Dragon's Milk

by Susan Fletcher

  Kaeldra turned and took Jeorg’s hand. “You remember Jeorg Sigrad,” she began shyly.

  But Granmyr was staring at his brooch. “You presume to wear this?” she asked. “Landerath’s brooch?”

  “Landerath is dead,” Jeorg said gently. Granmyr flinched and shut her eyes. “I thought he would like Kaeldra to have it.”

  “And I granted it to him,” Kaeldra finished.

  “You can’t do that.” Ryfenn’s mouth was tight. “It goes against tradition. You lost your own amulet; you aren’t permitted to grant another.”

  “I have done it,” Kaeldra said. She held Ryfenn’s gaze while the dragonpod blooms lapped against the hills; then, at last, Ryfenn looked away.

  epilogue

  The wild creatures of the earth are as milk for the human spirit; to destroy them is to starve our souls.

  —Private journals, Landerath

  Short of breath from running, Kaeldra burst into the clayhouse. She couldn’t see her at first, for the sun had nearly set and darkness webbed the edges of the room.

  “I should have thought,” came Granmyr’s voice, “that you’d be prompt. You’ve been hounding me to let you try this for so long.”

  Now Kaeldra made out Granmyr seated at a bench in the corner.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “Jeorg was banding birds. Some men from the eastern reaches came and had to take them right away. He says I’m the only one who can calm the birds, and he said it would take only a moment. But then one bird escaped and we had to chase it all through the cottage. . . .” Kaeldra smiled, recalling how Jeorg had leaped through their cottage with a net, while the men from the east roared with laughter.

  “That husband of yours seems to have found his occupation,” Granmyr said.

  True enough. Jeorg had not taken to farming, but he did have a way with animals. They gentled at the touch of his big, work-roughened hands; they obeyed at the sound of his voice. Men brought him their horses to be broken, their dogs to be trained for flock keeping. And now, two years after he and Kaeldra had returned from Rog, they had their own small string of horses.

  Jeorg was famed as well for his skill with homing birds; but few guessed his true purpose in this. He had devoted himself in secret to continuing the work of Landerath: training the birds, banding them, sending them to outposts from which they would alert him of a dragon hatching. For he still had hopes of a hatching yet to come. He and a few trusted companions had vowed to watch over a lair if the time ever came, to protect the draclings by whatever means possible until they could fly north with their dam.

  Now Kaeldra sat at the wheel. Her hands trembled as she slapped the wedged red clay onto the bat and moistened it with water. Long had she awaited this moment. She could not vision what she sought when Granmyr worked the clay, and so must work it herself. But now that Granmyr had at last deemed her ready, she was afraid. What if nothing happened?

  Kaeldra’s knees bumped against the rim; she had to splay her legs and hunch down over the clay. This wheel of Granmyr’s had been too small for her since she began clay working over a year ago. But now, with the child growing inside her, it was more uncomfortable than ever.

  “Left foot,” Granmyr said.

  Kaeldra kicked the spinner; her boot made a satisfying thud. She wore her boots high these days—Kragish style. She clothed herself in vibrant colors; she cropped her hair at her shoulders and let it coil as it pleased. Folk had stared at her at first, yet most seemed eventually to have grown accustomed to her unconventional garb. “I belong here,” Kaeldra told herself whenever she felt the impulse to shrink and hide. “I will not be a sun lizard.”

  Now she leaned into the clay, feeling its cool, gritty wetness beneath her hands. It felt awkward, balky, moving in the wrong direction.

  Center, Kaeldra thought. Center.

  Gradually the clay grew compliant. She coaxed it to rise, then pushed down again until it no longer thumped against her hands but spun smoothly, without resistance.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Make a bowl.”

  Kaeldra kicked again, then pressed two fingers into the center of the clay. It opened up like a blossom turned to the sun. Gently, she brought her hands together, feeling the wall rise and narrow between her fingers. It was a good bowl; she felt the centeredness of it in its wobble-free spin.

