“Go away, Konifer. Come meet him when you can believe that maybe this lander had absolutely nothing to do with dTserra’s death. Until then, go away.”
Through clenched teeth, jaw, neck and mind the Vize spoke, “She would be disgusted by…”
“She would be proud of me!”
He tried again, “I am the Vize and I…”
“Yes! You are the Vize and you have a brilliant soul. So listen to it. Go away, get over her, and listen to your soul. We need you, Konifer. What use is some love-sick, revenge-blinded leader to our dTelfur? Go away.”
The Vize faced her and didn’t try to speak. His chest worked violently and his face twitched, but he didn’t speak. Slowly he reached a hand up to his overvest and inside a pocket. He pulled out a short strip of leather and threw it on the ground at Sophie’s feet. Sophie recognized it as one of dTserra’s wrist bands.
After another eternity of tense silence, he spoke. “Be careful. Sophie.”
And then he turned and strode out of the infirmary. He kept walking right out of the village. Dragons spotted him occasionally and farmers reported his visits, but the dTelfur village didn’t see the Vize again for ten years.
Seven
∞
“Odrine, could I borrow your claw?” After three years living in the village, Hardt still had trouble pronouncing the more glottal dTelfur words.
Odrine corrected Hardt’s mispronunciation as he used his sharp middle toe-claw to punch a hole in the leather Hardt held taut for him. This was the ascetic dragon’s first opportunity to spend much time with the man and he was finding the lander just exactly as intriguing as his tchak Akai had promised he would be. The man hadn’t once tried to pry into what Odrine did in his time away from the village as all the other dTelfur did. He didn’t speak much at all in fact, but focused on his work on the weather tarpaulin he, Gyari, and Akai were building for the lander-type festival to be held in three days.
The tarp was ostensibly a present for all the hatchers but the idea had come from the healers’ continued complaints about old Deg sitting the eggs in all kinds of weather. Hardt had brought to Gyari the idea to build a collapsible/moveable/removable bower for Deg. Together they’d recruited hunters to bring them large hides and a woodworker to design the frame. When they had done the piecework themselves with no apprentices they had gone to Akai, the master artist to add the finishing touches.
Currently they were following her orders and beading a series of holes about two hands in from the edges which would let rain and snow and light through the leather to fall in interesting patterns on the edges of the nest while she scratched, dyed, and melted colors on to look like woven tree branches. They’d chosen the plateau for its privacy and size. Here they could leave the tarp spread out for however long they needed to work on it without fear of it being seen or accidentally damaged by any other dTelfur.
Odrine, neither tanner nor seamstress nor artist, was permitted to help with the final preparations only because Akai was heavy with an egg and could go into labor fever at any moment. Odrine wanted to be with her during the fever since she’d been all alone for her last one, trapped where she’d been working far from the village. He also hadn’t wanted her to carry both Gyari and Hardt, and the tarp up to this private northern plateau in her condition. Hauling telfs around was not a task Odrine had any stomach for so it had come as a surprise that morning when he’d offered to carry both men. Love was a very strange thing. He really hadn’t minded the two telfs on his back, since it was for Akai.
The recluse had no intention of wading among the masses at the festival, but he did find himself enjoying this project. Neither Gyari nor the lander bothered him with idle chatter. He got to watch Akai work, which was a rare treat. And it was actually pleasant to share such a beautiful spot with others. The festival would be a torture for him, but he could find a hill and watch the activity from a distance and still be close enough to reach Akai. He might even invite this lander fellow to visit with him. Surely a man as quiet as this would need a break from such a gathering of people and noise and activity as this festival was going to be.
