Sonata Form

by Carole Cummings

  “You mean until Taraverde’s ‘Elite Constabulary’ turned peaceful protests into full-out riots, Cennydd. They killed people, and Ostlich-Sztym let them—their own people. You can’t honestly think—”

  “Oh, please. They didn’t let the few push the many around, which is as it should be.” Cennydd waved it away, as though it was right, as though it was nothing, and tapped at the newspaper. “That’s what all this is about. It’s also where your problem lies, Milo. I mean, you’re the only Dewin in Whitpool, yeah? Especially now with your Black Dog mam gone off only the goddesses know where. You’ve no friends except Glynn and her tad. I know, I notice, because I pay attention. You’ve not even joined the Home Guard. You’ve no one to… shall we say, have your back.”

  Only, don’t show him your back.

  Glynn’s voice. Strangely resonant now.

  Milo shook his head, a peculiar numbness seeping from gut to chest and out through his limbs. “Everything you just said is wrong. All of it. Dewin are under threat because for almost a decade their political clout has been the only thing between the dictator in Taraverde and his land-grab. He’s made them a scapegoat with lies and hate-mongering.”

  “Then how d’you explain an entire country agreeing with him, and more falling into line with them every day?”

  “Ignorant people are all too willing to hate someone for no reason, as long as the wrath isn’t directed at them. You’ve no clue what the politics—”

  “I’ve no clue! Stone the crows, that’s rich from you. You don’t pay attention, Milo. Not to the right things. And you really should. I know how you love those dragons. What would happen to them if—” Cennydd cut it off, though it was too clear what he’d been getting at. His grin had compressed into something sour and unpleasant, just like that, jaw set and eyes flat. “It started with Taraverde, yes. But then it moved on to Ostlich-Sztym. And now the Dewin are being chased out of Colorat too. If they’re lucky. Błodwyl’s next, you watch and see if I’m wrong. Their homes taken. Their businesses signed over to whomever the government chooses. They’re fleeing like rats, Milo, and d’you know where they’re fleeing to?”

  He paused, eyebrows raised, but when Milo said nothing, Cennydd puffed a short laugh and shook his head with a What am I going to do with you, you naïve simpleton? It was all Milo could do to sit there and not knock Cennydd’s apparently oversized head from off his scrawny shoulders.

  “They’re coming here, Milo. Not only to Kymbrygh, but to Preidyn and Werrdig too. Some have managed to sneak their way across the borders of Nasbrun or Proyya, but most of them are coming here because our Queen bloody invited them. And I’ll tell you a secret.” Cennydd dipped in close and lowered his voice. “There are quite a lot who don’t like it. She’s Offeiriad. She should know better. And some people....” He sat back, took a glance around, then smirked. “Well. Not everyone is content to allow it.”

  Something in Milo went utterly still, utterly cold.

  A train whistled in the distance. Ellis’s train. Had to be. Early when the trains were never early, but Ellis was nearly here.

  Milo should be settling his bill, collecting himself, getting ready to meet Ellis on the platform. Joyful and eager.

  He sat right where he was. Staring at Cennydd. Unable to move.

  Cennydd was a bloody teenager. This was all Purity Party rot and nonsense he’d picked up from people older than he was, deliberately politically skewed, intent on othering anyone who didn’t look and think and speak and worship exactly like they did. And the crude bit about “only breeding among their own” was just flat untrue, the rest twisted out of the clear shapes of reality and distorted into something sinister and depraved.

  And for what?

  Milo was the only Dewin Cennydd even knew, so what could Dewin in general have ever done to dredge this kind of hatred from a mere boy? There was no reason for it that Milo could see. None. Cennydd was a child. He couldn’t possibly understand where most of the ignorance he was spewing even came from.

  Except.

  Cennydd’s mam sat on Whitpool’s council. His tad came from probably the wealthiest family besides Dilys’s in the whole of Kymbrygh. If this was what Cynnedd had been hearing at home....

  And here he was, offering Milo “protection” against… what, exactly?

  “What…?” Milo cleared his throat, setting his teacup back to rights in its saucer to buy himself a moment. “What does that mean, Cynnedd?” He peered evenly at Cynnedd, and hoped for once he was managing to keep what was roiling inside him off his face. “How might someone go about stopping this… well, the way you’re talking about it, it sounds like an infestation.”

