Dragon Frontier

by Dan Abnett

  Jake thought he was listening to his teacher’s wise words and was almost as surprised as everyone else at what happened next. While Yellow Cloud was talking, Jake felt the muscles in his hands flexing slightly. By the time Yellow Cloud had completed his speech, Jake could feel the muscles in Match’s back and shoulders responding to his touch. With just a little more pressure from Jake’s hands, Match lifted his body further into the air. Then, with two or three measured steps and a beat or two of his wings, the little green dragon left the ground.

  Jake kept the pressure in his hands and then transferred it from one hand to the other. Still climbing into the sky, Match began to turn a wide arc. The riders stared up at him with horror, pride and wonder.

  Yellow Cloud couldn’t believe his eyes and thought that Jake would soon bring his Thunderbird back down to earth. He began by smiling, but, after a few minutes of Match making bigger and higher circles, Yellow Cloud reached up and beckoned to them to land. Jake saw Yellow Cloud waving, and he wanted to wave back, but he was concentrating and didn’t think he was quite ready to fly one-handed.

  He soon became bored with the lazy circles and decided that, if he flew back to the camp, the others would have to follow him. Jake steered Match around until he was facing in the direction of the corral, and then he straightened his hands and increased the tension in his grip. The little dragon climbed higher into the sky. Instinctively, Jake pushed his knees deeper into Match’s shoulders, and suddenly he was travelling much more quickly. They were soon flying almost as fast as he had flown with Yellow Cloud on their journey to meet Match.

  ‘Go on, boy,’ said Jake. Match didn’t need any verbal encouragement, only Jake on his back, controlling his movements, but it felt good to talk to him nonetheless. Jake thought about the boys in the wagon train, who’d ridden their horses every day. If they could see him now, they would be as jealous of him as he had once been of them.

  Match and Jake were quickly out of shouting range. Soon, they wouldn’t be able to see Yellow Cloud waving at them. The Native removed his bracelet from his wrist and began to spin it to command his Thunderbird out of the mud pool. Within moments, Yellow Cloud rode into the air on Match’s trail. He was followed by the other five dragons, and Rolling Thunder and Grey Wolf were left to walk back to the corral.

  Jake was over the corral sooner than he had imagined possible. He was exhilarated and loving every minute of his first solo ride.

  He leaned into Match’s neck and rested his cheek there for a moment. In that instant, Jake felt a tingling in his arm and hand, like he’d felt before, except that it seemed to extend throughout his body. His head was soon full of a warm feeling. He closed his eyes in a slow blink. He felt a rush of blood in his head and heard a sudden roaring whoosh. He felt a warm, numb sensation in his limbs, almost as if he was swimming without water.

  Jake shook his head and opened his eyes. His view had changed entirely. He couldn’t see Match’s neck in front of him or feel his back beneath him. He could not feel his hands in the feathers at the nape of Match’s neck or his feet tucked into the dragon’s forelegs. He blinked again, and, for a split second, he was just a boy, clinging in awe to a dragon. In his next blink, he was Match and Match was him. He saw through the dragon’s eyes. He didn’t need to steer because the thought processes that worked his limbs now controlled Match’s wings.

  Jake flew past the corral and had no intention of landing. Everything was new and exciting. He was flying, and it was the best feeling in the world.

  As they flew, high over the mountain ranges, Jake knew it was bitterly cold, and yet he didn’t feel the freezing air against his skin. He was aware that he was flying very high, and yet he didn’t feel breathless in the thinning air. Jake was no longer flying the dragon; the dragon was flying Jake. It knew exactly where it was going, and it needed to take him there, and Jake trusted Match with his life.

  First, Jake and Match flew west with the sun high above them. Then they dropped in the series of slow circles that all the dragons used at take-off and landing. Jake looked around at a great gleaming wilderness with more bubbling mud pools. There was also a glimmering turquoise lake of clear water, sending great gouts of steam into the air. It was like nothing on earth that Jake had ever seen.

