by L. L. Bower
The shoving, biting and squeaking stop. They all mimic the kenning back to me, like a choir in unison.
Crisa holds her wand high, so the light spreads out, and we can all see. Mordea and Caroom raise their torches too. I walk backward and wave my arms, as an airport lineman might, for the dragonettes to follow. They obey, passing through the doorway one at a time.
Each dragon is about the size of a large dog and exhibits one of their species’ colors—black, blue, green, purple or red, although their colors appear pale by torchlight. They flap their wings, but there’s not enough room for them to fly. I’m not sure all of them know how anyway.
As soon as they realize they don’t have the space to go airborne, they settle into a single file and march forward, like a column of kindergarteners during a fire drill.
Mordea walks down the corridor a ways and waits with a bugbear torch to illuminate our path with light. I turn around to lead the way for the babies on their march to their mothers.
I move down the long, straight hallway until all the dragonettes, thirty or so, have left their prison. They purr as they march, sounds I remember from back when Jade hatched. They must know they’re going home.
Caroom, along with the torch she carries, takes a spot in the middle of the pack. Lawra and Berb space themselves out along the line of dragons.
Berb cries out in pain. I look back to see the dragons snap at his ankles and squawk at him. They must not trust him. Crisa says something to them in Dragonspeak, and they settle down again and let Berb walk alongside them. Grog, still carrying the now-quiet gnome Bramble, follows at the end of the line with Crisa.
Every so often, one of the dragonettes recites the kenning, I think for reassurance, and I repeat it back.
Upon leaving the long, straight hallway, we travel the twists and turns again of this cave corridor until we pass the lab’s sealed door. The minotaurs still lie where they died. Inside, I’m sure Galdo is dead by now, and the goblins too must lie mortally wounded by my cyclone.
Past the lab, we reach the prison area as a couple of newly escaped grigs, tiny green fairies that glow, dart out to fly over our heads. Their cells had to be different from mine, and I wonder what kind of small, secure enclosure kept them trapped. The grigs look back at the parading column of dragon babies and increase their speed and altitude, zipping well ahead of us before I can blink. Soon they disappear around a corner.
About halfway to the open-roofed chamber, I look back and by torchlight see that some of the dragonettes hang their heads. Others butt their noses on the dragon in front of them when he or she slows down, and some sound pathetic and feeble when they squawk. They must be exhausted, starved and still a little scared.
By the time we reach our destination, the open chamber with the hole in its roof, we haven’t seen a single guard. The centaur diversion has worked.
As soon as we’re all in the chamber, Crisa shoots sparks from her wand up through the hole, this time in dragon colors of green, black, purple, blue and red. “Only a dragon can see this,” she tells me. The mothers won’t miss this sign to come get their babies.
While many of the babies plodded to get here, they now flit around frantically and emit fast and furious squeaking noises. They must be working off the dragon equivalent of adrenaline. We try to stay out of their way.
This is the first chance I’ve had to study these little escapees. Most are deathly pale and covered with filth. Several flap bent wings and can’t get airborne, and one has a huge gash in his forehead that drips blood down over one eye. Some cough out deadly drool, in green, black or blue, emissions we have to dodge. The red babies emit smoke when they cough, and the purple babies send out sputtering sparks. I hope they’ll all recover.
Soon, large dragon heads in all five colors peer over the edge of the opening above us. My heart leaps at the sight of these magnificent creatures, but Crisa, Grog, Berb, Mordea, Caroom and Lawra don’t seem affected.
Each baby squeals with joy when he or she recognizes Mama. A few, stronger dragonettes, who know how, fly up to their mothers. In response, each mother expresses her happiness through a series of chipper whistles and clicks. I can’t tell which are louder, the slurping sounds that signal a bath from Mama or the purring sounds from the babies that signal their contentment.
