by Jane Yolen
Just when he thought his lungs would burst the green turned a brilliant white and he followed it up and into the air. He grabbed great gulps of breath and his chest heaved up and down. When his eyes were no longer water-filmed he saw he was in a cavern of green-white crystals. Overhead and on the cave walls were strange, faceted rocks that pulsed with light. Above the water, rainbow shadows danced and shimmered. Then he realized that instead of being in a lake he was in an eddying river whose slow-moving current was carrying him along. He paddled in desultory fashion, letting the river do the work, and in this way rounded a great curve. Suddenly an enormous opening was before him. It was as high as the nursery studbarn and opened on to endless sky.
The water carried him through. He turned over and floated along on his back, looking up into the clear blue Austarian sky where a black dot was scripting an elliptic message. His mind still crackled with the water’s static, so there was no way he could receive a sending that would tell him if that dot was a dragon—or a copter. He flipped back over onto his stomach, took three strong strokes, and clambered out onto a bank whose grass came right down into the water.
From where he stood, shaking himself like a dragon just emerged from a bath, he could see that the river wound on for another couple hundred meters, and then disappeared precipitously, as if the end were suddenly sheered off. There was a constant low deep sound, which seemed at once comforting and ominous. He wondered about it, but it wasn’t like any sound he’d ever heard.
Behind him the mountain climbed straight up, as if a second mountain stood atop the first, its dark rocks broken and ugly. On the other side of the river was a grassy slope similar to the one he stood on, and beyond it a sheer drop. He could see a stretch of desert land below with scattered green-black clumps of trees. And even farther on there was a black snaky line he guessed was a river, perhaps even the Narakka.
He became aware of the untrammeled grass between his toes, cool and tickling. Smiling at last, he threw himself facedown and let the strong familiar earth smell surround him.
But all the while he was thinking furiously, questions boiling up inside. How was he to get Akki, who could not swim, through the water to this blue-and-green haven? How could he convince a dragon already beginning to swell with eggs to swim to an unknown and unknowable destination? How could he hold both girl and worm through the terrifying moments underwater when none of them would be able to link minds? And, above all, how could he do it so that the cave people didn’t know their plans ahead of time or follow them into this light and open place?
Shaking his head, Jakkin let the sun warm and dry him. Slowly his mind cleared of the static, and as it did he felt it invaded by a faraway sending, faded but familiar:
“Sssargon rides. Sssargon turns. Sssargon soars.”
Jakkin chuckled to himself, waiting for the dragon to become aware of his presence. Then as the dragon monologue continued unabated, realization dawned on Jakkin. Sssargon simply didn’t hear him. He, Jakkin, was broadcasting none of his feelings. The habits he had learned in his long days deep in the cave held. Without even worrying about it, without working at visualizing a wall or a curtain or a fence, he could now cloak his feelings. Thankfully he opened his mind and let out a whoop of color. “Sssargon!” his sending shouted. “Sssargon, shut up! And Sssargon—come here!”
The dot did a complete loop-de-loop and started toward him, its sendings blasting out a parade of patterns—reds, golds, purples. In its wake there came four other sendings, related yet individual. The hatchlings, Heart’s Blood’s five, had all heard him and were on their way.
***
THEY NEARLY BROKE two of his ribs and fairly suffocated him once they had landed, crowding around him in boisterous delight. Sssasha had to buffet the triplets away from him with a broad sweep of her tail. And Sssargon, undaunted by their teasing, continued his commentary throughout the reunion, a color-filled drone that soon had them all chuckling.
“Sssargon laughs. Sssargon feels joy.”
At last Jakkin caught his breath and cleared his mind. He looked carefully at the five, all of whom seemed overgrown after the stunted, dull dragons of the cave. He patted Sssasha’s nose with its splotch of gold, then opened his mind to them slowly, like a storyteller beginning a tale. He made them feel the low, dark inside of the mountain caves and the low, dark minds of the cave’s damaged inhabitants. He pictured the work details, the reunion with Akki, the healing of the dragon, and the silent, steady laying of the eggs. Then, with a kind of mental drumroll, he pounded out the rest of the story, ending with the great gout of blood red spewing over them all.
