She was a keeper. She had promised.
The Egg burned in Mella’s hands. Without noticing, she began to think of it as the dragon had spoken of it. Not as an egg, but as the Egg.
“I will,” Mella said softly.
The dragon laid his head down again with a long sigh. Something slithered and rustled in the grass. It was the dragon’s tail. The sharp tip lifted and, very gently, brushed against Mella’s cheek.
“Good flying,” the dragon murmured, his voice very faint now. “May the wind rise beneath your wings.”
“I don’t have wings,” Mella objected.
The dragon didn’t answer.
Mella sat back on her heels, holding tightly to the Egg. What had she done? Had the dragon laid a spell on her, to make her agree so easily to carry the Egg into the Dragontooth Mountains? It was madness. She was only twelve years old. She could never do such a thing alone.
“Are you really going?”
The voice came from behind her back.
Trying to jump up, turn around, and hold on to the Egg at the same time didn’t work. Mella fell over onto the grass and wriggled up into a sitting position, staring at Roger. He was standing not ten yards away. All her attention must have been on the dragon, and his on her, to have missed the sound of his approach.
“You followed me!”
Roger was shaking his head slowly. “That’s a dragon,” he said. “A real one. A true dragon.”
“Of course it is.” Mella found that there were tears on her cheeks. She brushed them off with one hand, holding the Egg with the other.
“Look at it.” Slowly, step by step, Roger came closer. “I never thought—I didn’t know—it’s real.”
It’s dead, Mella wanted to shout. It’s real and it’s dead. Because of your master.
But she couldn’t. What would Roger do? Run home and tell everyone at the Inn that he’d heard her talking to a dragon?
She had to convince him somehow not to tell. She had to coax the dragon-slayer’s squire into helping her save a dragon’s egg.
“Roger, listen—”
Roger didn’t seem to hear her.
“That wingspan,” he marveled. “It must be twenty feet. Still, it’s heavy. How does it get airborne? Does it have hollow bones, like a bird’s?”
Mella gaped at him.
“And it talked to you.” Roger dropped to his knees beside Mella and the dragon. “I heard it.”
“It’s not my fault. I was just trying to—”
“But its mouth, its tongue—they’re not shaped for speech. At least not human speech. How could it talk?”
Mella had a question of her own. Why aren’t you angry? Roger’s eyes were wide, his face eager. Why did the dragon-slayer’s squire look like he thought a dragon was a wintertide gift?
But she didn’t dare ask. No sense reminding Roger that he should have been furious.
“Can they really breathe fire?” Roger went on. His hand, hesitating a little, gingerly stroked the smooth scales on the dragon’s neck.
“I don’t know,” Mella admitted. “I think it did, back there….” She waved a hand at the trail of trampled undergrowth and scorched trees. “The common ones can only snort a little steam.”
“Really?” Roger looked fascinated. “I wonder how closely they’re related. Do you think—”
“Why did you follow me?” Mella broke in. She hadn’t meant to interrupt, to be rude. But she didn’t understand this, the way Roger was maundering on.
“Your healer’s with Damien. She sent me out of the room.” Roger looked a little embarrassed. “I don’t like blood much. And I remembered which way you’d gone, with that—that thing. I found this in the hedge—” He held out her red hair ribbon, and his eyes dropped to the Egg. “That’s a dragon’s egg.”
Mella nodded. “I found it. This morning.” Thief! the dragon had roared at her. But she hadn’t meant to steal. She hadn’t known. “It was hunting, I think.” The dead deer, its bloody throat. “It had to leave the Egg alone. And I…”
If she hadn’t found the Egg, if she hadn’t taken it, would the dragon, once it had eaten, have been on its way? Then it would not be dead, and Mella would not have the Egg in her hands and the responsibility for its fate weighing on her. And Damien would have found nothing to fight. That made two deaths on her conscience. Two more.
“Well, then.” Roger looked thoughtful. “We have to get it to the Hatching Ground, don’t you think? How much time do we have?”
“We?” Mella stared at Roger. To her astonishment, he blushed.
