Vyck had often encouraged him to engage an opponent’s mind rather than its weapons. Often this advice was accompanied by the casual remark that if he couldn’t outwit a fox he shouldn’t be in the woods. But in this case he was facing a telf, a more foreign creature than any animal he’d encountered, who appeared overtaken by emotion and with little control of his own mind. Most animals wouldn’t attack without provocation and it was in hope that this dTelfur wasn’t so different that Hardt had stood, weaponless and spoken. He’d wanted to reach the man’s senses, to stop the battle before it began.
It was Sophie’s plea that made the man back down however. Not understanding most of the words, Hardt was only able to feel the deeper, emotional conversation going on between the two. When the angry man of power left, Sophie sagged sadly to the ground behind him. Hardt turned and leaned against the side of her head and stroked her soft and floppy ear as he’d seen little Kiely do with Kahrier and Lahrea with Kerander, the motion he interpreted as a hug between human and dragon. She tilted her nose towards him and sighed.
Gyari and his apprentices left quickly with their tools. The farmers were escorted away by Kerander. Quietly the children all found their beds or those of friends. Everyone found a silent occupation except for Edwarg and Akai whom Hardt watched pull the wall back across Sophie’s private area as they argued.
He and Sophie stayed as they were while the day wore on into evening and the glowbugs and fireflies in their nests around the hospital woke and lit up, flitting from nest to feeder and around the room distributing their light. No more visitors came around the wall. No healer peeked over. After a long time, when the residual feelings of panic finally dissipated from the two, Hardt encouraged the pensive dragon to work with him on their language skills. The healers on call would usually come by to watch the lessons, but this evening they were left to themselves and Hardt preferred it that way.
He’d been happy figuring out and exchanging basic words; nouns and numbers, colors, customs, and actions. But now, tonight, with his time perhaps limited, he needed to learn how to apologize. He knew that when the dragons were sorry, they would lay their big heads on the ground in front of whomever they had slighted, but he wasn’t sure if the purr-like sound that accompanied the head bow was a word, and the humans – telfs, he corrected himself with the dTelfur word – used several words and he thought that perhaps the gesture of hands opened wide and pressing back by the thighs was a required accompaniment. The nuances of the language were myriad and seemed even to differ vastly when used in conversations between Nahni and the other hatchlings from when the much older Deg and Edwarg conversed.
But he persevered and after some hours of effort, he managed to imitate the purr sound while pressing his hands back by his thighs. Sophie seemed amused by his efforts, but approving. After repeating the sound several times to reassure himself that he could, he directed the lesson back to an exploration of consequences. He was trying to determine the dTelfur system of punishment but hadn’t yet been able to grasp if they had formal recriminations of any sort. He could express “How can I fix this” and “I will do what you say” but he couldn’t figure out how to explain that he was presenting himself to them to pay the bloodprice for dTserra’s death.
He’d learned enough dTelfur to know now that the beautiful huntress he’d speared had said, “I am dTserra. I am gone/dead/killed. Why?” He knew that none of the other six dTelfur he’d first met wanted him to say dTserra’s name in front of Sophie and guessed that the woman had been important to Deg as well somehow. When Deg came by, Hardt planned to try to tell them both that he’d killed dTserra and that he was sorry and then he would accept whatever they did to him.
More than any other creature he’d known but for Vyck, he felt a leap in his heart when he did something to please Sophie. He enjoyed her company and dreaded to find that she was the dragon he’d met in the forest, that it was her friend he’d killed.
“Hardt.” Sophie nudged him with her good wing. With only the one working wing, she needed her tail to keep her balance so instead of drawing with it, she used her articulated wingclaw. Hardt didn’t know that this commonizing of the wing was customary between attached dTelfur or that her use of the wing was more than convenience, it was an indication of the strength of her feelings for him. She used it now to nudge him out of his distant thoughts.
“Viscier n Tian.” She spoke the names as she drew a mark in the dirt for each. An telf was indicated by a simple vertical line. A dragon, dTur was indicated by a vertical line with a wavy horizontal crossline. She circled them. “Atchs.” He repeated the word after her.
They’d tried to talk about this before many days ago, this attachment between telfs and dragons which made them atchs to each other. Hardt had not understood at the time but he’d been watching the pairings and close friendships between those passing through the infirmary.
He drew in the dirt the two symbols representing a telf and a dragon and he named them Kerander and Lahrea. Lahrea had come by the hospital often to see Kerander. She was a stunningly beautiful woman, in a more feminine way than dTserra, and young Nahni was unable to speak when she was around. The woman hadn’t shown much more than a passing interest in Hardt’s presence even when Kerander had introduced them with all the excitement of a kidden presenting a dead bird to its people. Hardt circled the two figures in the dirt and said, “Atchs.”
Sophie nodded. At least that was a common gesture. She then drew another simple vertical line and named it Dorat. She circled Dorat and Viscier and said “Tchak.” He repeated her.
This was an easier concept for him. He thought for sure this pairing was similar to Lander bonding, two people mating for life. So he drew two dragon symbols and called them Akai and Odrine. Odrine was a dragon he had met once, very briefly. Odrine had been fascinated by him, but was in some kind of rush and had taken Akai off with him for a day. Hardt had heard the artist mention Odrine’s name in the hospital. He circled the two and asked, “Tchak?”
