Wild of eye, Zardon hissed, “Come with me before
they
find you.”
Pip expected him to slit her throat. But before she could do more than utter a wordless squeak, the tension appeared to drain from the Dragon’s body and he added, much more gently, “Fear not. This Dragon does not eat Humans. I promise to keep you safe. I swear this by the fires of my belly and the hearts which beat in my chest. I will take you far from this place, little one, and I will explain what you need to know. But you and I need to leave right now, before others of evil purpose find you. They will not be gentle, nor kind, nor will they bring you to a good place.”
She could question him about the shadow creature, Pip thought. Surely a being as awesome as Zardon could protect her from that terrible evil, if it was even real? She would shelter beneath the wings of a mighty Red Dragon.
A decision firmed in Pip’s mind. “I will accompany you, if you’ll bring my friend Hunagu.”
“The Oraial?”
“I promised to take him home.”
Pip began to bow, thinking the Dragon might want a show of reverence and also wishing to cover her embarrassment at her rash attempt to strike a bargain with him, but he simply nodded.
“Zardon is name enough for me, little one. Do not bend your knee. Lords and kings are for Humans, not for the Dragon-kind. What name do you answer to?”
“Pip, or Pipsqueak to my friends.” It slipped out.
“Ay?” His lip curled, showing a gleaming thicket of fangs. Pip tottered backward before she realised he was smiling. He said, “Then pack your possessions, Pipsqueak. You’ll need something warm, for cold is the sky where free creatures fly. I shall undertake the mighty feat of lugging your great lump of a friend to Jeradia Island. And we shall burn the heavens together, as Dragon and Rider.”
Pip ran back to Hunagu before it struck her what she was doing. Flying with a Dragon? Was she crazy? For that matter, was he two leagues short of an Island, as the saying went? But to have freedom … as his Rider? She did not know whether to weep, faint or shout in celebration.
“Well?” rumbled Hunagu. “You leave?”
“We fly with Dragon.”
“Dragon eat Hunagu?”
Pip picked up her rajal skin covering. “Dragon promise no eat.” She dropped the last of their bananas, a gourd of water, and her razor ribbons into it. Ah, her bamboo flute. She should take that, and the bamboo sections for the pan-flute she still meant to make. She tied the bundle closed. Pip cast a last, longing look at the stone room where she had spent so many contented hours with Balthion, Arosia and Durithion. They would understand.
A Pygmy girl dressed in a loincloth emerged from beneath the shelter, carrying her bundle over her shoulder. She glanced about the enclosure. Dominated by the sleek immensity of the Red Dragon, it seemed small to her, now.
“Ready?” asked Zardon.
“Come, Hunagu.”
There was a part of her–and clearly, of Hunagu, too–which appreciated how mighty a predator watched them emerge from beneath their shelter. Pip had never felt quite so much like a sinewy lump of meat attached to bone; she wondered if Dragons enjoyed the taste of brains or intestines. Why on the Islands did she trust this creature?
“You can sit between my spine-spikes, up above my shoulders,” Zardon rumbled. “I’m sorry, I have no saddle. But your Oraial wouldn’t fit on my back anyway. He’d as likely enjoy sitting on a Southern Isles giant porcupine.”
Pip brightened. “We’ll use the net you tore off the top of the cage, Dragon. You can transport him as if you were a cargo Dragonship.”
Zardon inclined his head in assent, but Pip distinctly heard a furnace roar to life behind the armoured wall of his flank, crackling and rumbling ominously. She bit her lip, knowing he was displeased by her comment. With Hunagu’s assistance, she pulled out the large oblong of rope netting and folded it over three times, making a pouch for the Oraial. Pip threaded several of the anchor ropes through the edges and crosswise across the middle, her dark hands hastening through the task. A baleful Jade moon directly overhead shed enough green light for her to complete her work without difficulty.
“Humph,” grumbled Zardon. But he gripped the net with his forepaws. “Climb aboard, Rider.”
Pip could not understand why he insisted on calling her ‘Rider’, when she was nothing of the sort. She sprang from the top of his paw onto his left hind knee. From there she scrambled up his thigh, finding his Dragon scales at once warmer and rougher than she had expected. She found ready handholds and footholds on and between the saucer-sized scales, but had to take care because the edges were as sharp as the shards of flint her tribe used for shaping wood, in place of the precious metal knives which were so few. Shortly, she ascended the curve of his muscled lower back and walked along the single line of spikes rising from his spine up to Zardon’s lumpen shoulders. Each spike was taller than a Pygmy girl. At the nape of his neck the spines were the tallest, but they tapered down along his neck and back toward his tail.
