Constellation

by Sharon Lee

  The pods you have been eating from, those are yours. Eat and eat more; grasp one in your wing-branch and hold it with you while you fly. The other pods, those are for the flyers who come after you, to make their trees, if what comes takes the grove to rot.

  There was an image then, as if Stregalaar was looking through the thickest fog, an image of smoke, shattered trees and fire like a river boiling out of a cave.

  He sat still, more moments, but the tree had no more to say to him, and his blood was full of the urge to eat from the new pods, and to fly.

  * * *

  The air was full of wary dragons, all seeking something they’d not seen before, all full of a nervous energy fostered by whatever their trees and Tree Masters told them. Stregalaar’s calls brought answers from others of his agemates and those younger, and none from the elders. As of his agemates, he was the only Tree-Master, some followed him with noisy inquiry.

  “Stones that fly! Fire without drought!” said one circling youngling. “Have you seen such?”

  He had seen fire; Hargalaar had taken him wing to wing to watch it sweep a distant valley, and the pair of them had eaten their fill of the animals too injured to move on, while watching from a safe distance the spirals of dragons around a grove in danger. Seaside they had no drought, for the fog was good to them; and they had no fire.

  He had also visited cave fronts, with Levanlaar explaining that some dragons preferred them to trees. Not only rogues, but whole tribes of dragons lived in places where trees were few and far between, or where they would be overwhelmed by the mites, the sticky borers, or the root diggers.

  The cave front he’d seen was not one he’d dared enter; the odor about was that of multiple males, anger, and old dead meat as if there were no fresh. He disliked such meals: his greenkin was perched perfectly so that he might choose fish or fur-flesh by whim and rarely tasted the old dead.

  “Fire I have seen, and cliffs falling, and rocks,” Stregalaar answered the circling young. “Caves I have seen, but none with fire. Rivers, but none with fire.”

  These were grove-dragons, living among all the trees, not yet of an age to be granted dreams, not yet mated, most not yet recognized by a tree.

  This last was a puzzlement to Stregalaar. His first tree knew him as early as he could recall and it was to that tree he had returned nightly until the night he had been disowned for fighting. That expulsion was something many of the grove dragons never knew: they simply slept where they would and the grove kept them as they kept the grove.

  His tree, Laar, by accident or on purpose, grew far enough from the main grove to be seen as an outpost rather than a true grovetree. Hargalaar had taught him that, when the trees slowly moved up-coast in the past, it was because the root grubbers had grown too common in the south, so common that they had overwhelmed the attention of even a well-guarded grove, permitting the other pests to gain hold. The root grubbers and other pests were more fond of the heat than the trees, as the former Tree Master had it.

  The other reason his tree was an outpost was because of the pods it bore, many of which the dragons disdained as small, and less succulent than those of the main grove. Stregalaar found them of good size, but then he was small—small enough to be miscounted as younger than he was no matter his wing’s full color display. He had long outgrown the mottled green-gray camouflage of youth for the iridescent blue-and-silver banded wingtops of an adult male; his head was nearly as white as his belly and talons.

  Normally, the other flyers gave way to Stregalaar when close to his tree, while above the larger grove he was grudgingly admitted to airspace. Below the main grove’s hill and over the jutting peninsula on which it stood, he was recognized as a power, with only a few of the more flirty females flying close by without permission.

  Today, though, the entire space from the smallest of the fringe saplings to the near-beachless cliff to the north of his tree was open to all. Dragons flew until tired and settled where they were to have a moment’s rest, or they soared and used the oceanic cliff-face thermals that he loved to ride.

  Uncertainty wore on them all; there was bickering but no fighting. As the day moved on, more and more of the younglings settled back to the grove while the Tree Masters mediated with their trees or else gyred at height, watching.

