Dragonfriend (11 page)

“Speak!”

“I-I’m s-so awfully sorry o mighty Dragon,” she babbled, “someone else threw me down this cliff just recently and that’s why I’m here a-a-a–” she tried to halt the chattering of her teeth “–I’m laughing because I’m so terrified, mighty Dragon, and I know you probably think I’m insane but I’m not, and–”

“Silence!”

Lia tasted blood in her mouth from biting into her lip.

“Control your tongue’s flapping, girl,” he snarled, in a tone that did anything but help. “Pray you give truthful answers, or I swear your life shall be spilled this night!”

Four tries later, she managed to breathe, “Aye.”

He said, “Which Dragon threw you down here? How did you survive?”

“I always wanted to meet a Dragon, but not quite like this,” Lia ventured, speaking her thoughts aloud. “Um … I mean, it wasn’t a Dragon at all. A man tried to murder me, before throwing me off his Dragonship.”

“Who?”

“The man who’s now the King, I suppose–Captain Ra’aba. He–”

“Ra’aba!”

A baffling stress on the word, a crack of real thunder right above her back. At once, Hualiama understood that this Dragon knew exactly who Ra’aba was, and … hated him? Disapproved? There were so many nuances in the way her captor bit off that single word. What did it mean?

The claws loosened slightly. “Why are you so important, girl, that Ra’aba wanted you to fly into the Cloudlands? Who are you?”

“I’m Hualiama, the–”

“–adopted Princess of Fra’anior,” finished the Dragon.

Great leaping Islands! Her father’s fears, given voice. Icy claws clamped her belly as though the Dragon had seized a pawful of her entrails. King Chalcion had always claimed that the Dragons knew far more about Human dealings than they let on. If this monster knew who she was–a no-account royal ward of the Human royal family–then what else did he know? Were the Dragons secretly meddling in Human affairs and politics, as everyone seemed to ‘know’ but could never prove?

Yet her contradictory heart sang in the presence of a Dragon. Hualiama became aware of an expanding of purpose and understanding, as though his attack had released a swarm of thoughts like a thousand-strong flight of dragonets scared into flight, chaotic and vibrant and alive. She could not process all that she felt. It was too unruly, too visceral. How absurd was it that her skin thrilled to a Lesser Dragon’s touch, even though he meant to trample her? That her nostrils tingled, desperate to take in the sulphur and cinnamon scents of a formidable male Dragon? She was off-the-Islands crazy, Lia told herself, unhinged by distress and fear.

The Dragon demanded, “How did you survive, little Human?”

“With the help of a dragonet, I landed in a tree.”

A great rumble in his belly resolved into what she realised was the Dragon’s laughter. “You cheated Ra’aba? What courage … girl, you’ve no idea what you’ve done.”

Abruptly, his claws tightened across her back, pinning her as though she were locked behind dungeon bars. Hualiama groaned, but the Dragon did not relent. He snarled, “Princess, attend my words well. I was never here. You never saw a Dragon who warned you to lie low for the next three days. Don’t stick your insolent little nose out of that cave, no matter what you hear. Do you understand me?”

“Aye, mighty Dragon.” Lia despised the way her voice squeaked.

“You need to get off this Island. I don’t care how you do it, just leave. Should you be found here by another Dragon, no power in this Island-World could keep you safe.”

The pressure vanished. Nauseous with disbelief, Lia had strength only to lie motionless, her eyes squeezed shut. Any moment now, a talon would slice across her neck … the Dragon’s paw would stamp down … instead, a cool breeze wafted across her bare back.

Her wide-flung eyes spied the very tip of his tail as the Dragon dropped off the cliff.

What?

To say her world had been shaken was an understatement. The Islands dangled from the sky. The stars burned in her heart. She had just been attacked by a Dragon on their holy Island, and she would live to see another dawn? Dragons were not supposed to behave as though they felt compassion. Lia played and replayed their conversation in her head. Three things stood out to her–her crazed laughter, which had triggered an incomprehensible shift in his attitude, the Dragon’s knowledge of who she was, and the sheer incredulity and joy infusing the Dragon’s voice as he spoke of her cheating Captain Ra’aba.

Nothing about their encounter made a jot of sense.

She had not learned the Dragon’s name. Islands’ sakes, she did not even know what colour he had been! In all her dreams about an encounter with the amazing, magical Dragons, she had never imagined she would count herself fortunate not be scraped off the underside of a Dragon’s paw. Such raw, animal power! She shivered.

