The Summer Dragon

  Father had ordered new bows for Darian and me from the bowyer in Riat, but they would be weeks in the making. Meanwhile, when we could arrange to be together, Fren put us to work. We performed endless calisthenics designed to improve our upper-body strength: push-ups, pull-ups on a bar hung in a stable doorway, endless repetitions hefting bags of sand upward while bent over, standing, kneeling, lying down. Braced across a bench holding a board-like position on front, back, sides, to build our torso strength. I understood that these were the muscles we’d use to draw a bow. But this was work.

  Despite my ulterior motives, Fren and I never had time alone together to talk. I got the feeling he’d developed doubts about such pointed conversation. I’d ask a simple question, like “What are we doing here?” And he’d answer, “Feed the dragon. Clean the pan.” What was that? A riddle?

  In between, we still had duties to perform with our qits. Though she was long and lanky, Keirr’s shoulders now came nearly to mine, Aru’s skinny frame topped Darian’s ears. Father introduced new saddles, our first with actual straps and buckles, not just tied together out of rope. They were old, Darian’s in brown like Tauman’s, mine a dark gray with copper stitching, like the one that fit Grus. Mother’s colors. That alone pleased me beyond words. But it got even better.

  They had seats. We would ride at last. Darian and I looked at each other with so much obvious excitement that we broke into laughter at each other’s expressions.

  Father grinned large. “That’s the saddle Tauman used to break Rannu in. And Maia, yours is the one your Mother rode when Grus was young. These young ones want to test their wings. But we won’t let them. Not until they’re strong enough to fly with a person in the saddle.”

  We led them to the saddle jib, practically skipping with excitement. Keirr and Aru sensed our mood and fidgeted as the new saddles were cinched into place.

  I gave my baby a hug around the neck and patted her cheek, uncertain how she would react. She looked back at me, silver eye flashing, and said, “Up, Maia?”

  I laughed. “You smart, funny thing!” I climbed the step rungs on the forward harness strap, and she shifted to accommodate the change in her center of gravity. I swung my leg over and found both stirrups; she shifted back again. As I transferred my weight in response to her movement, she became excited, jumping and bucking, swaying from side to side. I heard Darian laughing, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Keirr. She looked back at me with one eye, then the other, nodding and wheezing with dragon laughter. She had seen people on the backs of dragons all along, so this wasn’t strange to her. And clearly, better than a saddle weighted with sand.

  We rode them around the paddock in circles until feeding time, then again until the sun went down. The day was over before I knew it.

  I’d never been so sore. I hurt in places I didn’t know I had, which surprised me, having ridden on dragons since before I could remember. But this was different. Keirr was a rambunctious youngster, and I’d never spent an entire day on a dragon’s back before—certainly never alone, and not on the ground galloping like on a horse. It was the most wonderful pain of my life.

  The next day, Father greeted us with bridles for their heads, too—something no dragon I’d ever seen was required to wear. Their eyes would be covered up, making them essentially blind.

  “It’s going to be tough on them at first, but this is an important part of their training,” said Father. “I’m going to set up an obstacle course in the paddock, now that we’ve got all the intruders settled elsewhere. They’ll have to trust your commands. When they don’t, they’ll run into things, trip, bump their heads and wings. I won’t lie—you’ll get banged up too. But this is how qits in the Dragonry are taught to trust their riders. These bridles will help them learn. The faster they absorb the commands, the sooner they’ll be rid of the headgear. Trust me, they’ll learn fast.”

  And they did. Keirr was especially trusting, and so she learned quickly, but Aru wasn’t far behind because pain is an excellent teacher. The commands were few and simple, words they already knew. “HAI!” for example—leap up or hit a barricade. Posts in the direct line of travel taught the commands for left and right. In and out told them when it was safe to spread their wings. Inflection indicated speed or intensity, so whoa was slow, WHOA! a full stop. Every command was accompanied by a slap or tap on the neck, as well. “Our words and signals become part of their environment, like another sense they have to learn,” Father explained.

