“Hmm, this salve is old. It would work on small cuts or aching muscles, but it’s not strong enough for something like this.”
“Okay, so what can we do about it? Is it getting infected or something?”
Anri shook her head and poured some water over his bare foot, causing him to writhe at the biting wind. “It isn’t infected, but it is very swollen and red. This salve isn’t strong enough to keep the swelling down or to help it seal up. We need to bind it tightly, and you need to take it easy to give it a chance to heal.” She smeared some more salve over the wound and wrapped his foot tightly, in a fancy crisscross pattern that kept the skin in the arch of his foot pressed together.
“I don’t know if I can do that.” Will gritted his teeth at the burning salve and the ache of the bandage squeezing his wound. “I have to catch up to Tavin. I have to get my egg back. After that, I’ll take it easy.”
Anri released his foot and pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders while Will tugged his sock and shoe back on.
“You once asked us why we wanted to be dragon riders,” she said, “but we never asked you. Why do you want to be a dragon rider? I thought at first that you weren’t taking it seriously. But now . . . I don’t think I understand at all.”
Will pulled some dried meat from his bag and handed some to Anri before biting into a piece himself. “Well,” he said, chewing his lump of hard salty meat, “you know I’m an off-lander. We came here because our boat got caught in a wicked storm at sea. The storm sank our boat, and my parents and I washed ashore here.” He took a deep breath and looked down at the slab of meat in his hands. “But we weren’t the only ones on the boat. My uncle John was with us. He didn’t make it onto the life raft. We haven’t seen him since.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Will glanced up at Anri and saw that she was frowning and twisting her fingers as she stared at her bag.
“If we had washed ashore in Florida or something—in the off-lands, that is—there would be search and rescue teams out looking for him. But we couldn’t find anyone to help us here. The best we found was a rumor that we could hire dragon riders to search the coast for him.”
“How long has it been since the storm?” Anri asked quietly.
“It’s been weeks, maybe a month. I’m not sure.” He shrugged. He didn’t want to think about what she might be implying, so he hurried on. “The thing is, I met a dragon rider on my way to the mountains. Perrin said he would go to Frozen Peaks Dragonhold to find riders who would help us. So I don’t need to go to the hatching ground to find help anymore.”
Anri arched an eyebrow at him curiously.
Will pulled his bag a little closer, noting how empty it felt without the dragon egg, and sighed. “Still, something makes me want to get my egg back from Tavin. I feel like I have to bring it to the hatching ground myself. I’m not sure why. If I do bond with a dragon, I might be stuck here in Avria forever, right? I’ll never get to go home. But that doesn’t seem so important anymore.” He took a drink from his waterskin to wash down the lump of meat in his throat and scooted back against the wall, hoping to shield himself from the wind. “Maybe I just don’t want a jerk like Tavin to get his way. Maybe I just think it sounds cool to be a dragon rider. But . . . it’s not that. I feel like I need to do this. It feels a lot more important than beating a bully or having fun. It feels more important than anything. I don’t get it.” He shivered as a gust swirled into their little alcove.
Anri shivered, too, and scooted closer until her arm brushed against his. “It makes sense to me. I feel the same way. I can’t wait to get to the hatching ground to make sure the egg I found is safe.”
She shuddered and started chafing her arms to warm them up.
Will’s blanket was big enough to cover both of them, so he shifted it around and threw half of it over her, too.
Anri hesitated, looking confused at the gesture. Then she sighed. “Here, take some of mine, too.” She unwrapped her blanket and spread half of it over him.
“It’s okay, I’ll be fine.” Will’s teeth chattered as he spoke.
“We’ll both be warmer this way,” she said.
She was right. Huddled close together, with two wool blankets over both of them, Will almost felt warm as the sky darkened around them and the icy wind whipped through the air.
When the mist drifted away, revealing thousands of stars glimmering in the blackness above, Anri had already drifted off, leaning against his side and shivering in her sleep now and then.