  Cennydd’s smile was so condescending it made Milo’s teeth hurt. “Oh, Milo.” He shook his head with a chuckling sigh. “You just don’t pay attention.” He stood, still smiling, and set his hand to Milo’s shoulder. “I won’t be old enough for a contract for a few years. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do things for those I care about in the meantime. And I’ve always loved the dragons.” He gave Milo’s shoulder a pat. “Think about it.”

  MILO DID think about it. When he made it to the platform just before Ellis disembarked. When he clung to Ellis like he’d never let go. When he watched Cynnedd greet a stranger with a handshake and escort him to a waiting car, all the while eyeing Ellis with a narrow, contemplative scowl. When he told Ellis, “Let’s go home,” and pulled him down the station’s steps.

  He thought about it, couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  He was paying attention.

  “AND THIS is what you do all day?” Ellis was grinning, delighted, as the razorback calf snuffled at him and let him set his hand to the small, still-soft scales just below the nub of what would eventually grow into a horn behind the brow ridge. “Play with baby dragons?”

  The calf’s mam was watching carefully, wary but not hostile. Which rather made Milo’s head explode a bit.

  “I can’t believe she’s letting you near him.”

  Milo didn’t think it was merely because he was here and watching. Nothing about this mam and her calf fit into what Milo knew was normal dragon behavior. Strangely docile and permissive, the cow, allowing Glynn right up close to her calf when Milo had never known a dragon to let anyone but dragonkin that near their young. But Glynn wasn’t just anyone. The dragons saw her every day, knew her, and even if they didn’t trust her like they trusted Milo, they at least knew she was no threat and never so much as growled at her, as far as Milo knew.

  This cow, though?

  Milo had told Ellis not to expect much. That he was a stranger, and the cow probably wouldn’t allow Ellis much closer to her calf than twenty paces, if he was lucky.

  And then she’d only stood there and watched when the calf trotted up to Ellis and butted him in the chest. Milo had nearly had a heart attack; he’d been watching the calf’s colors carefully, and the cow’s even more so, but there’d been no jags of anger or protectiveness roiling a warning. It happened so fast Milo hadn’t even had time to whip the shield he had ready at his fingertips between the calf and Ellis. All Milo really saw was Ellis go flying back on his arse and the calf staring down at him like it couldn’t understand why the puny new plaything was so easy to knock down. But the colors were all so happy, so calm, and Ellis was laughing, and then the calf was nuzzling, and the cow was just watching, and it was all so bizarre that Milo wondered if Ellis was somehow dragonkin and no one had noticed because he wasn’t ever around dragons.

  It would figure, actually. Lleu had been all over Ellis at first meeting like Ellis had bacon in his pockets, and Ansel hadn’t even tried to go after Ellis’s shins, not once.

  It wasn’t fair.

  “And no, I do not ‘play’ with baby dragons all day.” Milo huffed, trying to shake out the tension that had ramped all through him only a second ago. “We hardly ever even have a calf about the place. Not unless a cow breeds out of season, which this one did, and had the bad grace to brood here in the mid
dle of Reaping migration.” He jerked his chin at the cow, still only standing there and watching Ellis paw at her calf. “He’s the one who hatched last winter. I know I told you, because I couldn’t make it to Brookings for over a month.”

  “I remember.”

  “He’s doing... all right, I suppose. It’s only....”

  Milo hesitated, frowning, because the brooding had gone fine, the hatching perfect, but the calf, though healthy as any other hatchling Milo had encountered when it kicked away the last of its shell, didn’t seem to be quite thriving the way Milo expected. The way even the spitter had done, once Nain had found her. But this one wasn’t growing, was sometimes moody and aggressive for no reason then playful and buoyant—like now—and seemed to have occasional stomach issues Milo couldn’t explain. It walked funny sometimes, like its joints ached, but there was nothing wrong with its bones. And though the cow seemed to share the same troubles sometimes, it wasn’t often, and none of the other dragons showed symptoms, so whatever it might be, it apparently wasn’t contagious.

