Sign of the Dove

by Susan Fletcher

  “It’s time, then, is it?”

  Lunedweth was standing over her.

  “Yes.”

  The egg lurched again, and Lyf heard a soft ripping sound. There was a flurry of hail on the thatch, a tinkling of charms, a growling of distant thunder. The crack was longer now, and gaping. A tiny, translucent talon wiggled at one end of it, then vanished within the egg. Light spilled across it; Lyf looked up. Lunedweth was holding a candle.

  Inside the egg Lyf could see something gray and glistening and wet. She could not tell if it was head or tail, if it was shoulder or stomach or leg.

  The draclings crowded round now, thrumming, nosing at the egg. Lyf could feel their eagerness. Spens came and sat among them, stroking them, gazing at the egg.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Lyf said.

  Lunedweth shook her head. “Nor I. I know little of the Ancient Ones. But it doesn’t take a dragon-sayer to know this: The hatchling will need a mother—and milk.”

  Milk! She spoke true. Kaeldra had said that the youngest draclings needed milk. She said she had fed some of them goat’s milk, but what they truly needed was the milk of a mother dragon.

  Thunder boomed; the egg lurched again. Something was pushing up through the crack.

  A nose.

  Another lurch, and a tiny head poked out.

  It was long and bony and all-over damp. It seemed to be covered with a clammy, fuzzy skin. Its eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and its little skinny pink forked tongue flicked in and out.

  It was the ugliest thing Lyf had ever seen.

  The head began to swivel round, nostrils flaring, as if the hatchling were trying to feel the world by smell. A sound. It was making a sound. A hoarse little squeaky sound, like a rusty hinge.

  “Oh, sweet mother of the planets,” Lunedweth said.

  A clap of thunder. The loose shutter ripped off with a thump and the wind was blowing inside, riffling the pages of the books, stirring Lyf’s hair. Lunedweth was shouting something at Spens, something about the shutter. Lyf saw Owyn stumbling sleepily toward her; he nestled in among the draclings, near the egg.

  The hatchling struggled pitifully to free itself from its shell. Lyf was tempted to help it, to pry the egg away. But with chicks it was best to let them do it themselves. So too, perhaps, with draclings.

  She watched.

  The hatchling gave a great heave; the crack widened. Another heave, and the tiny body flopped through the gap, slid into Lyf’s lap.

  It was all skin and bones and talons—a piteous sight. Its head seemed far too big for its body, for too heavy for its spindly neck to support. It lay on Lyfs lap, heaving for breath, its heartbeat pulsing in its throat.

  The draclings surged closer, gazing at the hatchling. Lyf might have feared that they would harm it, were they not thrumming so loud.

  She removed the shell from her lap then reached out a finger and stroked the hatchling, stroked all the way down its back and tail. She could feel the sharp little bones beneath the wet layer of fuzz. Her finger came away wet and creamy-feeling. It was like fleece-wax. like touching a lamb’s wool.

  The hatchling twitched, flopped, staggered across Lyf’s lap—nudging her, making little smacking, sucking sounds with its mouth.

  “Here.”

  Lunedweth handed Lyf a twisted rag dripping with goat’s milk. Lyf held it above the hatchling, let it drip onto the tiny snout. The hatchling snapped at the cloth and began to suckle. Lyf could see movement in its scrawny little throat as it swallowed. All around, the draclings leaned toward her, thrumming loud. The hatchling suckled but a short while, then sagged down again, asleep.

  Now the thunder and wind had abated and settled down to a steady, hard rain. Spens, Lyf saw, was nailing the shutter back down.

  She stroked the hatchling again. It had already begun to dry. Its skin felt soft—so soft. Its sides swelled with an intake of breath, then it gave a little sigh and melted deeper into Lyf’s lap.

  And a strong, warm feeling flooded Lyf: a fierceness, an urge to protect. This hatchling … she was bound to it in some way she did not understand. She was vulnerable now in a way she had never been. If harm befell this little one … well, she could not steel herself against it. She could not separate herself from it. It would pierce her to the bone.

  “They hatch out of eggs, like birds,” Lunedweth was musing, “but they take milk like humans, like goats. And yet I fear they’re like birds in another way, as well.”

  “How is that?” Lyf asked.