Although the rest desperately flap their wings, most of the dragonettes are too weak, inexperienced or injured to fly. Crisa tells me how she related in Dragonspeak that the bugbears, Berb and Grog, are on our side so that the mothers and babies would accept help from them. Grog sets Brambel down against a wall, and the oreads watch over him as he sleeps.
Each mother lowers a wing through the hole and points it at her baby. Then either Berb or Grog lifts the requested baby up and places it on the offered and very sturdy wing. Mama lifts her baby out of the hole, and they commence more of the noisy licking and purring process.
If the baby can achieve some altitude, the mother will stretch her long neck as far as it will go—and that’s a considerable way—to catch the baby with her jaw behind its neck, much like a mother cat would. She then carries her little one off or slings it onto her back. Again, these actions are accompanied by the dragon equivalent of joyful cheers by both mother and baby. We stand back and watch in awe.
I feel good about what we’ve done, despite the risk from Galdo and his guards, all of whom, it turns out, were easier to subdue than I thought. We’ve not only allied the dragons with us, we’ve brought at least a temporary peace to this war-torn country. Maybe I can now rebuild my home and take up fishing and repairing clocks again.
When all of the babies have been scooped up by their mothers, we prepare to leave.
Jade appears at the edge of the roof opening, looks down and asks me telepathically, “Is that all the dragons you rescued?”
“I’m afraid so. Why, are we missing some?”
“Three mothers up here are without their babies. Is it possible that not all the dragonettes followed you?”
My heart sinks, and I kick myself for not checking their prison den more carefully before we left. If any babies didn’t follow us, that means they couldn’t, either because they were too weak or because they were dead.
“We can go back and look, but I’m afraid the news won’t be good.”
Jade says, “If nothing else, the mother will have a body to bury.”
I turn to Crisa. “I suppose you heard what Jade told me.”
Crisa brushes a straggly hair out of her face. “Yes, and we should split up, since someone needs to get medical attention for Brambel.”
Berb says something in Bugbearese, which Grog translates. “Berb need go home, family.”
“And we’re beyond tired.” Caroom looks at Lawra who nods. “We’d like to see our families too.”
Mordea says, “I can stay and help.”
“I hate to split up after all we’ve been through together.” I sigh. “But I understand the need to see your families. Your help has meant so much to Crisa and me. We couldn’t have been successful without it.”
The oreads smile and bow, while Grog translates my message to Berb, who nods. They’ll travel to their respective villages for a much-deserved reunion with their families. Grog, who’s placed Brambel once again over his shoulder, will head back to the compound, so my gnome friend can be ministered to. We seem to be filling up Crisa’s place with Galdo’s victims.
Crisa, Mordea, Brutus and I will go back for the remaining babies. Crisa’s magic will come in handy, and Mordea’s shapeshifting ability is necessary to our survival in the event we encounter more guards. Maybe, if word gets around that Galdo is dead, they won’t care to guard his prison, since it’s empty now anyway.
I look at Brutus. He’s lying on the cool stone floor against a wall. “Let’s go, Buddy.” He whimpers and puts his head between his front paws.
“What’s wrong? Are you still feeling ill from your run-in with Galdo?”
He nods his head slightly in affir
mation. Most people wouldn’t recognize that he understood my question. His head dips, and he whimpers again.
“I’ll take you back to the mountain once we finish our mission. You rest and get your strength back.” I lean down and pat his head. He sighs. I leave him lying down, head between his paws, eyes closed.
Brutus’s extra protection and dark creature detection would have been nice to have on the trek back to the dragonettes’ prison, but Noblesse and my helmet will be good substitutes.
We three, Crisa, Mordea and I, bid goodbye to our bugbear, gnome and oread friends who travel toward the narrow exit from which we escaped earlier. We retrace our steps toward the “killing” part of the cave.
We know the twists and turns of this corridor well now, and Crisa’s wand is all the light we need. We pass the prison and then the lab, which are both quiet. We see that the lab door is still sealed, with the two dead minotaurs still outside where they fell. Inside, two goblins and a sorcerer have probably met their maker.