Danny was the only villager who knew where the four had gone. Despite the high secrecy of the project, the hatching dragon had conned the information out of Gyari fearing Odrine would spirit Akai off to some private nesting bower to hatch her egg himself. Danny had barely found Akai in time for her last lay, he had no intention of letting her go through that again. Gyari, however, had confessed it all to Odrine on the flight up. Odrine only nodded his head in acknowledgement. The lander had laughed, commenting only when pressured that Akai was a very strong woman and he couldn’t imagine anyone spiriting her off to anywhere she didn’t want to go. Gyari and Odrine had both shaken their heads and wished the boy luck if he ever encountered a female in labor fever.
“Hardt!”
The tarp makers all started from their concentrated work at the sudden intrusion of Danny’s cry. Akai settled in the dust next to the tarp, her heart racing at the noise. She’d been painting, scratching, and staining with all six claws, her wing tips, and tail. She even held a painting tool in her strong lips, aware of nothing but her work and her vision for hours. Normally she liked to be alone while she worked on such all engaging projects like this, but Hardt and Gyari had quickly become equally as lost in their own sewing and she was fairly certain they were only peripherally aware of her presence. But now they were all sitting back from the leather blinking at the shocking intrusion of reality. Even Odrine was pulling back from his study of the landscape and rushing over to check on her. The sun had passed the zenith and it was very hot despite the breezy altitude of the plateau.
“Hardt!” Danny’s voice had flown by beneath them heading northwest.
Hardt set down his tools and stretched his fingers as he stood calling to the out-of-sight dragon, “We’re up here, Danny.”
“I know,” came the reply from below them and now to the west side. “I’m giving you a chance to hide whatever it is you’re working on.”
Akai looked around at the others briefly and then wandered over to the southern edge behind her. “Danny, just come up. It’s okay.”
She watched the boy flap hard and soar up and away and then turn in to land beside her. Upon landing he politely closed his eyes. Akai swatted Odrine with her tail before he could make fun of the hatcher.
“An egg is hatching. Deg sent me to invite Hardt to come share the event.”
“Is it a dtur or a telf?” Odrine asked.
Danny turned his great head towards the rarely seen dragon, his eyes still shut tight. “You know we never tell. It is our first hatching since Hardt arrived. Deg thought he’d be interested.”
“I am. Do you mind if I go, Gyari? I’ll come right back.”
“No you won’t.” Gyari answered distantly, remembering when his little Kisari had popped from her shell while he was up at the sands chatting with Deg.
The leatherworker had been unable to remain a dispassionate observer, drawn as he was to hold the little dragon and help her walk and shake the slime from her delicate wings. He remembered fondly, her hide had been so warm and her eyes sleepy. She was so small her head fit perfectly in his arms. The attending nursery healer had let him take care of the new-hatchling. She and Deg had talked him through the first moments and the nursery staff helped him over the next several moons. He had never experienced such a reaction before, hadn’t expected the feelings that had rushed over him for that little dragon. Deg had though. The old sneak had known. He’d asked Gyari to come by at that time deliberately.
So Hardt was going to become an atchs. How interesting, Gyari thought.
“Go boy.” He said out loud. “We’re nearly finished here anyway.”
“No we’re not.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of your tools and such. Go.”
Danny soared straight down to the hatching grounds up on the highest hill of the village. Deg, Sophie, a young hatcher
named Tcoa, and a healer from the nursery were arranged in a wide circle around a single dark mottled egg rolled away from the rest. The dragon landed on the stones edging the sandy hatching ground and let Hardt hop from his back before he took his place by Tcoa on Deg’s eggs so the old dragon could keep more of his attention on the active hatching.
Hardt circled around the sands along the stones and slipped into the circle of dTelfur between Sophie and the nursery healer, Kalihari. The sands were even hotter here than by the nesting eggs. He saw that the dragons, except for Deg, were all alternating which of their four feet were on the ground. Sophie herself even had her tail draped up on the stone walkway. Still he was embarrassed as he picked his way back to the edge and grabbed a couple of stones to stand on as Kalihari was.
“Hi Soph.”