  “You’re the first thing it saw, the first to feed it. This wee one thinks you’re its mam.”

  Harper’s Tale

  When a rat scurries round you long enough, you begin to know the smell of it.

  Their suspicions of Nysien grew. While Kaeldra rested and the others made ready to sail up the coast to the dragon’s cave, Nysien scurried round the village in search of … what? Provisions, he said. Ever it was provisions.

  And now, of a sudden, Nysien began to fret after Owyn and Lyf. He would ride out in search of them, he said. They might be lost, he said—or worse. “You sail on to the cave without me. Make a fire at the cave mouth. I’ll find it”

  The harper, thinking it well to keep Nysien under watch, made offer to go with him.

  Both Nysien and Jeorg protested.

  Later, Jeorg took the harper aside. He, Jeorg, would follow Nysien, while Kaeldra and the harper and the fisherman went ahead. “I leave her in your care” he said.

  He must truly have been alarmed to leave Kaeldra in the care of another—even one so illustrious as the harper.

  But the trouble, my lords and ladies, was greater than he thought.

  CHAPTER 16

  Never You Fret

  Lyf got little sleep for all the rest of that night. Every time she started to doze, the hatchling would let out its high, mewling peep peep peep, then nudge at her belly, making soft, sucking sounds. She kept a pig bladder full of goat’s milk at her side. The other draclings did not clamor to drink it; they had sniffed it at first but seemed to have no taste for it. Lyf would squirt milk onto the cloth teat, then hold it over the hatchling’s snout, letting the milk drip down. Once, Lunedweth tried to feed the hatchling too so that Lyf could get some sleep, but the hatchling hissed and stumbled blindly away from her, seeking out Lyf.

  “It knows the smell of you,” Lunedweth said, “and won’t take food from any but its mam.”

  And now Lyf was truly caught. For so long she had yearned for the day when she could give the draclings to someone else—someone stronger, someone older, someone who could deliver them into the charge of a dragon full-grown. But this hatchling would not take food, save from her. She could not give it over to another—even Kaeldra—or the little one would starve. She would have to take it to the mother dragon.

  And yet her fears were greatly blunted by the sweetness of having this little helpless creature in her lap, kneading and thrumming, taking nourishment from only her hands.

  The draclings floated from time to time, rising up, jangling in the moons and stars, startling Lyf awake. Neither Luned-weth nor Spens remarked on it, though surely they heard. Likely they had seen the draclings float before, when Lyf had yet been tranced. Likely they were used to it by now.

  It was nearly dawn when Lyf heard whispers.

  “You must tell her!” she heard.

  “But I swore. I gave my word.”

  “She’s likely the one the secret’s for. You must tell!”

  Beyond the dim glow of the banked fire, Lyf could make out two shadowy forms crouched in a far corner.

  “Tell what?” Lyf asked.

  Silence. One of the forms moved: a rustle of cloth, the crunch of a foot in straw, a tinkling of silver. A tongue of light bloomed up from the embers, illuminated Lunedweth’s face. “Come, Spens,” she said, then came to kneel at the edge of the knobbly mound of draclings surrounding Lyf.

  Spens crept slowly near, until the candlelight flickered across his
face. A shock of dark hair fell across his brow. “I swore I wouldn’t tell,” he said.

  “Don’t be a muddlewit! He’ll be vexed with you if you don’t. And these …” Light bled across the draclings. They had sunk back to the ground, their sides moving peacefully in sleep breathing. “There’s little enough chance for ’em. You must tell.”

  “Tell what Lyf asked. “ Who will be vexed?”

  No answer.

  “Is it Kaeldra? Have you had word of her?”

  “It’s … my uncle,” Spens said at last. “He’s a fisherman in the village of Merdoc. There’s a … a dove carved on his boat.”

  The breath caught in Lyf’s throat. “A dove?”

  “One time I was pointing out his boat to someone, and I said, ’Tis the one with the dove on its prow’And my uncle nearly barked me down. After, I mean. I was not to speak of it, he said. And I said, ‘Anyone could see it. It’s plain to view.’ And he said they wouldn’t remark upon it, ’less it were pointed out. And then when you spoke of the brine rats, well, I saw some in his boat once, in a fish barrel. And I asked about them, and he said the same thing. Made me swear not to breathe a word. And he wouldn’t tell me why.”