She was having an adventure already, Pip smiled wryly, and they had not even left the ground.
Zardon seemed to guess at her thoughts. “That’s the place, little one,” he grinned. “You sit between the spikes and hold on as if your life depends on it–which it does. Better still, secure yourself with this length of rope.”
Seated, Pip’s bare soles rested atop the muscles of his shoulders. She accepted a hank of rope from his claw and deftly lashed herself to the spine-spike behind her, tying a knot at her belly. She held her small bundle in her lap, tucked between her torso and the spike just one foot ahead of her, which gave her a small but comfortable seat. Pip could not even see Hunagu, somewhere down beneath Zardon’s chest.
Zardon rose, making her grip the spike in front of her, white-knuckled. His muscles bunched and shifted like smooth, flexible boulders rolling beneath the monstrous sack of his Dragon hide. His wings flared out either side of her, reaching from one wall of their enclosure to the other. Pip had expected the wing surfaces to be leathery, but stretched out, they seemed more membranous, a skin-surface stretched over the bones and rail-like struts.
“Feeling rather cramped,” muttered the Dragon. With a flick of his tail, he demolished part of the zoo enclosure’s wall. Rock and crysglass avalanched to the ground.
Pip chuckled nervously.
“I like the place better, now,” Zardon explained.
Strange colours prickled behind Pip’s eyes as the Dragon coiled back on his haunches. His wings rose to point at the Jade moon, creaking alarmingly. How could such a great beast even fly? He had to weigh many tons. Pip’s stomach lurched up into her throat. This was it, crazy Pygmy girl. No turning back now.
And then, Zardon hurled himself into the night sky.
Z
ARDON’s POWERFUL TAKE-OFF
snapped Pip’s head backward, fetching her skull a nasty blow on the spine-spike behind her. The zoo shrank and fell away so rapidly that she imagined the world had flipped upside-down, tipping her off the edge. Gone, the walls which had governed her life. Gone, the windows on her daily existence. In their place there was only the vast, crushing openness of the sky, and a Dragon beneath her. His wings drove them upward, generating their own breeze.
Pip clutched the spike in front of her, fighting a stifling wave of terror.
“The grey slate roofs and lights twinkling beneath us are Sylakia Town,” said Zardon, his voice deep and reassuring. “The edge of Sylakia Island lies just ahead. We’ll fly west to Archion Island, where we’ll rest. Even against this headwind, we should arrive by mid-morning tomorrow.”
She nodded mutely, wishing she felt braver.
A touch of his mind soothed her. “Better, little one? Look. See the world. Is it not to marvel at?”
Exultant, mute, humbled, she gazed beyond the shores of Sylakia. The horizon to the north sliced into the Yellow moon’s dome as though it were a fruit cut by a knife made of the Cloudlands, an unbroken expanse of greyish-green, poisonous clouds that lapped from the shores of Sylakia Island to the boundless beyond. Only legends told what lived beneath the Cloudlands.
Her eyes roamed the Island-World, suddenly hungry for what lay beyond the horizon. She wanted to drink it in, to know every unfamiliar scent on the breeze and pore over every wonderful new detail. From her perch, she saw how vast a cliff sheared away from Sylakia’s land-mass, a league tall, according to Balthion’s teaching. The entire panorama was lit by the Jade and Yellow moons. And the stars–she had never seen such a multitude!
How impossibly tiny her cage seemed, now. How much tinier, compared to the Island-World, the Pygmy girl nestled upon a Red Dragon’s back.
Her early life had been sheltered by the jungle’s boughs. After that, the zoo’s walls had bound her world–apart from what she had learned from Balthion and Arosia, the places their stories had taken her. But this was no story. This was real. Pip’s heart swelled in her chest, heavy with unshed tears. It was too beautiful.
Zardon’s neck curved until one brilliant red eye fixed on her. The jewelled facets twinkled with a subtle, hypnotic inner radiance. To Pip’s surprise, he kept flying perfectly straight forwards while looking back at her.
He said, “You’re awfully quiet for someone who has just been kidnapped out of her old life.”
A snort of laughter escaped her lips.
“A tinker banana for your thoughts, little Pip.”
“I am thinking of how, last time I flew between Islands, it was in the belly of a Dragonship. This is just … it is just so … oh, Zardon.”
“Ay,” he whispered. His wingbeat rocked her for several minutes as Pip gazed to the fore, unseeing. “Anything to do with those scars on your back?”
“It’s ridiculous,” Pip cried, wiping her nose on her rajal skin bundle. “I’m actually
sad
to be leaving that stupid cage.”
“I should’ve destroyed it more thoroughly.”
“You don’t like zoos?”
