The Waters of Nyra- Volume I

by Kelly Michelle Baker

  A month, she thought as she counted the pale-tan marks upon her tree. For a month she’d been chanting any day now, any day now like a lullaby. The words lost their meaning, becoming a monotonous buzz over the indifferent sea waves.

  That day, day thirty-one, was a cloudy day, just like thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight—so far back she cared not to recall. Waking, Nyra stretched into the fine sand, laying her head sternly on her paws. With firm deportment she watched the distant Agrings fall towards the ocean. Time and time again she tried to identify them. They were too far away.

  “How much longer, Mum?”

  The Xefexes were not present, as they never were in the morning. But Nyra on her own made talkative company.

  “It comes down to this; no one can get to this island unless they’ve escaped. No Agring is allowed out this far.” That was true, but what of today? Had the rules changed?

  “Definitely not,” she spat. Even a clever trick by Mum wouldn’t grant the Agrings permission outside their boundaries. After setting the Northern Coast on fire, security had nowhere to go but up.

  “So no island-visiting unless it’s done in secret. You have to be escaping in order to be here.” Or banished, she thought.

  Living by pattern was the way of an Agring. They woke, they hunted, and every few years, they tried to bolt out.

  “How often do we escape… try to escape?” she amended. “This last one was the third attempt. The second attempt was about a month before I was hatched, over eleven years ago.”

  Bile mounted in her throat. She swallowed it angrily.

  “The attempt before that was well… a bit earlier. Let’s see, Mum was about sixteen when it happened. She’s thirty-three now, so…”

  The dragglings ears drooped. “Seventeen years.”

  What if they don’t get away for another ten, twenty …

  Suddenly very hungry, Nyra crashed into the sea and began to rake the water in search of fish. Stomach gnawing from the inside out, Nyra pounded away, ready to obliterate anything in her path. The gnawing wouldn’t stop, even when she caught a fish an hour later on a swipe of luck.

  Deep within the foliage, the morning dew outlined her footprints, forming a straight course from her tree. They went north. Southward was the faded trail of her normal morning path—to the beach where she would watch the Fishers. There, the dew was untouched. Nyra had not treaded that path today, nor had the Xefexes disappeared that morning. Instead they swam at the north side with her, watching, waiting.

  The cliffs didn’t matter. They were distractions, churning her fantasies, the ones that refused to come true.

  Nothing was for certain anymore. Though her life was little and short, she’d been bred upon a foundation of knowing. Not just the ins and outs of being a slave’s daughter, but of her family too. Those rocks that were her loved ones were the stones she’d walked upon. To the Reservoir, the hills, the trees, the burrows, and even the forbidden chisel of the coast.

  But even had Darkmoon not banished her, certainty would not have lasted forever. For no adult knew everything, no matter how wise. Fuhorn knew that her son would escape just as Thaydra knew she’d reach the Zealers. All wrong. If Nyra was to be an adult (and time would push her there, screaming or singing) she’d reach the unknown no matter what her circumstances. Now she was fishing. Now she was flying. Time had arrived, and no one knew what it held.

  Looking over an average Agring life since the Sperks, it appeared that Nyra was bound to a disappointing pattern. All she knew was filled with assumptions, or sentences that began with ‘suppose if?’ Suppose the Agrings rescued her. Then what? Live underground until Darkmoon removed the exile?

  He’ll never remove the exile.

  Then what? Wait for the next escape attempt to bring back the Zealers? How long would it take to devise that plan? It had taken twenty-one years for the Agrings to try to escape the first time. Another six to try again. How long could she live underground before going insane?

  Or worse yet: how long could she go without being rescued from this island? The more Nyra thought about it, the more her ideas upturned into the notes of inquiry. Very few ended with resolution, and those that did were wishes more than fact.

  And at the end of the mess came that best case scenario. Nyra would be rescued. Nyra would go back to life as normal on the Northern Coast. Years would pass. She’d be full grown and making her own escape plans with the adults. More years would pass. Today’s adults would be old, bequeathing their dreams to Nyra’s generation.

