Above it

You are Alonso Quijana, maybe, and you are sitting in the big round window of your manor, with the lovely blue shutters. With the thick glass panes. There is a book in your hands, a simple book, of simple religious praises. It was written by so-and-so. Every once in a while, you glance up and gaze out at the dusty little town

Below
You—
All of it,
Below
You,
Maybe.

Maybe it is not below you, but at the very least, you are above it. The glass in the window is thick, and even with the shutters open, you cannot hear the little birds, little birds tweeting and twittering just outside, in the branches of one of the trees around your manor. You cannot hear the shouts of the vendors down in the dusty little marketplace of the dusty little town, advertising their dusty little cheeses and meats and wines, the best for the price! The highest quality! You won’t find this anywhere else in La Mancha! Buy now, or else someone else will get here first! You know all of what they have to say, anyhow.

You don’t go down into the dusty little marketplace yourself these days, anyhow. You send your housekeeper or your niece these days. You are above it. You send them down the hill, maybe with that bony old horse of yours to help carry whatever they might buy back up here for you. Cheeses and meats and wines. Books. Books and books and books. Your collection is not enough. Your brother’s collection, brought from Madrid, is not enough. Nothing is enough.

It is easy to sit and read in this window. The glass is thick. You cannot hear the screams of the prisoners, being brought into the dusty little marketplace in their lines. It is about that time in the afternoon, now, isn’t it?

You glance up again, and of course, there’s nothing to hear. You know all of what they have to say, anyhow. But you glance up, and your eyes linger. You are staring. Today, there is a dragon outside. Its body is black and gray, rising, rising, rising in great billowing coils from the edge of town. You are sitting, and you are staring at it; you are watching it rise. It is looming over dusty El Toboso. It is casting its shadow. It is a horrible monster ready to come crashing down onto all the people and everything; all of it, below.

You stare at the base of the dragon’s body. Where is it coming from? You can’t quite see where it’s coming from. You press your face to the glass, and that’s when you see that fire, blazing bright, fire from the ground, fire from a little patch of dirt next to the town. The dragon, surely it is rising from a great crack in the Earth, from the bowels of Hell, those flames! The fires of Hell itself! You press your head even tighter to the glass. Now, you put your ear right up to the glass, and yes—you can hear it, now, yes;

“The screams of the damned,” you murmur.

“Hmmm? What’s that?”

You just manage to avoid screaming, yourself, as you peel your face off the window. Your heart is pounding out a wild stampede in your chest. “It’s nothing,” you tell your niece, who has come in to show you the wine she bought today. Excellent, you tell her. Very good, you tell her. You glance out the window again at the dragon, and it’s just smoke, it's all it is. It’s just the latest round of prisoners who have refused to repent, that's all it is. You ask her what new books she’s brought for you, and she tells you that she’s brought none. She tells you, "How many times, now?" That she’s over and done with bringing you books.

“After everything that’s happened,” she says to you. She shakes her head. It was all because of the books. She isn’t going to let any of that happen again.

You hold up the book of praises for her to see, you show her the cover, “Look,” you tell her, can’t she see that it’s perfectly innocent? And the two of you don’t quite argue, but you’re trying to change her mind, and her mind isn’t changing. You aren’t quite angry at her, and she isn’t quite angry at you, but you tell her fine, then, you’ll just start going down into the village yourself again to get whatever books you want, and she tells you fine, then, and she turns and walks away.

You don’t mean that. You won’t do that, really. You’re too far above all that, now, aren’t you? You look out the window again, and the dragon is still just smoke, rising, most of it. Some of it is coming down, softly, over the town, soot and ash. It is dust, settling down all over everything, like it always does. Over all the roofs and the streets. In through the windows without glass to coat the floors and the walls and the countertops and the pots and the pans and the tilted shelves. Open a jar and catch some of it as it falls. It comes down like a blanket onto a great sleeping giant.

You take a long breath of half-clean air, dusty air. You tell a story to yourself about what you believe. You are a part of the animal of Spain, which is what you tell yourself. You open the cover of your praise-book and go back to reading the adventure of romance and chivalry and magic that you’d hidden between the pages. You think to yourself that the problem with girls is that they are too smart for their own good, too smart to ever learn the simple tricks of schoolboys.

There is dust, somehow, already, impossibly, on your story. You have to brush off a few of the words to read properly. Out the window, and through your feet, you can hear and feel the rumble of a great giant rising from the earth to fight an evil dragon.

The rumble, the rumble, the screech, the roar! The rumble as it moves, dusty pots and pans are rattling in all the dusty kitchens. Dusty jars of sesame seeds are sliding, sliding, sliding down dusty, tilted shelves. Closer to the edge. Closer to the edge. Closer to the edge.