Dragon of Ash & Stars: The Autobiography of a Night Dragon

by H. Leighton Dickson

  In the swarming, bobbing mass of people, I did see a flash of gold. I imagined it was Summerday flapping desperately in harness and fixed poles, an elegant golden whip coming down across her back. But it was only a flash and I have a vivid imagination.

  I closed my eyes then, and let the stick carry me away from this horrible place to my new home in the Under Weathers. But a part of me was gone, left behind on the Udan Shores, bound up in the fate of a lost boy without a soul.

  Chapter 6

  THE UNDER WEATHERS

  It was dark and raining when we reached the district called the Under Weathers and as we traveled, I thought we might possibly be headed back to the sea. My ears popped frequently and if I kept my eyes open to the road behind me, I grew dizzy from the low pressure. The air was a welcome change from the Corolanus Markets however, and the rain made everything lush and green. Moss grew up rocks and down tree branches and rivers rushed alongside the road that gradually became a path then a shaghorn trail and then little more than a narrow footpath.

  We saw no one else on that road for the entire day. It was a silent, solitary journey through foothill and forest, but the rain was constant and warm so I was content. Dragons are creatures of water as much as sky, but I did wonder about the stick. His conical hat and hide boots were soggy to the point of shapeless, but he walked without slipping, so I couldn’t complain.

  This land of the Under Weathers was very hilly, with low mountains and odd rock formations rising from shallow lakes. There was fog everywhere. At one point, I thought he was going to take us directly into a mountainside but there was a fissure and we slipped right through. It was perfectly black in this cavern and I could hear the hissing of goswyrms overhead. Soon, we were out the other side just as the last of the sun sank behind the foothills. He paused a moment, wiping the rain from his face.

  “Here we are, Snake,” he said. “The Oryza Fields of Gavius Grele. Been in my family for generations.”

  And he turned his back so I could see ahead for a change. There were fields as far as I could see, some flooded, some dry, and some that stretched up the hillsides of scrub and grass. The mountains surrounded this little valley and I thought it rather pretty and pastoral. Strange smells carried on the rain and I wondered what sort of living this man made from the earth when suddenly, I smelled dragons and my heart leapt in my chest.

  In the distance, there was a thatch-roofed farmhouse, several outbuildings and what looked like a silo several flights high. Lantern-light flickered at the window and stick people gathered in silhouette at the door. They looked very small.

  Gavius turned and continued down the path toward the farmhouse. They ran to meet us in the rain, those little stick people, splashing through the mud and shouting with voices that were very high in pitch. I instantly thought of fledglings with their sharp, high chirps and realized they were children.

  “Ruminor smiles, avus!”

  “Ruminor smiles on us all!”

  “Did you get one, avus?”

  “Avus, can we see it?”

  “What colour is it, avus? Did you get a blue one like you said?”

  I was surprised at how small they were. And how many. They reached up to touch my feet, my tail, my belly. I couldn’t hiss. I couldn’t spit. I was a bound dragon. Indignity was my life now.

  “Open the aviary, Tacita. He is young and needs rest.”

  The children raced away from us toward the silo – a tall stone building with curved walls and a metal mesh roof. Suddenly, a warble went up into the night, picked up by another and then another. It was like music to my ears and my breath caught in my throat.

  Dragonsong.

  The grey stick called Gavius Grele swung me from his back, his old fingers working at the tethers that bound my wings.

  “They are serenading you, Snake,” he said. “They are giving you a poor dragon’s welcome.”

  As the door rolled aside, one of the little sticks lit a lantern and placed in front of a surface that reminded me of very quiet water. I later learned that this was called silverstone, and sticks used it to reflect light in miraculous ways. Soon, the entire tower was filled with warm gold. My heart leapt at the sight of three dragons of various ages, each in their own cage. Each cage was easily one sixth of the silo, and soared all the way up to the metal mesh roof. They trumpeted and called and I hadn’t heard such a thing since the wars between the sea snakes and the dragons on the Anquar Cliffs.

