Within the Sanctuary of Wings

by Marie Brennan

  How had they come to be there? Speculation alone could not tell me, but my command of the language did not yet suffice to address such abstract, complex topics. I had a strong suspicion that, as I had theorized before, folk memory in Tser-nga preserved knowledge of the Draconeans—for surely these were the “ice demons” feared by the people of Hlamtse Rong. Had they dwelt here since ancient times? Nothing in their architecture reminded me of the ruins I had seen in other parts of the world … but of course it would be absurdly difficult to build such things in a place like this. For one mad moment, I wondered if the inhabitants of the Sanctuary even knew that the larger Draconean civilization had fallen thousands of years before, far outside their isolated home.

  Had I been able to explore, I might have learned more, and more rapidly. Three things, however, militated against my departing from Imsali. First, of course, was my own weakness and injury, though in time I overcame that issue. The second was that although it does not snow as heavily in the winter as during the monsoon, it does still snow; and winter is the primary season for the wind to come howling through.

  The third is that we were not alone in that place.

  In our village, yes. (If I may be permitted to term it “our village,” when I was only a temporary guest there.) But as it transpired, each of the villages within the Sanctuary had its own set of yak caretakers. This I discovered one day when Kahhe swooped down and bundled me straight back into the barn, without so much as a by-your-leave.

  I do mean swooped. On that day I discovered that, while Draconean wings cannot support full flight, they are sufficient for a degree of gliding. Kahhe landed before me in the snow, clapped one scaled hand over my mouth, and hauled me bodily through the doorway. It is a mark of how much I had come to trust the sisters that after my first, muffled yelp of surprise, I made no protest at all. If she felt I needed to be removed from sight, I assumed it was for my own protection—and so it was.

  Voices came from outside. By then I had heard enough of the three sisters that I could recognize their tones, and knew the new speakers were neither Zam nor Ruzt. Kahhe pointed with one claw. I stared. She pointed again, wings fluttering. I knew what she meant; it was only reluctance that held me back. But I had no better option, and so, obedient to her instructions, I climbed over the railing into one of the yak enclosures and wormed my way between the beasts until I was far enough back to be thoroughly concealed. Then she went outside.

  Common sense told me to stay where I was. But I am, as Suhail is fond of saying, deranged as well as practical. I could learn a great deal by watching my three Draconeans interact with others … and I did not relish the thought of staying among the yaks, made fragrant by their enclosed quarters.

  I crept back between them and went to the barn door, where I peered out through the crack. In the street outside I saw two new Draconeans speaking to Kahhe. Before long her sisters joined them, and then the conversation devolved into an argument.

  The wind was too fierce that day for me to hear much of what they said, and I doubt I would have understood more than one word in ten even if I could hear. Though by then I had some facility with the language, at least within the narrow scope of my daily affairs, I still required my interlocutors to speak slowly and clearly—which is not a thing people generally do in natural conversation.

  Watching their body language, however, kept me fascinated enough to forget the intense chill coming through the crack of the door. Their gestures were not those of humans: Ruzt kept holding up one hand, fingers spread and palm out, which among us would have been a sign of placation or a request for quiet while she spoke. Here it seemed to be a way of indicating refusal, like a shake of the head. At one point a newcomer half spread her wings; Kahhe responded by spreading her own to their fullest extent. The other followed suit, and the two commenced what I could only think of as a staring contest, except with wings instead of eyes. When Zam had lifted her ruff my first day awake, I had interpreted it as a fear response; here I thought the increase in apparent size signaled some kind of dominance challenge instead.

  Kahhe won the contest, but in the end Ruzt curled her fingers inward and turned her palm toward her body, which signaled assent. All five Draconeans turned and came toward me.

  I scrambled for cover once more. Whether any of the Draconeans took particular note of the restless and protesting yaks in one of the enclosures, I cannot say; by then I was crouched as low as I could be in the far corner, praying that the nearest beast would not decide to saunter away and leave me exposed. I only know that no one commented on my presence, which meant none of the strangers had noticed it.