Right past the lab, near the cell where the dragonettes were imprisoned, we find a pale green baby dragonette lying at the edge of the cave. Its eyes are closed, but, from the heaving of its sides, I can tell it’s still alive. This baby must have been too weak to make the entire trip. It must have crawled through the open door after we left and tried to follow us, until it could go no farther.
Crisa leans over the dragon, caresses its head and chants, “Moto Energius.” The baby opens its eyes and raises its head.
I repeat the kenning for warmth and home, and the baby starts to purr. Its feet are covered in black filth, so Crisa waves her wand and cleans it up.
Mordea shapeshifts again into a bugbear. “With a bugbear’s strength, I can carry this dragon with ease.” Even though the baby is small by dragon standards, he or she still weighs at least thirty pounds.
Our shapeshifting friend tries to pick up the dragonette, but she nips at his fingers and spits blue goo at him. Mordea jerks his hands back. I repeat the clicks and whistles for “warmth and home.” The dragonette sighs and lowers its head.
Mordea strokes its head. “I won’t hurt you, little one. Trust me.” The baby looks at me, and I repeat the kenning in Dragonspeak again. Crisa says something too in the baby’s language, and its eyes enlarge.
“What did you tell it?” I ask Crisa.
“That Mordea is a friend who’s going to take it to its mother.”
The baby allows Mordea to lift it into his arms where it lets out a pitiful squawk. Mordea pets its scaly back and says in a soft, quiet voice, “That’s a good dragon. Let’s get you to your mother now.”
The dragonette puts its head over Mordea’s shoulder and closes its eyes.
Mordea crouches forward a little and leans against the cave wall, still holding the dragonette. “Since the baby is so content right now, why don’t I wait here?” He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t relish seeing what you’ll find, and it might scare this little one, who’s been through enough already.”
I nod. “Good call. We’ll catch you on the way back.”
Crisa and I walk toward the end of the corridor, still using her wand to see. When we reach the melted door to the dragonettes’ prison, Crisa’s holds her wand high, and it casts a weak glow into the dark room. I peer in but don’t see or hear anything, not even the sound of dripping water. I clear my throat to make sure my ears still work.
My sense of smell, however, is working overtime. An intense sulfurous odor confirms that the dragons were confined here. I swallow hard, to keep from tasting stomach acid. Above the gag-level of sulfur is the scent of something rotting, and I plug my nose.
I’m grossed out, and part of me wants to turn around and leave. But my sense of determination to find the remaining dragons overcomes my disgust. Where are those other two babies?
I look over at Crisa and, in these dim conditions, notice her angelic ivory aura. As far as I can tell, I’m one of few who can see it. I tell her, “I don’t see or hear anyone.”
She takes a deep breath. “I can’t stand this stench. It reeks of cruelty and neglect.” She scrunches up her nose and waves her wand. “There, I’ve dispelled the rancid smell.”
I unplug my nose and find that the disgusting odors are gone.
She sweeps her wand in an arc, trying to catch all the corners of the room with its light, but all we see is a blackened floor. We step into the stone room, much too small for so many dragonettes, a twelve-by-twelve square tomb that looks like it was magically chiseled out of rock. As we walk, the floor squishes and is covered in layers of what I think is dragon waste. I’m nauseated again.
Crisa swishes her wand along the ground on each side of the square room, and my eyes follow her light. At first, I don’t see anything—just more filth. During a second sweep, I notice a taller pile of waste in one corner. “Let’s take a closer look over there.”
As we pick our way carefully to that far corner, I can’t prevent the spongy muck from oozing over and into the tops of my hiking boots.
When we reach the gunk in the corner, the light from Crisa’s wand reveals what’s left of two dragonettes, one on top of the other, plastered with feces. Neither dragon moves. Here’s the source of the rotting smell that Crisa thankfully dispelled.
Crisa reaches down to check for a pulse on each of the bodies. When she pulls her sludge-covered fingers back, she cleans them with a swipe of her wand and removes the black muck from the tops of the dragons.