  Not all of the younglings rested: several imitated their elders as best as they could within the confines of the grove airspace. Stregalaar caught sight several times of the suddenly graceful Chenachyen, born to the grove’s oldest tree. Not as tall as the tallest tree, it was by far the largest with a canopy easily serving a dozen youngsters and a set of older pairs. The flyers from the Chyen tree were orderly, not at all like the current crop from the veer.

  As for Chenachyen, the marks on her wings told the story: she’d be strong and seeking her own space, or not strong enough and submitting to another’s, as soon as the last of the pale grays faded and her full wing stripes were clear.

  That thought took hold and held some fancy for him, even with the strangeness of the day. A tree of special pods could use a strong helper, as perhaps he could.

  His tree called; it was in the way the branches fluttered that it hummed loud enough for his attention. Hargalaar told him that the Laar hummed best of all the trees in the grove, and in recognition, he dipped a wing sharply and dove toward the nest-front.

  Several top branches were fluttering as he passed by, the notes like those of a pod-offering, and he hurried to grasp the nest and try the newest pod, whistling his approach to the tree.

  Our only branch-with-wings, the tree dreamed at him, even before he could close his eyes, eat and eat and watch and warn and—

  The top branch fluttering grew stronger, but the dream went on, pushing at him:

  Rocks flow like rivers, the tree dreamed to him, rocks have no roots and no wings, rocks sustain with sharp edges and weight, they have no will to touch them, nor claws to hold them, nor do they know the fail or fall. Eat what is here while rocks flow like rivers and shake like leaves—

  The dream stopped on that ungentle image, as if what the Laar wished to teach him went beyond even the thought of trees. Stregalaar grabbed the newest pod with some vigor, the urgent warning calls of dragons filled his ears.

  The pod branch was shaking; there was a stickiness on the bark as if the sap flowed at winter-end strength. Deep inside his ears, Stregalaar heard a rumble, and knew it was not just the pod branch shaking but the entire tree. He felt vibrations of some tremendous force through his very leg bones. Around him were popping sounds and great rumbles, as if a thunderstorm was coming up at the tree from the sea below.

  He could do nothing against the sudden side-to-side whipping of the branches, except shake himself free, launching sidewise from his perch, more flailing than flying those first perilous moments as he plummeted, until he gained some lift, turning the tumble into a dive down the face of the cliff toward the river, rocks and boulders and dust falling with him—

  He arched his back to rise, straining wingtips away from the madness of mounds of water shaking in the river, of some strange tearing noise behind him.

  He leveled, beat wings against the noise, turned in time to see portions of the grove crashing to the ground, whole trees sundered, and then his tree, twisting against rock and dirt, turning and shaking, sliding down the crumbling cliff face toward him.

  With a tremendous shudder, the entire edge of the peninsula gave way, with the Laar engulfed in dust and sliding toward the water below. Unbalanced by the sight of the collapse, and unnerved by the noise, Stregalaar nearly collided with a branch—his branch!—as it slid past him.

  The river took the flood of stone and dirt; the tree’s descent slowed, and stopped. The sounds like thunder were gone now, but above the hillside were cries of dragonish despair. A glance showed Stregalaar that much of the grove lay at angles, and a new rift in the land split it in two.

  In confusion, Stregalaar looked back to his tree, seeing the nest still largely in p
lace, though at an odd angle, as the trunk leaned back against what was left of the hillside it had once crowned.

  What must he do? He spun in the air, heard piteous cries, saw the uncertain motion of guard dragons as they dropped down from the heights to survey the damage. In the sudden near silence, he heard a tree hum. His tree. The Laar called.

  * * *

  The tree’s hum was odd, strained.

  Stregalaar whistled diffidently in response, as if to an injured elder. He would normally circle the tree several times, announcing his arrival as he descended. Now—he fluttered back, hovering against the light breeze.

  How was he supposed to behave, after all? This was outside of Hargalaar’s teaching. The nest was surprisingly intact, the dreaming place easily accessible even with the tree’s unnatural lean against the cliff-face. The smell of sand and saltwater was strong, as was the smell of bruised leaves, but his own nest still had some lure. He was disoriented though, with dark earth between him and the sky where there should only be a view of the horizon, clouds, and distant waves.

