by Marc Secchia
Chymasion shuddered as he released his second wave of seven probes.
You’re draining yourself too severely, my precious flame-heart, Shimmerith scolded. Don’t place yourself in danger in this way. Here, let me touch you.
The others come, said Jyoss.
Shortly, the Dragonwing formed up and moved on, steadily following the Isles’ curve south-eastward. After an hour, about the same length of time they had waited for the previous set of probes, three returned. Chymasion returned the information to Pip, who plotted three touchpoints on her mental map. If she performed a quick triangulation …
“The Well-Hole,” she said.
“Good,” rumbled Emblazon. “Nak’s nothing has likely been proven. The Marshal is no more than one hundred and fifty leagues from our position. Two hours more, and we should reach the area the Oraials suggested for our search. It’s becoming tight.”
The balance of the bright, sunny morning passed quickly. Pip recognised nothing, but Hunagu led the group quickly by smell to the first Island where they should find Pygmies–or at least, signs of recent habitation. The Pygmy tribes moved often, or at least hunted abroad, to avoid depleting one Island’s resources and to keep potential enemies guessing.
Three Islands. Five. They found a cunningly camouflaged but abandoned Pygmy village at the sixth, which showed no sign of ever having been burned. Dragon-Pip cast about but soon realised the village was not her own. It seemed too neat. Recently abandoned, perhaps, but everything had been removed to the last iota–gourds, tools, weapons, cooking pots, even the sacred images of ancestors. No, this struck her as a strategic withdrawal. No haste. Nothing dropped or forgotten. The ground swept clean of tracks, the huts deliberately left open …
They were going about this the wrong way.
Sending all the others except Chymasion away, Pip transformed from Dragoness to Human form. She dressed quickly, but not in her usual tunic top and calf-length trousers. She donned her home-made loincloth, fastening the daggers to her waist with a double loop of cord. Pip tied ragged strips of cloth across her chest and over her left shoulder, ostensibly to hold her quiver of arrows, but also to preserve a certain measure of modesty she no longer felt she could give up. Using the sticky ochre clay she had found and prepared the previous day, she painted her body, face and arms as best she remembered in the patterns of her tribe.
She made a face. Mercy, she felt naked–a word which did not even exist in Ancient Southern. She felt as if her uncovered backside was a flag waving in the breeze. Perfectly Pygmy-normal, she reminded herself. Overdressed, even.
Chymasion, we need to find their sacred cave. It’ll be here somewhere, near the village.
You need me to detect rock? Hard ground?
Please.
Pip felt magic pass over her as a tingle up her spine. The Jade Dragon slowly turned, scanning the undergrowth with his unique power. Meantime, she cast about for a trail leading from the village. There would be one, well-concealed as a matter of course.
As Silver had taught her, she focussed her Dragon awareness through her limited Human senses, slowly allowing herself to become one with her surroundings, mindful of every leaf brushing against its neighbour and earthworms squelching through the moist earth, the movements of jungle rodents and birds and insects, alert for any sign of disturbance, any hint which did not belong to the whole. She laughed softly, testing the air with her nose. Was that the faintest smell of wood smoke lingering on the breeze?
Chymasion, focus this way. Stay twenty feet behind me.
Pip pushed through the undergrowth. Mercy, a noose trap linked to a poisoned arrow. She ghosted past, sending a mental warning to her draconic guard. Here. The faintest of trails led her forward past a massively gnarled tree which grew almost horizontally up against a hidden hill, just a jumble of boulders covered in yellowing moss. The tree turned ninety degrees and reached for the skies. Behind was a narrow, dark crack.
Her heart crammed into her throat, throbbing like a frightened animal.
In Ancient Southern, Pip recited aloud, “O spirits, receive one of your own. Stay your curse till my purpose be known.”
Again she settled, letting the awareness of her surrounds imbue her consciousness. Ay. She moved her hands away from her weapons and held them up at shoulder level, fingers unclenched.
Loudly, she called, “A stranger seeks aid from your hearth.”
After a long, long moment, a Pygmy warrior appeared out of the dark, a poisoned arrow nocked and pointed unwaveringly at her belly. He was not the only one, Pip sensed. She did not know him. His tribal warrior-paint was a thick, pustulent green, limited to unfamiliar bands around his neck, biceps, upper thighs and ankles.
