Something a little different today. As some of my readers know, I also write fantasy and sci-fi. This short story was written as a special favor to my sister, as a “Christmas special” of sorts for my six-year-old niece. It features the main character from one of my (currently unpublished) fantasy novels (tentatively titled Numbers of the Dragon.) I present it here on the off-chance that anyone aside from my niece might enjoy it. If you are familiar with the novel, it is—shall we say—canon-adjacent, rather than strictly canon.

The Longest Night

The snow-coated forest at night was the loneliest place in the world.

Sixteen-year-old Lin, a boy who called home lands far to the south, followed a trail of tamped-down snow in the darkened woods. Evening had only just fallen, and the sky was deep indigo in the east and orange, turning rust-red, where the sun had set in the west. Bright stars twinkled above the horizon, glittering like snow-crystals in the sky. Three moons, silver and bright, hovered in thin crescents in the west, about to the follow the sun in its journey.

Lin shivered, shoving his hands deeper into his coat pockets. The snow on either side of the path came up as high as his shoulders, making him feel like he was walking through a strange white tunnel. His breath fogged out in front of him, a cloud of mist. He wore a good, sturdy coat lined with fur, and shearling boots, and felted mittens thrummed with wool, but the winter cold of the northern forests chilled him to the bone.

Just then, a strange little creature poked its head around the trunk of a tall pine tree.

“Skree?”

It was a little dragon, about cat-sized with his wings tucked tight against his body. He should have been hard to see against the snow, with his smooth white hide, but he shimmered with purple and green and colors Lin could not name—colors of magic. Spines around his head flared to show a webbed crest, and his eyes were a solid, deep blue.

Lin sighed. “Hello, Skree,” he said. “Have you found anything yet?”

Skree chirped, extending his wings so he could hop from the top of the drifted snow down to the path. He looked up at Lin expectantly.

“I’m not sure whether that means yes or no,” Lin told the dragon.

His search was the only reason Lin had come north in the first place, to these frozen mountains and forests. He was looking for places of magic.

His own city, in the desert far to the south, had many places of magic. He had studied the magic there—but it wasn’t enough. He understood what he needed to with that kind of magic. His father had studied it, too, and cared more for the magic in his desert city than he ever had for his own son. His mother had studied magic once, too, but she had passed into God’s light many years ago, when Lin was very young.

His own city was in the desert to the south, but he wasn’t sure if it was really home. Maybe that was why he had come north in the first place: to find a place he belonged.

He was looking for a different kind of magic than the one he’d always known. Not the kind that could be pinned down like a butterfly and studied like a book. The kind he could feel with instinct. With his heart.

Skree chirped again. The little dragon spread his wings and leapt into the air. Hovering in place for a moment, he craned his long neck to look for Lin, then set off down the path with powerful strokes of his wings.

“You found something?” Lin asked, but the dragon didn’t stop to reply. Lin hurried after him.

After a little while, the path forked. One way led to the village of the northerners who had taken Lin in. He would have to return that way before long, and he hesitated at the fork for a long moment. If he returned there, he would find houses, protected against the cold, with fires in the fireplaces and food at the tables.

But it wasn’t what he was looking for. He was an outsider here, and despite his best efforts, this wasn’t home either.

True, one of the families here had taken him in during his travels: the warrior Khawu and her wife Pobi. And they had taken in his teacher Andane, too, who had traveled north along with him—the teacher who had watched over him, cared for him, more like a parent than the ones he’d really had.

But perhaps that acceptance, from all of them, was only because they felt sorry for him. He didn’t really belong. He didn’t need to burden them by turning up where he wasn’t wanted.

He was afraid that if he didn’t find the magic he was looking for, he wouldn’t find a place to belong, either. Something deep inside him told him that if he found one, he would find the other. It had to be somewhere out there. Would it be here, or somewhere even more distant and strange?

Lin looked down the second pathway. It wasn’t kept as well; he would have to climb over a snowdrift almost as high as his head to reach it. And it was dark down that way, with no glittering lights from the village. But Lin knew it would lead to a valley rumored to be full of magic, in a clearing that made a blanket of the stars overhead.

Skree glided back to Lin, as silently as the snowy owls that sometimes flew above, and immediately broke the silence by chittering at Lin insistently. The little dragon seemed to be urging him down the darkened path to the left, the one leading into the valley.

Sighing, Lin turned that way, resigning himself to a cold, dark, journey. It was Midwinter Night, the longest night of the year, and soon the three moons would set, leaving only starlight to guide him. Already the rust and orange had disappeared from the sky, leaving only deep, midnight blue. With heavy heart, Lin began to climb over the snowdrift.

