Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits

by Robin McKinley

  Nobody knows if dragons really can spout fire any more, or whether that’s all a complete myth (like whether or not foogits ever had a working third eye), or if over several thousand years of selective breeding humans have managed to get rid of the fire-spouting (in which case we’ll be in a lot of trouble if we have a nasty-tempered throwback some day. The myths include whole countries burning if they get a big enough dragon mad at them). Dragons spit a little fire at you no more often than a horse tries to kick you. Which is to say if you treat your dragon nicely you’re fine. Or that’s the standard line. It’s different though because horses are twitchier animals generally; they’re prey. Dragons aren’t. They can afford to have a look and a think before they do anything about it; nobody’s going to bite them on the back of the neck and then tear out their entrails. And domestic dragons have been bred for good temper for a long time. People do get burned, but it’s rare, and when it happens it’s a huge story and it’s told all over the country and everyone’s horrified and there’s always an investigation because the presumption is the human did something wrong.

  But dragons still smell of fire. It’s a hot, charred smell, and when you smell it for the first time it’s pretty scary, even if it’s only one of the little ones carrying freight, and even when it’s the other side of the jammed-with-smells fairground from where you are and behind the long series of warehouses there. It’s scarier yet when you’re walking toward a whole hsa full of them. I can’t begin to imagine who the first human was who decided to try and tame one. It’s like who thought of trying to eat a cawgilly for the first time? They sure don’t look like they’d be good to eat and they smell bad too, raw, even after you’ve got rid of the scent glands. But at least a cawgilly isn’t as big as a mountain. Also they run away if they see you coming after them, like a wild horse does. And there’s no fire involved.

  I kept reminding myself that not only were these tame dragons I was walking toward but this was the Academy, and furthermore I was with my brother who was a First Flighter at the Academy. What was really interesting though is that Sippy, who’d spent most of the last ten days skulking and cowering, wasn’t. When we first set off he had made an attempt to run a few circles around us, since he had the space to do it in for the first time in several days, but he was still too full of food and had to give it up. He trotted along behind, panting rather, but then he picked up and trotted past us, with his head and ears up and his tail straight out behind with the guard hairs on it raised, which in foogit language means, ʺHmm, what’s this?ʺ If he’d been frightened or worried the guard hairs would run backwards the full length up his spine, eventually up to his topknot, which would have bushed out (or tried to) like a sort of extreme mane. Among other things this exposes the third eye, if there is one, and I’d never seen Sippy in that much of a strop, although I’m told a big male foogit ready for battle isn’t funny any more.

  And then I smelled the dragons too, but it made me want to slow down, not speed up.

  They’re properly called hsa but they’re often slangily just called barns, Dag told me, and they’re huge enough to look at, but huger still from inside, because they’re dug into the ground and the hillsides as well. The Academy was where it was because there was this huge flat plain with these sudden hills leaping up at its edge, and the hills are mazes of underground caverns. A mountain over your head keeps the temperature down, and a lot of dragons all rubbing up against each other generate a lot of heat. Supposedly wild dragons lived there once, before the beginning of time. It’s been the Academy hsa since there was an Academy, and there are pretty much only folk tales about the time before the Academy existed. But even so people had been riding and breeding dragons for riding a long, long time before anyone thought of establishing an Academy about it.

  I’d never been there before of course. None of our family had except Dag. I don’t know if he remembered what it had been like for him the very first time—but it was the dragons themselves that had made him change his mind about staying at the Academy, and maybe the wham had happened while he was walking across this field just like I was. Maybe, if he thought about me at all, and I wouldn’t’ve blamed him if he didn’t, he only thought that I was potty about animals too and that I’d have the same reaction to the dragons that he did so he didn’t have to worry or think about me, except maybe how lucky I was that I was going to meet, really meet, a dragon, which almost nobody outside the academy system ever does. There are handlers at all the regular commercial stations, but they only handle whatever the dragon is carrying. The only person the dragon pays attention to is the rider—the partner. And that’s true several times over in the army.