  Suddenly, a great fountain of hot water erupted from the turquoise lake. It shot up close to them and then rained down, hot and bright, warmer than summer showers and as heavy as any downpour. Match rumbled and snickered, and Jake knew that he was smiling.

  They swept lower over the wilderness and back over the geyser just as it erupted again. This time, Jake couldn’t help laughing too. The hot rain beat down on them, and the sulphurous steam wove around them.

  After one more slow turn, Match picked up speed. Jake expected that they would fly back to the corral, but he trusted the little dragon. He allowed him to steer his own course while Jake enjoyed the ride inside Match’s head.

  Match followed the ridge of rock at the edge of the wilderness, picking up speed, but staying low. As he swept close to the escarpment, Match’s turn almost flipped him on his side. His wings stretched wide, but were positioned almost above and below his body, following the rise of the ridge. Jake was thrilled with the feeling of the ground surging up towards him as their angle of flight got steeper.

  Jake was about to whoop and holler like a Native. He understood their joy, and he wanted to celebrate. As he opened his mouth, he was suddenly aware of his hands in Match’s neck feathers and his feet wedged into the top of the dragon’s forelegs. He could feel the wind in his hair and the forces holding his body against Match’s neck. Jake’s eyes widened at the view. Then they squeezed tightly shut, and his throat constricted, turning the holler into a terrified scream.

  ‘Aaarrrghh!’

  Jake heard the sound go on and on … and on. He was still screaming long after he expected to be dead. Match was flying towards a sheer black rock face. The curve of the ridge had come to an end, and there was no way out.

  Jake heard his scream fizzle away, and he blinked and opened his eyes. He did not know how Match had found a cleft in the vertical face of black rock, but he had. The little dragon had found a gap barely wide enough for them, and he’d tilted his body on to its side and was flying through it.

  Jake panicked, kicking his feet and tugging the feathers at the nape of Match’s neck. If he’d been more experienced, Match might have ignored Jake’s frantic instructions, but this was their first ride, and, just as the boy panicked, the dragon panicked too.

  Jake screamed again, this time with his eyes wide open. The scream bounced off the rock cliffs as Match tried to straighten up before they’d emerged on the other side of the stone tunnel. When they did emerge, the dragon straightened up too quickly and went into a lopsided tailspin. It ended with Match cartwheeling into a great blue sand dune.

  Jake let go of Match’s neck feathers and flew the last few yards before landing, without his dragon beneath him. He hoped the sand would be soft as he flipped over to land on his back next to the crumpled heap of Match’s body. Jake was winded, and he grunted as he tried to sit up. He was more worried about Match, though, and he scrambled through the glassy blue sand to the dragon.

  ‘Match, are you all right?’ he asked.

  Jake took Match’s head in his arms. The little dragon blinked at him and puffed a little yellow sigh. Then he thrust with his legs until he was sitting on the dune next to his rider. He flexed his right wing easily, but when he tried to flex his left, his forked tongue appeared between his teeth.

  Match was in pain. Jake scrambled around the dragon’s left side and looked up at the alula joint of the wing. Then he stepped on to
Match’s foreleg and lifted himself on to his neck, facing his tail rather than his head. Match lowered his wing, and Jake took a good look at the joint. The feathers had been torn away and there was some blood, but nothing was broken.

  Jake climbed off Match’s neck, patted him on the head and went to find something to help the little dragon. The place they had landed in was beautiful and it was worth taking the opportunity to look around and get his bearings while the little dragon rested.

  Jake took a proper look around, and his jaw dropped. Right in front of him hung a huge crescent moon, ten times the size of any moon he had ever seen, and a bright vermilion red.

  Jake looked west and there was the sun, beginning its slow descent to the horizon. He looked at the great red crescent moon, and then towards the sun again, and he realized that something was wrong … That many things were wrong.