  Keirr and Aru both clicked throughout their workouts, their ear frills opened wide. By the end of the second week they navigated ever-changing obstacle courses simply by listening for our commands or responding to the touches on their necks.

  “Feel your bond mark,” Darian said one day, at the end of a long session. I reached behind and touched the back of my neck. It was hot, like sunburn. I reached down to Keirr’s bond mark. It was the same way.

  “It helps us,” Darian said, with a quizzical grin. “That’s how we feel them, and they feel us.”

  In between, we trained with Fren. I tried to frame questions that would get me the answers I sought about Asha and Truth, but without alerting Darian to my agenda.

  “Fren, how do you know what’s true?”

  “Feel the contraction of your muscles and pay attention to your pain.”

  “That’s not an answer!”

  “Do you understand your question?” He winked at me and turned his back.

  It started to annoy me.

  It was good work, though. It kept us distracted from the difficulties of an aerie overburdened with dragons and people. We barely had time to think about Horrors or Edimmu. If I spied Addai or Bellua lurking about, I’d do exactly as Fren demanded: I’d concentrate on my muscles and try to direct the pain, or I’d pay close attention to the movement of Keirr’s body beneath me. She tested her wings constantly. She wanted to fly, I could tell. Always, we were conscious that Menog’s Day approached fast. Our first flight loomed.

  Every evening we collapsed into exhausted, blessed sleep. After another week, Father delivered a surprise. “Now you’re going to learn to trust your dragons. This time you will be blindfolded. They have to learn something they’re only beginning to comprehend: where you are in their space, and how important it is to protect you. And you will learn that you’re not in charge. Your relationship to your mount is as equals. You learn together. You fly together. You are a single unit, a team. You must learn to accept their input as a part of your environment, like a new sense you’ve been given. If you thought the last two weeks were hard, ready yourselves. We’ll go hard, and the only break you’ll get is your exercise sessions with Fren.”

  The next few days were brutal. Father and Shuja ran our mounts on a tether lead through a new obstacle course, shouting commands, whistling and laughing. Even though Keirr and Aru used their new words enthusiastically, the communications were more physical than anything else. We learned fast to anticipate our mounts’ next movements by subtle cues in shift or balance. Soon after, Keirr and Aru were able to judge when the communications were necessary, and when we just knew.

  Off came the blinders and blindfolds. We spent the last days of autumn simplifying our commands down to a minimal patter of words and touches, the very personal language that made bridles unnecessary. Keirr was very happy to be done with the bridle. Oh yhes.

  Aru was soon ready for the final training course, being strong enough to leap from the paddock and flap to the roof of the aerie with Darian on his back. His exuberance pushed him forward, with Father cheering and letting the lunge line out for higher and higher leaps.

  “He’s advanced for his age, boy!” Father said, and Darian glowed with pride. “He made it with two downbeats of his wings. When he can do it with one downbeat, he’ll be ready for the sky.”

  Keirr worked hard to keep up and reached the rooftop two days later, though it took her three flaps.
“That’s fine,” Father said. “She’s small, but she’s strong. That was really very good.” We followed up with days of practice flights to the aerie roof and landings in the paddock. It gave our young dragons a new appreciation of the command HAI—not just up, but flying. Then one day, Aru made it from paddock to roof with a single flap of his wings. The next day, with me hunkered close to her neck, exhaling forcefully into the back of her neck, my face pressed to her bond mark, so did Keirr.

  Meanwhile: “Fren—what is the meaning of life?” I knew my questions were getting ridiculous, and I guessed he was likely to give me another non-answer.

  “Lift the sandbag. Count. Lift again.”

  Damn.

