The Waters of Nyra- Volume I

by Kelly Michelle Baker

  Watching the sun etch through the sky behind a thin film of clouds, Nyra hummed familiar melodies. Oh, My Lovely Tail came first to mind. It was one of Jesoam’s proudest works, and incidentally, one of the most annoying. And like all annoying melodies, it stuck like snot in the fever season. Nyra was resigned to it (mostly), wondering how many times she could sing the song before finding land.

  Five repeats later, the sun was still in the same place. Nyra couldn’t remember enough verses to get any substantial seconds out of it. On the sixth repeat, she decided to make up a new melody. The wind whistled in her ears, bouncing between high and low strands of sound. If nature could be fancy in song, so could she. Soon, Jesoam’s tune was completely gone. Halfway through the second verse new words crept into her head. Nyra sang them, bouncing from the low to the high:

  My tail is meant to appease,

  In the still and in the breeze,

  And soon it seems I’ll hit the rains,

  Something, Something, Something feigns.

  She clacked her tongue, bemused. This new melody was not her invention. It was Bristone’s tune, the one she sang on the morning Blaze and Nyra went down the Scar.

  “Oh, fine,” Nyra groaned. She hated thinking of Bristone now, or any Sperk for that matter. Still a thought was a thought, and it would pass the time. And the words of another dragon made her feel not so alone, like someone was singing to her over the sea using telepathy (a ludicrous notion, although Bristone surely would have liked it). Nyra tried to recall the lyrics:

  “Something on the Dawn of Dawns,

  And figure out what’s said to pawns.

  You have to always go back in

  And then there is a beautiful sin.”

  They definitely were not right. The cadence was off, too. She’d only heard the song once, and even then it didn’t make any sense. Only the melody had stuck. It was strangely beautiful. And eerie. Voice strained by the high notes, Nyra stopped singing and tried to think of another ditty.

  An island appeared.

  “Finally!” she said. Though the clouds hung heavy and dark, Nyra could see a black mound rising in the northwest. Her wing beats quickened. The wind whistled on, louder. A storm was near. She’d reach shelter just in time.

  As the island drew closer, Nyra inadvertently drifted back to Bristone’s melody. Again she tried to think of another song. But none came. Her mind kept reverting back to those high trills.

  Trills? Bristone’s voice was somber and soft, void of trills. The sound in Nyra’s head was shriller than she remembered, similar to the harsh whistles kicking-up in the breeze. Dissonantly, the cold air whipped against her ears. Nyra’s wings beat faster. The island grew larger, dark, and oddly tall. Very tall. It must have unnaturally large trees. It didn’t matter, just as long as she drew closer, and fast.

  Wind raw and throaty, the melody in her head circled over and over, becoming fuller and fuller with each round. It grew loud, just as the island grew tall. The second sun winked below the horizon.

  A figure appeared in the distance. It loomed atop the island like a shard of obsidian. Nyra blinked several times, thinking debris had flown into her face. But there was no pain, and the figure did not vanish. It stayed flat and suspended in the sky.

  Nyra wavered in flight. What is that? It reminded her of a black feather turned upward on a thermal, only its course was deliberate. Subtly, the tips of the shard began to bend up and down.

  Wings, she thought.

  Though fuzzied by distraction, the song in Nyra’s head went on—the anthem to her peculiar circumstance. Bristone no longer sang it in Nyra’s memory. It was more like the breeze was humming it in real time, spaced and jarring like unexpected bird cries.

  It sounded like the tune came from dead ahead.

  The shard was closer.

  Big.

  Bigger than me.

  “Fine,” she murmured in the smallest whisper. Nyra tilted east, away from the figure and her island. Her flapping became fast. She strained each wing to pump silently. On her new path was an ominous spread of black and gray seascape. No island.

  The sounds behind her reverberated over the ocean, drifting on the sky and waves. Drifting on the sea. Of seas.

  Alarm radiated to her claw tips. Nyra flung her head over her shoulder. The thing’s wings were wider than any creature she’d ever seen in a nightmare.

  The thing veered upward. It climbed unflapping into the clouded heavens. As suddenly as it appeared, it was gone, swallowed by the indiscernible beyond.

  The music stopped.

