Run and Touch the Sky

by Melissa Giorgio

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Run and Touch the Sky

  Melissa Giorgio

  COPYRIGHT

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including written, electronic, recording, or photocopying, without written permission of the author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Run and Touch the Sky by Melissa Giorgio

  © 2017 by Melissa Giorgio. All rights reserved.

  Published by Melissa Giorgio

  Cover by RebecaCovers

  Image of egg and dragon by Merritt Sloan

  Formatted by Polgarus Studio

  The characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Existing brands and businesses are used in a fictitious manner, and the author claims no ownership of or affiliation with trademarked properties. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental, and not intended by the author.

  This one is for Finny, who sat by my side as I wrote and edited all these books. I miss you.

  Table of Contents

  Part One Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Two Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Part One

  Chapter One

  The stories you’ve heard are wrong. The dragons aren’t dead.

  Were people really stupid enough to believe that? Have they even met a dragon? No, I suppose not if they actually thought the old wars had wiped out all of those powerful, ancient beings. If they lived and interacted with dragons on a daily basis, then they would realize how laughable the idea of their extinction was.

  Yes, you heard me right. Lived and interacted with dragons on a daily basis. It’s true, I swear.

  Welcome to Meradell, land of the dragons.

  “‘Land of the dragons’?” Trey interrupted with a scornful look. Trey had been my best friend since we were both babies, but maybe not right at this moment. He was shaking his head as he sharpened his knife, his black hair flopping into his dark brown eyes as it often did because it needed to be cut about five months ago. But he wouldn’t let me do it, not after the last time when I’d accidentally cut too much on one side and then had to cut more off to even it out, but now this side was crooked, and then, what do you know, now my best friend was nearly bald and refused to speak to me for about two weeks. But Trey got over it. He always did. We were so close everyone thought we were siblings, even if the only physical trait we shared was our brown skin. Trey’s black hair was straight while my brown locks were wavy and usually untamable, and his eyes were so dark, they were almost black, while mine were a bright green that I’d inherited from my mom. And at fifteen Trey was already tall for his age, while I seemed to have stopped growing. I only came up to his shoulder, and that was only when I was standing on my tiptoes, which was very, very annoying.

  But like I said, we were best friends and we very rarely fought, although right now I had to strongly resist the urge to pick up the large pink and white conch shell that rested by my feet and hurl it at his head for interrupting me.

  Instead I folded my arms over my chest and glared down at him as the waves from the ocean crashed steadily behind me. I’d been reading my essay about Meradell’s history, a paper I’d stayed up all night writing, out loud, and I was barely a third of the way in and he was already criticizing me.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Trey said. He still hadn’t glanced up from his knife, so I didn’t know how he knew I was glaring at him, but Mom said I had a bit of a harsh gaze when I was mad at someone, so maybe he could feel it. “Look, you can’t call Meradell ‘the land of the dragons.’”

  “Why not?” I pointed to the sky. It was unfortunately devoid of dragons at the moment, so I lowered my hand, feeling stupid. “Don’t dragons live here?”

  “They don’t live in Meradell. They live in the mountains.”

  I snorted. “And your point is?”

  “You make it sound like the dragons came first, before Meradell,” Trey said. “Which everyone knows is wrong. You’ll end up failing the assignment if you say something like that. You also can’t call the reader stupid; you’ll definitely fail for that.”

  With a huff I sat down next to Trey, crumpling up the papers containing my barely-legible scribbles. The sand was warm, and all I wanted to do was lay back and close my eyes. But if I didn’t write this paper, I really would fail, and then I’d have to explain to Mom and Dad why I needed to repeat my grade. I could just hear what they’d say, too:

  “You’re fifteen years old now, Nerine,” Mom would scold. “Far too old to be babied.”

  “Just look at your sister,” Dad would add, no doubt. All of my life, I’d been told to look at my sister, Maya. Three years older than me, things came effortlessly to her. While I had to study to earn my passing grades, she merely had to glance at a book and she’d know everything. She was a natural-born leader whom everyone wanted to follow while I was just bossy. She never got in trouble; I was always in trouble. But I didn’t care about all of that. No, what made me writhe with jealousy—not that I admitted this to anyone but Trey, and he knew not to say anything or he’d face my wrath and my fists—was Maya’s dragon, Aster.

  This may not be the land of the dragons, but the dragons did live here and nowhere else. While the rest of the world thought the dragons were dead, felled during the old wars a thousand years ago, those of us who lived in Meradell knew the truth. When the dragons and the magicians had fought over the magic, some of the dragons had broken away. They’d seen their brethren dying—a near impossible task, but thanks to amplifiers, used to boost a magician’s magic, it had been possible—and had known something needed to be done. They’d left, spending years searching for a land where they could live in peace. And that was when they’d found Meradell.

