Dragonsong

by Anne McCaffrey

  But Menolly was shedding her work clothes as fast as she could. Sella was just likely to slip the word to Mavi (her sister was as wary of Yanus as Menolly) about Menolly piping in her room – a suspicious action on its own. Though Menolly hadn’t sworn not to tune at all; only not to do it in front of people.

  However, everyone was in a good mood that night: Yanus, because he’d spoken to F’lar the Weyrleader and because there’d be good fishing on the morrow if the weather held. Fish always rose to feed from drowned Thread, and half the Fall had been over Nerat Bay. The Deep would be thick with schools. With Yanus in a good mood, the rest of the Sea Holders could also rejoice because there’d been no Thread on the ground at all.

  So it wasn’t any wonder that they called on Menolly to play for them. She sang two of the longer Sagas about dragons; and then did the Name-Song for the current wingleaders of Benden Weyr so her Sea Hold would know their dragonmen. She wondered if there’d been a recent Hatching that Half-Circle mightn’t have heard about, being so isolated. But she was certain that F’lar would have told Yanus if that were so. But would Yanus have told Menolly? She wasn’t the Harper to be told such things as courtesy.

  The Sea Holders wanted more singing, but her throat was tired. So she played them a song they could sing, bellowing out the words in voices roughened by wind and salt. She saw her father scowling at her, though he was singing along with the rest of them, and she wondered if he didn’t want her – a mere girl – to play men’s songs. It galled her because she’d played them often enough when Petiron was alive. She sighed at this injustice. And then wondered what F’lar would have said if he’d known that Half-Circle Sea Hold was dependent on a mere girl for their harpering. She’d heard everyone say that F’lar was a fair man, a farseeing man, and a fine dragonrider. There were even songs about him and his Weyrwoman, Lessa.

  So she sang them, in honor of the Weyr-leader’s visit, and her father’s expression lightened. She sang on until her throat was so tight that not a squeak would come out. She wished that someone else could play to give her a rest but, as she scanned the faces of the holders, there wasn’t any of them who could beat a drum properly, much less finger a gitar or pipe.

  That was why the next day it seemed only logical for her to start one of the children learning the drum rolls. Plenty of songs could be sung just to drum beat. And one of Soreel’s two children still in Teaching was sensitive enough to learn to pipe.

  Someone, Sella perhaps, Menolly thought bitterly, informed Mavi of Menolly’s activity.

  ‘You were told no tuning …’

  ‘Teaching someone drum beats is not tuning …’

  ‘Teaching anyone to play is Harper business, not yours, m’girl. Just your good fortune Sea Holder is out in the Deep or you’d have the belt across your shoulders, so you would. No more nonsense.’

  ‘But it’s not nonsense, Mavi. Last night another drummer or piper would have …’

  Her mother raised her hand in warning, and Menolly bit shut her lips.

  ‘No tuning, Menolly!’

  And that was that.

  ‘Now girl, see to the glows before the fleet gets back.’

  That job took Menolly inexorably to the Harper’s room: swept clean of everything that had been personal to Petiron. She was also reminded of the sealed message on the Record room mantel. What if the Masterharper were expecting a message from Petiron about the songmaker? Menolly was so very sure that part of that unopened message was about her. Not that thinking about it did Menolly any good. Even knowing it for a fact would be no help, Menolly decided gloomily. But that didn’t stop her from going past Yanus’s Record room and peering in at the tempting package on the mantel.

  She sighed, turning from the room. By now the Masterharper would have heard of Petiron’s death and be sending a new Harper. Maybe the new man would be able to open the message, and maybe, if it was about her, maybe if it said that the songs she’d sent were good ones, Yanus and her mother wouldn’t put such restrictions on her about tuning and whistling and everything.

  As the winter spun itself out, Menolly found that her sense of loss when she thought of Petiron deepened. He had been the only person in the Sea Hold who had ever encouraged her in anything: and most especially in that one thing that she was now forbidden to do. Melodies don’t stop growing in the mind, tapping at fingers, just because they’re forbidden. And Menolly didn’t stop composing them – which, she felt, was not precisely disobeying.