  Nyra counted her breaths. Ten … twenty …. thirty. No sound, not one. Forty breaths, fifty….

  Nothing.

  Spared? Nyra waited for the music to come back or the figure to reappear. Neither happened. Her brain was ice. The wind was gentle. The ocean below wafted delicately, like a pond. Her wing beats printed the water surface with ripples, brushing her near-immaculate reflection.

  The island sat temptingly in the west, sporting its protective trees. Wherever that thing was, it wasn’t on the island now. Nyra would have seen it drop down from above.

  This could be my chance. Nyra didn’t know if her wings could hold out until the next rest stop. She certainly wouldn’t make it before dark. Thing or no thing, the island was her best option.

  But what if there were other mysterious figures on the island? Would there be places to hide?

  Nyra flapped in place, thinking.

  A shrill screech cleaved the clouds, and Nyra looked up into a pair of gnarled, emerald talons.

  She barreled right, wings flopping over one another. Something soft yet powerful buffeted her flank, crushing her downward. She sprang away, steadying just as a crash ripped the ocean below.

  In a circle of spray was the biggest thing Nyra had ever seen. Taking up the space of seven Sperks or more, a mountain of blackness twisted and churned on the insignificantly small waves. All over were impossibly large scales, bending and shifting as the beast beat the water on wings the size of river crossings. It was as black as pitch, save for where muted moonlight dazzled it to an iridescent green. The color flickered like star explosions, making the great animal’s movements appear quick and jolting.

  The frenzied head arched back, and from a shimmering beak rang the trills Nyra had heard moments before. A green, unmoving eye found her.

  She spun away, flapping for life. Her skin flared into needles. Too slow, too slow! The island waited in the northwest, the only place of cover.

  Only chance.

  The wind kicked up, hitting her square in the face. She jerked about in the air. The trees! The trees! She pictured their leaves reaching out, the knotty limbs thick and sheltering. But the wind kept beating her back. Back east.

  “MOVE!” she shouted to herself. Way too close behind was the thing, clear out of the ocean and shining brilliantly as it threw waterfalls of ocean from its scales. It came forward far too fast to count the seconds. The beak opened, dwarfing the lengthy body that snaked behind.

  There’d be a chomp. Then nothing.

  Nyra screamed.

  A loud thump came instead. The thing shrieked. Whipping around, Nyra faced the beast, a mere two lengths behind. Only it did not look at her. Scales erect, the birdlike-face twitched back and forth with furious zeal, as if looking for something. Nyra gaped, unable to move anything but her wings. The thing tossed its head in all directions. She stupidly followed its gaze, searching.

  The monster’s frozen stare hit her like a blow to the stomach.

  Breaking from paralysis, Nyra flipped towards the island again. Feathered wings battered behind her. Hot breath wrapped over her back feet, choking its way up her neck.

  The end, she thought, closing her eyes. Mother’s and Blaze’s faces appeared on each lid. She hoped they’d miss her.

  THUMP!

  The bird-thing screeched again, its head swirling round and round. Just above, a slender shadow loomed, smaller and fast; a sliver before the
silver clouds.

  “FLY!” said a voice.

  Nyra obeyed, though she could not see the speaker. Not properly. Just a sliver of moonlight bouncing off the sky. The sliver zipped out of sight, vanishing behind the monster-bird. The island was closer, the strange trees taller. And below, the water did not look quite as dark.

  I’ll make it.

  “No!” the same voice shouted. “You’ll hit the shallows.”

  Nyra rolled hither thither in the air, searching for the other. The sliver seemed to dance about the bird’s head, distracting it.

  “What?” she hollered. The wind sucked up her voice like lungs. She looked into the nothingness above: black and dark gray, low hanging mists.

  “Fly! Keep flying.”

  Nyra did, toward the island.

  “No! Northeast.”

  “East?” she spat. Ahead was the northwest, and the trees, the safety. East was a liquid desert affording no life.

  The bird shrieked even louder, splitting her brain clean in two.

  “Go east!” the voice said again.

  “No!”

  “You have to!”

  A high rumble resounded far above, and a feeling as hot as fire seared inside Nyra’s chest. “I don’t want to die!”

