The Waters of Nyra- Volume I

by Kelly Michelle Baker

  The two Royal dragons’ eyes widened, two reds and two blacks on Nyra’s green-yellows. Their posture was rigid, and a low growl issued from one of their throats. A look passed between them, held for an uncomfortably long while. Others filtered in to stand at the Royals' sides, meeting Nyra with the same blaring silence. Soon the room was filled with dragons, all of which looked like they could squish her without breaking a sweat. Many a gaze suggested that exact intention if given the go ahead.

  At long last the two Royals looked back at Nyra, eyes open and cavernous like the great chamber in which they dwelled.

  “Where were you headed?” came the voice of the white Zealer, Royal Zirus. The words were deep and slow. Very slow, as if he were trying to come up with his own answer before the question escaped.

  Her heart thudded loudly in her chest. She said nothing.

  “Out towards the basin,” said Nyra’s original capturer, male. He fidgeted, stealing glances in her direction. Guiltily, fearfully. “My post was nearly over. I decided to take one last loop by the coast…”

  “Not from you, Jatika,” said the Royal female. Impatience trilled in her voice. “My mate addressed you,” she hissed at Nyra. “Now answer! Where or to whom were you headed?”

  Nyra’s mouth opened. A puff of air stammered from her jaws. A whimper came followed by croaking sounds.

  “I-I was headed t-to you, I think. I’m looking for the Zealers, I guess.”

  I guess?

  The Royals exchanged another glance. “The Zealers…” said the female, lingering on the word.

  “Yes, Zealers,” piped Nyra. Royal Zirus’ brow seemed to furrow, or it might have if the forehead was not a plate of diamond-hard material. Instead the arc of his cheeks lifted confusedly. The Royal female’s pursed mouth implied similar confusion.

  Royal Zirus spoke. “And you presume to have business with Zealers?” His voice was composed.

  “I… no. I mean, yes, yes I do. But I...”

  “She can’t breathe, release her,” said the Royal female with a frustrated fling of her wrist. The pressure lifted from Nyra’s back.

  She stood up. Be confident. Represent. By Quay, she was a representative! It all hung in the balance now, on her shoulders. Represent.

  “I am Nyra.” Had she introduced herself yet? Did they even ask? She didn’t think so. Wasn’t that the sort of thing one asked first?

  Enough! Represent.

  “I am Nyra. I-I’m from the Nammock herd, or colony, either one.” She shook her head, agog at her own tediousness. “I live… we live on the Northern Coast. It’s on the northernmost area of Nyra. The continent Nyra, obviously, not me.”

  Perhaps it was a trick of light and sound, but Nyra could have sworn that the word Nammock flickered on the mouths of the several bystanders, some speaking so sharply that whispers managed to escape, loud enough to be hooting ghosts in her ears.

  Swallowing, Nyra hoped that it was the other’s turn to speak.

  “Were you looking for someone?” asked Royal Zirus. Another strange question. Nyra would have expected them to ask why an Agring was so far north. This didn’t bother her for long, as the Royal female interjected.

  “You’re saying too much,” she scolded her mate.

  “She’s not an actress, Arjell. I’m almost certain, especially given her age. She has no reinforcements, and is entirely at our disposal. I’d rather be as forward as possible rather than sidestep.”

  “Zirus…” she warned.

  “What would you suggest, Arjell?” he said calmly.

  “Less haste,” she growled. “We’re letting impatience and angst get the better of us. Realize that we have time.”

  Nyra whimpered.

  “Very well,” he sighed. Although Zirus’s eyes did not leave Nyra’s during the exchange, the Agring observed his subtle refocus, just as his mate had refocused moments ago. “Please, little one,” he said. “Now is the time to tell us why you are here.” Disapproval was printed on Arjell’s snarling face.

  “W-well,” came Nyra’s staccato breath. She felt cold pressure in her skull. “My family has lived on the Northern Coast for several years. Forever, maybe. And we um… we had a problem about forty years ago. Some Sperk Dragons came. They are bigger than us.” Did they know what a Sperk was? “We aren’t sure why, but they got chased or scared out of their home in the mountain caves. And they came here… I mean, they came where we live. And because they couldn’t fish or dig, they overtook our colony and made us fish and dig for them. And we’ve been doing just that every day ever since.”

