The Waters of Nyra- Volume I

by Kelly Michelle Baker

  She woke. Teal fanned out beyond her eyelids, printing bright blotches in her vision.

  The sky above was black. The suns had long since set, but her tree gleamed in a light brighter than day. Through the leaves were threads of color. Finding the ocean, she saw bluish-green tendrils beneath the rippling tides.

  The Green Spot.

  A tree branch drove into her belly, stamping bark marks on her underside. But it was a noise that had awakened her, she knew. Rising awkwardly to her feet, the draggling nosed aside the leafy branches. So bright were the tides that they appeared to be moonbeams adopting water’s behavior, and from them shimmered dozens of light blue snouts, crying fervently.

  Nyra was struck with eerie familiarity. But before she could reminisce, the snouts broke completely from the water. The Xefexes scuttled up the shoreline, dragged by their diamond-shaped wings. Tens and tens appeared and still more came out. Nyra wondered if they filled the whole sea.

  Finally the calamity died. Where still sands once laced the beach were haphazard swipes, traced by a hundred bellies.

  Nyra looked beyond them. Was it their habit to jump from the water this late? Though their calls stung her ears with impossible frequencies, the tones and cadences were mildly comforting. She knew the sounds from nights past as a buzz in her ears, ones long dismissed as wind or insects.

  Nyra began to think about it very hard, so hard that when a dark figure blocked the Green Spot, she was unable to acknowledge it properly. It disappeared from her thoughts like a tidal turnover. And soon again, Nyra dreamed.

  When Nyra awoke again the first sun was almost at noon. She grumbled. Time was wasting away. She needed to come up with a plan.

  The bark marks on her belly had deepened, confirming her suspicion that Agrings were not meant to live in trees. Nyra needed a walk.

  The beach looked clear and was silent. The waves boasted no Xefexes. Was it worth the risk? Her stomach grumbled. “Stop it,” she said, hugging her ribs. How long had it been since she’d eaten? This morning and all day yesterday, and the evening of the night before. She’d never gone so long without food in her life.

  Getting down was difficult. She and Blaze had climbed trees before near the Reservoir, but not often. She clattered harshly down with new scrapes and bruises. But she had no time to inspect them. The ground was thick with foliage, making it difficult to see. She was the stranger here, and the beasts who owned this island were larger. What if there were terrestrial animals here as well? Or arboreal ones with teeth? The aquatic ones alone could climb up on land.

  Gulls flew close by. Leaves rustled. Otherwise, the twigs, the pebbles, and everything else were at peace. Nyra walked towards the beach. Sliding one paw beneath the sand at a time, Nyra emerged from the foliage, meeting the suns full on. The beach was warm, much warmer than the tree tops. A breeze kicked up, balmy. Wind was never balmy in fall, not on the cliff tops anyway.

  Paces away lay a silver body. The fish! Gnawing bubbles popped against her stomach. Seeing no Xefexes, Nyra leaped to it. Her snout wrinkled automatically, assuming a rancid smell would meet her nostrils. A fish sitting out all night was never pleasant, and Nyra had never eaten a rotten fish before. At home they were always fresh. Only once had she seen an Agring eat a rotten fish—Emdu on a dare. He’d thrown up for the better part of that afternoon.

  But coming closer, the fish showed no signs of decay. It was under an hour dead, she assumed from the wet scales. And it seemed bigger.

  The Xefexes had replaced their offering.

  A sense of relief came over her. She watched the calm sea, wondering what stirred just below.

  The draggling nestled into the sand, letting the hot grains reshape her bark-printed belly. With an eager sniff, Nyra bent forward to take the first bite.

  A spot dotted the sky straight ahead. Above the cliffs.

  Someone was coming from the mainland.

  Chapter 9: Savior

  Her first instinct was to run to it. Home was forward, and Mum, Blaze, her cousins—the cliffs and anything near them pulled like a cord from her heart.

  The spot grew bigger. There was no mistake. It headed for the island. A rush filled her. It was over. The nightmare was going to end under whatever redemption soared beneath the beautiful sky. She took a breath to shout.

  The blotch got darker. Bigger.

  Too big.

  Her voice snagged.

