Slither

by Melody Steiner

  “Anything, El.”

  “Adom said you had a boat hidden away somewhere. He’s lying, isn’t he? You wouldn’t keep something like that from me when you know I’ve dreamed of escaping for years.”

  “I had a boat, the one I used to sail here, but it was damaged in a storm. That was long before you. I would have told you about it if it would’ve helped you escape.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “It’s in the bathing cave, hidden behind a rock. All that’s left of it is one of two rotted wooden planks with a handful of barnacles growing on it.”

  “Why didn’t you ever try to fix it?”

  “There wasn’t much left to fix after the storm, and the water dragons keep a close eye on boats in their territory. I’ve seen them swallow a fishing boat in one vicious chomp. It’s why sailors avoid these waters. They believe in sea monsters, but won’t recognize them as dragons.”

  Even though Muuth’s response makes perfect sense, I can’t help but feel disappointment. Adom had been right about the boat, after all. Why hadn’t Muuth ever mentioned it before? He had always led me to believe he had come here as a prisoner, like me.

  The gleam in his eyes causes me to break our shared gaze. “Why are you staring?”

  Muuth wags his head. “I’m sorry. I’m growing so old. I need to pass on my stories.”

  I’m practically his daughter. If he wants to tell me more tales or recite more rhymes, I’ll sit and listen. So why does it seem like he wants something else? “Well, go ahead then.”

  His expression slackens. Intensity fades from his eyes. He puts a hand to his forehead. “I can’t live forever.” He straightens and shudders, shaking his head as though coming out of a trance.

  Pulling away, I pat him gently on the back. “You can come with me. Let’s run.”

  “My place is with the dragons and the stones.” His voice sounds firm, his tone, resigned.

  Why he wants to die with these foul serpents is anybody’s guess—I have no inclination to delve any deeper into his insanity than proximity allows. Chills creep up my back as I study his veined, heavy-lidded eyes. Have they changed colors? Or is the darkness playing tricks on my imagination?

  “The next time Adom goes to Trana, I’m going with him,” I murmur.

  “Why did he want to take you with him in the first place?”

  “I suppose he thought my humanity would validate his claim as Count Malandre.”

  “Count Malandre?” Muuth breathes, eyes widening.

  “It’s what he calls himself.” It’s been a long day and a longer night. “I need sleep.”

  The old man rises. His bones groan painfully. Hobbling around the room, Muuth careens at the entrance and jiggles his foot. “I’ll see you when you wake up, then.”

  When he leaves, I hug my knees to my chest for warmth. Those Tranar beds were so soft. I miss them already. And the tarts and the honey and the warm baths! Salvaging a few old leaves for a nest, I curl into a tight ball and force myself to sleep.

  ~ * ~

  I awaken as the afternoon heat breaks. Head groggy and aching from an uncomfortable few hours of sleep, I stumble straightaway into Adom’s chambers. No hypnotic fire flickers from the stone furnace. The room is still and cold. Too late. He’s already returned to Trana.

  I pick out one or two of the dresses he stored away for my use. My new plan is to check out the bathing cave to verify Muuth’s story. Of course I believe him—Muuth has never lied to me before, and I trust him completely—but I want to see the old boat with my own eyes. Besides, I need a bucket of water to clean the younglings’ cave afterward.

  The bathing cave is a lake near the mountain’s base. Its only opening is blocked by vines and trees so the filtered light creeps in with greens and purples. The lake is a mystic blue, stalagmites lurching up from the bed of coral. Moss decorates the walls of the cave, the most homey wall decor I have yet to see, even with all the finery I saw in Trana.

  Muuth said what’s left of the boat is hidden behind a rock. I stalk past a pile of moldy old ropes and dingy burlap sacks, strip out of my clothes, and leave the folded pile on a rock. The lake water slips over my skin, raising gooseflesh as I wade out toward the middle of the lake where there is a large rock. The ‘sugarloaf’ as Muuth calls it, is far enough away from the shore that I don’t often go there. He refers to it as his sunbathing rock, so I’ve let it be his territory, same as his room. It’s an easy guess where he’s hidden the boat.