  Maybe the cow had got into something before she’d arrived last year, and it had seeped through her egg’s shell before it hardened prebrood. Milo didn’t know. There was nothing in his books, Rhywun Collins was no help, and none of the other dragonkin were having issues, at least those who answered his letters. And though both cow and calf occasionally flared odd moody colors for no reason, the tempers came and they went, a weird overhang of soup-green and gray now and then that Milo didn’t know how to interpret. All it told him was there was something wrong one minute and not the next, and he couldn’t get a handle on it.

  Milo pushed a sigh through his teeth. “It’s only, they grow so fast in the first couple of years—he should be twice his size already. He should be strong enough to make the flight up north before the end of this season when the rest of the clan goes, but the way he’s going I don’t think he’ll be… ehm....”

  The calf used the claw on his wing thumb to tap curiously at Ellis’s broad-brimmed hat, all gentle care, but playful still. The colors wafting off him were all warm pastels. Affectionate. It made Milo blink.

  “That.... That’s not....” He shook his head. “Sorry, only this is very strange. They normally don’t do this. And you aren’t that charming, so I can’t figure—”

  “Oi, I’m charming as a basket of kittens with bows on!” Indignant. “And you know you love me, so no surprise they do.” Arrogant. “But I think it’s more they sense the dragonstone.” Ellis grinned over at Milo, one hand exploring the knots that would grow into horny plates down the calf’s back, and the other patting at the breast pocket of his day coat. The calf tilted his head and snorted out a thick puff of smoke from his nostrils. “It’s been warmer than usual since I got here”—Ellis coughed and waved the smoke out of his face—“but now it’s only this side of hot. And he keeps sniffing at it.”

  “Oh, for—” Of course. Of course. “You’re clan!” Milo’s smile was probably a bit daft and dazed, but he couldn’t help it. “They know you’re mine. Ha! According to them, I own you!”

  He laughed when Ellis lifted his eyebrows and flashed him a look that said Oh really? Because yes. Really.

  Dragons were clan animals. They’d made Milo part of their clan when Nain’s old “friend” had created a dragonstone for him. And Milo had, apparently, pulled Ellis into the clan when he’d offered the stone as a cariad gift.

  He couldn’t say he’d meant to, really. He hadn’t even thought about it at the time. The stone was important to him, and it had been just as important to give Ellis something of himself, to seal what wasn’t really a contract, not legally, but… was there such a thing as a contract of the heart? Said out loud, it would make Milo cringe with twee, but in his head, it seemed entirely fitting.

  And he still couldn’t stop smiling.

  “No getting out of it now,” he told Ellis, smug. “The dragons say you’re mine. And who wants to argue with dragons?”

  “Not I.” Ellis slid his hand over the calf’s nose and stepped back. He looked down at his boots, smile small and easy, then peered up at Milo, gray eyes bright. “Who needs the Sisters to approve a contract when you’ve got dragons?”

  Milo very nearly did a pirouette in the mud, he was so giddy.

  Because who indeed?

  GLYNN AND Ellis got on perhaps a bit too well.

  “Oh, he did not!” Glynn’s jaw was hanging, her wide-open grin crinkling her eyes into crescent moons. “Milo? I don’t believe it. You made that up.”

  “Why would I?” Ellis’s smile was evil as he waggled his eyebrows at Milo across the table. He stabbed up a bit of popty. “I see he’s got all of Whitpool swottled with his ‘upstanding young squire’ game, but Wellech knows better. It took the locals years to stop hiding their cabbages when they knew Milo was visiting.” He jammed the potato in his mouth, still managing to grin smugly around it.

  “Not all of Whitpool is fooled,” Howell put in mildly with a sidelong glance at Milo and a quirk at the corner of his mouth. When Milo shot him a betrayed look, Howell merely sipped at his beer and put all his attention on his braised lamb.

  Glynn, however, was not to be deterred. “What?” She leaned in toward her tad, clearly tickled and far too eager. “Tad, what?”

  Milo had felt a bit awkward about playing host to Ellis by himself. So he’d thought it might be nice to invite Howell and Glynn to have supper with them.

  Every goddess in the pantheon, had he been wrong.

