But it had not made it. It believed it could. For so long, hope was the undying companion in a world of none. That and the capybaras—their cries widening its trifle affection for this horrible place, their squeals in death reminders of its own mortality.
It had friends here. But not of its kind.
Curving talons, arthritically frozen, narrowed to its tender skin.
A sting, a leap, and the prisoner crashed safely between the pillars growing from the rocky beach. It fled deep into the towers.
Safe.
Shrill howls bled through the skies as the monster staggered away to a distant perch.
Obscured by sandy rock, the prisoner shook on ragged feet. It drooped on each breath.
There had been two options. Both were liberating. Both were old. But both were resolute. Doubled fates had shimmered through the years like stars, pulling in opposite directions. At any time, one would take its place in eternity.
But the prisoner had not achieved either. At the last moment it had given into that cowardly third option: to run back.
It needed only to reach the depths. There it would dive deep into the sea, out of the monster’s lair. It would make it or not make it. It would be free by the skies or eaten alive. Both freedom.
Neither.
Instead it’d run away.
The prisoner no longer measured the time, for the days had stretched on so long they made a timepiece in its mind, ticking, ticking, scratching on an open wound.
Today, and for forever, the scratching would carry on. Because it had run. Because it was a coward. The very misery it loathed, the despair that often threatened to take its life, would never leave, like chronic illness. Forever it’d be sick, until it learned to commit to fate; race to the sea or to the jaws.
Until then, the question of decades would circle numbingly in its brain:
What now?
Chapter 8: Out
Bird song filtered into Nyra’s dreams as she found consciousness. Resplendent warmth massaged her joints, and somewhere close was the back-and-forth of an ocean tide. Fine sands wove between her toes.
These feelings were wrong. Fighting the urge to open her eyes, the draggling scrunched her forehead until her sight turned from yellow to mauve. Green blotches swam behind her lids as the previous night’s dreams tapered together.
They aligned into a nightmare.
Atop the cliff, the Coast had been alive with fire, framed in blinding flashes, the dark clouds reflecting a teaming landscape.
Was that right?
Darkmoon had bashed her over the edge. She’d plummeted. Icey air and spray swatted her every orifice. Inside and outside, beaten alive, tossing and churning, like being swallowed by something dead and cold. She tumbled towards blackness. Toothy wind threatened to shear her wings off, pinned though they were. She would have to open them. She’d have to try. Like partners of dance, they rose together in shaking choreography, pushing against the needle rain below and above. Higher and higher they went, in slow motion, preparing to batter the wind that would carry her to safety.
Gulp. Wet lips swallowed her.
She did not recognize how warm the air had been until she hit the biting iciness of the Vousille Ocean.
Finally, she had reached the sea.
It was going to murder her.
Currents shook her in a violent tug-of-war. Direction was blind. She didn’t have enough power to swim, or in any case know the way to go.
By a miracle her head broke the surface. Foam crackled in her throat. Far, far above, a hazy glow wavered from the black cliff tops. Nyra tried to spot shapes.
Something hard slammed her flank. A great boulder protruded from the cliff face. Her claws shot out, gripping the eroded surface. Land.
The far away glow must have been firelight. It has to be, she thought frantically, willing herself to see color through the stinging salt. For fire was indicative of home. Burning, but still home.
The waves hissed closer.
“No, no…” she sputtered. Brine wafted her entirely, almost tearing her from the rocks. Nyra gurgled beneath the surface, not letting go. The wave withdrew. She was still latched tight, coughing raucously. The wave would come back, and her strength would not save her a second time. She would have to climb. Scanning a desperate paw over the rocks, she felt for cracks and crevices. The other paw gripped for life.
A crack. Small, but just big enough. She hoisted up. There was another fissure. Then another. Crack after crack guided her up. The waves buffeted her hind legs, furtively rising.
Rain sobbed over her face. Up above the light grew clearer. Two shapes appeared. They shot down the cliff face. Faster and faster, they grew larger and larger. Nyra’s eyes opened wide despite the rain.
