She was supposed to be at the bottom of the Cloudlands.
Instead, Aranya found herself sitting in a pretty dell on the edge of an Island cliff. Steep, forest-covered hills bounded the dell to the back and sides, but the bit where she sat was lush sword-grass, named for its thick, pointed blades. A dozen or so ralti sheep grazed peaceably nearby. A vast, ancient prekki-fruit tree stood several paces from her right hand, its burgundy-leafed branches drooping with their load of purple fruit. A cheerful burbling of water came to her strangely sensitised ears.
Her head turned slowly until her neck popped. “Ouch. Ralti sheep droppings …”
The view was stunning. The twin suns blazed half-cut through by Iridith’s sphere, giving the dell a sunbeam-chased fairytale aspect.
“Leave my sheep alone!” came a querulous cry.
Aranya glanced up in alarm. A tiny, old man advanced upon her with startling speed, lifting his cane to thwack her with all of his strength.
She stared at him. He skidded to a halt, knee-deep in the grass. “Well, my pretty, where did you appear from to give old Nak the thrill of his life?” He beamed, having apparently forgotten all about hitting her. “Come, give us a kiss, my pretty petal.”
Aranya could not find her tongue. He had to be a hundred summers if he was a day, a wizened old stick of a man with two canes.
Nak grinned lasciviously. “Will you just look at those proud young breasts, and hair as unbound as the windrocs of the mighty sky?” Aranya covered herself instinctively. She was naked! Her cheeks burned furiously as he added, “And those legs, oh my fireflower petal, hast thou descended upon the sunbeams, my sun-angel, to delight my elder days with the lustrous beauty of thy flawless skin?”
“Nak,” she said, resolutely ignoring his descent into ancient poetic metre and evident appreciation of her nudity, “where am I? Who are you?”
“Give us a kiss, petal, but one itsy-bitsy little kiss, for which I’ll tell thee my heart’s deepest secrets.” He indicated his cheek. “Right here.”
Aranya stared at him a little longer, thinking: the old fraud! He was clearly moons-touched, but there was something innocent in his mien, as he stood there with cheeks screwed up like two wrinkled red flara-fruit, and in the dancing brightness of his eyes, that she simply … trusted. The joy of life ran deeply in him.
Was this some strange delusion of an afterlife? What harm could a kiss do?
Aranya pulled her feet beneath her, stood with another groan as a dozen hurts yammered for her attention, and stooped to kiss him. Scarcely had her lips touched his cheek when old Nak was off, capering across the grass and bounding over small berry-bushes, shouting a nonsensical song about love in the golden fields of Findaria. Before she could blink a second time, he appeared behind her and tweaked her backside with his fingers, crying, “Perfection itself!”
“Stop that.” Aranya whirled. “Am I dreaming?”
“Nay, thou art not, but I am,” said Nak, appearing in front of her again. “Let me pillow my head upon thy voluptuous hillocks, my–”
“Hands off!” she roared, shoving him away.
Nak chortled at her from where he had fallen. “Ah, thou art the feisty fire of the twin suns.” He bounced to his feet like a kitten chasing a bit of string and made a comical little bow. “O matchless beauty, my name is Nak. Thou art stood upon Sylakia Island’s good soil. And thou descended from heaven itself, thou didst, my petal.”
She tried to shake off a nagging sense of unreality.
“Nak,” a woman called.
“Ah, the toothless old rajal,” he said. “Hear her dulcet tones cut the wind as sharp as an Immadian dagger.”
“Nak, who’s shouting?”
Aranya saw a woman’s head and shoulders appear above what had to be a fold in the land she had not noticed. She was white of hair and bent with great age. She surveyed the scene with a ferocious scowl worthy of any rajal.
“Look!” cried Nak. “How could I resist? She’s a vision! The very suns upon my face; the breath in my lungs–”
“Petal, has my Nak been bothering you?”
The old woman seemed unbothered by her visitor’s lack of clothing. “He has been gallant indeed,” Aranya replied, “asking nought but a kiss.”
“You are far too kind to lie to an old woman like that,” said the woman, three parts sweetness and one part acid. “Come to me, petal. We’ve been expecting you. You’re quite the beauty, aren’t you? Those eyes; that hair! My name is Oyda. Nak–get thee to thy sheep, thou fool of a husband.”