  “Collapse it.”

  Kaeldra pushed against the wall, felt a resistance in the clay. She pushed harder. The clay closed in upon itself, lurched suddenly, seemed to tug against her fingers and rise of its own accord to form a mountain, a mountain chain. The landscape rolled beneath her hands, a strange, wild country, covered with ice. It tilted and pitched as though she soared through the air above it: cliffs and canyons, smooth snowy expanses of plain and floe and sea. Something dark in the distance: a cave? It was a cave; the earth opened up and she was hurtling down a high, dark passage into a cavern, an immense cavern, where a spring of turquoise water bubbled and steamed.

  And there, in the warmth, in the sulphur-reeking, billowy-white mist, slept the draclings. Many dragons slept in that place—but Kaeldra saw Embyr and Pyro first, nestled in the curve of a big green dragon’s tail. They had grown, Kaeldra saw. Never again would they squeeze through a porthole or curl up inside an empty cask.

  As Kaeldra watched, Embyr lifted her head and looked about her, as though she had heard or felt something odd. She nudged Pyro; he, too, looked up. And a thrumming touched Kaeldra’s mind, a ticklish vibration that grew stronger and still stronger until it hummed inside her bones.

  Something shifted. The mists swirled past her, blurring the draclings. The cave began to shrink and slip away. No, not shrinking; Kaeldra was moving back: back through cavern, back through the passage, back across the chill, snow-driven expanse. She held on to the dwindling thrum for as long as she could, as though by clinging she could capture it forever in her mind.

  And the earth slowed and grew stiff beneath her hands, and in the clayhouse it was dark. And the only hum was the sound of the wheel, slowing, slowing . . .

  “Did you find what you sought?” Granmyr’s voice.

  Kaeldra nodded, unable, yet, to speak.

  “Are they well?”

  “Yes. But they are lost to us, Granmyr. They’re in a strange place, unlike any I have heard of. And it is far, so far.”

  “Perhaps there will be others. This hatching cycle may not have run its course.”

  “But they’d only have to leave,” Kaeldra said. “They can’t stay here; we’d kill them.”

  “The Ancient Ones live,” Granmyr said. “You’ve seen to that. A day may yet come when men appreciate what we have lost. Someday, if the Ancient Ones survive, they may return.”

  Someday.

  Kaeldra’s gaze drifted to the hills, where the dragonpod blooms, with their promise of fertility, rippled in the moonlight. They look so like milk, she thought. Like dragon’s milk. Her hand strayed to her belly, and she felt a sudden joy: This child would wake to a world still touched by the splendor of dragons.

  The Ancient Ones live. There may be others.

  And that will have to do, Kaeldra thought, until someday comes to pass.

  PART I

  EGG

  Something old,

  Something new,

  Something broken,

  Someone blue.

  What was whole

  Has come undone.

  Something’s broken,

  Someone’s blue.

  —From “Broken & Blue” by White Raven

  Mercury and PCBs,

  Nitrogen dioxide,

  Arsenic and desert dust

  Blotting out the sun.

  Breathe in.

  Breathe it all in:

  Now you and the celumbra are one.

  —From “Sky Shadow” by Mutant Tide

  PLEATHER

  Back in the house, I put everything away—coat, boots, flashlight. I kenned Stella down to my shoulder and was heading upstairs w
hen I all-at-once froze, halfway freaking out Stella, who lurched forward on my shoulder, flapped her wings for balance, and about poked out my eye with a feather.

  There was Piper on the landing—rumpled nightie, ducky slippers, round glasses too big for her five-year-old face. Sitting there. Watching.

  “What are you doing up?” I kept my voice quiet. Aunt Pen was a sound sleeper. Once the hearing aid came out she was gone: out for the night. Still, better not push it. Aunt Pen would fry a circuit if she saw Stella uncaged.

  “Looking for you,” Piper said.

  “Well, I’m here now. Get back to bed. We’ll both go back to bed.”

  “Will you catch Luna?”

