by Marc Secchia
Pip sighed. “How beautiful, Zardon. Did you make that up?”
“I dabble in a little poetry.”
“Dabble? This from he who claims to value honesty over lies?”
“Do you always wake up ready to bite a Dragon with his own words?” snorted Zardon.
Pip sensed an underlying delight at her cheeky riposte. She said, a touch astringently, “There’s a first time for everything, even for an old-as-the-Islands Dragon. Now, I’ve been thinking–”
“Oh? Most people I know call that snoring.”
“I do not snore! Oh–hilarious, Zardon. Chortle away. How’s Hunagu?”
“As well as an Oraial dangling several leagues over the abyss can be, little one. He sleeps. Now, before you do any more … thinking, I want you to take a deep breath.”
“A breath?”
“Fill your lungs, little one. As much as you can.”
Silently mutinous, Pip did as instructed. She sucked in a lungful of the sweetest, cleanest air in creation and let it out in a gust of her own. “Well?”
“Well, I find it hard to believe your stories of being a patient Pygmy hunter,” he teased. “How long could you stalk an animal, Pip? Two seconds?”
Pip favoured this sally with a rude noise in her throat. Whatever had she expected of a Dragon? Zardon was massive, deadly and rather friendlier than the pets some Sylakians used to bring to the zoo. If someone had painted the entire Island-World a different colour, she would have felt no less astonished than she was now. Joking with a Dragon? Dragon poetry? Riding Dragonback? Flying between the Islands? She pinched her thigh surreptitiously, hoping to avoid notice, but a twinkle in his eye assured her Zardon had perceived her disbelief.
He said, “What do you smell in the air, Pip?”
She mulled his question. “It is fresh and sweet, and wonderfully far removed from any zoo. It makes me … tingle.”
His big, toothy grin flashed toward her. “The sweet tingle of freedom. Every breath.”
“Freedom as commanded by a mighty Red Dragon?”
Zardon laughed so hard and long he began to hiccough. Pip bounced about on her seat while he kept gulping, laughing and burping out the odd fireball, until she could not help laughing along with him.
True to Zardon’s prediction, Archion Island loomed out of the Cloudlands during the course of that morning. It was as strange as the Dragon had described to her. Two immense legs of rock joined together almost a league above the clouds. Each of the legs was ringed by many layers of terrace lakes, constructed by the Ancients in times before memory. Great concentric retaining walls trapped the waters that made Archion famous for its birds, giving the Island the appearance of the banded anteaters of her native Crescent Islands.
“Blackwing storks, ten types of heron, and innumerable duck species inhabit those terrace lakes,” said Zardon, giving words to her impression of specks so numerous they buzzed like clouds of mosquitoes around the Island. “Beneath the arch are caves which hold the greatest concentration of bats in the Island-World. And lower on the southern face, there are thousands of windrocs. We’ll keep a Dragon’s-eye out for windrocs.”
“Would they bother a Dragon?” asked Pip.
“A big windroc has a wingspan of eighteen to twenty feet,” he replied. “A few together will attack a full-grown ralti sheep. A feral windroc will attack anything that moves. There. You can see a windroc spiralling up next to that cliff face.”
Pip could see the bird, just about. Dragons had amazing eyesight. Balthion had taught her that a Dragon’s senses were more sensitive than her own, and that Dragons had further senses Humans could only guess at. Her neck swivelled as Zardon arrowed toward one of the lower terrace lakes. His landing sparked mayhem as thousands of water birds fled, squawking and cawing in panic.
She meant to slide down to help Hunagu clamber free of the net, but Pip had misjudged the height of Zardon’s flank. She found herself falling from a height of over fifteen feet.
“Easy there, rajal.” Again, her skin prickled. A cushion of air saved her from a nasty landing.
Dragon magic. Pip eyeballed her companion charily. Riding on his back, it had been convenient to forget how simply enormous Zardon was. Standing next to him, she realised that one wrong footstep could turn her into flatbread. Flatter than flatbread. A wafer!
Hunagu seemed to want nothing to do with the Dragon. He lumbered off at once to graze on the dense berry-bushes alongside the clear lake, cramming berry-laden branches into his mouth as though he had not eaten in months. After wandering down to the lake shore, Pip spied the silvery flash of a fat fish just a dozen feet out. She licked her lips. Oh, for a Pygmy spear. She was surprised anything survived in the lake, given the sheer number of birds they had scared away.
