Ceremonies

Epilogue: Christmas

Those same stars looked coldly down that winter upon the teeming city.

The stores were open late that night for last-minute shopping. Crowds hurried through the frozen streets, arms laden with packages. Salvation Army bands competed with the sounds of the traffic. Steam rose from holes in the pavement.

He walked with her, hand in hand, through the crowd. She was smiling at the shop windows, the Santas in the street, the excited, rosy faces of the children, but something in her gaze seemed far away, and always would be.

He, too, was distracted. He was musing upon the holy birth now being celebrated, and upon the unholy one so narrowly averted that very summer. He reminded himself for the thousandth time that nothing, that night, had been born.

And yet the monstrous thing itself, the thing the old man had given his life for, had not been destroyed. Might it not be living still, waiting in its egg of earth? Had he -interrupted the Ceremony in time?

The stars trembled unseen beyond the lights of the city. He felt his wife's hand in his. Surrounded by the throng, he paused, listened a moment, then walked on.

'What is it, Jeremy?' she asked. 'Is something wrong?'

'It's nothing, honey,' he said. He smiled at her and clutched her hand more tightly. She hadn't heard it.

But he had – he was almost sure of it. Above the sounds of the city, the taxi horns, the music, and the laughter, he had heard the roar of the dragon.