If dragons could weep, they wept. Crowding close to him, they rubbed against him in their need for comfort. Sssasha licked his ear carefully with her rough tongue.
Then Tri-ssskkette, with the mental equivalent of a sigh, sent a fluttering thought that flapped like the skin over her ears. “Akki!” She laced the picture of Akki in gold but the flutter lines kept breaking up the image. It was so plaintive, Jakkin reached over and hugged her around the neck.
“Akki,” he said aloud, framing a simultaneous sending. Dragons recognized certain spoken words—names and specific objects—but the sendings were still necessary. “Akki is under the mountain by the lake. I must go back. But thee will have a place in this ending, Tri—I promise thee that.”
The others pushed next to Tri-ssskkette, signaling their own willingness, and nearly knocked Jakkin over. He gave them each a pat on the nose.
“This is my plan, and it will be better to say it to thee now, for once I am back in the water and under the mountain, I can send thee nothing.”
“Nothing?” Sssargon was startled out of his self-involvement for a moment.
“Nothing,” Jakkin repeated, both out loud and in a sending. “The water stops all sendings.”
“Thee will be like other men then?” It was Sssasha who understood first.
“Almost.” Jakkin nodded. “But the people of the cave can send to dragons, and their sendings are strong. If thee feels it, Sssasha, if they call thee in this way”—and he looked at them fiercely— “COME, COME, COME, then thee must all pump thy wings and leave at once. For these are worm killers, bone stackers, blood drinkers. Thee must all leave Akki and me. No more of Heart’s Blood’s line must die for me. Do you understand?”
They nodded their great heads up and down, up and down, in slow agreement, Sssasha first and then the triplets and, at the very last and reluctantly, Sssargon.
“Thee must wait here, ready to help. Thee must he my eyes and my ears.” Then he told them what he planned, so shapeless a thing that even as he spoke and sent it, he wondered if it could possibly work.
When Jakkin had finished Sssargon put his nose against Jakkin’s ear and blew a warm breath into it. Then he twisted his neck so that he was eye to eye with Jakkin. “Sssargon hears. Sssargon be eyes.”
“We are thy ears, thy ears, thy ears.” The triplets emphasized this by fluttering their earflaps outrageously. Jakkin rewarded them each with a chuck underneath the chin.
Then he turned to Sssasha. “And thee, my beauty?” he asked, touching the gold slash on her nose.
“I am thy heart, Jakkin,” she sent. It was as clear and unambiguous as any sending the people of the cave could send, but it shimmered with light and with love, and he could read past, present, and future in it.
He turned, slid down the grassy slope back into the water. It seemed colder than before. As he started to stroke against the current, moving slowly upstream, he fought the impulse to turn and look back at the dragons. He needed every bit of strength for the difficult pull ahead. And he feared that if he saw them there he might not be able to go on. Water splashed up into his mouth and made him cough. His ears had begun to ring. The cold and the steady current sapped his fading strength even further. But he went on, one stroke after another, until he had battled his way back through the great opening in the mountainside and into the green crystal cave.
&n
bsp; Treading water there, he looked about as if measuring something—the rocks, perhaps, or the walls, or his own fast-disappearing courage. Then through the static in his mind, as if it were a fresh sending, came the memory of Sssasha’s words: “I am thy heart, Jakkin.” Well, he would need the heart of a dragon to get through the rest of it. But for Sssasha, for all of them, for Akki and Auricle—and es pecially for Heart’s Blood, who had sacrificed herself that they might live—he would be brave. Taking a deep breath, he dived down and swam swiftly and surely away from the light.