  I reach the rock and drag myself out of the water, shivering. Sharp stones scratch against my skin, drawing pink and white lines across my knees, legs, and forearms. Uneven pebbles bruise my palms. A few days in Trana, and I am becoming soft. I crawl around the rock island, searching for the pieces, but I don’t see any boat wreckage. Mud sticks to my fingernails. Maybe I have the wrong rock. Or maybe Muuth dismantled it last night after I confronted him about it.

  Or maybe he moved it, a nagging voice says at the back of my head. I shake away the ridiculous idea. Muuth would never...Well, where is it, then? Why would he hide the wreckage? I think about Adom’s words. Maybe it isn’t wreckage. Maybe it’s really a boat. And for some reason, Muuth doesn’t want me to have it.

  “This is crazy,” I say. “He wouldn’t do that to me. Adom is getting under my skin.”

  I swim back to the shore, dry off, and change into the plain dress I borrowed from Adom. I tie my short hair back using a fresh rag. The scent of fire and grease fills the cave. Muuth is cooking breakfast. He’s always taken care of me. If he says the boat is wrecked I will believe him. I wet my lips and move toward the cave entrance.

  ~ * ~

  Nerama and Canna are sleeping in the central cave when I enter. They uncurl their long tails and bat sleepy eyelids. The pungent scent of dragon dung permeates the air. When Nerama sees me laying a plank of wood on the floor to serve as a dustpan, he hisses.

  “What are you doing here, Rat?”

  I hold the broom in my right hand and force a smile. “I’m sweeping scales.”

  Canna snorts and farts at the same time. “You must be in a good mood today.”

  My arm slows as I notice mysterious splotches on the floor. “What happened here?”

  Nerama yawns, his tongue lolling out over his teeth. “Ona nearly killed Adom last night. He smelled like stinking human food. Your scent was all over him.” He taps one of the spots with a talon. “Don’t worry. The blood will wash out when we have another rainfall.”

  The broom slips from my hands. Thud. “Is he all right?”

  “Ona? He’s salting his wounds on the beach, but he’ll be fine.”

  I bend over to retrieve the rolling broom. “I meant Adom.”

  Canna’s eyes narrow. “It isn’t your business, slave.”

  “Please tell me.”

  Nerama and Canna exchange glances.

  “She thinks she can mate with him,” Nerama taunts.

  “Have some decency,” I scold. “Your herd leader is injured.”

  “In his dragon form, Adom may be strong enough that he can’t be defeated,” says Canna. “But that doesn’t make him one of us. One day, a stronger dragon will rip his head off and when that day comes, you’re welcome to have him all to your lonely self. Until then, stay away from him. Silva has her claws deep under his scales, so you have no claim on him.”

  Taking a step back, I spit to show my disgust. “I never said I wanted to claim him.”

  “Then why does he slither to your defense every time the Head Dragons vote to kill you? When you forget to feed the cattle, or fail to clean the younglings’ cave, we’re reminded how useless you are to us. We don’t need you here, but Adom disagrees. When the Head Dragons vote against him, he must fight to win his way. To win your life. Every time he takes your punishment, he enrages the herd. The next time you climb to the top of the mountain
or wade through the leech bog, think about how you were supposed to burn for your failures. How Adom is burning in your stead.”

  My stomach hardens up until it feels like the dense pit of a peach. Adom is taking punishments for me? But why would he do that? If he felt sorry for me, why keep me here like a prisoner?

  I boost the plank and carry it outside, sickened and confused by their words. I separate the scales from dust and pocket them in my satchel. If I return to Trana, I need to be able to pay my way to Foghum City. I’ll collect as many scales as I can while I’m here.

  The island is summery today. Scattering dust to the warm wind, I study the sky. Dragons cut the perfect blue like fish through sea. Their bodies glisten in the sun, great floating gems.