  That was it. That was the story in summary. Right? The pressure on the crown of her head grew colder.

  “So that’s why I’m here.”

  The Zealers stared on.

  Nyra wanted to scream. To scream the cave right open and fly off.

  “So you are a slave, essentially,” said Zirus. “Yes?”

  Not essentially. Am a slave. “Yes.”

  “But you escaped?”

  “Yes!” she shouted, relieved by their understanding. On the right course. She stood a little taller. “Almost. I was actually banished. My mum, Thaydra, caused an uproar. She’d been practicing fire. Of course the Sperks didn’t know about it until she set the field aflame. We’d planned to get away in the commotion. It failed. So to punish Mum, at least I think that was his reason, the Sperk Alpha, Darkmoon, pushed me over the cliff edge.”

  “And you made it here.”

  “Yes.”

  “In the approaching winter?” said Arjell testily.

  Nyra flinched. “Well, yes, but I had help. Lots. In fact, down by the coast—”

  “Arjell,” interjected Zirus, eyes ever on Nyra. “Pardon my interruption. But if I may redirect the conversation?”

  “Zirus…”

  “Have peace, I beg you. It’s been years of investigation. You want to know as much as I.”

  Arjell snorted. Zirus closed his eyes, methodically, as one did when staving off a searing headache.

  “Nyra. You have told me the whole story that you know?”

  “Yes,” said Nyra. “There are more details—”

  “You’ve told me your life. As you know it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then stop me if I am making false assumptions.” He cleared his throat. “I take it you have come to us, come all this way, for some sort of council? You want to ask for our assistance with your problem.”

  “Yes. Please,” she added quickly.

  Behind his shining white plate, Nyra saw Zirus’s mouth hang open.

  “We need you to help us…” she offered, prompting him out of silence.

  For a millisecond his eyes flickered off hers.

  “Young Agring,” he paused, “why do you think that we would ever help you?”

  At first Nyra cocked her head, feeling the mild loss she knew when her mind wandered during Aunt Dewep’s history lectures. Blaze would have to catch her up in whispers.

  Blaze was not here to whisper.

  Sour blood pulsed from Nyra’s throat, teasing the pumping vessels in chest.

  “Because you said you would!” she shouted, suddenly mad at the Zealers, furious at them for not seeing the clarity whipping them in the face. Her raw, raucous voice kept the sourness in her throat at bay, though the pressure did not vanish from her chest. “That’s what our Alpha always said. They would come to Nyra’s Northern Coast.” She took on Fuhorn’s deeper voice, hunching her head downward in the way the Agring Alpha often did. “You know, return the favor?”

  “What favor?” said Zirus.

  The surge of her heart intensified, and pulling behind the pain was hot rage. Only this time, it was not for the Zealers. The hot rage pricked Nyra herself, boiling to the point of self revulsion. What am I doing wrong? Why aren’t they understanding? Remembering? Why are their questions so bizarre?

  I’m messing it up. I’m eleven, I’m a representative, and I’m saying it wrong. I’m confusing everyone. With stup
id words and bad storytelling.

  “It’s not poor storytelling, young Nyra,” said Zirus. She’d been thinking out-loud. Of all the times. “Please. Take a breath. We don't mean to interrogate. We are merely curious. Please tell us why you think we will help you?”

  Little quakes wriggled down her jaw line. Her nose wrinkled in and out. Breaths came, soothing over the back of her trembling tongue. Somewhere inside was her voice. Nyra found it imbedded in the pit of her stomach, frail as moth wings.

  “When my ancestors came,” she said slowly, “and they saved the dragglings in your nursery, your leader at the time, Sorja, said he would help us.” There. Clarity and conciseness. “And now we need your help.”

  “Saved our nursery?” Venom dripped from Arjell’s utterance. Had the Royal been a common dragon, Nyra assumed Arjell would have lunged. Only mandatory dignity kept her in place. Zirus remained calm. Yet in his own subtle way, the male looked equally disconcerted, as if he were channeling his distress in the most thoughtful approach he could muster.