Then Will noticed something that almost made him leap to his feet. If it hadn’t been for the warm weight of Anri leaning against his side, and the fact that he could barely see his hand in front of his face, he would have raced up the mountain right then.
Above them on the mountainside, close enough that Will was sure he could climb there within an hour, flickering orange-red light glowed from behind the trees.
It was a campfire.
His heart hammered against his ribs. He sat up a little straighter, trying to get a better view.
Should he wake Anri? Maybe they could make it. Maybe they could crawl on their hands and feet and feel the trail ahead to keep from falling . . .
As he watched the flickering light, he realized it wasn’t coming from straight up the trail. It was off to the side, which meant that the trail must double back somewhere. Changing directions on this unpredictable path, with numb hands and feet, when he couldn’t see two inches in front of his face, sounded like a good way to get killed.
Still, he at least wanted to try.
He shifted, trying to scoot away from Anri without disturbing her.
She took a deep breath and lifted her head groggily. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s . . .” He hesitated, then sighed. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
Anri dropped her head and drifted back to sleep against his shoulder.
He settled back against the cold cliffside with a sigh. He couldn’t tell her. She wouldn’t let him go alone, and he couldn’t let her follow him. Not with the inky blackness of night around them. Not after seeing the terror in her eyes when she’d nearly fallen off the tree roots.
He’d have to wait until she was deep asleep before sneaking away.
He set his eyes on the dim orange glow on the mountainside and waited.
Chapter Eighteen
Dancer was running away from him through drifts of snow. Her glistening neck feathers and brightly colored body showed up sharply against the white powdery hills.
Will raced after her. He knew it was a bad idea. If she felt like he was chasing her, Dancer would only run faster. But she was heading right toward the edge of a cliff. If he didn’t make it in time, she would plummet to her death.
The cold bit into his feet and hands. His throat and lungs ached as he panted in the icy air.
Will lost sight of the cormant as she dropped below a rise. Still, he ran. He couldn’t give up.
When he made it over the hill, Dancer was nowhere to be seen. An icy white field stretched before him, leading to the steep drop-off ahead.
Shivering, he crept to the edge of the cliff, following Dancer’s three-toed footprints, and that’s when he noticed a shining blue egg nestled in a drift of snow.
Will crouched down and rested his hand on the cold eggshell. Could this be Dancer’s egg?
The moment he touched it, the egg rocked. It cracked. The shell shattered, and out burst a tiny blue dragon.
Will pulled his hand back in shock as the tiny dragon flopped in the snow with awkward wings and clumsy claws.
“No! Not so close to the edge. You’ll fall!”
The baby dragon didn’t listen to him. It rolled to its feet and flapped its wings, but they weren’t strong enough to lift it into the air. The tiny blue dragon flapped harder and tumbled backward over the cliff.
Will screamed and reached out, catching its tail as it disappeared over the edge.
The little dragon writhe
d, trying to break free.
“Stop, I’m trying to save you!”
The hatchling twisted its neck around and spewed a cloud of icy breath at Will, freezing him to the core.
Will woke with a start, trembling from the icy wind that still swirled in the alcove. Next to him, Anri was asleep, huddled in a tight shivering knot. The sky was light enough now that he could see their surroundings.
All at once, he remembered the light from the campfire he’d seen. How had he fallen asleep?
Furious at himself, he tossed the blankets off and limped over to the trail to see the place where the fire had been, but he couldn’t spot it. The mountainside looked like nothing but a steep wall of impenetrable greenery.
“Will? What is it?” Anri asked groggily. She rubbed her eye with a fist. Her cheek was red from sleeping against his side all night.
“I saw firelight on the trail up there last night. I wanted to see if I could figure out where it was.” His breath came out in puffs of fog.
Anri clambered to her feet, wrapped both blankets around her shoulders, and joined him on the trail. “Where did you see it?”