  Relief flooded through her. One of the dove sign!

  “Is it near, this Merdoc?” Lyf asked. “Can we go there?”

  “Not now,” Lunedweth said. “Sleep while yet you can! There are things I must attend to—-then we’ll see.”

  Soon enough, Lyf woke to the hatchling’s hungry mewlings. Sleepily, she fed it. She could not tell whether this hatchling was male or female. In the faint morning light, its skin looked gray—neither reddish gray nor greenish gray—and it was whole, without rents to show the scales beneath. Lyf tried to ken with it, but felt only a faint tingling in her head. The hatch-ling’s scrawny throat worked as it swallowed, its face suffused with bliss. Watching, Lyf was engulfed by a wave of tenderness.

  She could see Owyn asleep among the draclings, and Spens’s slumbering form on his pallet. Lunedweth was tending a small fire in a clay bowl by the window. Smoke twined up in odd undulations, and the fresh, pungent smell of burning tinewort filled the room. Lunedweth began to chant—softly, rhythmically, waving her purple-tipped fingers above the flame, disturbing the smoke. At last she stopped, doused the flame with water, and turned to face Lyf.

  “You must go now,” she said, “for the earth pulse conspires against you in this place. I sense a warping in the aura, and the moon is out of phase. Besides,” she added, “something’s come into the marsh. The birds are in a pother—and I’m certain I heard dogs.”

  They made their way through the marsh while mist shrank the world to a moving patch of gray water and ghostly reeds. Though Lyf was fearful, straining eyes and ears against the mist for signs of men and dogs, the going was easier than before. For Spens conveyed them in his boat—a stout, leathern tub of a vessel, hardly large enough to contain them all. He knelt astern and rowed while Lyf and Owyn sat forward amid a welter of squirming draclings. The hatchling slumbered within the carrier; when she pressed it to her stomach, Lyf could feel it thrum.

  She marked no sign of others in the marsh—though it was true that she could see little beyond the gray pall of fog. She did hear birds, but there were ever birds in the marsh. Twice she thought she heard barking.

  “Never you fret,” Spens said, reassuring. “I know these marshlands as well as my own left knee. If the hunters come near, I know channels they’ll never find, and bolt-holes they’d never dream of.”

  Lunedweth did not come. She stood watching and faded behind them into the mist until she and her crannog and her hut had vanished away entire.

  “Will they find her?” Lyf asked Spens. “Whoever it is with the dogs?”

  “Not soon,” he said. “But when the fog burns off …”

  Spens had argued with Lunedweth to put out her fire so that the smoke would not betray her whereabouts. But she had refused. “I’ll draw them away from you,” she had said. “I’ll mix them a love potion in a cup of plum wine—no—111 not have them clinging to me. I’ll cast a muddlement on them. They’ll stagger round the marsh till you’re well away.”

  Yet whoever it was would likely find Lunedweth, soon or late. And though Lunedweth had sworn she would cast a muddlement on them, Lyf gravely doubted whether she could cast anything but sticks and stones. Lyf wondered again that Lunedweth would help them, would risk her life for theirs. “You were needin’ help, so I gave it. It’s that simple. If you can’t understand that, then I pity you—so I do.”

  At first the draclings were restless. Clambering one on top of another, they swarmed in a wiggly heap to one side of the boat and then the other. They peered down into the rippling water, huffed out smoke at the rushes passing by. Lyf scolded them to be still, because the boat was tipping precariously. Smoak sprang into her lap and hiccuped smoky breaths into her face. Only the hatchling slept.

  Owyn wanted to peek at it; Lyf opened the sack and let him look in. “Be gentle with it, now,” she said.

  With a great show of tenderness, he reached his chubby hand within the sack and stroked the hatchling’s head. “It’s soft,” he said. Satisfied, he withdrew his hand; he paid little mind to the hatchling after that.

  But Lyf could not get enough of it. Again and again she opened the sack and peered within. Movement flickered beneath the hatchling’s eyelids, and expressions poured like water over its bony face: joy, and then pain, and then joy again. Dreaming, it was. But what, Lyf wondered, did one so new to this world have to dream of?

  The hatchling sneezed, breathed in sharply, let out a long, slow sigh.

