Sign of the Dove

by Susan Fletcher

  The man’s voice sounded below her. “Galum! Bevan! Dwynn! Come help!”

  Benches scraping. Heavy, booted footsteps. Deep voices, conferring.

  Hurry. Hurry. They mustn’t see Owyn. Owyn could not keep his green eyes averted; he would give them away.

  She reached the landing just as the first footsteps jarred the wooden stairs. Down the hallway. Open the door and shut it behind. “Owyn!” she whispered urgently. “Get in the basket now! The hunters are coming!”

  “Why?” Owyn asked. She could hear the rumbling of footsteps: closer, closer. She picked him up, set him down in the empty basket. “We’re playing a trick on the hunters,” she said desperately. “Hush! Do you hear me? And no drumming. Hush!”

  Footsteps on the landing. Lyf grabbed two fistfuls of dirty linen, threw them over Owyn. Two more fistfuls, and her glance snagged on something light in the corner of the room.

  The egg. It had come partway out of its carrier.

  The door flew open; Lyf looked down and finished filling the basket with linen.

  Please don’t let them see the egg.

  The man who had helped her was counting. “One, two, three, four, five, six. If we each take one, we can be done with it in a single trip.”

  The draclings were light. But Owyn—he was heavy. If one of them picked up Owyn’s basket, he would know something was amiss. Lyf leaned down to claim the basket with Owyn in it. In her mind’s eye, the egg glowed like a full moon rising, impossible to miss.

  Heavy. Owyn was too heavy. She could never lug him down the steps. She started slowly toward the door because she knew not what else to do, when, “Let me swap with you, now, Lyf,” Alys said.

  Lyf let out a breath, lowered Owyn to the floor. “Wait,” she whispered. She fussed with the linens until the last man had left, then fetched the egg and carrier and slid them deep into the basket. “Here, Owyn. Hold the egg.”

  The linens moved a bit, and Lyf heard a muffled, “Why?”

  “Sh!”

  Alys picked up the basket with Owyn and the egg; Lyf snatched up the last remaining basket and followed them down the stairs.

  At the cart, one of the men took Lyf’s basket and set it within. She started for the seat near Alys, but the man stepped into her path. “My mother taught me,” he said,”to say ‘Thank you.’”

  Lyf looked up, startled. “Thank you!” she said. She ducked her head and scrambled up onto the seat.

  “You’ll return soon, then?” Alys’s admirer was asking her.

  She giggled. “Soon enough.” She shook the reins. “Git you! Rusty, git!” The cart slowly creaked forward.

  Lyf held her breath, waiting for the man to call out, straining to hear his running footsteps. “He saw my eyes,” she whispered. She was hot, all-over hot. She wiped her clammy hands on her cloak.

  “No, there, sweetie, I’m sure he didn’t,”Alys assured her.

  “Yes. I looked right at him. I didn’t mean to. He was blocking my way He wanted me to thank him, and it startled me.”

  Alys furrowed her brow. “Oh, dear,” she said.

  “It was just for a moment. When I was looking at him, I mean.”

  “Well, likely he didn’t notice.”Alys patted Lyf’s knee. Lyf could tell she was trying to be comforting. But Alys said nothing for a while after that. She was listening, Lyf thought. As Lyf herself was listening.

  Hazy yellow light seeped through the fog from the shop windows. Folk were stirring now. There were other carts about, and people walking. Lyf could hear dogs barking and the clanging of a smithy somewhere beyond.

  But no shouting. No following footsteps.

  Lyf turned to look back, but Alys laid a restraining hand on her knee. “No. Not yet.”

  “Can I come out now?” Owyn’s voice came from behind.

  “No,” Lyf said. “We’re still playing a trick on the hunters. Just a little while longer—then you may”.

  Lyf reached out with her mind for the draclings, and felt a waking, a restlessness. she urged.

  A questioning in her mind.

 

  A dog barked—nearer this time. Lyf jumped, started to look back, then remembered herself.

  “It’s only a little dog,” Alys said. “Not like the hunters’ hounds.”

  “Oh.” Lyf calmed a bit, but the yapping continued, seemed to grow closer. There was a restlessness, a seething in her mind. The draclings. she told them.

