by Nathan Dodge
But the truth that came was not the one I had expected. I had joined the others streaming over the basin as the teaming little ones below jockeyed for position, vying for the highest hills to ensure greatest visibility. These were the potential mothers, each one hardly the size of my smallclaw, looking for a carrier to give warmth and provide a body for the rearing of her children. I had come purely out of curiosity, not out of any actual desire to acquire a passenger. I had as little interest in attaining the respect rendered paired ones as I did in dying young.
But then I saw her. Ovana, though I didn’t yet know her name. Her teeth had gleamed in the sunlight in demonstration of their sharpness, a promise that she would cut me cleanly and quickly as she burrowed into my fat-pouch and carved out a vent. I remembered my mother’s warnings, but when I looked down, I didn’t see the risk. Instead I saw Ovana’s bright fur gleaming, her long, shapely ears, her outstretched paws reaching for me with perfect faith. I circled once, twice, three times, unable to take my eyes from her. In less than a minute, I knew my choice.
I dropped into a dive.
I snapped her up with almost no effort, heading straight to the cliffs. Her slithering passage down my throat was strange, but not unpleasant. Every scale of mine vibrated with excitement. When I landed and felt the sharp sting of her teeth, I felt a promising joy unlike any I’d ever known. I’d never be alone again, for whatever time we had. Not a minute’s regret. Not one, in all the years since.
* * *
I wished, briefly, for the certainty I’d once felt, even some small bit. The visitors made me nervous. Why did they return again and again? There was something about their dismissal of me, of anyone who did not air-speak, that worried me. I tapped my worries in simple single-speak absently with one claw. Ovana’s response, calm, placid Ovana, was like a tiny storm in my breast.
We should eat them and be done, tapped one pair of paws while a second warned, They think Kal[!] are non-entity, like the wild korde in the forest that hunt gressi for sport and food. That Kal[!] are bad, like korde.
The last words confused me more than anything else. The lithe, furred korde ate the plant eaters, an arrangement that had always seemed very suitable to me. Korde needed meat for food, and unless controlled, the gressi would have grown endlessly and destroyed their forest home.
The female we had spoken to was wet-faced as Ovana and I soared away. It troubled me further, almost enough to rouse me from my distaste. Her watering signaled complicated emotions which I pondered along with Ovana’s statement. Do the korde and gressi not have an equitable arrangement? I indicated with the slow wing-shudders and arm-claps of flight. Speech was always awkward in the air.
Ovana’s paws returned unexpected thoughts. To us, yes, but knowledge is existence beat against a contrary They do not exist in the here, in Mäa. A small hesitation surfaced before she continued. Perhaps we cannot know one another, she tapped softly on my breastbone. Perhaps one küri cannot understand other küri from so far away. The words were imprecise, but I knew her meaning here. The visitors were another kind of entity, another family of sorts, but their küri was so distant from us in every way that I feared I could not fly to them, not with all the remaining days of my wings.
I landed with sincere relief amongst my brethren, noisily making my way into the family cavern, greeting my cousins with joy. My family was Ovana’s, and Ovana’s, mine, but when we were lonely we stayed more often at the höhe, where other Kal[!] and some paired ones were. Benefitting as I did from Ovana’s clever paws, I had grown partial to the paired ones’ company, articulate as they were. At times I would even fly Ovana home to see her siblings, who would curl up to me like little Kal[!] in a nest, in order to enjoy their conversation. When the crowd grew too large and Ovana could not reach them all even thrumming on my breastbone, she would have me relay her words, using my own claws and wings and tail like an echoing drum.
This night, however, we had needed the company of our own, of other paired ones. The sessions with the visitors mystified my kin as much as they did me: their untruths, their gods, their strange concerns. We also wondered aloud about their stated purpose. Ovana had explained about the vast plains above the sky which the visitors explored, and I believed they told the truth of worlds beyond our own Mäa. But to leave one’s home seemed to me the greatest folly. Life was where life was, and their travels did not change that. One did not leave home, except for family—and what family had they here?