“No more than I’d want to be bound in one place with unbreakable chains, Pip,” he replied, his words seething with a Dragon’s anger. Pip was surprised to feel an answering flare of her own rage, as though they were somehow linked at an unsuspected level.
How did Zardon understand her so completely?
“Now, honour me with your story,” he said. “How did a Pygmy come to live in a Sylakian zoo? How long were you there? And when did you learn you could do magic?”
She was about to speak when his final question caught her like an unanticipated punch in the gut. Magic? He meant … what she had done to Hunagu. Pip sucked in her lips. She had tried very hard to forget. It stank of a bizarre dream, now. And yet she knew something inexplicable had happened, that day, something beyond what should be real or possible–something immoral, even.
“That magic is what drew me to you,” Zardon added, confirming the volatile brew of fears and hopes churning in her breast. “I was not the only one who felt you shake the Island-World to its foundations, Pip. But I found you first. It’s a talent I have. Perhaps you do not believe in magic. I tell you, the older I grow–and I am very old, even for a Dragon–the more I realise that magic binds everything. Life itself revels in magic. Dragons do magic all the time, like I am now, levitating your friend Hunagu and aiding my failing body with a little magic to ease the aches of age. I sense potential inside of you, little one. Potential as wide and deep as these Cloudlands we are flying over.”
Pip shifted uncomfortably. “Zardon, can I be honest?”
“Honesty over lies. It’s my motto.”
“Frankly? To me, all this is like a fine-sounding dream.”
“How’s about I chew on your kneecaps, just a nibble or two, to assure you that you aren’t dreaming?”
She objected, “Zardon, you’re a
Dragon
. I’m a Pygmy.”
“Really? Your powers of insight out-dazzle the very suns.” His low, barking laughter made them bounce up and down in the air several times. Pip’s exasperation simmered in her belly. “A dollop of honesty in return, little one,” he said. “When I say I sense greatness in you, it is not like some set of fancy clothes you can slip into. In my experience, true greatness is won through great struggle and sacrifice. The journey is never an easy one.”
Again, Pip fell silent, striving to understand, to touch an indefinable but longed-for something that his words had stirred within her.
Zardon said, “Right now, were I in your hide, I would be feeling overwhelmed. That’s fine. We Dragons are used to getting our own way.”
She dared a wink. “I noticed.”
His fangs gleamed in a hundred-tooth Dragon smile. “I see that Pygmies have courage, even when their hearts are speeding away across the Cloudlands. Relax, little one. Enjoy the ride.”
Fine for the one with the wings to say. Pip sighed. If she had any courage, it was Pygmy-sized. “Thank you, Zardon. It’s a wonderful … experience.” Everything was wonderful, she should have said. She puffed out her cheeks. “Do you ever see through the Cloudlands to what lies beneath?”
“No. Aren’t you wondering where we’re going? Or are you too busy chatting to your ride?”
Pip trilled a joyous laugh. “I’m just a girl awash in wonder, mighty Zardon. Right now, all I care is that I’m not in a cage. For sheer awesomeness, nothing beats that.”
“One grows accustomed to liberty,” Zardon noted. “But I’d wager you wouldn’t be recommending a stint of captivity to help me better appreciate my freedom?”
“Nooooooo ….”
“Little one, I propose to take you to a place where I believe your potential might be nurtured. It is far from perfectly safe, but it is one of the few places in this Island-World where Dragons and Humans live alongside each other in harmony. We fight tooth and claw to keep it that way. I believe you might find there a home and a community where you can belong.”
Pip did not mention that what she wanted most, was to go home to the Crescent Islands. Instead, she asked, “Where is this place, Zardon?”
“Jeradia Island.”
“Jeradia, home of giants?”
“The tallest men in the Island-World,” Zardon agreed, “but they are not giants.”
“Unless you’re a Pygmy.”
“Since when did mere size gauge the worth of Human or Dragon?” He sounded so severe, Pip dared not utter the retort that burned on the tip of her tongue. He added, “Unless those men succeeded in caging not only your body, but your mind and your very soul?”
“Never.” Or, had they?
“Then don’t trouble my ears with that kind of talk.”
She scowled over her shoulder at the shadow of Sylakia Island, receding into the gloom as they forged out over an ocean of cloud. Only a Dragon stood between her and a several-leagues fall to her death. Only a Dragon? Ha! Pip scoffed at her silly thoughts. Only a magnificent flying monster straight out of Pygmy legend, whose breath was fire and who soared on the winds with the ease of any bird. The night air was cool, but she was far too excited to feel cold. Zardon had picked her out for what she had meant as a joke. Perhaps he was right. It might be small person thinking, but size did help. Just look at him. He could fly anywhere his fancy took him. What creature would dare to attack a Dragon?
