Dragonsong (dragon riders of pern)

by Anne McCaffrey

  She was tired enough when she returned from that task, but then they all had to help load the big nets and ready the boats for a night trawl. The tide was right then.

  She was roused before sunrise the next morning to gut and salt the phenomenal catch. That took all the live-long day and sent her to bed so weary she just stripped off her dirty clothes, and dropped into her sleeping furs.

  The next day was devoted to net-mending, normally a pleasant task because the Hold women would chat and sing. But her father was anxious for the nets to be repaired quickly so that he could take the evening tide again for another deep-sea cast. Everyone bent to his work without time for talk or singing while the Sea Holder prowled among them. He seemed to watch Menolly more often than anyone else, and she felt clumsy.

  It was then that she began to wonder if perhaps the new Harper had found fault with the way the youngsters had been taught their Ballads and Sagas. Time and again Petiron had told her that there was only one way to teach them and, as she had learned properly from him, she must have passed on the knowledge correctly. Why then did her father seem to be so annoyed with her? Why did he glare at her so much? Was he still angry with her for letting Old Uncle babble?

  She worried enough to ask her sister about it that evening when the ships had finally set sail and everyone else could relax a little.

  “Angry about Old Uncle?” Sella shrugged. “What on earth are you talking about, girl? Who remembers that? You think entirely too much about yourself, Menolly, that’s your biggest problem. Why should Yanus care one way or another about you?”

  The scorn in Sella’s voice reminded Menolly too acutely that she was only a girl, too big for a proper girl, and the youngest of a large family, therefore of least account. It was in no way a consolation to be insignificant, even if her father was, for that reason, less likely to notice her. Or remember her misdeeds. Except that he’d remembered about her singing her own songs to the youngsters. Or had Sella forgotten that? Or did Sella even know that?

  Probably, thought Menolly as she tried to find a comfortable spot in the old bed rushes for her weary body. But then, what Sella said about Menolly thinking only of herself applied even more to Sella, who was always thinking about her appearance and her self. Sella was old enough to be married to some advantage to the Hold. Her father had only three fosterlings at the moment, but four of Menolly’s six brothers were out at other Sea Holds, learning their trade. Now, with a Harper to speak for them all again, perhaps there’d be some rearrangements.

  The next day the Hold women spent in washing clothes. With Threadfall past, and a good clear sunny day, they could count on fast drying. Menolly hoped for a chance to speak to her mother to find out if the Harper had faulted her teaching, but the opportunity never arose. Instead, Menolly came in for another scolding from Mavi for the state of her clothes, unmended; her bed furs, unaired; her hair, her sloppy appearance and her slothfulness in general. That evening Menolly was quite content to take a bowl of soup and disappear into a shadowy corner of the big kitchen rather than be noticed again. She kept wondering why she was being singled out for so much misunderstanding.

  Her thoughts kept returning to the sin of having strummed a few bars of her own song. That, and being a girl and the only one who could teach or play in the absence of a real Harper.

  Yes, she finally decided, that was the reason for her universal disfavor. No one wanted the Harper to know that the youngsters had been schooled by a girl. But, if she hadn’t taught them right, then Petiron had taught her all wrong. That didn’t hold water. And, if the old man had really written the Masterharper about her, wouldn’t the new Harper have been curious, or sought her out? Maybe her songs hadn’t been as good as old Petiron had thought. Probably Petiron had never sent them to the Masterharper. And that message hadn’t said anything about her. At any rate, the packet was now gone from the mantel in the Records room. And, the way things were going, Menolly would never get close enough to Elgion to introduce herself.

  Sure as the sun came up, Menolly could guess what she’d have to do the next day—gather new grasses and rushes to repack all the beds in the Hold. It was just the sort of thing her mother would think of for someone so out of favor.

  She was wrong. The ships came back to port just after dawn, their holds packed with yellow-stripe and packtails. The entire Hold was turned out to gut, salt and start the smoke-cave.