“Mislaid her sense of humour fifty seasons ago, she did,” grumbled Nak. But he immediately walked off, calling to his sheep.
Aranya desperately wanted something to start making sense in her aching brain. “Oyda–I’m sorry, I must ask. This morning they tossed me off the edge of Sylakia. Am I dead? Am I dreaming?”
Oyda looked Aranya up and down with a kindly but astute air about her. Aranya had the impression that despite her great age, little passed her by. Oyda said, “You look mighty alive to me, petal. My Nak evidently thinks so, too. His old heart has run further this morn than at any time in the last fifty years. Come inside. Are you cold?”
“I never get cold,” Aranya said automatically.
Oyda said, “Indeed?”
With just one word, Aranya realised that Oyda knew far more than she was letting on.
The old woman showed Aranya to the door of a small, low-beamed hut built back into the hillside, so that the roof was simply grassy sod grown right across the top of it, making the interior seem more a burrow than Human habitation. The room within was small and homely, full of herbs and delicious smells and wooden furniture that had the look of heavy use by generations of a single family. A small fire blazed behind a grating. Two doors at the back of the main living area led apparently to further rooms, perhaps bedrooms or storage rooms.
Aranya whispered, “Please …”
“Sit down, petal,” she said. “All things become clear to those who, having fallen from the sky, show a modicum of patience. Redbush tea? The pot is just boiled. I made you a little breakfast. Hungry?”
Aranya saw a table set for three. Fear flickered in her inmost being. The fire flickered along with her. The old woman glanced at the fire, but seemed unconcerned.
“Oyda, can I trust you?”
“Petal, that’s for you to decide. What does your heart tell you?”
Her heart told her that absolute honesty would be best, Aranya thought in wonder. She wet her lips. Slowly, she said, “You’ll have to excuse me, Oyda, but I’m terribly confused. I’m supposed to be dead and here I am, hurting, and you’ve a table laid for breakfast. Forgive me if I find all this a little … peculiar.”
An expression of great kindness creased her eyes as Oyda smiled at Aranya. She seemed so grandmotherly, so chock-full of sympathy and love, that Aranya just wanted to throw her arms around her and pour out all her troubles. She bustled into one of the back rooms, calling over her shoulder:
“Petal, I’ll match you ten secrets for every one of yours. I have enough. But I usually find it better to start at the beginning, with a nice cup of tea in hand. Everything seems so much better after a cup of tea.” She emerged holding a blue, homespun blanket. “Here, cover yourself. You’ll find Nak more bearable thus.”
Aranya drew the blanket gingerly about her body. Even the soft material’s touch hurt her shoulders. “I should introduce myself. I am Aranya, Princess of Immadia, lately a hostage in the Tower of Sylakia.”
“Delighted to meet you, Aranya,” said Oyda, stumping over to the door. “I’m Oyda, as you know, wife to Nak. Nak! Breakfast! I will be one hundred and seventy-seven summers in a week’s time. Who am I? I am she who knows why flame burns within you. You look like you’ve had a hard day. Lynch mob?”
How old? Impossible. Aranya tried to school her expression into something less idiotic. That knowing air; that gentle flash of her dark brown eyes. How much was Oyda guessing and how much did she
know already? This was insane. Surely, a crazy dream. She had been dreaming a great deal lately. She wet her lips. Oyda was waiting for her answer as if she was prepared to wait all summer long merely for the chance to speak with her visitor.
“Uh–well, I burned Garthion, son of the Supreme Commander of Sylakia, last night.”
“The Butcher of Jeradia? You didn’t kill him, by any chance?” Aranya shook her head, stunned. A hard day? Try being chained to a rock and dropped off a cliff, woman! “Aye, there’s a shame. I suppose our Sylakian overlords took it in a rather dim light?”
“Dim light?” said Nak, appearing in the doorway. “Mmm! Smell that! She’s been keeping it warm all morning. Not a jot of sympathy for me. Here I am, salivating over that smell worse than a ralti sheep dribbling a river.” His eyes lit upon Aranya. “Fie, fair damsel, now there’s a scandal. Why cover up such a surfeit of nubile pulchritude, I demand to know?”
Oyda snapped, “Sit, husband, before I beat thee black and blue with thy own cane.”
