One common thread in these early stories is how much agency Griaule has: how much his influence is real or imaginary. He might look like an object, an increasingly overgrown piece of the valley’s landscape. But at times, it becomes increasingly clear that he might be conscious, might after all be controlling events. The question these early stories play out is what kind of lives can be lived in the shadow of this ‘influence’.
By the time Shepard returned to this setting with ‘Liar’s House’ (2003) and ‘The Taborin Scale’ (2010), Griaule’s will has become much more pervasive. In both stories, we’re granted far more explicit insights into the dragon’s past and future, his wishes and desires. Despite Griaule’s trapped state, his personality becomes quite clear in these later stories. He is as one imagines dragons to be: cruel, arrogant, a user of others to his own ends. Yet there’s also a strange kind of poignancy to these stories as the consequences of what has gone before are played out.
The last story here, ‘The Skull’ (2012), advances in so many directions that it’s difficult to know where to start. Griaule has become a myth, a legend, a holy relic. From the earlier stories’ notional 19th-century setting, Shepard moves to the present and beyond. The history depicted in the previous stories becomes something to be argued over and disputed. Yet Griaule’s influence – real or imagined – persists in curious ways. Politics also becomes a much more explicit consideration here: the exploitation of the poor by the rich, and the powerless by the powerful, are vividly present.
At times, these linked stories look like they have the form of allegories – that Griaule might stand for, say, power or corruption, or the dead hand of the past. Certainly, you could construct readings of them that render them as allegories. I’d argue, though, that Shepard manages to keep them from being so easily reduced. Every character in these stories has some kind of relationship to Griaule – they may fear him, or worship him, or want to kill him. In a sense, these relationships offer a kind of judgment on the characters. (Shepard is a strongly moral writer.) If a character makes their living as a scalehunter, foraging from Griaule’s body, what does that tell the reader about them and their view of the world? The choices these characters make about their interactions with Griaule are as revealing as anything about them. And then, once in a while, Griaule seems to make a choice about them. The dragon’s eyes are open.