  Of all the fish in the sea, Menolly detested packtails the most. An ugly fish, with sharp spines all over, it oozed an oily slime that ate into the flesh of your hands and made the skin peel off. Packtails were more head and mouth than anything else but hack the front end off and the rounded, blunt tail could be sliced off the backbone. Grilled fresh it was succulent eating: smoked it could be softened later for baking or boiling and be as tasty as the day it was caught. But packtails were the messiest, hardest, toughest, smelliest fish to gut.

  Halfway through the morning, Menolly’s knife slipped across the fish she was slicing, gashing her left palm wide open. The pain and shock were so great that Menolly just stood, stupidly staring at her hand bones, until Sella realized that she wasn’t keeping pace with the others.

  “Menolly, just dreaming…Oh, for the love of…Mavi! Mavi!” Sella could be irritating, but she could keep her wits. As she did now, grabbing Menolly’s wrist and stopping the spurt of blood from the severed artery.

  As Mavi came and led her past the furiously working holders, Menolly was seized with a sense of guilt. Everyone glared at her as if she’d deliberately wounded herself to get out of working. The humiliation and silent accusations brought tears to her eyes, not the pain nor the sick feeling in her hand.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” Menolly blurted out to her mother as they reached the Hold’s infirmary.

  Her mother stared at her. “Who said that you did?”

  “No one! They just looked it!”

  “My girl, you think entirely too much about yourself. I assure you that no one was thinking any such thing. Now hold your hand, so, for a moment.”

  The blood spurted up as Mavi released the pressure on the tendon in Menolly’s wrist. For one instant Menolly thought she might faint, but she was determined not to think of herself again. She pretended that she didn’t own the hand that Mavi was going to have to fix.

  Mavi now deftly fastened a tourniquet and then laved the wound with a pungent herbal lotion. Menolly’s hand began to numb, increasing her detachment from the injury. The bleeding ceased, but some how Menolly couldn’t bring herself to look into the wound. Instead she watched the intent expression on her mother’s face as she quickly stitched the severed blood vessel and closed the long slice. Then she slathered quantities of salve on the cut and bound the hand in soft cloths.

  “There! Let’s hope I got all that packtail slime out of the wound.”

  Concern and doubt caused Mavi to frown, and Menolly became fearful. Suddenly she remembered other things: women losing fingers and…

  “My hand will be all right, won’t it?”

  “We’ll hope so.”

  Mavi never lied, and the small hard ball of sick fear began to unknot in Menolly’s stomach. “You should have some use of it. Enough for all practical purposes.”

  “What do you mean? Practical purposes? Won’t I be able to play again?”

  “Play?” Mavi gave her daughter a long, hard stare, as if she’d mentioned something forbidden. “Your playing days are over, Menolly. You’re way past the teaching…”

  “But the new Harper has new songs…the ballad he sang the first night…I never heard all of it. I don’t know the chording. I want to learn…” She broke off, horribly frightened by the closed look on her mother’s face, and the shine of pity in her eyes.

  “Even if your fingers will work after that slice, you won’t be playing again. Content yourself that Yanus was so indulgent while old Petiron was dying…”

  “But Petiron…”

  “That’s enough buts. Here, drink th
is. I want you in your bed before it puts you to sleep. You’ve lost a lot of blood, and I can’t have you fainting away on me.”

  Stunned by her mother’s words, Menolly barely tasted the bitter wine and weed. She stumbled, even with her mother’s help, up the stone steps to her cubicle. She was cold despite the furs, cold in spirit. But the wine and weed had been liberally mixed, and she couldn’t fight the effect. Her last conscious thought was of misery, of being cheated of the one thing that had made her life bearable. She knew now what a dragonless rider must feel.

  Chapter 4

  Black, blacker, blackest

  And cold beyond frozen things.

  Where is between when there is naught

  To Life but fragile dragons’ wings?

  Despite her mother’s care in cleaning the wound, Menolly’s hand was swollen by evening and she was feverish with pain. One of the old aunts sat with her, placing cool cloths on her head and face, and gently crooning what she thought would be a comforting song. The notion was misplaced since, even in her delirium, Menolly was aware that music had now been forbidden her. She became more irritated and restless. Finally Mavi dosed her liberally with fellis juice and wine, and she fell into a deep slumber.

