Green eastern dragon wrapped around a calf

He had horns like a stag's antlers, whiskers longer than a rowing boat, and eyes the red of an old customs stamp. He could not cross the bridge himself, the iron being no friend to dragons, so he wound his body round the northern pillar and sent his tail down the southern bank to fetch whatever travellers dropped. Coins, mostly. A wedding ring once. A child's wooden horse, which he kept on a ledge under the water for forty years and gave back to its owner when she came grey-haired to see the river.

The officer on the northern post was a thin woman called Pell, who wrote everything down and trusted nothing that could not be stamped. One wet night a man came to her with a passport that had no photograph in it, only a name and a date, and she told him the paper was not in order. The water went quiet. Then the great head rose beside the booth, dripping gold and green, and the whiskers lifted like reeds in a wind.

"Stamp him yourself, then," Pell said, not even looking up. And the dragon did, with one claw, pressing hard. The mark came out green and never washed off, and the man walked over the bridge with his name written in the only ink the river respects. My grandmother always said that is why the Ilu runs so bright in the spring, and why you should never ask a dragon for a receipt.