Dragon's Heart

by Jane Yolen

  He got to the top of the stairs before it was fully light, walked around the outer edge of the roof toward the front, convinced it would be quieter than making a beeline across the center. As he went, he sent messages to Akki over and over. The silence was worrying.

  When he reached the front of the building, he knelt down, lay fully on his stomach and, looking carefully over the side, located the unshuttered window. Then he crawled across the roof on his belly to the place where he figured the window stood.

  Sssasha, flying over the nearest wort fields, sent him a message. "Too far. Too far."

  Evidently he'd missed the window by a bit. He leaned over again and checked. Yes, he'd overshot his mark. Crawling backward on his stomach a few centimeters at a time, he checked again, while Sssasha sent him a whirlwind of golden flowers, like small suns.

  They both understood that the only way for his plan to work was for him to be precisely over the window. But the next bit was going to be even trickier.

  Sssasha flew back and landed lightly on the roof beside him. That is, the landing was light. Light—but not silent. After all, she is a dragon! That was worrying enough. But he also worried that the flat roof couldn't hold her body weight and that she might crash through.

  They waited, Jakkin biting his lower lip. But though the roof creaked, it held. Whoever had made that roof knew the danger dragons posed and had considered that when the warehouses had been built.

  Sighing with relief, Jakkin shrugged out of the sling and then his shirt. He knotted them together into a rope, making a noose at one end. At the same time, he sent to Sssasha, "Thou art a mighty worm."

  She gave him a toothy, lipless grin. "Thou art a mighty worm, too!" Not a lie, because it wasn't meant to be believed. Just her idea of a joke.

  Grinning back at her, he slipped the noose end of the rope around his waist. The other end Sssasha drew toward herself, using her extended nails—the unum, secundum, and tricept. She set the rope end under her right front foot. Then she lay down close to the edge of the roof and tucked the foot with the rope end under her. The rising sun backlit her dusty scales. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth.

  "Do not let it go till I tell thee to." He sent the picture of what he was about to do.

  "Or splat!" It was her favorite bit of foolishness. The sending was full of popping bubbles.

  "Splat indeed, thou lovely queen of dragons. Art thou ready?"

  She snapped her tongue into her mouth. Her tail twitched. "Ready."

  Checking one last time over the side of the building, Jakkin sat up, then dangled his feet over the edge. He brought his wrist—with Akki's hair band wrapped around it—to his lips. Turning onto his stomach again, he wiggled down till he was hanging by his arms. He was still a good foot or so above the top of the unshuttered window.

  He hoped the makeshift rope would hold. He hoped the dragon would hold. He hoped his stomach would hold. And his luck.

  Then he let go.

  Dangling at the end of the cobbled-together rope, Jakkin was now even with the window, but unfortunately the rope had twisted him about before he'd time to look in. Kicking his legs, he managed to swing around again, then grab on to the upper part of the window and pull himself to it. Peering into the dark room, he could just make out a mattress with a blanket at one end. It could have been there for years, or been put there for a prisoner. For Akki.

  Akki! For a minute he thought he heard something, a sigh perhaps. But that was all.

  Pulling himself closer, he stared further into the room. Something to the right side of the window caught his eye. A leg—no, two legs—someone sitting in a chair. He tapped lightly on the window. The legs stirred.

  "Akki!"

  "Danger ... Go away ... Find..."

  The sending was weak, but he recognized it at once. Hauling himself up a bit on the rope, he then kicked away from the building, and when he swung back, his feet went through the window and he landed amid broken glass on the floor.

  He'd cut his left hand a little. It hurt, but not too much. More important—he was in.

  "Let go, let go!" he sent to Sssasha, and the rope immediately went slack. Shedding the rope, he turned to Akki. She was tied to a chair; her strange blue dress was torn at the shoulders and under the arms, and smelled awful.

  Nevertheless he put his arms around her. "I'm here. And I've brought you the gold band for your hair ... Why, what have you done to it?"

  She looked up at him. "Oh, Jakkin, I cut it. With shears. Please don't ask why. Just get me out of this." She was trembling.