The path was difficult. The snow was light and powdery, and a cold breeze picked up, blowing it across his field of vision until he could hardly see where he was going. He shivered from the cold, shoving his hands back into his pockets to keep them warmer. Was he hearing the howl of wind in the distance? Or the howl of wolves? Lin swallowed hard and kept his head down. It didn’t matter. He had to do this.

An enormous fir tree had fallen across the less-maintained path, forcing Lin to look up as he contemplated how to go around it. As he did, he saw something strange in the air above the tree’s broken trunk. Was it a shimmer of light? A hint of the magic he was looking for? A place where strange other worlds touched his own?

He hurried forward, scrambling to climb over the tree trunk to reach it. That flicker of light, that hint of magic—that was what he needed. The tree’s branches seemed to try to grab him, and scratched his face as he clambered through, but he ignored them and jumped to the ground on the other side.

When he looked up again, the shimmer of magic was gone.

That was it, then. There was no magic after all. Lin didn’t know whether it had ever been there in the first place, or whether it had been there, but disappeared as he drew close.

He would have nothing to bring back to his teacher, Andane, nor to anyone else, if he ever did return home. He had done his best, and yet he’d still failed. He had come all this way, and for nothing. He was never going to find the magic. It would all be a waste of time.

He sagged against the tree trunk behind him, suddenly exhausted and willing to go no further. Even Skree had disappeared, and left him. It had all been for nothing. Darkness seemed deep around him, and the moons had disappeared below the tree line, leaving only stars overhead. It was cold, and dark, and Lin was alone.

“Skree?”

Lin raised his head, though hope still seemed lost. But there was the little dragon, bounding through the snow. A spray of powder puffed up every time he landed.

Lin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Skree,” he said. “We’ll never find it. We should just go back.”

“Skrrrr.” The dragon flared his crest, then seemed to urge Lin forward again. “Skreee.”

Lin sighed. “What’s the point? There isn’t anything that way.”

The dragon leapt into the air and landed on the tree trunk next to him, then poked Lin in the side with his nose. “Skreeee.”

“Fine. Fine. I’m going, okay?” Lin raised his hands in submission, then got back to his feet. “But we can’t go much further.” He was so cold.

The little dragon seemed to cheer up immediately, chirping and launching himself further down the path. Lin sighed again, and began to trudge after him.

Was there… light ahead? Again? Lin shook his head and looked down. No reason to get his hopes up. But the light seemed to grow stronger as he walked further, rather than fading away. Instead of a purple-green shimmer, it was golden-orange, and while it flickered into shadow every so often, it did not disappear.

“Skreee!” The dragon reappeared in front of Lin, looking pleased with himself. Just then, the path opened out into a wide clearing. Lin stepped away from the trees and paused, his eyes widening.

He was in a wide valley, looking up into the jagged, snow-coated mountains. In the dark sky, shimmering lights danced among the stars: green waves of ethereal glow, like a river made of magic itself. For a moment he could only stand and stare, entranced by the aurora. Maybe this was the magic he’d been looking for.

There was another light ahead of him, too, of a much more ordinary type. An enormous bonfire burned in the clearing directly ahead of him. The flames seemed to reach toward the heavens, and he could see the moons on the horizon again. Even from as far away as Lin was, he could feel the warmth from the fire. But that warmth was nothing compared to the warmth that suddenly appeared in his heart.

There, around the fire, were his friends. His teacher, Andane, sat nearest to the path, and stood, smiling, when Lin began to clamber through the snow to reach the fire. There, too, were his northern friends: Khawu the warrior, a woman who carried a bow on her back at all times and wore a hood of wolf-fur, and her wife, Pobi, who had round cheeks and a smile so warm it could melt icicles. Other villagers, too, surrounded the fire on benches of fallen logs, and looked happy to see him there.

“We thought you’d never make it,” Andane said when Lin finally reached the fire. He hugged Lin tightly, and the warmth inside Lin suddenly seemed like enough to melt all the snow around them. “Come sit by the fire with us.”

“Together we’ll keep the fire roaring,” Khawu said.

“And in the morning, the sun will rise, and the longest night will be over,” Pobi said, handing Lin a mug of warm, steaming tea.

Lin took the tea and looked around. The cold of the winter around him seemed to have faded to a distant memory.

Suddenly he realized something: he had found the magic after all. It wasn’t the kind of magic he’d thought he was looking for. It wasn’t the kind he could study, or understand just from reading about him in books. This magic was more real than that. It was community, and family. It was love.

Lin looked up at the dark Midwinter sky. It no longer seemed so cold and distant. The sparkling stars seemed close enough to touch. And soon, he knew, the sun would come up, and spring would be on its way.

“Thank you,” he told the others. “I understand now.”

And together they kept the fire burning bright until the end of night.