by Marc Secchia
Re-grafting puncture wounds was more complicated. Hualiama made an attempt under Sunfyora’s direction, but the complexities of the draconic dermal and subcutaneous tissues defeated her at first. Draconic hide boasted no less than three distinct layers of hide-armour, all fed by complex nerve, vascular and magical systems, which the healer-Dragoness saw with what she called Deep Sight, a Dragon-power Hualiama had never heard of. Coupled with her own emergent understanding of Balance, they steadily rebuilt a Red Dragon’s horrible neck-wounds from the inside out.
You have power, hatchling! Sunfyora muttered at one point.
Power, perhaps, but a lack of knowledge and experience in how to apply it, the Star Dragoness said ruefully.
Straw-head, Flicker murmured into one of her ear-canals.
The Citrine-Blue snorted happily, bathing Hualiama’s shoulder in a friendly curl of fire. No hatching grows into their paws in a day. Now, let’s send this fine Red on his way. Two days, and that new skin will harden into full armour. Ready for another problem? Burliki has severe intestinal and skin damage–
I’m Hualiama, Lia blurted out.
Sunfyora made a pleased ruffle of her double-wings. I guessed. The mighty Tourmaline spoke of the birth-in-fire of a Star Dragoness. We all expected you to be–she coughed a delicate smoke-ring–bigger.
From her other side, the chunky muscle-mountain that was Burliki wafted scented fire over them both, tingling Lia’s highly sensitive nostrils with notes of anise, tarragon, a host of tangy metallic scents beyond her ken and a rich floral bouquet unexpectedly similar to the fireflower perfume of the Fra’anior Cluster. Sunfyora nudged him slyly and suggested that neither she nor the Star Dragoness spoke Franxxian Aroma-Dialect, and could he desist from wafting over her patients? Another intriguing nuance of draconic life she had not encountered in her travels through scroll-lore. Observing their interaction, Lia concluded that despite her protestations, the resulting acceleration of hearts-beats and burbling of belly-fires implied that those scents had the desired effect on Sunfyora.
An hour later, Burliki was the proud owner of a shiny new patch of Dragon hide larger and wider than Dragoness-Lia was tall.
“We could do with combining these techniques with Human medical science,” Lia mused aside to Sunfyora. “Stitching intestines beforehand would have shaved half of the time off of what we just achieved. Teach me more, please, noble Dragoness.”
The Citrine-Blue made a smoky humph that implied Star Dragoness magic was somewhat unique. “If you learned to draw upon the injured Dragon’s resources, that would conserve your strength.”
“We did well,” Lia protested.
Mud-for-brains, Flicker muttered in his sleep. Hualiama considered the patch of warmth sleeping beneath her skull-spikes, in the hollow between the skull-plate that anchored the spikes and her neck itself. Flicker reincarnate. The second Flicker. How poignant her memories. She could not stand to lose him again.
“We’ve two hundred and seventy-six patients left,” countered the other Dragoness.
Lia showed her a few needle-sharp hatchling fangs.
“Point taken.” Sunfyora gave her a playful wing-slap. “Let’s get to work, student!”
* * * *
Four hours after midnight, Grandion spied the relief spearing through a cloudbank and frowned. How had Zulior conjured up such a miraculous number of Dragons? By the pale, beautiful light of a full Blue moon, his magnified sight picked out the individuals in that group, whereupon his hearts quickened to the tune of a fine, smoky snort of wonderment. By the First Egg of all Dragons! There came Burliki, flying with relative ease, and had not Tenzu of Tyrodia’s right wing been shredded so severely, the Brown had been forced to walk the last four leagues back to Kerdani? Yet he soared aloft, favouring the right only marginally.
Grandion led his paw-weary, battered Dragonwing on an intercept course. Ten more Dragons appeared from the clouds. Two dozen!
Raiden growled, “What is this, o Tourmaline?”
Fumiko, who had been dozing in her seat between his spine-spikes, straightened up with a bark of laughter. “I know, Grandion–don’t you?” His scales prickled in anticipation. “Don’t you Dragons scent these things with your sixth or seventh sense?”
No seventh sense was needed. Grandion could smell those little laughing paws from a hundred leagues off. A resounding chuckle vibrated deep in his chest, a near-subsonic rumble. Where she was concerned, just listen to the logical fallacies in his thinking. Laughing paws? O Dragon of muddled fires! He bugled quietly, “Hualiama.”
