by Marc Secchia
Lia looped a section of vine around her legs. Now she could hold it with her feet, while she stretched for the next handhold.
Aye. It took her half an hour of slithering up vines to crest the overhang, but Lia was rewarded with the discovery of what appeared to be an ascending animal-trail leading southward around the Island.
“Ha,” she said, “I don’t need a dragonet, I just need Human brains and ingenuity.”
Her scowl, however, told the truth. She missed Flicker, despite all his silly posturing. Endless chatter, silly witticisms … no mind. Whistling a jaunty tune to pick up her spirits, Lia scrambled over the rocks, following a trail clearly never meant for the tread of a Human foot.
The jagged volcanic rocks made short work of her pretty royal slippers. Lia hurled the remnants over the edge with a frustrated shriek, before biting her lip. She could have used those. For firelighters? A smile curved her lips as she peered out at the Island-World through veils of trailing ferns and vanilla-scented flowering vines, and between trees growing horizontally out of the cliff side, bowing their boughs as if in worship of the great, uncrossable ocean of Cloudlands. Briefly, a cloud of luminous orange giant monarch butterflies swirled out of the foliage, the hand-sized insects wreathing her body as though intending to clothe her in a most splendid raiment.
That was when she spied a slit reptilian eye peering at her from the greenery just beside her head.
“Unholy windrocs!” she gasped, throwing herself backward.
The python struck, but missed by inches as Lia scrambled along in full retreat, trying somehow to keep one eye on her footing and the other on the reptile’s advance. Now she knew what type of trail this was–a trail frequented by pythons large enough to make a tidy meal of undersized royal wards. The trail skirted the cliff edge beneath an overhang in this part. No climbing here. She needed to pass the snake.
Right. May her courage swell from the size of a mouse’s meal to Dragonish proportions.
Hualiama eyed the golden-backed python as balefully as it eyed her. “Come here! I’ll give you this dagger to eat.” She felt for a stone near her foot. Swoop, strike! “Get out of here! Go on!”
Snakes as large as pythons were uncommon on her Island, but Lia knew that in theory, noise and vibration should chase them off. They were ambush predators, not fighters. See, father? All that scroll-worming in the royal library, mostly in search of Dragon lore were she honest, could come in useful in situations like these. Shouting, dancing like an excitable spider monkey and pelting the snake with rocks, Lia chased it off into the undergrowth.
“Come near my family again, Ra’aba, and I’ll do the same to you.”
Lia strutted down the trail, and promptly sliced her toe open on a sharp sliver of basalt.
Midday and early afternoon saw her taking shelter beneath a dead chagga tree, which bore a type of hard-shelled, bitter fruit good for throwing at windrocs or chasing off pestiferous monkeys, of which there seemed to be an endless supply. Hualiama peeled a poor-man’s-apple and ate it without great relish, despite the hunger snapping in her lean belly. The day’s sultry heat robbed her of appetite. Her tan limbs gleamed. Sweat trickled down her neck as her lungs laboured to expel the syrupy air. Oh for a cool breeze, or another waterfall!
Dangling her feet over the cliff edge, Lia gazed out over the pristine Cloudlands, imagining she had Dragon eyes and could see all the way to the Western Isles, hundreds and hundreds of leagues away, to places with evocative names like Naphtha and Ur-Tagga and Xorniss. Where would Ra’aba have sent her family? Would that her soul could have winged across that great void, the unknown, depthless expanse of deceptively puffy ochre clouds, to be with them. Did Shyana gaze to the horizon, mourning her daughter’s death? Did she feel how the beauty of infinite solitude engulfed Lia in waves of aching so intense, that each heartbeat threatened to become her last? Did the Island-World’s majesty both crush and elevate her spirit to exultation?
Here she crawled, an insignificant ant on the wall of the world.
Late that afternoon, when Hualiama crawled beneath a gnarled tree trunk so massive it stood four times her height, almost entirely blocking the trail, she found her waterfall. Thirty feet wide, it was utterly impassable.
A problem for tomorrow. Lia moved forward to lean into the spray, whispering, “Mercy, that’s delightful.” Extending her hands palms-up, she cupped handfuls of water and tossed them over her head and upper body, shivering at the chill pleasure. The suns lowering in the west beat pleasantly on her back.