Sophie threw her head back and laughed in her way. Hardt blushed, confused. Finally she calmed down and shook her head. He didn’t understand her words, but then she recircled the pair and added the word endet, future.
Close friends of mixed species seemed to be atchs while tchak seemed to refer to bonded couples of the same species. But Dorat and Tian were close friends, were even living together now he understood, and they weren’t atchs. He didn’t know if every dTelfur had an atchs- type relationship or what the relationship entailed. He knew only that it meant that the two were very close, partners. And he wondered. He bent down to the exposed dirt and wiped away all of the lines. Then he drew a large dragon mark and a telf mark and he circled them.
He pointed at the dragon mark, “Sophie.”
Then he pointed at the telf mark and said the word for question. Nahni had taught him to say question when he was unsure how to ask what he wanted to know. Most of the time it worked. But now, Sophie closed her enormous eyes and he regretted the word.
A rich old tenor voice spoke from over the wall-partition and Sophie looked up. The voice said, “dTserra.”
Deg moved the partition aside with a wingclaw and slowly pulled his huge body inside. Then he closed the wall off again and paced over to Sophie. He wrapped his tail around hers and touched his muzzle to her head. “Sophie n dTserra hehdrant atchs.”
It had been Sophie he met in the forest. It had been her partner, her close friend, her atchs he’d murdered. Hardt laid down on the straw flooring, lay his forehead on the dirt at Sophie’s feet and purred the word of apology he’d just learned. The dirt mixed with his tears and he knelt up with mud on his face. It took two tries for him to speak again. Here, now, he would have to answer to his crimes. He would pay the bloodprice. Self-pity warred with integrity and tied his words and tongue. But eventually, with regret a thousand times more than that he’d felt when he’d set out to do this, he confessed his guilt in broken dTelfur. “Ie iorden dTserra.” I killed her.
The words tumbled out after that. He looked at neither dragon but told his story, mixing dTelfur and Lander and drawing in the dirt. “I was hunting. I didn’t hear her then I heard her. I threw my spear. She spoke to me. A dragon came. You, Sophie? I was sad. I lifted dTserra. Dragon says ‘Nan ye.’ Blows me over. Flies away.”
He got to his feet and stood staring at nothing, his eyes pointed at the dirt, his hands at his sides pressing back. “Ie iorden dTserra. I am sorry. I will do what you say.” And he waited, afraid to look up at either dragon. He waited for whatever would come.
The silence drew on. He could hear them breathing. He distantly felt his own chest struggling to catch some air and fought against the burning in his eyes. He remembered how passionately dTserra had fought to protect Sophie when she thought he was going to kill the dragon and hoped he could accept his own fate with such courage and selflessness. To slake Sophie’s sadness he thought he would do anything and he would do it with honor. He would serve her will with pleasure.
His head hung low, he admonished himself for his sorrow and tried to imagine Sophie’s. He tried to imagine the anger the Elder Konifer would righteously bring down upon his head. The man would return and use his power and Sophie would not plead for Hardt again.
And so he waited.
And still he waited.
And finally Sophie spoke.
“Ieken.” She said.
He raised his head, incredulous, and stared into her eyes.
She repeated herself in the Lander words she had learned from him, “I know.”
Deg too was staring at her in disbelief.
She went on in Lander. “I remember you.”
She dragged her tail around and used it to trace the badly healed scar on his right arm. In her own mix of Lander and dTelfur she told him, “You are also the kind lander who lifted her to me. So I forgive you.”
Hardt stared speechlessly at her. He’d prepared for any eventuality except forgiveness.
Deg appeared to pick his jaw up off the ground and asked Sophie in dTelfur, “How did you know? How long have you known?”
“I knew when I saw him on the river. I could never forget that face twisted with remorse. I knew he’d speared her and I knew that she had probably forced him to it. Either she snuck up on him or she challenged him. I knew dTserra, Deg, better than you and even you knew her fondness for trouble would kill her one day.”
“You are so calm. I have never heard you speak of dTserra’s death so calmly.”
“I have Konifer’s behavior to hold up as a mirror. Let him stew in anger and revenge. It teaches me to live another way.”
“dTserra would be here now if this lander hadn’t killed her.”
“Look at his face, Deg. He didn’t mean to do it. And he said he’s sorry. I think he said it the first night he met you. That would be good enough for dTserra so it is good enough for me. He even said it like a dragon this time and that would have thrilled her.” She dragged a chair over with her tail and set it gently behind Hardt. “Besides, I like him. And he’s the only one who can tell us exactly how she died.”
Hardt didn’t understand their entire conversation that night. He hung on to words and phrases as he had hung on to dTserra’s words all those seasons and as his dTelfur improved over the seasons so did his understanding of why Deg’s estimation of Sophie soared that night. Similarly, as their understanding of each other developed, he repeated the tale of dTserra’s death. Each telling was painful and sad. But with each telling Hardt felt a weight lifted further from his shoulders. Sophie told him more each time about how she and dTserra had been spying on the Stray front for several days and why they had separated to hunt. Each time he learned more about the character of the woman he had found and lost in a heartbeat and each time he felt Sophie was less saddened to talk about her.
