by Marc Secchia
“Ay? What about you, Pip?”
Trapped beneath his fierce gaze, Pip felt compelled to offer what was hidden in her heart. She said, “Master, I grew up in the jungle. I lived seven summers in a Sylakian zoo.” Kassik made a tiny but audible intake of breath at this, but did not interrupt. “Zardon stole me from my cage and dropped me here without much explanation. In truth, I can offer you little, but I do know you would be offering me the world … freedom …”
Pip choked up. She wiped her eyes, feeling littler and more foolish by the moment, and stumbled on, “And education. A new life. Master Kassik, I’m not ungrateful. I don’t know about your other students, but I do know that no-one would appreciate it more, nor work harder to earn your trust, than I would.”
“Freedom. A new life.” He sighed very deeply, but suddenly, he sat back and smiled as though she had delivered the most joyous news. “Ideas of humble yet supreme power. Very good. We shall eat, and wait upon Mistress Mya’adara, and then you shall tell us all about this Pygmy girl from the Crescent Islands. Who is Pip? Why do you speak with such a musical accent? What are your skills? Have you any education at all, having lived in a zoo? I want to know everything.”
Pip bowed her head. She had expected to feel intimidated by Master Kassik. Instead, she felt a warm welcome, and perhaps, a kindred spirit.
* * * *
Mistress Mya’adara was a Western Isles warrior from the Naphtha Cluster. She seemed as wide as she was tall, and her sleeveless tunic revealed tattooed arms so muscular they could have furnished a rajal without dishonour. Although she overshadowed Pip like a giant jungle tree, she had an easy smile and an irresistible way of getting exactly what she wanted. Pip noted the huge scimitar belted at her waist. The Head of First Year Students seemed more than capable of using it to carve up Dragons–or errant students.
With dizzying speed, she showed Pip the first year classrooms, the practice field and the vaulting dining hall, where all the students, Journeymen, Mentors and Masters habitually took meals together. Dinner was not yet ready, so they whipped down eleven levels and across five buildings to the infirmary, where Mya’adara had her apartments and the first year dormitory complex was located. Pip liked the vine-covered buildings at once. There was more vegetation than stone, it seemed. This tour was accompanied by a barrage of information.
“Ah have trunkfuls of clothes mah girls have grown out of, Pip,” she explained, in her broad Western Isles brogue. “When they was six summahs old, but no matter, no mind. Yah a Pygmy. Yah just made the way yah are. Like me.” She flexed her biceps.
Pip said, “Do you eat whole melons for breakfast, Mistress?”
Mya’adara laughed heartily, clapping her on the shoulder. Pip stumbled. “Sorry. Good joke! Did yah shrink in the wash?”
“I can do anything a big person can,” Pip replied, with a forced chuckle. Her accent was funny. ‘Shreenk.’ ‘Yah’ for you. But she had a sweet, wholesome way about her.
“I know yah can.” Mya’adara’s eyes, however, appraised her with intensity similar to Master Kassik’s. Pip hoped she was not thinking how small she was compared to the other students. “Yah got lakes full of fish to catch up on, Pip. Yah ready? First year class has already been cut down by a third. Yah join late, yah collect their jealousy, girl. Yah have to catch up on all yah academic subjects and weapons before the examinations. Four weeks, yah got. Shall I speak to Master Shambithion about a deferral?”
“I don’t want any special treatment,” said Pip.
“Ah can imagine not.”
Pip knew the Mistress had seen right through her bravado.
A half-hour of vigorous rooting about in Mistress Mya’adara’s storage room secured Pip clothes enough to furnish half a village of Pygmies, and shoes. She eyed the shoes distrustfully. Wouldn’t they make her feet stink? But Mya’adara was very firm about the need for clothing. ‘This isn’t a jungle, Pip. Yah dress decent.’
She lugged a canvas holdall down to the infirmary, a vast cavern beneath the student dormitory buildings. A blast of hot air snatched Pip’s breath away as she entered. The cave was gigantic, easily large enough for a Dragon to fly right in through the entrance which yawned away to her left. In places, pretty red crystals peeked through the rock, and it was brightly lit by the same lamps she had seen in the stairway. Her nostrils tingled at the tang of smoke and the sweet aroma of many medicinal herbs; a healing smell. Pip liked the place at once.
