Dragons and Mages: A Limited Edition Anthology

by Pauline Creeden

  The firedragon shot overhead so fast that a downdraft from its wings slammed into the waters and flattened the waves all around her. It was gaining fast on Egill’s dragon, and now it was spouting fire.

  Dyrfinna waited until the dragon’s flames grew small in the distance. Then, keeping an eye on those flames, she came out of the ocean, water running off her, grabbed her bags, and ran along the seashore, looking for a shelter. She soon found a small cave that was out of sight from the sky. She crawled in on her hands and knees, dragging her bags behind her, into a small space. It smelled a little damp, but it would do for the night.

  After dumping her meager belongings, Dyrfinna stepped out of the cave, watching the flames in the distance as she took off her wet clothes and armor. The little drawing that Aesa had given her had survived. She kissed the paper and put it under a rock so it wouldn’t blow away. She couldn’t look at the picture. She couldn’t cry. Not right now. Not right now.

  She wrung out her clothes, letting the wind dry off her body, and hung them around the rocks near the entrance for the time being. Then she put on some of the dry clothes she’d brought in her bag. Dyrfinna gently picked up Aesa’s picture and put it back in her shirt, against her heart.

  The cave seemed to be far enough back from the high tide mark on the rocks, so she might be okay for the night. Unless a storm came up ….

  She was about to go searching for an alternate shelter in the rocks around the island, but suddenly the flames in the distance stopped. Evidently the battle was over. The red dragon would be back at any time.

  Dyrfinna grabbed her wet things and brought everything inside the cave to get it out of the dragon’s sight. She couldn’t give that dragon any indication that she was here. Not if she wanted to stay alive.

  “Stay alive? For what?” She let out an awful laugh. Then she put her face in her hands and made herself breathe slowly so she wouldn’t burst out sobbing.

  Once Dyrfinna had gathered herself, she got busy setting up her little shelter. The low ceiling inside the cave made it so she had to crawl around, but it was high enough to sit up. The sandy and smooth floor of the cave smelled like water and minerals, but she wasn’t sure if the water smell was from the ocean outside or from a water source somewhere in the rocks. She could find out in the morning. A source of fresh water right now would be very valuable to her.

  “For what?” she asked aloud. “Why?”

  She made herself shut up again.

  The sand was dry enough, though pitted with rocks. She picked out rocks so she could have a comfortable place to sleep.

  Dyrfinna looked inside her bag. She’d brought a little bread, some dried strawberries from Ragnarok, a little dried meat. Several bladders of water. She wasn’t sure what Egill had put in the bag he’d given her, but she was not interested in looking.

  She wanted to hang up her sea cloak because it was drenched, and she’d counted on using that as a blanket when she went to sleep. No chance of that now. She lay it on the ground where she wasn’t sleeping, hoping that it would dry out slightly.

  From outside, the leathery rush of wings came across the ocean. Even though she was in a small cave out of the wild dragon’s sight, she froze. The wings came on louder and louder until they went right overhead like a storm. A hard gust of wind pushed inside the cave. Then quiet, and the wingbeats grew distant.

  She thought of being crammed against the rocks with Skeggi, the clothes on her back about to catch on fire, the oxygen in the air eaten by the flames as they stared into each other’s eyes. She caught her breath.

  She did not want to ever experience that again. Even that short time under the dragon’s fire seemed to last for days. Every moment was agony. And they hadn’t even burned.

  She made a pillow of her clothes and lay down.

  Tomorrow she had to find a source of water, another place to hide or live, and set out some fishing lines and floats to catch her breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Water was uppermost in her mind. Thirst already scratched at her throat. She took a drink from one of her bladders of water, but cut it short. Until she found a source of water to replenish her stock, she’d need to conserve it.

  Exhaustion overcame her, but when she shut her eyes, all she could see was Ostryg, lying at her feet in a pool of hot blood and his bugging eyes staring at her. That bloody gap between his eyes.