They were the silhouettes of Agrings.
A rescue.
Nyra continued her ascent. She would reach them. They would reach her.
A third shape followed.
“I’m here!” she shouted weakly, spray catching in her throat.
But the third shape was larger, bulkier, so great it could not be mistaken as the slender forms in the lead.
This was not a friend.
The paired noses of Aisel and Fidee hovered a mere length away. She could almost touch them. Just one more heave, one more crack.
“Ny—” said Aisel.
Darkmoon crashed behind the twins, seizing the cliff face, perpendicular to the sea. The twins scattered.
His almond gaze burst at Nyra, so strong it might have passed through her body. But it did not. For the very last thing Nyra saw were the two yellow-green orbs spiraling away as her paws, numbed to invisibility, released and salty shadows enveloped her once more.
After that was nothing.
Nyra jerked out of the memory. Again she was aware of bird song and sun rays.
She opened her eyes.
Brilliant blue. It was a cloudless day.
The ocean was eye-level, rushing out to the edges of the globe. To the far left and right it dipped into unknown nothingness, tracing a territory between horizon and sky. Dead ahead it stopped. There, misty haze furled up in baby blue puffs. Behind them was the faint, sepia face of a towering cliff.
Nyra searched for the suns. Both had come up, both on her left. The welcoming hue of cerulean sky told her it was morning.
The nape of her neck prickled. The far-off cliff face and low sea level frightened her. But neither were quite so disturbing as the rising suns. Nyra had been rising from her den for over eleven years. And always, the suns greeted her on the right.
A sudden wave toppled ahead. Pale grit crusted the soles of her feet, ruffling beneath her as she backed away from the chasing tide. A beach stretched out on either side.
Thump. Something shoved against her rump. Above were dapples of cheery green, casting her in transparent emerald. A tree, the leafy kind. Others towered around it, thickening into darkness.
Am I where I think…?
No, she couldn’t be.
But she would check.
The draggling eased back to the lapping waves, trying not to collapse on her wobbling legs. She did not feel the cold when the tide bumped up over her feet. Water rose to her chest.
A few lengths off and a small measure into the sea shined a faint, green luminosity.
“I’m at the Green Spot,” she whispered. The Green Spot, the little glowing dot before the island. Was this the island?
She pushed back to dry land and fell heavily down. Quickened breaths ricocheted off the roof of her mouth, drumming down to her thrumming heart. The misty cliffs stared back.
Nyra was where no Agring had been in almost forty years.
What had happened next last night? After Darkmoon? Blackness and the brutal feel of the churning sea. She had swum away into nothing, kicking away from all she knew. Everything ahead was dark…
Until a soft green glow had blinked in and out of the rolling current; a nostalgic beacon in the void. She swam until her feet fell fla
t on glorious land. Here, at the Green Spot, her body had slept.
Yet the rest of her—memories and life—were rooted on the Northern Coast where they belonged.
An invisible force started sucking her homeward. Nyra plunged back into the ocean. Tides slammed her backward, but she fought on. She paddled, so earnestly, so fast that the cliff should have met her immediately. But it didn’t. She pumped harder.
How would she get back up the cliff once she got there? Climbing. She’d climbed quite a lot last night, and that was in the dark. In daylight, getting up would be easy. Comparatively.
A dot appeared over the misty cliffs, barely visible. Nyra slowed. The dot fell from the tops. As it neared the sea, two fans threw out from its sides. It grazed the surface, vanishing behind swells of ocean.
The Agrings were fishing.
And the Sperks would be watching. Hot adrenaline prickled her spine. She sunk so that only her eyes and nose floated above. Of course climbing would not work, at least not dead ahead. From dawn to dusk the sky and land would be teaming with watchers.
Be productive, she scolded herself, thinking of Thaydra. She veered right, where the cliff bended to the Scar. She’d climb the west face just south of the Scar. Getting there would take longer, but Sperk surveillance did not reach down there. And tree cover spanned the south, narrowing its way to the Reservoir area.
Hide in the forest.