  They climbed up the ladders and were gone for some time. I heard a creaking from the upper attic, where fodder was kept, above the mews. I considered trying to shift to better cover, but did not quite dare; the risk of being caught in the open was too high. Finally they came back down, bearing sacks of the richer feed we gave to yaks that seemed to be languishing in their winter quarters. So: the argument had been about feed, and whether our village would give any to the visitors. Were their yaks wasting away, or had something gone wrong with their feed, or were the newcomers simply bullies extorting surplus from their neighbours? I never did find out.

  Kahhe retrieved me once they were gone. Leaving the barn, I saw something that stopped me—in my tracks, I should say, but it would be more accurate to say in front of them. The ground by the barn door was thoroughly trampled, but I had been roaming about earlier, and the snow away from the usual path showed my footprints clearly.

  Human footprints. Would anyone here recognize them as such? They certainly did not look Draconean, by size or by stride length.

  When Kahhe saw what had alarmed me, she immediately went to consult with her sisters. After that I was issued a broom with which to blur my tracks, and the trio frowned more on me going anywhere they had not already trampled a path. (After a day or two of carrying the broom, I instead improvised a kind of straw skirt, which would drag behind me as I walked without need for special effort. As this also had the effect of insulating me further against the cold, I did not mind the additional burden.)

  “What would have happened if they saw me?” I asked, staring in the direction the strangers had gone. I spoke in Akhian, as had become my habit; I was more focused on learning Ruzt’s language than teaching her any of my own, but the odds of her understanding a stray word or two were higher if I spoke that tongue.

  She made no reply, and I doubt my meaning came through. In a sense, I am glad I did not get an answer then, for I would not have been prepared for the consequences.

  * * *

  That night I approached Kahhe and asked, by means of mime, whether I could examine her wings.

  Ever since I woke up and discovered that Draconeans were not only real but alive (or at least since I had collected my wits in the aftermath of that discovery), I had wondered about their wings. Their ancient kin might have inhabited places like Akhia and Keonga, but these three dwelt in an exceedingly cold climate. A thin structure like a wing loses heat rapidly, because the blood vessels are unavoidably close to the surface. How did they deal with this problem?

  I had noted that my rescuers had a habit of crouching close to the fire with their wings partially spread, as if cupping the heat to themselves. They most often did this immediately after returning from the outside, in the manner of a human warming their hands at the flame, and that made sense to me; but they also did it before departing, and I wanted to know why.

  So I pointed to Kahhe’s wings and said in her language, “What?” By now this was well established as my way of asking for vocabulary, and so she answered me, “Kappu.” I repeated this process with my eyes and received the word ika in return. Then, employing my new acquisitions and some accompanying mime, along with their word for “please,” I inquired whether I could examine her wings. Kahhe seemed puzzled by my interest, but let me approach, and did not flinch away when I touched her.

  In the course of my c
areer I have handled any number of dragon wings. Many of them, however, have been on carcasses, and most of the remaining number belonged to very small breeds of dragon, such as the honeyseeker. My only experience with a larger wing on a living creature was when I had to assist Tom in doctoring a drake in Akhia, and in that instance she was drugged to her ruff.

  Kahhe’s wing was entirely different, not for any reason of anatomy, but simply because it belonged to a living, wakeful, self-aware creature. The muscles that controlled it shifted under my hands, Kahhe not quite willing to relax entirely into my grip. I felt the warmth of it—we had been inside for some time—and her pulse when I used my fingertips to locate the main alar artery.

  A pulse which vanished a moment later. I think Kahhe believed I wanted to pinch off the blood flow, and was trying to assist me; and so she did, but not in the way she intended.

  Her action told me what I would not otherwise have known: that Draconeans can voluntarily control the blood flow to their wings. When in strong sunlight or near a fire, they open those vessels and draw in as much heat as they can, but when they go into the cold, they reduce the flow to their wings, the better to preserve that heat.