They talked well into the night with their pantomime and Deg did not depart until Sophie was sound asleep. Hardt stayed up with him and watched the dtur woman slip into a restful oblivion then he pulled the wall aside for the eldest dragon and walked him out of the hospital. At the entranceway where Hardt had only nine days previously thought Deg was banishing him from the village he said good night. Off in the direction of the river the horizon was glowing a deep orange. The sky just above it awash in a rich blue as a new day crept up. Deg turned to him before he ambled away. He bent his head down low and looked into Hardt’s eyes.
“I forgive you too.” He said and touched the lander’s shoulder with his wingtip.
Konifer woke both Hardt and Sophie when he arrived early the next day. The night healers had barely handed off their duties to the new shift when he strode through the doorway and boldly past the partition.
“Wake up, Sophie. You can’t sleep all day. And get that lander up as well.”
Sophie instinctually swung her tail around to create a boundary between the Vize and her crouched but yawning bunkmate. Hardt had woken and leapt to a position which could take him into or away from whatever wild creature was threatening him. But as the rest of his senses woke up as well and he realized where he was, he stood up and tried to face the dTelfur leader around Sophie’s head, swung protectively between them.
She caught the yawn from Hardt, ruining her tough posturing, but when it passed and she’d blinked some more sleep from her eyes, she gathered her courage and faced her dead atch’s one-time lover. “I won’t let you hurt him, Konifer.”
Konifer had spent his night thinking. After leaving the infirmary he’d gone directly to the hatching grounds to speak with Deg and the old dragon had filled him in on details Girsat and Tally had failed to mention. They’d not told him that the lander had been in the village for nearly a moon already or that he’d spent most of that time healing from serious wounds acquired when he’d saved Sophie’s life. They had, in fact, not taken time to get any relevant facts before they’d run off to call in the Vize to the “emergency.”
The Vize was a passionate man. His emotional responses had been one of the qualities dTserra had cited in her rejection of his proposal that they share a space in the burrow. As the two leading citizens of the dTelfur spoke and many villagers and visiting outlanders approached unsolicited to give the Vize their opinion of the creature, Konifer slowly realized that he’d acted emotionally and as rashly as Girsat and Tally. Most dTelfur liked the lander, had met and chat with it and come away relieved of the fears they’d been living with since dTserra’s murder. There were those who urged him to destroy the foreign thing but often, these were dTelfur who had yet to find their way to the infirmary for an introduction.
The vize tamped his feelings deep down into his breast and let his mind take charge. He told the villagers that he would go to meet the lander and speak with it before he made any judgement of it and recommended to all those opposed to its presence that they do the same.
It also occurred to him, as he paced through the bower and the burrow all night, that having a lander in the village would provide him with the opportunity to study the enemy. He considered carefully as he walked what questions he would ask the creature. What information would best serve the dTelfur to defeat the lander infestation? By the time he decided the sun was up enough to count as day he’d convinced himself that he was meeting the lander with an open mind and that any information he may gather on the invaders’ weaknesses was solely for the protection of his people.
But then Sophie, stood up to him.
“I want to meet the lander, Sophie.” He subdued his umbrage at her offensive behavior. “I told you I would come back today.”
“You couldn’t have waited until it was more today than now?”
“Sophie, why are you being so hostile?”
“Because you intended to use your powers to kill him not even a day ago.”
“I’ve had a night to think.”
“To think how embarrassed dTserra would be by your cowardly behavior?”
Konifer froze. Hardt could feel the man’s grip on civili
ty slip.
“dTserra has nothing to do with this.”
“Hah!”
Sophie hadn’t slept long, but the entire time she had slept had been spent in a dream of dTserra, her bold, unflappable dTserra. If Konifer had waited till later, if he’d shown any compassion at all or apologized for waking them, he would have gotten to deal with the kind, gentle, timid dragon he was expecting to walk all over. But he hadn’t shown any consideration, hadn’t in fact considered Sophie at all and so what he got was a half-awake, pissed off old dragon behaving as brashly and honestly as dTserra would.
“You want to kill this man because he is a lander and some lander killed the woman you loved. Well, Konifer, you have no right to revenge dTserra’s death. She never wanted you as anything more than a man despite all your desires and we went away on that hunting trip to get away from your relentless advances.” Common sense was tapping at Sophie’s brain to get her attention but she was on a roll, spitting out words she’d always wanted to say. “I felt badly for you, but she told you before you ever coupled the first time that she was bound only to me and would never take a telf mate. All the others understood, but you wouldn’t leave us alone. She liked you, Konifer. May have loved you. But you never gave her the room to make up her mind. And even now you won’t let her go. You’re still trying to own her.”
Hardt had half an eye on the apoplectic Vize. The rest of his attention was on the tip of Sophie’s tail which was twitching wildly around him. Her voice was calm and her gaze steady, but her tail indicated regret of every word. The Vize didn’t see the tail and he didn’t see Hardt. His cold eyes bore holes into Sophie’s.
Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 17