“I mean…if you don’t mind my coming?”
Mella was not usually at a loss for words, but she couldn’t figure out how to answer. Mind? She didn’t mind, precisely. Just a moment ago she had thought that she could never do this alone. Mind? That wasn’t it.
This didn’t make sense. She was a keeper, she’d talked to the dragon, she’d made a promise. Mella knew why she meant to save the Egg. But Roger…
“Why would you want to?” she demanded. “It’s a dragon! They said your master’s dying. It killed him!”
“Damien’s not dead,” Roger answered, although his face grew sober. “The healer said he should recover, if he doesn’t take fever too badly. And anyway, it was just defending its young. Any living thing would do the same. You can’t blame it for that.”
Mella shook her head, bewildered.
“It’s a true dragon,” Roger went on, and his face lit up with excitement. “I never thought they were real. Can you imagine, seeing one up close? Talking to it? Well, you can, I suppose. Imagine. I mean, you don’t need to. But I…” His eyes traveled over the bulk of the dragon, its torn wing, its bloodstained breast. “It’s magnificent. We have to take care of that egg. You’ll let me come?”
Mella didn’t know what to answer.
Chapter Six
Mella perched on the saddle behind Roger, clinging to his waist. Her skirts were gathered up above her knees, which made her blush. But no one could see her red cheeks in the dark. And she didn’t dare sit sidesaddle, or she’d slide right off the horse’s back and land in the dirt.
It would have been more comfortable if they’d taken Damien’s horse as well as Roger’s. Mella had wanted to, but Roger had refused. “That’s stealing,” he’d said, his freckled face shocked in the dim yellow light of the lantern.
Mella didn’t think so. They would return the horse in a few days, after all, and it wasn’t as if Damien could ride it at the moment. But she couldn’t put up much of an argument when they could only speak in whispers for fear that Peder and Poll, asleep in the loft overhead, would hear. So they had only Roger’s gray mare, not Damien’s chestnut gelding.
Roger set the horse to a steady jog, heading east to Dragonsford. Mella yawned. The long day had taken a toll on her. She had struggled to keep awake as she lay in bed, waiting for Lilla to fall asleep so she could sneak outside unnoticed. Now, despite the chill of the night air, her eyes kept drifting shut. She forced them open again, with an effort, and discovered that her cheek had come to rest against Roger’s shoulders.
She sat bolt upright.
Roger had pulled the horse to a halt. “Far enough?” he said over his shoulder. “There’s a bit of a clearing there.”
“Far enough,” Mella agreed, stifling another yawn. Their plan had been simply to get away from the Inn tonight, and tomorrow morning ride the rest of the way to Dragonsford.
Tomorrow morning. Mella couldn’t stop thinking of that, even while she gathered a few sticks and fallen branches, groping about in the brambles and roots at the edge of the clearing. Roger was taking care of the horse, removing the saddle and bridle.
Tomorrow morning Mella’s parents would wake, and she would be gone. They would be frantic. Guilt clutched at Mella’s heart. They would search the woods. They would call in all the village to help. Would they think she’d been kidnapped? That she’d run away with Roger? Would they think another dragon had eaten her?
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And her own dragons. Da would have to pay coin that the Inn could ill afford and hire Tilda from the village to look after them, a keeper too old now for a herd of her own. But they’d be restless and unhappy without Mella. A herd was never right when the keeper was not there.
Mella wished she’d been able at least to leave her family a note. Her father could read and write well enough to keep the Inn’s accounts. He would have been able to puzzle out a message. But Mella had never learned writing. Too late, it occurred to her that Roger was probably lettered. Wasn’t that something squires had to learn? She could have asked for his help. But there was no point in dwelling on it now.
She’d be home again as quickly as she could. The dragon had said the Hatching Ground was less than a day’s flight away. It might take a bit longer on horseback. But surely her parents and her dragons would only have two or three days to miss her.
Something rustled in the darkness between the trees. Paws or a tail raked through dry leaves and dead twigs. Mella jumped a little.
