I force a smile. The boys will get a magical creature introduction, not me. Though I suppose I have the advantage now, what with spending the whole afternoon in the company of a baby dragon.
“Hey, Papa? Is there anything else special a Seeker would need to do to care for a baby dragon? Like, if its parent dragons weren’t there?”
Papa raises his eyebrows. “Why the sudden interest in baby dragons?”
“Um, no reason. Just something Ari and I were talking about in training.”
“You should start posing your questions to Seeker Agnar during training, so that the others can learn from them as well. I’m not supposed to give you any unfair advantage, remember?”
“I know, Papa.” I have a ton more questions, but I don’t know how to ask them without making him suspicious. He’s right—I should be discussing all of this in training.
Guilt twists in my gut, but I ignore it. Lying is necessary, just for now, just this once. Papa would understand.
I hope.
Papa and Elisa cheerfully wave me off to training, while Mama huffs and reminds me not to be late for dinner. I wave goodbye, ignoring the sickening lurch in my stomach, and head off down the lane like I’m walking toward the village. As soon as I’m out of sight of the hut, I turn around and cut back, keeping to the trees until I’m past the hut again and headed toward Runa’s farm.
I find the beach again easily enough. I can’t quite remember which cave Lilja is in, but it doesn’t matter. I reach out with my gift, searching for Lilja’s magic, and find her almost instantly. That strong a life force is impossible to miss, and I head straight toward it.
Inside the cave, I spot Lilja right away, curled up in a beam of sunlight that’s streaming through a crack in the rocks. She’s even more beautiful in the daylight, with her scales almost sparkling.
She senses my presence and leaps up, her massive clawed feet thudding into the stone. I wince. We’re going to have to teach her to step a little more lightly, or she’s bound to cause an earthquake or something when she gets bigger.
I imitate the three-note whistle that Ari used last night, just to make sure she doesn’t see me as a threat. “Hi, Lilja,” I say as she bounds in my direction. “Remember me?”
She slams her tail to the ground in response.
“Nice to see you, too,” I say. “Did you have a good morning?”
She blinks.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Okay, how about we do some training?”
Another blink. Her spikes are flattened against her back, and she doesn’t look aggressive, so I decide to take that as a positive response. I reach into my pocket, pulling out a single bilberry.
She perks up instantly, her ears swiveling in my direction, her head lowering toward the berry.
“Not yet,” I say. “Okay, Lilja. Stay.”
She flicks her tongue out, eyeing the berry.
“Stay,” I repeat, and back up.
She takes a step forward, her claw studding the earth barely a foot in front of me.
“No, stay,” I repeat, taking another step back.
She puts her other foot forward, getting closer.
How did Ari do this last night? He made it look so easy.
“Lilja,” I scold. “I know you know what that word means. Now stay.”
I leap backward in three quick steps, and Lilja lunges, her jaws open wide. I fling the berry away, not wanting her to bite my whole hand off, and she follows it with her head, snapping it off the ground with a flick of her tongue.
I groan in frustration. “Okay. Let’s pause for a second.” Papa would not be impressed with my skills so far. It’s been only five minutes and I already almost lost an appendage.
I try to think back to how Ari pulled this off last night. What did he do that I’m not?
I close my eyes and picture him walking backward, saying “stay,” the berry clinched between his yellow-tinged fingers—
Yellow. From his magic. That’s it.
I don’t have Ari’s gift, and I don’t know how he uses it. But I do know how to use mine.
I’ve been letting it loose, allowing my gift to collide with Lilja’s sparking life force, but I haven’t been doing anything with it. Time to change that.
I release more of my gift, watching the green light of natural magic bloom across my fingertips, and reach toward Lilja. She starts as my magic touches hers, diverting her attention from the berry for a split second. I let myself feel her energy, despite how overwhelming it is, trying to get a sense for how it flows. It’s like a ball of silver flame, sparking with life. I allow my gift to flow around the edges of hers like the smallest trickle of water: gentle, coaxing, soft. Lilja’s head tilts to the side, and she lowers her ears. As I continue smoothing my gift over the surface of her magic, her claws loosen their grip in the dirt.