“Stranger you are,” said the man.
A warning. Pip kept her hands immobile, grateful now for Master Adak’s tutelage in the basics of inter-tribe relations. She ironed any hint of uncertainty out of her voice. “This stranger comes open-handed, in peace. I seek a boon. Knowledge of my tribe, for I have walked a lost path for seven summers of my life.”
“What of the Ancient Ones who stalk our jungle halls?”
“I will bid them leave.”
The dark eyes flashed at her. “You have this power?”
Pip nodded firmly. “I have this power.”
The man showed no outward sign of shock, but Pip’s Dragon-senses clearly identified his elevated heartbeat, and the nervousness of the warriors backing him up. They had thought to deal with an interloper from another tribe. Now, she claimed power over Dragons. To retreat and confer would be shameful. To reveal fear, even more shameful. Yet, she must not offer help, at least not directly. The next move was his.
The man’s jaw tightened. “What knowledge do you seek?”
She winced inwardly. The direct phrasing of his question betrayed weakness. She said, “In my eighth summer of life, the pale men-with-beards took me as a bond-slave to their faraway land. An Island of no jungles. A place so cold, rain sticks to the ground.” This was a gamble, an admission of vulnerability. That those events were past, was immaterial. To die in battle was glorious. To be captured? Dishonour. “Now, in my fifteenth summer, I have returned to find my tribe. But the Islands are many and their ways, the secret of gelid sap.”
“Few return from the monster’s belly,” said the warrior.
Pip indicated her leg. “I am Named. I am Pygmy. The fires of my jungle soul never die.”
“Ay. May the soul’s fires never die,” he responded appropriately. Odd how Pygmies talked about soul-fires, similarly to Dragons. “Name a warrior from your tribe. Quickly.”
“No’otha,” said Pip, not pausing to think.
“Ah.” Finally, the deadpan face split into a grin. Drawing his dagger, the man squatted and began to draw rapidly in the dirt. “Take the jungle ways five Islands directly south, then two eastward. Crossing the Ape’s way here, you will come to an Island shaped like forked stick.”
Pip peered over his shoulder, nodding. Right. That should be easy to find, the westerly fork being shorter than the south-easterly.
“From there, head for the smoking Island. South again, you will find its four sisters. One is shaped like a Dragon’s foot. There you will find your village, burned seven summers ago by the big-person slavers. Many warriors were lost, but the tribe is still strong. Will you give that old leopard No’otha a message from Cha’òbít?”
She nodded. “I will be your mouth.”
Rising, the warrior hawked up a decent gobbet of spit and covered her left cheek in a spray of red-stained spit.
* * * *
Pip ran back to where she had left the others. “Found them!” she yelled.
“What’s that on your cheek?” asked Oyda.
“Phew,” said Nak, fanning his face. Emblazon promptly snaffled the Rider into his paw, effectively blinding him. Nak yelled unhappily inside his instant confinement.
Silver’s eyes bulged in his suddenly rosy-cheeked face. “What’re you wearing,
Pip?”
“Not wearing,” said Duri, scathing of tone as he deliberately averted his eyes. “Did I ever tell you how Pipsqueak first appeared to me?”
Nak managed to call between Emblazon’s knuckles, “Is there any chance under the heavens you could persuade Oyda into Pygmy gear, Pip? Please? Have mercy on a poor, piratical reprobate whose head you never fail to turn.”
“You first, I insist,” snorted Oyda, but she had a wink for Pip.
Quickly, Pip summarised her meeting with the Pygmies. “Cha’òbít’s nephew is–ah, married, I guess you big people would say–to No’otha’s granddaughter. That’s a tribal blood-tie.”
“And the spit?” asked Kaiatha, evidently itching to wipe Pip’s cheek. Lack of neatness always vexed her.
Pip scratched her chin. Roaring rajals, how did one translate all these cultural nuances? “Greeting and obligation. No’otha will owe Cha’òbít for helping me. Therefore we should find a way of paying or honouring No’otha first … Islands’ sakes, it’s complicated. Can we go find my tribe now?”
Freshly released from Emblazon’s paw, Nak imitated a child’s piping voice. “Are we home yet?”
For that, he received a punch on the shoulder that knocked him clean off his feet. Pip winced. “Ah, sorry, Nak. Stronger than I thought.”