  I felt myself starting to walk stiffly, like I had approaching the Academy gates. But this was worse. I fixed my eyes on Sippy’s happy, interested tail a few paces in front of me, and told myself that if my foogit could do it, so could I.

  There was a beyond-enormous door in front of us. The funny thing was it was built like an ordinary double stable door, and the top halves were open. Any of the four quarters was big enough to be the roof of our house with some left over. When you got close enough you saw there was an ordinary human-sized door cut into the right-hand bottom half. I didn’t mean to giggle but I did, although it sounded more like I was being stabbed than laughing. Dag said at once, ʺI know. But dragons don’t like draughts. It makes them restless. So we keep the bottoms closed all year, and the tops closed in the winter.ʺ

  Sippy squeezed through the little people door with me and I took hold of his topknot on the far side to keep him near me. Holding an ear isn’t fair for long; it’s just for when you really need him to pay attention. His topknot was nice and long and I could get a good grip and he could still turn his head.

  There was the rustle of vastness all around us. It took an effort of will to look up from the top of Sippy’s head. I looked up. There was a sharp slope down from the doors and then a big empty sandy space just beyond that. It was pretty scuffed up but at the same time you knew it got raked all the time, and there were the rakes, leaning on either side of the doors. The piece at the bottom with teeth was about as wide as I am tall, and the length of the handles was twice that. Beyond the sandy space it was too far away and dark to see clearly, but that’s where the rustling came from.

  Dag set off at once down a corridor. We were still mostly above ground and there were windows here although they were over our heads, and the corridor slanted downwards. Pretty soon it was more shadows than light, and then the lanterns began, sitting in niches in the walls (the first ones low enough for mere humans to fill and trim and light them; then when the second overhead rank began there also started to be the occasional ladder hung against the wall). Every so often there was a wide gap in the walls—a gigantic doorway—with its own shadows and its own flickering light. And its own hot charred smell.

  We met the occasional other human. I recognised the cadet uniform, but there was another uniform too. One of the men in the other uniform stopped as we came toward him. ʺSingla Dag, honoured sir,ʺ he began. ʺYou sand-for-brains chucklehead, Dag, don’t you know enough to climb back into your uniform before you come to the hsa? I won’t report you, but there are plenty who will.ʺ

  ʺI forgot,ʺ said Dag, humbly for Dag.

  ʺI believe you, or I’d send you back. I still should send you back. If you hear anyone coming, hide behind a dragon, will you?ʺ

  ʺYes, Hlorgla Dorgin,ʺ said Dag, still humble.

  ʺMmph,ʺ said Dorgin, and looked at me. ʺYou must be one of his brothers,ʺ he said.

  ʺI—er—yes, sir,ʺ I said.

  ʺYou look like him,ʺ said Dorgin.

  ʺNo, sir,ʺ I said.

  Dorgin smiled suddenly. ʺYou’ll grow into those feet,ʺ he said. ʺI’ve seen dragons like you. Keep your brother in order, will you? I wonder what else I should be telling you, besides don’t let him go to the hsa out of uniform?ʺ He gave Dag another glare and walked on.

  ʺThat was Dorgin,ʺ said Dag unne
cessarily.

  ʺHave we met anyone who’s going to report you?ʺ I said.

  ʺI don’t think so,ʺ said Dag, whose mind was obviously leaving this uninteresting topic.

  ʺYou wouldn’t want to tell me what Fistagh looks like?ʺ I said innocently.

  Dag gave me a sharp look and then laughed, although the laugh was almost as sharp as the look. ʺI’ll hide behind a dragon like Dorgin said, okay?ʺ

  After a lot more corridors and a lot farther going down, we came to another big sandy space. There was a fire burning in a stone-ringed fire pit in the centre of it. The smoke rose cleanly and straight up, and I looked up to see where it was going, but the ceiling, assuming there was a ceiling, was again lost in darkness, along with the chimney-hole. Dag made a curious humming, crooning noise. It wasn’t very loud and I don’t think it was just the creepiness of the surroundings that would have made me take special notice of almost anything, but it was a very attention-catching sound.