  Darian enjoyed the structure of this new daily work, though. He surpassed me in weight and repetition for each exercise, but I pushed him hard. My competitive spirit demanded no less. I wasn’t about to let him forget who had saved whose life in the caverns. We weren’t soft people by any stretch—raising dragons is hard work. Riding an animal that weighed eight or ten times what I did was work too. But soon I saw changes in my physique; I developed round biceps, broader shoulders, and the veins in my forearms stood proud. The growing muscles in my chest made my small breasts seem embarrassingly large. But if I felt at all masculine, I needed only to look at Darian. While I became lean and hard, his arms and chest swelled with new muscle. His limp vanished, and he began to imitate the casual, easy swagger of the Dragonry riders.

  I suppose I did, too.

  THIRTY-SIX

  THREE DAYS BEFORE Menog’s day, Father gave Darian and me harnesses to wear on our first ride. They were old too, the very ones Tauman and Mother used on their first flights with Rannu and Grus. But they were in good condition. Darian’s was brown, to match his saddle. Mine, likewise, was deep gray with copper stitching. We spent that evening in the tack house cleaning and inspecting the saddles and adjusting the harnesses while our dragons slept.

  We could hardly call them qits anymore—Keirr’s shoulders now came to my nose, Aru’s to Darian’s forehead. With the rest of the year’s growth to come, they weren’t their full size yet and wouldn’t fill out for several more years beyond that, but they weren’t babies in any sense either. I scarcely had time to mourn the end of that too-brief period, though. Keirr and Aru shared our excitement and surged through their paces with enthusiasm we could barely contain. We knew their instinctual behavior could overwhelm us if we didn’t work them hard. They wanted to fly. I was never so grateful to have Father telling me what to do.

  Two days before the celebration he handed each of us a burlap bundle tied with string. “Since we didn’t have a proper celebration for your bonding, I give you these instead. I’m very proud of both of you.”

  Each bundle contained a new shortcoat of leather with buckles for our harnesses, and winter chaps for our legs. Folded inside were lined gloves and a set of the laced leggings that dragon riders wear as safeguard against blacking out at the bottom of a steep plummet. The laces are drawn tight, and then when the legs are bent sharply they constrict, preventing blood from pooling in the legs and numbing the brain. The very thought shivered my body with a mix of fear and excitement.

  Finally we discovered new goggles made of soft leather with polished glass lenses, smooth and distortion-free, unlike ordinary window glass.

  I stood speechless, overwhelmed with emotion. I felt like an empress, and Darian beamed with pride. We were almost there.

  Mother visited my dreams that night—but smiling, not angry. Speaking the tongue of dragons.

  Menog’s Day marked the changing of the season, when autumn surrendered the last of her color to the hard gray of winter. The people of Riat celebrated with lit candles in every window. Families visited the graves or memorials of their ancestors to lay chrysanthemums—autumn’s final blush—in their memory. In the evening, villagers along the central canal launched paper boats dressed with candles and dried flowers. Soon after the sun’s last glimmer, the river Wilding became a serpent of twinkling lights, seen in glimpses between the buildings. The villagers watched the progression of lights, singing or making silent prayer from shore, while children skipped and raced to follow their skiffs. Some boats ended in a blaze as paper or flowers caught fire, but that was part of the spectacle, and part of the story.

  Tonight we gathered on the brood platform with our guests. Bellua and Addai stood next to Rov. They conferred in low tones, but I couldn’t hear them and chose not to try. Mabir tended to services in the Temple. Father had invited Borgomos, but he declined to join us, saying only that he’d planned something with his people. Fren had disappeared, no doubt to a ceremony of his own.

  Cairek stood politely apart from all as we waited for the lights to appear, though he stole looks at me from time to time. His men lined the parapet of the paddock or watched from the clifftop. Many of them had already lit candles of their own. The Juza patrolled the night sky.

  My hand found Jhem’s as we waited. Keirr stuck her head under my arm as if to say, “No, you are mine.” I hugged her neck, but didn’t let go of Jhem’s hand.

  The sun went down, the shadow of the mountains streaking across the plains quickly on this shortest day of the year. Singing floated up from below before we saw the first of the lights in the river, bobbing and winking as the paper boats that carried them were jostled on the stream. It was beautiful. When I’d seen this ceremony before, it was mere spectacle, the meaning lost on my young mind. Now I understood the simple beauty, an image of every man or woman who ever lived caught in the currents of their lives, a story of life and its fragility. I smiled. How was it that Mabir described Menog? He is the spiritual center that remains when all else has fallen into ruin—the true heart of us.