  What seemed to worry Yanus and Mavi most, Menolly reasoned to herself, was the fact that the children, whom she was supposed to teach only the proper Ballads and Sagas, might think Menolly’s tunes were Harper-crafted. (If her tunes were that good in her parents’ ears, what was the harm of them?) Basically they didn’t want her to play her songs aloud where they would be heard and perhaps repeated at awkward times.

  Menolly could, therefore, see no harm in writing down new tunes. She played them softly in the empty Little Hall when the children had left, before she began her afternoon chores, carefully hiding her notations among the Harper records in the rack of the Hall. Safe enough, for no-one but herself, til the new Harper came, would discover them there.

  This mild deviation from the absolute obedience to her father’s restriction about tuning did much to ease Menolly’s growing frustration and loneliness. What Menolly didn’t realize was that her mother had been watching her closely, having recognized the signs of rebellion in her. Mavi didn’t want the Hold to be disgraced in any way, and she feared that Menolly, her head turned by Petiron’s marked favor, was not mature enough to discipline herself. Sella had warned her mother that Menolly was getting out of hand. Mavi put some of that tale down to sisterly envy. But, when Sella had told Mavi that Menolly had actually started to teach another how to play an instrument, Mavi had been obliged to intervene. Let Yanus get one whisper of Menolly’s disobedience and there’d be real trouble in the Hold for the girl.

  Spring was coming and with spring, the quieter seas. Perhaps the new Harper would arrive soon.

  And then spring did come, a first glorious day. The sweet scents of seabeachplum and marshberry filled the seaward breezes and came in through the opened shutters of the Little Hall. The children were singing loudly, as if shouting got them through the learning faster. True, they were singing one of the longer Sagas, word perfect, but with far more exuberance than was strictly needed. Perhaps it was that exuberance that infected Menolly and reminded her of a tune she’d tried to set down the day before.

  She did not consciously disobey. She certainly was unaware that the fleet had returned from an early catch. She was equally unaware that the chords she was strumming were not – officially – of the Harper’s craft. And it was doubly unfortunate that this lapse occurred just as the Sea Holder passed the open windows of the Hall.

  He was in the Little Hall almost at once, summarily dismissing the youngsters to help unload the heavy catch. Then he silently, which made the anticipation of the punishment worse, removed his wide belt, signaled to Menolly to raise her tunic over her head and to bend over the high harper’s stool.

  When he had finished, she had fallen to her knees on the hard stone flags, biting her lips to keep back the sobs. He’d never beaten her so hard before. The blood was roaring in her ears so fiercely that she didn’t hear Yanus leave the Little Hall. It was a long while before she could ease the tunic over the painful weals on her back. Only when she’d got slowly to her feet did she realize that he’d taken the gitar, too. She knew then that his judgement was irrevocable and harsh.

  And unjust! She’d only played the first few bars … hummed along … and that only because the last chords of the Teaching Ballad had modified into the new tune in her head. Surely that little snitch wouldn’t have done any lasting harm! And the children knew all the Teaching Ballads they were supposed to know. She hadn’t meant to disobey Yanus.

  ‘Menolly?’ Her mother came to the classhall door, the carrying thong of an empty skin in
her hand. ‘You dismissed them early? Is that wise …’ Her mother stopped abruptly and stared at her daughter. An expression of anger and disgust crossed her face. ‘So you’ve been the fool after all? With so much at stake, and you had to tune …’

  ‘I didn’t do it on purpose, Mavi. The song … just came into my mind. I’d played no more than a measure …’

  There wasn’t any point in trying to justify the incident to her mother. Not now. The desolation Menolly had felt when she realized her father had taken the gitar intensified in the face of her mother’s cold displeasure.

  ‘Take the sack. We need fresh greens,’ Mavi said in an expressionless voice. ‘And any of the yellow-veined grass that might be up. There should be some.’

  Resignedly, Menolly took the sack and, without thinking, looped the thong over her shoulder. She caught her breath as the unwieldy sack banged against her scored back.

  Before Menolly could avoid it, her mother had flipped up the loose tunic. She gave an inarticulate exclamation. ‘You’ll need numbweed on some of those.’

  Menolly pulled away. ‘What good’s a beating then, if it’s numbed away first chance?’ And she dashed out of the Hall.

