by Joshua Gryniewicz

Flame-Born Change-Bringer: 
The Salamander in Myth and Story
copyright (c) 2003 by Josh Gryniewicz

In a backwoods bar somewhere in America, where an antiquated jukebox scrapes out old Johnny Cash tunes on record, one fisherman-turned-taleteller may weave some story, as the beer loosens his tongue and pretenses alike, that will add to the annals of unsolved mysteries and modern folklore. As outlandish tales of “the one that got away” wind slowly down, he may lower his voice to a hushed whisper as he relays an encounter with a prehistoric beast unlike anything that has ever been seen.

His rowboat had hit the flowing waves of murky, sediment-laced waters before the rising sun had even appeared in the sky. This, of course, was the ideal time to reel in the best catch--as his father had done, his grandfather, and his grandfather’s father before him. On this morning, however, something unsettling would occur. First his line would become snagged, and before he could reason the weight of what he had hooked, it would begin to move, dragging with it the anchored boat against the taut line.

Then, the waters would become choppy. Almost as if they were suddenly boiling, fish skimmed to the surface puncturing the water line and hurling their bodies into the air. To them death by suffocation seemed a better fate then whatever stalked them from beneath. As he wrestled against his catch, he would notice a pair of eyes opened from below, hypnotizing him. Eyes that were stoked with coal from the fires of hell itself staring from some insidious beyond. A mouth, punctured with his hook, peeled back, revealing a menacing row of razor teeth, as fierce as those of any animal, and its body was thick, black and glistening. For that split second before he wrenched his blade from his belt and sliced the sturdy fishing thread free, it looked as though he were seeing some ancient monster, a dinosaur perhaps, long since banished from this earth.

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