Rather than eating, Zardon settled himself on the sandy lake shore in the full suns-glare, gleaming like the most enormous ruby in existence. His neck seemed to droop. Pip wondered if the old Dragon was not more tired than he cared to admit. Perhaps he just needed to rest. He had been carrying an Oraial between Islands.
Right. A lunatic grin touched her lips. Pip marched around to his nose. “So, what can I bring you to eat, mighty Zardon?”
His eye cracked open lazily. “Asks the hunter with no weapons?”
“Aren’t Dragon Riders supposed to care for their Dragons?”
“Now I’m ‘your’ Dragon?” Smoke curled out of his left nostril. “Very well, my Rider. I would enjoy about two or three hundred stork eggs. You go collect them and toss them down my gullet whilst I loll in the suns and think Island-changing thoughts about–oh, life, destiny, the wonders of Dragon magic–”
“The hungers of your cavernous stomach–”
“I get cantankerous when I’m hungry. Even a Pygmy starts to look tasty.”
“You’re not sharpening your fangs on me.”
His laughter made the ground shake beneath her feet. “That’d be a waste of a good kidnapping, wouldn’t it?”
So Pip walked the shores of the rippling terrace lake and collected armfuls of stork eggs, any one of which would have furnished a Pygmy–several Pygmies, even–a decent meal. She piled them near Zardon’s head. The eggs, more than half the diameter of her head, were green with brown speckles. The storks did not seem to bother with building nests, merely scratching a shallow bowl in the warm, black volcanic sand alongside the lake to hold their clutch. She caught Zardon watching her with a slit eye, like the rajal in the cage opposite which had never quite seemed to sleep.
When she declared the amount sufficient, Zardon said, “A Dragon Rider will do tasks which their Dragon finds difficult due to their size–like you have just done. I can teach you more about Dragon care, if you’d like?”
“I’d love that.” Pip waved at his mouth. “Show me those fangs.”
Zardon’s mouth yawned open, giving Pip a fine view of his forked, deep red tongue lying between his fangs, and the dark tunnel leading to his gullet. The roof of his mouth was not ridged, but rather, perfectly smooth. A Pygmy could have made a home inside that mouth, with room to spare.
“Just toss them in whole,” the Dragon said.
Wary of stray fireballs or burning sulphur or whatever else Dragons were supposed to spit at their enemies, Pip set herself to pitching eggs onto his tongue. Zardon barely chewed before he swallowed. She realised a mad grin was plastered to her lips, but she could not help herself. She was feeding a Dragon? Her tribe had worshipped the Ancient Ones, as they called Dragons.
After several hundred eggs had disappeared down his voracious maw, Zardon said, “Keep a few for yourself and I’ll show you a trick–cooked eggs, Dragon-style.”
“Thanks.”
“Dragons must care for their Riders, too.” He added in a lecturing tone, “Dragons protect their Riders, hunt for them, offer Dragonish learning and wisdom, fight battles and carry Riders upon their backs. A Rider’s greatest gift is the companionship they offer their Dragon. A very special bond develops between Dragon
and Rider–besides the obvious physical tasks which I’ll teach you. You probably wonder what a tiny Human can offer a mighty Dragon. I’ll admit, some Dragons think the same. But I think they’re arrogant. When you really understand how it is between Rider and Dragon … Pip, you’ll know, deep down, that two spirits can befriend each other and twine together and become more than you might imagine.”
Pip realised, the way he talked, that Zardon must once have had a Dragon Rider he loved. It must be hard for him to accept another, a Pygmy girl, who was so ignorant of his needs and his history. But he had said, ‘we shall burn the heavens together, as Dragon and Rider.’ What did that mean? She had a sense it was more than just a casual phrase.
Now was not the time to ask those questions. Zardon might choose to speak of his pain when he was ready. Instead, she bowed deeply from her waist in the Pygmy way, her right fist clenched over her heart to signify respect, and said, “I don’t know much, mighty Zardon, but I do know that I am deeply honoured to ride you.”
His eyes lidded over. The Dragon made a sound as if wind were sighing through the treetops. Pip wondered if he was mourning.
