Dragonfriend

by Marc Secchia

  “Can you–” she squeezed her eyes shut, mouthing a word which would have earned her a reprimand from one of her tutors back at the Palace. She began to sweat and shiver simultaneously as the pain swept over her. “I’m going crazy. Talking to a dragonet in my crazy bird-perch.”

  Eat, chirped the dragonet, making the sign again. Eat.

  Eat, she chirped back.

  Fine, I’ll feed you, you useless … what did you just say?

  Lia knew she was badly wounded. The song of her body was anguish, a counterpoint to the consuming grief over her family’s fate. King Chalcion was a proud, unbending man. This would be a dagger to his gut. As for Queen Shyana–she was sweet and accommodating, the person to whom Hualiama had always turned. She truly treated Lia as a daughter, unlike the King. Should she be ungrateful for her position in the royal household? No. But the royal life was not all blossoms, as the Islands saying went.

  The dragonet’s paw touched her lips. The animal fed her patiently, pawful by pawful, as Lia forced herself to swallow. Perhaps it thought she was a wounded hatchling? She had never imagined animals could care like this. There was something deeply peculiar about being tended by a dragonet, she felt, sinking back against her bough-bed, the type of impossible magic often served up in dreams. Yet, only reality could hurt this much. Lia spied on the creature as it worked. Fussy little thing, deft of paw and as nervous as a wild rajal kitten. Clearly undecided on a choice between two different mounds of herbal mush, the dragonet bit its little forked tongue exactly as her second-youngest brother, Elki, liked to do when he studied with the royal tutors. The dragonet chirruped to itself before hopping over to examine her broken arm. Quite the little physician. She had no doubt of its intelligence.

  A monstrous lassitude swept over her Island like a sinister thunderstorm enveloping Fra’anior. The howl of the tempest sang her sorrow, while the jagged bolts of lightning represented pain, searing her body again and again. Even when Lia lay unmoving, it hurt to breathe.

  Later, among her delirious dreams, she felt water spilling down her cheek. Lia opened her mouth instinctively, parched. Was it raining? Or was this the dragonet’s work once more?

  The branch swayed in the hot volcanic breeze, rocking her to sleep.

  Chapter 3: Storm

  Flicker tended the unconscious female flat-face for two more days before heading underground to consult with the Ancient One. He returned with a head buzzing with ideas and new words.

  Girl, he said to himself. Human girl. Um … “Girl.”

  By his wings, that speech-pattern offended the throat! This was how they talked? According to the Ancient fire-breather, Humans talked only with the sounds of their mouths, just as he could produce Dragonish vocally if needed. Clearly, their brains were severely underdeveloped in comparison to a dragonet’s–or a Lesser Dragon’s.

  The old one had said, Thou art possessed of the gift of understanding, little one. Learn to use it well.

  He did not enjoy being lectured.

  Flicker’s flight muscles were recovered enough that he could test them gingerly for short stretches in the caves and tunnels that riddled Ha’athior’s underbelly, but when he returned to the tree, he dug his claws into the bark and walked across to the place where he had left the unsightly thing–the girl.

  To Flicker’s surprise, he found her awake, sitting up on a thicker part of the branch as she bit into a purple prekki fruit with evident relish. Juice dripped from her chin. She had used the metal shard to assist her talon-less digits, so that she could peel the fruit and eat the inside. Well, these Human creatures were quite adept with tools, he had observed, using them to supplement the disadvantages of their pathetic paws.

  “Oh, you’re back,” she greeted him, showing her undersized fangs.

  “Girl,” he announced, rather grandly.

  “What? Did you just say ‘girl’? Aye, that’s right.”

  Flicker struck a pose that displayed his gleaming scales to best advantage. He had just bathed in a waterfall. Aren’t I clever?

  “Lia,” she said, tapping her chest.

  “Leeeeee-ya,” he parroted back. Was this monkey-chatter supposed to convey meaning? How droll. Well, he would learn this simple speech in a few days.

  “Very good! Lia. You’re smart for a dragonet. What’s your name?”

  Now she was pointing at him? Yes, I know lots about Humans, he said. The Ancient One told me everything I need to know. How’s the fruit? Good?