  Back then Meradell had been a small village, barely a few shacks nestled deep within the Havian Valley and bordered on three sides by the tall, imposing Fale Mountains. A large, oval-shaped lake rested in the center of the valley; that’s where the original settlers of Meradell first built their homes. The fresh water lake had provided them w
ith plenty of fish, and the thick forest had given them the supplies they’d needed to build their homes. Farther south, the valley opened up to the rest of the continent, and to the west was the Adrianna Ocean. As Meradell prospered, the settlers had begun building boats, which they used to trade with other cities. Faraway places with names like Ayres and Riven and Soarenvale. The trading had opened the doors for Meradell, introducing it to new foods, new people, and a new world.

  And for some time, that was all the people of Meradell had needed. The sleepy little fishing village grew into a town, and then a city. New buildings popped up overnight, taking over more and more of the valley. When they’d realized the forest was shrinking at an alarming rate, the residents had left the valley in search of more trees, more wood, more building supplies. There was talk of expanding the city south, to the beach. Why should it remain in just the valley? Why couldn’t Meradell be the biggest and best city in the world? Our neighbors in the west had been floundering, recovering from the wars between the magicians and the dragons. It was time for Meradell to step up, to show the world how well they could do without magic. For no magic had tainted the valley—ever. The original settlers had had no trace of magic in their blood, and as magic was mostly passed from parent to child, it never appeared.

  And then the dragons had made themselves known to the humans.

  When you think about it, Meradell was the perfect place for them. A land without magic. After years of bloodshed, how could they not be attracted to it? They saw Meradell as an opportunity to start over. To free themselves from the war that had plagued their kind, nearly driving them to extinction. The Fale Mountains were full of twisty, natural-formed caverns, and the dragons had settled in nicely, unbeknownst to the Meradellans.

  Yes, for seven hundred years, they’d had no idea they’d been living amongst dragons. It was a good thing I hadn’t read that part of my paper aloud to Trey; I’d used words much stronger than “stupid.”

  Dragons were breathtakingly huge creatures. And they weren’t exactly quiet. In the winter their roars caused avalanches. So how exactly did it take the Meradellans seven hundred years to realize their neighbors were dragons? People said it was because the residents had been too busy building and expanding. Why would they look to the skies or the mountains when there was so much work to be done?

  That part of the story always made me shake my head in disbelief. Were they honestly saying that no one was adventurous? No one climbed the mountains? Not one soul went exploring? Everyone was content with what they had? There wasn’t a single dreamer amongst them?

  Trey’s answer was people did go exploring, but anyone who’d stumbled upon a dragon had been eaten, end of story. Except that these dragons had fled from war once already, and they were in no mood to start a new one with a new group of humans. The dragons wanted peace.

  And so did the Meradellans, once they’d gotten over their initial shock upon discovering their neighbors were dragons.

  There were a few stories on how that’d happened. Some say the humans finally did look to the skies and noticed strange, dark shapes flying overheard during the night. A few brave souls, armed to the teeth, climbed the mountains, discovered the dragons, had a nice little chat, and invited them to Meradell for a feast.

  Sure.

  I got the whole story from Senia, a gorgeous ruby-scaled dragon with golden eyes. She was Aster’s older sister and a bit haughty, but I liked her. She was the only dragon who talked to me, so that earned her a few extra points in my book. Senia and Aster hadn’t been alive during the wars; they’d been hatched almost three hundred years ago. Compared with the other dragons who lived in the mountains, Senia and Aster were babies.

  Although, be advised that if you called Senia a baby to her face, she would eat you. Or set you on fire. It depended on her mood, which was usually cranky. If you had to call her a baby, make sure Aster was around. She was the only one who could get Senia to rein in her temper. Oh, never tell Senia she had a temper, either.

  Basically, don’t talk to her if you wanted to live. For whatever reason, she tolerated me, although she did smack me with her wing or tail if I annoyed her too much. But her temper and her smacks were worth it because like I said, she was the only dragon who put up with me.

  It’d been a summer evening, when the air was heavy with humidity and the sky was turning a brilliant shade of orange. Maya and Aster had escaped to the beach and Trey and I’d tagged along, as we often did. I’d been looking forward to an evening of listening to the waves pound against the sand, but once the other children had caught wind that Aster was there, the beach had become crowded and noisy. Scowling, I’d stomped away from my sister and her dragon, Trey trailing behind me as he dragged a stick through the sand. We were twelve at the time, and I already had a temper, which chased away everyone but Trey. He knew about my dark moods, and he knew the best way to get me out of them was to sit quietly with me until I was finally ready to talk.

