by Calista Skye
“Caronerax. I was not going to say this. But I am sorry that I shot you. I thought you had killed Heidi, that’s why. And you were coming towards me in the dark. I am going to ask a question now, and I will accept the penalty for it: how can you heal?”
The dragon wraps up the paste and leans back on a big, conveniently placed rock. “I have never been injured. Dragons rarely are. I need my cache, of course. But I can’t be sure that that is enough.”
“Then… you might die?”
“I don’t know.”
I start to worry. “There really is no way for you to heal? No dragon knows about that?”
He crosses his legs. “It is not a topic we take seriously. We can injure each other in combat, but fights between dragons are usually to the death. And there is no poison involved in it, of course. I suppose the only time it is mentioned is when we are hatchlings, just a silly rhyme that is plainly meant to only be entertaining.”
“Oh? Do you remember it?”
“It’s very simple. It rhymes in our own language, but probably not in yours:
A scale for a scale
A crack in the scale
Means scales must be traded
Piece of hoard must be given
Or the cracked will die
Who must pay?
The one who has erred.”
Caronerax groans. “Curse this crude language! All the nuances are gone from the words, all the depth. In my language, they imply healing and an immense cost that must be paid for it. A piece of a hoard is an absurd price that nobody will ever pay, even the injured dragon, himself. Even to avoid death.”
I scratch my chin. “What does it mean? Okay, someone’s scales get cracked. Now scales must be traded and someone gives a piece of a hoard. An impossible price. If no payment, the cracked will die. So that must happen anyway? Unless the one who has erred actually pays?”
Caronerax sighs. “Like I said, it’s not to be taken seriously. But it is the only reference to healing we have.”
“‘The one who has erred,’” I ponder. “Made a mistake, somehow. And he must pay an impossible price so the cracked won’t die.”
We sit like that for a while, with the crackling fire in front of us. I eat what has to pass for dinner, enjoying the heat from the flames and the taste of the grilled not-sheep and the not-blueberries. I make a mental note to bring some of them back to the village. I think they would make a pretty good jam or an ingredient for a sweet dessert. They are among the sweetest berries I’ve had here.
As I finish up, Caronerax moves closer.
“You have been asking many questions,” he growls. “I told you what would happen.”
The breath sticks in my throat. He did tell me, and I’m not sure I’m that opposed to it.
“You did,” I croak, my mouth dry.
His eyes shine from above in yellow and blue. “I think it’s now time for the penalty.”
He places one big hand behind my head and pulls me close.
I couldn’t resist, even if I wanted to. He’s bringing his entire hypnotic and irresistible dragon presence to bear, and I’m like a squirrel in the crosshairs of a tank.
Opening my lips slightly in preparation, I arch my back for a better position.
His lips graze mine and his hand touches one breast, outside the dress-
“Enemy!” The dragon bounces to his feet, whirls around, and snarls at something I can’t see because it’s hidden behind him.
10
- Jennifer -
I scramble to get up. “No, don’t hurt him!” I yell. “That’s not an enemy!”
Caronerax moves faster than the eye can see, but the other creature jumps high into the air and lands right beside me. It’s snarling, baring sharp, white fangs, but not at me.
“Caronerax, stop!” I yell.
The dragon freezes, tense as a bowstring, while the newcomer looks ready to pounce at him and bite his throat out.
“That thing snuck up on me,” Caronerax growls. “It has nothing good in mind.”
“It’s okay,” I assure him, hoping I’m right, my heartbeat hammering in my ears. “I know him. Kind of.”
It’s a spidermonkey, one of the many-armed creatures that the cavemen call ‘gray ghosts’. They’re intelligent enough and live in large, hidden cities, but they’re not big on talking and can easily be confused for less accomplished beings. Emilia befriended one of them that she named Alice, and since then we’ve been on pretty friendly terms with these original inhabitants of Xren. They’re small and cute, but they can be extremely fierce and have been known to jump tens of feet straight up to bite the throats out of dactyls passing overhead.
This is not Alice, though, I can see that right away.
“Hello,” I begin. “Were you looking for me?”
The spidermonkey turns part of his attention to me, then reaches out one of his many hands. It holds a rolled-up piece of dried dinosaur skin, the closest thing our village has come to making paper. It’s a close relative of the parchment that was used for writing on in the really old days on Earth.
I carefully take the scroll out of the spidermonkey’s hand. “He’s bringing me something.”
Caronerax relaxes, becoming his old, aloof self again. “Hopefully, it is a cure against poisoned fragments.”
The scroll is stiff, and as I unroll it I see that it has writing on it. I go closer to the fire and read in the flickering light.
Dear Jennifer,
If you’re reading this, it means you’re alive. Yay! Some people saw a dragon flying away with someone in his claws, and that must have been you since you are missing. Presumed dead.
We have sent 14 spidermonkeys out in all directions with this same message. We hope they understand the point and find you if you are alive.