He whispered up at the dragon who was staring intensely at a splotchy acorn-brown egg about the size of her eye. It looked too big to be holding a telf baby but he knew that lander women carried a lot of fluid in their wombs with their infants so perhaps the eggs similarly held additional packing material as well. It wasn’t one of the biggest eggs on the sands but still it dwarfed the majority of the eggs including Akai’s long-incubating first lay.
There were about thirty eggs on the sands ranging in size from a large grapefruit to a small buffalo and in color from birch white to rich dirt brown. Some of the eggs had blue, green, or red tints to them. Akai’s little egg was nearly all blue. It was in the middle of the pile everyone thought of as Danny’s even though none of the eggs technically belonged to anyone and all of them were warmed by any of the five hatching dragons. But only Danny and Deg actually helped the women through delivery and the eggs were sorted accordingly. Even though most of the dTelfur couldn’t identify their dam or their offspring, much less their sire, all of them held a close affection for the dragon who had hatched them. Thus the strong influence Deg, who’d been delivering infants for centuries, had on the society.
The egg rocked.
Hardt’s eyes riveted back on the hatching egg. It had pitched rather violently towards Deg and Tcoa and then rocked to stillness again. For a while Hardt watched it as intently as Sophie but then his mind wandered again as the egg remained still.
He knew that labor was an extremely personal event. The fever that preceded the nesting of an egg had been known to last up to eight days. All friends and healers were welcome to attend and support the woman during this time but the actual egg laying would involve only the woman, Deg or Danny, and on rare occasions a mate or atchs of the woman’s. What he’d heard of the process sounded absolutely dreadful. Akai had told he and an intimate group of women one night about her first labor. A telf woman had corroborated that labor had been just as difficult for her. After a short argument over the superiority of their respective hatching dragons, all the dams agreed that one pregnancy was more than enough for a lifetime.
Hardt had then fascinated them all with his experience birthing landers. Turned out the live births were a topic of great speculation amongst the dTelfur. and they were rapt at his description. He hastened to caution them that he had only ever been present at two births and understood that lander women had vastly different experiences, but they didn’t care. They gleaned from him every detail he could remember. They asked him how long the women had to carry the babies around, under the impression as they were that all species only birthed infants when their souls were needed.
He’d grilled them in turn about that. Nahni, deep in the throes of figuring out why her soul had hatched had dominated the explanations. Sophie, he’d noted, had remained silent.
The circle of watchers perked up as the egg rolled.
It pitched over so hard this time that it rolled a couple of times towards Sophie and Hardt before it rocked to a stop. Once again it drew everyone’s undivided attention just in time for it to do nothing particularly interesting at all.
Souls. The dTelfur only hatched when their souls were needed, or would soon be needed. Somehow nature knew. And Deg could guess pretty accurately most of the time what the younglings’ souls were made for. Being so much older and spending all his time around birth, the ancient hatcher was able to tell Hardt a great deal more than the women. He had told Hardt that he no longer despaired his virtual immortality because he believed Nahni’s soul was that of a great counselor. He believed that she was alive to replace him in that function when he went on and so her presence gave him the peace and urgency that came with proof of his own mortality.
The old dragon had tried to explain to Hardt how intrinsically Nature was wrapped up in their lives. Nature had changed them when the telfs and the dTur had combined their tribes and as the new dTelfur infants hatched it had become clear that random biology was not the only force at play. Deg didn’t know that the changes had been a reward for the colossal sacrifices made by dTur and telfs alike to end their xenocidal war. Nature had always had more of a hand in things than they imagined. The first Vize herself was stricken with the powers one evening while desperately trying to save a nest of dTur eggs from a band of telfs led by her own siblings.
The Vize and his/her protégé, the Vizet, were the only dTelfur who felt any particular influence from Nature during their lives, but the selective hatchings were unmistakably enhancing the ability of the symbiotic race to survive. Deg had grappled with Hardt over the idea that the lander’s presence amongst the community was going to change which souls were needed and so which were hatched. His very presence may have been the influence that caused Nature to allow Akai a rare second pregnancy.
