Dragon's Milk

by Susan Fletcher

  What is it?

  Pyro pounced and streaked past her out of the cave. She wheeled around, snatched at him, missed.

  “Come back here!” she cried. And then stood still, staring out across the valley.

  Away in the south, a smoke plume curled lazily in the kollflower-blue sky. A ring of gnatlike specks swam round the smoke. But they weren’t gnats, Kaeldra knew. They were birds, all kinds of birds, more birds than Kaeldra had ever seen together at once. Through the crying, she could hear their calls.

  Kaeldra suddenly felt as if she had swallowed a stone. Something awful had happened, she knew that. But what?

  She turned to Embyr. 〈What is it?〉 she demanded. She cupped the dracling’s head in her hands. 〈Talk to me! Tell me what it is!〉

  Embyr’s eyes met Kaeldra’s. Her crying stopped. Then it began again, only this time, Kaeldra understood. She threw her arms around the dracling’s neck as the wail ripped through her head:

  〈Motherrr!〉

  chapter 12

  Into the sky

  The dragon doth fly

  A terror of flame, fang, and coil.

  Yet soon all below

  The dragonpods grow

  And fruitful becomes the burnt soil.

  —Anonymous,

  From the archives of Rog

  hush. Wait here.〉

  The draclings’ narrow heads turned to follow as Kaeldra crept away from them. Embyr leaned forward, rose to her feet in a single, fluid movement.

  〈No, Embyr. Lie still. I’ll soon return.〉

  In the darkness, the draclings looked like three boulders in a stand of rock near the clayhouse. But then the bright half-moon slipped out from behind a cloud, and the dragon backs gleamed like hammered brass.

  No one would be out this time of night, Kaeldra told herself. No one would see. At least, not on an ordinary night.

  But nothing seemed ordinary anymore.

  Kaeldra felt her way over the familiar ground to the clayhouse. The door was partway open. Firelight licked at the darkness inside. Not ordinary. Why would Granmyr be up now, in the stillness before dawn? Was she waiting for her? Did she know of Fiora’s death? Kaeldra thought of Jeorg, of the hunters who had come seeking her. Maybe it wasn’t Granmyr at all, but someone else, someone tricking her, someone who knew where she would go.

  Kaeldra hesitated. For the thousandth time she asked herself if she had done the right thing, bringing the draclings here. But Fiora was dead. Of that, Kaeldra was certain. And the draclings couldn’t take care of themselves. She couldn’t trust them to stay in the cave when she was away. And then there were the wolves—and whoever had killed Fiora.

  Something thumped inside the clayhouse.

  Fear flicked up the back of Kaeldra’s neck.

  Another thump and then another. A steady, rhythmic hum: the sound of Granmyr at her wheel.

  Kaeldra drew in a breath, peered through the doorway.

  Granmyr looked up.

  “Child,” Granmyr said, and then she was holding Kaeldra in her arms. Safe. Kaeldra felt again how thin Granmyr was, how light. But even so, she felt safe, completely safe, for the first time since Fiora had died nearly a day ago.

  Granmyr drew back. “Did you bring them with you?”

  Kaeldra nodded. She did not ask how Granmyr guessed she had the draclings. “Outside,” Kaeldra said.

  “Quickly. Bring them in.”

  Kaeldra stepped out, called silently for her charges. Slowly, three heads appeared from behind the rocks. The draclings slunk toward the doorway and rubbed against Kaeldra’s legs, but did not go in.

  “Quickly,” Granmyr said. “Jeorg Sigrad was here earlier with his falcon. He inquired for you. We may be watched.”

  “Did he do it? Did he kill Fiora?”

  “No. It was that gang of local fools. They baited her with a concoction of pitch and straw. She ate it and exploded, killing two of them. This, for the glory of Elythia, mind you. Then they put the dragon’s head on a cart and paraded it through the town. Idiots!”

  Kaeldra’s stomach lurched. We’re safe now, she told herself. We’re with Granmyr. Granmyr will take care of us.

  The draclings stared at the old woman. A fearing and a puzzlement tickled at Kaeldra’s mind.