  And now she heard a second dog, one with a deeper bark. Alys turned back to look. “Oh, dear. It’s none of the hunters’ dogs,” she said,”but it is big. And it’s following.”

  A third dog, a fourth, a whole chorus of dogs joined in. Alys looked back again. “Shoo! Get away, now Shoo!” She shook the reins. “Faster, Rusty!”

  The swayback mare broke into a halfhearted trot, then subsided to a walk. Now dogs beset the cart on all sides, barking, baying, yipping, yapping. The draclings’ fears were clattering in Lyf’s mind. She turned back to look and saw three narrow heads poking up from the baskets. The little pumpkin-hued dracling huffed out a spray of sparks. Lyf urged, but that only seemed to alarm them. Four more heads popped up, and then Owyn was thrashing up through the linens, peering over the rim of his basket.

  “Why are those dogs barking?” he asked.

  “They won’t harm you,” Lyf said. “Get down!”

  The cart swerved suddenly; Lyf whirled round to see Rusty toss her head and shy from the pack of barking dogs.

  “Shoo! “Alys yelled. “Go away! Shoo!” She snapped the reins feverishly; the can jerked forward.

  People were staring at them now; Lyf could see them coming out of their cottages and shops to gape. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Alys chanted softly, oh clearing with every breath. Her gaze was fixed on the road ahead.

  There was a bridge, Lyf saw. A narrow plank bridge with a thin wooden rail. The draclings were making a racket in her mind; the dogs were thronging all about in a great, barking horde. The cart lurched in fitful stops and starts as Alys yelled at the dogs and urged the old nag forward. “I’m afraid I’m going to hurt the dogs,” she wailed to Lyf. “I’m afraid I’m going to run them down.”

  Lyf urged the draclings. She heard shouting, turned around to look, and her heart leapt into her throat. Folk running, pursuing. They came clearer now, through the fog: men, women, children, dogs.

  A lick of fire: one of the draclings was flaming. Then another and another. Puffs of blue smoke arose from the cart. More fire. One of the baskets was burning.

  And now the cart rattled up onto the bridge, but something was dreadfully amiss. They were tilting, they were tipping. …

  Lyf leaned hard against Alys to keep the cart from overturning, but she couldn’t stop it. There was a splintering crash as the railing broke, and they were hurtling through the air— draclings, linens, baskets, all—and the river came rushing up.

  Harper’s Tale

  Tyneth was deserted. Or so they thought at first—Kael-dra and her friends. But, hearing a dull roar, they made their way through empty streets to a throng gathered near a bridge.

  Like a fair it was, my ladies—the folk were that thick.

  Kaeldra and Jeorg lay low while the harper went for news. And dire enough it was: The innkeeper’s sister had fallen into the river—along with two younglings and a passel of draclings.

  CHAPTER 12

  The marsh

  The river slammed against her in a jolt of stinging cold. It stopped her breath and, when she gasped for air at last, water sucked up into her nose and filled her throat. Lyf thrashed her arms, trying to drag her head up into the air. Then she was coughing. Gasping. Coughing.

  Air.

  The bridge arched darkly overhead and then was gone as the current swept her along. Her boots, heavy as iron, dragged her down. Her cloak felt cumbrous as a coat of mail. Lyf pumped her arms and kicked her feet, trying to recall what Jeorg had taug
ht her of swimming.

  Owyn. Where was Owyn?

  Through the swirling fog, she could see the sleek-dark heads of draclings all about her, bobbing on the stream. A wicker basket grazed her shoulder and went floating past, and then a tangle of linen, bloated with air. She wrenched round to look for Owyn behind her, and a snag was bearing down, a massive stump with a great wide tangle of roots.

  “Auntie Lyf!”

  She saw him then, head above water, clutching to the roots.

  She reached out, grabbed a root, then worked her way hand over hand through the twisted snarl until she came to him. Gladness welled up within her. “Owyn!”

  “Auntie Lyf!” he said, and there was a catch in his voice.

  “Owyn, are you well? Unharmed?”

  He nodded, his eyes so dark and wide and frightened, they seemed to take up half his face. “Did we . . . trick the hunters?” he asked.