She grimaces. “They’re both dead, and from the looks of them, they’ve been gone a while.” I observe what she means. The vacuum of death has sucked up their bodily liquids. Their leathery black skin now hugs their bones. They’re so desiccated and muck-darkened that it’s impossible to tell what color they were in life.
A tear trickles down Crisa’s face. “No creature should have to die this way.” Her voice catches. “And certainly not little ones like these.”
I groan in agreement. “We can’t take them to their mothers looking like this.”
“I’ll clean them up better.” She squiggles her wand, and the rest of the muck slides off. Then with another wand flourish, she brightens them, until they appear as if they were never soiled. She even adds plumpness to their skin. Now they look like they’re only sleeping. By her wand’s glow, I can tell one of them was a red dragonette, and the other was black.
She lowers her wand. “There. The mothers will never know they died on a dung heap like yesterday’s garbage.”
“How can we get them back to their mothers?” I ask. “Mordea will carry that live dragonette, but I think two more dragons will be too much for him to haul. I guess I can try to carry one of them.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll use my magic to suspend them in air and float them back through the caves.”
She twirls her wand around and around them, and they slowly lift off the ground. She causes the bodies to hover ahead of us, sending them out of their prison cell and into the cave hallway. We follow.
Farther down the hall, we meet Mordea again. Thankfully, the baby dragon is still asleep on his shoulder and doesn’t see the babies’ corpses. When Mordea sees them, he moans. “Such a loss.”
“I feel for their mothers.” I slap my fist into my palm. Questions of why buzz around in my head like trapped insects. Why did those other mothers get their babies back? Why didn’t these two make it?
Crisa shakes her head like she’s read my thoughts. “More senseless casualties from Galdo’s evil.”
Mordea shifts the sleeping dragonette on his shoulders as we start back down the cave corridor, the hovering deceased dragons and Crisa, with her lighted wand, in the lead.
All of a sudden, Mordea stops us. “Wait a minute.” He plugs his nose. “Do you know how bad you two smell?
“No.” Crisa sniffs her sleeve. “I cast an odor-neutralizing spell on the room, so we could stand being in that dung-infested place but didn’t include us. Are we stinky?”
“Let’s just sa
y I’m having trouble keeping my breakfast down.”
“I can fix that.” Crisa recites an incantation.
“Ah, much better.” Mordea inhales deeply, like he’s been holding his breath up to now. “I can stand to be in the same cave with you now.”
I walk forward a few steps and realize my shoes don’t gurgle now. I look down to see they’re clean too.
We pass the lab door again, and it’s still sealed. No one else emerges from the prison area, and no sounds resound through the cave, which feels weird but also good. Unless more guards return, the prison is empty, and the lab is destroyed. Galdo’s reign of terror is over.
When we reach the open cavern, Crisa explains to the waiting dragon mother that Mordea, still in bugbear form, is actually a tomte, not a dark creature. That allows Mordea to pass his sick charge up to its parent without being drenched in deadly slobber.
He murmurs, “I’m sorry,” as he hands the baby to its green-colored mother.
She gently plucks her baby from his hands with her teeth to set it on the ground next to her. The mother drops her nose and nudges it, whereupon the baby emits a pitiful squawk. Slurping noises follow, as it gets a bath.
Another dragon mother appears with raw meat in her mouth, which she places near the sickly dragonette. The next sounds are chewing and smacking noises.
Mordea raises his eyebrows. “It may yet recover.”
Meanwhile, the last two mothers, one red and one black, peer over the edge of the opening and see the hovering carcasses of their little ones. One of them exudes a human-sounding wail, while the other trembles.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” Crisa says in English. She says something else in Dragonspeak, as she raises her wand and sweeps it upward. The corpses rise in slow motion through the roof opening. Each mother wraps a wing around her rising baby and then cradles it, sobbing quietly. They both disappear from view. I assume they’re going to find a place to bury their offspring.