  Does Adom really take the punishment for me whenever I overstep? Why would he do it? We aren’t friends, and we never talked before the Trana trip. I’ve never had any indication…

  Scream, he told me the day before the trip. Then he blew fire at me and let me escape. He didn’t ask me to do it because he derived pleasure from my shrieks of pain. He asked me to do it so I could spare him the pain the herd would cause him if they knew he let me off soft.

  I do care, he told me yesterday. More than you know.

  I double over and hug my knees. The balmy wind turns chill, and the bite feels deserved. What if Adom wanted the changelings to come to Onyx so he wouldn’t be alone? So he wouldn’t have to face the dragons by himself. So others could stand beside him and fight.

  We fly to fight.

  “Why wouldn’t you tell me?” I whisper. “If this is true, why wouldn’t you trust me?”

  A soft glow of light bounces across the walls of Muuth’s den when I enter it later in the day. “Does Adom take punishments for me?” The question bubbles up without any forewarning.

  Muuth sits crouching like an old toad, staring bug-eyed at small inscriptions on stone slabs. “Where is this coming from?” He fingers the slabs like some of his little creations.

  “There was blood in the central cave. Nerama said—” my voice cracks.

  “Ona and Adom fought yesterday, but not over you,” Muuth says quietly.

  I draw circles in the dirt with my fingernail. Does Muuth know I went to the bathing cave this morning? Does he know I checked on his story? “Why did they fight?”

  “Ona wants to control the herd, and he’s using Adom’s human side to make him look soft. It has nothing to do with you. He has to fight to keep his place, even without you around.”

  I stare at the gadgets along the walls of his den. “Then why does he put up with it?”

  He jabs one of the slabs into the ground. “With what? Their aggression? You know what they are, El. You’ve seen them fight each other on the beach and in the air. They’re creatures made of flame, and have you ever seen flame sit still and be at peace? No. It is greedy, and all-consuming, and ever-changing. That is what dragons are. Adom knows this. Adom is this.”

  I wet my lip, thoughtful. “How old is he?”

  He wobbles to his feet with his stones weighing down his sagging forearms. He carries them to the wall and places them in slots around his lantern. “Twenty-eight.”

  Dragons live for hundreds of years. Dragon younglings don’t reach adolescence for thirty years. Why did Adom age so rapidly? “How can he be so young?”

  Muuth shrugs. “All part of the changeling curse, I suppose.”

  There’s more to it. I force him to meet my gaze. “Who cursed him?”

  He scratches his head and goes wide-eyed. When the ploy doesn’t soften me, he speaks reluctantly. “A woman named Jetarna. You know about the stone soldiers?”

  The words of the man from the ball—Lord Berrel, was it?— return to me. “The Tranars believe she was a witch because she predicted they would come.”

  Muuth studies the patterns on the ceiling with great interest, all the while steepling his hands. “She wasn’t a witch. And she didn’t make any prophecy. Remember the invention I told you about? The one that allowed me to glimpse the sun’s acid?”

  My eyes fall on him. “The gadget you said summoned the stone soldiers?”

  “I never said that.” He shakes his head. “It wasn’t only mine. Jetarna and I built the telescope together. She’d been experimenting with dragon blood and observed a strange effect when the blood was exposed to sunlight. It turned into dust.”

  As my mouth drops open, I take in a soft breath. “I didn’t realize you knew Jetarna.”

  “Of course I knew her. She was my wife.”

  My eyelids flip open. “Jetarna? The Jetarna?”

  “Yes, the Jetarna. She studied things. I built things. Once in a while, we collaborated and discovered together. We documented everything, but it was all destroyed during the war.”

  The thoughts won’t settle into a coherent sentence. “So the sun’s acid—”

  Muuth bows his head. “We wanted to see what the sun looked like up close. Jetarna hypothesized that the coagulation effect she observed in the dragon blood corresponded to changes on the sun’s surface. The sun’s acid proved her theory. Then she confessed to me that for decades, she’d been using stores of dragon blood to test the healing properties on humans. In particular, pregnant women. The women who came to her were desperate, and the dragon blood seemed to solve complex issues during pregnancy and labor. But there was a side effect.”