  “Please tell us, how did you save our nursery?” he said patiently.

  Ten beats in her heart, then twenty in a matter of seconds, each one bleating individual syllables. Lost, lost, lost. The sickening feel of fight or flight ripened to a swelling melon in her brain.

  They had lost their own story. Lost it through the generations.

  “Agrings from my herd came north,” she pleaded. “There was a cave-in. Sorja asked them to use fire to free the dragglings. You thanked us, and you gave us the Zealer Stone and promised us friendship.”

  Zirus looked away, not at Arjell, nor at his subordinates, but away. Nyra wished he’d yell, or even spit at her. Anything but his stillness. Anything but his disappearance into thought, the dark tinkerings twisting behind that pristine plate.

  “Nyra,” he said solemnly. “Your story. It’s one we know, and we’ve learned it as children from our elders, just as you have.”

  Her breath held.

  “But Nyra, the endings are not at all the same.”

  “What?” Nyra slurred. The voice that came out was Thaydra’s.

  “Only the beginning is true,” he said. “Your kind did come. And there was a cave-in. But there was no heroism.”

  Arjell growled dangerously. The room had been perfectly quiet.

  “Instead, there was a disaster.”

  “Disaster,” Nyra repeated.

  “When the Agrings breathed fire, everything collapsed. Most of the dragglings were trampled to death, the lucky ones. The rest suffocated, dying to the cries of their screaming parents on the other side.”

  Wrong.

  “Because of you, they died. We chased you off and warned you to never come again. Your homeland was marked with the very kind of stone you stole from our cave, wedged deep into the rocks beside a nearby island. The glow every night was to remind you to never return. Ever.”

  You. He called the ancestors you, not them, the line between callous lies and living innocence locked together.

  “And because of you, we’ve been at war with ourselves for over three-hundred years.”

  The silence, skewed in time, was forever in the past. The future didn’t move.

  A thudding barreled in from behind. “Royal Zirus,” someone panted. “One of the Raklisalls saw the Agring. They’re gathering outside the main cave now. Numbers growing.”

  In a flash, Zirus dove into another persona, one Nyra didn’t know nor cared to understand. Vague words passed through the fog that held the Agring in suspension.

  “Say nothing,” came a fuzzy voice, maybe Zirus, but he sounded different. Direct, hasty. “Report immediately if Kodoral is with them. Arjell, send warning to the family warrens. Sigeen, send Tonuritt to outside guard-duty, I need you here. And Jatika?”

  Nyra barely perceived a pause.

  “Put her with Olieve.”

  Jatika must have hesitated, for Zirus shouted, “Quickly now! And use the back way. Don’t put her in their sight again.”

  Once more Nyra was in the air and the bright green stars erupted across the tunnels. Again there were gasps, left and right.

  And although it would have been right to picture Mother, to picture Blaze, to picture home, Cousin Jesoam loomed in her head. There was a moment of a million moments where Jesoam explained a thing she probably knew nothing about. Nyra forgot most of them. But for reasons on the brink of implausible, one memory outshined the others through time gone and into now.

  It’s in all the great songs, cousin. Don’t you understand? There’s a time when the music must go back to the beginning. You must go back to the beginning before you reach the end. Everything starts all over. For good or for worse.

  A single light blared ahead. The room was cold. They stopped. Bright water shimmered at her feet.

  “Hold your breath.”

  Nyra was plunged into an emerald-blue glow of liquid ice.

  Part III

  Glacier

  Chapter 14: Nyra

  Plunged in the icy mood of his aunt, Blaze searched for a mar in the pristine sky.

  “That’s all for today,” huffed Dewep. Relief washed down her face like summer rain.

  Flying lessons had been exceptionally bad today, and that was saying something. With such a rare sunny day, what level-minded draggling would give his or her full attention? Dewep had tried bribing them with the first bass catch of the morning, which caused Casstooth to criticize Dewep’s teaching strategy, which caused Dewep to bark orders, which made everyone sour. It didn’t help when Emdu loudly whispered about Sperks’ giant hindquarters. Casstooth then scolded the already flustered Dewep for being a poor disciplinarian. This led to shouts, which led to Emdu getting a smart thump on the tail, which led to even more chaos. It was all Blazing Fire could do to stifle a sigh when the lesson’s cancelation inevitably arrived.