  Much Mavi cared if she hurt, anyhow, except that a sound body works harder and longer and faster.

  Her thoughts and her misery spurred her out of the Hold, every swinging stride she took jarring her sore back. She didn’t slow down because she’d the whole long track in front of the Hold to go. The faster she went, the better, before some auntie wanted to know why the children were out of lessons so soon, or why Menolly was going green-picking instead of Teaching.

  Fortunately she encountered no-one. Everyone was either down at the Dock Cavern, unloading, or making themselves scarce to the Sea Holder’s eyes so they wouldn’t have to. Menolly charged past the smaller holds, down aways on the marshroad, then up the righthand track, south of the Half-Circle. She’d put as much distance between herself and Sea Hold as she could: all perfectly legitimate, in search of greenery.

  As she jogged along the sandy footpath, she kept her eyes open for fresh growth, trying to ignore the occasional rough going when she’d jar her whole body. Her back began to smart. She gritted her teeth and paced on.

  Her brother, Alemi, had once said that she could run as well as any boy of the Hold and outdistance the half of them on a long race. If only she had been a boy … Then it wouldn’t have mattered if Petiron had died and left them Harperless. Nor would Yanus have beaten a boy for being brave enough to sing his own songs.

  The first of the low marsh valleys was pink and yellow with blooming seabeachplum and marshberry, slightly blackened here and there: more from the low-flying queens catching the odd Thread that escaped the main wings. Yes, and there was the patch that the flame-thrower had charred: the one Thread infestation that had gotten through. One day, Menolly told herself, she’d just throw open a window’s steel shutters and see the dragons charring Thread in the sky. What a sight that must be for certain!

  Fearful, too, she reckoned, having seen her mother treat men for Threadburn. Why, the mark looked as if someone had drawn a point-deep groove with a red-hot poker on the man’s arm, leaving the edges black with singed skin. Torly would always bear that straight scar, puckered and red. Threadscore never healed neatly.

  She had to stop running. She’d begun to sweat heavily and her back was stinging. She loosened her tunic belt, flapping the soft runner-beast hide to send cooling draughts up between her shoulder blades.

  Past the first marsh valley, up over the rocky hump hill into the next valley. Cautious going here: this was one of the deep, boggy places. No sign of yellow-veined grasses. There had been a stand last summer two humpy hills over.

  She heard them first, glancing up with a stab of terror at the unexpected sounds above. Dragons? She glanced wildly about for the tell tale gray glitter of skyborne Thread in the east. The greeny blue sky was clear of that dreaded fogging, but not of dragonwings. She heard dragons? It couldn’t be! They didn’t swarm like that. Dragons always flew in ordered wings, a pattern against the sky. These were darting, dodging, then swooping and climbing. She shaded her eyes. Blue flashes, green, the odd brown and then … Of course, sun glinted golden off the leading, dartlike body. A queen! A queen that tiny?

  She expelled the breath she’d been holding in her amazement. A fire lizard queen? It had to be. Only fire lizards could be that small and look like dragons. Whers certainly didn’t. And whers didn’t mate midair. And that’s what Menolly was seeing: the mating flight of a fire lizard queen, with her bronzes in close pursuit.

  So fire lizards weren’t boy talk! Awed, Menolly watched the swift, graceful flight. The queen had led her swarm so high that the smaller ones, the blues and greens and browns, had been forced down. They circled now at a lower altitude, struggling to keep the same direction as the high fliers. They dipped and dashed in mimicry of the queen and bronzes.

  They had to be fire lizards! thought Menolly, her heart almost stopping at the beauty and thrill of the sight. Fire lizards! And they were like dragons. Only much, much smaller. She didn’t know all the Teachings for nothing. A queen dragon was gold: she mated with the bronze who could outfly her. Which was exactly what was happening right now with the fire lizards.

  Oh, they were beautiful to behold! The queen had turned sunward and Menolly, for all her eyes were very longsighted, could barely pick out that black mote and trailing cluster.

  She walked on, following the main group of fire lizards. She’d bet anything that she’d end up on the coastline near the Dragon Stones. Last fall her brother Alemi had claimed he’d seen fire lizards there at dawn, feeding on fingertails in the shallows. His report had set off another rash of what Petiron had called ‘lizard-fever’. Every lad in the Sea Hold had burned with plans to trap a fire lizard. They’d plagued Alemi to repeat his sighting.