At least I had an appreciative audience. My nest-brother Kil[!]a and several cousins attended to me after the communal feed, and many of the nestlings flocked about the höhe, fluttering their wings excitedly as I described them.
Wingless, yet furless? the nestlings asked. As soft as mosh that grows in the cracks of the caves, in the damp of the forest, in the ground beneath the grasses?
Yes, I confirmed. It is very hard to listen to someone that resembles dinner. What is your concern today, mosh-thing? Was that the wind, or did you speak? Great gales of laughter filled the air at this, bellows from Kal[!] and almost inaudible squeaks from the nun-Scäldi among us.
It was perhaps for this reason we did not hear their approach, nor the first bomb’s descent until it landed. There was a soft, almost gentle jarring as it fell, a delicate trembling in the ground, that first distant explosion. We all stopped, unsettled, the Scäldi paws crawling upward to understand the tremors of the air, Kal[!] wings raised as if expecting the air to carry us into flight. Thus we listened together in perfect communion, in absolute silence, in the moment before the air exploded.
Rocks flew, ground burst upward, and a horrible, acrid tang filled the air. The nestlings surged toward the exit to their parents’ terror, where bright lights poured into our warm home. I watched as nestlings evaporated into ash, and my whole body shook with fear.
Up! tapped Ovana, straining on my breastbone with a fury I had never felt before. Up, or we die!
I snatched two nun-Scäldi who had been visiting in my jaws and gave the great, weighty thrum of my wings that meant to follow, then soared upward through the gas-vents. Slender though they are, all but the largest Kal[!] could fly through them, and had in childhood dares. I had not forgotten the tricks of the passages, which vents led upward and which led to nothing. Nor, I hoped, had the others. I flew in shaking darkness, buffeted by explosions before I burst into the sunlight, mouth cracked so that my additional Scäldi passengers might breathe within my grasp. One moaned in agony.
Why? I queried awkwardly. I could not manage more as I flew higher, obscuring myself in the clouds. Below me I could see a few escaping Kal[!] and ships, bearing down hard on my family. Ovana quivered at her vent, and I tipped forward briefly that she could better see. My larger brethren visibly littered the land below, ripped to pieces. Three brave brothers landed in attack formation on one of the ships, their claws ripping frantically. The ship failed to defend itself with any rapidity and lost its place in the air, collapsing into two halves like a broken egg. I bellowed my approval as my back arched and I prepared to dive and join them in their second sweeping attack, but Ovana stalled me, a choking knock upward at my throat that would have been unpardonable in any situation but this. I hesitated, remembering the little Scäldi cradled in my mouth, and in that brief hesitation I saw a silver bubble surround the second ship, slipping outward, covering my attacking brethren. Then my brethren were no more.
A keening gust poured out of me, restrained only by the Scäldi within my maw. A soft funereal patter echoed throughout my body, my wings stuttering, the Scäldi joining in more rapid time.
Why? I asked again.
Neri, Ovana said. It was her only interruption in our communal grief. Take us to Neri.
When we reached the stone-dwelling, I landed as clumsily as a nestling, grief-struck as I was. I delivered my two passengers to the door of the eldest Scäldi I knew, one who would tend to them. The wounded one was shaking badly. I feared for its survival.
Ovana, I said, the w
ords shuddering in my claws, in the angle of my wings, in the shake of my tail-tip, they will destroy us all.
Neri, she only repeated.
We found Neri at the top of the hill. She spun with delight when she saw us, her many ears dancing charmingly.
I need your bravery, she tapped. I need your swiftness.
You know of the slaughter? Ovana asked.
Yes. Did any Scäldi die?
I felt Ovana’s confusion within me, and I spoke, haltingly, through my grief.
One which I brought may not survive. And there were many paired ones at the höhe. It is probable some Scäldi died.
But is it sure? Neri asked.
It is not sure, Ovana said.
It is not sure, I echoed.
Neri slumped, then looked toward the dwellings below.
Where is the wounded one?