  So helpless.

  So sweet.

  Kindle jealously butted at Lyf whenever she gazed down at the hatchling, until Lyf relented and scratched between Kindles eye ridges. Then the little blue-green dracling closed her eyes, thrumming, and the corners of her mouth curved up in a smile.

  Lunedweth had mixed in a sleeping potion with the draclings’ meal of dried newts, and soon, much to Lyf’s relief, it took effect. Before long the draclings settled down into a tangled, drowsy heap in the bottom of the boat. Spens tossed Lyf a fishnet; she spread it over them.

  But Owyn was not tired a bit. He kept plaguing her with questions and complaints—”Why do we have to go now?” “Why can’t Lunie come with us?” “When will we get to the town?” “I’m hungry!” “I’m thirsty!” “My legs hurt!”

  Lyf answered his questions, urged him to have patience, rubbed his cramping legs. But soon she felt herself begin to fade. She had not been quite the same since that last kenning. She felt drained all the time and seemed to need more sleep. Her thoughts often came muzzy and dull.

  At last, in spite of Owyn, in spite of her trepidations, Lyf drowsed off. When she opened her eyes, the mist had dispersed. The boat was scudding down a brisk stream surrounded by forest. The draclings still slept; Owyn had somehow moved back near Spens, who deftly guided the boat through the churning water. Spens smiled, seeing Lyf awake, as he answered one of Owyn’s whys,

  The hatchling was mewling. Lyf sat up, groped about for the bladder of goat’s milk Lunedweth had given her, and began to feed it.

  “Have you seen anyone?” she asked. “The men with the dogs?”

  “Nary a soul”Spens said.

  “Why are you sleeping so much?” Owyn asked.

  “I was … sick,” Lyf said. “But I’m feeling better now.”

  And she did feel better—less drained, less muzzy. But she was still tired. When the hatchling had done with feeding, she snuggled against the netted heap of draclings and closed her eyes again.

  When next she awoke, it was nearly dusk. “Have I slept so long?” she murmured, looking about her. The river had widened now. Calmed. It was lined on both banks with scrubby tanlar trees, but beyond them she saw planted fields.

  Spens chuckled. “You’Ve slept nearly all this day.”

  “I never sleep so long,” she said. The kenning. It must hav
e been that. The draclings, awake and restless, came thrumming toward her. Someone had taken off their net Owyn started drumming on the boat with a spoon Lunedweth had given him.

  “Have they been fed?” Lyf asked.

  Spens nodded. “Dried lizards for the draclings—the last of Lunedweth’s cache. Some of her stewed meat”—he wrinkled his nose—”for Owyn and me. Would you be wantin’ some?”

  Lyf shook her head. She wasn’t ready for Lunedweth’s cooking. Not yet. Her stomach felt too unsettled. But her mind, for the first time since the kenning, was clear.

  Spens, she saw now, had turned the boat and was paddling in toward shore.

  “Well wait in a place I know,” he said, “till after dark. The village isn’t far. I hope my uncle’s home. My aunt … well … I’Ve never spoken to her of… the dove sign.”

  Lyf felt a flicker of unease.

  “But she must know,” Spens said. “And besides, my uncle’s likely home. Never you fret.”

  Spens grabbed an overhanging root when they reached shore; the draclings surged out of the boat and scrambled onto the bank. Lyf gave Owyn a boost, then picked up the bladder of milk and clambered up herself. The river held a dull, pewter gleam, but darkness lay thick among the trees. Spens dragged the boat up the slope and stowed it in a heap of brush. He led them along the shaded riverbank, then up a long, sloping path until they came to a stone-built hut set into the side of the hill.

  “It’s years since I’ve been here,” he said. “My friends and I, we used to bide here sometimes. It was our fort.”

  The sharp smell of moldering thatch engulfed Lyf as she entered. The shed had no windows, but light seeped in through a gap in one wall and a yawning hole in the roof. Owyn threw himself down on the packed-earth floor; the draclings bounded in after, walked across his stomach, flicked at him with forked tongues.

  The hatchling was peeping for milk, but when Lyf began to feed it, Kindle climbed into her lap and nipped at the milk rag.

  Lyf said. She dumped Kindle off her lap and yanked at the rag.