“It’s set up for Dragons and their Riders,” said the Mistress, leading her down a few steps to the cavern floor. “Beds and roosts together. Yah wouldn’t believe the fuss, if yah separate Dragon from Rider. Such a whining and complaining! Over there’s Cardiata, the Yellow fledgling. Broke her right primary wing bone in aerial combat training last week. Shimmerith, who belongs with Nak–that wastrel snoring up a storm in bay four–she has a fungal infection of the bowel. Painful. And this magnificent creature is mah Rajion.”
Rajion curved his neck to eyeball Pip. He was a vast Red Dragon of a magnificent crimson hue, with lower jaw fangs which curled up past his upper gums, giving him a permanently smiling expression–the type of smile a Dragon offered its prey before eating it, Pip thought with a shudder. Rajion was missing most of his left hind leg, and the outer third of his left wing.
She bowed courteously, and a little shyly, to Rajion.
“Injured in the war,” Mya’adara explained, following Pip’s thoughts perfectly.
Shimmerith stirred restlessly in her sleep. She was a beautiful, slender Dragon, a pale gemstone blue with sapphire flashes on her scales and spines, giving her the appearance of having been painted by an artist.
“Shimmerith’s beautiful.”
“Ay, and she deserves better than a worthless layabout for a Rider.”
Pip thought it best to keep silent. Mya’adara sounded positively wrathful.
“Oh, Casitha works here? Casitha!”
The woman looked up with a bright smile from the dressing she was changing on a Red Dragon fledgling’s eye. “No, everyone makes that mistake. I’m Oyda. Healer. Emblazon’s Rider. Mya’adara’s chief lackey and bandage-changer.”
“Bah,” snorted Mya’adara.
Pip grinned at Oyda’s insouciant tone as they walked over to the bowl-shaped bay where the small Red Dragon–all thirty-five feet of him, she estimated–was settled on a comfortable pile of ralti sheep furs. For a famous Dragon Rider, Oyda seemed easy-going and affable. “Honoured to meet you, Rider Oyda. I’m Pip. Lately from Sylakia Island.”
“Sylakia? Don’t they keep Pygmies as pets?” As Pip sucked in her lower lip, Oyda added, “Idiots and barbarians, keeping slaves. Are you joining the first year?”
“So I’m told.”
Oyda’s striking brown eyes, flecked with green and gold towards their centres, twinkled at her. “Good. A Pygmy warrior in that class should shake things up. Anyone who gives you a rough time, you send them straight to me. I’ll serve them to Emblazon for breakfast.”
“Not if I catch them first,” growled Rajion, right behind Pip’s shoulder. She flinched. “How’s his eye, Oyda? Shall I heal Tarragon again?”
Healing powers? Master Balthion had not mentioned that. Pip watched Rajion work his magic with all of her senses alert. Yes, definitely that odd tingling–it had to be magic.
Later, Mya’adara showed her the first year dormitories. Her assigned bunk was in a long room which housed forty-eight students in twelve double bunks, with spaces in between for desks. She deposited her new canvas holdall and her rajal skin in the indicated place, before joining the other students in the main dining hall. Dinner was held late–a Jeradian custom, Mya’adara said. Darkness had fallen, but the hall’s lights blazed cheerfully over the bustling trestle tables and long wooden benches of the dining hall.
Hundreds of pairs of eyes, it seemed, noted her entrance through the immense jalkwood doors, which stood at least twenty times her height–perhaps tall and wide enough to accommodate a Dragon, she rea
lised. She hoped all these big people did not think she was just a child. The huge Western Isles woman led her along to a rowdy section.
“The first years,” said Mya’adara. “Hundreds of the rascals. Now, where’s yah dorm leader–yah Mentor? Hailia, she’s called.”
“Pip!” A glad cry came from nearby. “Great Islands, guys, its Pip.”
A table bounced as Durithion practically threw himself off his seat and dashed between the benches toward her.
“Duri?” she gasped. He thumped into her and gave her a huge hug.
“Yah know this scoundrel?” Mya’adara scowled at Duri. “Hands off the female students, young man, before Ah remove them permanently.”
“She’s … oh, I know Pip from home,” Duri spluttered, his ears heating up until they resembled red flags either side of his head. He dropped the hug as though he had been burned. “Oh, Pip … how, I mean what … this is incredible. It is you, right?”