Lia! Flicker dropped onto her shoulder.
Surprise almost pitched her into the hissing white flow. Lia wobbled; Flicker snatched at her hair and tore a good chunk out trying to pull her to safety.
Her face seemed stuck between a smile and a frown as she regarded the irrepressible dragonet, slowing her panting deliberately. Finally, Lia settled on, “You lovely little pest. Where’ve you been all day?”
I see your straw is useful for something, said Flicker, cleaning the strands off his paws. I was visiting my egg-mother and warren, thank you very much. They were worried about me, unlike your parents … ah, do you have any lemur intestines?
The dragonet looked so cute and contrite, Hualiama had to forgive him, even though she understood only one word in three. “Thanks for coming back, you little scamp. I missed you like I’d miss a mosquito in my ear. Where shall we roost tonight?” Cave here?
Flicker nodded. Through the water-that-thunders, flat-face. Follow me if you dare.
And he plunged into the flow with the facility of a trout fleeing the snap of a windroc’s beak.
Chapter 5: A Dragonet’s Pet
FIve days of fighting with monkeys, snakes, a nest of black wasps, thorn-ferns and more vines than Hualiama ever wanted to see in a lifetime, garnished with Flicker’s inimitable blend of witty commentary and ingenious insults at her lack of progress, brought her to a place Flicker deemed ‘good’–a protruding ledge with an unparalleled view over the Cloudlands. Putting her hands on her knees, Lia decided she’d smack the snarky dragonet just as soon as she had the energy to do so. She was cut, bruised, abraded and covered in blotchy red spots from the wasp stings. Never had she looked less like a member of the royal household. Never had she looked more like a Dragon’s breakfast, chewed up and spat out.
Then, she punched her left arm to the sky and shouted, “Yes! We’ve done it! We’re less than a third of the way up.”
At that instant, Flicker nipped her ankle-bone.
“Blast it, you overgrown dragonfly,” she gasped, clutching the spot.
Swoooosh! Lia’s semi-collapse turned into a headlong dive as a massive pair of wings pummelled the air above her body. Windroc! Flicker screeched and flared his neck-ruff as he raced to take on the windroc. Lia scrabbled for her dagger, palmed it, and watched without daring to breathe as the bird gyrated casually on its wingtip, returning for another pass.
She had to find shelter. Vines, bushes, anything would do as opposed to standing in the open while a red-eyed, feral windroc lined her up for a snack. Close up, the bird looked as big as a Dragon–sixteen feet in wingspan, talons which could clasp her head like a fruit, and a cruel, hooked beak which opened now to express its fury in a long, ear-splitting shriek. A five-foot girl and a two-foot dragonet faced the Island-World’s most fearsome avian predator.
It struck Lia that any self-respecting Dragon would have this windroc for a snack. It was only the size of a several months-old Dragon hatchling, after all–a thought which offered as much comfort as a seat atop an active volcano.
Her world seemed to narrow to those talons. Lia crouched, balanced on the balls of her feet. Flicker! The dragonet tangled repeatedly with the windroc, aiming for the eyes. The girl swayed, aiming a dagger-strike at the feathered body. The bird passed overhead again, snapping at her, and Lia had a new cut on her left forearm, five inches long, down to the bone. Great Islands, she had not even seen its strike. Instead
of cutting the body, her blade had torn a gash in its wing.
A strategy popped into her mind.
As Flicker and the windroc looped away, scrapping and screeching at each other, Lia snatched up the length of vine she had been using. Cut it off the belt, fool! She secured the vine to the base of a shabis-berry bush, deep-rooted and tough. Her shaking fingers failed to form a slipknot. No time for that. She threw together an overhand knot and braced her trembling knees, trying to calculate the angles as the windroc swooped for a third pass. Mercy, that creature was lethal. One snap of its beak would slice Flicker in half, but the dragonet dodged with great agility … he was hurt! His right wing hung at a poor angle.