  “It’s not fair,” she said aloud.

  She knew at once how wrong that sounded. She was alive: he wasn’t. Where there’s life, there’s hope, she thought again. Then snorted.

  She reached into her shirt and brought out the picture that Aesa had drawn of her and Finna in their boat having all kinds of adventures together.

  She kissed the picture again.

  Only then did she allow herself to cry.

  Alone

  After a while, she realized she needed to do her exploration at night, when the dragon couldn’t see her. She groaned, exhausted in every limb, but she crept out, put out some fishing lines in the sea, and then started searching for potable water and other caves to live in. She walked quietly, keeping low to the ground to stay out of sight of the glow on the other side of the island, behind the cliffs facing the mainland.

  She found a larger, drier cave where she could hang her cloak and wet clothes, so she moved the wet clothing in there. She left Egill’s sack in the old cave. She didn’t even want to look at it. This cave seemed to be big enough for her to build a fire in—but then she realized that if she built a fire, the dragon would likely follow the smell, and blast the cave. She groaned aloud.

  She found a sad little spring, choked with ash. She did her best to keep it clear, but every time she returned to it, the water would be filled with ash again. And she didn’t dare stay out in the open for too long, because the dragon kept a close eye on the spring. Through the day, as it flew over the island, it would stop by the spring and drop fire on it, just for fun, apparently. There was no firewood on the island; everything combustible had been burned to ash. To keep from eating raw fish, she wedged her catch in between the rocks in the spring so they were cooked by the boiling water. Then when she went there at night, she collected the fish and the ashy, stale water. She’d fill her canteen, then go back to her cave and pour the ashy water through a piece of cloth to get the large chunks out, into a bowl that she drank from.

  For a long time she did this, numb. Her mind, usually full of talk, stopped. It left. She didn’t miss it.

  This wasn’t peace, though. It was doom. Just waiting to die.

  Though she did the things that kept her alive. She looked for fish. She hid from the dragon. She picked up things that people once used, things she found around the island, usually around some bits of skeleton that had lain there long enough to have turned back to dust or ash.

  She picked up bits of gold, the random things from the pockets of the dead. Bits of flint. A burned pipe. A little scrimshaw carving from a walrus tusk. A button. A bone flute. Things of no value. She gathered them.

  There was nobody to talk to. She just ranged the items of the dead together in the cave where she slept. Her eyes adjusted to the constant darkness. Light only entered the cave in the early morning when the sun shone in. There was nothing more that was good on the earth. Aesa was gone. Her Mama was gone. Egill, their father, had cut her straps with his knife and shoved her off the dragon.

  And what Gefjun had said, about starting that blood feud with her family .…

  Yeah, she earned that.

  But her little sister. What were they going to say to her? “Your Sissy is gone. We left her on a dragon isle to be burned to death and she never got to tell you goodbye. Sorry about that.”

  She had to stop thinking. She couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Her words only ashes, where her little sis couldn’t hear.

  What good were those words? What good were they anyway? They didn’t fly through the air to her loved ones. The gods didn’t hear them. Hearts
connected by love couldn’t reach each other from far away.

  This was the starkest of truths: We are alone, she thought, utterly alone.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered anyway.

  It annoyed her. Why did she keep whispering that to Aesa? She raged at herself.

  And yet, that night as she tried to eat her fish, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  Then Dyrfinna stopped dead.

  She wasn’t whispering to Aesa.

  She was talking to Leikny.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no,” she whispered. She put the fish down. Couldn’t move.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered again.

  Dyrfinna used to sing all the time. All the time. So did Leikny.

  No. She didn’t want to touch the memory.

  She pushed the memory down out of sight. She made herself open her eyes. Made herself look at the fish in her hand. But it stared back at her with dead eyes.

  She flung it into the ocean.

  Another night and day passed. She no longer wanted to eat. Didn’t want to think.