  This proved to be a blessing because the hand had so swollen that it was obvious some of the packtail slime had gotten in the bloodstream. Mavi called in one of the other Hold women deft in such matters. Luckily for Menolly, they decided to release the coarse stitches, to allow better drainage of the infection. They kept Menolly heavily dosed and hourly changed the hot poulticing of her hand and arm.

  Packtail infection was pernicious, and Mavi was dreadfully afraid that they might have to remove Menolly’s arm to prevent a further spread. She was constantly by her daughter’s side, an attention that Menolly would have been surprised, and gratified, to receive, but she remained unconscious. Fortunately the angry red lines faded on the girl’s swollen arm on the evening of the fourth day. The swelling receded, and the edges of the terrible gash assumed the healthier color of healing flesh.

  Throughout her delirium, Menolly kept begging “them” to let her play just once more, just once again, pleading in such a pitiful tone that it all but broke Mavi’s heart to realize that unkind fortune had made that impossible. The hand would always be crippled. Which was as well since some of the new Harper’s questions were provoking Yanus. Elgion very much wanted to know who had drilled the youngsters in their Teaching Songs and Ballads. At first, thinking that Menolly had been nowhere near as skilled as everyone had assumed, Yanus had told Elgion that a fosterling had undertaken the task and he’d returned to his own Hold just prior to the Harper’s arrival.

  “Whoever did has the makings of a good Harper then,” Elgion told his new Holder. “Old Petiron was a better teacher than most.”

  The praise unexpectedly disturbed Yanus. He couldn’t retract his words, and he didn’t want to admit to Elgion that the person was a girl. So Yanus decided to let matters stand. No girl could be a Harper, any way the road turned. Menolly was too old now to be in any of the classes, and he’d see that she was busy with other things until she came to think of her playing as some childish fancy. At least she hadn’t disgraced the Hold.

  He was, of course, sorry that the girl had cut herself so badly, and not entirely because she was a good worker. Still it kept her out of the Harper’s way until she forgot her silly tuning. Once or twice though, while Menolly was ill, he missed her clear sweet voice in countersong, the way she and Petiron used to sing. Yet he dismissed the matter from his mind. Women had more to do than sit about singing and playing.

  There were exciting doings in the Holds and Weyrs, according to Elgion’s private report to him. Troubles, too, deep and worrisome enough to take his mind from the minor matter of a wounded girl.

  One of the questions that Harper Elgion often posed concerned the Sea Hold’s attitude towards their Weyr, Benden. Elgion was curious as to how often they came in contact with the Oldtimers at Ista Weyr. How did Yanus and his holders feel about dragonriders? About the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman of Benden? If they resented dragonmen going on Search for young boys and girls of the Holds and Crafthalls to become dragonriders? Had Yanus or any of his Hold ever attended a Hatching?

  Yanus answered the questions with the fewest possible words, and at first this seemed to satisfy the Harper.

  “Half-Circle’s always tithed to Benden Weyr, even before Thread fell. We know our duty to our Weyr, and they do theirs by us. Not a single burrow of Thread since the Fall started seven or more Turns ago.”

  “Oldtimers? Well, with Half-Circle beholden to Benden Weyr, we don’t much see any of the other Weyrs, not as the people in Keroon or Nerat might when the Fall overlaps two Weyrs’ boundaries. Very glad we were that the Oldtimers would come between so many hundreds of Turns to help our time out.”

  “Dragonmen are welcome any time at Half-Circle. Come spring and fall, the women are here anyway, gathering seabeachplums and marshberries, grasses and the like. Welcome to all they want.”

  “Never met Weyrwoman Lessa. I see her on her queen Ramoth in the sky after a Fall now and then. Weyrleader F’lar’s a fine fellow.”

  “Search? Do they find any likely lad at Half-Circle, it will be to our honor, and he’s our leave to go.”

  Although the problem had never worried the Sea Holder; no one from Half-Circle had answered a Search. Which was as well, Yanus thought privately. If a lad happened to be chosen, every other lad in the Hold would take to grumbling that he should have been picked. And on the seas of Pern, you had to keep your mind on your work, not on dreams. Bad enough to have those pesky fire lizards appearing now and then by the Dragon Stones. But as no one could get near enough to the stones to catch a fire lizard, no harm was done.

