisoned in an encased spire of autumnal leaves. My dragon has peppered scales which give no reflection, unkept talons clutching at coined treasure, and through flared nostrils, it coughs up smoke rings. During the day, its thorny tail wraps protective barriers; we adventure nowhere. There is no tension. We merely co-exist.

But I keep secrets from the dragon.

Every morning, I slide from beneath the covers of my marital bed, tiptoe over flagstone, and scrawl letters to that teacher of English. Then, while my dragon snores fuggy hazes, I toss the letters out of a stone-arched window and pray to serendipity. I crave to follow the letters. Sometimes I climb onto the window’s lipped edge, float arms up into the air and, like a ballerina, poise one leg over the precipice, taunting balance as my eyes track yellow scripted pages fluttering like monarchs toward dawn’s rosy epithets.

However, the moment my soul leans forward and begs gravity to take responsibility, I’m pulled down from the window and my feet plant to flagged bedroom slate, so I unravel silken scarves from round my head and lean over vines of ancient ivy to test how far my hair reaches. It never reaches far. My ropes are wound too tight, are too brittle, too dry to ascend. I heard the bride-to-be has skin like milk and long, smooth hair the color of honey. I wonder if she knows the teacher of English might have loved me.

Here’s another secret.

I feasted on lessons of language during my own wedding. As principled guests waxed speeches over a chicken adorned buffet, my eyes roamed the hall and fell upon an open door leading to the servants’ corridor. He stood in the frame, dark, hands in pockets. Our eyes locked, and from beyond the seven-oaked table, I witnessed pink claw scratches at his cheeks. I gripped a chalice in fear of exposing the sweat on my palms as my new husband leaned over to request a pass of meat. I couldn’t look down.

Later, as decorated guests strolled grounds policed by posted winged serpents, I followed a strange sound rapping upon hollow wood. My husband–occupied by conversations of mining bits of coin–did not notice. The sound led me from my new spouse and esteemed attendees down a cobbled path which struggled against nature’s overgrowth, tangled branches, muffled vision, layers of foliage, teased outstretched limbs. My fingers groped blindly, landed upon a lattice gate; I pushed it open and stepped inside a four-walled garden.

The air dripped with scents of royal lilac and floating blue hydrangeas. Luminescent butterflies slipped in and out of wide-open peonies then flitted over to quake on the petals of pink daisies. The conversational din of my wedding party could be heard faint over walls, covered thick with wild, scrambling roses. Low, and from a deep recess, a melody began to swell. I forgot about the wedding. I forgot about the dragons, and, in the moonlit garden, began to twirl and twirl and twirl.

Until I collided with flesh.

“Beg your pardon.” The man from the servants’ doorway sprang up into a cardinal flush and stuffed leaves of grass into his pockets. I regained balance. Our pupils leveled, dilated, met. I blinked. He blinked. My cheeks burned a hot, crimson blush. Within the four enclosed garden walls, the melody swell crescendoed into a vague memory of a pirouette, of fluid mirrored images dancing weightless to a nocturn long remembered.

“You found the garden,” he whispered.

“It’s my wedding night,” breath barely escaped my lips. The man from the corridor grinned, pushed his finger to a shush, then pulled me into the folds of a hollowed, mossy trunk. He pointed above. The shadow of fiery wings and a pin-point tail circled in peering flight over us. Unable to cast eyes downward, chests heaving in unison, I murmured, “I know the song.” The man pulled me further into velvet green folds and grazed his mouth against my earlobe, “I do, too. Si tu savais*.”

I can’t share what happened next…yet.

In three days my knight in shining armor will marry someone who is not me, someone with blue eyes and cascading silken braids. I slipped out of bed this morning to discover torrential rainfall shrouding dawn’s rosy fingers. I inched my toes over a stone window sill to watch handwritten letters sink in the deluge like drowning Rhopalocera. I am held captive in a rusted-out tower by a bearded reptile who breathes infernos. I lift my arms. My toes inch forward.

But before this chapter closes, I have one more secret.

I’ve been to the mountains surrounding the Valley. I know the language of The Machine. The English teacher taught me a thing or two in that secret garden. (Don’t tell my husband.)

*Si tu savais: if you only knew