We are all leaving Xren on the escape ship. Too many bad things have happened lately. We leave 6 days from now unless we hear from you. Write on the back of this sheet and give it to the messenger. He can move faster than you and will give it to us. Hopefully. We are at Bune now. We’re under siege by dragons. We may wait longer than 6 days IF we hear from you. As long as it takes, Delyah says, but she also says that we may not be able to. But we MUST hear from you.
Sincerely,
Ashlynn
PS: Most of the caveman tribes have turned on us. Trust nobody!
The writing is small and girlishly round, but still fills the big parchment completely.
And another piece of ice thaws in my chest. The girls are still here, and they will wait for me.
I run over to the raft and pick up a pen-length sliver of wood, then find the place where Caronerax ripped the not-sheep’s throat out. The pool of blood has mostly seeped into the ground, but there’s a small puddle still somewhat liquid.
I dip the ‘pen’ into it and write a message to the girls, assuring them I am alive, then giving some suggestions and observations and heart-felt opinions about the general state of this planet and its wildlife until there’s no more room to write.
I roll the parchment back up, then unroll it again and add
PS: This is not my blood.
No need to scare the girls too much.
Caronerax and the spidermonkey are carefully ignoring each other, while at the same time staying tense.
I squat down and hand the scroll to the spidermonkey. “Thank you. Can you please take this back to the person who gave it to you?”
The creature looks up at me and curls its fingers around the scroll. It glances over at Caronerax, then jumps thirty feet away in a single, high bound, and then keeps bouncing away, above the treetops.
I can’t help but wonder how it gets across water, but those jumps are really long and if it got here, then it will be able to get back again.
That thing moves fast, but how long would it take it to make its way here from Bune? It must have taken it a day or maybe less. If I remember correctly, the distance between Canada and Florida is more than a thousand miles. And even
spidermonkeys can’t move a hundred miles an hour, right? Fifteen to twenty would be a more realistic guess. At twenty miles an hour, for about twenty hours because the day here on Xren is shorter than on Earth… that’s four hundred miles. Still a long way, but nowhere near as far as I feared. And that’s the worst case scenario.
I also notice that the spidermonkey is moving pretty much straight south, which also has to be a good sign. I was right about that, at least.
I walk over to Caronerax. “It was a message from the other girls. They are leaving the planet and want to know that I’m still alive.”
“And you told them you are?”
I cock my head to the side. “I appear to be. You’re not planning on changing that, are you?”
He looks me up and down. “Not at present.”
A lot of tension is gone from my mind, a lot of worry has dissipated. The girls will soon know I’m alive, they will wait until I’m there before they take off, they will know approximately where I am, who I’m with, and what they can do to maybe speed up my return considerably. This is all starting to look really good.
I put more wood on the fire and sit down on the not-sheep fur.
Caronerax saunters over and sits down beside me, long legs stretched out as he leans on the boulder. “Did you tell them about me?”
My eyelids are starting to feel heavy. “Maybe a little. I don’t know much about you.”
“Good.”
“I think you enjoy being mysterious. While I’m the least mysterious person you ever met. Anyway, I have something for you.
He lifts the curtain of curly hair out of his face. “What?”
I open my palm and show it to him. “This simple thing here.”
“What is it?”
“It’s something that will help you see better, which is important for captains of rafts. Can I put it on you?” I reach up and gather his hair to the side, then slide the small wooden thing over and through it. “There.”
He touches it. “Again, what is it?”
“We call it a hairpin. It keeps the hair out of your face. So that you can see stuff?”
He looks around, angling his head this way and that. “It appears to work.”
With the long, golden hair out of the way, he is even more heart-stoppingly gorgeous than before. And the contrast between the girly way of keeping his hair out of his eyes and the intense masculinity of the rest of him just doubles the attraction by some mechanism I will never understand.
“And it makes you look tremendously manly,” I assure him.
He gets up, walks over to the water and looks down at his own reflection.
“It does,” he reports with satisfaction when he returns and sits down.
“Told you. Do you mind if I…” I lean my head on his shoulder, not giving him a chance to protest.
- - -
I wake up lying on the fur, and I have no memory of how that happened.
My dress is on and perfectly proper, the fire still has some embers left glowing, little waves are clucking against the gravel beach, and there’s a light on the horizon.
I stretch and gingerly touch my shoulders. Still sore, but that’s only to be expected.
The memory of last night returns, and I get to my feet feeling optimistic and cheerful.
Caronerax is nowhere to be seen, but the raft is still there, so he didn’t leave without me. He must have pushed it out into the water, because for the first time I can see that it floats. Pretty high in the water, too.
I munch on not-sheep meat and not-blueberries, making note to think of better names for both. Except if I’ll be leaving the planet soon anyway, there might be no need for new names at all.
I pack the meat and the berries, using the fur as a sling pouch to carry them.
Then I stand on the beach, kick at the raft, and look around for that mercurial dragon.
Immediately, he comes striding out of the woods, both casual and determined at the same time. He whisks past me, goes up on the raft, and grabs the oar-tree that lies there. I have to scramble to get up onto the logs before me pushes off, using the entire tree as a pole.