  Pivoting on sand-scratched heels, Nyra raced into her tree, climbing until the leaves thinned and branches wobbled in the breeze. She could see clear to the cliffs.

  Too high, she thought. The Sperk would see her. Thick branches hung below. She clambered down until she met green darkness. Only a few windows of beach nosed through the leaves. It was little, but enough for her to see, and hope the other could not reciprocate.

  The Sperk’s enormous feet thudded down. The rest of its body was obscured by green. Windowed on the left was Nyra’s would-be lunch, silver and shining. The monster stood beside it; a mountain aside a pebble of a fish. Nyra pictured its almond eyes alert and wide.

  But whom should she picture? Nyra felt a glimmer of hope, glowing inexplicably purple in her imagination. Suppose this Sperk was a friend. Opalheart? Nyra took shallower breaths to avoid rustling the leaves.

  The Sperk’s snout came into view. Capacious nostrils flared upon a nose blunt and blue. Blunt, but not as much as it could be. The softer features suggested a female. The draggling’s heart dropped sharply to her bowels. Above the lilac waters of her hopes was the face of Opalheart, vanishing down the gentle slope of the real Sperk’s feminine tapers. Why couldn’t it be him? Opalheart would have news, he would have word from Mother, and a plan to make things right.

  Squeezing the branches, Nyra tried to quell the shaking in her forelegs.

  If not male, this bulky creature would have to be Bristone (who probably had plans of summoning lost souls from apocryphal legends). But the bizarre she-Sperk would have to do.

  Bristone, Bristone, Bristone! The name was so powerful Nyra mouthed it. Squinting, she tried to channel a single image ahead, so as to mold the creature before her into Bristone’s features.

  The Sperk edged from behind a withered leaf, her head coming into full view.

  Two haggard creases killed it all. Just behind the Sperk’s eyes were a couple of puckered lines. This was not the bizarre dragon who liked to sing, the creature whose pupils opened into dark pools that matched her mysterious demeanor. This was a Sperk ill-versed in kindness, much like the rest of her species. She hated frivolity, and joy, so much so that the claws of revulsion had scratched premature lines behind her irritated eyes.

  Casstooth.

  A gust of wind, and another window opened in the foliage, revealing footprints.

  My footprints.

  Casstooth nosed the ground and pointed north.

  She’s seen them.

  Beneath the trees was compact soil. Yesterday it had been spongy from the rain. Had it been dry this morning? It must have, she would have remembered sponginess. As long as the ground was dry, the footprints would be negligible once they crossed from sand to dirt, at least in the shadows. The draggling took in a long, silent breath.

  Smell. Did she have an odor? Agrings were not known for their smelling. But what of Sperks? Nyra had never thought of it before. How stupid, stupid, to only think of it now. Nyra snorted contemptuously.

  The Sperk’s ears perked.

  Oh no.

  Nyra braced for the incoming eye contact when a squeak pierced the air. On the beach, the Sperk flipped around. One of the Xefexes leaped from the ocean, slapping its fin-wings.

  Casstooth’s ears flared, her haunches rising in attack stance. But the Xefex did not come closer. The Sperk stared the Xefex down, daring it to advance. Nothing happened. Casstooth lowered to the footprints again. Powdered sand flicked away as she puffed hot air across the beach. On each depression her nose dipped into the ground, following the Agring prints in cadence with Nyra�
��s throbbing insides.

  Another squeak. Casstooth glanced behind again. The same Xefex was spiraling in the air, its red-tinted patterns shining in the midday light. More heads bobbed nearby. Strident chatter broke out amongst the sea dragons, leaping closer to shore.

  The Sperk recovered much more quickly this time. The nearer she came to the trees, the louder the Xefex calls became. But Casstooth did not budge from her concentration.

  Lightening struck Nyra’s muscles as she tensed up to flee. Could she jump the tree tops? The other trees bore no clues, no footprints at their bases. Casstooth would not check them, would she?

  Nyra braced herself for the first jump, hoping her rustling would be lost in the trifling winds.

  No choice. No choice.

  Noises broke out at the tree base. There was a Xefex, flopping over its fins. Rising up, it cocked its silly head towards Nyra. Then in avian gesticulation, the strange beast nodded and uttered a throaty chirp.