  “Look,” said Darian, pointing to lights in the sky north and east.

  “What is that?” said Jhem. They rose beyond the far porches of Riat; first a few, then more, until a soft glowing cloud undulated like a dragon’s wings against the rise of night.

  Father’s hand found my shoulder and gripped it. “It’s Borgomos’s people. They’ve hung candles from kites, and fly them in the evening breeze. Kites shaped like dragons, to honor their history. It is the way of Cuuloda.” After a pause he amended that. “Was.”

  We looked on for several minutes in silent appreciation. It was creative and beautiful, more appropriate to the aeries than candles in a river. “They’re honoring those they lost,” I said.

  Father’s hand squeezed my shoulder. He didn’t release it for several long moments. “That’s right,” he said, and then stopped speaking. I turned to see his face, directed at the lights in the distant sky. His eyes glittered and his chin was taut.

  Then, one kite rose above the others, higher and higher, until there was no mistaking the meaning. “I think that one’s for you,” said Darian.

  Despite myself, I glanced at Addai and Bellua in time to see them look away. A shiver ran down my legs. I didn’t ask for this. We watched until the horizon was black and the last candle—my candle—winked out against the backdrop of stars.

  Afterward, Father, Tauman and Jhem, Darian and I took lanterns and walked with all our dragons through the army camp, to a point on the clifftop overlooking the fall of the Roaring. One year or another, if the weather didn’t permit flying, we held our ceremony here. Rov and Addai didn’t want us in the air at night, so instead, each of us by turns carried a bouquet of dried chrysanthemums to the precipice and said a few words, aloud or to ourselves, in honor of those gone before us.

  Father went first, and stood in silence for a space. Then he said simply, “I miss you, Father and Mother. And I love you still, Reiss.” It always struck a lonesome chord in me when he spoke her name. He didn’t do it very often. He threw his flowers into the tumult of the Roaring and they vanished.

  Tauman lowered his head, lips moving quietly in private thought. Jhem leaned against him, also speaking to her
self. They threw their bundles over together. Darian followed with similar quiet reverence.

  I didn’t know what to say. I could see Mother in memory’s eye, riding her Grus, smiling in sunshine, laughing in winter, singing the qits to sleep, scolding me with her last words. As I stood there washed in spray amidst the deafening thunder of the Roaring, all the days I had lived felt like water swirling through the eddy of my time on earth. Like beads on a string—countable, finite. How many beads since Mother’s fall? Pride and excitement blended strangely with my nostalgia, bringing tears to my eyes. Menog’s tears are good tears, Mother would have said.

  I pulled the flowers to my chest. I couldn’t toss them in without a word, but I didn’t know what to say. Perhaps tomorrow when I flew with my Keirr for the first time, perhaps then. I tucked the bundle of flowers into my jacket.

  Her remembrance belonged in the sky anyway.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE SKY WAS ON FIRE.

  A towering wall of cloud loomed, a vertical wave of moving air with a curled and tattered crest, blazing red in the pre-dawn light.

  “A Morningtide boiling up, on the first day of the New Year,” said Father, “And on the day of your first flight.”

  “Is that a good sign?” asked Darian, from somewhere behind him.

  “This could be a once in a lifetime event. Wait until Bellua sees it. Wait until we tell him a Morningtide also rose on the day Maia was born. HA!”

  The Morningtide was a fabled cloud formation. Every so often, dense, moist air rolled off the ocean to the west. Warm dry air from the east rose against it, stood it on edge, and piled it high against the uplift of our mountains, a wave waiting to break on our tall shore. It offered an opportunity to soar to heights seldom achieved, sliding across a cliff face of cloud as it mounted into the sky. When a Morningtide arose, supplications were made, ashes were scattered, the Avar were praised.