  He settled finally, for the first time in his life uncertain of the tree’s solidity.

  The Laar muttered to itself like some scavenging seaflyer arguing with shells unwilling to open. Stregalaar saw dream fragments he could not understand, felt as if he had flowing sap pulled from broken root tips, as if his green leaves bled on the rocks.

  Watch, Winged One, from on high. Return to your nest this night, for we are not yet splintered, came the dream, but from beneath came something else: that sound again, and motion. This time the motion was not side-to-side but as if the tree tried and failed again and again to return to its height, up and down, up and down so he was shaken and flung into the air haphazardly. Gathering wits as he gathered air, he pumped his wings, trying to rise above the rumbling danger.

  Below, the shaking continued, as before his horrified gaze the entire peninsula shredded, not falling on his tree but subsiding like a dying fish into damp beach sand. The Laar subsided as well, roots awash in the semisalty water, then the crushed branches lay slowly back into the sea, and it was swept into the river current.

  His tree! It was moving! The ground had given way around it entirely and now the water it had tapped with long roots had control of it, and was bearing it off!

  Unbidden, his flight curved—he knew the Laar lived. He must follow, he must observe, protect. He must protect.

  Dragons. Now he could hear the sound of other dragons, some keening with despair, others in terror; the shaking had begun again and the hill the grove stood upon was rent with strange crevasses. Many of the trees had lost most of their leaves if not most of their limbs in the fury of the disaster, and besides the dragons, other creatures rushed about randomly, trying to find someplace not afflicted by this dread calamity.

  Below, his tree was picking up speed as it found the center of the current, spinning slowly as it was swept along. He paced it for some time, barely above a lazy glide, using the sea breeze and wing twitches to guide himself. Sometimes he felt he heard the Laar hum. Sometimes the tree’s bobbing showed him quick glimpses of pods still intact. The shore was more distant now, the calls of other dragons barely audible.

  A freshening breeze from landside surprised him; he rose, and let the wind spin. The tide had turned suddenly, and unlike its usual pattern, the water was retreating rapidly toward the sea, carrying his tree faster and farther away from the grove. The breeze brushed his cheeks. He flicked his inner lids against it as he saw the receding beach, unnaturally wide, and full of fish and wrack. The Laar’s leaves stirred as if they were wings on which it sped away from the land now that it was free . . .

  Stregalaar flew above the tree, and looked ahead, his eye drawn to the horizon, where a strange line had sprung up, sweeping across the bay with inevitable majesty.

  His first impulse reached his wings and he turned to face the threat, to unsheathe his claws that he might rip and rend this thing, or distract it as Hargalaar had told him to distract herd leaders fronting a stampede of grass eaters.

  This was no stampede. It was as if the horizon itself was charging, and there was another rumble and roar from below.

  It was too much: as much as he tried to think, his wings knew an ancient answer.

  He flew higher. He strained to climb away from the madness, for it appeared the whole world was rushing to swallow him and his tree. His wings knew the world was bigger than he was, that nothing but another dragon dares chase a dragon into the sky.

  * * *

  His gaze never wavered as that wall came on; he let flight take care of itself and observed. As he rose, he could understand what he could not from sea level: this was no moving cliff nor rapid fog, but a wave like no other. It came at an amazing speed and as it came, it rose. It appeared to extend beyond his vision in both directions up and down the coast, as it sped relentlessly toward his tree.

  Building, the wave came on.

  Then it was by, distantly roaring but unlike the land roars, there was no new damage. His tree was like flotsam after a stormtide; it lifted and then dropped into the following trough with some speed. The wave went on, growing even taller, until it burst upon the land, crashing over the grove spot, seeming to suck from the sky those dragons who dared it.

  The grove and the hill beyond disappeared under foam and spray. The sea ran up the river, and then the thunder of that clash of land and sea rumbled to him.