I led her to the door, and she scampered inward with unseemly haste. I watched in curiosity, the weight of my grief temporarily suspended. I heard her skittering inside, the unclear and distant funereal grief audible within. I had failed to save the little one. My head bowed in shame.
It is dead! Neri cried triumphantly from within, and my wings went still with shock.
She delights? Ovana said. As if I were one of them, to give her comforting words that were not true.
She delights, I said, my pain evident in the slowness of my words.
Neri exploded from the dwelling, corpse in hand, and all but cut me in her attempt to push my mouth open. Her stamping patter inside my mouth was all too clear to me as I crawled backward in surprise.
Take me and this body to our visitors, she said. Fly silently, unseen, into their camps at the foot of the Störn meadow. And then I will try to stop the massacre with this single corpse.
* * *
We flew over the volcanic lands in night and smoke, over death and red-floating rock. The heat was horrible, enough to send Neri into such stutters she ceased to communicate all but the most urgent directions. We had chosen to alternately fly and crawl inland over the broken, black rock crust that spread out a full day’s flight around the meadowlands the Scäldi favored. I had learned from Neri’s meetings these areas were avoided by the ships, their weight too great on landing, breaking the thin rock surface so they would slide into the scalding lava below.
My thick black scales glistened in harmony with the crust, making us all but invisible when ships flew above us to spread more destruction. But in this quasi-safety, Ovana and Neri were in misery. I could shield them from the heat a little, but the air was heavy and thick with a burning scent. Worse, Neri was crushed beside the rapidly decomposing Scäldi corpse she had insisted on bringing. I moved as quickly as my shaking body would permit, alternating low ground flights like a nestling would use and stumbling over the rock. Once, I nearly slid into the red rock fire, and I sprang upward like a pinched Scäldi, almost tossing Neri into my gullet. Ovana hissed at me to get down, but after that I touched ground as little as possible.
It was nearly dark by the time we made it to the outskirts of the largest Scäldi home at the foot of the mountains. Ships filled the skies above its stone. Even if I had wished to try for the obscurity of the clouds, it would have been impossible to thread my way through their ships unseen. My jaw unclenched at last, and Neri climbed out, sodden, soot-covered, and miserable, corpse in paw.
You may run, she foot-stamped tiredly. But I do not know you will be any safer.
We stay, Ovana returned. I click-snapped my wings in agreement.
Neri spent a short moment in a desperate attempt to groom herself before giving up in some despair. She pawed my muzzle, and I bent to give her access to my mouth again. To my surprised she reached to my brow, pinching it uncomfortably, and used it to climb onto me, settling herself atop. She tapped up, and I raised myself to my full height with great anxiety. There, after a brief moment in which she caught her breath, Neri gave her death scream.
If I had not already been so exhausted, I would have been terrified. Now I only stood mutely, one claw raised in readiness to catch her. Only when she did not fall did I understand. Her death-scream, that call which Scäldi made to Kal[!] at their end, was not being used in its proper context. It was not a cry for death to come, but a beacon for the visitors.
They appeared almost magically, popping up like mosh from the ground around me, silver objects in their hands that reminded me of the fate of the members of my höhe. A groan escaped me. Ovana tapped, goodbye?
“You killed Scäldi,” Neri trilled. “You broke treaty.”
Treaty: a word invested with great promise. I dropped from my full height to make her communications easier. In the ground below me, I heard perturbations that told me of my küri’s massacre. I stilled my body from speaking its sorrow.
The little diplomat, Tonora, rushed to join us, two others at her side with the silver objects clenched in their limbs. Tonora made a grimace as she dropped to inspect the dead Scäldi.
“I tried to tell them not to hurt the dragons,” she said, Ovana tapping her quick translation to me once more. “But the treaty you made gives us license to protect you.”
“You killed Scäldi,” Neri repeated stubbornly in air-speak, jumping down to rest beside the female. “You broke treaty. You leave.”