  She lobbed the pip to the winds. “I’m Lia. You are?”

  Hungry, he said, tucking into a piece of the fruit he had collected. Just then, a sharp tang entered his nostrils. Flicker raised his muzzle at once, testing the air. There’s a storm coming.

  She did not seem to understand. Doing that crinkling routine with her eyes and tossing the pale straw on her head, the girl gazed at him. Flicker did not understand either. His belly-fires churned pleasurably beneath her scrutiny, and his talons curled with bewildering happiness. She was patently pleased with his reappearance. And why not? He was a handsome specimen of a dragonet, and terrifically knowledgeable about her kind. Perhaps now was the moment to impress her with his second word.

  “Hooo-min,” he said, delicately pointing a talon at her.

  Oh, what joy! Her pale skin flushed with delight and her laugher trilled forth–and laughter was an emotional response dragonets understood. Never mind that she clutched her stomach and groaned right away. Flicker gave her a fine rendition of a dragonet’s belly-laugh. More laughter!

  “Ooh, don’t do that,” whispered the girl, nursing her wound.

  Her eyes rested gently upon him, gleaming with a quality he wanted to suggest was Dragon fire, but was not. All he knew was the warmth her regard kindled in him, and that this feeling must do something to her fires too, because her face reddened into a fine semblance of a dawn sky. Growing chary at his scrutiny, the girl’s eyes slid aside as coyly as a female dragonet eyeing up an attractive male.

  Flicker licked his paws, cleaning them with catlike fastidiousness.

  Just then, the wind rose to buffet their branch.

  Her eyes visited the southern horizon with palpable trepidation. The mid-morning sky out there had turned a deep, coppery green, as though the Cloudlands had swelled to assault Iridith’s enormous, sallow dome in the form of dark, Dragon’s-head storm clouds. A flight of windrocs rushed toward them from the south. High above, a Dragonwing returning from the direction of Yaya Loop Cluster made a terrific speed of over twenty-five leagues per hour, just specks in the sky at their height, but the way her pupils focussed, the dragonet knew she had noted their haste.

  Really? She was less of an idiot than he had supposed. Truth be told, that word did not seem to apply at all, now.

  Flicker began to collect his herbs into a neat pile. Come. We need to find shelter, he told her.

  * * * *

  As the cool wind whipped the trailing strands of her white-blonde hair across her face, Hualiama shivered. A storm! As a proficient Dragonship pilot, accustomed to navigating these Islands solo in her Dragonship, she knew how suddenly a storm could strike. More than once Lia had been forced to take shelter and wait out a storm. She always navigated carefully around the rim-Islands and never flew straight across the caldera, for to be caught out there spelled certain death. This time, however, safety lay over three hundred feet away along a branch which seemed to grow thinner and more precarious the longer she stared at it. The first hundred feet or so were bare, then came a couple of side-branches, after which the wood grew comfortingly thick as it neared the cliff into which the tree’s huge, gnarled roots plunged with grim assurance, like a drowning man’s fingers clutching safely onto the shore of a terrace lake.

  Another day, she might have danced along that branch–well, that was a lie. She would have walked carefully but surely over to the Island’s shore.

  The dragonet made an insistent chirruping noise.

  Li
a rose to her feet, swaying in concert with the branch beneath her feet. “Oh, Dragons’ breath! I can’t do this … I must.”

  Quickly, urged the dragonet.

  Oh, she had almost forgotten to take the dagger, one of a matched pair of Immadian forked daggers she had received the very morning of Ra’aba’s treachery, a birthday gift from the King. Was this what Ra’aba had used to stab her? Removing her slippers, she thrust them into her belt, along with the blade.

  “Come on, Lia,” she told herself. Shuffle. Pant. Gasp, sway. The rising wind made her task doubly difficult. The Great Dragon himself could not have blown that storm in any faster. Hualiama knew that if she had seen that sky while at the helm of her Dragonship, she would have been moored on an Island two hours ago. She and the dragonet were in grave peril.

  With enviable agility, the dragonet darted over to the Island’s shore, balancing his load.