21
THIS TIME, TIRED as he was, Jakkin had been able to judge the amount of breath he needed, and he pulled himself through the ever-darkening water with growing confidence. Just as he began his ascent toward the green-black surface, something caught around his legs. Yanking and kicking, he brought the heavy object up to his eyes and saw, with horror, that it was one of the white robes.
His heart began to pound and his ears felt ready to burst. Fearing the worst—that the robe was Akki’s and she’d really drowned this time—he pushed it away and watched it rise slowly. He swam desperately for the top, bursting up into the air, gulping mouthfuls into his exploding lungs, and then made for the shore. Rubbing the water from his eyes only seemed to make his vision worse, and he reminded himself to calm down. But when his eyes seemed clear at last he still had trouble seeing in the cave, and that was when he noticed the guttered torch lying in a puddle. The cavern was lit only by the water reflecting eerily on the walls. There was no sign of Akki. The robe in the water must be his own.
He cursed himself for leaving her there so long, alone and unprotected, and his curses rose in volume and originality until he found himself screaming her name. The walls echoed crazily, bouncing the two syllables back and forth, as if playing with them. But there was no answer, and his static-filled mind could find no trace of any sendings.
“Akki!” he screamed again, starting down a tunnel.
Hearing a sound behind him, he turned abruptly. Something on the far side of the lake was rising up from the shallows.
“Shut up, Jakkin,” she said. “Maybe we can’t send, with all the static, but no one could miss your shouting. The walls are ringing with it!”
“Fewmets, Akki, I thought you were gone. I thought . . . I thought . . .” He found he could scarcely breathe.
She waded around the lake, careful to stay where the water was only knee-deep.
“What about what I thought, Jakkin?” she said. “You were gone so long, I thought you were drowned. And I can’t swim, so how could I rescue you? And then I thought that if you really had died, your body would float up. So I had hope that you’d found another way out. But I didn’t know if I could follow.” She hesitated. “But I always knew you’d come back for me if you could.” She put her hand on his arm.
He shook it off angrily. “What were you doing underwater?” he asked. “You nearly scared me to death.”
“Practicing!” she said lightly.
“Practicing? Practicing what?”
“That’s a joke, Jakkin.”
“I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
“Well, you sure could use something to sweeten you.”
He made a wry movement with his mouth.
“Actually it was the only way I could think to keep them from finding me. When they began that gathering call again, you know, ‘COME, COME, COME,’ I was so scared I wouldn’t be able to resist it, I ducked down into the water. Even held my nose. And the chant stopped, just like that! Or at least I couldn’t hear it anymore because of the crackling. Then I remembered both our robes were by the lake, so I came up for air and dragged them in with me. If Makk saw those, he’d figure out where we were easily.” She smiled. “Smart, wasn’t I?”
He was still not mollified. “You left the torch.”
She looked over her shoulder at the guttered torch. “Oh, dragon’s droppings. They’d have known anyway.”
“Still,” Jakkin said quietly, “it was awfully brave.”
“It was awfully stupid,” Akki insisted. “Don’t patronize me, Jakkin. I’ve done brave things in my life. Don’t forget I joined a rebel cell to spy on them. I’ve lived in the wilderness with you. It just turns out that this wasn’t exactly one of the bravest things I’ve done.”
“It was.”
“It wasn’t!”
“It was, too.”
“It . . . oh, listen to us, Jakkin. We sound like kids.”
“I still think it was brave.”
“Never mind. It’s a silly argument anyway. Tell me what you found down there.” She pointed to the center of the lake.
Excitedly he sketched out the underwater passage, the crystal cave, the river, the grassy slopes, and the reunion with the hatchlings.
“Then they’re all right?” Akki asked, relief in her voice. “What about Tri-ssskkette’s wing? All healed?”
“I . . . I didn’t look,” Jakkin admitted.
“Well, you were a bit busy,” Akki conceded. “Besides, if she could fly all that way up the mountain, she must be doing fine. Wish we could heal as fast!”
“You can check it out when we get there,” Jakkin said.