Pip’s own ears burned as the boys at Duri’s table whistled and hooted at them. “Yes, Duri.”
“You have to meet all of my friends.”
He dragged her over to his table, rattling on about his father studying her and how incredible it was to have her at the Academy and throwing thirty names at her in rapid succession.
But then, from nearby, a voice cut clearly through the hubbub, “Oh, great Islands, it’s the monkey from the zoo. Hello, monkey.”
Cruel laughter rose from the table behind her.
Pip whirled, clenching her fists in rage. She knew that voice. She could never forget it. Telisia!
“Girls, this is Pip,” Telisia drawled. “My father studied her at the Sylakian zoo. She lived there with the monkeys. Apparently, she even speaks monkey.”
“T-T-Telisia!” Durithion stammered, advancing on her.
“How did you get here, Pip?” asked Telisia, playing to her audience. “Did the zookeepers let you out?”
“Actually, I flew Dragonback.”
“Dragonback? Why, you little liar, you–”
Pip ground out, “I’ll just go tell Zardon the Red Dragon you called him a liar, shall I?”
For a moment, Telisia’s mouth worked but no sound came out.
The boy next to her chipped in, “Are you threatening my girlfriend, you undersized rat?”
Durithion shouted, “You take that back, Prince Ulldari!”
Suddenly, Mistress Mya’adara stood between all the heated stares. “I trust yah second years are giving our newest student a warm welcome? Telisia?”
“I was just surprised to see Pip, that’s all,” said Telisia, her tone making it very clear that the surprise was not a pleasant one. “Welcome to Dragon Rider Academy, Pip of the Pygmies.”
Pip summoned a deadly-sweet smile. “Thank you, Telisia.”
* * * *
Kneeling, Mistress Mya’adara measured the new student carefully with a knotted string. “Three feet … ten, no, eleven inches. Hold still, Pip.”
“At least four feet, please,” said Pip.
Maylin, a slant-eyed Eastern Islander first year from her dormitory, patted her on top of her head. The Pygmy girl could gladly have bitten that condescending hand. “No tiptoes, Pip. You don’t want to rile the Mistress. She bites.”
“She hits,” said Mya’adara, clipping the back of Maylin’s head efficiently. “Ah’ll have those feet flat on mah floor, yah overgrown jungle imp.”
Sighing, Pip subsided.
“You’re running out of knots down there, Mistress,” said Maylin. When she received no reply, she added, “How tall are you, Mistress Mya’adara? Six mountains and how many peaks?”
“Six feet and six,” she replied. “Stop stirring trouble, Maylin, or Ah’ll have yah mending every pair of trousers in mah school.”
“Trouble? Me?” Maylin winked at Pip.
“Yah not just the trouble, yah the sauce on top of the trouble,” said the Mistress, biting her tongue as she concentrated. “Not quite the big four, Pip. Sorry. Three feet, eleven and one-half inches, yah are.”
“The simply enormous four,” chortled Maylin. This time, Pip did hit her, a punch on the arm which seemed to function as a general sort of greeting between the first years.
“Ouch, you pocket rajal,” said Maylin, rubbing her arm. “Where’d you learn to hit like that?”
“Wrestling Oraial Apes,” said Pip.
“Mercy.”
“Yah don’t argue with Pygmy warriors, or Western Isles warriors, for that matter,” said Mya’adara, marking down Pip’s details on her records scroll. “Right. We need yah weight, girl.”
“One titchy bag of flour,” said Maylin.
Pip thumped her other arm before Maylin could dodge. “That’s two bags, you short-changing little cheat.”
Maylin grinned, “Ooh, fun with a pun. Two bags of mischief, Mistress.”
“Ah’m having second thoughts about asking yah to help Pip find her way around the Academy,” said the Mistress. “That smacks of giving two monkeys the key to a storeroom full of sweets. Stand still, Pip. Hmm. Seven sackweight and three grains. Need to feed yah up, poor mite.”
To her surprise, Pip found an arm about her shoulder. “If you’re finished, Mistress,” said Maylin, “we intend to take a careful and very polite tour of all the best sights of the Academy.”
“Bah,” said Mya’adara. “And Ah come from a purple Island orbiting the Jade moon. Off with yah scamps. Shoo!”