  Everything within me wanted to serenade back but I was wearing a muzzle and the best I could do was a pathetic hum.

  “Neve,” Gavius said. “Our Snake is hungry. Fetch him a small meal of grubs and diced kidney. But very small. His collar is a fisher-bolt and I think it’s too tight. I’m not sure how we’ll fix that. I should have bought one in the village but I wasn’t thinking.”

  The little stick called Neve raced off to do his bidding.

  Gavius carried me into one of the empty cages, set my talons upon the damp chaff bedding. He released the bindings from my wings and they sprang out as if of their own volition. Next, the muzzle, and once off, I threw back my head and sang as I had never sung before. The three dragons launched into flight, up to the metal mesh roof (which I realized was open to the sky and rain and stars) and then swooped back down again in a display of dragon joy.

  My feet next, and once free of the hemp, I lit from the straw and soared up, up, up to the mesh roof, filling my chest with cold night air and rainwater. In the pen to my left was a grey yearling drake with the beginnings of horns and we battered our beaks along the mesh walls in greeting. In the pen to my right, an old green drake with stunted wings and dwarfed legs and many scars along his scales. Across from the three of us, a red drakina of about three years. She was too large for her pen but that didn’t stop her trilling along with us. I would have happily continued to spiral and soar but a strange, mouth-watering scent reached my nostrils. I dropped to the straw to investigate.

  “But he’s not blue, avus,” said one little stick.

  “No, he’s better,” said Gavius. “He’s a night dragon.”

  “Oh,” they all said at once.

  They had spooned a pungent mixture of mash and grubs into a wooden trough and slid it through a panel in the pen. I cocked my head at the sight of it. I was a fish eater for the most part, occasionally tasting sea snake, goswyrm, dillies and jakes whenever Rue had a mind to share. Never this strange green-brown medley that smelled like the inside of a dead ghorn.

  “What’s his name, avus?”

  “The man at the auction called him Snake. What do you think about that, Tacita?”

  Gavius noticed my hesitation and reached a grey hand in, plucking several tiny oily bits in his fingers. He tossed one in the air towards me, which I caught easily. The children clapped and squealed and I was proud of the fact that Rue had taught me well. I swallowed instantly, unsure of the taste on my tongue, but when he tossed another, I crunched down with my tearing teeth. Dragons are not grass grazers like noxen or leaf nibblers like goswyrms. Dragons are flesh eaters and our teeth are made like little daggers or arrowheads or spears. Crunching was a foreign concept, like slurping mash or pulling carts.

  “Snake is not a good name for him,” said the little stick called Tacita.

  “Well then, what would be?”

  But crunch I did and I shook my head at the scattering of tastes through my mouth. It went down fine, however, and I snapped my beak at him, catching and swallowing the third piece before plunging my jaws into the trough with relish.

  “Blacky,” said Tacita.

  “Smoky,” said another

  “Cloudsnake,” said Neve.

  “Draco Stellorum!” cried a boy and they all laughed at that.

  “Draco Stellorum,” repeated Gavius. “Dragon of the Stars.”

  I would have approved but I was busy.

  “Nightshade,” said Tacita.

  “Nightshade,” repeated Neve.

  “Nightshade,” repeated
Gavius. “Well then, I think our new dragon has a name.”

  I didn’t care. My belly was full and I eagerly licked all the green-brown juices and grub legs from the trough. And that night, when I climbed into the hemp nest just above the floor and folded my wings across my back, I hoped that wherever he was, Rue was as happy and well-fed as I was at this moment. And when I dreamed, I dreamed of water and fish and Summerday and my wild and future home on the Fang of Wyvern.

  ***

  Pulling a cart does not come as naturally to dragons as fishing, but I did learn many things in those first weeks on the oryza fields.

  First, I learned that there are two kinds of harnesses – fixed and free. Fixed traps are used for young dragons and when the terrain is even. They involve three light poles that fix the harness to the cart, one pole on either side (attached to the harness under the wings) and one beneath, (attached to the harness under the chest) to keep the dragon flying just above the ground. The underpole can be adjusted to varying angles and while restrictive, it’s actually very helpful. Learning the art of steady flying is difficult for young dragons and we need all the help we can get.