Chapter 10: Dragons Have Ear Wax
LAter That Afternoon, Zardon swam them across the pristine waters before climbing onto the terrace-lake’s twenty-foot thick retaining wall and dropping off the other side with a simple flip of his wings. Pip whooped as they swooped through the hot, still afternoon air, cut by thick golden beams cast by the twin suns, partially hidden behind the Yellow moon. Hunagu made a sound like a low moan.
Zardon had heated a boulder with his Dragon fire until it glowed red-hot. He poked a neat hole into it with his claw. Pip filled the hole with water and boiled herself an egg. Yum! “I can also grill meat on a skewer,” he claimed. “Just a trickle of fire is what’s needed.”
“And here I thought it was Pygmy kebabs you were salivating over.”
Zardon chuckle throbbed deep down in his chest. “You’d probably taste as sour as you are cheeky.”
But Pip’s reminiscing was brought to an abrupt end as Zardon’s entire body jerked as if he had been stuck with the point of a sword. “Strangeness on the breeze,” breathed the Dragon, almost stalling in the air. “What evil stalks the Island-World? Is it hunting us?”
Pip shuddered. That apparition … “Zardon?”
“Eh? Who said that?” The Dragon shook himself as if he were a cat with a flea inside its ear. Pip very nearly lost her bundle. Only the rope around her waist kept her from taking an unexpected flying lesson, down into the depthless Cloudlands.
“On your back.”
Zardon’s neck twizzled about. Confusion reigned in his eyes. Fire licked around the edges of his nostrils as he stared at her, and murder lurked in the depths of his blazing yellow eyes. “Who’s this tiny insect clinging to my back?”
Pip clenched her teeth. “I’m Pip, remember? You’re taking me to Jeradia Island?”
“Pip? Islands’ sakes, yes. Pip. Now I remember. Pygmy. Strange powers.” His brow drew down as he snarled, “Is it you bothering me like this? Eh? Like a bird fluttering in my ear canal?”
Now Pip wished she could have leaped right out of her seat. The way his jaw muscles clenched, she was convinced she was about to lose a leg or be roasted for a Dragon’s lunch. She stammered, “I d-don’t know w-what you’re talking about. Zardon, you’re being weird.”
“Weird? Me? Well, I … something has been found. Something ancient. I sense it, just a hint of a hint, a coldness and a deep, brooding malice … and what should a Dragon fear? But I fear this.”
Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the madness cleared from his eyes and Zardon’s smile reappeared. He asked her what had happened. Summoning up the shreds of her courage, Pip told him what he had said, and then, feeling sillier and smaller by the moment, related her chilling dreams about the Dragon-like shadow.
“Ay,” growled Zardon. “I’m sorry if I frightened you, little one. My sense of foresight is a little unreliable. However, I’ve an itch along my spine–which you have just confirmed–that says something is amiss in our Island-World. I need to find out what it is. The quicker we reach Jeradia, the better. You’ll be safe there.”
Unreliable? Downright deadly! Pip said, “It’s not after me, is it?”
“Plenty of Dragons after you,” he roared, rather more cheerfully than Pip would have preferred. “Shapeshifters, too. But this is something different, I fear. It cares not for life of any kind. Pip, you should not worry. I am here.”
So much for not worrying, Pip fumed. She worried that her ride was about to eat her. She worried about Jeradia. Now she should be unconcerned about the ramblings of a confused old Dragon?
Four hours of swift gliding, dropping steadily toward the Cloudlands, brought them to an uninhabited line of Islands stretching south-west of Archion. Pip imagined a ridge beneath the gold-tinged, toxic Cloudlands, its green-capped mountain-tips peeking up into the world of living things above.
“See how the vegetation dies out on the lower slopes?” Zardon’s wingbeat paused as he pointed with his right wingtip. “The Cloudlands are acidic, besides being highly poisonous. That’s the line of safety for Humans, Pip. Only lichens grow lower down. If you ever find yourself that low, climb as quickly as you can.”
“But Dragons can fly through the Cloudlands, right?”
“Dragons can hold their breath for fifteen minutes or more,” said Zardon. “Some Dragons have perfected the use of a magical shield to protect them from the airborne poisons. But you’d be flying blind.”
“Don’t you wonder what lies beneath the Cloudlands, Zardon?”