“I guess we’re leaving,” I comment, trying to keep my balance while I sit down on the logs.
“Indeed, we are,” Caronerax says and plunges the tree to the bottom of the lake, then pushes hard at it and makes the whole front of the raft rise up in the air from the sheer water pressure. “I know which way we should be going, but I also think you should point it out.”
“That way,” I state, pointing straight south, which is pretty much back to the island we just left. “But probably better to go around.”
“You think so?” He has the driest delivery of any man ever.
I decide to shut up and concentrate on not falling overboard. The logs squeak and tremble from Caronerax’s great power when he pushes at the tree-slash-pole, transferring the force to the raft. It’s not the stablest of vessels, and I sit down as flat as I can, clinging to the moving logs as hard as possible without getting my fingers caught between them.
The lake gets deeper, and Caronerax starts using the tree as an oar, dipping the top half of it into the water and pulling at it. His back muscles flex delightfully in the sunshine. There is really something to be said about yellow stripes on a blue background. I will never look at the Swedish flag the same way again. But of course, that rarely has this kind of muscle underneath it.
The dragon maneuvers us around the island at what to me is great speed, and I notice we do leave a considerable wake behind us. This thing will never be a speedboat, but it could well be one of the fastest watercraft on Xren.
There’s nothing for me to do except keep lookout for dactyls, so I decide to do that and simply enjoy the ride, watching our island grow distant behind us. Ahead there’s mostly water, but also a long line of forest way ahead of us. When we get there I guess we have to leave the raft, but this is not a bad way to travel a mile or two.
As it turns out, we end up going much further than I thought. The lake is long and narrow and vaguely S-shaped, and when after several hours we finally get to the end of it, we have come many miles almost straight south.
Caronerax carelessly drives the raft up onto the beach, and I stagger off it, knees weak and fingers numb. I’m soaked — dragons aren’t natural rowers, and I’ve been splashed with just about every single stroke.
But I’m not as cold today as yesterday. The sun heats me up more than yesterday, and holding onto the not-sheep fur helps keep some warmth in me.
This beach is much like the one we left.
I pick up a stone, polished and round. “You think this is another island?”
There’s no reply, and that’s fair enough. It’s a question impossible to answer. I ask it mostly to say something.
“I’ll eat a little more and we can keep walking,” I suggest. “And I’ll apply more paste to you.”
That done, we walk on. This time Caronerax walks in front, but still pacing himself and not leaving me behind, which he easily could have.
I keep lookout upwards, both for dactyls and possible rescuers. Not that I need rescuing, as such. But there are dragons in our tribe, and they will sometimes let their wives use them for transportation and scouting.
It doesn’t take me long to realize we’re being watched and maybe followed. I test it a few times, suddenly stopping short and listening for noises behind me in the woods. Each time, there’s a crunching sound that could be a light footstep, but which could also be my imagination. Except on Xren, it’s always better to assume that your suspicions are indeed dangers, even if they’re really not.
It doesn’t worry me too much. I’m in the company of a dragon. If someone wants to attack us, I don’t think I can stop him from tearing them limb from limb.
Caronerax and I walk all day, through a mostly pine forest that still seems to be on a steady downslope. I tell myself that it’s getting gradually warmer, too.
We reach a small dell, like a
bowl in the ground. There is no vegetation in a perfect circle around it, and there are only boulders and other round rocks in the bottom. They have a wet sheen to them, and there’s a small puddle of water at the bottom of the hollow.
A gust of wind reaches me, warm and humid. It bears a smell I can’t quite place, but which isn’t pleasant and still somehow reminds me of my friend Dolly.
Caronerax walks straight down the rocky bowl, and I carefully follow. This whole place reminds me of something I’ve never seen myself, only heard of and seen pictures of.
I stop. “Caronerax,” I call, “maybe it would be better to walk around?”
He doesn’t reply, just keeps walking.
As he nears the bottom, a strange, liquid rumbling fills the air.
“Caronerax!” I yell. “Get away from there! Run!”
11
- Jennifer -
The dragon walks on, undeterred in the most stubbornly male way.
As he passes the bottom of the bowl, he stops and looks down as if puzzled.
At that same moment, a gigantic stream of water and steam explodes up from the ground with a deafening hiss, hits the dragon right in the crotch, and throws him into the air.
He cartwheels inside the huge pillar of steam until I lose sight of him, because I have to throw myself down when the hot water rains from above.
The droplets have cooled down and don’t hurt me when they fall, but the dragon gives off a loud “oof” when he hits the ground right next to the hole.
The huge expulsion of boiling water has stopped as quickly as it started, leaving only a pool of bubbling water and a small cloud of steam that drifts innocently away.
I run down the bowl, trying not to slip on the wet boulders. I know that smell now — it’s sulfur, of course, the stuff Dolly uses to make gunpowder for our blunderbusses.
Before I can reach him, Caronerax slowly gets to his feet.
“That’s a curious thing,” he says, pinning his wet hair back. “Some kind of trap.”