“The traders want this planet,” Tonora said bluntly, and my respect for her increased. We should have waited for this female, this honest one, before we said yes to their much-loved treaty. “They want the mosh especially. The Kal[!] terrify them, and they stand in their way, eating the mosh they want. You played right into their hands. I tried to stop them, but you didn’t understand.”
“I not understand?” shrieked Neri. “You not understand! You go!”
“I saw some Scäldi babies, and the host body. If I’m understanding correctly, I think you could argue the dragons are a kind of Scäldi, host-Scäldi, anyhow. That would protect them in the treaty.”
“Kal[!] NOT Scäldi. We do not say what is not true,” cried Neri. “You killed Scäldi. You broke the treaty. You go.” Behind her, my wings moved of their own volition into an attack stance. Myself I could not save—nor, likely, Ovana—but if I were quick, I was almost certain I could make time for Neri to run.
“A dead Scäldi just gives you the right of review. It doesn’t automatically remove us from the planet,” Tonora said impatiently. “In this case, the act of aggression is from a creature that we have the right to defend ourselves from. We don’t have a treaty with them, nor does it appear they are even capable of making one. You are defenseless,” the female added, almost apologetically. “I knew you didn’t understand. Or I suppose I didn’t understand. I didn’t see their plan until too late. The treaty you chose, it gives the traders a sort of family protection right to you, in loco parentis.” Ovana’s hands raised mutely over that inside me, unable to translate Tonora’s last words; both of us were lost as to their meaning.
But all at once Neri looked peaceful. “We are defenseless?” she said. “Visitors think Scäldi defenseless against Kal[!]-dragon-god creatures, so protect by killing Kal[!]?” Her trill was so peaceful it sounded like a song. Tonora nodded.
Rearing to her full height, Neri extended her neck and her razor-teeth and tore off the extended limb of the closest guard with one abrupt snap. He screamed, falling, as the half-circle of guards raised their silver to point at Neri.
Chaos erupted. I did not know why they did not pour their silver upon us, but perhaps it was their surprise, or some directive Tonora had wisely put in place for the duration of our meeting. Neri spat out the flesh, mouth red and sweet, and turned to Tonora, whose eyes were frozen on the body of her guard. “Scäldi not defenseless,” Neri purred. “Visitors go.”
Despite all that had happened, I could barely restrain my laughing bellows. I resettled myself peacefully, at last understanding. We Kal[!] cherish Scäldi with great affection, it is true, and we treat them tenderly. But to call one defenseless? I had never thought an untru
th humorous before. My eyes on Tonora, I saw a slow, small smile grow on her face before she turned to quietly explain our misunderstanding to the other traders.
Perhaps the visitors were not so different from us after all. Who does not like a good joke?
Exhausted by our travels, I let the world fade before me as I curled into stone-sleep. I trusted Neri would resolve our difficulties now that the point had been made. Masterful Neri. Her küri would celebrate her far and wide tonight.
* * *
In the weeks that followed, my faith in Neri’s diplomacy was proven. After Neri’s bite (the nip, it came to be referred to), there were no more attacks, and despite our initial objections, Kal[!] were appended in the treaty as Scäldi family—cousins, they informed us, a kind of half-family, a truth we could accept. The nipped guard’s arm was replaced with a new one (for some reason, he could not grow his own), and they stopped insisting the Scäldi were in need of their assistance. In the end, we allowed them to purchase excess mosh for almost nothing so long as they did not speak to us or trouble us, and our lives returned to peace.
Now
Ovana should not have crawled out of her pouch at this, the end of our lives. She might have lived days, even weeks longer if she had not. I chided Ovana for her exit, but she tapped a gentle wanted near/see you, and I was quiet. Since the children hatched completely and began eating my legs with their gentle, numbing teeth, I have drifted into a hazy kind of memory. I can see only vaguely out of my one remaining eye; the lay-Scäldi have been working at me for months, my body holding mostly fresh for them as they grew and scampered, as Ovana and I dispensed advice to our flesh-children. Once they pierce my gut, or if it goes a little longer without rain, I will die. It bothers me less than I had expected, with Ovana curled against my cheek.