  They cannot do this forever, of course, as it greatly restricts the mobility of that limb; and the longer the wings remain dormant, the longer it takes them to return to full function. (It is for this reason that spreading the wings is a dominance challenge, at least in winter; to leave them exposed is a test of endurance.) Judging by the way she moved in the aftermath of the strangers’ visit, Kahhe had strained a muscle swooping in to hide me, likely on account of the cold and lack of blood flow. But it is a very clever adaptation—a kind of localized anatomical hibernation.

  The notion of hibernation should have occured to me much sooner. (No doubt the more scientifically inclined of my readers have thought of it already, and wondered that I have not addressed it before now.) In my defense I can only say that I had spent my entire tenure in that village either unconscious, in hysterics, or reeling from the flood of new information; and as a consequence, I had the attention span of a gnat: no sooner did I begin pondering one aspect of the puzzle than some equally interesting angle distracted me.

  But as soon as I thought of it, I was certain that the rest of the village’s inhabitants had not gone to winter quarters—or rather, that “winter quarters” for them consisted of hibernation. It is a common biological response to cold weather, for it allows the organism to survive on a much reduced diet when food is scarce; I had seen its more unusual summer cousin, aestivation, among the desert drakes of Akhia.

  The Draconeans could not all go into hibernation, for they would wake to find their yak herds annihilated by the harsh winter. (Wild yaks may survive without undue trouble, but their domesticated kin have more difficulty.) My three fought their instincts, staying awake through the frozen months to ensure their kindred’s livestock would be waiting when spring came. They ate tremendous quantities of food—a fact I had noted but, having nothing to compare it against, had assumed was their ordinary diet—and chewed a certain leaf in much the same fashion as human men chew tobacco. Initially I abstained from trying the leaf myself, knowing that what was edible to them might not be so to me; but Ruzt pressed some upon me when I had an abscessed tooth, and although the taste was unpleasantly astringent, it helped to numb my mouth while she drained the abscess. After that I chewed it somewhat regularly, for I found it improved my health and mitigated the effects of the high altitude.

  Not long after I examined Kahhe’s wing, I tried to ask about hibernation. Our communication was not anything like fluent enough yet to cover such a topic, and so once again I had to ask in mime, pointing at empty houses and then feigning sleep. At first I thought my meaning still too muddled, for Ruzt only cocked her head and then walked away. As this persisted, however, I became certain that she understood me perfectly well, and was using incomprehension as her shield against my questions. I did not press.

  You must not think that I had suddenly mislaid my curiosity. My list of mysteries to solve was a kilometer long; but language was still a tremendous barrier, and moreover I was eternally cognizant of the fact that the line between “prisoner” and “guest” might be exceedingly thin. That my three hostesses were friendly to me, I was certain—well, certain in two cases; Zam still gave me a wide berth whenever she could, and watched me with a gimlet eye. But Kahhe’s swift action to hide me when the neighbours came calling made it obvious that I could not expect so hospitable a reaction from their kin.

  And whether I was correct about hibernation or not, I knew beyond a doubt that eventually the other inhabitants of Imsali would return. When that day arrived, I needed to be out of the Sanctuary and back to my own people, which I could only do with the help of my three caretakers … or I needed that trio to be my shield against whatever might come next.

  * * *

  My communications with Ruzt and the others improved dramatically when I realized that I was thinking too much like my husband.

  This was ironic because I had been trying not to think about him at all. I was frequently unsuccessful; over the past five years I had grown accustomed to having Suhail at my side, and his absence felt like a missing limb. As I have said, though, I often lost myself to despair in those days, for it was easy to imagine that I would never escape the Sanctuary (how ironic that name would then be!), and therefore would never see him again. I could banish my demons with unyielding determination to prevail … but this only worked for a time, and drained me tremendously. It was better to lose myself in the challenges I faced, addressing what lay immediately before me, rather than allowing my thoughts to stray too far ahead.

