The Summer Dragon

by Todd Lockwood

  Then his eyes turned full on me, bloodshot and harrowed. “Hold to the light, Maia. Hold to the light of Getig, of Asha.”

  A thread of saliva ran from the corner of his mouth as he collapsed again on the bed, his eyes closed halfway in the sleep of delirium. His fingers relaxed, and I withdrew my hand.

  Trembling, I rubbed the marks Fren’s nails left in my wrist and looked to Jhem and Mabir. If they had heard any of it, they made no sign.

  What had just happened here? Who or what was Asha?

  Mabir put the last of his tools back into his pouch and looked at me with a mixture of relief and anxiety. He said something, but I didn’t hear it. I nodded anyway.

  Jhem walked over and pulled me to my feet. I shook my head and returned to the gloom of the Temple infirmary. Aru bounced happily next to Darian’s bed, licking the hand that dangled there.

  “Look at them,” said Jhem. “We can’t separate them now. They belong together.”

  “You’re right.” Mabir’s eyes twinkled at me. “More than that, they both need to be near Maia, so that Aru can draw strength from their new runes, and Darian from Aru. I’ll explain to Bellua that I chose to finish their bond marks without his approval. He’ll be angry, but that is my burden to bear. Let me wrap Darian’s leg and immobilize it, so he’s safe to travel.”

  I squeezed my baby tight as Mabir came to me, put his wiry arms around us, and hugged us warmly. “Thank you, little catalyst, Getig’s little Maia.”

  Getig’s Maia. I didn’t know how to respond to that, but when he tried to release me, I gripped his arm.

  “What is Asha?” I said.

  Mabir’s face paled. “Where did you hear that name?”

  “From Fren, moments ago.”

  The dhalla looked to Fren, then to me, and his color faded. He trembled beneath my touch. “Sweet Avar. Not now, Maia. This is not the time. Holy Avar, but these are strange times indeed. Speak that name to no one. No one! I will explain when I can.”

  He pulled away from me and hobbled to Darian’s bedside. “Jhem! Maia! Gather your babies and send Tauman in. It’s time to get you all home.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  DARIAN SLEPT the next two days in the winter stable, with Aru and Keirr and me close by. Father scolded us mildly for our escapade, in Bellua’s presence. But he smiled slyly and winked at me once as Bellua spewed angrily about this affront to his authority. The merihem insisted on studying Darian’s finished bond mark long and hard, but he made no judgment about Mabir’s work, and never looked at my neck. I tried not to think about him, saying nothing when he came in from time to time to examine Darian, though I wore my hair loose and never turned my back to him. He didn’t once resort to graving in Darian’s wound, even though he always brought his tools and my brother remained gray and still. Did it mean that he saw improvement? Or would he dare to withhold aid and let my brother die?

  I stayed by Darian’s bedside except to feed our qits or relieve myself. Jhem brought my meals, and Father and Tauman stopped in regularly. We tried to wake Darian frequently to pour some broth down his throat, but Father worried that it was too little nourishment after such a long fast.

  Aru improved, however. Where before he’d been confused and unhappy, now he seemed content to lie between Darian’s cot and mine, and even tussled with Keirr like a qit ought to do. That at least was a relief. I realized that I could feel him the way I felt Keirr. Before, I’d been unaware of that bond with my own qit. I’d thought it was merely my deepening love for her. Now, because of Aru, I understood that the bond mark truly did unite us in a way difficult to describe. If I yawned, they might both curl up in their beds. If my stomach growled, they would mowp for a meal. If one of them stopped to scratch behind an ear frill, I might feel a tickle behind my ear. If I thought too hard about it, my insides got quivery. I noted a difference, though—the link to Aru seemed weaker, less commanding, as if Aru truly was shared and not mine alone. Would that be a problem in the future? Would his loyalties be divided? Weakened? Or broadened? Not even Mabir could answer that question.