“Oh, how romantic!” the blacksmith Tadao sighed, drawing an amused glance from his warrior-wife Fumiko.
Here was another masterpiece of her paw. A family of Dragons and Dragon Riders, the mated pairs of Vinzuki and Raiden oath-linked with Fumiko and Tadao.
Grandion pumped his aching wings, sweeping his battle-scarred body up to the incoming Dragonwing. Romantic? She refused his advances! He must woo her, entice her, with the uttermost draconic cunning, or his ascending fire-oaths meant nothing.
Yet if Blue-star had rebelled against her mother’s dominion, that too was a sign and a portent. He lauded the decision. Shinzen’s Giants and Dragonwings closed in from the southwest, south and east. The huge Island that housed the Human capital city lay but fifty leagues ahead. If she had reached the capital, that meant the Lost Islands could not be far behind–a pawful of days at most.
The battle must draw together at Kerdani.
Chapter 21: Rainbows over Islands
HUaliama slept flank-to-flank with Sunfyora in the Dragon fashion, her paws twitching lightly, now and again, as she dozed restlessly. Eggling-dreams beset her. Chaotic, filled with desperate liaisons with her White Dragoness mother and Fra’anior’s thundering and endless fleeing from the wild storms of the Ancient Dragon’s presence. Again and again, she tumbled away over the Islands of the world, seeking her soul’s rest, her home, unable to find what she desired most … and she whimpered and cried out, and Sunfyora comforted her with a motherly paw and a warm word.
At last came a time when she fell deeply asleep, and found herself in what she had come to think of as her soul-space, the home she and her Human shared.
“Humansoul?” she called, padding up the steps to the bed–which held a scaly intruder!
A Dragon! A wing, a girl slumbering between paws as white as anemone petals … Numistar! Oh mercy, it could not be! Her paws froze with shock, her mind charged up the steps and pounced on that Dragoness in a terrible, rending battle-fury, but her body refused to obey.
“Numistar! Get away from her!”
“Numistar?” said the White Dragoness, in tones so ineffably sweet and melancholy, Hualiama’s fires sorrowed and swooped toward darkness. “Do you know me so little?”
“I-I … Istariela! Shell-mother!”
She bounded up those steps in a flash and crashed into the beautiful arch of her mother’s neck, the diamond-frosted scales, the scent she had so long imagined filling her nostrils with cascades of hope and sorrow and ecstasy. Hualiama cried, Tell me you’re real! Is this real? Shell-mother?
May she crawl back inside the eggshell; may she re-enter her mother’s womb!
Istariela’s paw clasped her close, desperate, tender, trembling. A wordless crooning rose from her throat, before she choked it off, saying, As real as my spirit-presence embodied across the leagues, my darling shell-daughter, my song, my third-heart. How I have longed for this day.
So you are present? In this Island-World?
Hualiama … her head jerked; her paw clenched painfully tight. He hunts. Please, let this be … let it suffice. How I wish I could be closer, yet–
Yet I am to endure the terrible choices of two exiled, absentee parents?
Human arms wound around her neck. The girl touched her Dragoness’ cheek, her eyes brimming with more understanding and grief than either soul could bear. She, of all people, knew first-hand the pain of separation and loss. Then the Human girl had
learned the shattering truth of her parentage; despite that, Humansoul was still generous with her love. The Dragoness sighed up a gust that shivered every scale on her body.
Human-Lia said, “We know, don’t we? We honour our legacy, being shell-daughter to the most legendary Dragon-pair in history, yet what heartache they chose …”
“Fate’s choice?” echoed the Star Dragoness, with a bittersweet chuckle. “Do we choose a fate, or does fate choose for us?”
Istariela’s face was a picture of puzzlement, even suspicion. “There’s two Hualiamas? Explain your … ah, self? Selves?”
“We believe we may be the third race,” Dragon-Lia began, only to be halted in her tracks by a screech.