Hardt had been overwhelmed, was still overwhelmed. He couldn’t grasp how any force could know who would be needed. While searching for understanding he’d argued with several villagers who couldn’t conceive how the landers survived without such enlightened direction. They’d bicker back and forth about which system was the logical one and then storm off unsatisfied. Deg had reassured him after several moons of this kind of searching that none of the dTelfur could really explain the magic of dTelfur birthing any more than he could explain the magic of lander creation. The dTelfur were just lucky to know absolutely that there was a reason for their births.
Hardt snapped back from his thoughts as the egg tipped up on end.
And fell back down to its side, rocking to a stop. Once again it just lay there. Hardt was beginning to think that the infant was just kicking in its sleep and wasn’t hatching at all.
The sun was disappearing out past the hills, bathing the horizon briefly in dark light but behind him he knew the stars blanketing the sky over the river would give them enough light to stand here all night. The sun had been just past the zenith when Danny had fetched him from the plateau. Thinking about it, Hardt went and gathered a third stone to his spot and sat, cross legged, denying his urge to yell at the egg, “Hey! Wake up and come on out. We’re all waiting for you.”
Instead he wandered back into his thoughts.
All night the egg pitched and rolled and tipped up and rocked away, one motion at a time. The sands were too hot for Deg or Sophie to lay down, though Danny and Tcoa slept comfortably on their piles of decently behaving eggs. Kalihari’s tchak came up with water after the far moon, Aeschent, the landers’ bondstar had set and the bed was still empty beside her. Hardt was dismayed that she obeyed the unspoken dictum of silence, handing him the bottle without a word and disappearing after serving everyone and leaving a warm wrap for her mate.
Hardt was bored and tired. His stomach started growling after the water woke it up. He was nodding on his little stone platform by the time the sun showed up again over the river with its indecently cheery yellow brightness. All interesting speculation had abandoned him hours before, leaving him to think about the nights he’d practiced total self-sacrificing concentration in the woods west of Stray while the rest of the front slept. Such a short time ago and yet a world away from where he was now. His journey had begun with dTserra’s death.
His mind woke up instantly as the egg
jumped once more into the air. It hovered for a moment, wriggling and then fell and shattered back onto the sand. In the middle of the gooey wreck lay a little telf boy on his stomach, his skin as brown and mottled as his shell had been. The infant coughed weakly and pushed himself back onto his knees. He got his feet under him and pushed himself up to standing, facing Hardt and Sophie.
Deg noticed two ridges on the child’s back that looked like wing- joints.
Danny noted that the gills on his chest were scaled.
Tcoa admired the sworls of black hair already plastered to his tiny head.
Kalihari counted the fingers and toes and noted that the hatchling had birthing claws only on his three middle toes rather than all five.
Sophie looked in awe at his intelligent eyes.
Hardt saw that the kid was about to fall and dashed in to catch him.
The baby was hot to the touch and covered in what Hardt could still only think of as packing material. His thick hair was matted about his head with the goo and he could barely hold his head up.
“Welcome.” Deg spoke quietly but the hatchling in Hardt’s arms turned as if he recognized the voice.
“Welcome.” Hardt repeated the word and was rewarded with the return of the beautiful little boy’s gaze. He didn’t want to be overprotective since the kid had stood up immediately after breaking through his own shell, but at the same time the baby looked exhausted. After one wobbling glance around at this new world, Hardt unsure if he should let the boy stand on his own, the new-hatchling closed his eyes and fell back into Hardt’s embrace, asleep.
When Hardt stood, the healer was beside him. She helped him take his shirt off so the child could feel the warmth of skin and so get accustomed to contact and showed him how to massage the slimy fluids into the delicate skin. Deg and Sophie converged on him then and each reached out a tongue to carefully help massage the baby. Kalihari stroked the infant’s head and murmured “welcome” before she stepped away to give them some privacy.
Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 18