  On the third day, I realized that a flush of color had returned to Darian’s cheeks and the wound in his leg appeared less swollen. The rotten, gangrenous smell was gone, the gravings successful at last. As Bellua looked on in silence, Mabir pronounced Darian officially on the mend, and Bellua stayed out of the aeries the rest of that day.

  Darian’s laughter woke me the fourth morning. He sat in his bed, with Aru bounding around him in circles. Though he’d lost weight, his cheeks were pink. I jumped out of my blankets and took him by the shoulders, cautious to avoid the giant hug that I really wanted to deliver.

  Keirr stretched and crawled out of her box to curl at my side. Darian scratched behind her ear frill as she purred a greeting to Aru.

  “Maia, I’m home! When did that happen?”

  “Four nights ago. We rescued you from the Temple hospital—”

  “Rescued? From the Temple? The last thing I remember is falling. The Horror in the cave. I ran past it.”

  “You don’t remember the mountainside, after we escaped from the Horrors? You stood up for me.”

  He shook his head slowly but then nodded as a light dawned in his eyes. “Yes, I do remember that now. I think I remember the Temple, too.” He touched the back of his neck. “How long have I been asleep?” He looked around the aeries as if seeing them for the first time, a smile forming on his lips.

  “Over a week. I have so much to tell you, but you have to swear silence. Things have gotten strange around here.” I couldn’t stop looking at him. His cheeks were hollow, but when he smiled he looked so much like his former self that I had to smile, too.

  “Not so strange that we don’t have food, I hope, because I’m starving.”

  I laughed. “We still have food. You stay right here—I’m going to get Father.”

  As I started to run for the doors, Darian grabbed my sleeve. “Maia, thank you.” His voice cracked.

  “For what?”

  He shook his head, a look of perplexed amusement adding humor to his hollow cheeks. Then he laughed out loud. “I don’t know! I’ve been asleep or something. But thank you anyway. I’m pretty sure you’ve taken care of me.”

  I smiled and kissed his cheek. “You have no idea.”

  Mabir visited more often once Darian awoke, and even spent two nights in the winter stable with us. He didn’t talk to me about Fren’s cryptic words though, and I was afraid to bring them up because Mabir and I were never alone, and I worried that Bellua might be listening at the door. I caught Mabir studying me oddly a time or two, but he acted as if he were doing something else. Once, I found a chance to quietly ask him, “When? When can we talk?”

  “Soon,” he said. “But not here. Not now.”

  Darian was too weak to walk, but he ate like a qit, and his face filled in again. His improved condition freed me to begin working with Keirr. One of the first tasks, now that the bond marks were applied and healed, was to create the ports in her wings that would allow us to strap a saddle harness around her body. Father summoned me into the courtyard, and Mabir joined us with his graving tools readied, a burlap sack at his feet.

  Father stood beside the “porting horse,” a sawhorse contraption with a block of wood in the center sculpted to fit the underside of a qit’s wings between the wing muscles and her hips. The thought of cutting my baby made my stomach turn, and Keirr responded by shrinking and struggling. Naturally, I held her close to calm her, but Father clicked his tongue like a dragon dam. “You can’t treat her like a pet, cuddling her and kissing her all the time. She’s going to grow very quickly. She’s going to be smart, and she’s a natural predator. It’s time to start treating her like the adult animal she will become very, very soon.”

  I nodded. “I know. It’s just that . . .” I looked up at him sadly.

  He smiled back. “Don�
��t think I don’t understand how you feel, Maia. The bond mark has increased your empathy for her—not that you didn’t have plenty of that already. But we must do what we must do, so let’s do it well, right? We’ll get her in position, then you hold her, and be firm.”

  Together we moved Keirr next to the porting horse and stretched her wing out with the block nestled against her side. Mabir put a hand on my shoulder and smiled encouragement. Then he opened the burlap sack and produced a block of ice from the vaults. He laid it on Keirr’s wing where it joined her torso, and together we calmed her struggles.