“I’ll do that,” Akki said a bit too brightly. “And now that I’ve practiced my underwater swimming—or at least my underwater nose holding—I’m ready to go. As long as you take my hand, Jakkin, I’ll make it.” Her voice had gotten high and brittle sounding and she gave a little shiver, but she never stopped smiling.
Jakkin realized she wasn’t feeling quite as brave as she was trying to appear, and he thought grimly that they’d both need Sssasha’s heart for this.
“Why should I need Sssasha’s heart?”
“Because . . . oh, never mind.” Flustered, he could barely speak. She’d been able to pick up his thoughts, and he’d been so sure the automatic shielding worked. Perhaps it wasn’t as complete as he hoped. Or maybe it worked just with dragons. Or self-involved dragons like Sssargon. Or perhaps it didn’t work with someone who loved him, like Akki. Or . . . and then the further realization hit him. There was no more static in his mind.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
“I’m ready.” She started backing into the water.
“I mean back to the egg cave.”
“The egg cave—don’t be crazy. I can make it through the water, Jakkin. I know I can.”
He put his hand out toward her. “I know you can, too, Akki. But we can’t leave Auricle. They’ll kill her. Just like the brown. Another bloody ceremony and more bones for the pile. We can’t let them do it.”
“Jakkin, we really don’t have a choice. We have to save ourselves.”
“No! We’re not in danger. We can leave anytime. But we’ve got to save Auricle.”
She turned away from him, shivering, and stared into the darkness. “We are in danger, Jakkin. In danger of becoming as brutish and dark-minded as these people. Can’t you feel it? If we stay, sooner or later we’ll be forced to join one of their bloody rituals, and then what will we be?”
“Akki, we’re that already. Dragon breeders and stewards and trainers and all the rest of us on Austar, we’ve used and abused dragons for centuries. We’ve beaten them and eaten them, we’ve maimed and trained them as if they were simple animals. Even with all the evidence that they’re more than that. And that’s why we have to save the dragons, as many as we can—here and back at the nursery. At whatever the cost, Akki.”
“Dragons? Plural? Do you have delusions of grandeur, Jakkin? Do you think you’re a mighty hero? A moment ago you wanted to save only one dragon—Auricle.”
“We have to save the hatchlings, too.”
“You can’t save them all, Jakkin. There must be twenty or thirty dragons in here. And saving even one of them won’t bring Heart’s Blood back. Let’s just go ourselves, before it’s too late.”
He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “You’re not listening, Akki. I realize there’s no suc
h thing as a trade-off in guilt—these dragons for Heart’s Blood. It’s much more. I feel as if I’m seeing clearly for the first time. Why can’t I make you see it too? Humans and dragons together for Austar’s greater good.”
“COME. COME. COME.”
She stared at him, though her face had a strange listening look, as if one part of her was already caught in the web of chanting. Then her thoughts came tumbling into his mind, obscuring the call for a moment. “Together. Dragons and humans. Oh, yes, Jakkin, yes. I understand.” Aloud, she added, “You really don’t need to save all the hatchlings here, only the females. They set the males free when they’re old enough to fend for themselves. Didn’t you know that? All the adult dragons in the cave are female. When one comes into heat they stake her outside in the meadow and the wild males battle for possession. That way the cave people don’t have to worry about feeding and caring for males, who are so unpredictable and difficult. The males don’t really matter to them anyway.”
Jakkin snorted. “Don’t matter?”
“No egg chamber,” Akki said.
“Oh!”
“So you need me.”
“Of course I need you,” Jakkin said, pulling her into his arms.
She looked up into his face, her eyes suddenly clear and laughing. “Idiot—you need me because you still can’t tell the difference between a male and a female hatchling—and I can. Some dragon master you are.”
He began to chuckle and she joined him, and their laughter rose into a kind of hysteria until the chant began again, over whelming them both. Then, like the rest of the cave people, they marched unerringly through the tunnels toward the source of the chant.