“That prophecy is about you?” the White Dragoness gasped. “Already I have seen its portents, but concluded that the ‘third race’ was Dramagon’s creation, or an event heralded by the comet of Numistar Winterborn. I don’t know if you understand, that though I see that your bodies appear separately in this place, they are not truly separate. I see oneness. More than cohesion, more than unity. You … and you … are linked–why? One soul-presence blurred, like two flowers sharing a single stem–”
“We can help a bit,” Human-Lia said, “but there’s much to learn. My brother Elki described our state, our abilities, as Shapeshifting. We are one soul manifest in two likenesses, perhaps as you might imagine the two sides of one coin. Our physical forms coincide–in oneness, inseparable, except in this place. It appears that injury to one form reflects in the other. Though I don’t know how a wing-injury might reflect on our Human form, for example. These forms must recharge differently. The Human can starve if only the Dragoness manifests for a period of time–I need to test the parameters–but the Dragon magic can replenish while the Dragoness is … elsewhere. And it does seem that we may be a Star Dragoness, although we aren’t sure–”
Istariela growled, “You are a Star Dragoness, and my progeny!”
Both forms of Hualiama bowed simultaneously, making Istariela’s beautiful brow-ridges wrinkle in consternation.
She whispered, “So close it is, I almost grasp a prophetic truth …”
Her eyes lidded, then opened upon pure white flame. In a great voice, the White Dragoness recited:
Could it be that from tragedy,
Beauty might rise,
In form unbeknown to me?
Let it be. Let it be! LET IT BE!
Thunder without storm rolled across the starlit skies, shaking Hualiama in ways and depths she could not begin to articulate. Once more, the treble power of oath-making! Thrice spoken, once ordained, Fra’anior the Onyx had taught her, stressing great caution in the making of such oaths.
A sulphurous wind wafted into the chamber.
Now Istariela quaked from muzzle to wingtip. What have I done? I have summoned him–you cannot trust Fra’anior, my precious ones! Never!
She winked out of existence, making both Hualiamas stumble forward in surprise. In almost the same instant, a titanic voice smote her world:
ISTARIELA! TRAITORESS!
Lia knew she had to wake. She had to flee Fra’anior, for if she were caught with the White Dragoness, he would punish her, too … away. Away, Hualiama!
And she was gone.
* * * *
Grandion prowled into the infirmary building, ninety feet of predatory silence. Shielded. Pad-footed. Even his breathing stilled, and he banked his belly-fires despite their agitated churning at the prospect of meeting Hualiama once more. Last time he had Projected himself into her presence, she had rejected his advances–rightly, he had concluded, but her refusal still rankled.
Rock-headed, wilful, exasperating … female!
Who was the more infuriating, her Human or her Dragoness? Dealing with one female was more than enough for most Dragons, but two? Insanity.
There she was, scales agleam with inner radiance as though she dreamed amidst starry realms, casting a pool of light where she lay alongside Sunfyora. Without so much as disturbing a blade of straw on the floor, Grandion slipped over to her flank, imagining how she would react. A shriek? A bugle of delight? A coy whirl of her half-lidded fire-eyes to regard his massively impressive masculine poise, before a demure dip of her gaze?
Closer. A wingtip-touch separated them now.
The Star Dragoness’ eyes flicked open, perfectly focussed on him. The most sulphurous greetings of the Great Dragon to thee, noble Tourmaline.
As if he had never left.
The Tourmaline’s fires thundered up into his throat; he immediately swallowed them back down again, lest he engulf a hatchling in the inferno of his mortification and annoyance. The result was that he stood flat-pawed and gaping like the most idiotic of feral Dragons, while Hualiama stretched as the dawn spreading its artful wings across the sky, and smiled a smile that obliterated any control he might have imagined exerting over his knees, or any other bodily movement. Overbalancing, he pitched forward on his nose.
Oh, you’re injured, she cried. Where does it hurt, my beloved?
Beloved? Nowhere so injured as in his third heart.
Her reaction was dismay. Grandion heard himself mutter an inanity about torn wings as the Star Dragoness immediately fell to fussing over him, checking his various wounds; while her tiny hearts pounded away at hummingbird-speed, as if she swirled through the midst of an aerial battle, betraying her agitation with every pulse. Emotion clogged his throat and crammed into his mind. Relief. Sorrow. Transcendent love mingled with undraconic fear. For he knew that all the might, magic and power of a Tourmaline Dragon lay defenceless before what he felt for her, the starlight of his nocturnal skies.