  〈It’s all right.〉 Untangling her feet from the little ones, Kaeldra walked into the clayhouse. She laid her hand on Granmyr’s shoulder. 〈Safe.〉

  Embyr crept into the room, rubbed against Kaeldra’s legs. Kaeldra bent and stroked her head. Then Pyro and Synge inched forward, side by side, ready to bolt. Embyr sniffed at Granmyr’s feet. A soft thrumming began in her throat. One by one, the three draclings began to mill about Granmyr’s legs, rubbing, thrumming. Firelight played on their backs, glittered coppery red and green. Granmyr knelt, reached to touch them. She cradled their heads in her hands, looked into their eyes. Synge nuzzled her stomach; the old woman sat back and gathered the baby dragon into her lap. The thrumming built to a gentle roar.

  Granmyr looked up. “I never thought—” her voice broke. Her eyes were glistening, Kaeldra saw with surprise. “I never thought to see this” Granmyr whispered.

  Softly, Kaeldra shut the door.

  After a time the draclings ventured from Granmyr and began to explore. They sniffed at the wet clay, drank from the waterpot. They tiptoed around the stacks of bisque, played hide and seek in large urns. 〈Careful,〉 Kaeldra warned, but they walked lightly and disturbed nothing.

  Praise the heavens they were over their craziness. They were themselves again, only more subdued. Except they had not spoken. They had said nothing since last morning, when it had happened.

  Granmyr passed Kaeldra a mug of tea and gestured for her to sit on a stool near the fire. “What will we do now, Granmyr?” Kaeldra asked, feeling the tea warm inside her, feeling the fire heat touch her face and hands and knees.

  Granmyr stirred the fire with a long stick. Yellow light burst across her face. Kaeldra waited.

  “What do you think?” Granmyr asked.

  Kaeldra had thought about it. She had thought about it all the way down the mountain. Someone had to care for the draclings. Someone who understood them; someone whom they could trust. But Kaeldra didn’t see how they could stay here, on the croft. Sooner or later, the wrong people would find them: Jeorg or the men of Elythia.

  And another thing: What would the draclings eat? They couldn’t survive on small animals forever. They were growing fast. Soon they would need larger prey. Few hart roamed these hills, and fewer wypari. But one kind of meat was plentiful, and the draclings already had a taste for it. All too soon, Kaeldra knew, the draclings would hunt for sheep.

  Kaeldra had thought about it, but she didn’t like what she had thought. She wanted Granmyr to think. She wanted Granmyr to make it right.

  “Couldn’t they stay here?” Kaeldra asked. “You could make a spell to protect them. You could . . .”

  Kaeldra remembered what Granmyr had said before when she had asked the old woman to make Lyf well with her magic. Her magic was weak, she had said. The safe feeling that had welled up inside her shrank to a small, hard lump in her stomach.

  “I couldn’t go away from here,” Kaeldra said. Granmyr had said nothing about her going away, but she felt she needed to say it. “Lyf needs me. How will she get well without the . . .” Kaeldra stopped. There was no more milk, she remembered. Fiora was dead.

  “Lyf is better now. She will be fine.”

  “But her eyes . . .”

  Granmyr stirred the fire again. “There’s nothing wrong with Lyf’s eyes,” she said. “They are simply unusual. She may turn out to be a very unusual—a very singular girl. Like you.”

  “I don’t want to be singular! I just want to stay here and belong, like everybody else.”

  There was a crash behind her. The draclings scrambled away and disappeared behind a stacked pile of bowls. Shards from a large bisque crock littered the ground. Kaeldra sighed and went to pick up the pieces. �
��I’m sorry. I should have been watching. I should have—”

  “It’s not your fault, child.”

  “Anyway, where would I take them? I have no place to go.”

  “There is a place,” Granmyr said.

  Kaeldra sighed again. There would be. She felt her familiar world begin to slip away from her. Why couldn’t everything have stayed the way it was? She would have tried even harder to look and act as an Elythian girl ought. She would have made Ryfenn like her; she would have made herself belong, in time.

  “Come,” Granmyr said. She took the shards out of Kaeldra’s hands and led her to a straw pallet in a corner of the shed. “You need your rest. I will arrange what needs to be arranged.”

  “Why can’t I sleep in the loft? I want to sleep in the loft.”

  Granmyr pulled a blanket over her. “It is best you not see the others before you go. If they know nothing, they can give nothing away.”

  “But I have to say good-bye to Ryfenn and Lyf and Mirym! I can’t go without seeing them. I can’t—” Kaeldra tried to sit up, but an immense tiredness weighed her down. As though looking up from the bottom of a well, Kaeldra watched Granmyr turn in the light, watched her sit at her wheel. The wheel sounds echoed faintly, as if through water.