Quicker than thought, Hualiama switched hands to hurl her dagger, burying it in the bird’s skull just behind the eye. The windroc barely flinched. Then she tossed her loop of vine at the onrushing bird and dived again, skidding across the bare rock. Talons plucked the material of her skirt and scored fiery pain across the back of her left thigh. From the corner of her eye, she saw the loop catch on the windroc’s neck. The rope jerked taut. The bird crash-landed on its beak.
Rolling, groaning, knocking her broken arm about … Lia was searching for a way back into the fray when Flicker broke free of the dazed predator.
Shelter! he squeaked, trying to take to the air.
She caught his tail. Dragging the hapless dragonet behind her, Lia ducked beneath a dense thicket. More harsh caws came from the sky as a half-dozen windrocs fell upon their luckless fellow-creature and within a couple of minutes, reduced it to a pile of bones and feathers.
* * * *
My tail, if you please! Flicker grumbled.
“Sorry.”
I’ll make you sorry, you straw-headed … here’s your dagger. With a fine, Human-like bow, Flicker presented the dagger to Lia. My compliments.
You were–Hualiama stumbled, struggling with her limited Dragonish. Switching to Island Standard, she said, “Awesome! So brave.”
Can’t leave you to wander around these cliffs on your own, Human-Lia. Now, why don’t we get away from these nasty windrocs and I’ll show you the best cave in the world. He mock-snapped at her. Don’t you dare pick up a dragonet by his tail. It’s demeaning.
As they emerged from the far side of the thicket, Hualiama gave him one of those looks which stirred his belly-fires. “I don’t understand what I did to annoy you, Flicker, but I’m sorry. Very sorry. Sorry with your favourite intestines slathered on top?”
She giggled in that lilting way that never failed to amaze him. Lia had the best laugh. Carefree, bubbling, even a little wild. She reminded him of a storm in motion, he decided. Flicker’s seventh sense told him that she was the kind of creature who could shake the world. He purred to himself, knowing that she’d be changing nothing without his help. Straw-head would have been rotting in the Cloudlands …
“O mighty Flicker,” said Lia, bowing toward him with an elaborate Fra’aniorian hand-twirl, “slayer of the dreadful windroc, saviour and protector most gallant of maidens trapped down league-tall cliffs, will you ever forgive me?”
Well, said Flicker, strutting and puffing up his chest fit to burst, I’d do the same for anyone in trouble, Lia. But he knew he would slay ten windrocs for her smile.
The girl stopped in her tracks. “Mercy … my soul …”
She must realise what he already knew, that this ledge jutted out two hundred feet or so from the Island’s main body, offering unparalleled, panoramic views. To the north and south, the Island-massif curved away into the distance, a vertical mountain-slope as far as the eye could see. To the west, Flicker saw a few Islets–just mountain peaks, really, apart from one inhabited Island which the Humans called Ya’arriol–sticking up out of the Cloudlands. Even the Ancient One would not tell him what lay beneath that ever-shifting, ever opaque realm. Four or five miles to the southwest, a slender volcanic cone abutted the main Island, lush and green, wreathed in multi-coloured flights of dragonets, making the sharp, perfect cone seem to shimmer with living lights.
That was the place of the Great Dragon, a place of worship.
Hualiama stood motionless, as though wishing to devote her entire being to drinking in that beauty, eyes and mouth and pores all striving to know it, taste it, inscribe what she perceived on her heart. “W-What a-are those?” she stammered, pointing at the volcano.
“Dragonets,” said Flicker.
“So many?”
He coiled, intending to leap up onto her shoulder to comfort her, when he realised he was seeing the strange Human phenomenon called happy-tears. Flicker settled for rubbing against her legs like a cat.
“Oh, my poor darling, you’re hurt,” said Lia, scooping him up.
He pointed with his foreclaw. “Look. Dragons.”
Lia narrowed her eyes. Could she see that far? He was beginning to wonder how good her eyesight was, because she did not appear to see details which were instantly clear to him. He felt a distinct jolt in her body as she spotted the Dragonwing of six huge Reds. Her heart pounded against his flank. Was she afraid? It was men who had done this to her, not the Dragonkind.
Inside, said Flicker. Why are you afraid of Dragons, Lia?