  He knelt behind her and worked at the knots with equally trembling fingers. In minutes he'd untied her and pulled her to her feet. She just barely managed to stand.

  "Now, isn't that sweet," said an icy voice from across the room.

  Jakkin swung around. In the open door stood a man with white-gold hair, looking exactly like the bad man in the hatchling's sending. He was holding a gun.

  "Behind me," Jakkin sent to Akki.

  "He has a gun."

  "I see it."

  Taking a step toward the man, Jakkin still held Akki behind him. "It's over," he said. At the same time, he sent to Sssasha, "Danger. Now."

  "It certainly is." Dark laughed. "For you."

  That laugh! Jakkin suddenly remembered that laugh. "But you're ..."

  "I certainly am."

  Dark came toward them slowly. He pushed the mattress aside with one foot, never looking away from them. "She wouldn't tell me where you were, but that doesn't matter now, does it? All that pain, little girl, and for nothing. Now I have both of you, anyway. The only two people who can possibly identify me with the group that blew up Rokk Major. With you gone, I can safely run for senator, and I have the ability to win. Golden will be grieving too hard to go on. After senator—who knows."

  "The group?" Jakkin asked. Anything to stall. "What do you mean 'the group that blew up...'"

  Dark laughed. "Oh come, young dragon master, you didn't really think that the one little bag of explosives you carried could have brought down the pit all on its own, did you?"

  Jakkin sighed. Yes, he'd carried that burden of guilt. Akki, too. But he wouldn't say it aloud. Instead, he sent, "Sssasha!Now!" But Sssasha was unaccountably silent.

  "Come away from that window," Dark said. "It's daylight, and cars might come by any minute. I wouldn't want them to see you. Or what is about to happen to you. Don't worry. It won't hurt for long. I have enough bullets to put you both out of your misery. No need to prolong it. And then in a week or two, when we search this building again, there you'll be, in each other's arms. Victims of the kidnapper, who has died. But you, young man, will die a hero."

  They moved as he told them, Akki still behind Jakkin.

  "What do we...?" Akki began.

  "I have a plan," Jakkin sent back, thinking that the plan needed Sssasha, who'd suddenly gone quiet. He strained to hear if she was still on the roof, but could detect nothing.

  To stall for time till the dragon could come and help them, he said, "I found him, you know. The driver. If I can find him, others can, too. They'll figure it out. It won't work. He'll have been dead longer than us."

  Dark laughed. "Only if they find you today or tomorrow. But a couple of weeks from now ... you'll all look the same."

  "Then—let her go. You'll still have me. She won't be able to tell anyone as long as I—"

  "Do you think I'm stupid?"

  Jakkin snorted. "I think if you shoot us in the day with the windows open, you're more than stupid."

  "I was just getting to that," Dark said, going to the window, where he closed one shutter, still keeping an eye all the while on Jakkin and Akki. He started to close the second, when a sound made him stop. He glanced out quickly. A trio of dragons were just hovering outside, their wings thrown open in a stall.

  "What's—" he said, and then it was too late.

  "Drop!" Jakkin sent to Akki, turning to her and pulling her to the floor. "Danger now! Fire, fir
e, fire!" he sent.

  The triplets didn't hesitate. They let go with three great streams of fire that combined into a single pulse. The fire caught Dark in the middle of his chest, and in seconds he was fully engulfed in flames. His scream was horrifying, high-pitched, though through it all he shot his gun out the window at the three dragons.

  Jakkin knew that the bullets would bounce harmlessly off their scales unless hitting the vulnerable neck. The triplets would have shuttered their eyes even before the first shot. It would take stingers—a lot of stingers—to bring a trio of yearling dragons down.

  The triplets roared back at Dark, which stopped their fire for a minute. Then they combined the three streams of flame once again.

  The burning man remained upright for a moment longer, then fell silently, and lay on the floor, blackened and still.

  "We can't just let him burn," Akki cried.

  "We already have," Jakkin told her. Standing, he lifted her up to him, trying to shield her from the sight, but she started to pull away.