  Beneath, his tree, Laar, floated, crushed side down, no longer making obvious headway toward the greater ocean, no longer swirling in circles. Instead it left a slight wake as from somewhere more landwind touched and shook the leaves, the branches leading, the heavy trunk half-submerged, following.

  Stregalaar strained to see the land and watch the Laar at the same time; he thought of the grove, but there was no sign of it as the sea ate at the land. He wavered, took two strokes toward the land, torn. He needed to know what had become of his grovemates, but—the Laar.

  His wings ached. He was very tired; his nest was near, and dry.

  With that thought he spun in air, closed on the tree, and slowed to a near hover as he came over the tangled sticks and branches of his nest. Wings vibrating in the breeze, he allowed his forward motion to fail, and he stepped onto the restless and sea-slicked trunk, barely a step away from a pair of new-formed pods.

  * * *

  It was late in the day and still the tree did not dream. If he listened hard, Stregalaar thought he felt mumbles and mutters; sometimes a particular branch or limb would hum briefly, or leaves would flutter oddly, but how much of that was due to the ocean and waves and how much to the tree’s will he had no idea. The Laar had rarely done this when planted firm.

  They were moving, though. The motion of the tree in the water was somewhat like the motion of branch in a light wind, but the rhythm in it was wrong. Studying the thing, Stregalaar realized it was because the whole trunk was moving—there was no strong point the tree was bending or swaying from.

  He inched upward as far as he could, which was not to the old strong trunktop but to the rather bendy end of his own branch, which swayed doubly from the waves and his weight. He would have to dream with the Laar about that, if the tree would listen. Hargalaar had let him know the tree would listen, pointing out the broad platform that used to be beneath the nest and which now worked as a windbreak.

  His view from this vantage point was surprisingly limited. He could see waves and clouds and a distant mist on the horizon. He’d felt a touch of fear when he first sighted that mist . . . but this was not a moving wall of water, merely the ordinary motion of fog, a near daily occurrence in some seasons.

  In the other direction, when he deliberately searched it out, was the blurred line of land. The clouds he could see building there boded a wet night, and even as he watched, he saw a flicker of lightning in the growing storm.

  In the water all about them were signs of the cataclysm they had survived: broken, brainless trees and limbs, c
lumps of bushes, leaves and berries, even unappetizingly dead animals. Fish and sea things moved among the dead, eating what they would.

  He took note of several of the scavengers, who were big enough to be a problem at close range.

  The scent of the ocean mingled with the scent of torn limbs and roots, for the tree’s slide down the embankment had taken a toll. Too, there were other scents of note: fresh and broken leaves, salt tang, damp earth. Not all of the scents were familiar, and even of those, he knew the proportions were grossly changed from what he was used to.

  Gripping the branch carefully in the face of what appeared to be a larger-than-usual wave, Stregalaar turned his back on the land once more to find the mist growing from the seaward side. With weather closing in, he would need to be extra alert in the night. Leaving his perch for a quick snack of pod, he sought the jumbled tangle of the nest, and stepped into it with a will. Granted the Laar’s new arrangements, he would eventually need to reshape the nest. For the moment, what he needed was respite.

  Tucking claws around the nest’s still-firm backbone, he let the ocean’s breeze bring him smells until, with closed eyes, he slept.

  * * *

  The rain did not reach them that night, but the fog did, closing in even before the day was done. The thunderstorm rumbled away for half the night, and it wasn’t until near-dawn that the fog relented, permitting sight of the fading night guides overhead. Between the movement of the waves and lack of lifelong landmarks, it took him a moment to recognize their patterns as the clearing continued, but before full dawn, he’d seen that nothing there had changed, which was good.

  The full morning brought a chill breeze carrying odors familiar and unfamiliar, this one becoming strong enough to flap the leaves and change the progress of the tree through the water. The wave action felt more pronounced, from time to time giving the tree a high end and a low.