  She awoke to the smells of soup and hot bread. Pewter gray, the light of dusk trickled through the clay-house window. She must have slept all day! Granmyr was feeding the draclings. She broke off chunks of cheese, and they lifted them from her open palm with their tongues.

  The old woman looked up from the draclings and smiled. There was a softness to her face that Kaeldra seldom saw there. “You’re awake,” she said.

  She brought Kaeldra soup, bread, and a wedge of cheese. The soup was thick and good. Something nagged at the back of Kaeldra’s mind, something unpleasant. She shrugged and pushed it away.

  Pyro sniffed at Granmyr’s sleeve, searching for more cheese. He looked at Kaeldra. 〈Hungry.〉

  〈You’re always hungry,〉 Kaeldra thought, then realized: He spoke! For the first time since—

  〈Hungry.〉

  Kaeldra felt the reproach in his voice. She was eating, but she’d forgotten about feeding them. The draclings hadn’t had any meat since they had left the cave. She ought to have set snares that morning.

  “Have you fed them aught but cheese?” Kaeldra asked.

  Granmyr looked at Kaeldra, then at Pyro, then back at Kaeldra. “He said something to you, didn’t he?” she said. “And you answered.”

  “He said he’s hungry. They eat a lot.”

  “I tried to talk to them,” Granmyr mused. “But I felt no reply. How do you know when they’re—talking to you?”

  “You feel it in your head. Sometimes it’s words, and sometimes it’s just a feeling. It tingles, with the little ones, although when Fiora talked, it pained me.” Fiora. Kaeldra put down her soup. “I felt her die.”

  Granmyr touched Kaeldra’s hand. Kaeldra tried to blink back the tears, but they came anyway, and then Granmyr was holding her. All the bad things she had tried to forget came flooding back. Fiora dead. No one else to care for the draclings. Having to go away, go somewhere strange, somewhere she’d never been. Having to leave without saying good-bye to Lyf or Mirym or Ryfenn. Kaeldra’s nose was running; Granmyr’s rough gown scratched her cheek, but Kaeldra didn’t care. The dragonslayer—

  “I don’t want to go,” Kaeldra whispered, and remembered, as she spoke them, having said those words before. It seemed that Granmyr was always sending her on journeys she did not want to take.

  The draclings gathered round, nuzzling her. Granmyr stroked her hair. “I know it’s hard, child. But you’re stronger than you know, and I can help a little.”

  Kaeldra wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve. “Better feed the draclings,” she said. “Do you have any meat?”

  “Only a rabbit I caught for supper. I fed them more cheese earlier, and most of the soup. The big one tipped it over and I just managed to salvage enough for you.”

  “They need more, I think.” Kaeldra wondered how she would feed them from now on.

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Granmyr said. Soon she returned with the rabbit, more cheese, some dried meat, and a few eggs. The draclings tore into them, ravenous, as Kaeldra finished her meal. When the draclings had done, they curled up near the fire and slept.

  “Here. Put on these.” Granmyr set a pile of woven stuff on her lap.

  Kaeldra touched the cloth. It was drab and coarsely woven, not like her own things, the soft, pastel-hued garments that she herself had carefully woven and dyed. She sorted out shift and stockings, underhood and gown. The gown seemed wrong, somehow. It seemed too short. And the shift—Kaeldra held up the oddly shaped garment. It wasn’t a shift. It was—breeches!

  “These are boys’ things!”

  “A girl is not safe on the road. Neither is a boy, for that matter, but for a girl it is worse.” Speculatively, Granmyr fingered Kaeldra’s long braid. “Now, this—”

  “No!” Kaeldra cried. She snatched away her braid. “Then people would think I was a boy.”

  “Well, that’s the idea, isn’t it?” Granmyr said dryly, but for the moment she said no more about the braid.

  Kaeldra put on the garments. The tunic felt strange and short. The breeches bunched between her legs. Her own gown, fashioned in the way of Elythia, lay upon the floor. A lump rose in her throat. Stripped of her familiar garb, she felt as conspicuous as a heron in a flock of doves.

  “Don’t forget the hood,” Granmyr said. “You’ll have to wear it night and day—unless we cut your hair.”