How he thrilled to the caress of her magic upon his hypersensitive wing-membranes, a sensation at once soothing and enflaming, and the affectionate touch of tiny paws setting straight wing struts and arranging membranes to be healed; he heard within her resonant harmonic magic a deeper, more enchanting Dragonsong than anything he had ever imagined, a song of restoration and mending and passion which beguiled his hearts until his breast hurt with the very fullness of the sum of the Island-World’s wonder. Even breathing seemed superfluous. Exaltation! Stupefying, wing-shivering glory!
Her breathing came faster and faster, gasping, wheezing, her touch ever more frantic and fleeting. ‘Soul-connection!’ he wanted to cry. ‘Love overwhelms all with billows of fragrant fire!’
No … she panted. I cannot, I must not … oh, Grandion!
She flashed away from him, incredibly fleet of paw and wing. Panicked. Wild-eyed. Her sinuous form streaked a zigzag course between the tall, thickset beams which supported the ceiling, carved of the trunks of jinsumo trees, and darted toward the wide-flung doorway before Grandion was able to do more than shift a paw.
Hualiama! He lurched after her, running, dodging with Dragon-reflexes so that neither tail nor wingtip touched a sleeping Dragon in passing, but his greater bulk counted against him. Grandion was five seconds behind the fleeing hatchling as she passed the warehouse exit, seventy feet wide and thirty tall. The moment he charged through the doors, he coiled his massive thighs and sprang for the skies, clearing the buildings before taking his first downward stroke. Whap! Dust exploded across the courtyard. Whap-whap-whap! Rapid, circumscribed flutter-strokes fuelled his monstrous acceleration as the Tourmaline Dragon streaked toward the dawn’s first blush. Aided by the gleam of a three-quarters Yellow Moon dominating the eastern horizon, he cast about, first low and then high. Vanished? Impossible–no, there! A hint of disturbance as she nipped through a puffy, low-lying cloud. The hunter in him roused. Dragon senses reached out. His nostrils flared wide, drinking in the scents of daybreak, including faint traces of her unique, complex Dragoness-scent, marking a trail that to his heightened perception described an artist’s skyward-pointing brush-stroke.
Upward! His entire body flexed, raising howls of protest from his tired, overworked muscles. But he was Tourmaline. He hunted for joy. Storm winds filled his wings as his magic and stre
ngth catapulted the Dragon toward the upper curvature of the Yellow Moon.
Hualiama!
Tiny wings fluttered like a blue moth amidst the dusky clouds.
Hualiama, my third heart, come to me. Be with me.
She strained harder, somehow managing to maintain her lead. Pride in her Dragoness-strength caused a delighted bugle to vent from his throat.
Grandion swept through the sparse altostratus cloud layers and vaulted into the endless airy dome above. He had miscalculated the hour. It was a few minutes after dawn, but the rising suns were eclipsed by the Yellow Moon, streaming out from behind it in great, thick spikes of golden light, as though the skull-ruff of a golden Sun-Dragon rose to salute the heavens. Beauty to enflame a Dragon’s hearts forever.
That light reached across the world as his chase lengthened and the suns rose, until her hatchling-proportioned strength began to fail, as it surely must.
Then he called to her in silken tones, soothing her overwrought state, although he sensed the near-feral response of earlier had long since abated. Could he conclude that she was Dragoness enough to desire and invite his chasing? Surely too simplistic an answer.
Ah, by his wings! Now let the supreme draconic wiles of a Tourmaline Dragon dazzle his oath-partner!
With a confident laugh, Grandion reached for the Dragoness.
* * * *
Undone by a word, ambushed by her emotions, Hualiama saw no path but to flee. She had no choice. Once that millisecond decision had been taken, she was at the mercy of draconic reactions and battle-readiness and, if she were honest, plain and simple fear. She flew as if she could slough off that angst like a butterfly breaking free of its chrysalis. She flew even when the panic abated and she knew Grandion chased her, because her humiliation would not allow otherwise.
Please catch me. Please leave me alone. Her thoughts swung between two diametrically opposed Islands. Where would she fly? She did not care. Out here she might play in golden suns-beams and sport with the dawn, sensing from far off the gazes of the watch-Dragons upon her, but not giving a rotten prekki-fruit peel for their regard.