  The dreams would fail.

  Or suppose they worked?

  Even so, I’ll be old. Maybe dead.

  The years would not wait for Zealers and saviors, not for chance nor hope. Erratic dreams would scribble on until Nyra washed away from life itself, her youth stolen forever by the malediction that was wishing.

  She stood with the morning at her right. Raw seed cones, oh so faint, blended with saline crystals on the breeze; the perfect marriage of sea and solid ground. Breathing deeply, she stored little pieces of soil, bark, and foliage in the waters of her memory, on shallow shores where she could retrieve them whenever she needed.

  “Thank you,” she said, nodding to the Xefexes, watching from the gentle tides. Their eyes were the same as always; jovial and big. Yet Nyra knew them better. She could not interpret the chirps, the flips, the waggles. Not perfectly. But somehow, they knew her. And if she could allow herself one wish in her dark reality, she hoped they would understand her decision now.

  Perhaps they’d watch over her family.

  Feeling fresh and resolute, the dragon turned her back to the cliffs, leaned back, and pushed into the northern sky.

  Chapter 10: Before the Maelstrom

  Always, ALWAYS the blue.

  What did one picture when they thought of the sea? Nyra imagined blue and waves, but also buds of green and brown. Since forever she had known the ocean from the cliffs’ vantage, where the solace of flat feet accompanied verdant grass and copper rock. Even when her midnight fantasies had her suspended over cerulean, she could always turn her head back. There, she’d find land.

  But now, as Nyra scaled the open ocean, all was blue. Ahead was the blue. Peripherals were the blue. Blue, blue, blue.

  When the Green Spot and cliffs dropped off the horizon, she learned to not glance back, knowing everything she saw ahead would be perfectly mirrored behind. Whatever love the sea and land once shared ended in a bitter estrangement, with Nyra stuck on one side. Tesset and Rovavik came to mind. Tesset was the land, rooted selfishly in one place. Rovavik was left to wander in perpetuity with no visible destination.

  Nyra’s mind never calmed. How lovely it would be to purge thoughts from that humming space between her ears. To not think at all. For the noise in her head was a reminder of reality: that she was alone, leagues from other minds.

  Above all things she craved stimulation, distraction other than internal ponderings. She wanted to play games. Sunny days shined in her memory, where she ran blithely in tag. Run. Catch. Get away. In tag, she seldom noticed her fatigue until the day was done. Now, without the fun, Nyra felt her wings, those creaky limbs stuck in the same pattern as the waves. Up down up down up down...

  On the island, Nyra had practiced endurance. Within the month she’d nearly built the muscles of an adolescent flyer. Time had granted her that. But that didn’t make flying over oblivion easy.

  That first day of travel turned out unbearable. Bolstered by resolve’s energy, she went until noon without becoming tired (thinking of the Zealers, home, and the prosperous future). Following old navigation tips, Nyra kept the suns on her right shoulder during the morning. They were not always easy to spot under the heavy cloud cover. But she could usually see Quay’s eyes burning through long enough to make an assessment. Nyra had lighted into the ocean for a short break at noon. Floating, she spread her wings over the gentle rises, cooling her limbs. She even managed to catch a few fish.

  Afternoon arrived.
Back in the air, it took one short daydream before the pain kicked in. Stiffness crept through her joints, rain trickling down flower stems. Her wings became slabs of thick ground, dripping with mud and soggy brambles. She had no choice but to wobble back to sea.

  She paddled forward, seconds thrumming on her brain. Losing time. Losing time. But the water made her wings heavier than ever. There was no way she could get airborne again. She was grounded. Watered.

  Nyra swam north.