But that presented a whole new problem; the fact that she needed to hide at all. Climbing a cliff would get her out of the water, but it would not get her home. Nyra’s banishment (if that was indeed the proper term) had used up more dramatic license than Darkmoon usually used in a month. He’d meant business.
But what’s so wrong with going back? No one died, no one’s hurt. She remembered Jesoam and cringed. No Sperks are hurt. Banishment seemed extreme.
Or was it? Crimson’s story came to mind. The eldest son of Fuhorn had suffered much worse, trampled into a watery grave. No Sperks had been hurt then, and still Darkmoon had killed.
If Nyra was going to go home, it had to be discreet. She’d have to get there without the Sperks knowing, then get a message to the Agrings. How, she did not know. The Agrings would have to smuggle her into the warren. Living underground was probably the only way. Until Fuhorn and Mother decided what to do: apologize, work extra, whatever. Until then Nyra would have to stay hidden.
How awful.
But better than living alone on an island.
Far away though it was, the Scar finally wrapped around to meet her. At first Nyra didn’t recognize it. The features appeared out of place at this angle. Then a sandy expanse yawned out of the cliff in a gentle slope.
Suppose she climbed the Scar? Bristone said it could not be done by an Agring. Nyra did not believe it. That’s just what Bristone would say, the melancholy thing. If the Sperk liked to mix lullabies with magical killers, she probably enjoyed mixing death with anything: butter flowers, hummingbirds, fluffy things. Mother had a word for this personality type. Nyra could not remember it at the moment.
At the Scar she could scrape her way up the sidelines, where the water was least turbulent. Save for when Sperks were getting a drink or snagging a fish, Thaydra was typically the only one at the Reservoir, with Fuhorn dropping in some afternoons.
A flash skipped beside her. She tried to follow it with her eyes. Nothing. Dismissing it as sunlight, she paddled on.
Opalheart might be on duty at the burrows, she mused. Maybe sneaking in would be easy. The Sperks outnumbered the Agrings, but only a few took on guard duties. The rest wasted away their free time. Could she jump through the blind spots? Or perhaps Opalheart could wrap her in one of his mighty wings and discreetly carry her home. That would work. With wings so big, he could hold an adult Agring in a comfortable fold. No one would see. She made a mental note to remember it.
Another flash. It swam in an arch across her path. Leisurely it sunk out of sight, too relaxed to be a trick of the light.
“Don’t move, don’t move,” she murmured. Tickles pattered her skin, yet there was nothing there. She looked about for a safe place to hide. The ocean had none. Like the plains.
The Scar was still so far away. The island was closer, but not close.
She’d have to make a run… make a swim for it.
On the count of four.
One… two… three…
A spout of water twisted skyward. From the top blossomed a slender torpedo of a beast, exploding in a crown of spines. The creature opened its mouth. Shrill reverberations wailed into Nyra’s ears while two broad wings blurred in pulsation.
The draggling turned, beating the ocean to froth as she paddled back to shore, leaving the Scar far behind.
Nyra felt certain she would be eaten alive. At the shore, she ran right up a tree. Twigs scratched her to a stop. Only then did she dare to look down.
Below, a patchwork of shadows stroked the soil. Breeze rustled the foreground leaves, each larger than her face. The trees opened to the beach, then the tides, then the ocean, then the cliffs, growing less and less misty as the suns climbed higher. Nothing moved, and no sound met her but for her own breath.
The ocean was tranquil, no signs of recent disturbance. Tides erased some of her footprints on the shore. The rest lead right to her hiding place. She gripped the bark tight.
The thing was gone.
Or was it? Every so often one wave appeared lighter than the others. Teal tides slithered between the navy blue ones. Only these particular waves did not move in the same rhythm of the others. They skidded sideways, forwards, and backwards in random volition.
The colors came closer. The water parted. A light blue head bobbed at the surface. Its anterior was splashed with markings, and fin-like ears swept out from behind two enormous eyes. Down its neck were bony lines fastened tight against the skin. Spines, she thought.