“What’s that?” Roger asked. Finished with the horse, he’d come to stand at her elbow.
“I don’t know.” It might be almost anything. A badger. A fox. Not big or heavy enough to be a bear. A snake, even. Mella’s toes twitched in her shoes.
Then a breeze drifted across her face, and she caught a hint of a familiar, dry, sulfury smell.
“Dragons,” she told Roger. “Wild dragons.”
“Oh?” Roger looked excited. “They’re rare. Have you seen them before?”
“Not really,” Mella admitted. The wild common dragons were shy and came out to hunt at night, so she had only caught a glimpse or two, now and then, in the twilight forest—a scaled flank or snout behind shadowy leaves, a tail slithering through the grass.
Now she seemed to hear rustling from all sides. A hiss teased at her ears as she turned, with a shiver, to pile her firewood in a heap at the center of the clearing. It wasn’t as if she was afraid of the little wild dragons. Of course not. Still, she felt better when Roger had struck a spark and, after much puffing and blowing, had a fire burning. She was glad as much for the cheerful light as for the warmth.
“Are they related?” Roger asked as Mella found her cloak and her dragonhide gloves inside the sack she’d brought from the Inn.
“Who?” Gloves on, Mella dug into the sack again and drew out the metal box her mother kept candles in. It now held the Egg. “Wild dragons and tame ones? Aye, they’re practically the same.” She wondered, as she flipped up the catch and opened the lid of the box, who the first keeper had been. Who’d first coaxed a shy wild dragon out of a thicket or a cave, fed it, learned to rub behind its ears the way dragons liked? Who’d been the first to know, deep in her bones, when a herd was hungry or frightened or threatened with sickness?
“No, I meant—well, that’s interesting too. But the true dragons. Like that one today. Are they related to the wild ones?”
How could Mella know something like that? She lifted the Egg out of the coals she had packed around it and settled it in the heat of Roger’s fire, realizing as she did that Roger had not expected her to answer at all. He went on talking.
“It’s hard to think so. But the true ones look like your farm dragons, you have to admit. The neck, and the tail with its spike, and the shape of the head. The wings are larger in the big ones, of course….”
Mella stopped listening. Knees under her chin, she watched the Egg, wrapped in flame like a baby in a blanket. It had seemed dull as coal when she’d lifted it out of the box, but now, as it warmed, colors began to swirl again across its surface. Or underneath it, rather. It was as if the black shell grew translucent in the heat and let her catch a glimpse of the Egg’s heart.
After a while she noticed that Roger had stopped talking. He was looking at her expectantly. “Have you always known?” he asked, and she realized that he was repeating the question.
“Known what?”
“That you wanted to be a keeper.”
Mella smiled. “Always. When I was barely old enough to walk, my parents found me asleep in the dragons’ pen. They were afraid I’d be killed, but the dragons just curled up around me and watched over me. That’s when Gran knew….”
“Knew what?”
“She said I had the touch. She taught me.”
“Your grandmother was a keeper?”
“The best in the kingdom,” Mella answered proudly, despite the tightness in her throat. Gran had been skinny and tough and gnarled like an old oak root, and she could make a dragon obey her at a look. “People came for miles around for her help if a herd was sick or if they wanted advice on breeding. Gran knew everything.”
Everything.
Even before Mella had opened her eyes, she’d known.
The herd was still asleep, huddled together as they always were, sharing the warmth of their scaly bodies. She’d felt them, a knot of limbs and tails and wings. It was not a dream, something that skimmed lightly over the surface of her sleeping mind. It was deeper than that; it lodged itself firmly under her breastbone, next to her beating heart. Her dragons would always be there.
You look after them now, girl.
“Yes, Gran,” Mella mumbled sleepily. She pushed back the heavy winter quilt and stuck her feet out of the bed. Lilla moaned as an icy draft snaked its way under the blankets.
“Mella, what are you doing?”
“Feed the dragons,” Mella muttered stupidly. The rag rug beside the bed was nearly as cold as the bare wooden floor.
