Was Nyra in water when she…? He shook his head bitterly, but the thoughts held fast.
The bones were picked clean. Picked clean in only a night’s time, dragged ashore by aquatic monsters. Casstooth told them, firmly, factually. Nyra. Gone.
For weeks Blaze stared fangs at Casstooth. You’re lying, he thought. It made sense for her to lie. Suppose the guard had never found Nyra? This would be bad news for Darkmoon. With no death there’d be no vengeance, and the Sperk Alpha broiled with vengeance. Any confusion, any doubt would be a complication, and an angry one at that. And though Nyra’s outcome bore no reflection on Casstooth’s efforts, would it not be in her best interest to lie? To prevent murder of the messenger, so to speak?
No, said a voice in his head, a voice that grew louder with time. The truth was better. Casstooth was not that stupid, nor Darkmoon that irrational. What if Nyra was later seen alive, or otherwise not fitting Casstooth’s description? The risk of lying was too great, as it almost always was.
“No one would survive this cold anyway,” Blaze muttered as the breeze kicked up. “Nor the sea.”
He often considered the other Agrings, peering at their faces as they went about their daily business. He wondered if they hurt inside. And if they did, how much, and where was the grief was rooted.
Blaze’s grief hung in clumps off his skin, or it may as well have. For the dripping sorrow in his heart did not mend like the scrapes and cracked claws he’d felt before. The sadness was heavy, so very heavy, and he knew everyone could see it.
The herd was a unit, a family, but none were as close as siblings. Being a brother was his job, to be the go-to figure in her life. And he’d treated it like fecal matter. He’d talked too much. He’d been annoying. A know-it-all, too. Observations were his gift, and he shared them, every single one of them. Never shutting up.
There were those who pretended to grieve. Jesoam was one. It began the day after Nyra fell. A day that was meant for silence, where even sincere condolences would offend the heart and mind. But in the darkening twilight, just when the Fishers landed from their last trip, Jesoam ran forth from her burrow and made her proclamation;
“In honor of my cousin, I shall not sing ever again.” She’d spread her one, unburned wing, embracing the dwindling sun like a celestial spirit. Only Blaze seemed to notice her eyelids, cracked open just enough to flicker from dragon to dragon, scanning, pausing on those who looked in her direction, at which time she’d ruffle her ears alluringly.
A good four suns passed before Emdu heard Jesoam humming tunelessly to herself, preening her healing wing. He told Blaze, and they halfheartedly agreed that it didn’t count. Then the humming became fuller and recognizable, and soon Blaze found himself remembering the lyrics to her stupid songs. Finally she started belting, shamelessly and with no more guilt than a hungry predator. She’d faltered once, when Blaze first caught her in a dead-on stare. He didn’t speak to her for a long time. Though he expected as much from Jesoam, he could not suppress the rage prickling his skin. Even more frustrating was that Jesoam seemed to care less. But the pulse of his heart eventually slowed, giving into the same beat of normalcy that his cousin no doubt assumed much sooner. He’d even accepted her rock-stacking challenge last night. Neither of them had had much fun. Blaze had been polite enough to not say this aloud (perhaps because she’d beat him to it).
None were more hurt than him, though. They couldn’t. No one had been affected more.
Save for one contender.
Of course, Thaydra, whose grief surpassed everything, built until the suns rose that day after Nyra vanished over the edge. Building too fast.
Too decisively.
When the second sun came up, her eyes had been sea-bound.
And she ran.
Straight and narrow, Thaydra ran. No wings, low tide, running.
Blaze ran after her. She leaped to the edge, suspended in nothing, fifty Sperks lengths above the unforgiving below. He ran. He’d tried.
But instantaneously, a second slice scarred his battered heart.
And he knew it would never heal. For now, she was gone. Thaydra. Like her daughter. Gone forever.
“There was another thought,” he murmured to himself as the Reservoir water lapped closer to his forepaws. For no reason, it occurred to him now. There was one thought he never shared with Nyra. And it was the last one:
Thaydra had wanted the children to escape with the others, impulsively and emotionally. He thought about it tenderly, cranking his mind to fit Thaydra’s provisionally misshapen one. Then it hit.
She had been afraid for, maybe the first time in her life, herself. And that was just the tip of it, for this fear bathed over himself and Nyra as well. What would happen to her after the Agrings got away? Given the history, whatever might be exaggerated or untrue, Thaydra was and would be Darkmoon’s target. What sort of suffering would she endure? What final, gruesome pathway would snake its way to her throat?
Whatever it would be, she didn’t want Blaze or Nyra to see it.
But Thaydra’s plan had gone awry in the end, when Darkmoon skewed his vengeance. So she’d invented a new one for herself, one that she alone would have to carry out.
He ran.
“Stop thinking about it!” he yelled. Water licked his claws, electrifying each into a backwards leap. He panted liberally.
Rock-bottom though it all seemed, there was still yet another problem with an unknown solution. He remembered it when he saw his fellow students. The youngest herd members, only four of them including himself, maturing fast.
We are ending. Not today, not even ten years from now. But Darkmoon knows. Every so often he’d muster the intrigue to investigate, to uncover whatever dark solution lay ahead.
But I’m not the rebel, he mourned. She was. And it would end there.
A twig snapped. His heart jumped, and his tongue brushed the soft tissue behind his upper fangs. His vocal chords tightened.
“N—”
At his side was nothing. His tongue flumped down.
Always the sounds, always nothing. He knew better than to be so foolish. The pain should have reminded him. Always.
Yet sometimes the grass would snap, the wind would buffet, and he’d know for a second that she was there walking beside him, making her personal cadence in nature’s sounds. For a split second, life returned.
Blaze withdrew his back left foot from the ground, revealing a cleanly snapped branch.
It would end there, moving to the next day and the next in a land that had lost its namesake.
Concluded in The Waters of Nyra: Volume II
Acknowledgements
First, I'd like to thank Nikkita Pierrottie for leading me through the tangled Amazon with a machete. I'm lucky to know such a talented writer and friend. Visit her books at nikkitapierrottie.com. Next, my sister, Stacy, for keeping Nyra a secret for fifteen years and reading it first (sarenea.deviantart.com). Also Jon, who read second and offered his honest and professional opinions (artizek.deviantart.com). All of these people, plus Caroline, Beth, Melissa, Vee, Cat, and Stephen gave thoughtful comments. You have my gratitude and love.
I stand on sturdy shoulders, and if it weren’t for the greats, my little dragon may never have flown. Thus, I'd like to acknowledge my favorite authors, late and living, for plucking me out of reality (as needed, and then some): Brian Jacques, Willa Cather, Ken Follett, J.K. Rowling, Wilson Rawls, Victor Hugo, Kenneth Oppel, Richard Adams, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, and especially David Clement-Davies, whose philosophies haunt me still, and for calling me brilliant. Finally, my parents, who didn’t know about Nyra until publication, but encouraged my writing all the same. Please pardon my dishonesty. I hope you’ll consider the dragons productive.
Photo by Benjamin Wood
Born an Air Force brat, Kelly grew up on both coasts and everywhere in between. She studied at the University of Colorado at Boulder and California State University Stanislaus, earning a master’s in Ecology and Sustai
nability. When not writing or trying to save the world, she enjoys drawing, theater, long walks, and new recipes. The Waters of Nyra is her first novel. She calls Colorado Springs home.
kellymichellebaker.com
The Waters of Nyra- Volume I Page 24