  She became weak. Grew cold, lying there in the cave, wrapped in her sea cloak. She drank her ashy water. The memory kept trying to work itself loose in her mind, but she kept submerging it, holding it down there until the bubbles stopped rising. Yet it kept coming back when she least expected it. Leikny’s hand lying curled. How flat her face looked as she lay on her side, but not sleeping. That was no sleep. No dreaming with that sleep.

  Dyrfinna would walk away from that awful memory each time.

  And it still came back.

  Through all this, she’d kept having to duck out of sight every time the dragon came around. She’d had a few close calls with it. It must have smelled something, or saw her, but it kept coming around, and each time, she thought that if the dragon wanted to kill her, she’d blast the tunnel with flame. That would have roasted her alive after about five minutes, maybe ten.

  When she fell sick and stopped leaving the cave, she was no longer bothered by the thought of being roasted to death. It would hurt for a while, enormous rain of fire and torture. Then it would be over. She wouldn’t even remember the horrendous pain.

  The memory would try to come again and she fled it.

  And finally it found her. The dragon came to her cave and blasted the entrance. She’d seen it coming and had dashed far up the cave to the other entrance, leapt outside, and had run to the cliffs to hide, watching as it flew from one entrance to the other, blasting both. She never went back to the cave after that.

  “I don’t want your eggs!” she screamed at it. Not that it made a difference. That damn dragon still came for her every time it saw her, or suspected her, so she had to stay on the alert. She had to find a sleeping place and hide carefully so it wouldn’t burn her out. It would fly around the island looking around suspiciously, and blast fire into every nook or cranny it thought it had seen her.

  The only thing that brought her out of her numbness was her anger, her fury at the dragon. That nasty little evil dragon that delighted in making her life Hel.

  One time it nearly got her, and she had to run into the ocean and hide in the deep water. At least her eyesight didn’t seem like the best. Or maybe it was color blind.

  She had to start kicking toward the shore, trying not to move her head too far out of the water, so it wouldn’t spot her. She ducked underwater and came up with her hair over her face to hide herself, with a piece of seaweed wrapped around her head, hoping she looked like a clump of seaweed just floating along and minding its own business. Then she struck out for the shore, taking care to keep her arms and shoulders under water in her little tent of wet hair. Her breath sounded harsh as she swam along.

  That horrid dragon.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered again as she struggled through the water.

  And then it all started coming back to her.

  No, no, not here.

  But it came back to her all the same. And this time she couldn’t shut it out.

  Dyrfinna was ten. She was singing. She wanted to pull down lightning like Thor. She imagined lightning slamming into her hand and then she’d be holding a bolt like a javelin, ready to throw it.

  She was in the storm singing. Pulling down power.

  Leikny got too close. Bam. She was ten and Leikny was only eleven. She’d been singing and she’d killed her and the death was ugly, and it was awful.

  In the water she started crying.

  Gefjun … Gefjun had understood. She knew why Dyrfinna stopped singing. She’d let Dyrfinna make her choice. Sometimes she’d shake her head about, but she’d let it go.

  Dyrfinna crawled back on shore, shaken, and curled up in her little cave. Exhausted.

  When the stars were bright, she crawled out again, shivering. The glow from the dragon’s den was gone. The dragon had left to find food.

  Good.

  Dyrfinna pulled herself to her feet and stood, turning her face to the night sky.

  Back at home, in the deepest part of the night when things were quietest, when she was in her own bed wrapped in her quilts, she could still hear the soft noises of the night. A screech owl would call whooeeee in the distance, or the wind and snow shushed in the pines, or she’d hear the night watchman having a quiet conversation with a traveler. Dogs would bark in the distance, or a cow would low. There would come to her the soft, comforting sounds of other creatures that shared the night world with her. Even the sounds of the wolves calling across the mountains sounded sweet. Wolves sounded especially lovely when she was safe at home, snuggled in her bed, surrounded by four strong walls to keep the wolves out. When Dyrfinna woke up in the middle of the night, those were the sounds that lulled her back to sleep.