“A right Dragon I married,” said Nak. “Say, petal, you wouldn’t just slip the blanket down to show a little shoulder, would you?”
“Dragon Rider,” said Oyda.
“Why, I used to line up the wenches in my bedroom, four a night, and–ouch! Dash it all, woman, can a man not tell an honest story?”
“Not that one.”
“Four frolicsome wenches jumped into my bed,” sang Nak. Oyda clipped the back of his head with the flat of her hand.
“Dragon Rider?” Aranya blurted out, only just catching up with the conversation. Her day, having started in the worst possible way, was now taking a bent toward madness. Had her mind snapped? She wanted to scream, ‘What’s going on?’
Oyda sighed. “Why don’t I pour the tea? Tell us everything, Aranya.”
“And then you’ll–”
“We will,” the old people chorused.
Over breakfast, Aranya told Oyda and Nak her story. They listened closely and asked a few pertinent questions. Nak mostly behaved himself. The old man sniffed loudly at her description of Yolathion, praised Immadia to the heavens–evidently having visited her Island many years before–and was vocally unimpressed when she related how Yolathion had been the one to cast her off the Tower’s battlements.
“I was a great warrior in my day!” he cried, waving his bread-roll about dangerously. “Why, if I were a hundred summers younger, I’d show that young pup a thing or twenty-three! I’m no stripling myself!”
Oyda rolled her eyes. “All five feet and seven inches of him, but he was a magnificent swordsman in his day, I’ll grant. I’m so sorry your first lesson came so harshly, Aranya. How do your arms feel?”
“Tender.”
“Jolly lucky you didn’t tear them off after a fall like that,” Nak added. “Be gentle with yourself until you’ve learned to fly, says I.”
“I’ll mix up some liniment,” said Oyda, starting to select random bottles off of her shelves. “You must be exhausted after your first transformation.”
Aranya drew a breath right into the bottom of her lungs and, to her astonishment, shouted, “Will you both kindly stop talking in riddles?” Sparks blasted up the chimney at her words. Willing herself to calm down before their entire hut combusted, she pleaded, “How does a person fly? Why does the fire burn? Why am I not dead? Tell me in words of one syllable, so that I can understand! Please … Oyda, Nak, please. I’m scared.”
The two old people regarded her with such a depth of understanding that Aranya began to cry. She hated showing weakness, but it was all too overwhelming.
Nak spoke first. “People don’t fly,” he said. “Dragons do. You can fly because you’re a Dragon.”
Aranya’s eyes grew round. She shook her head, over and over.
“A Dragon and a person,” Oyda clarified. “Two forms. You’re still Aranya of Immadia, petal, but you’re able to shift into a Dragon form which is as alive and vital as you are sitting at my table right now. That’s where your fire comes from.”
“I … no. No! That’s–”
“Impossible?” she snorted. “Impossible for a Dragon to break a few chains and fly out of the Cloudlands? Don’t be silly, child.”
“I am not a silly child!” Flames roared out of her mouth and shot up the chimney. “They threw me off the cliff–don’t you get that? You try it sometime! Try saying farewell to everything you know because you know you’re going to die.”
Aranya leaped to her feet, intending to storm out of the door. The room spun around her.
“Easy there, rajal.” Nak’s hand, surprisingly firm for his age, steadied her.
“Ooh, I don’t feel good.”
“You won’t,” said Oyda. “Not for a few days, you won’t. Come lie down in the back. You can ask me all the questions you want. You’ve landed among good friends, petal. That’s all you need to know right now. We’re friends.”
* * * *
Instead of asking her million questions, Aranya fell asleep and dreamed terrible, chaotic dreams filled with fire and burning and endless falling. Yolathion and Garthion merged in her mind as they flagellated her with burning whips. She saw Garthion standing over Zuziana and could only scream impotently as he peeled the skin off her body.
She awoke shrieking, “Zip!”
Oyda appeared in the doorway with a taper to light the tallow candle in her room, her hands covered in flour and bread-dough. “You slept forty hours, Aranya. I was getting worried.”
“A day and a half? No wonder I feel–well, like I was tossed off a cliff.” Aranya laughed hollowly. She tried to reach up to muss her tangled hair, and gave up with a hiss of pain. “I probably don’t smell too good. I had a fever, didn’t I? Can I bathe in the stream?”