  It was just as well that the crags were unapproachable. Not even an experienced boatman would brave those treacherous currents. But, if anyone had been sure there were fire lizards there … Well no-one would know from her.

  Even if Petiron had been alive, Menolly decided, she would not have told him. He’d never seen a fire lizard, though he’d admitted to the children that the Records allowed that fire lizards did exist.

  ‘They’re seen,’ Petiron had told her later, ‘but they can’t be captured.’ He gave a wheezing chuckle. ‘People’ve been trying to since the first shell was cracked.’

  ‘Why can’t they be caught?’

  ‘They don’t want to. They’re smart. They just disappear …’

  ‘They go between like dragons?’

  ‘There’s no proof of that,’ said Petiron, a trifle cross, as if she’d been too presumptuous in suggesting a comparison between fire lizards and the great dragons of Pern.

  ‘Where else can you disappear to?’ Menolly had wanted to know. ‘What is between?’

  ‘Some place that isn’t.’ Petiron had shuddered. ‘You’re neither here nor there,’ and he gestured first to one corner of the Hall and then towards the Sea Dock on the other side of the harbor. ‘It’s cold, and it’s nothing. No sight, no sound, no sensations.’

  ‘You’ve ridden dragonback?’ Menolly had been impressed.

  ‘Once. Many Turns ago.’ He shuddered again in remembrance. ‘Now, since we’re touching on the subject, sing me the Riddle Song.’

  ‘It’s been solved. Why do we have to know it now?’

  ‘Sing it for me so I’ll know that you know it, girl,’ Petiron had said testily. Which was no reason at all.

  But Petiron had been very kind to her, Menolly knew, and her throat tightened with remembered regret for his passing. (Had he gone between? The way dragons did when they lost their riders or grew too infirm to fly? No, one left nothing behind, going between. Petiron had left his body to be slipped into the deeps.) And Petiron had left more behind than his body. He’d left her every song he’d ever known, every lay, every ballad, saga, every finger
ing, chord and strum, every rhythm. There wasn’t any way a stringed instrument could be played that she didn’t know, nor any cadence on the drums at which she wasn’t time-perfect. She could whistle double-trills as well as any wherry with her tongue or on the reeds. But there had been some things Petiron wouldn’t – or perhaps couldn’t – tell her about her world. Menolly wondered if this was because she was a girl and there were mysteries that only the male mind could understand.

  ‘Well,’ as Mavi had once told Menolly and Sella, ‘there are feminine puzzles that no mere man could sort, so that score is even.’

  ‘And one more for the feminine side,’ said Menolly as she followed the fire lizards. A mere girl had seen what all the boys – and men – of the Sea Hold had only dreamed of seeing, fire lizards at play.

  They’d ceased following the queen and her bronzes and now indulged in mock air battles, swooping now and then to the land itself. And seemingly under it. Until Menolly realized that they must be over the beaches. The sand was slipping under her feet. An unwary step could plunge her into the holes and dips. She could hear the sea. She changed her course, keeping to the thicker patches of coarse marsh grasses. The ground would be firmer there, and she’d be less visible to the fire lizards.

  She came to a slight rise, before the bluff broke off into a steep dive on to the beaches. The Dragon Stones were beyond in the sea, slightly hidden by a heat haze. She could hear fire lizards chirping and chattering. She crouched in the grasses and then, dropping to her full length, crept to the bluff edge, hoping for another glimpse of the fire lizards.

  They were quite visible – delightfully so. The tide was out, and they were exceedingly busy in the shallows, picking rockmites from the tumbled exposed boulders, or wallowing on the narrow edging of red and white sand, bathing themselves with great enthusiasm in the little pools, spreading their delicate wings to dry. There were several flurries as two fire lizards vied for the same choice morsel. In that alone, she decided, they must differ from dragons; she’d never heard of dragons fighting amongst themselves for anything. She’d heard that dragons feeding among herds of runner-beasts and wherries were something horrible to behold. Dragons didn’t eat that frequently, which was as well or not all the resources of Pern could keep the dragons fed.