  "Akki ... I didn't mean ..." That's when he realized she wasn't angry with him but had simply passed out. So he picked her up in his arms, horrified how light she'd become—practically skin and bones. Then, carrying her, he went as quickly as he could through the open door.

  Walking down the three flights of stairs with Akki in his arms was an agony. Not that she was heavy, but all the adrenaline Jakkin had used to keep going had suddenly dropped away. Several times his knees threatened to buckle, but he would not let her go.

  Once outside, he set her down carefully in the field across the road. When he turned and glanced behind at the building they'd just escaped from, the top floor of the warehouse was red with flames.

  Jakkin thought about how Dark's last moments must have been horrible, agonizing, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. The trogs who'd mistreated him had done so because he'd taken something from them. I might call it liberation, but they thought it was stealing. Yet Dark ... Dark killed the driver, shot the girl Senekka. He had tortured and starved Akki. And for what? Just to get Akki to tell where he was. Dark deserved everything he got.

  Jakkin sat down next to Akki and took her hand in his. He wished now that he still had the sling with the tea and the last lizard egg. It would be a long way back to Golden's house. Akki could use the nourishment.

  Just as he was getting ready to pick her up again, he heard the sound of something overhead.

  Dragons? But it was too loud for that.

  Looking up, he saw a copter above him. He jumped to his feet and waved his hands wildly. "Here!" he cried, then sent Akki a picture of a soft bed and food.

  Lifting her up, he felt her stir.

  "Jakkin," she whispered.

  "I'm here."

  ***

  JAKKIN DIDN'T leave Akki's side except when Henkky shooed him out so she could wash Akki and put her into a nightgown. When he went back into the hospice room, standing at her bedside, Akki was sleeping, with a tube running into her right arm.

  "What's that?" he asked, terrified.

  Henkky smiled, put a hand on his shoulder. "Something to get fluids into her quickly. She's had a rough time."

  "Will she ... is she...?"

  "She'll be fine, except for bad dreams. I expect you know something about those yourself."

  Senekka was sitting up in the bed next to Akki's. She was very pale, but Henkky said she would make a full recovery. "Is she some kind of hero?" Senekka asked.

  He nodded.

  "I knew it!" Senekka said. "I just wish I could remember why."

  "When she wakes up, maybe she can tell you," he said. "You'll want to see the hatchling now," Henkky told him.

  "But Akki?"

  Henkky looked at him. "She'll sleep for some time. There's a sedative in that fluid as well."

  ***

  THE HATCHLING had already caught some of the sendings between Jakkin and Akki when they were first brought back to the hospice by Golden. He'd landed the copter right outside the door of his house, on the paving between the spindly spikka trees, where cars weren't allowed to go.

  "Nor copters, either," Henkky had reminded him.

  "What's the use of being a senator if you can't claim privilege every once in a while?" he'd said.

  Jakkin found the hatchling in the garden. She was lying down, eyes closed, chewing on a sprig of wort. When she heard him come in, her eyes went wide.

  "Danger?" she sent.

  He squatted down beside her. "Not anymore," he said, sending it at the same time. Then he scratched beneath her chin till she began to thrum.

  ***

  THEY ALL ate dinner that evening at Akki's bedside—eggs, salad, a berry pie and a berry liqueur for dessert. Jakkin refused the last. What he had to say was too important to say tipsy.

  Likkarn was there, having been fetched by copter. Jakkin had insisted on it. The other nursery folk had stopped by and were told the story of the rescue, then were driven back home to the nursery.

  The driver Dikkon was returned to his home in a casket. There was to be a major funeral in a few days. Golden planned to speak at it. Insisted on it, actually. There was to be a widow's pension, larger than Dikkon's salary. Golden was planning to fund it himself.

  Senekka was now settled in her own bedroom, much improved. So it was just the five of them at dinner: Jakkin and Akki, Likkarn, Golden and Henkky.

  As she sat up in the hospice bed, eyes like bruises, Akki said she felt better. "I'm not tied up and starving, so it's a major improvement."