  “She experimented on pregnant women?” the words wheeze out.

  “I know. The horror in your voice matches what I felt when she told me. And when she told me she suspected that the dragon blood changed the infants born after treatment, I knew we had to destroy them. All of them.” His voice grows husky. “I don’t hate the dragons, El, not like you do. But I do hate the changelings. They’re an abomination, a failed experiment. And they’re stronger than normal dragons, and they have unheard of abilities. Things no living thing should be able to do. I once saw a changeling control a human with his mind.” Muuth scrubs his face.

  “Do you understand? We couldn’t let them live. Not when we already had full-blooded dragons scorching the land. Some changelings came from high-ranking families, even. They had power, strength, and money. Can you imagine what would happen if they came together?”

  Yes, I can imagine. I’m living proof that a herd of dragons means nothing good for Tranars. “You’re telling me you were responsible for ending the war with the dragons?”

  His eyebrows scrunch. “I’m telling you we were responsible for the changelings. We tried to track them all, but we couldn’t. There were about forty originally. Jetarna treated that many women with the dragon blood over four winters. And by the time she told me, thirty winters had gone by. They were living among us, grown by then and had children of their own.”

  I rub the spot between my eyes as a headache builds slowly. “Did they pass it on to their children? The forty original changelings?”

  He nods, his head bent low. “They did. It’s in the blood of forty families now. Some had twelve children, some had only one. And then, by chance, we saw what happened when…” He closes his eyes as if the memory pains him, “when one of the changelings was exposed to sun’s acid. When the fog came, it burned and seemed to disorient her. She tried to change, but in the process, her blood coagulated. The dragons call it the stone disease.”

  The stone disease. That’s what Adom said would weaken the herd. So the young man—Berrel—his story about the dragons all turning to stone was true. The Tranars didn’t have words for the transformation, didn’t know why it happened. So, they called it a prophecy.

  Muuth’s lower lip trembles and his eyes turn dewy. “Jetarna and I never agreed on the changelings. She wanted to help them. I thought we should terminate them. Using the telescope to read the sun’s surface, I was able to predict when the next sun’s acid would fall. I’d already discovered that by measuring the blac
k spots as they grow, you can estimate when the fog will fall. From my measurements, I calculated that the next event would happen in twenty-two days.”

  My eyes shift to the white structure in the corner of the room. I’d seen Muuth peering through it at the starry sky on occasion, but had no idea he was seeing anything meaningful. What was he looking for? The next sun’s acid fog? “What did you do?”

  He swallows loudly. “I went behind Jetarna’s back to convince the king to attack the dragons on that day and draw them out. That was the last battle between the king’s army and the dragons. There were changelings in the army, too. Soldiers. As they writhed, suffered and changed, the dragons tried to save them. But they, too, were exposed. Some had fresh wounds from the fight, and their blood reacted to the fog. They turned to stone on the battlefield.”

  Thinking of battle, of blood and suffering, brings back memories of my family’s murder. Of the animals I slaughter for the dragons. I can’t control the grimace that those thoughts put on my face. “But they didn’t all die like the Tranar legend claims.”

  Muuth’s frown deepens. “We’ve always known that, El.”

  Confusion makes my head throb more intensely. “So why did the war end?”

  He lays on his pallet, his hands interwoven across his chest. “The youngest ones didn’t fight that day. They hid in a cave in Trana. That protected them during the battle. Dragon scales became a symbol of wealth and position. Those dragons eventually retreated to Onyx Island because they were outnumbered by human enemies and poachers seeking their scales.”

  We are silent for several moments while I process the story. Why hadn’t Muuth shared any of this with me before? And how did he get here after all of that. “So they didn’t kidnap you then, like you led me to believe? You came here on your own?”

  His eyes, dewy and sad, stream tears. “I have no other place to belong, Elanor. My daughter, Jamie, is dead and they murdered my wife. I packed my things and roamed the country for a long while before I landed here, on this godforsaken island that I’ve come to call home.”