  Hunters. Lyf craned round to look behind, but could see little beyond the thick pall of fog. The grayness massed darkly to one side—the riverbank, perhaps. She could make out no such border on the other side. The water churned with foam and debris: tree branches, wooden planks, baskets, linens, draclings. Beyond the steady river rush she heard faint, calling voices and the barkings of distant dogs.

  Of Alys she saw no sign.

  Lyf turned back to Owyn, then her glance caught on a luminous patch of white.

  The egg. He held it in its carrier, clasped to his chest.

  “Owyn!” she said, stunned. “The egg. How did you . . . ?”

  “You told me to hold it.”

  “Yes, but . . . in the water . . .”

  “My da taught it to me, to swim on my back and hold things.”

  He had held it through the fall? She would never have held it. She would have dropped it with the first freezing shock of river.

  Lyf fumbled for the water-soaked carrier, drew its loop over her head. Then Owyn was climbing up through the roots to perch atop the stump. Lyf followed—but more slowly. Her hands had gone numb with cold and would not grip as they ought. Her boots weighed at least ten anchor-weight. Her sopping kirtle got entangled in the roots and between her legs; the egg kept getting in the way. All the while she feared the stump might tip and roll over, but it did not. At last, she dragged herself onto the bole and straddled there behind Owyn. She latched onto him with one hand and grasped a root behind her with the other.

  The snag rushed headlong through the fog, jolting over patches of white water, sending sheets of foamy river cascading into their faces. Thank the heavens the stump never rolled—its wide-spreading mass of roots kept the top side ever on top. But it yawed this way and that, and often, jostled by competing eddies, spun round and round again.

  Lyf could see draclings—dark splotches in the gray spring flood.

  she summoned. They veered toward the log, gliding like seals through the swollen river. Then they were climbing on, hooking their talons into the wet bark and pulling themselves up among the roots.

  The snag rocked but did not tip. The draclings shook themselves, flapping their wings, filling the air with spray. They came nuzzling round Lyf and Owyn—first Skorch, pushing past the others, then the fierce-looking green one, then a pudgy reddish one, and then Smoak, hiccuping, nudging, begging to be scratched.

  “I can’t scratch you now! Do you want me to fall off?” Lyf said, making her voice sound gruff. Then Kindle was climbing up Lyf’s arm and draping herself about Lyf’s neck, thrumming wildly. All of the draclings were thrumming. And Lyf felt a sudden, sharp surge of unreasonable joy.

  She began to count them, but broke off at a sudden shout from behind. Lyf twisted round and saw a dark shape in the fog: a boat. Two boats—no, three—no, four.

  All at once something burst inside her head, shattered in blinding splinters of pain. Lyf cried out, pressed her palms into her eyes. Again the pain came. It pulsed against Lyf’s skull, dwindled to a dull, aching throb.

  What was that?

  The draclings crowded round her, mewling. Their fears flooded into her mind.

  They must have felt it too.

  A hissing sound. Lyf looked up to see that the snag was plowing through reeds—a forest of reeds. It was slowing, stopping. They had fetched up on the riverbank.

  The boats. Where were the boats?

  Lyf shook her head to clear it, then tried to pull Kindle off her shoulder. The dracling refused to budge, digging her talons into Lyf’s flesh. Lyf clambered down from the stump and sank halfway to her knees in muck. Not the riverbank. A marsh! She turned round to help Owyn just in time to see him land in splattering mud. The draclings were leaping off the snag all around them, spraying her with scum and mud and water. They milled about her legs; their fears racketed against the inside of her skull.

  Lyf pulled Owyn up out of the mud and, pushing the egg to one side, set him on a hip and stumbled through the marsh. She could hear him crying—little gasping sobs. The draclings came splashing after.

  Behind came voices—sharp, alarmed. They were nearing.

  She struck out blindly away from the river. Her neck ached from lugging Kindle and the egg. Her dripping cloak and kirtle dragged her down. Mud pulled hard at her boots. Please, she thought, don’t let it be a suck-bog. One of the draclings got entangled in her legs; she tripped, fell, pulled herself to her feet. She tried to keep to the thickest clusters of marsh grass, hoping soon to feel solid ground beneath her. But the marsh was honeycombed with rivulets and streams, and mist clung thick and opaque to the ground. Lyf could not see clearly where she was putting her feet, and once plunged chest-deep into water. When she found the shallows again, she set down Owyn and resettled Kindle and the egg carrier about her chafing neck. Holding tight to Owyn’s hand, she skirted the edges of reedy thickets, trying to find a way through. Then she pushed aside a curtain of mallow grass and there was a mound of dry, hummocky land, where the ground did not squish underfoot.