Chapter 13: A Princely Punch
PIP’s First week of school passed by in a blur. There was a mountain of books and scrolls to digest, classrooms to find, Mentors and Journeymen or Journeywomen to meet, and several groups of students to learn to avoid. She lost count of the number of times she heard the word ‘monkey’ hissed behind her back, or was tripped up, sent in a wrong direction, tricked or misinformed, had luminous flesh-eating slugs dropped down her back, or was jostled in the corridors. Being the shortest student by at least a foot, and two or three in the case of the Jeradians, seemed to lend itself to an inordinate number of ‘accidents’. Someone tucked a note under her pillow-roll to inform her that the only student who was shorter than her was Hardak, a third year student in a wheelchair, and that she would be ‘cut down to size’, too. Pip bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood.
To her surprise, Durithion tried his best to protect her. Telisia and her first year prince boyfriend, His Most Islandic Excellency Ulldari the Fifth, Crown Prince of Udalia Island, which was apparently less than half of his full title, seemed to have embarked on a personal mission to make her life a misery.
Pip hid in the infirmary and chatted to Shimmerith, or shadowed Oyda on her rounds amongst the sick or injured Dragons and Riders. She buried her nose in scrolls and Dragon lore and stole out of the Academy grounds, through the tunnel, to see Hunagu. After pouring out her heart to him, she was pounced upon on the way back by the Red Dragon guard. His roar paralysed her; an ungentle swipe of his paw bruised her ribs.
Master Kassik handed down a punishment of working in the laundry room for a week.
Shimmerith and Rajion cornered her in the infirmary and scolded her for causing trouble. Alathion had been very quick to accuse the Dragons of shirking their guard duty, they growled, growing so heated and snappish that Pip began to fear for her life.
Nak ‘rescued’ her, only to start teasing her about fuelling the Dragonish furnace.
Then, the dapper little man grandly regaled her with several tales of his exploits. She was supposed to goggle and make appropriately reverential noises, Pip thought crossly, later. ‘Oh, Dragon Rider, you’re so amazing,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Oh, how did you accomplish that? You’re so ingenious.’ Nak’s opinion of himself evidently reached the moons above. But he was terrifically funny, especially when he mimed Prince Ulldari’s regal pomp.
As she trotted down to the training arena, located in the far corner of the balcony-field outside the great dining hall, on the eighth day of that first week, Pip found her feet scurrying
along in anticipation. Finally. She knew about weapons. A Pygmy warrior would show the other students a thing or two, rather than being the smallest, the ignorant one, the one whose feet dangled from every chair she sat on.
By way of greeting, Prince Ulldari said, “Great. The monkey’s taking weapons classes.” The group of four or five boys who always seemed to be around him, egging him on, burst out laughing on cue.
Pip joined the other students warming up on the sandy arena floor. The morning was cool; the suns having not yet risen high enough to warm the inside of the volcano–not that it needed heating, on the whole. Pip imagined that in the summer, the heat from the lava flows and the suns had to be unbearable.
She wanted to join the other first year girls from her dormitory, but the three she was closest to, Kaiatha, Yaethi and Maylin, seemed to be chatting animatedly in a close huddle. It was a world apart to a Pygmy girl. How could she join in without looking like the loneliest fool who walked the Islands? They had been kind, but they had been friends long before she joined the first year class.
Pip flinched as a pebble struck her neck. Ignore it.
A twig pinged the back of her knee. Pip bit back her rage. She did not want to grace Master Kassik’s office twice in her first week.
A larger pebble pinked into the sand beside her. The boys laughed at something. Ulldari tapped her on the shoulder. She whirled.
“You insulted my girlfriend, monkey.”
She said, “I suppose you dropped out of charm school for obnoxious princes?”
Ulldari sneered, “Why don’t you go back to your zoo, runt? You’re just playing with the big people here. We don’t have time for little black monkeys.”
Pip shook with rage. There was a roaring in her ears. She glared up at the richly-dressed prince. “You’d better be ready to back up your words with action, Ulldari. Because you’re ralti-sheep stupid. You’ve no idea who you’re picking on.”
“Pick yourself a training sword,” he retorted, “and I’ll give you a spanking. Then you can go work with the messenger monkeys.”