Play The Dragon in the Barley

The crows came down at first light and went straight up again without landing. Ragna Torsdatter stands at the gap in her drystone wall with a pitchfork in both hands, the tines pointed at a dragon. It lies across her barley from the wall nearly to the stream, bronze along the back and slate grey underneath, one wing folded and the other spread over the stooks like a dropped sail. It smells of hot iron and wet ash. Mist sits on the fjord below the farm, and down at Bakke, Halvard's dogs have been barking since the middle of the night. Her boy Torleif is halfway over the wall. She doesn't look round. Off. Off the wall. Go and get the long rope from the boathouse, and don't stop at Halvard's on the way. He goes, slowly, looking back every few steps. She lowers the pitchfork an inch. From here you can see what she's been staring at for an hour: a black spearhead buried below the breastbone, the shaft snapped off a hand's width out. Around the base of the neck runs a band of pale scar where the scales grew back crooked, the way a collar wears a horse. Well, Ragna says. It's dead. I've poked it twice. Thirty-four strides, nose to the end of the tail, I counted twice. She holds the pitchfork out to you, handle first. Hold this. I want it measured properly with the rope before the priest gets here, and before anyone who can write. Whoever comes for it, I want to know exactly what they're taking off my land.