  “Luna! Did you let her out?”

  Piper shrugged.

  I groaned. Inside, though—not out loud. I’d look pretty stupid getting on her case about Luna, with Stella sitting right there on my shoulder.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “In the basement.”

  “The basement!” I remembered Aunt Pen and took it down a notch. “How did that happen?”

  “I was looking for you. And I opened the basement door and she flew down.”

  “Did you try to ken her back?”

  Piper nodded. “She wouldn’t come!” Her voice spiked up: high-megahertz whine.

  “Shh!” I put my arm around her. She leaned against me, buried her face in my shirt. “Hey. It’s okay.” It actually takes years to get kenning worked out with your bird—no matter how talented you are. It’s more complicated than you might think, and Piper’d had Luna for less than a year. Luna: as in Stellaluna, our favorite picture-book bat.

  I might be able to summon Luna myself, but it’s not the done thing to ken another person’s bird. It’s just not polite.

  A thought struck me. The basement.

  I held Piper’s shoulders and pushed her away so I could see her face. “Why did you open the basement door? Did you hear something down there?”

  “No.”

  “Sort of a thumping sound?”

  “No! I was just looking.”

  Okay. I breathed. Okay. “Did you see where she went?”

  “It was dark. And I couldn’t reach the switch.”

  Don’t wanna.

  I so wished I could leave this till morning. But no way would Piper go to sleep without Luna.

  “You wait here,” I said.

  I fumbled for the light switch just inside the basement door. Way down below, the ancient fixture clicked on—buzzing, flickering, and dim. I peered into the shadows. No sign of Luna. Ditzy bird. I started down the steps, breathing in eau de basement—metallic-smelling, sort of, mixed with chemicals and dust. Halfway to the bottom, Stella pushed off my shoulder and glided past the sputtery light, into the shadows.

  “Hey,” I said.

  I tried summoning her, but she slipped away. I could feel her faintly farther back, but she was dissing me.

  Bad bird. Bad, bad bird.

  I heard a scratching sound as Stella lit down someplace I couldn’t see, then a little greeting peep from Luna.

  I hesitated on the bottom step and scanned the room. Hadn’t been down here in years. There was the furnace. The lawn furniture, stacked and covered, waiting for spring. The banks of floor-to-ceiling shelves with their neat plastic bins, all neatly labeled and color-coded, Aunt Pen style. HOLIDAY DECORATIONS. PAPER PRODUCTS. CLEANING SUPPLIES. LIGHT BULBS. STYROFOAM PACKING PEANUTS.

  No Stella. No Luna. At least, not that I could see.

  I moved past the first bank of shelves, then deeper back, past the next. PAINT. CARPET REMNANTS. EBAY. GOODWILL. There were a couple of plastic bins labeled DAMAGED FIGURINES—a tidy little graveyard for those bloodless birds of hers. Birds that didn’t shed feathers or strew seeds. Birds that didn’t poop.

  The furnace snicked on, grumbled to life. A draft stirred the cobwebs at the tops of the shelves. I wished I’d put on my flip-flops. The concrete was seismic frigid, and bits of grit clung to the bottoms of my feet.

  Ahead, at the far, dim end of the room, six or seven beat-up cardboard boxes sat in a heap on the floor. They looked so different from Aunt Pen’s pristine plastic bins, I knew what they must be.

  The ones Dad had sent last week. The ones he’d found in that storage locker in Alaska. Full of Mom’s research stuff, he said.

  We’d never even known about the locker until the overdue notice came. They were going to “dispose of the contents” unless someone paid, like pronto. So Dad went right back up to Anchorage, hoping to find some clues.

  And there, at the top of the pile of boxes, were Stella and Luna. One each: cockatiel and canary. They seemed to be staring down into the narrow space between the boxes and the shelves. Ignoring me completely.

  Could they smell Mom, maybe? Was that why they’d come down here?