  Another Xefex emerged from the bush. The first repeated the nodding motion. The second copied. The first nodded again, and again the other repeated.

  Confusion dribbled over Nyra’s fear. Up ahead, the Sperk was almost completely hidden by leaves, but Nyra could see her outline pacing ever closer.

  A third Xefex came, and Nyra could hear the sounds of others. So loud, so conspicuous.

  What if they’re leading her to me?

  Casstooth growled, hearing the Xefexes. Nyra had no time to spring. Not without being seen.

  The draggling scrunched into the smallest ball she could muster. Yellowed sticks were on the island floor just before she sealed her eyes. The air wreaked of decay and sea foam.

  “Ohhhh.” A sound of honest shock tremored below. Casstooth had spotted her, Nyra knew it. She waited for the blow.

  “Roendon’s Light,” said Casstooth. There was a muted pound. The sticks rattled together and Xefex chirps screeched out again, followed by the frenzied gasps of Casstooth.

  The Xefexes cackled on like angry crows. Casstooth’s hyperventilating died out, yet Nyra imagined the Sperk’s face vivid in fear. Her breaths slid into liquidy words:

  “Flourish the flora, nourish the nesting,

  Stave the skies, forever resting,

  And mighty bellows on your…”

  The Sperk paused. It was a familiar verse to Nyra, and she found her tongue curling into the last word as Casstooth said it:

  “Wings.”

  Then as quickly as they’d come, the thuds of Casstooth’s feet faded into the waves. One whumph of wings and everything Sperk disappeared.

  Nyra waited just to be sure. Suppose it was a trick? What if Casstooth lingered?

  All quiet.

  Whatever was going on, sitting up a tree did little. Mother waited somewhere. Nyra ached all over at the idea. Down below was the brown ground. Yellowish sticks still cluttered the island floor. Nyra descended.

  About ten Xefexes lumbered into view. Nyra stopped. Pairs and pairs of bemused eyes targeted her own.

  “What are you going to do?” Nyra asked. She spoke calmly but with authority. Inflection-wise, she might have been asking them something simple, like to ‘please pass the salmon.’

  The Xefex eyes seemed to say, ‘Please pass the Agring.’

  “You won’t catch me up here,” she asserted. She held her chin up, imagining Blaze at her side. “And even if I climb down you won’t catch me. One wrong move and I’ll climb back up. I mean it.”

  The draggling took a second step down. As she lowered to the next branch, one of the Xefexes squirmed backwards. The reddish one, she observed, the one who had leaped from the waters and caught Casstooth’s attention. It was a clumsy movement, pushing back on those transparent diamond wings, or fins, whatever they were. But then another did the same, then another and another. Soon, the whole group was giving her space.

  Nyra eased down further. The Xefexes moved away at an equal increment.

  “I mean it, I’ll climb back up like that and you will not catch me,” she hissed, taking another step. Again the red one moved, and the rest followed its example.

  At last, white claws met brown dirt. Nyra readied herself to run. Her second foot touched down, bending over something curvy. The sticks. Like a thicket they entwined on one another. Each branch attached to a second by rolling knobs or spidery tissue.

  She gasped. “These are bones!” Her head shot up to the Xefexes, seeking clarification. It did not come. Permanent smiles left and right. Unchanged.

  Bones were not commonplace at home, not big ones. Just fish bones, feeble things that could be broken down in a tongue slosh. Real bones, the kinds in stories, were practically fabled. At age seven, Nyra had seen her first and last. That year an antelope herd passed through the Northern Coast, enough to feed the Sperks for weeks. The Agrings found themselves on an unexpected holiday, so strange that most didn’t know what to do with the time. But time off was not the only treat. By the charity of a few unknown Sperks, the Agrings received a fraction of the kills. Vaguely, a mulched deer leg trotted over Nyra’s memory, one that she picked clean with the help of Blaze. They were rewarded by the shining white of healthy bone, just before Thaydra snapped it, revealing the magic of marrow.

  Nyra had not acknowledged the contribution at the time. But looking back, she realized that the Sperks had made a conscious decision to give the Agrings something. How unheard of.