At least, in one more irony, she had learned that Dragons could make mistakes. He thought she was important. How little a Dragon knew.

* * * *

When Flicker returned to the cave, he looked for straw-head in her customary sleeping-place, the hollow where the Dragoness in ages past must have brooded over her eggs. She was not there. Instead, the Human girl watched him from the hot pool, neck-deep in the steaming water, the expression in her eyes unfathomable.

“Ah … good hunting?” he chirped.

“If you count becoming the prey as good hunting, yes,” said Lia.

Flicker coughed fire involuntarily. “What?”

“Oh, if you must know, a Dragon ambushed me last night but left me alive–while you were nowhere to be found.”

Flicker’s wings pulsed in shame. “Shards take it, Lia, I’m sorry.”
And here I’m the one who preached at you about friends always looking after each other’s wings.

He thought she would demand to know where he had been, but instead, Hualiama recounted the incident for him. “What do you make of it, Flicker?”

“I don’t understand either,” said the dragonet. “You should have been smeared across the rocks and your entrails scattered for the windrocs.”

“Nice–thanks for that image.”

He vibrated his wings very rapidly against his flanks, indicating the dragonet sense of humour under adversity. Flicker said,
You’re right, the Dragons seem to know far more about Human politics than they rightly should. Dragons are devious creatures. How can they spy so effectively? Are they employing an unknown form of magic? More importantly, we need to escape from this Island, because I can assure you, to receive only a threat from a Dragon is such a blessing, you cannot believe it. Usually they deal with their problems without delay.

“Hence the detail about my entrails?”

“Indeed. If only you had wings!”

“Aye, meantime, I’ll climb down into the caldera, walk barefoot across the lava flows to the next Island, holding my breath all the way, and climb that one? Or shall I just hitch my belt to a passing windroc?”

He blinked his eye membranes at her sarcasm.

“Oh, Islands’ sakes! I’m sorry, Flicker. I’m not angry with you.”

Flicker wondered if the Ancient One would have a clever idea for how a Human girl could escape an inescapable Island. Could she build herself a gliding apparatus and soar across on the thermals? Flag down a passing Dragonship? They had to assume that all Human Dragonships belonged to Ra’aba. Attracting his attention would spell an ugly end for his friend–just as abrupt and messy an end as that Dragon, by all law, logic and legend, should have dealt her. What did this portend? He shook his head as though he had an insect stuck in his ear-canal.

Poor Lia. Her heart was so wrapped up in her people, just as a dragonet’s hearts were tied to his warren and Dragon-kin. Yet, there was a quality about the Human girl he simply could not place his paw upon. She was never deceitful, but she was mysterious. Aye, by his wings, that word suited her like wings suited a dragonet’s back. Could it be that in hurling himself off the cliff after her, he had thrown himself into the greatest adventure of his life? Of any dragonet’s lifetime? The thought of the praise-songs the dragonet-kind would compose to acclaim his deeds filled Flicker’s belly with warm, pleasant fire.

The dragonet suggested, “You could flaunt yourself without any coverings. Wouldn’t that attract every Human male within a hundred league radius to your aid?”

“Flicker!” The girl’s eyes filled with fire. “You are in
so
much trouble!”

She chased him around the cavern, calling down hilarious mock-curses upon him as the dragonet evaded her grasping fingertips. Eventually, Flicker allowed himself to be caught and chastised.

That was when they heard Dragons roaring deep beneath the Island, like the sound of a faraway waterfall.

T
hree days of
enforced hiding were enough to drive her up the proverbial cliff-face, while the Dragons’ unending, thunderous song trembled the Island so violently that Lia kept casting distrustful glances at the cavern roof. Hualiama taught Flicker the dances from the Flame Cycle, her favourite dance-opera, but the baritone parts put her in mind of her brother Ari. Artless, trusting Ari. He would not understand why they needed to live in exile–if her family did indeed live.

“You’ve the patience of a dragonet hatchling,” said Flicker.

Lia demonstrated the dying flame pirouette.

“And the brains of a mosquito,” he added.

“I can recount the twenty-eight warren scents in order for you, if you like,” said Lia, with an exaggerated sniff of disdain. “Danger, trouble, confusion, gathering-together, deep-meeting, kinship first-degree, friendship, companionship, courtship …”

“Any monkey can parrot words without understanding.”