  “Keep moving, if not anything else, keep moving,” she told herself, just as she’d told Blaze to keep running the day Darkmoon caught them on the cliff edge. “The Vousille Ocean is dotted with an island chain.” That quote was Mother’s. “Otherwise the ancestor’s would never have made it.” This was key in every escape attempt. Fuhorn insisted that Agrings had wonderful endurance. Apparently it was not uncommon for herds to migrate from the winter rains. Nyra’s herd had never migrated, even before the enslavement, but that wasn’t the point. The point was Agrings could sustain flight, so long as rest waited on the other side of the day. Still, endurance or no endurance, everything had to sleep at some point. And so Nyra knew the island chain waited for her, somewhere in the volatile blue. For me. For Agrings.

  Nyra repeated this to herself many times over the afternoon, gripping the wave’s heavy rolls under her chest. But as the first sun grew close to the horizon, her paddling declined. She felt sick. Nyra initially thought herself impervious to seasickness, for in the first hour, she rolled upon the waves with little disorientation. Now her stomach deflated to mush, and it felt as though her insides strained on their sinews, tossing in a leaky bag. Her brain hung weightlessly in her skull, jarring suddenly left or right against the grain of the sea.

  Straightening up in the torrent as best she could, Nyra resolved to push through with her head held high.

  She threw up.

  The dragon blinked, her vision swimming. Her weightless brain turned into a rock, rolling from side to side. The higher she lifted her head, the more it tossed. She tried to keep it down, swallowing sea water as it buffeted her chin.

  “I’m alright, I’m alright,” she whispered, avoiding the sight of her sick dissipating on the foam. Clouds plastered above in a congealing sheet.

  She threw up again. And again. Her throat cracked painfully. Nyra treaded in place, countering the waves with sluggish strokes.

  All she wanted, all she needed, was a moment, a mere moment of stillness. It was a small wish, maybe the smallest she had ever made in her life. And though it was the smallest, and she wished for it more than anything, even more than Mother, there was no motionless place nearby.

  What if I don’t find the islands? She could barely think for fear of aggravating the sickness. But she needed to be up high to see.

  She could have been near land and not known it.

  The first sun touched down behind the clouds. Nyra broke into tears. The nausea quieted, leaving her dreadfully thirsty. But she kept swimming. The second sun set, the clouds smothering out the moons. Nyra wept harder, hating herself. She was supposed to be strong. Instead, she would slip beneath a force she loathed more than her weakling body.

  “I’m not ready to die,” she gurgled. Fetid water leaked through the corners of her mouth. The clouds pressed down from above, suffocating. Roendon’s eyes were somewhere behind that wall.

  He didn’t care.

  Far too quickly, the daylight drained out.

  Short time. Long time. Whichever, death’s soggy wet claws readied to sponge her away.

  Then a patch of sky thinned, revealing a clear, starry blackness, and in its wake, a great round moon.

  Nyra traced the moonlight through the crisp window. Down from the sky, between the winds, and to the ocean surface. The sea made a thick black line against the horizon. It was perfectly straight.

  Except for one spot. On the right was a soft bump, imperfect and lovely.

  An island.

  Nyra veered right, glancing gratefully upward along the way.

  She did not fly the next day or the next, letting exhaustion, stiffness, and nausea bleed out into the cooling sands. She did not explore the new island, nor did she care to. It was smaller than the Green Spot island and had no trees. Only a few shrubs and rocks dotted the surface, every bit of it moist. Finding a rain puddle, Nyra worried that no amount of water could satiate her parched stomach. But after just a few swigs she felt better, and better still after sleep.

  Go on? Behind her sloshed the memory of a horrible evening. Yet an invisible magnet began pulling her south, back to the chance of rescue.

  “Back to the beginning,” she mumbled.

  After another long night’s sleep, she took off. Her soreness had dissipated, and she was able to fly hours into the afternoon. It hurt a little, but it trumped the memory of sea sickness. Of all the things Mother prepared them for in life, she had never described anything so ghastly as the disease of the sea. Of course Thaydra wouldn’t know. Few Agrings would. But the experience left Nyra with a strange yet obliging confidence; if she could survive dry heaves and a headache in the planet’s largest agitator, she could endure anything.