“What? Mella, it’s the middle of the night. You’re dreaming.”
Indeed, it was dark. No moonlight came through the one window in the far wall. It seemed as if the floor, the dresses and shawls hanging on the wall and the shoes beneath them, Gran in her bed on the other side of the chimney, had all vanished.
“Mella. You’re letting the cold in.”
Mella hesitated. “Gran?”
Lilla was right. It was the heart of night. It was no time to bring scraps and fresh meat out to the dragons. But why had Gran spoken to her then?
“She’s asleep. Honestly, Mella, I think you are too. Get back in bed.”
Mella did. She would have to check on Blackie’s wing in the morning, she thought. Her own shoulder ached a little, and she rubbed it absently. He’d caught his wing on a nail, tearing the thin, tender skin. She’d have to make sure it didn’t get infected. Keep it clean, that was the key. Gran would help her. Even a sick or injured dragon was patient under Gran’s soothing hands.
But Gran didn’t help her in the morning. Gran didn’t wake again. Mella, trying to keep Blackie quiet while she smoothed salve over the cut on his wing, remembered the words she’d heard in the night.
“I will, Gran,” she whispered. “I promise.”
And now she’d left them. Run away with a knight’s squire and a dragon’s egg and left them behind.
And it wasn’t the first time she’d broken her promise to Gran. Barely a week after Gran had gone, there had been Lady.
“What about you?” she asked Roger quickly. “Why did you become a Defender? You didn’t even believe in dragons.”
She saw a flash of white as Roger smiled. “I suppose I was wrong about that. But I thought there might be, when I first became a squire. Maybe not giant ones, fire-breathers. But something, some fact behind the legend. Some reason for all the old stories. And it was better than…”
Mella felt sleepiness creeping up on her. But she was curious too. “Better than what?” A yawn nearly swallowed the last word.
“Learning to fight. My brothers are all squires to military orders. My oldest brother died at the attack on Tyrene. Siege tactics and fortifications and hacking people to pieces…At least with the Defenders I got to be outdoors. They’re always traveling the borderlands and the mountains, looking for signs of dragons. My father wasn’t pleased.”
“Why not?”
“He thought it was foolishness, taking an oath to keep the k
ingdom safe from dragons. He says the Defenders are a relic, out of date. He said I made the family look ridiculous and I should join a military order, too. Get myself killed, like Aliard.”
Mella felt another yawn forcing its way up her throat. Her eyelids were getting heavy. Roger’s voice was gentle and sad.
Mella lay down on her side, wrapping herself in her cloak, staring into the fire, now settling itself into a small heap of red orange coals with the Egg glowing black at its heart. She was sorry about Roger’s brother. She thought she should tell him so, but she fell asleep instead.
Chapter Seven
In her dreams, Mella was missing something.
Gran?
No, not her grandmother. Someone else. There was a gap, like an ache in the air, where something had been taken.
What was it? It was hard for her to say. It was as if someone had stolen her liver or her kidney, something that had always been inside her, so much a part of her that she never thought about it at all. Now it was gone and nothing would be right with her until whatever was gone had returned.
Restless, she squirmed in her sleep, twisting her cloak around herself. But the wrongness couldn’t be solved that way. With something other than her ears she heard a whimper and a long, low, hungry howl that shivered its way down into her bones.
When Mella woke, still tired, her cloak was damp with dew. Her nose felt like a frozen lump clinging to her face, and her tears made her cheeks even colder.
It had been no dream. She had felt her dragons missing her.
A herd was always restless without its keeper. Oh, Tilda would feed them and keep an eye out for injuries or sickness. But they’d pine for Mella the way Lady had pined for Gran.
Gran had never left the herd, not even for a day. Other keepers did, when trips to the market or the city had to be made. There were even itinerant keepers with no herds of their own who made their way from town to town, offering to care for dragons so that their keepers could rest or travel.
Poor, pitiful things, Gran had called those gypsy keepers. Wastrels and wanderers. She wouldn’t trust her dragons to one of them for a day. A keeper with no herd of her own was no true keeper.
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