  And an immense heap of darkness at the edge of the firelight uncurled itself, and made a crooning noise in return. This sound was no louder than Dag’s had been, but it could no more have been made by a human chest than a human could fly. It was like the echo of an earthquake. I was surprised the earth didn’t tremble underfoot. Sippy, however, was trembling like seven earthquakes, and he made no attempt to get away from my now-convulsive grip on his crest, but I thought the trembling was more excitement than fear. I was trembling too, but I wouldn’t want to say it was mostly excitement.

  We stood still as Dag went toward the humming blackness. Against the firelight I could see what I guessed was a head and neck untwist itself from the top of the mound, and arch down toward Dag. Dag reached a hand up toward it; it was like a leaf trying to pat a forest.

  But the forest liked it. The hum dropped down a few more earth-shaking notes and the gigantic spade-shaped head—which I could now just make out in the twilight—came to a halt within human arm’s length of Dag’s hand. I thought dizzily of the sensation of a gnat landing on your skin; you could just about feel it if you were paying attention. And dragons must have thick skin. Maybe not on their noses. I hoped dragons didn’t blow through their nostrils the way foogits did.

  Dag left his hand on the dragon’s nose and turned his head toward me. ʺCome say hello. She knows you’re here and that you came with me. But it’s polite to greet her yourself.ʺ

  I walked toward them, feeling as if I was in a dream. The weird light and the weird echoy rustling noises that came from everywhere—and the sense of being so far underground—was part of it but it was mostly the dragon. This dragon. Her humming was almost inaudible now but she didn’t seem to want to dislodge Dag’s tiny hand, so as Sippy and I came closer, rather than turning toward us, there was a sort of half-imaginary tremor through the blackness that was perhaps her acknowledgement or her acceptance of our approach. When I was standing right beside Dag there was a ripple at the top of the head that I thought might be ears.

  Dag said sheepishly, ʺI don’t know how to do this. I’ve never introduced anyone to their first dragon. When we do it as cadets, we kneel.ʺ

  This seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I knelt. Sippy prostrated himself without any prompting from me. I let go of his topknot and bowed my head so I didn’t see her move her head at last, but I heard it—do I mean heard? Underground in the dark next to a dragon your senses do funny things—and felt the surprisingly gentle whisper of her breath through my hair. I don’t know if she quite touched me or not, but I felt the heat of her on the top of my head.

  Everything was fine. Then Sippy leaped up from his imitation of a hearth-rug, and licked her nose.

  The head disappeared instantly, whipping back up and away from us into the darkness, and the rest of the darkness blurred at the edges as it shifted backward. ʺOh, Sippy,ʺ I wailed. I didn’t suppose an unwanted lick on the nose would be one of the things that made a dragon spit fire, but I didn’t want her even a little bit mad at Dag five days before First Flight either.

  It took me half a minute to realise that the noise I was hearing was Dag laughing—a normal, easy, proper laugh, like it wasn’t costing him anything. And there was another noise too that later on I learnt was the sound of him scratching one of her forelegs. Dragons’ claws are very flat, so you can just about reach their ankles when they’re standing up. ʺI was going to take her outside anyway. Let’s go now before Sippy gangs up on her.ʺ He set off at a brisk trot and I heaved myself along in his wake. I wanted to protest the pace, but when you think about it, you running flat out is still a slow amble to a dragon. And furthermore it was uphill. Sippy dashed ahead of us and then dashed back, but he had to make do with jumping straight up in the air since Hereyta was keeping her head well out of reach. It looked a little like his swerving-and-leaping game.