  I crept up behind Luna, pressed a finger against the backs of her twiggy legs. She lifted one foot and seemed about to fall for it—to step back onto my finger—but at the last second she tumbled to my nefarious plan and fluttered up to the top of the shelves.

  “Twit,” I muttered.

  The box, I saw, was marked up and tattered, having spent its previous life shipping ink cartridges from Taiwan. I strained to decipher the tiny postmark in the stuttering light. ANCHORAGE, AK.

  I ran my fingers across Dad’s handwriting—the careful, rounded letters, the hopeful upward dips at the ends of words. Soon, he’d said when he’d called earlier this evening. He would come home soon.

  When is soon? I’d asked. It was nearly two weeks already. But he couldn’t answer that. Had he found anything, any clues? Too soon to tell, he’d said.

  I sighed, feeling the old familiar ache hollowing out my insides.

  “Bryn?”

  I turned around. Piper was leaning into the doorway at the top of the stairs.

  “Bryn, did you find her?” She sounded a little wheezy.

  “Yes. I’ll be there soon.” I heard the echo: Soon.

  “With Luna?”

  “Yes. In a minute. Go get your inhaler, would you?”

  I looked where the birds were staring and saw that one of the boxes seemed to have tipped off the stack and landed on the floor on its side. The flaps had popped open; little clumps of wadded newspaper spilled out across the concrete, behind the other stacked boxes, beneath the lowest shelf.

  A shiver brushed the back of my neck. Something had happened here. But what?

  I synched with Stella and felt a weird, restless energy. Curiosity—on steroids. Something drawing her in.

  I squatted beside the tipped box. It had been closed up with that brown paper sealing tape—not the stronger, plastic stuff you’re supposed to use for mailing. It looked as if the glue had come ungummed, and then the tape had torn.

  It was mostly dirt samples in the boxes, Dad had said. Dirt with microbes in it. Bugs, Mom called them. She was always looking for promising new bugs. Bugs that would eat toxic waste. Dad had sent half the samples to Taj at the lab and half here, just to be safe.

  I righted the box, set it on the floor beside the other ones. I raked through the crumpled paper inside. Nothing. I peered beneath the shelf, following the trail of newsprint.

  Something there. Roundish. Hard to see way back there in the shadows.

  A soccer ball? A volleyball?

  From here, it looked kind of like leather, but it wouldn’t have to be. It could be that plastic synth leather. Pleather. It seemed to have sections, sort of, like crocodile skin or a tortoise shell. And it wasn’t quite round. More ovalish.

  An egg? Some kind of mega-huge egg?

  Ostrich?

  Emu?

  Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t dirt.

  “What are you into, Mom?” I murmured.

  Luna fluttered down again, beside Stella. Both of them still fixated on that egg. “Hate to break it to you, ladies,” I said, “but this is way out of your league.”

  Maybe, when the egg had rolled out of
the box, it had bumped the wooden post that held up the shelves. Ergo the mysterious thumps.

  Maybe. But wouldn’t that happen just once?

  “Bryn?” Piper again. “Are you coming?”

  “Soon! Just wait there.”

  I got down on my hands and knees, reached way back beneath the shelf. I touched the egg. It gave a little, like a rubber ball. I scooted forward, stretched full-out on the floor, and gently cupped my whole hand over it.

  Weird. It was maybe a teensy bit warmer against my palm than it should have been. Not very warm, but it was chilly down here. You’d think the egg would be too.

  And something else. It had a funny kind of vibe to it. So faint, I almost couldn’t tell if I was imagining it. But I didn’t think I was.

  All at once, sprawled out there in the dark, with so many mysteries bumping around in my head . . . all at once, I knew one small thing for absolute certain.

  Whatever it was inside this egg, it was alive.

  OTHER BOOKS BY

  SUSAN FLETCHER

  THE DRAGON CHRONICLES:

  Flight of the Dragon Kyn

  Sign of the Dove

  Alphabet of Dreams

  Shadow Spinner

  Walk Across the Sea

  ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

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  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1989 by Susan Fletcher

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.