“There you go,” I say softly. “You’ve calmed down a little now, haven’t you? Okay, now we can focus.”
I raise the berry again, and her ears shoot right back up, her excitement returning, but I wait for several heartbeats until she steadies again.
“Lilja,” I say, not loosening my magic’s gentle grip on hers, “stay.”
I back up a step.
The dragon doesn’t move.
I take another step. Her ears shift forward and her eyes follow me carefully, but she’s not overly excited this time. She’s paying attention.
I take another step. And another. And another.
I’m halfway across the cave before she moves, sliding one foot slowly forward, testing me.
“Stay,” I repeat, and she stops.
I don’t want to test my luck, so I take only one more step backward. She doesn’t move.
“Okay,” I say. “Good dragon. Now, catch!”
I toss the berry in her direction, and Lilja lunges for it so fast her movement is a blur. I don’t even see the moment when she catches the berry, but her neck moves as she swallows, turning back toward me. A few sparks shoot off her energy again as she gets excited for another.
I repeat the trick, making sure she’s calm first, then backing away a little more. I get almost to the far end of the cave this time before she tries to move again. It’s slow going, having to wait for her to calm down each time, but it works.
Still, I don’t want to push her too hard, so I only make her stay once more before tossing a few more berries and letting her catch them. She thuds her tail happily against the ground as she swipes them from the air.
“Okay, Lilja, you’re doing great,” I say. “But we need to work on this whole flying thing now, all right?”
She isn’t really paying attention. Her eyes are on my coat pocket, the source of the delicious berries.
I frown. I’m still not sure how to encourage her to fly. It’s not like I can demonstrate. But maybe I can give her a nudge with my magic somehow. It’s worked so far.
Besides, what kind of Seeker am I if I can’t handle teaching a baby dragon some tricks?
“Okay, Lil, we’re going to go really high for this next one. Are you ready?”
She lowers her head and scoots toward me as I produce another berry from my pocket. I step back and toss the berry into the air as high as I can.
Lilja shoves against the ground and lurches into the air, flapping her wings, but she doesn’t fly directly toward the berry. She hovers vertically and stretches her long neck out to grab it, then thuds back down to the ground.
I sigh in defeat.
Maybe training a dragon is going to be harder than I thought.
NINE
The rest of my first afternoon with Lilja passes quickly. She has thoroughly mastered the “stay” trick, but I can’t coax her into doing more than hovering in the air for a few seconds.
By the time Ari shows up, I’m completely frustrated, and Lilja is now ignoring me and trying to curl up and take a nap. “So I see it’s going well,” Ari says dryly, taking one look at my face.
“This is the most stubborn dr
agon in the history of the world,” I inform him. “How was official Seeker training?”
“Pretty basic stuff for the second day,” Ari says. “We practiced sensing living beings with our gifts.”
“Really? That’s all?” I’ve been doing that since I was five. Though maybe it’s easier for me, as a naturalist. I can see how someone with a warrior gift would have a harder time with it.
“Yeah,” Ari says, shrugging, and I can tell he finds it easy too. “Seeker Agnar did share some useful tips, though. I can show you tonight if you want.”
I nod. “Okay. And I was thinking maybe we should try to get Lilja out of the cave tonight. Maybe we could get her down to the beach? We might be able to get her to fly more easily if she has open air to maneuver. This cave is big, but it probably seems pretty small to a dragon.”
“Good idea,” he says. “So, you’ll meet me on the beach when you can sneak away?”
“Yeah, I…” I stop. Thinking of sneaking away made me realize that I have no idea what time it is. I run to the front of the cave and peer out the opening to look at the sky. The sun is already setting. “Oh no,” I say. “I think I’m going to be late.” Dusk is still a ways off, but I also have a long run to get home.
“Go ahead,” Ari says. “I can take it from here.”