  Kaeldra quickly yanked the hood over her head.

  Granmyr slipped a rope around Kaeldra’s waist and tied on a leather purse, heavy with coins. She nodded at the bulging blanket roll on the table. “I packed rope and an extra blanket so you can tie them down at night. They float in their sleep.”

  “I know,” Kaeldra said.

  Granmyr looked at Kaeldra. She shook her head as though in wonderment, leading Kaeldra to the wheel. “All these years I’ve asked myself whether you inherited the gift. Even so, I underestimated you.”

  “But where will I go? You said there is a place.”

  “Watch.”

  Granmyr wet her hands, laid them on the red clay. It spun, rose, shimmered like distant hills in the summer heat. Between Granmyr’s fingers, the clay began to glow. The glow spread, spread until the whole clay lump shone white. White walls rose up out of it, white turrets, white spires. A tiny white banner trembled, unfurled, buffeted by a spectral breeze.

  “There,” Granmyr murmured. “Just as I thought.”

  Her hands rose to touch the banner. It swelled and darkened until Kaeldra saw that it was a bird, a bird cupped in Granmyr’s hands. The bird cocked its head, gave a sudden cry. A kestrel’s cry. There was a blur of feathers, a beating of wings. A dark shape streaked through the window into the dark.

  Kaeldra heard Granmyr’s sharp intake of breath. “A changing,” the old woman said. “I have outdone myself this night.”

  The clay slowed, the glow dimmed, the castle caved in upon itself.

  Granmyr dipped her hands into the waterpot to wash off the slip and, drying them, turned to Kaeldra. “That castle is where you must go. It is the fastness of the Sentinels, on the island of Rog, off the northern coast of Kragrom. Seek there the man called Landerath. He will help.”

  “But you said the Sentinels are dragonslayers! And Landerath—is he not the one who sent Jeorg?”

  “He is. You will have need of much caution. Yet Landerath is not what he seems. Though he leads the Sentinels, in truth he is friend—not foe—to dragons. He, too, witnessed the Migration. Smitten with awe he was, and filled with purpose. He pledged secret loyalty to Kara; they and a handful of others plotted to save the hatchlings when the next hatching cycle commenced.

  “They formed an underground of informants, spanning the four corners of the earth. Each informant was given a seab
ird, color banded and trained to return at first to Kara, and then, after her death, to Landerath. From time to time old birds were replaced with young ones. At the first sign of a hatching the informant was to release the bird—”

  “The seabird! You released it and—”

  “Landerath knew by the color of the band from whence it came.”

  “Then why did he send Jeorg? He is a slayer, not a friend.”

  Granmyr shook her head. “That young man is lying about something, but I cannot divine his purpose. Landerath was to have sent a dragon friend to protect the hatchlings—not a slayer. And yet if Jeorg knew this, why would he not at least pretend to be a friend? And how came he to possess Landerath’s brooch, which he showed me when he first arrived? It is the very brooch, wrought in the shape of a dragonpod bloom, that I gave Landerath long ago in Kragrom. As a token of—esteem, I think I said. What bletherchaff!” Granmyr smiled wryly. “I was moondaft in love with him, but he had a calling, and—” She shook her head again, breaking out of her reverie, then stood and began to tie the blanket roll across Kaeldra’s back.

  “What is this dragonpod bloom?” Kaeldra asked. “You spoke of it once before, and I know it not.”

  “You have never seen one; they disappeared not long after the Migration. They had ice blue petals and brought untold fertility to the soil. The flowers grew, the old ones said, after a flight of dragons.

  “But of Jeorg, I like it not. Were he a dragon friend, he would have told me by now. I am uneasy for Landerath.” Granmyr cinched the last knot and tugged at the rope to test it. “In any case, you must not let Jeorg find you.”

  “But this Landerath,” Kaeldra stalled. “When I reach him, then what? What will he do?”

  “I know not for certain. He may know where the dragonkyn dwells and have means of sending the draclings there. Or at the very least—” Granmyr hesitated. “He knows the name of the dragon leader. He knows the location of the council bluff, where Kara summoned the dragons and where they promised to return. Landerath is not a dragon-sayer; he may not call. But you—” Abruptly, Granmyr picked up a sheepskin cloak and placed it over Kaeldra’s shoulders. “I doubt it will come to that. Time it is for you to go.”