  Outside in daylight . . . dragons are beautiful. Their skin shines rainbow colours, although a green dragon is green under the rainbows, and a red dragon is red, and so on. As I say, I’d seen a few little ones that did hop-stops to the bigger towns near us, and I thought they were beautiful and proud and just a little bit arrogant—which they were. That’s what dragons are like. But Hereyta just about knocked me over, just looking at her. She was a kind of red-gold; when she stretched her wings the iridescence made them look like they were on fire, and when she gave them a flap you would swear you could see the fire running down their edges. I mean, yes, all dragons are beautiful—all the ones I’ve seen, anyway—but Hereyta was special. Hereyta was amazing. I knew this, even if I had never seen a dragon up close before, and even if she was Dag’s dragon so I was going to like her even if she was foogit-sized, dung-coloured, and warty. And even if she had only two eyes.

  Dragon eyes vary in colour the way dragon skins do, but all dragon eyes glitter. I know that you talk about eyes glittering—the evil enchanter in a fairy tale always has glittering eyes; so do the things in dark corners when you’re little and trying to go to sleep—but dragon-eye glitter is the real thing. I suppose almost everything about a dragon is scary, because they’re so huge, and also, of course, because they’re the only creature (that we know of) that can fly through the Firespace. But the glitter of their eyes isn’t like anything else.

  I think that it’s the glitter of dragon eyes that’s the origin of all those stories about the beds of jewels that wild dragons are supposed to have made for themselves back in the days when dragons were wild, and used to eat children when they couldn’t find any sheep. Where all those jewels are supposed to have come from was always beyond me; even if you put all the kings and emperors and enchanters (good and evil) together and stripped them of everything they had, I still don’t think you’d get more than about one jewel-bed for one medium-large dragon out of it. But you see the glitter of the eyes and you do think of jewels. Nothing else comes close—not fire, not stars, not anything. Of course I, and most of the other listeners to fairy tales, have never seen more than the mayor’s beryl or topaz or whatever the local badge of office is, but we can all dream. When you see a dragon’s eyes up close—if you’re lucky enough to see a dragon’s eyes up close—you don’t have to dream.

  It was Hereyta’s left eye that was gone. Dragons have that great knobbly ridge over their eyes, and some of the breeding lines still throw out horns sometimes, but no really top-class dragon has horns any more. Hereyta didn’t. And she had two eyes—which shone so vividly I felt I’d be embarrassed ever staring into a mere bonfire again—and one black crater. It wasn’t ugly, any more than a dark hollow in a mountainside is ugly, but it looked all wrong.

  She didn’t seem to favour that side. As soon as we got outdoors—and this was true every time we came outdoors together for the few days left before First Flight—Sippy went into his full rushing-and-leaping-into-the-air routine. Dag just about killed himself laughing, that first time. In other circumstances I’d’ve probably got pretty mad at him laughing at Sippy like that, but it didn’t actually feel like he was laughing at Sippy. It wa
s like Sippy was doing him this enormous favour by letting all the laughter he hadn’t been able to laugh out, where it ought to be, instead of all pent up inside and squashed by worry and misery. Like Sippy licking Hereyta’s nose had knocked the bung out of the barrel, and now the laughter came flooding out. And because I wasn’t getting mad, I noticed what it really was: love. Dag really loved Hereyta. I understood that. It’s so much easier, loving animals. They love you right back, and it doesn’t get complicated. Unless it’s a two-eyed dragon who you’ve been partnered with for First Flight at your dragonrider academy.

  I don’t know if Hereyta just had really nice manners (yes) or if she was amused by Sippy too, but rather than ignoring the tiny lunatic doing his nut around her feet, by the end of that first game she’d developed her own side of it. When Sippy did it to me, the only rule I played by was that I had to move between rushes, so he had to keep adjusting and re-aiming. It was like, if you’re going to be this insane, I’m at least not going to make it easy for you. Hereyta used her head. She’d arch her endless neck (I swear the top of the arch had clouds hanging over it) so that her nose was just above ground level—say the top of my head, which is just above ground level to a dragon—and as Sippy rushed at her, she’d twitch it aside. I don’t think he started to develop his mid-air twist till he was playing with Hereyta; I was too easy a target. Then she’d move her head along sideways—keeping it amazingly the same distance above the ground—as if she was daring Sippy to try again, which of course he did.