  Free traps are simple – dragon harness attached by tethers to the cart. These are good for plows and tilling unstable ground. They require a dragon that knows his angles, for it is very easy to become tangled in the loose set of leathers. Fortunately for me, Gavius started me out with a fixed harness and we got to work immediately in his large acreage of oryza, a type of grain that requires flooding to grow. Planting is done in the spring and is very labour intensive. It doesn’t require dragons however, just many little sticks. The plowing of the fields, the mixing of the shat fertilizer and the tilling of the soil, those were jobs for dragons. The threshing of the kernels from the husks – that was also a job for dragons.

  Gavius also had a flock of Silky Shearers that he used for wool, milk, cheese and meat. This, along with the oryza, fed his family and ran the business. Dragon shat is acidic, and when mixed with the milk from the shearers, produced a fertilizer that was perfect for the oryza. It was the job of his children and grandchildren to spread in it the water that soaked the fields. Everyone had a job at Gavius’ fields. There was not one day of rest.

  The old green drake with dwarfed legs went by the name of Stumptail. He had been on Gavius’ farm since he was a yearling, and the work was becoming hard on his joints. He could pull a cart like a nox however, walking on all four limbs with an odd, jerking gait. As I have said before, dragons on land are cumbersome things and I would watch him walk, head bobbing as he pulled the plow. Whether it was a limp or a rhythm, I couldn’t tell, but his legs seemed sound, his knuckles strong and his body solid. He had no tail and his horns, spines and talons had been filed down so that there was nothing dragon-like about him. It made me question my fate here on the farm, where a dragon became more like a nox in order to fit. Still, he had few vices and was old, so perhaps life had not done so poorly by him after all.

  The young grey was called Stonecrop. He was being trained to take over from Stumptail and was a happy young drake, filled to the spines with nervous energy. He was always chasing his tail or scratching his shoulders or chewing his feet, and every night he climbed up the mesh walls of his pen, then down again, up and then down. I couldn’t imagine life for him on a farm, pulling plows and tilling fields under harness every day. It didn’t seem suited to his nervous personality and I wondered if he had started out that way or if life had conspired to make him so. Not all dragons thrive in the service of sticks, I’ve learned over the years. More are destroyed than are kept and Samus the plowhand threatened us always. Kissing the axe, he called it. The fate of working dragons.

  The red drakina was called Ruby and she was the resident thresher. She had the spines of a mature dragon but with filed horns like the others. She also had a temper that kept the drakes away from her and I realized that was why she was on the far side of the aviary with an empty pen on both sides. It made me wonder about drakinas in general. Other than my mother, sisters and Summerday, I had little experience with them. It seemed like such a bother to attend worrisome, wicked or brooding females when the entire ocean was filled with fish.

  The work was hard. I didn’t take well to pulling a tiller at first and must admit it is not in the nature of dragons to pull. It is ours to soar and wheel in the skies, to dance on the clouds and swim in the sun. This type of agrarian flying was hard and disciplined, with short, tempered beating of the wings. No stretching, no soaring; just slow, steady flight. But Gavius and his family treated me kindly, so I was happy and well fed and I grew under their care. After a few weeks, the sores from the harness became callouses as my body moulded itself to the farm.

  I had never lived through a rainy season, having not yet been a yearling when I’d arrived and the weeks of constant rain wore my spirits down. The skies were dark in the morning and dark well before the end of work. Some days, the sun never shone at all and I despaired of ever seeing blue sky again. Fortunately, the aviary was well drained so while it was always wet, our nests were sheltered and relatively dry. I found there was nothing I loved better than climbing into my nest after a long, bone-weary day in the fields. Closing my eyes to the singing of the dragons was (and still is) a blissful thing.