The Dragon Rider rubbed his shoulder, astonished. “Suffering windroc spit, girl. I’m standing right behind you in the next battle.”
“What about Tik?” asked Shimmerith.
“Cha’òbít did not offer help,” Pip noted. “But I’d hope that with the right questioning we could find out who Tik’s relations are, and then ask amongst the tribes. It might take months.”
Arosia said, “Pygmies love children. Helping orphans is a high honour.”
This was definitely an occasion for wrinkling her nose at Arosia. Being reminded of her own culture was itself a reminder of what she had lost. Pip’s gaze returned to her discomfited boyfriend–and what she had gained. Although he did seem too easily shocked.
Reaching out to lace her fingers into his, Pip said, “This isn’t flaunting, Silver. Animals, even Dragons, are clad in their own hide and that’s enough, isn’t it?”
Silver nodded. Gulped.
Nak smirked, “The problem is that her hide is just so flaming fabulous, isn’t it, Silver? We men understand these–urk! Emblazon …”
The Dragon inquired solicitously, “Oh, Dragon Rider. Did that hurt?”
Pip settled for wrapping herself in a travel cloak as they soared over the Islands once more, following Cha’òbít’s guidance to the letter. Strange how Emblazon was sometimes so arrogant-male Dragon, doing what he wished, and other times he became an immovable stickler for protocol. Thus they flew the neat, prescribed zigzag, each point ticked off in officious tones by the Amber Dragon. Soon, the Dragonwing skirted the actively spitting volcano Cha’òbít had mentioned and headed south toward its ‘four sisters’, connected to the volcano by several mile-long vines. The easternmost Island, right on the edge of the Crescent, was indeed shaped like a Dragon’s foot, with two rugged peninsulas pointing almost due north, and a further three splayed out upon its southern aspect.
Still the storm lurked, occluding the entire southern horizon in towering grey-black battlements. In fact, they were so close now that the storm almost appeared to be reaching around the Dragonwing, a flanking manoeuvre of dangerous cloud-armies pregnant with lightning and magic. The Marshal’s doing? Pip had to wonder. No further Assassin of Night-Reds had appeared; those which had winged north had vanished into the distance and not returned. She could not shake the sensation of being watched. Shurgal? The Marshal? The Dragon of Shadow? Some other power?
Too many enemies.
Seen from Cinti’s back, nothing looked familiar. Pip turned to speak to Silver, seated right behind her, when the rearward view to the broad-based volcanic cone snagged her eye. Her jaw sagged. That crack in the cone’s rim, leaking a slow, meandering trail of hot orange lava. That cloud of smoke or ash hanging just over the summit, the dense tropical vegetation clinging to vertical cliffs on the eastern face … o heart, keep beating! O lungs, don’t forget how to fill and empty!
Silver reached out to squeeze her arm. “This is it, isn’t it?”
“Ay.”
Pip buried her head in her arms; Silver rubbed her back companionably. “It’s going to be perfect, Pygmy girl. You’re going home.”
Chymasion called over, “I still can’t master penetrating that jungle in search of life, Pip. You’ll have to go in on foot.”
Hunagu made his feelings plain with a snort that conveyed the superiority of Ape jungle skills over those of Dragons. Oyda immediately laid a warning hand on Emblazon’s shoulder, but the Amber Dragon had clearly determined that matters Ape were beneath his dignity. He landed Hunagu gravely on a huge, moss-mottled branch and watched the chosen trio sally forth–Pip, Chymasion and Hunagu.
They were back in less than half an hour. “Wrong scent-memories,” Pip explained.
“Wrong stink,” Nak translated for everyone.
“That’s your boots,” Pip retorted. “Trust me, I’ve suffered multiple near-death experiences in the vicinity of Nak’s boots.”
Nak beamed at her. “Trust me, I hire only the finest roost-help for cleaning my beautiful Shimmerith’s lair. Who else can count a Pygmy Dragoness for a pillow-changer and bootlicker?”
“Recently upgraded to boot-burner,” Oyda put in.
Right. Fourth place on her menu went to Oyda. “Move on!” Pip sang out.
The next peninsula, the more easterly of the Island’s two ‘toes’, was much more promising. After being dropped off midway along a quarter-mile branch in a spot where Dragons could land, Hunagu immediately sniffed the air approvingly. “No stinky Human boots,” he said approvingly, in his best Island Standard. “Come, Pipsqueak. Here good-good hunting.”