  Howell shrugged, apparently fascinated by the way his knife parted the lamb on his plate. “It’s only that I’m not surprised he pulled the same stunt in Wellech.” He took a bite, chewed thoughtfully. “Though it seems p’raps that was mere practice, because he managed to pull it off here.”

  “No!” Glynn sat back, gleeful. “Who?”

  “Ta, Howell,” Milo muttered, gulping more beer than was probably wise, but he figured he deserved it. He sighed at Glynn. “I was practicing my aim at the time.” He shrugged at Ellis. “Remember the onions?”

  “Oh, my heart.” Glynn was practically vibrating out of her chair. “What about the onions?”

  Milo ignored her, and said to Ellis, “It was like that, only I’d just learned how to catch something without actually exploding it.”

  “Exploding!” Now Glynn was bouncing.

  Milo rolled his eyes. “It was Nain’s fault. She made me come to the markets with her. And she knew I hate figs.”

  “Who hates figs?” Ellis actually seemed offended as he looked around the table. “I ask you!”

  “I hate figs. And Nain knew it. And still, she made a point of loading up her basket with a bloody armload of them, smirking at me. And then she said I had to carry it because it was too heavy, laden down with figs as it was, and wasn’t I always saying I was a big strong boy?” Milo huffed. “I was trying to grab at it with my magic. Nain had been all but drilling me on it, after all. But I couldn’t stop thinking about all the otherwise perfectly edible dishes she was going to put the awful things in, and I… might’ve got a little… angry about it.” He shrugged, cheeks warm. “I didn’t actually mean to send the basket pitching across the market.” He couldn’t help the tiny smile that was ticcing at his lip. “And I certainly didn’t mean to smash the figs into pulp and then blow them up so they smeared all over Rhywun Catrin’s storefront. It just… happened.”

  It had been satisfying and hilarious for about five minutes. Until Nain decided that scraping and washing the storefront—“Without using magic, Milo, is that understood?”—would teach Milo a lesson while at least partially appeasing Rhywun Catrin.

  It hadn’t, really. Milo still got chary looks from her whenever he ventured past her shop.

  Glynn was nearly breathless, face almost in her dinner as she laughed and laughed.

  Ellis looked almost proud. “I admit, that does rather put the Cabbage Incident to shame.”

  “The cabbages were your mam’s fault and you know it!�
�� Milo pointed accusingly at Ellis. “She said to use them as targets!”

  It only got worse from there. Or better. Milo reckoned it depended on one’s perspective. He had to admit everyone seemed thoroughly entertained, even if the entertainment consisted mainly of exaggerated retellings of embarrassing incidents from Milo’s own life. But it did put paid to Milo’s anxiety over immersing someone like Ellis in the mundanity that was Milo’s bucolic life. That and Ellis’s clear fascination with the dragons. Milo always forgot they were rather exotic to those who didn’t have to shovel their shite once a week.

  Milo sat back, enjoying the homey atmosphere, laughing and eating and giving as good as he got when he could, and looking ahead to when Glynn and Howell would retire to their little cottage but having no desire to rush it. He’d have Ellis all to himself later. Right now, this kitchen hadn’t heard so much cheer and familial laughter for more than a year, and Milo intended to savor it.

  Chapter 10—Variation

  : the compositional process of changing an aspect of a musical work while retaining others

  He couldn’t sleep. That was the only reason it happened the way it did. Simple coincidence; random serendipity. He couldn’t sleep, so he carefully extracted himself from Ellis’s squiddy limbs and went downstairs to make himself a cup of tea.

  Lleu couldn’t be bothered to follow, tucked up against the backs of Ellis’s knees and peering at Milo as though to chide him for disturbing the night’s peace and comfort. With Ceri gone, Lleu had taken to sleeping in Milo’s room, in Milo’s bed, and not only would he not be displaced by an added body, he had his ways of making it clear he was not pleased with the need for substitution in the first place. Namely by chewing the corners of the sheets and cushion slips, something he hadn’t done since he was a puppy. And though he never actually chewed through them and ruined them completely, there was still nothing like the experience of turning over in one’s sleep and coming into sudden unexpected contact with a cold, slobber-sodden lump of linen.