  Lia inched out onto the bare branch, sweating freely, the pain in her abdomen akin to a red-hot glob of lava stuck in her lower intestines. Her back was little better. She only had use of her left arm, and decided she had never been more thankful to be left-handed, even if it caused dark mutterings among the superstitious. Should she slip, she would have no chance of arresting her fall. Lia gritted her teeth. She had to keep moving.

  The dragonet zipped past her again. Even he had to dig his talons into the bark now as the branch tossed in the wind.

  Suddenly, Hualiama sank to her knees, crying hoarsely, “Come on, Lia!”

  She hauled herself along with her good arm, her legs dangling either side of the branch, inches at a time. She established a rhythm. Pull. Wince. Breathe. Rest. “Come on.” Pull again, paying no heed to the tearing sensation in her stomach. Whatever had begun to knit together was ruined once more. Curse the cloth of her dress snagging on a rough chip of bark. “One more.” Resort to slashing it free with the dagger. “Again.” Pull past that point. Her broken arm jarred. Pain washed over her, leaving her dizzy and enervated. She tucked the useless arm into her belt. “And again.” Pull. Repeat.

  Black spots danced on her vision, making her imagine windrocs circling a soon-to-be carcass. If only she could rest, pillowing her head on the bark which seemed as soft as the plumpest palace pillow-roll, the type that Fyria demanded for her comfort …

  She summoned scorn. Little Lia. Short shrift, as her brothers sometimes called her, in reference to her unusually diminutive stature for a Fra’aniorian Islander. Naturally, she had the golden Fra’aniorian skin and acceptably pointy ears which betrayed her Isles heritage, but she also had eyes of a rare, smoky green. Queen Shyana said her eyes smouldered as though on the verge of catching fire, especially when she was angry. She remembered Captain Ra’aba’s stinging jibes–for he was right. Despite a royal adoption, everyone knew there was but one real Princess of Fra’anior. Subtly or openly, Lia was daily put in her place by servants and nobles alike. Suitors had only a passing interest in a foundling, insofar as she might provide them better access to beautiful, flame-haired Fyria.

  Hualiama summoned rage and grief to her aid. Grief over the parents she had never known. Rage at the wrongs she had suffered.

  When that was spent, still she crawled onward, until she reached the place where the secondary branches split off.

  She rested.

  * * * *

  Wake up! Flicker shook the girl’s shoulder.

  Nothing.

  He patted her cheek with his paw.

  Nothing, not even a flicker of those odd filaments above her strange, powerful eyes.

  Congratulating himself on his audacity, Flicker pinched the skin of her arm with his talons.

  Less than nothing.

  The dragonet sank his fangs into her finger.

  Jerking upright, she screeched, “You wretched dollop of flying monkey–oh.” Shaking her hand, Lia smiled grimly at the dragonet. “You’ll pay for that later. Thank you.”

  Stupid straw-head, get moving before I have to bite you again.

  To his consternation, the Human girl seemed amused rather than annoyed by his flame-curling ire. She began to move again. How she must rue not having wings and claws like him, Flicker imagined. Flat-face used the piece of metal to pull herself along, stabbing it into the bark, pulling her injured body along as though it weighed as much as a boulder, leaving a crimson smear where she passed. Despite the pain so clearly etched on her face, the girl struggled on and on … and, to his disbelief, further still.

  This was courage! Flicker’s throat constricted; he rubbed his muzzle with his paws. She honoured the gift of life in ways his family would have spent hours crafting verses to praise, adding her deeds to the songs that told the dragonet histories. Were these Human creatures truly capable of such elevated behaviour? She was as brave as any Dragon. He had to discuss this with the Ancient One. He would be fascinated, too.

  Flicker fell to encouraging her. Come on, straw-head. One paw more. Over this difficult bit, you barbarously ugly beast–here, this is the place for your paw.

  The first fat droplet of rain splashed his scales. The dragonet shuddered. She had to move faster! Oh, here she came, covering a whole ten feet before collapsing. No, another wrenching movement of the arm.

  He yelled at her, Come on, use your soul-fires! The fires, Human girl!

  She was groaning now, not the sounds she had made before, but the wordless cries of a soul in agony. Her lungs made a peculiar whistling noise at each breath. Rain splattered them again. The wind knocked the branch so hard that she slewed and had to rely on the knife to keep from sliding over the edge.