  Here, on this dead, rocky island, the only sound she heard was the endless surge and rush of the sea. Nothing else. No bird calls, no dog barks, not even the pipping and trill of a sea bird. The only things alive on this desolate rock were Dyrfinna and a dragon that wanted to kill her.

  No sound but the sea. And silence.

  She was utterly alone.

  And there all alone, with only the stars for company, she thought of Leikny. A hurt grew inside of her, spread through her belly.

  The stars were so far away.

  Dyrfinna remembered Leikny, saw her older sister as she used to be. Hugging her the exact same way that she hugged Aesa.

  Those dark eyes, bright like a bird’s, flashing as Leikny asked Dyrfinna a question. Her dark lashes sweeping her cheeks as she solemnly placed an egg in her basket. She always laid the eggs in so gently. How she’d boss Dyrfinna around like she knew everything even though she was only a year older.

  Leikny was right. She was always right.

  And now, standing under the stars, filled with memories, Dyrfinna started to sing.

  The song moved out of her in the quiet. She closed her eyes.

  A slow, halting song.

  After all, there was nothing alive here except for the dragon, and it was out foraging.

  She was utterly alone. There was nobody here her song could hurt.

  It was something that she had wanted to sing when she’d killed the wolf, but she hadn't done it. But she sang for the wolf too.

  But Leikny. And what Dyrfinna’s song had done to her.

  That absence so huge that it hurt.

  The love so great, now crying out.

  Because the sister she loved so much, she had killed.

  With a song.

  Leikny burst into Dyrfinna’s memory. That giggle, that belly laugh. Her funny thin toes. How she’d boss Dyrfinna around and drove her crazy all the time. How she’d always hum or sing quietly to herself when she was alone or working on a picture or a puzzle or a game. Dyrfinna had never told Leikny how she loved her quiet singing, afraid she might realize what she was doing and stop, and then Dyrfinna would never hear her sweet song again.

  Her long eyelashes. Her long black hair that she braided up, so thin and wispy, and her head on
Dyrfinna’s shoulder as she put her arms around her for a hug.

  Leikny would have been nineteen this year.

  A million people had told her, “It was an accident.”

  Dyrfinna had never once believed it was true.

  It had been an accident, yes. Dyrfinna was an excellent singer, but she’d never been able to control her songs. They’d kept spinning out, going awry, and the magic they’d generated was very powerful. But she could never get control of that power.

  Even so, Dyrfinna could not for an instant be persuaded that she was innocent. Nothing would ever make that sickening guilt go away, not ever, for the rest of her life. It would always be hers.

  Trying to forget only pushed her pain deeper, like a thorn.

  The vault of heaven was crowded with stars trembling up high in the dark. And Dyrfinna sang to them, lifting her voice.

  Dyrfinna sang of her grief so deep, it shot through her like a vein of blackness in a rock.

  Then a sound made her open her eyes as she sang.

  And her heart dropped. Dyrfinna froze.

  Hovering in the air before her was the orange dragon. The orange dragon shining like fire.

  Its wingspan was as wide as her house. The dragon’s tail curled as it regarded her.

  The dragon’s orange fire-glow was bright enough to cast Dyrfinna’s doomed shadow on the ground.

  Grace

  She looked in its jeweled eyes.

  She was done.

  For the first time in her life, she was done. She let her life go, feeling ready to cry.

  Dyrfinna could do little more than sink to her knees, unable to turn away from that dragon, the embodiment of fire, the glory of its great wings of flame.

  She crumpled, still singing for Leikny, and for Aesa. Her body shook uncontrollably.

  Aesa was her treasure and she had defended her so keenly. And now it was time to say goodbye to her.

  The dragon was everything she’d ever wanted.

  Except that it was wild and about to kill her.

  Her breaths were ragged gasps. It was too late to run. Even if she passed out, she wouldn’t be able to escape the agony of those flames. That would be all she felt, that agony, for the remainder of her very short life.