  If the new Harper found his Holder an unimaginative man, hardworking and hidebound, he had been well prepared for it by his training. His problem was that he must provoke a change, subtle at first, in what he found; for Masterharper Robinton wanted each of his journeymen to get every Holder and Craftmaster to think beyond the needs of their own lands, Hall and people. Harpers were not simply tellers of tales and singers of songs; they were arbiters of justice, confidants of Holders and Craftmasters, and molders of the young. Now, more than ever, it was necessary to alter hide-bound thinking, to get everyone, starting with the young and working on the old, to consider more of Pern than the land they kept Thread-free or the problems of their particular area. Many old ways needed shaking up, revising. If F’lar of Benden Weyr hadn’t done some shaking up, if Lessa hadn’t made her fantastic ride back four hundred Turns to bring up the missing five Weyrs of dragonriders, Pern would be writhing under Thread, with nothing green and growing left on the surface. The Weyrs had profited and so had Pern. Similarly the holds and crafts would profit if they only were willing to examine new ideas and ways.

  Half-Circle could expand, Elgion thought. The present quarters were becoming cramped. The children had told him that there were more caves in the adjacent bluffs. And the Dock Cavern could accommodate more than the thirty-odd craft now anchored so safely there.

  By and large, though, Elgion was rather relieved at his situation, since this was his first post as Harper. He had his own well-furnished apartments in the Hold, enough to eat, though the diet of fish might soon pall on a man accustomed to red meat, and the Seaholders were generally pleasant people, if a little dour.

  Only one thing puzzled him: who had drilled the children so perfectly? Old Petiron had sent word to the Harper that there was a likely songmaker at Half-Circle, and he had included two scored melodies that had greatly impressed the Masterharper. Petiron had also said that there’d be some difficulty in the Sea Hold about the songmaker. A new Harper, for Petiron had known that he was dying when he wrote the Masterharper, would have to go carefully. This was a Hold that had kept much to itself and observed all the old ways.

  So Elgion had kept his counsel on the matter of the songmaker, certain that
the lad would make himself known. Music was hard to deny and, based on the two songs Elgion had been shown, this lad was undeniably musical. However, if the chap were a fosterling and away from the Hold, he’d have to await his return.

  Elgion had soon managed to visit all the different smaller holds in the Half-Circle palisade and gotten to know most people by name. The young girls would flirt with him or gaze at him with sorrowful eyes and sighs when he played in the evenings at the Great Hall.

  There was really no way in which Elgion would have realized that Menolly was the person he wanted. The children had been told by the Sea Holder that the Harper would not like to know that they’d been drilled by a girl, so they were not to bring disgrace on the Hold by telling him. After Menolly cut her hand so badly, it was rumored that she’d never use it again, so everyone was told that it would be heartless to ask her to sing in the evenings.

  When Menolly was well of the infection and her hand healed but obviously stiff, no one was thoughtless enough to remind her of her music. She herself stayed away from the singing in the Great Hall. And since she could not use her hand well and so many occupations in the Hold required two, she was frequently sent away in the day to gather greens and fruits, usually alone.

  If Mavi was perplexed by the quietness and passivity of her youngest child, she put it down to the long and painful recovery, not to loss of her music. Mavi knew that all manner of pain and trouble could be forgotten in time, and so she did her best to keep her daughter occupied. Mavi was a very busy woman, and Menolly kept out of her way.

  Gathering greens and fruit suited Menolly perfectly. It kept her out in the open and away from the Hold, away from people. She would have her morning drink, bread and fish quietly in the great kitchen when everyone was dashing around to feed the men of the Hold, either going out to fish or coming back in from a night’s sailing. Then Menolly would wrap up a fishroll and take one of the nets or skin slings. She’d tell the old aunt in charge of the pantry that she was going out for whatever it was, and since the old aunt had a memory like a seine net, she wouldn’t remember that Menolly had done the same thing the day before or realize that she would do the same the day after.