“Let me warm you some water and I’ll help, if you don’t object?”
Aranya tried to ease her shoulders. “Is it always this–oh, that kills–painful?”
“It’ll heal. I’ll give you something for the pain.” Oyda placed a wrap around her shoulders and led her to the kitchen table. “You tore a few ligaments–no surprise, having dropped nigh a league off the Last Walk into the Cloudlands. Nak and I spent a few hours yesterday figuring out what we know about Dragon Shapeshifters. That’s what you are, petal. There are Dragons, Humans, and those who are both–Shapeshifters. Sit.”
Oyda ladled porridge into a wooden bowl and set the kettle on a tripod above the fireplace to boil water for redbush tea. As Aranya ate, she returned to kneading her dough.
Aranya did not want to think about what Oyda had just said–she wasn’t even Human? Oyda dealt in riddles as though they were facts, as though she saw life differently to anyone else in the world. Ten seconds awake and that sense of unreality lurked in the corners of the room, but it was somehow held at bay by the strange magic of Oyda’s hands turning and kneading the dough. Simple bread baking, the stuff of life around the Islands; emblematic of a new life that bubbled exuberantly in Aranya’s veins, life that grew and yearned and hurt and hungered, yet remained anchored in the old-as-time movements of a pair of hands shaping bread.
Aranya spooned porridge into her mouth as though it were her last meal–or rather, her first after dying. Something within her had died down there in the Cloudlands.
“You’re in a remote area of Sylakia, twelve leagues and more from the capital,” Oyda said. “Back of us is a thick forest most folks wouldn’t brave. You are welcome stay as long as you need, petal. Can’t say as Nak and I have many visitors. Don’t you worry about food or clothes. I’ve been sewing you a little something, if only to keep old Nak from pawing you. He’s a good man, my Nak, but a fool where women are concerned.”
“Thank you, but I can’t stay long.”
“Petal, Nak and I are in no danger because of your presence,” she said, reading Aranya’s thoughts effortlessly. “You should stay as long as you need to heal up and figure out what’s next for your life.” Oyda cut the dough and began to roll it out for braided rolls. “Na
k and I can help, some. We both used to be Dragon Riders. Nak wants to teach you to fly before you plough up more grass than you did with your first landing, or break your neck.”
“There are historical things you need to know. No Islander likes Dragons. It didn’t used to be that way. But neither Dragons nor Humans like Shapeshifters. Your kind were blamed for many of the problems that arose between Dragons and Humans. When we were young, Nak and I knew a lovely little Shapeshifter, an Onyx Pygmy Dragon called Pip.”
“A Pygmy Dragon?” Aranya echoed.
“Remind me later. I’ll tell you her story.”
Without being asked, she filled Aranya’s bowl a second time and deposited a healthy dollop of rich yellow honey right in the middle of her porridge. “Something sweet for a treat,” she said. “It’ll put a pinch of colour in those hollow cheeks. Tea?” Aranya nodded. “Of course. Now, rule number one. Listen well. You need to feed both your forms. Dragons don’t eat often. My Amber Dragon, who was called Emblazon, used to fill up on a giant ralti sheep every couple of weeks or so. But he was fully grown. You’ll probably be juvenile size. I wonder what colour Dragon you are–oh, my sweet petal, don’t sigh like that.”
She had a thousand things to sigh about, but what emerged was inane. “I have to eat sheep?”
Oyda chuckled heartily. “Meat, Aranya–Dragons don’t eat flowers. More if you’re flying more. And more if you’re transforming often, I’d assume. We think transforming takes lots of energy, but we’re not sure. As best we know, neither of our Dragons were Shapeshifters. That’s the thing–folks can’t tell. That’s where the trust breaks down. There might be Dragons all over the Islands taking the form of Humans. Nobody would know. Neither you nor your father knew your mother was a Shapeshifter. Yet I judge from what you told us that she probably flew when she was pregnant with you. Do you want to hide this identity of yours, as she did?”
Aranya opened and closed her mouth. Her brain buzzed with so many thoughts that she lost her ability to speak.
Oyda poured the tea. “Rule number two: Dragons are not invulnerable. You can break your neck. Dragons can and do kill each other. Dragon hide is not impenetrable.”
Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) Page 10