  “I just don’t get it!” I’d said, kicking at a rock. “Why does everyone have to show up?”

  We watched the kids race around Aster as they played tag, squealing with laughter when she used her teeth to gently pick one girl up by the cuff of her shirt and pretend to drop her. She’d done the same with Trey and me only last week, and we’d laughed so hard, we’d almost thrown up. I hated sharing. I especially hating sharing something that belonged to my sister. She should only share Aster with me, not the entire city.

  I mostly hated that Aster wasn’t mine. She was Maya’s dragon, and Maya was her human. They’d bonded back when Maya was only seven. She’d been hunting with Dad, but a storm had appeared suddenly, as they often did in the valley, and Maya had slipped down a muddy ravine, twisting her ankle. It wasn’t Dad who’d heard her cries for help, but Aster. The dragon had stayed with my sister until Dad and a rescue team had arrived, keeping Maya dry with one, long extended red wing. Aster had followed Maya and Dad back to Meradell, sitting outside our home until we realized she’d been waiting to see if Maya was all right. Once my sister had come to the door and waved to the red dragon, Aster had taken off into the night, causing Maya to cry.

  But Aster had come back, night after night. Just to make sure Maya was still there. Once she’d seen her, the dragon flew away. It’d taken my sister two months to work up the courage to speak to Aster. “Why do you come when the day is already over?” Maya had asked. “Why not during the day, so we have more time together?”

  Aster had smiled at this, her pointy teeth reflecting the moonlight, and said, “I will come tomorrow morning if that’s what you want.”

  Bright and early the next morning, as my sister readied for school, I’d peered out the window to see Aster sitting in the front yard, her wings tucked against her body as she stared at the door. I’d wanted to go out to see her, but Mom wouldn’t let me. Only Maya had been allowed outside, since Maya was the one going to school. At four, I’d still had another year to go. I’d always wondered, if I’d been older and had walked with my sister to school, if Aster would have bonded with me too. Or if she would only ever have had eyes for my sister.

  After that, they were inseparable. It happened sometimes; a dragon chose a human and ended up spending more time in the city than in the mountains. That was exactly what had happened with Aster, much to the disappointment of both Senia and me. When Aster and Maya had bonded, Senia and I both lost sisters. You’d think it would have caused Senia and me to form our own bond, but she was too wild and proud to tie herself down to a single human. The fact that she even talked to me, like she had that night when I was twelve, was actually a great accomplishment. With the exception of Trey, Senia didn’t usually associate with the other humans.

  I’d been so busy sulking on the beach, watching the other kids crowd around Maya and Aster, that I hadn’t even noticed Senia lying amongst the reeds. It was only when I kicked a rock and it came dangerously close to her head that she let out a low growl, startling both Trey and me.

&n
bsp; “Senia?” I’d asked, recognizing her red scales. I would never tell her this, but out of all the dragons that lived in the mountains, she was the most beautiful. Her scales, brighter than Aster’s, glowed like jewels, and her eyes were the color of gold.

  “Making a racket as usual, Nerine,” she said by way of greeting.

  “I’m not! I’m just angry.”

  Senia didn’t have to ask why I was angry. After studying me for a long moment, she indicated the spot next to her with the dip of her head. “Come. Sit.”

  I usually didn’t like being told what to do, but if a dragon told me to sit, I sat. Even if it was Senia, who was too bossy for her own good.

  I sat amongst the reeds, Trey at my side. For a long moment we simply sat in silence, listening to the children shrieking and laughing. But all too soon I was squirming, desperate to say something—anything—to fill the silence. “When did the dragons show themselves to the humans living here?” I blurted out. Trey poked me and I swatted his hand away with a glare.

  Senia was resting her head on the ground, her long tail curled around her body and her wings tucked against her side. At my question she raised her head slightly to give me a curious stare. “You know when.”

  “Two hundred years ago, yes.” A fly buzzed in my face and I swatted it away impatiently. “By then you’d been living here for seven hundred years, though.” I grinned wickedly. “Oh wait, not you, you’re only two hundred—”

  Senia cut me off with a growl while Trey whispered my name frantically, probably worried I was moments from getting eaten. “I’m two hundred and seventy-two!”

  “Right, of course. How could I forget those seventy-two years? Anyway,” I pushed on when it looked like Senia was about to hit me, “the dragons, your kin, took seven hundred years to show themselves. We’ve read about what happened in books, but I want to hear it from you.”