  Father took his skinning knife with its short, curved blade, freshly sharpened and washed in alcohol, and pointed with it. “Take note of the veins here, behind the wing and here, in front of the leg. They feed the membrane of the wing, and they’re important in a young animal whose wings have more growing to do than any other part of her body. Always leave at least two fingers’ width between them and the incision. Keirr’s are well placed, so this won’t be a problem. When her wings are grown these veins won’t be nearly so critical.” He raised the blade, and I winced. “Don’t worry, she has less feeling there than you imagine, and ice numbs the skin. It will be over quickly.”

  Without thinking, I began Mabir’s calming tune. He joined me, as did Father, humming in low harmony. Mabir removed the block of ice, and then Father sliced with deliberate care through Keirr’s wing membrane into the block of the porting horse, directly next to her body. He reversed direction and returned, removing a thin, lozenge-shaped bit of skin. She barely struggled until Mabir bathed the wound with an alcohol-soaked swab. But with continued singing and gentle force we kept her restrained long enough for him to grave sigils around the opening. The runes arced around the margin, then stretched out several inches into the wing membrane like arrowheads. “This will promote scar tissue with elasticity and strength,” he explained.

  “I feel it! In my own side, like a tingling.”

  Father nodded. “That’s the power of your bond mark at work.”

  We repeated the process on the other wing. Last of all, we wrapped a clean bandage around her torso and through the wing ports, to prevent them from healing closed, and applied a poultice to the incisions to numb them and stop any bleeding. It had taken less than twenty minutes, but now my Keirr was prepared for a life in the skies with me—me—on her back. My joy at the thought seemed to calm her, because she turned and licked my face, her silver eyes squinting with trust and acceptance.

  Father patted my shoulder. “Good job. Take a few moments while we do Aru’s wing ports.” He and Mabir took the porting horse into the winter stable.

  I took Keirr’s head in my hands, kissing her on the nose.

  “Don’t you worry, little one. No matter how big you get, you’ll always be my baby.”

  She blinked back at me.

  “Mowp?” she asked.

  I floated on a cloud for the next several days, lifted by Darian’s recovery and Aru’s rebounding spirit. My bond with Keirr was a new uncharted landscape that only grew broader and deeper. Mabir showed up once in a while, mostly to check on Darian or confer with Father, and he still refused to discuss Fren’s words. I filled Darian in on most of what he’d missed, but I didn’t tell him about Asha or the shared bond mark, fearing, in part, that he might be upset by it but figuring, too, that what he didn’t know he couldn’t accidentally tell to someone who would make ill use of it.

  We rarely saw Bellua and Captain Rov, who spent most of every day at the caverns or otherwise kept to the manor house. Bellua hadn’t left, as he’d said he would if Darian recovered. But we saw less of him, thank the Avar. I didn’t think about either of them much but avoided Bellua when he lurked about the aeries.

  I had plenty to keep me occupied.

  Young dragons are hard work. Besides feeding and bathing, they need training of all kinds. It begins with language lessons—simple commands, mostly, certain words and phrases that will be important throughout their lives: stay, come, go, halt. Their favorite would be the word for up, “Hai!” But those days still awaited us.

  First: names. Dragons understand the concept. They use names willingly and even invent their own—Keirr’s own sire named her. Shuja called my Father “Magha,” an easy name for a dragon to pronounce, whereas the “T” in “Tauman” was more difficult, and so my brother’s Rannu called him “Dauman.” “Jhem” came out of Audax’s mouth with a soft “G” as “Ghem,” and so on. Shuja called Tauman “Boi,” to his embarrassment, and Jhem “Ghirw,” or Girl, as best we could decipher. Social status was not lost on dragons.

  “Mai-ah,” I said, patting my chest as Keirr nosed about for another piece of salmon. “Mai-ah.”

  “Mowp,” she insisted.

  “Who am I, Keirr? You are . . . Keirr.” I patted her chest. Then I patted my own again. “Mai-ah.”

  “Mowp.” She’d been fed already, so she wasn’t hungry, but salmon was easily her favorite treat so far.