  The sea below turned lighter. Shallower. The trees took shape, narrow and tapering to flat tops.

  The sliver appeared from above. “Then you can’t stay here.”

  Nyra’s eyes fell from the sky down to the monster’s beak, opening into a cavernous maw of stinking verdant. A flapping tongue gleamed, as scarlet and large as Nyra’s entire body.

  The sliver clashed atop her. Bones in her neck ground together. Nyra fell like a stone, down and down, until liquid chaos swallowed them both whole. Her eyes stayed wide open, bitten by the cold in a million places. Silver orbs blossomed from her nostrils, sliding over the dark body above like little insects. The water was clear. In the air, the bird writhed while facets of the sea surface broke into a rippling glass mosaic.

  The sliver pushed off Nyra. Upward it kicked until it broke into the lighter gray of the atmosphere. Nyra treaded water below, heart pounding into her tail spikes. Then like a ruptured mountain, the sky broke into white hot blue. The bulk of the bird shied out of sight, its long neck jabbing around the blinding light. Everything was a haze of luminosity and dark forms.

  Then it all disappeared—the sliver, the glow, the monster. Nyra was left in almost pitch-black. Her lungs suddenly stung. Watching the last bubble trickle from her mouth, Nyra pumped in a direction she hoped was up.

  Her left claw swiped into bighting air. She’d made it. She kept her head low, sputtering salty water. Her eyes darted left and right, searching for the vanished hubbub.

  The familiar white hot blue light flickered in the west. Waves bobbed everything up and down, taking Nyra in and out of sight. By the tall trees was the gargantuan bird. The flickering grew dimmer, and then both figures melted into the forbidden island.

  On wet wings, Nyra splattered out of the ocean and flew east.

  Chapter 11: Oharassie

  Nyra flapped on and on. Maybe for an hour, maybe less, maybe more. The flat sea line beckoned her forward, uninviting, but she had no other choice. In a deluge of terror, she forgot what she was looking for, and it wasn’t until the stars appeared she remembered her goal to find another island. And yet half of her was afraid to spot one, fearing that the terrible beast might have brothers in far places. She vowed to stay clear of anything with extremely tall trees. Find a mound, but not too tall.

  By the time her fight-or-flight response calmed, a quaint little island appeared upon the charcoal skyline. No monster sightings. She somehow found sleep, fitful though it was. The beast’s talons stabbed over and over in her mind.

  When she awoke, both suns were high in the sky. She’d overslept. Under normal circumstances, this loss of time might have upset her. Today it didn’t.

  “I bet it was a Dragon Hawk,” she croaked. A small burn panged her throat. There’d been no rain yesterday, nothing to drink. Nyra sucked her tongue.

  She had had a clear image of a Dragon Hawk in her head. It developed years ago from the ancestors’ tale. On the way to the Zealers they battled unbelievable foes, so Fuhorn said. One of them was a Dragon Hawk, and though the descriptions were never thorough, Nyra had inevitably formed a picture. Because multiple Agrings had to bring down this creature, Nyra assumed it was large, but no bigger than a Sperk. She’d never seen anything bigger than her enslavers’ species and couldn’t fathom anything much more gigantic, at least anything that existed in the real world. The animal she’d seen last night made her imagination-Hawk look like a bumble bee.

  Dragon Hawk, she cringed. Dragons were beasts of weaponry as hawks were birds of prey. That thing joined the two together in grisly matrimony. The shriek rang in her memory, so awful it physically hurt. She clamped down her ears. “Why does this have to be so bad?” she grumbled into the sand. Not just the Hawk. Not just the sea sickness. But everything.

  I can’t do it much longer, she thought miserably.

  Then you can’t stay here.

  Nyra sat bolt upright. There was more to last night than the Hawk. The voice, shouting demands, insisting she go far away from the island. Sperk, Agring, or something new? Male or female? She could recall nothing but the words themselves. It was just sound from a sliver.

  It had wanted her to go east, away from the island, away from where the Hawk lived. Good advice.

  As she sat back down, a spasm ran down her neck. “ACK!” she cried. It felt like a tree trunk had driven from tail to spine. Her whole back went rigid.