  "Tomorrow I'm going to try you on tea and dry toast," Henkky said.

  Golden cleared his throat. "Jakkin, why did you want us all here?"

  Jakkin was holding Akki's hand carefully, the one with the torn thumbnail. He'd already discussed with her what he wanted to say. Taking time to look at each of them in turn, he said, "We need your advice."

  Henkky leaned forward. "Is it about this dragon problem, the one you alluded to before ... before..."

  Akki nodded.

  "It's a dragon problem, but a people problem, too," Jakkin said. "We thought it would be simple, but it's not."

  Akki put her other hand on top of his. "Just tell it from the beginning, Jakkin."

  So he did, going back to the time they'd sheltered in Heart's Blood's egg chamber for warmth, then had emerged in the morning utterly changed. "We could stay out in Dark-After, we could talk to dragons mind-to-mind. And to each other that way as well."

  "I have a bit of that, too," Likkarn said.

  Henkky and Golden just looked astonished.

  Henkky said, "Mind speech?"

  "That's rubbish," Golden said.

  "Not at all." Likkarn's voice was calm.

  Jakkin continued. "In the mountains Akki and I were captured by the very same trogs who came after me just days ago." He spoke quickly about what he'd endured while being captured by them, and how he and Likkarn and Errikkin had killed all four.

  Raising his bandaged arm, Likkarn added, "One of them gave me this in the battle."

  Jakkin laughed, remembering that the wound had come from Errikkin closing Likkarn's fingers in the door, but he didn't contradict the old man.

  "What you need to know is that the trogs also know the secret. They must have discovered it generations ago. They slaughter their hen dragons after the hens give birth, in order to place their own babies in the egg chamber. And they have all but given up speech in favor of sendings."

  Akki sat up a bit more in the bed. "I came here to use Dr. Henkky's lab to try to make a vaccine using tissue or blood from a dragon's egg chamber so everyone can have these same gifts. The change has to have happened chemically not magically, and we should be able to reproduce it in the laboratory."

  Nodding, Henkky said, "I agree."

  "That's not all," Jakkin said. "When my friend Slakk killed a drakk in the incubarn last week, he had a moment when his hand was in her egg chamber and I could hear him," Jakkin said. "Just a moment."
<
br />   "Drakk blood..." Akki's eyes got wide. "Maybe..."

  Golden threw up his hands. "All right, everyone—I believe you. Akki, you can work here. Or we can build you a lab at the nursery. Or ..."

  Interrupting them, Jakkin said, "But as I watched the warehouse burn, I suddenly wondered what could have happened if Dark had had the ability to talk to dragons, to force them to blaze away at anyone he didn't like. Look what I did—and I'm not a bad man."

  They were all silent for a moment, then suddenly began to talk all at once, assuring him he was actually a hero, telling him that motive made things right.

  Jakkin held up his hand to stop them. "I'm not worried about me being bad. But who judges motive? Which one of us can make that decision for others? I've been thinking that maybe Akki shouldn't work on such a vaccine now, if men like Dark—who want to rule the planet—could harness it to their own ends."

  This time the silence lasted longer. Henkky opened her mouth several times, shutting it without speaking. Likkarn chewed on his lower lip.

  Finally, Golden smiled and spread his hands out, palms down. He seemed to be looking at his nails as he spoke. "Jakkin, if we waited on progress until the planet was filled with only good people, we'd never move forward at all. Human beings are a funny combination of good and bad. We work to make the good ones better, to weed out the bad ones. Sometimes we miss. We certainly missed Dark. He killed Dikkon, who was a good, honorable man. He almost killed Senekka and he tortured Akki."

  Golden looked up now, talking directly to Jakkin. "He would have killed you, too. But he didn't because you had something he never had. You have beings who love you unconditionally. Who count on you. Who stand up for you. Who know your soul because it is entirely open to them. He only had a gun and a black heart."

  Likkarn laughed. "A really black heart now."

  " Uncle Likkarn!" Jakkin said.

  And suddenly there were other things to talk about, explain, marvel at—like family history.