She scuttled across the rock, making for a round cave-entrance he pointed out for her. Me afraid die, she said. “Forbidden.” No Human-Island.
Oh. So that was what the Ancient One had meant! Flicker tasted the strange word. It was similar to the idea that Dragons did not want dragonets invading their roosts, but carried deeper, darker undertones that he neither understood nor enjoyed.
Flicker bared his fangs at her.
* * * *
Lia angled rapidly for the cave. “Forbidden. It’s bad, not allowed … you don’t go to a forbidden place. If you do, they throw you off a Dragonship.”
When the dragonet did not appear to comprehend, Lia imitated the cry she had made before. Aaaah! She mimed a person falling into the Cloudlands.
By the Great Dragon’s breath! Every one of Flicker’s talons unsheathed as his paws contracted, making Hualiama gasp in pain. He said, Oh, shards take it. I’m sorry. Please …
She held him tighter. “What’s a few more cuts, little one?”
Sorry. The dragonet’s flexible neck extended. He rubbed cheeks with her. Hualiama flinched slightly in surprise, but quickly covered her mistake by imitating him, making a contented noise.
She said, “Umm, you smell … what is that smell?”
Flicker’s nostrils flared as they stood before the round cave entrance, wide enough for any Dragon to slip inside, enjoying the warm breeze issuing from the depths of the mountain.
Lia wondered if she was not imagining something, but it was the strangest cave-smell. Not damp. No, nor musty. Just a hint of moisture, yet this was … she could not say. It reminded her oddly of Dragon fire billowing before an attacking Dragon, only this smell was sweet and not acrid like smoke, suggesting dizzying mysteries and hints of long-forgotten magic. She imagined the Island’s roots were steeped in wonders beyond Human comprehension.
Flicker sprang lithely down from her arms. Come, straw-head.
Within, just off the main tunnel which plunged unknowably far into the mountainside, Lia found a cosy round chamber, lit from above by daylight filtering through a clear, star-shaped crystal. Toward the back of the cave she saw two small pools, one bubbling and the other mirror-still.
A Dragon’s roost, said Flicker.
Wow!
The dragonet showed her a depression in the centre of the cave. “Eggs, here.”
Soft, warm sand greeted her toes. Lia gazed around in delight. What colour might the mother Dragon have been? Then, a frisson cased her spine in flame.
White. A hunted Dragoness, frantic, laying her eggs in the cavern while she checked the entrance a hundred times, wondering if she should block it to prevent him from finding her, brooding over her clutch of three Dragon eggs, each easily three feet in length, the
n knowing a searching presence, the great, many-headed Black Dragon seeking her with all the powers of his magic and cunning … concealing the eggs deep underground, summoning one to care for them, sheltering her unborn young with her own pearlescent power, and then departing the cave to submit to the Black Dragon’s chastisement …
Lia’s legs folded beneath her. Her head struck the sand. She heard Flicker’s shriek as though it came from a great distance, and when she dreamed, it was about Dragons fighting.
* * * *
Her right arm took a further three weeks to heal to the point where she could grip light objects without gritting her teeth, and raise her hand above the height of her shoulder. In that time Lia eased back into her daily exercise and dance routines, much to Flicker’s bemusement. They set up a home of sorts in the cave. Even the worst of her bruises and lesions healed up, thanks to the dragonet’s medications, and she worked diligently on learning to speak Dragonish.
Flicker taught her how to mend a rent in a dragonet’s wing. The thin, supple wing membrane was also extraordinarily sensitive, so he first had her find the right combination of herbs–numb wort, tergaroot and pungent wandering monk’s-flower–which Lia helped to prepare two ways, firstly for eating and secondly, for smearing on the wound to numb it. Then, having readied thorn needles and thread, she was equipped for the task. Fra’aniorian lace embroidery, regarded as the finest in the Island-World, was an art form of which Hualiama had only ever scratched the surface. Flicker made her demonstrate her sewing skills on leaves before he allowed her near his wing. This triggered a hissing-contest between Human and dragonet.
She drew together the ragged edges of his wing membrane and set her nimble fingers to the task, starting by gluing together two severed wing struts, which to her resembled cartilage but were clearly much stronger, and then working on the surface itself.