  I held the lump of fish at arm’s length, out of her reach. Patted my chest again. “Maia.”

  She sat and looked at me with her head cocked sideways, a pose becoming very characteristic of study, of deep thought. “Maia,” she said, perfectly. Then “MOWP.” Assertively.

  I laughed and gave her the treat, scratching behind her ear frill. I sensed the part that our bond mark played in the transaction. It somehow helped her to know what I expected from her. Impressive science, the Temple’s art of graving. That, or a very smart qit. Or both. I often wondered how my ancestors had managed dragons at all without the graving science, or had the art come first—and for what purpose? As far as anyone knew, the science was older than history.

  The whole process intrigued me, though. I listened close to the adult dragons when they clicked and rumbled to each other, thinking always about my mother’s comments so long ago, and the way that Keirr’s poppa told her to come to my side, to stay with me, with only a very few rumbled sounds. They weren’t just random noises, I knew that much, though they were hard to differentiate from each other. I continued to listen and mimic them when I thought I detected something. More often than not the adult dragons looked at me as if I were deranged. Perhaps I was.

  One day I watched in fascination as Keirr played with a chicken carcass I set out for her lunch. She backed off from it several paces, hunkered down as if she prepared to spring, and closed her eyes. She clicked and opened her eyes wide, head bouncing high, then looked at her meal with her head cocked.

  “What are you up to, little girl?”

  She crouched down again, closed her eyes, and wiggled closer to her target. She clicked again, then her eyes popped open and her head went up, tilted to the other side. I laughed aloud, but she ignored me and repeated the process one more time: crouch, eyes closed, creep closer, click, then look up with something akin to astonishment.

  And then it was over. She pounced on her quarry and dismembered it thoroughly. Something had happened that escaped me. I wished I could be in her head while she performed this ritual, whatever it was. I saw it once more the next day, this time with Aru as the unwitting victim, with a full-on mock battle afterward. I never saw it again.

  Keirr astounded me with how quickly she learned words, and Aru with how quickly he followed suit. They were eager to communicate. Aru learned to say Keirr’s name quickly, but she struggled with Aru for some reason. It always came out “Owoo,” or entirely as the rolling dragon “R.” We worked on it.

  “Bukaw” was chicken. “Mmuu!” for beef. “Spsh” or “hwssh” or any combination that evoked splashing noises was “fish,” though we were far from naming species—all words that I adopted because they were easy for her to speak.

  Darian disliked barnyard sounds entirely, though. He worked hard with Aru to get him close to actual words in our language, but the best his qit could do with chicken was “k-kkn.” Cow gave him much less tro
uble, to my brother’s relief. One day Darian sat rubbing the scar on his leg, frowning as if it hurt, and snapped, “Your dragon sounds ridiculous clucking like a chicken and mooing like a cow. I wish you wouldn’t teach Aru that they’re acceptable words. I don’t like it.”

  The filigree of graving around his scars didn’t make them any prettier. I could see that his leg probably still throbbed, but I was in no mood for attitude. “When you’re feeding him yourself you can teach him whatever words you please. I’ve got my hands doubly full.”

  When he started to object, I turned my back on him and marched straight to the storehouse, with Aru and Keirr trailing behind. They waited with anticipation as I went below to the ice vault and gathered food for their mid-morning meal, primarily chicken, Aru’s favorite. When the basket hoist reached the top, they circled hungrily.

  I showed them the basket full of chicken carcasses. Keirr asked for one politely by clucking quietly like a hen. “Buk buk,” she said, and I tossed her a prize. She snatched it out of the air, tenderized it just a little, and then swallowed it one piece at a time. Aru watched, eyeing the remaining birds.

  “You have to ask, politely,” I told him. “Watch Keirr. Hey, baby, want another?”

  “Buk buk buk,” she said, and I rewarded her with another bird.

  “Get it?” I said to Aru. He looked at me, tilted his head to one side quizzically, straightened it again. Nosed in for a bird, but I pushed him away. “Buk buk,” I insisted.

  “Buh,” he said.