“Always, little one.” His tone suggested that her questions were amusing, not in a belittling way, but rather as a welcome pastime between companions. “It’s one of the great mysteries of the Island-World. Some say there are enormous, flightless Land Dragons crawling about beneath the clouds, breathing out the toxins that make the Cloudlands.”
Pip wiped her forehead. “It’s like breathing hot water down here.”
“We’ve descended two thirds of a league from Sylakia Island, little one. Of course the air feels thicker. There’s greater pressure the lower you descend. Higher up, the air becomes thinner and even a Dragon can suffer from lack of oxygen. A good Dragon Rider watches out for signs of oxygen deprivation–slowed reactions, headaches, nausea–”
“And those scale mites you were talking about.”
“All in good time, Rider,” he reproved her. “My mites have travelled with me many a league. They will last a few more.”
Zardon flew on until the night was well advanced, the sixteen hours of daylight yielding to the eleven hours of night. Dragon eyesight could pierce the darkness easily. But when the Blue and White moons rose, Pip was also able to discern the ridge they flew over. The Dragon brought them down beside a round crater lake, where Pip once more extricated Hunagu from his net.
The Oraial yawned mightily. “Pip good-good?”
“Pip tired. Hunagu safe in net?”
“Ape not made to fly. But Dragon good. Hunagu mighty-big hungry.”
“Hunagu always hungry,” Pip grinned. “Nice bushes here. Go eat.”
The Oraial ambled off, his belly rumbling in anticipation of grazing on a sprawling patch of berry bushes nearby. Pip hoped he was alright. Hunagu did not sound happy. Had she done wrong, bringing him? Or by not insisting that Zardon take him directly to the Crescent Islands?
Rather than chew over what she could not change, Pip poked her head inside Zardon’s mouth. Riders were supposed to look after their Dragons’ fangs. “Show me again where it hurts.”
Zardon pointed with his claw. Pip could not see very well in the gloom, but it seemed that he had a bone stuck right in the base of his jaw between the last two fangs. The sharp end jabbed into the flesh of his cheek.
“It’s a bone, wedged between your teeth,” she said.
“Probably some luckless ralti sheep. Can you reach it?”
> “Not without climbing inside your mouth.”
“Ah, doth the mighty Pygmy warrior tremble?”
That was how Pip ended up inside Zardon’s mouth, clambering over the rough bulge of his tongue toward the back of his throat. She tried to ignore thoughts of what might happen if she tickled him enough to trigger his swallow-reflex. Dragons’ food-stomachs were extremely acidic, able to digest most things, even bone. He’d make short work of a Pygmy, warrior or none.
“Somehow, my Dragon fire never burned that bone out,” he said.
“It’s below the tongue’s surface,” said Pip, trying to grapple with the slimy bone. “Perhaps you shape the fire with your tongue as it comes out?”
An ominous rumble sounded somewhere down that dark passageway. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about fire right now,” said Zardon.
Pip suppressed a violent urge to shout something rude and most likely regrettable down his throat. She said, “Tell me, Zardon, what am I supposed to be doing in Jeradia?”
“Going to school.”
“School? Oh, Zardon, you’re the best!”
With that, Pip heaved the bone free. She stumbled backward, catching herself on the back of his throat. Zardon coughed, spluttered, heaved for air, and wheezed, “Get out, get out …”
She bolted for the front of his mouth, but his tongue caught up and slapped her legs out from under her. Zardon spat Pip fifty feet through the air. Flames blossomed along the path she had taken, coming within inches of roasting her rump. Pip splashed down hard, but she had barely begun to kick for the surface when a paw snatched her up again.
“I’m so sorry. Are you alright?”
Pip wiped the water streaming down her face. All she could think of to say was, “See, Pygmies can fly.”
The Dragon’s apologies were drowned out in the thunder of his laughter.
Dragon care was not what Pip had imagined, particularly not when she had to shove her arm up to the armpit into his ear canal to dig out a lump of ear wax he could not reach. Dragons had three ear canals either side of their skull, pointing forward, upward and sideways. The passages were easily large enough to accommodate her arm. Each apparently led to a separate inner ear, and could be independently closed by a ring of muscles just within the canal’s entrance. When he inadvertently tried to close the canal in response to her digging around inside his skull, it felt as though her arm had been clamped in a vice.