  But one cannot live in a marriage like mine without each spouse shaping the other—not when one of your primary joys lies in sharing your interests and fields of knowledge. It was only because of Suhail that I had made as many linguistic strides as I had, and I followed his principles and theories in establishing a common vocabulary with my rescuers.

  My change of course came about because of a brilliant dawn. A nightmare had woken me, as it often did; rather than disturb the sisters with my restlessness, I slipped quietly through the door to the antechamber. I had to bring my outer clothing with me, naturally, for the air there was cold enough to give me frostbite if I did not take care—and there is nothing like the unforgiving slap of freezing air to wake a person. Since sleep was now beyond me, and I had gone to such effort in dressing myself in all the necessary layers, I thought I might as well go outside.

  Dawn had come to the summit of Anshakkar, that central peak. Though most of the Sanctuary yet lay in shadow, the mountain burned like a flame with the light of the rising sun. Looking on it, I was reminded of the dawn when I stood atop the col with Tom, gazing into the west; and I understood why humans have been known to worship mountains. Anshakkar’s beauty was of a divine sort, sharp and untouchable, as far distant from my own concerns as I was from the concerns of an ant. Pencil and paper, had I possessed either at that moment, could not possibly have captured the effect, and I have never had much skill with oils … but never in my life have I wished so strongly to render a moment on canvas, even if I knew my effort would fall short. It seemed to me in that frozen moment, caught between the remnants of sleep and the wakefulness of an icy dawn, that no one could hope to understand my time in the Sanctuary unless they saw that mountain, ablaze with morning’s light.

  The feeling passed—but the idea it had planted in my mind did not.

  Prior to the discovery of the Cataract Stone and subsequent breakthrough regarding their language, we had two sources for our fragmentary, erroneous knowledge of Draconean civilization. The first was folklore: memories preserved in Scripture and humble tales, mutated by time until they were scarcely recognizable. The second was the material remains of their age, the buildings and artefacts and, above all, the images—the painted murals and carved reliefs that had once adorned their world. We had misinterpreted so much of tha
t, but it was still the one means by which the ancients could speak to the modern human, transcending the barrier of language.

  Could I not communicate in the same way?

  I had no proper supplies for the purpose, just a few scraps of paper that had been tucked into the pocket of my coat; my pencil had gone astray during the avalanche or my wanderings afterward, never to be seen again. But humans made art long before we had paper or pencils, and I would not let that lack hinder me.

  The interior wall of the yak barn, plastered with white lime, was my primary canvas. By the time the sisters roused to feed the beasts and muck out their enclosures, I had laid out my tale in charcoal, doing my best to mimic the style of ancient Draconean art: Thu, finding the remnants of a Draconean in the valley; Thu again, meeting with myself and Tom and Suhail; then five of us climbing up to the col, where we found the second carcass; then the avalanche. As a coda, myself on one side of the mountains, my companions on the other, in postures of sorrow.

  (I was fortunate that the barn, inhabited as it was by so many yaks, was warm enough that my tears did not freeze. My nose ran dreadfully, though, and I had only one handkerchief with which to address that issue, which I had already worn to a rag. Yak-wool scraps make abysmal tools for the purpose.)

  The sisters were already upset when they came in, I think because they woke to find me gone from the house, and had to follow my brushed-over tracks to locate me. The simple existence of my picture was enough to deepen their consternation, long before I had a chance to show them its details. Zam in particular was angry: although the charcoal would wash off quite easily, or could at least be smudged into illegibility if the need should arise, I had left a blatant sign of my presence in a relatively public building.

  But in time they calmed, and then Ruzt and Kahhe studied my pictures. I exercised my vocabulary, pointing to each bit like a teacher: Draconean, Zabel, mountain. Then, once Ruzt understood, I drew a final image. This one depicted myself and the others together again, in the posture from ancient art that we believed to indicate rejoicing.