A three year old boy --- concerned for his safety and the safety of his fourteen year old sister and parents --- hid inside his closet, palming a dulled pewter dragon.

This was the third time in the past year that someone had broken into the house, and the third time his father had caught up with the burglar. The other two occurrences were in the daytime, when the burglars thought his father would be at work, but they were both wrong and now they were both in prison.

This new intruder was different, though, smarter because he’d chosen to break in at night, when everyone in the house should have been asleep, which would have made the family and their meager possessions ripe for the picking.

The boy’s name was Leon, short for Leonardo, and he’d always had a fascination with dragons, like the one cupped in his hands now, the one named Oriax. His scales had become worn over the years, from constant handling as he passed down from one generation to the next, and the arrow-shaped tip of his tail had broken off long before he became Leon’s pet. Still, though he was more than four hundred years old and ragged, Leon loved him. Over the years, each time Leon tore open Christmas and birthday presents, played with the new toys inside or --- unhappily --- wore the new clothes, then grew tired of the newness of his presents, Oriax never left his side. Leon knew the little pewter dragon wasn’t real, but that part of the equation wasn’t important. What was important was the friendship Oriax bestowed upon young Leon. It was unconditional and eternal, and that was what mattered to Leon, who never had any real friends to speak of in real life. Oriax was only 4 inches tall and fit easily inside Leon’s pocket, so it only stood to reason that he went wherever the boy did. On his chest were symbols about which Leon had asked the origins of, and his father promised to tell the boy later in life, when he would be more prone to understanding the meanings. Studded on either side of Oriax’s muzzle were two tiny rubies for eyes, but Leon never questioned if there had ever been anything in the sockets before now.

Oriax was Leon’s protector as well as the boy’s best friend, and whenever Leon got scared, the little pocket dragon was always right there for comfort and reassurance.

Leon’s father, Adam, held a job within the government, though no one never really knew what job it was within the government that Adam actually did. To say that there were secrets in the Everett family would be something of an understatement. Leon often wondered what secrets his father actually knew, but he never had to wonder too hard or for too long. Before his curiosity got the better of him, his father would always remind him that curiosity often killed the cat.

On this particular evening, it seemed his father knew a little more than someone wanted him to know, because that was what the yelling was about downstairs. Leon’s father knew the intruder, and so did his mother, because they were both yelling at him by name. The intruder battered Adam as Leon huddled inside the closet, and the boy could hear everything that was said, though it wasn’t said as much as screamed, and that was what bothered Leon most.

He thought he heard something about the Rothschild family, though he couldn’t be entirely sure. He remembered hearing a rumor about how the Rothschild family secretly ran the entire world, though he was never sure whether or not he actually understood it.

Suffering seemed to overtake Leon’s father then, and Leon had always known that his father did not suffer well.

Then Leon thought he heard footsteps on the stairs, heavy and insisting. So far, the boy had managed to avoid making his presence known; a situation the intruder seemed adamant in changing. He wanted to call out to his mother, but couldn’t hear her downstairs. Had the intruder beaten her, too?

Then Leon’s bedroom door flung open with a thud as the doorknob dug into the wall. “It’s okay kid,” the man’s voice said, in a less than reassuring tone. “Come on out so I can talk to you.”

Leon quickly realized there were only so many places in the bedroom in which to hide, and once the intruder heard the scratch of pajama feet against the hardwood floor, it didn’t take another second for the closet door to burst open too.

“There you are, you little fucker.” Leon still could not see the man’s face.

He ignored the man’s demands to come out of the closet, insisting instead on digging himself even deeper behind the toy box that had become his own personal fortress.

Frustrated, the intruder jutted his arm in front of him in an irritated effort to snatch the boy out of his hideaway, all the while shouting obscenities and threats.

Suddenly and before Leon knew what was happening, the intruder jerked back his arm. Obviously stunned, he gazed at the blood spurting from the wrist. Crimson jets surged in all directions from where the hand should have been.

Oriax stood on the toy box, his ruby eyes glowing with uncompromising fury. The little dragon spat the hand on the floor outside the closet, spreading his pewter wings. He took flight with little warning and caught the intruder’s throat in his mighty jaws, pulling the jugular out with powerful sideways thrusts of his head. With no mercy he shredded the man’s throat and face.

Spinning and screaming, the intruder flung himself about the bedroom in an effort to shake the dragon loose as it dug its razor-sharp claws into his eyes. Then the man’s boot caught a loose floor board and he hit the window with all the force it took to crash through it. He swept out the window and fell, screaming, three floors to the ground, smashing the concrete walkway with a thud that told Leon it was okay to come out of the closet now.

Oriax grabbed the severed hand and flew with it to the window, where he flung his head with all his might and sent the hand flying out into the night. With a single great beat of his wings, he flew across the room and back into Leon’s cupped hands. He blew a tiny puff of smoke from his nostrils, glancing at the boy with eyes that at the same time told him it was over and not to worry any longer.

Fifteen years later, in a private room at Boston College, Oriax stood beside a stack of text books on a desk. A new symbol had been scratched onto his chest scales, right under the one his father had explained the meaning of only months earlier. This new symbol matched Leon’s name perfectly, and intertwined with that of his father’s. As a friend reached to grab a dart from the board beside Leon’s head, just for an alarming and eternal second he thought he saw the pewter dragon’s fangs bare. The friend turned to Leon and saw an expression that people only display when they know something horrible is about to happen, an expression Leon only displayed because he knew what usually followed the revealing of dragon’s teeth. The friend stood then, ignoring the darts he’d gathered and the untouched bottle of beer to his left, hurried out of the room, and lived.

I am at Leon’s new house now. His wife’s name is Elizabeth, which is funny because it is the name equated with the first symbol about which Leon ever inquired. She knows the history shared by me and Leon, and it is something about which she never asks. Children are born to this couple who are still in wedded bliss even after twenty years together. There is Monique, who is twelve now and sure to be one of my biggest challenges to protect, Nicholas, who is
nine and more full of energy than any boy I’ve ever known, which will require even more energy from me to keep up with him, and Evan, who just turned three and has already begun asking what the symbols are on my chest.

He studies me now and then and I remember the same curiosity gracing Leon’s face when he was just three, too, and how I’d had to fly through the house faster than I thought my wings would allow, moving toys out of his path before he could trip on them and turning pot handles so that he wouldn’t be able to grab them.

One of my eyes popped out the other day, but I was able to stick it back in just in time so Monique wouldn’t see.

The past week has been rather hectic around the house, what with all the new furniture being shuffled about. I’ve had my eye on one of the moving men for the past three hours, because he has had his eye on Elizabeth.

I saw a photograph once on the Internet, when Leon didn’t think I was watching what he was looking up, and this moving man bears an alarming resemblance to the man in the photograph . . . at that website displaying the living heirs to the Rothschild estate.

Looks like I have a long day ahead of me.