But none of this stopped her heart from lodging right up in her throat. She could not begin to quantify the emotions riddling her stupefied, speechless heart.
After a long time, Pip rediscovered her ability to speak. She told him her tale. She started with those very scars on her back he had noticed, scars left by the big people who had destroyed her village. Words poured out of her like crimson blood from a fresh wound. Perhaps she sought to shock the Dragon; Pip did not know. But when her tale finally ran dry, Zardon dipped his head and said:
“Thank you for sharing your heart, Pip.”
Zardon did not seem inclined to say anything more. After a time, Pip’s eyes grew heavy. She laid her head on the small bundle of her possessions, and slept.
* * * *
Dawn fired the Cloudlands with its furnace glow, bringing a warm glow of coppers and oranges to the layer of Cloudlands far beneath them. Pip, snared momentarily in that half-dream state before fully awakening, wondered how it was that serenity could steal into her soul so easily. She felt light and trouble-free. Perhaps, if she only believed, she could spread her arms and fly like the great Dragon beneath her, his enormous flight muscles bunching and releasing the slow, powerful wing-strokes that swished them onward with the unceasing ease of a never-ending heartbeat.
“Did I hear you stir, little one?” asked Zardon.
“I’m awake.”
Awake, but befuddled to find herself flying Dragonback. She shook off the dream cobwebs and pushed herself upright. They were out of sight of any land. The aura of nothingness was so silent and intense it seemed to trumpet its presence, pressing in upon her with inaudible, unfathomable purpose, an awareness of the Island-World as she had never imagined it before.
He said:
The blazing wings of dawn spirited me away,
Dragon-swift above the suns-rise,
Flying to my destiny beyond the clouds.
Pip sighed. “How beautiful, Zardon. Did you make that up?”
“I dabble in a little poetry.”
“Dabble? This from he who claims to value honesty over lies?”
“Do you always wake up ready to bite a Dragon with his own words?” snorted Zardon.
Pip sensed an underlying delight at her cheeky riposte. She said, a touch astringently, “There’s a first time for everything, even for an old-as-the-Islands Dragon. Now, I’ve been thinking–”
“Oh? Most people I know call that snoring.”
“I do not snore! Oh–hilarious, Zardon. Chortle away. How’s Hunagu?”
“As well as an Oraial dangling several leagues over the abyss can be, little one. He sleeps. Now, before you do any more … thinking, I want you to take a deep breath.”
“A breath?”
“Fill your lungs, little one. As much as you can.”
Silently mutinous, Pip did as instructed. She sucked in a lungful of the sweetest, cleanest air in creation and let it out in a gust of her own. “Well?”
“Well, I find it hard to believe your stories of being a patient Pygmy hunter,” he teased. “How long could you stalk an animal, Pip? Two seconds?”
Pip favoured this sally with a rude noise in her throat. Whatever had she expected of a Dragon? Zardon was massive, deadly and rather friendlier than the pets some Sylakians used to bring to the zoo. If someone had painted the entire Island-World a different colour, she would have felt no less astonished than she was now. Joking with a Dragon? Dragon poetry? Riding Dragonback? Flying between the Islands? She pinched her thigh surreptitiously, hoping to avoid notice, but a twinkle in his eye assured her Zardon had perceived her disbelief.
He said, “What do you smell in the air, Pip?”
She mulled his question. “It is fresh and sweet, and wonderfully far removed from any zoo. It makes me … tingle.”
His big, toothy grin flashed toward her. “The sweet tingle of freedom. Every breath.”
“Freedom as
commanded
by a mighty Red Dragon?”
Zardon laughed so hard and long he began to hiccough. Pip bounced about on her seat while he kept gulping, laughing and burping out the odd fireball, until she could not help laughing along with him.
True to Zardon’s prediction, Archion Island loomed out of the Cloudlands during the course of that morning. It was as strange as the Dragon had described to her. Two immense legs of rock joined together almost a league above the clouds. Each of the legs was ringed by many layers of terrace lakes, constructed by the Ancients in times before memory. Great concentric retaining walls trapped the waters that made Archion famous for its birds, giving the Island the appearance of the banded anteaters of her native Crescent Islands.
“Blackwing storks, ten types of heron, and innumerable duck species inhabit those terrace lakes,” said Zardon, giving words to her impression of specks so numerous they buzzed like clouds of mosquitoes around the Island. “Beneath the arch are caves which hold the greatest concentration of bats in the Island-World. And lower on the southern face, there are thousands of windrocs. We’ll keep a Dragon’s-eye out for windrocs.”