  The sky was not blue or streaked with the orange and pink of a glorious autumn evening. It was mostly green, streaked turquoise and purple around the clouds, but the clouds were yellow and the sky was green. The sun was too big and not bright enough and was speckled black as if it was cooler than it should be.

  Jake’s mouth hung open as he gazed at the green sky with its enormous red moon. Then he cast his eye along the vast horizon. He recognized nothing. The shapes of the trees were wrong, the formations of the mountains were unfamiliar, and the sand was blue.

  Jake had not thought about it when he’d landed, but the sand really was blue. He thrust his hand into it, sifting it through his fingers as he had done with the orange sand at the corral. He was left with two smooth, glassy beads. He compared one of them to the beads on his bracelet, and, although he couldn’t tell for sure, he believed they were the same.

  Jake heard a faint sigh and turned to see Match trying to clean his wound, flicking his forked tongue at it and puffing little yellow sighs. If Jake had been wearing a shirt, he would have torn off a strip to clean Match’s wound, but he was wearing the Native buckskin trousers and jerkin.

  He stumbled off the dune and looked around. Jake could smell sulphur in the air. He knew that there was warm water, and he trusted the sulphur in it would clean Match’s wound thoroughly. His father had often used sulphur ointments on wounds. He just needed a rag or maybe the leaves of a plant.

  Jake walked along the sandy ridge that linked several dunes and brought him closer to the hot pool. Then he began to stride down the slope, sideways, the sand shifting away in mini-avalanches wherever his feet fell. That’s when he saw a piece of wood sticking out of the sand, but it wasn’t flotsam and jetsam, not driftwood. It was a piece of worked wood, which had been sawn, planed and sanded, and had a bolt through it. It had also been burned.

  Jake dug around the wood. The sand was not difficult to shift, and he soon uncovered something recognizable. It looked like the side-rail of a wagon, a small wagon, maybe a chuck-wagon. Then he saw the stitched edge of a piece of cloth. When he pulled it, more sand rolled away, and Jake knew it was the edge of a singed wagon canopy. He bit and tore at the cloth until he had a square of it, bigger than a handkerchief. He crabbed his way down the rest of the dune, bringing more sand down with him, and then jogged to the pool.

  When he dipped the cloth into it, he could feel the searing warmth of the water and smell the healing sulphur. He soaked the cloth over and over, so that it was clean. Then he turned to walk back to Match and could not believe his eyes. Where the sand had spilled down the dune under his feet, all sorts of objects had been uncovered, or half-uncovered, that Jake hadn’t noticed before. He could see the top half of a wagon wheel, a driver’s bench, sticking out from the side-rail, and several canopy hoops were clearly visible, although some were charred.

  Jake forgot the canvas in his hand as he began to climb the dune. He displaced more and more sand as he went from object to object, uncovering them all.

  The wagon was small, and there were harness straps for one ox. There was a dented coffee pot and a small barrel of salt meat. Then Jake saw a splash of red on the sand. It was more cloth, and, when he tugged on it, he pulled out a set of knitted red underwear. Then he spotted more wood jutting out of the dune. It was a carved piece of scrollwork that belonged to an instrument. Jake was convinced he recognized the wagon and knew who it belonged to.

  He made his way to the scrolled nub of wood that stood in the sand. He pulled it gently, shook the sand out of it and looked at it longingly. The last time he had seen this fiddle, Pa Watkiss had been playing it, and his ma had been singing. It was the day he’d met Yellow Cloud, the day before they had crossed the river. It was the last evening he’d seen his family alive and well and happy.

  Jake sat in the sand, surrounded by what was left of Pa Watkiss’s little wagon. There was not another one like it in the whole world. He remembered seeing the wagon lifted clean off the ground during the fire. He thought it had exploded. He thought the little wagon had hopped into the air. Then Jake remembered that he hadn’t seen it land. It had simply disappeared. He tried to work out what might have happened. There was no sign of Pa Watkiss. There was no sign of his ma or pa or Emmie, but the sand dunes were vast and could be hiding anything.