Other heads appeared. Were they hungry? Each jaw curled in a permanent smile, accentuating those bulbous eyes. The jaws were big. Nyra peered between the beasts in turn. The sixth one she spotted was looking right at her. Wide pupils stained on hers like ink. Nyra sunk back into the branches. The creature cocked its head. The rest copied. Eight more pairs of eyes found her.
In a four syllable chirp, the creature lifted its two diamond-shaped wings from the surface. Flapping, it rose higher, revealing a snake-like body. It crashed back down and splashed the group. None of them moved, keeping their gaze to the treed draggling.
Nyra gasped. “Xefexes!” They had to be. Like almost everyone else in the herd, the only other dragon species she had ever seen was a Sperk. The rest were characters in stories, difficult to picture. No one knew for sure what was real or not. Xefexes were one of the few known to be real. Occasionally a Fisher would claim to have seen one, but always far away at the Green Spot. Some Agrings called them porpoises, for there slender bodies resembled the elusive mammals. Nyra did not believe in real porpoises at any rate, but she herself had seen things leaping by the Green Spot.
Of Xefex temperament, Nyra knew nothing. They ate fish, she assumed. What else was there to eat in the sea? The Xefexes did not look horribly big, not much larger than an adult Agring. But Xefexes lived in packs. Group hunters. It brought to mind another mammal Nyra did not believe in: wild canines that could bring down antelope ten times their size using teamwork.
To Xefex credit, there were no bad stories. No Fisher had been attacked by a Xefex. Those tales mostly starred Aquadrays, the big and bad monsters who swallowed travelers in one gulp. Nevertheless, Nyra felt a strong aversion, and thus a new dilemma reared its toothy head. How do I get home now? She could not, would not swim back to the mainland.
“Can I fly home?” She realized she had spoken out loud when the Xefexes bobbed from the water further, revealing their slender necks. Nyra winced, but they did not come closer. She went on with her thoughts privately.
Mum said that she and Blaze could fly. Without Sperks, she would have been flying months, maybe ev
en years ago. Last night she had almost done it. Right? If Nyra practiced a little on the island first, could she make it?
The tides murmured. A Xefex was pulling its way up shore.
“Oh no no NO!” Nyra hissed. Her lips curled back over her budding fangs.
Lumbering out on land, the Xefex bore no hint of a formal body but for a bulge in the middle. No flippers or fins protruded from the ventral side. Two reddish wings, or what Nyra could only describe as wings, grew out from the back. They were not like hers at all. Nyra had bat wings, or so Fuhorn often said. Nyra had never seen a bat (yet another mythical creature). The Xefex had squarish ones, elongated at the tips. It must have used its wings for flying underwater.
A silver thing flashed in its mouth. A fish! They eat fish! The Xefex dropped the shiny morsel. The water beast squeaked, sounding far more bird than dragon. It loped back into the sea, turned, and lied poised above the gentle tides. The others followed its example. Pairs and pairs of orbs floated on the water, watching Nyra. Her focus darted between them and the fish, back and forth, sea to land.
Then her stomach gurgled.
“Absolutely never!” Nyra exclaimed. The fish gazed vacantly upward. Its plump body bulged behind luminescent scales.
Nyra wanted to eat it.
Nyra didn’t want to be eaten.
Hours drained on. One sunset. A second. Nyra watched the fish the whole time. She thought of nothing else until night insects chirruped her to sleep.
Some time into the night a dream started up. It was a contest between herself, Blaze, and her cousins. The object was to create the most unique sound. Of course Jesoam loved it, twittering away on her ceaseless voice. Emdu went next. His noises were unimpressive, but somehow enough to make Blaze jealous. In the middle of Emdu’s performance, Blaze started shrieking like a crazed gull. The sound was loud and offensive. He ran up to Nyra and began blowing air in her ears. His cries became shriller, and though Nyra was annoyed, she was too tired to scold him. In fact, she couldn’t stand up. She collapsed, and the ground was a long pole digging along her belly. Both suns blurred out, and heaviness took her away.
The Waters of Nyra- Volume I Page 14