  “Want to stack rocks with us, Blaze?” said Ipsity, forepaws poised to run as far away from the adults as possible.

  “You go ahead,” he said. “I’m going to the Dam trees.”

  The others exchanged a peeved look. It was not the first time Blaze had turned down a play-invite.

  Today’s sun made the afternoon especially valuable, to enjoy a few hours before the rain clouds promised to return. And what an additionally rare treat to have it free. But the heavens inspired no change in the day to day life of one particular draggling.

  “Draggling’s a loose term,” murmured Blaze to himself. He and his fellows, Ipsity, Jesoam and Emdu, were still the youngest in the Nammock herd. But just as the afternoon guaranteed precipitation, age eleven promised growth spurts, and no Agring yet had been blessed or cursed with exception.

  He wandered towards Fitzer’s Reservoir, barely aware of the sunlight kissing his shoulders, nor the unrelenting eyes of passers-by who watched him differently ever since his world had changed.

  Aunt Dewep had been teaching flying for almost a season now, always with a Sperk to chaperone. It was a dreadful time to do so. Flying lessons, as enforced by the Sperks, were to begin at age twelve. Such was protocol since the enslavement. But that had changed. Lessons were happening now, this fall, before everyone’s spring birthday, and just in time for the weather to turn from bad to worse. Practice occurred in the rain, cold rain, and was seldom cancelled.

  Of course, when Fuhorn was young, there were no limits as to when one learned their wings. Likewise, there were no consequences of knowing. You learned when you were ready and hunted for yourself when ready. Now training was strictly scheduled. This was where the blessings and curses came into play. For as much as the young dreamed of reaching age twelve and the skies, it was only at the mercy of the Sperks that lessons were delayed. The adults begged for it long ago, and unlike most of their wishes, this particular request had once been granted.

  Let them be children, Fuhorn often recited. If the sky is slavery, keep them grounded until they’ve grown.

  So the number twelve had been stamped with that wond
erful and horrible undertone. And slowly, like their parents had learned before them, ripe wings took on a dark connotation.

  No there would be no wait. Because the grownups conspired. They rebelled. What better way to punish them than by making the children suffer? Darkmoon retaliated, as always, with wings. Tearing them away or giving them life, he found a way to make them hated by their own bodies.

  A western breeze made Blaze recoil, and he quickened his pace. The trees would afford shelter until sunset. Privacy too, he hoped. He didn’t feel like chatting. The Reservoir came into sight.

  Blaze spotted a figure by the tree line. His heart sank. Insipid small talk scripted into his throat, etching on the scars of his previous conversations. It took another second for the figure to take shape.

  There was Opalheart meandering the Reservoir’s southern perimeter. Luckily, he was far away on the other side. The Agring’s insides moved back to their proper places.

  It was not that animosity stood between them. Nevertheless, a blockade had built itself ever since the early fall, since Opalheart resigned from guard duties. Lately, his eyes turned down shamefully when an Agring crossed his path. His socialization with other Sperks also decreased, Blaze observed, with Bristone as his only outlet for any lengthy dialogue.

  Blaze gathered this from studying at far off-vantage points. Idle gossip from Agrings also reached his ears, though he never listened intentionally. Still, he occasionally talked to Opalheart himself. The blockade was uncrackable, and neither the Sperk nor Blaze made much effort to chip away the pieces. But unlike the Dam, the blockade had miniscule fissures, small enough to filter away deeper topics yet large enough to allow chit-chat to pass through. So off and on Blaze discussed weather, daily catches, or afternoon plans, always with forced enthusiasm.

  Opalheart caught Blaze's eye from across the water. The Agring turned away. When he looked up again, the Sperk had disappeared.

  Blaze sighed, mildly surprised by his own disap-pointment. On the right, water spilled loudly over the Scar. The rest churned peacefully at his feet.