  The little stick named Tacita had taken a liking to me. She was the first to bring my mash in the morning, squatting by my pen to watch as I ate. Sometimes she would show me my reflection in the silverstone and together, we admired my beauty and colour. Other times, she brought a slate, reedpaper and charsticks and would sketch for hour after hour. She always showed me her charrings and invariably, they were of me. My profile, my eye, my talons, my beak. Sleeping, eating, pulling. I especially liked the ones of me soaring across the moons, for I hadn’t soared since the Udan Shore.

  I wondered if she dreamed of elsewhere, like me, like Rue.

  But Tacita wasn’t lost and she wasn’t a slave. She was free and happy and I often wondered if this could have been Rue’s life had he not been sold to Serkus. At night, she would sneak in to the aviary and sit outside my pen, hugging her knees as if they would keep her warm. Sometimes she sang with me, her high thin voice mirroring the memory of his pipes. She had dark hair, just like him, and large dark eyes like the moons of my father, Draco Stellorum. Soon I began to look forward to her night visits and sometimes fell asleep to her singing.

  “I’m glad we didn’t get a blue dragon,” she said one night. “I like you better. You’re like the night sky and the night sky is big and dark and very sad. It’s okay to be sad. I was sad when my parents died but avus is good to me. At least we could all stay together.”

  She fell asleep beside my pen that night. If I could have, I would have stretched my wings to cover her. Still, I exchanged my perch for the straw of the floor and slept with my back to hers, warming her as best I could until morning.

  Life could have been worse for me, I realized.

  The silver band had become too tight however and now I could only eat very small meals. It had become difficult to breathe as well, but the low fields were heavy with rich, damp air so what I could breathe was good. Still, it presented a problem, for the band had no way to be loosened without being removed entirely and it seemed Gavius didn’t have a second, larger size for me. I wondered how you could have a farm with dragons and no proper equipment for their care. Then again, they were poor and I was growing.

  He left for Corolanus one rainy morning, leaving Samus the plowhand in charge of the farm. I was pulling the tiller through a field that had been left fallow for a year. It was on a high slope and the soil was heavy from the rain, so it was a difficult job even under the best conditions. Behind me, Samus was driving. I didn’t like working with Samus. He was lazy and made the dragons do more than our share. However it was not in my nature to complain, so I put my shoulder into the work, flying hard and strong up the hills in the rain. Harder yet was the tilling downside, for that was when you really needed your sti
ck to keep the device from sliding forward and crushing your feet or tail under its heavy iron blade.

  I knew now why Stumptail had no tail. Tillers, plows and long, elegant dragonlines simply didn’t mix.

  We had lost the sun early and it was almost time to quit for the day. My shoulders were aching from the down-strain of the fixed harness and my wings were burning with exertion. Low and steady, flap and flap. Exhausting, especially with the silver band cutting off my breath and I couldn’t fill my chest with air, only rapid shallow gasps. But still I worked, low and steady, flap and flap. I couldn’t wait to be done for the night.

  The soil was hard and slick and on the second last run, Samus stumbled. He dropped onto the ground and stayed, muttering under his breath but behind me, the tiller began to slide forward and I realized he had let go of the gripholds. In fixed harness, the poles began to carry me on down the hillside.

  I whipped my tail beneath me and dipped my wings back, trying to brace my feet in the wet hillside but the tiller was heavy and I was already light-headed. Samus shouted as I slipped forward and downward in the mud. The metal blade churned hot on my scales and I beat furiously to right myself but my wings beat vainly against mud and pole and grinding blades. Suddenly the poles snapped and the tiller lurched forward, plunging the broken ends into the ground and taking me with them. Pain shot like arrows through my haunches while mud and the silver band cut off all breath in my chest. I was being crushed into the hard, slick soil and for a moment, like me, the world did not breathe.

  There was a shadow as Samus grabbed the long gripholds, hauled down with all his weight but it was not enough. The forward angle was too high, the arc too deadly as they rose slowly, ominously, into the air above me. He would be forced to release them soon, else risk his own death. This slope was so steep that once it fell, we would plunge down the hillside, shattering tiller and dragon alike.