“Thanks,” I say. “See you tonight!”
* * *
Of course I end up being late for dinner, and of course Mama gets her revenge by keeping me busy with chores for the rest of the night. By the time Mama sends me and Elisa off to bed, I could sleep for a week. But I can’t. I have more important things to do.
Sneaking out of the hut is slightly less nerve-racking this time, though it still takes forever for the rest of my family to fall asleep. Cold wind greets me as I creep outside, buttoning my coat tightly. The moon is large tonight, a few days shy of being full, but it’s mostly obscured by thick clouds, making it hard to see as I leap over the garden gate and run up the lane and over the hill.
By the time I reach the beach, Ari has already lured Lilja out of her cave. He’s tossing berries and coaxing her to fly, but he’s having little luck. I linger at the edge of the beach, planning just to watch them for a minute, but Lilja senses my presence and runs over immediately.
There are very few things that scare me, but the sight of a massive dragon with sharp teeth running toward me does, admittedly, make my heart race. Lilja stops just short of knocking me over and gives me a welcoming sniff.
I pat her nose in greeting. “How are you doing, Lil? Ready to start flying?”
“I think we have a defective dragon,” Ari grumbles, approaching us. “She just won’t do it.”
“Maybe she’s not ready.”
“Maybe.” Ari pauses. “So, ready to train?”
“Born ready.”
Ari tosses a few berries toward the other end of the beach, and Lilja bounds after them. “That ought to keep her busy for a second at least. Okay, so… Sorry, I’ve never really taught anyone anything before. I’m not sure how to start.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Just tell me what Seeker Agnar told the rest of you.”
“Well, he talked about calling on your gift, which of course you already know how to do.… But the part that I liked was when he talked about rhythm.”
“Rhythm?”
“Like… Let me show you. Close your eyes.”
I give him a skeptical look but follow his instructions. “Now what?”
“So, he explained it like this. First, just focus on yourself. Listen to the sound of your breathing, or focus on your heartbeat. Don’t think, just listen. You’re supposed to get, like, in tune with your own natural rhythm.”
“Um, okay…” I feel a bit ridiculous, just standing there with my eyes closed, but I try it anyway. I take a deep breath and listen to it.
“Even breaths,” Ari says. “Fall into a rhythm with it.”
After a minute, I start to relax a little, and my breathing falls into a more even pattern. “Now what?” I whisper.
“Now do the same thing, but with what’s around you. Let your gift spread out, and try to find a rhythm in something nearby.”
I push my gift out, and it flows eagerly from my fingertips. “Like this?”
“Not so fast,” Ari says. “Just a little bit at a time.”
I reel it in and try again. My gift hovers only a few inches from my fingertips. “Like this?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t feel anything.”
“It takes a minute. Just like when you were listening to your breathing. Just wait.”
With a sigh, I close my eyes again. For a long moment, I still don’t feel anything. But—a tiny little pulse beats somewhere below me. I didn’t feel it at first, but there is a rhythm to its life force, a tiny movement that vibrates the air. “I feel something!”
“Without opening your eyes, try to guess what it is,” Ari says.
“Well, it’s coming from the ground.… I think it has a heartbeat, so it isn’t a plant. It’s… It’s moving pretty quickly over the rock, scurrying. Definitely an insect. A little one.”
“Now open your eyes,” Ari says.
I look down at the ground. If I hadn’t searched for the life force first, I never would’ve noticed the tiny beetle, whose coloring blends in with the rocks. I wouldn’t even have known it was there.
“Whoa,” I say. “Pretty neat trick. But, um, I hope they don’t expect us to do that every time we need to use our gifts to sense something. Because that took forever.”
Ari laughs. “I doubt it. Most of the guys in training couldn’t even do it right.”
“So that’s it? That’s the whole lesson?”
“I mean, we spent the rest of training just practicing sensing stuff. Seeker Agnar hid a bunch of plants around the arena, and we had a kind of scavenger hunt to find all of them. Not really something you need to practice, I guess, since you can already do that.”