“I think you’re getting your animals confused,” said Lia. “I’m a straw-head, remember?”

Actually, her hair was starting to resemble straw. She had no Palace soaps and oils here to make her hair soft and lustrous, nor servants to scrub it for her and spend an hour brushing out the knots. Lia had learned a form of patience–during the inevitable, endless primping demanded of Princesses and enforced by their Queen-mothers, she designed Dragonship parts in her head or chased Dragons through the fiery suns-set skies of her imagination.

Tanned, bare-legged, dagger-wielding Princesses who ate spit-roast lemur for dinner and slurped down raw cliff-lark eggs, were not the currency of conservative Fra’anior.

Flicker raised his head. “It’s gone quiet out there.”

So it had. Lia nodded. “Do you think it might be safe? Please scout, Flicker.”

“Of course.” The dragonet managed an in-flight swagger as he nipped out of the cave.

She was just returning to her dance when a high-pitched squeal of alarm from outside, arrested her mid-leap. Lia darted to the cave entrance and peered up the tunnel, squinting at the full-suns brightness at the end of the short entryway. Where was Flicker? Did he need help?

Flicker shot back toward her at ten times the speed he had departed, crying,
Dragon, Dragon, Dragon …

Another Dragon? Or, could the compassionate Dragon have returned?

Get underwater!

Lia gaped at Flicker. “What?”

The pool! Go! Hide in the water!

And with that, he raced further down the tunnel.

Indecision froze her feet. No, only one Dragon knew where and who she was. This was her chance to learn something, her best and perhaps only chance to ask for help.

Hualiama jogged up to the cave entrance, just as a Dragon descended four-pawed to the ledge outside, fifty feet from her position. The Dragon was the orange colour of a flame’s heart and yellow in the underparts, a vast, hoary adult male whose wingspan had to measure over a hundred feet, and whose shoulders topped four times her height. Her breath snagged in awe. Were Dragons truly so heart-arrestingly enormous? No wonder his grip had been overpowering.

When the Orange Dragon fixed his burning eye upon her, however, the Human girl realised her mistake. This was no friendly visitor. A scar twisted the left side of his muzzle into a permanent half-sneer. The power of the Dragon’s sallow gaze reminded her of none other than Ra’aba, the way his brow-ridge drew down and his lip peeled open, revealing a jaw stuffed with gleaming fangs, any one of which could have skewered Lia and served her up as a kebab without a second thought.

Did recognition writhe in her belly? Was this the spirit of Ra’aba, reincarnated in Dragon form?

“Ah, so the dragonets spoke truly,” rumbled the Dragon, swinging his muzzle toward her, flame licking around his huge, flaring nostrils. His voice was as dry as air simmering over the caldera, crackling with fires as though he concealed a bonfire in his throat. “Here’s how it works, Princess. Run. Scream, if you’d like. I’ll give you a count of three.”

Hualiama made a wordless squeak of dread.

“Run.” The Dragon made a shooing motion with his forepaw. “Go on. It’s more amusing for me.”

Terror exploded from her belly in slow motion, burning the pathways of her body. The sense of his evil was so palpable, she knew the Dragon saw her as nothing more than a loathsome insect to be crushed beneath his heel. It was possible to die from fright. She was the prey. The Orange Dragon was the predator, and nothing in the Island-World could protect her from such a creature. Doom stalked her upon wings the colour of molten lava.

“One.”

She jerked back.

“Two …”

Hualiama’s feet seemed possessed of wings of their own. She had never fled so fast, but the monster out there provided more than enough motivation. An agile left-right dance-step took her into their chamber. She sprinted flat out. Air hissed past her ears. The Orange Dragon’s monstrous challenge, the full-throated roar of an adult male on the hunt, shook the cavern.

“Three!”

The Orange Dragon pounced, his paws crashing down near the cave entrance, the shock conducted through sand and rock to her fleeing feet. The air sucked away from her lungs; Lia heard a rising thunder of fire, a crackling and sizzling sound as a wave of heat rolled over her back, as superheated as any volcanic eruption. Fire-reflections dazzled from the crystals embedded in the cavern walls. Lia dived headlong into the cool pool. The world flared orange. Rolling over underwater, she gazed up through the ripples at a torrent of Dragon fire, roiling and billowing above the pool with fatal brilliance, as though she stared into the heart of the twin suns.