  Flicker shoved her from behind. Here, push against my head. Use your magic, you idiotic slab of–oh, do you have any magic? Aye, her strength was magic. The dragonet had never seen its equal, and it brought a weird, fuzzy sensation to his mind. With each movement along the slick branch, the Human girl seemed to grow conversely stronger, as if her heart had simply assumed the function of muscle and bone and refused to let up, to cramp or to let go; as though the pain mattered, but only to refine and fuel her supreme effort; making him fancy that the spirit of the Ancient One indwelled her frail form, a spirit of fire and magic, indomitable.

  The rain and wind drove in, drawing a shroud of darkness over the Island-World. The dragonet had to cling to the branch with every talon of his four paws. The girl kept moving. Foot by foot, she gained ground. The water sluiced over her wounds and plastered her head-straw to the massive cut on her back, through which he saw muscle and even naked bone, but the girl did not yield.

  Thunder punched his body. Multiple strikes of branch lightning cracked about them as the storm’s full fury struck, as if it were an elemental Dragon taken form to drag dragonet and Human to their doom. Flicker found himself in front of the girl, hauling her along by the very pale straw which had so captured his imagination–and his insults–as they neared their goal, solid ground. Where it established a root-grip on the Island the ancient trunk was deeply lightning-split, a fracture of the branch away from the main trunk at a time aeons past, and it was to this split that the girl dragged herself, and collapsed insensate.

  Flicker pulled himself over her head, spread his wings to provide what protection he could, and squeezed his eyes shut. He must endure the storm.

  * * * *

  Hualiama woke with a song in her heart and laughter bubbling on her lips. Alive! The twin suns baked her shoulders, and she was alive! The storm had rumbled off over the endless Cloudlands, leaving sopping vegetation and a fresh, loamy-wet smell to speak of its fury. The dragonet rested atop her head, his wings drooping either side of her face. Her heartbeat pulsed in her ears, lub-lub, a life-affirming sound, while the pulse in his chest was a complex, ever-shifting drumbeat driven by multiple hearts.

  For sheer overflow of joy, she began to sing. Her voice was as rusty as metal left to corrode near the caldera floor, so Lia sang in an almost-whisper. As she sang, she gently shifted the dragonet from its perch o
n her head into the crook of her left arm.

  “You’re a beautiful–ah–” she checked, and blushed “–boy. Oh, aye! You are.”

  If he was like any male she knew, she hoped he never found out she had mistaken him for a pretty female at first.

  A more appropriate song suggested itself:

  Rejoice! O my soul, rejoice!

  Soar with the dawn fresh to the day,

  Rejoice! O my soul, rejoice!

  May these suns brighten upon my way.

  No mind that she felt as wrung out as a dishcloth used to scrub pots in the Palace kitchens for the last ten years. Her excitement was unbridled. The Dragon of Death had been cheated of his prey. He would hunt no more, not this day. She might be stuck four miles down a cliff, with no hope of climbing back up again until her arm and stomach healed, but Lia’s heart pulsated with gratitude.

  She had a chance to avenge her family.

  Aye, and the Roc had better watch his back from now on.

  However, such grim oaths did not match her mood. Tenderly, all choked up with wonder and thankfulness, Lia stroked the dragonet. “I’ve never known an animal as faithful as you, little one. Thank you for … everything. How shall I name you? After all, it seems you want to be my friend, for you came back to me.”

  He was incredible. His scales had the supple gloss of Helyon silk, yet Dragon scales were known to be diamond-hard. Every detail of his body was sculpted, from the striated muscles and delicate wing struts, to the miniscule detail of the tiniest scales around his eyes. The longer she scrutinised his scales, the more different patterns she found, a palette of greens and flecks of gold which could not conceivably be pinned down to any handful of colours. Lia shook herself free of the subtle hypnosis this investigation exerted on her mind. The dragonet lived and breathed, yet, if she listened as closely as she could, it was to detect a faint crackling within his belly. She held a living coal, a creature of enchanted fires. His body radiated warmth into her belly, soothing the much-abused tissues around her wound.