  “The Sliver clobbered me!” The pain jarred up to her head. The Sliver had landed on her full force last night. She was lucky her body hadn’t snapped in two. Gently, Nyra eased back to the ground, straight from nose to tail. Each vertebra locked behind the other, squeezed by invisible knots.

  “No flying today,” she winced. Or the next day. An insect droned by her ear. Her eyelids drooped, images of shallow water wading behind them.

  When she woke up her spine was still stiff, the pain great. Gingerly, she inspected the injury for bruising. There was none. She caught sight of her ribs, wrapped in thin red skin, poking from her flank. She needed to fatten up. While on the ocean, flying burned her catches up quickly. Nyra had noticed her appetite growing, eating about six times more than what she ate at home. Mother always said that flying was the most expensive way to spend energy. And though Thaydra had not done any flying in the last eleven or so years, she clearly knew what she was talking about.

  The sky was gray again. Suns made themselves scarce in autumn. So did the heat.

  I need fat. Nyra was flying to the paradigm of ice, the coldest place in the world, so chilly the very ground shivered up and out to the clouds. Like the Hawk, Fuhorn had whimsically described the mountains. Nyra had never seen one. The mountains she’d been closest to at home were too far inland, obscured by hills and trees. If mountains were back there, they blended away into the sky.

  Then there was snow. Nyra (the continent) got plenty of snow, only it rarely made it to the coastline. A time or two, Nyra had seen white, fluffy clumps falling. She and Blaze had made an effort to catch one, to see it up close. But all examinations were ruined once the flakes reached the ground. Not one survived, turning into slushy puddles that spilled into the den. Mother grimaced, attempting to clot the den opening with dry grass. Nyra and Blaze just splashed happily.

  Slush was all Nyra knew. But it was one of many kinds of wet cold in the world. According to Fuhorn, there was lighter snow, crystallized and tiny, cut into beautiful detail. Likes porpoises, wolves, and bats, it sounded made-up.

  Nyra rumbled her throat. It was a good distraction. She soon forgot her fear of cold.

  The next day found her in less pain. She felt well enough to amble in the shallows. There were no fish. The sea gleamed in the north. Somewhere out there was food.

  Nyra
arched her back, up and down, back and forth. Little pangs bit her spine. After several movements the bites became nibbles, then nips, then nothing.

  Within an hour the island was leagues behind her. She caught one fish after another, getting accustomed to her growing fangs. This went on for another three days, with the ever-predictable islands at the ends.

  Blue. Blue Blue.

  About twenty-two days total. Everything is automatic now. Routine. Consistent. Like home.

  But alone.

  She hunted. She flew. She rested. Locked in custom. A grownup routine. Her heart panged as she thought of the Fishers. They were stuck by virtue of their grownup bodies. Nyra was stuck by virtue of bad luck.

  Nyra had openly opposed growing up. Save for flying, what was the purpose? What made maturity so wonderful? The idea of dragglinghood disappearing was too awful, and in every summer when she turned a new year, she swore that it would be her favorite age. The trouble was, this number kept getting higher, and she kept calling it her favorite, even as it changed.

  “Eleven is my favorite age,” she affirmed now. Her tongue flicked over her two lengthening fangs as she glided northward. They were still hers no matter what shape they took.

  Nyra waggled her ears. Had it really been twenty-two days? Approximately? And then a month on the Xefex island? She tried to focus on eating. Seeing a fish, Nyra swooped down and snagged it, half spearing, half chomping. Wrestling with her fangs, she tried to find a common ground between chewing and swallowing whole. Oil inched into her throat, trickling down the wrong tube.

  “Ack!” she croaked, spitting out the mulched-up fish. Nyra tried to hack up the drip creeping into her lungs, each breath turning harsh and acidic. Finally it shot out, plopping in the ocean. Her mouth tasted terrible.

  She had an idea. On the sea floated the mulch. Snatching it back mid-flight, Nyra fiddled through the guts, looking up intermittently to stay on course.

  Fish were built for the sea, Mother had once said on a sunny afternoon years ago. Nyra had thought this a stupid observation at the time, and promptly expressed it. Fish had fins, they had gills—of course they were built for a life in water. Nyra’s cheekiness had resulted in a trip to the Reservoir.