Pip sniffed too. Magic, a touch of bird guano, and the pungent odour of a saprophytic gourd-vine dangling nearby. She automatically checked for ripe fruit, plucked one and made a neat incision into the orange stem with her dagger. Sweet, sticky green mikku-juice, tasting like anise and honey. Yum!
After a short swig, she passed it back to Cinti. “Give that to Tik, please.”
She followed the Oraial Ape along the branch, hooting softly to find out how far he had progressed.
Brushing aside a veil of leaves, Hunagu shinned down a secondary trunk as though it were the easiest of stepladders and struck out into the Island’s interior. Cool green enfolded them. Pip noted familiar birdcalls and a chill trickle of premonition or anticipation on the nape of her neck. This was it. Home soil. Not that they were on home soil as yet, but another swift descent from Hunagu, a hundred-foot drop taken with the help of trailing lianas and an Ape’s incredible facility with tracing a pathway in any conceivable direction through the wildest of jungles soon brought her feet into contact with cool, rich black soil. Chymasion landed soft-pawed right behind her.
Once more, they wended their way in between the mighty jungle giants, every footfall deadened by the soft mulch underfoot, every breath hushed for reasons Pip could not quite fathom. She eased into a Pygmy warrior’s habitual alertness. Now, her footfalls did not even squelch. She disturbed no leaf or twig in passing. A touch awkward, but that feeling was already fading.
Astonishing, said Chymasion, after an hour had passed in utter silence. Not all around us is botanical. I see in these trees a tracery of magical pathways akin to those in a Dragon’s being. The reason underpinning the outstandingly massive botanical growth upon these Islands, is magical. Naturally. Or unnaturally, if you prefer.
Dragon and Shapeshifter chuckled together.
Quite unexpectedly, Pip sensed a familiarity in her surroundings, almost a mental ‘click’, or as Dragons would say, a change of aerial orientation. She pointed out a faint, heavily overgrown trail to Hunagu, who hooted in accord with her assessment, charging ahead more aggressively. Then he paused
, gesturing for her to take the lead. Pip jogged ahead, increasing the pace still further. The pace of a Pygmy warrior on the hunt. Every few steps she scanned the trail ahead and the trees above and to the sides. They passed through a few rare patches of dappling suns-shine, detoured where a twenty-foot tall branch had crashed down across the trail, and crossed two ravines on branch-bridges, or in Chymasion’s case, a leap, a gentle glide and a deft landing.
In her heart, Pip agonised over a cold truth. This trail had not seen use for many moons. In all likelihood, her people were not on this Island any more. Yet her village called to her. It sang a song which could not be denied. They climbed a four thousand foot ridge into the day’s heat, before finding on the far side, a small half-moon pool of water on the edge of a vertical drop.
Pip walked right to the still pool’s lip, next to a trickle of a waterfall, and peered over the edge. “We used to do this as children.”
“Do what?” asked Chymasion.
“Jump into the plunge-pools. A series of four. I remember the last being very high indeed.”
For a moment, Pip paused to gaze at the wall of leafy jungle pressed up against the cliff, chenki, lime-green orbík and flowering tiû’ti trees in the main. Thousands of trumpet-shaped pink flowers, as large as a Jeradian serving-platter, stretched forty feet upward from their branches, yearning for the suns-light. Jungle- mountains, these had once been. Now she knew a far wider world, accessible by a Dragoness’ wings, yet to be in this place was to know again the tininess of the Human frame in contrast to the stolid ranks of jungle giants, a sense of insignificance in the light of the natural world’s overwhelming power. Those Ancient Dragons must have been moved by wonder, she realised. An appreciation of beauty. A love of stark, forbidding landscapes and mighty Island-sculptures. World-building. Modelling. Perhaps even … loving what they had wrought. Ay.
With a soft whoop, she leaped into space. Splash! Icy water revived her. Pip gathered her weapons, forged ahead to the edge of the next pool, and leaped again. Swish. Splash! Now a short leap, and then a quick gathering of her balance atop the final, tallest leap. Two hundred feet into a narrow, pitch-black draw stuffed with foliage. Down below was an apparently bottomless plunge-pool, black as the night.