  But these bones were not like those of antelope. These were not fresh, that much was certain by the color. And they stank terribly.

  The draggling moved closer. They stretched out in spindly appendages, meeting at a sharp, iridescent curve. While the other bones were splintered, this section was pristine, almost pearly, like it had been polished. Curving to a hook, the nubbin was a familiar shape.

  The wing claw of an Agring Dragon.

  “You ate an Agring,” she mumbled to the Xefexes. But she felt no disgust. Something was remiss. She soaked up the bones’ detail. That’s what Blaze would have done; studied.

  “Then why aren’t you eating me?” Standing alone at the tree base, Nyra was more than vulnerable. Ten times over she could have been attacked, becoming the ooze of a dozen jaws. Yet here she was, whole.

  No malice crossed the Xefexes’ open faces, or even the blankness of blood-rage. Though stuck in smiles, their mouths seemed to uncurl, their pupils diluted in earnest curiosity. They suggested honesty—an icy promise just cool enough to chill Nyra’s flaming skepticism.

  “The bones,” she said. “They were not there when I went up the tree. Where did you get them?”

  Smiles again. But she knew the Xefexes had brought them there, right beneath her. Why?

  Casstooth’s words rang again. The Sperk had been alarmed, alarmed enough to recite a verse usually saved for the newly dead.

  Did she think they were mine? If that were true, the Xefexes had helped Nyra, saving the Agring from whatever fate the terrible Sperk would have ensured. But where a rush of gratitude should have taken over, Nyra instead felt violent frustration. Tossing her head, she raged out at the onlookers.

  “Why do you have these?” she shouted. Leaves shook brutally as two birds lifted away. Her ears flattened submissively.

  She whispered, “If you are so good, why do you have Agring bones? If you killed an Agring, why would you help me?”

  And whom did you kill?

  Nyra paced hither-thither. Who was good? Who was bad? Sperks were now mottled up in ethics, thanks to Opalheart, and now these flippered things were mixing virtues. Once upon a time life had been simple. Agrings were good, Sperks were bad. Xefexes were nearly-imaginary, or otherwise irrelevant. Now everything fizzed with questions.

  Mum did this, she seethed. Mum changed everything too fast. She hated being mad at her mother, now of all times. So lost was Nyra that she could barely remember whom to dislike. But Mum had blurred the enemy line when she’d introduced Opalheart. Now Xefexes were helping. Maybe even the horrible Tesset wasn’t evil any
more.

  “Tesset,” she spat. The voice was an intonation away from Thaydra’s, one and the same anger. Nyra recalled that last day on the Dam, that day where Tesset showed up and instigated a shouting match. Nyra remembered Mother muttering to herself on the Reservoir shore, mouthing a name over and over.

  “Crimson,” said Nyra. That was what Mother had said. “Crimson.”

  In her imagined memory, Nyra conjured up a dragon she’d never met. A dragon who was brave. A dragon who brought watered eyes to Fuhorn on rare, weak occasions. A dragon who crashed to the sea under the belly of a monster. The one who never surfaced again.

  And she knew the bones’ identity. The Xefexes hadn’t killed anyone. Not then, not now.

  Nyra recited the old, old prayer Casstooth voiced only moments before.

  Sunset followed sunset. Rain clouds jostled the skies with thunder, anxious to escape after a long and dry summer. Moisture hung heavy in the air, so strong it seemed the wind squeezed water droplets from invisible pores. Fall was inescapably here.

  Fourteen days passed. Each closed with a storm, each longer than the last. Nyra watched them all. Violent forks split the atmosphere, cracking a line between her and the Northern Coast. Mum and Blaze would be watching, too.

  Fourteen days, and still Nyra was on the island. In each she waited for the inevitable miracle, its arrival unknown, yet just as certain as daytime followed night. When it happened, she’d at last awaken. The nightmare would cease, and Blaze would be twisted in his sleep at her side.

  Much had changed since she last saw him.

  For one, Xefexes were no longer the center of her worries. They were friends. Mute, frolicsome friends skirting the edges of her new domain, though they could not speak. For a while she tried to bridge the gap, imitating their clicks and gestures. This amused them, or so it appeared. They would cackle in a deranged sort of laughter, slapping the water with their wings.