He pointed up the hill. “I can’t see anything there now. It wasn’t far, though. Tavin must be going slow to keep from falling, like we thought he would. Maybe we can catch up to him today.”
“We’d better. We’re probably most of the way to the hatching ground by now. Your 'friend' would have been there already if he’d taken the safe road.”
They rolled their blankets up and tucked them back in their bags. Trouble didn’t bother coming out of Anri’s bag. Instead, she squirmed around and poked her head out to see what was going on.
Anri rubbed her hands together and hugged her arms as they started trudging up the hill. “Hopefully he doesn’t know we’re following him. The faster we go, the sooner we’ll catch up to him.” She rubbed her hands over her face and groaned. “Swarms! I really wish we had some hot kaffa right about now.”
Will slung his arms through the straps of his bag and followed her. “We’ll have to be sneaky if we’re going to catch him, though, right? I mean, if he hears us coming, he’ll probably make his cormant run ahead faster than we can keep up.”
Anri turned to look at him and pulled her cloak tight around her shoulders. “You know him better than I do. Would he really do something so stupid?”
Will limped as he climbed after her. His foot hurt still, but the tight wrap that Anri had used helped a lot.
“I’ve seen him nearly get himself killed for pretty dumb things before. I don’t know how he’s lived this long.”
They got into a natural rhythm as they made their way higher, stopping to help each other whenever they came to dangerous parts of the trail.
As the day wore on, the temperature dropped until the earth under their feet was stiff with frost and patches of old dense snow dotted the surrounding hills. Trouble stayed huddled inside Anri’s bag and rarely poked her head out anymore. It seemed a frozen mountain peak was not the ideal habitat for a kisnit.
The trail curved around a sharp bend, and suddenly everything started changing. First, Will noticed that the patches of snow grew smaller and less frequent. Then the ground grew softer and slightly damp in places. After a while, Trouble jumped out of Anri’s bag and scurried among the bushes and trees. Will noticed that his breath no longer clouded when he breathed, and shortly after that he and Anri were rolling up their thick cloaks and stuffing them in their bags.
“I wonder why it’s getting warmer,” Will said. “We’re still pretty high up, aren’t we?” He risked a glance down the side of the mountain. Far below them, the distant trees looked like bushes. The white line of a river rushed in a winding path down the mountain, so far away they couldn’t hear a sound.
“I’m not sure,” Anri said. “I’ve always heard that the hatching ground is warm for the eggs. And it makes sense that the red dragons who live in Fire Mountain Dragonhold want to live somewhere hot. They are fire dragons after all.”
“Maybe Fire Mountain is a volcano,” Will said. “I’ve heard of places, like in Hawaii, where you can’t even walk around on the ground because it’s so hot from the lava. In some places, there are natural pools that stay hot all year, even when there’s snow on the ground, because the magma underground heats them up.”
“Hmm. Kind of like the Poison Plains,” Anri said, grabbing Will’s hand to help him step over a thick tree root.
“What’s the Poison Plains?”
“It’s a place near Silverlake, where green dragons and their riders live. I’ve never been there myself. The whole area is toxic to any living creature except green dragons and their riders. Green riders develop immunity to poison when they bond with their dragons, so they can handle it. Even most plants can’t live there. I’ve heard that there are thousands of ponds in the plains, and they’re always bubbling and frothing with poison from underground. Green dragons bathe in them for fun.”
They were winding around another bend in the trail when Anri suddenly froze in place, holding her hand up to stop Will. He came to a halt, not moving a muscle as Anri turned to face him with wide eyes. She gave him a slow, deliberate nod and crouched down to give him space to look.
Will inched closer and leaned over her head to peek around the corner. On the other side of the rocky edge, the trail wound around and backtracked, leaving a deep gorge between where they were hiding and the trail farther on.
On the other side of that gorge, right where the trail turned back around another corner, a cormant stood tethered to a tree in a level clearing. A boy crouched down next to him, trying to start a campfire. It was Slash and Tavin. Will could see the red feathers around the bird’s beak and the scowling expression on the sandy-haired boy’s face.