  Jake wondered if he should begin to dig. Then he heard a loose canopy flapping against itself, and his heart missed a beat.

  Jake turned at the familiar sound, half-expecting to see another wagon in the insane landscape.

  What he actually saw was Yellow Cloud riding his Thunderbird through the gap in the rock and swooping down towards the dunes. There was more movement in the air, and Yellow Cloud was followed by five other Native riders astride their various mounts.

  They looked glorious in the haze of golden sunshine, bathed in the warm light from the great red moon. Their scales gleamed and glistened, and their wings beat the air with a sound like the rumble of distant thunder.

  Yellow Cloud wasted no time in cleaning Match’s wound. He filled his hands with mud from one of the bubbling pools and smeared it on to the alula joint.

  ‘The feathers are lost,’ said Yellow Cloud, as he dressed the wound while Jake held Match’s head. ‘It will heal, but you should not have ridden so far, so fast. You have frightened him.’

  Yellow Cloud was gentle with Match, but fierce with Jake, and the boy blushed. There was a strained silence between them for several moments. Then Yellow Cloud spoke more gently to him.

  ‘What did you feel when you flew?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jake, blushing to the roots of his hair.

  ‘You felt it, didn’t you?’ asked Yellow Cloud, smiling.

  ‘It was as if I was Match and he was me. It was as if we were one person, one dragon,’ said Jake, speaking so fast he was almost tripping over his words.

  ‘How did you fall?’ asked Yellow Cloud.

  ‘One minute it was just me and Match flying together,’ said Jake, ‘and the next we were separate. I didn’t know where I was and … I panicked. I didn’t mean to, but suddenly I was just a boy who didn’t know how to ride a dragon, and I didn’t know how to land, and …’

  ‘You have learned in an hour what it takes a year for many riders to learn,’ said Yellow Cloud. ‘There is only shame in wounding your Thunderbird.’

  Jake took Match’s head in his arms once more and laid his cheek on the top of his head. He felt his tattoo tingle and itch, and his hand throbbed. Match made a little mewling noise and lifted his head. Jake looked into the dragon’s deep, red, fathomless eyes. He did not blink and neither did Match, and suddenly Jake was looking out at his own eyes. He thought it was his reflection, but then he watched himself blink. Jake screwed up his eyes, and, when he opened them, he was looking at Match
again.

  The little dragon growled and then stood up in one easy movement. Match followed Jake and Yellow Cloud to the steaming pool where the other dragons were bathing and playing, and wasted no time joining them.

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Jake, spreading his arms to take in all the extraordinary scenery around them. As he did so, a strange two-legged creature with a high collar around its neck and white scales ducked under Jake’s arm and waddled towards the water’s edge. ‘And what is that?’ he asked, incredulous.

  ‘We are close to our winter training grounds,’ said Yellow Cloud. ‘Our camp is a short ride over that ridge and into the valley beyond.’

  ‘The Land of the Red Moon,’ said Jake. ‘I didn’t know it was somewhere else. I thought it was just a fancy name. I should have realized because I didn’t think dragons were real either.’

  ‘What do you think now?’ asked Yellow Cloud.

  Jake wanted to talk about his family and about finding Pa Watkiss’s wagon in the dunes, but he wasn’t sure what to say.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said. ‘Except … I think my family could be alive. I think they might have come here.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’ asked Yellow Cloud.

  ‘I know who these things belonged to,’ said Jake, pointing at the stuff he’d found in the dunes. ‘I knew the man that drove the little wagon and the ox that pulled it. He played that fiddle when my mother sang.’

  Jake’s throat closed up, and he swallowed hard. The day had been full of such amazing adventures and now this. He didn’t know whether to be happy or sad.

  ‘These things were not here last winter,’ said Yellow Cloud. ‘I have not seen them before.’