“Hmm.” I’m not sure whether to believe Ari or not. How do I know if that’s really what happened in training? What if he’s holding out on me?
Ari, of course, immediately senses my skepticism. His empathy gift at work, I’m sure. “If you don’t believe me, you can ask one of the other boys to train you instead. Although I don’t think any of them has a secret dragon.”
“I just may do that. I’m starting to think your secret dragon is more trouble than she’s worth.” I nod toward Lilja, who’s happily sniffing a boulder as if pondering eating it for dinner.
“Go ahead, then.” Ari’s tone is light. “But don’t expect any of the others to actually help you win the competition.”
I bristle. “I could win it without your help, thank you very much.”
“You’re not going to win it regardless. I’m going to win.” Coming from Johann or Tomas, this might have sounded mean, but Ari grins at me when he says it, his tone teasing, and I get that he’s just trying to joke around. Still, I can’t let that kind of comment go unchallenged.
“In your dreams,” I say. “As if an empath could beat a naturalist.”
Ari opens his mouth, but whatever he’s about to say is cut off by a loud thud.
Lilja, having thoroughly sniffed every inch of sand and rock on the beach, is now staring out at the sea and slamming her tail down against the ground, only to lift it and slam it back down again. Thud. Thud. Thud.
“What are you doing, Lil?” I yell as both Ari and I run toward her. The ground trembles beneath our feet.
“She wants to fly out there,” Ari says. Thud. Thud. Thud. “It’s probably some kind of instinct, knowing that there’s food out there, and she’s frustrated that she can’t get it. I can feel it.”
Sure enough, the yellow sparks of his gift are dancing around his fingertips. “Can you calm her down?” I ask.
“I can try.” The light of his gift glows brighter. “I need to quiet her down before—”
“The other dragons,” I say, tilting my head
toward the sky.
“No, I meant the villagers. I thought they might hear—”
“No, look! Other dragons! There.” I point straight up.
The palest rays of moonlight illuminate the sky, and silhouetted against them are the unmistakable shapes of wings, tails, spikes, clawed feet—
“Whoa,” Ari says.
Fully grown dragons practically make Lilja look like an ordinary lizard. Their wingspans can be as long as fifty or sixty feet, their bodies blotting out the sky. I try to count their shadows, but it’s hard to tell as they move so fast overhead. One, two, three…
Beside me, Lilja makes a strange keening sound in her throat that I’ve never heard before. As I turn toward her, she leaps forward, her claws scrabbling against the rocky beach. Her wings snap out, and with a few quick strides she launches herself into the air.
“Yes!” Ari shouts. “She’s doing it!”
He’s right. Lilja isn’t just hovering this time. She’s flapping her wings hard, stretching her long neck forward, trying to move faster and higher. She sways a little, still trying to get the hang of it, her feet paddling ungracefully in the air like a dog trying to swim. As the larger dragons fly directly overhead, the sound of their wings pounding like drumbeats in our ears, Lilja finally manages to surge forward, getting closer to the cliffs. Ari and I whoop and cheer as she soars. It really, really worked. Our baby dragon has learned to fly. She’s really going to—
“Look out, Lilja!” Ari calls, and a second later I see the problem. A second too late. Lilja’s wildly swinging tail slams into the cliff’s face and snags on a tree. A bigger, stronger dragon could simply tug themselves free, but Lilja is caught so off-balance that she nearly tumbles from the air, dropping rapidly. The tree snaps in half with a loud crack, dragged down by Lilja’s weight as she plummets. I start to rush toward her, wanting to help in some way, but Ari waves his arms frantically, stopping me.
“Get out of the way,” he yells. We both scramble backward as Lilja tumbles toward the beach.
At the last minute, she finds some balance, her wings flapping wildly, and she manages to land on her feet with an earthshaking thump that probably woke up the whole island, let alone the village. Vibrations tremble underneath us, knocking me to the ground.
Seekers of the Wild Realm Page 8