Slash looked tired and bedraggled. He held one foot up like he was reluctant to put weight on it. The protective wraps that had been wrapped around his legs now hung down in tattered strips. His beak was open and panting with thirst.
“It’s him,” Will whispered to Anri, grinding his teeth in rage. “I’m surprised he made it so far on Slash. I wouldn’t blame that cormant if he threw Tavin down the mountain.”
“What do you want to do now?” Anri asked.
Will pressed his lips together and retreated around the corner. “I need to go over there and get my egg back.”
“I don’t think you should fight him for it,” Anri said in a hushed voice. “If you two fight, you’ll risk hurting the egg. I know I said that it probably wouldn’t hatch, but there still might be a living dragon inside.”
Will crouched down and rested his chin in his palm for a moment. “All right. I have an idea. Tavin stole the egg from me and left before I noticed. I’ll just do the same to him. We’ll wait until he’s distracted with something, then we’ll sneak past him. I’ll take my egg back, and we’ll be long gone by the time he notices.”
“There are a million ways this could go wrong,” Anri said. “What if he catches us? He’ll probably fight you for the egg. And if we wait too long, it’ll be night. We won’t be able to see the trail ahead of us.”
“We’ll just have to sneak closer to his camp before we lose daylight. Once we get to his camp, there’ll be some light from his fire to help us, and we can wait as long as we need to. He’s bound to go somewhere to use the bathroom or collect more firewood before it gets too dark.”
Anri grimaced and bit her lip. Will could tell she didn’t like his plan, but in the end, she agreed it was more likely to work than walking up to Tavin and asking for the egg back.
They crept along the trail together, keeping an eye on Tavin the whole time and hiding behind bushes and trees whenever they could. The trail had gradually leveled out as they hiked that day. They were no longer climbing uphill, but skirting the steep drop-off next to the trail was tricky enough.
When they were only a short way from Tavin’s camp, they stopped behind a spur of the mountain wall. Huddling together, they waited for their cha
nce to steal the egg back, peeking around the corner from time to time.
As they sat there, Will asked Anri about her life before she found a dragon egg. He learned that her father had been a master smith but had died a few years earlier, leaving her older brother to fill his shoes. She’d done her best to earn money for her family, taking jobs wherever she could. She’d even worked in a silk mine for a short while. That someone could mine for silk, instead of collecting it from silkworms, fascinated Will, but the way Anri shuddered when she spoke of it made him think it wasn’t a very pleasant job.
Will told Anri about his life in the off-lands, too. He tried to explain the thrill of riding a mountain bike down steep trails and off sick jumps, how delicious five-cheese pizza was, and the excitement of watching awesome superhero movies. She seemed confused by most of these things, but when he told her that Thor was his favorite superhero, she perked up.
“Yes, Avrians know about Odin and his sons. They’re the gods worshiped by the ancients. Bragi, the god of the bards, is my favorite.”
It hadn’t occurred to Will that Anri would know anything about Norse mythology. He nodded thoughtfully, trying to hide how awkward he felt that he only knew about Thor because of a movie character.
The sky was growing dim when Tavin finally unrolled his blanket and laid on the ground next to his fire.
Will watched until the other boy stayed still for several minutes. “I think he’s going to sleep,” he whispered.
Anri peeked around his shoulder. Together, they watched Tavin, waiting to see if he would move. When he didn’t move for several more minutes, Will gave Anri a nod. Silently, they crept out of the shadows and walked the rest of the way up the trail until the campfire's glow surrounded them.
Anri tiptoed to Tavin’s side and scanned the ground next to him. “Where do you think the egg is?” she whispered.
Will looked around until he spotted the bag tied to Slash’s saddle. “That creep didn’t even unsaddle Slash for the night!” Will growled, forcing himself to keep his voice quiet.
Secret of the Dragon Egg (Dragon Riders of Avria Book 1) Page 17