  Lyf and Owyn slumped down on the reeds. The draclings came thrumming about, butted their heads at the egg, nuzzled her neck. Kindle slid down from her shoulders to her lap. Still frightened they were—Lyf could feel it—though not so strongly as before. “Sh!” she said. “Let me listen!”

  The reeds around them rose eerily from the mist; she could see nothing beyond. But she heard voices and splashing sounds. The draclings seemed to sense the need for caution; they sat still, cocking their narrow heads to one side as if listening. The voices seemed to come from all directions: approached, receded, approached. Lyf ached to move, to run, to flee—but forced herself to stay. If she could hear them moving, they could hear her moving. Especially with the draclings. A holt cat’s prey, she knew, was safe until it stirred; the holt cat could not see it else.

  Now they were the prey.

  The voices grew fainter. The draclings visibly calmed. Some of them trod round and round, trampling down the reeds before settling down. Others began licking their claws to clean them.

  “Are they gone?” Owyn whispered.

  Lyf shook her head no. She could still hear voices, far off. She could not tell where they came from—whether they were returning to the river or still searching. In fact, she was not certain any longer which way the river lay.

  She strained her ears through the marsh sounds—the constant, high chirpings of frogs, a faint rustling of reeds, the musical ploink of something falling into the water. She breathed in the rich smell of marsh rot, overlaid by the fragrance of flowers and new, green, growing things, overlaid by the smell of wet wool.

  “I’m cold,” Owyn said. He was shivering, Lyf saw. His throat-ill would come back.

  Only then did she realize that she was shivering too. Her kirtle clung to her back and shoulders, heavy and clammy and chill. She wrung out her braid and the hood of her cloak; it didn’t help.

  “Lie down,” she said to Owyn.

  “Why?”

  Lyf gave him a look; he obeyed. Gently, she pushed Kindle off her lap. She
found Smoak among the welter of draclings and pulled him atop Owyn. The dracling was limp, sleepy, compliant. Owyn shivered, curled up tighter. Smoak hiccuped once, thrummed, settled in.

  “Is that better?”

  “Um,” Owyn said. “He’s warm!”

  Lyf tried to sort out whole draclings from the tangle of heads and backs and tails. Nine. That couldn’t be. She counted again. Eleven. Better. But there had been thirteen! She called silently into the mist, but heard nothing, felt nothing. Then she remembered the twin bursts of pain in her head.

  Might they . . . have been killed?

  Lyf called.

  The draclings stretched up, cocked their heads, listening.

  But there was nothing.

  Well, perhaps they are only lost, Lyf thought. But she could not forget that blinding-bright pain.

  The draclings snuggled in again. Kindle crept toward Lyf, clambered up and draped herself about Lyf’s neck. Thank the heavens she was so light. Warmth seeped through Lyf’s sodden cloak, flowed deep into her neck and shoulders and back. She scratched the little one’s floppy crest. Kindle lifted her chin; Lyf scratched in the hollow beneath her jaw. The dracling began to thrum, her throat vibrating like the low string on a harp.

  Lyf surveyed the other draclings, trying to recall which ones were missing. Skorch sat in the middle of the heap, looking round alertly. Smoak lay atop of Owyn, hiccuping softly into his ear. Skorch and Smoak and Kindle were the only names Lyf knew. The others had not offered their names, and she had not pressed. A dragon’s name was a rare gift, Kaeldra had told her, and must be freely given.

  Still, Lyf recognized the others: the fierce-looking female, with her high-arching eye ridges; the big, pudgy reddish one. Where was the clumsy one who had backed into the post? No—wait. There she was, burrowed way down deep in the pile. But . . . where were Kindle’s siblings? The one the color of green apples, who liked to nibble Lyf’s fingers? The feisty pumpkin-colored one who was always spitting sparks? Lyf scanned the mound of draclings but could find no trace of them.