  Again she came across an island at night fall, just as Fuhorn and Thaydra had promised, affording a comfortable nook to stretch her wings and sip rain puddles. The following morning she was even less sore. And again she flew.

  Blue. Blue. Blue.

  “I HATE THE BABY WAY!” Nyra shrieked as the fish wriggled into blackness.

  It was about twelve days into the journey. Her wings had strengthened, and though she would never escape the weariness, the Agring was able to fly all day. Besides, tiredness or not, she refused to float on the sea for more than an hour at a time. Though her external parts felt ripe and true, her stomach still panged upon eating, and she feared burping her organs up should she go into another vomiting fit.

  Today, like every day, she hunted in the ‘baby way’, just how Mother had taught them at the Reservoir. Coming out of a failed catch, she coughed up sea water. She’d been scanning the surface for an hour. Seven dives, no catches.

  Subtly, oh so subtly, her body was growing. She’d never felt her body growing before. But as everything was coming on so starkly these days (with so much flying and a drastically inflated appetite), Nyra was hardly surprised to detect these changes.

  It wasn’t so much that she grew taller. Had a marking tree been present, Nyra felt she’d measure in at the same height. Development was an apt word, as some of her shrunk while some of her expanded. Her wings were gaining muscle, but she also thinned. On the whole, the shaping made things easier. She grew streamlined.

  The only thing that became increasingly difficult was hunting. At whatever rate her wing muscles expanded, her fangs doubled it. Until recently her fangs were mere buds, maybe a smidge longer than the rest of her teeth. But between the month at the Green Spot and now, her fangs had grown almost twice as long. Mother said this would happen. There was a reason flying began at around age twelve under the enslavement: they were ready to hunt.

  But she’d learned the baby way first. In the Reservoir, she’d caught fish like a bear (whatever that was), jaws open wide, snapping up prey. This was for little dragglings, although she and Blaze were the only ones she knew that learned to hunt before age twelve. Once the fangs grew out, Agrings needed to spear fish. Anything wider than the width between their fangs would bounce right off. Occasionally, a lucky Agring could scoop a fish up from tail to head, much like they did when swallowing food whole. Cousin Vor could do it. But this took superb dexterity.

  “HATE IT!” she shrieked again. Much as her fangs had grown, they were not yet spears. Nyra was neither a candidate for the baby or grownup technique. And it seemed especially problematic today. She didn’t know why.

  “Did my fangs grow really fast last night?” she said. Had she eaten something especially nutritious? The previous day, she’d fallen asleep running her tongue over her teeth. She’d then dreamed about her t
eeth, at night and in the waking hours of morning.

  Perhaps her failure was more psychological than physical. “Oh, the threats of acknowledgement,” Nyra mumbled. That’s what Mum would say. The threats of being aware of a problem, so much so it distracted you from the task at hand. Excessive thinking. She’d have to stop agonizing and evolve. Baby habits would soon be gone forever, and there was nothing she could do to keep them.

  “Unless I kill myself. That would stop the aging process.” A smile creased her face. “Yep.” She laughed.

  A silver sliver darted beneath. Still snickering, Nyra dove down and caught it.

  The rest of that twelfth day went as normal. At noon she rested, floating on the cool waves. She seldom noticed her rising body temperature until she hit the water. How chilly was the sea! At first she didn’t mind, no more than she minded jumping in Fitzer’s Reservoir on a hot summer day. But that was summer on land. This was the ocean in fall. At home, climbing out of the water meant play-time. Here, it meant flying until the next island appeared, exhaustion looming over her muscles like Sperk shadows.

  She flew on into the evening, fighting the battle of her awkward fangs. She wouldn’t starve anytime soon, just as long as the sea carried fish. But she’d have to keep up with adolescence, too.

  That was scary.

  Blue. Blue. Blue.

  “Gonna get dark soon,” she murmured to the twilight. Cherry light bathed her wings. They’d hardly beaten that afternoon. The thermals had been generous. Second sunset would be in an hour. An island would be appearing in no time, if all went according to pattern. Nyra was more than ready for a good night’s rest.