Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons)

by Secchia, Marc

  Aranya nodded. All that flying, two battles and then lying low for three days in a cave had combined to make her ravenous. Her stomach chose that moment to growl so loudly it echoed down the tunnels behind them.

  “I’ll take that as an affirmative. I need to hunt. No, don’t you growl at me and block the doorway. I’ll be careful. Aranya!” Zip giggled as Aranya pushed her back from the cave entrance with her muzzle. “Don’t you bully me, you stubborn lump of Dragon flesh. Yes, I know there are Dragonships crawling all over this Island like rats on a fresh carcass. Yes, if there’s one thing I can assure you, it is that Remoyan Princesses know how to hunt and we can sneak, too. We’re very … sneaky.”

  With that, she darted beneath Aranya’s neck.

  Aranya lifted her paw and flattened her friend–claws carefully held apart, lest she hurt Zip.

  “Ouch! Get off me, you scaly ralti sheep, or I swear I’ll skin that pretty hide and hang it up for a hunting trophy!” When she relented, Zip said, dusting off her armour with cheerful slaps, “You know, petal, we need to come up with a Dragon name for you. I can’t call forty feet of Amethyst Dragon–well, ‘petal’, can I? Aranya is your Human name. How do you fancy the ring of, ‘Knobbly-Kneed Goat Muncher’? Or something grander, like ‘Her Amethyst Majesty the Mighty Fireball Tosser’?”

  This drew a laugh, which hurt.

  “Look, the rest of you is getting better but I’m worried about your throat and I’m tired of talking to myself. Understood? I will be super, super-careful.”

  Aranya raised her paw and gave her a woebegone look.

  Zuziana unexpectedly flung her arms around Aranya’s neck. “You’re silly. You’re not having one of those Dragon foresights–no? Right. You breathed fire. Clever thing, you just wanted to show off by destroying six Dragonships at once. Well, if we can’t get you healed up, we need to go ask Nak. He’ll say, ‘Give us a peck on the cheek, thou lily of the pond.’ Oyda will say, ‘Concentrate, Nak.’ ‘Ah, but I dreamed of ten Immadian Princesses in my bed last night.’” She aped the little old man tottering about on his canes.

  She had to let her friend go. It was that or keep laughing, which brought fresh misery because of her throat. Who ever thought of a Dragon being injured producing her natural element, fire?

  Zip should find something easily.

  Aranya moved to the back of the cave, where a natural trickle had pooled enough to allow her to drink easily. The water was fresh and tangy with minerals, which her Dragon form appreciated. She saw a glint at the bottom of the pool. It winked at her. Curious, Aranya dipped her paw in up to the knee-joint and stirred the sediment. Gold coins. Lots of them, old gold drals, with the stamp of the Sylakian windroc on them. Beautiful, thick metal of high quality, she thought. This must have been a Dragon’s hoard. Her paw curled possessively over the drals. Stillness settled upon the cave as she regarded the hoard. It was so pretty. So golden. So–hers.

  “Dinner time.”

  She whirled with fire buzzing in her belly and a strange roaring sound filling her ears. Aranya stared at the intruder, outlined at the cave entrance by the setting suns’ fiery exit from the day. Her lips peeled back from her fangs. How dare that little creature come near her treasure?

  “Aranya? Why–why are you glaring at me like that?”

  She tore herself away from the pool and its treacherous allure with a sound that was half-gasp and half-sob. She backed away as far as she could, shuddering. How much time had passed? The shadows had grown deep. The cold jealousy that consumed; the greedy stirring of a heart ready to rend and destroy even those most precious to her to protect that cold, unfeeling metal … she flung herself to the ground and hid her head beneath her wing.

  Zuziana marched over to the pool and looked in. She stood very still for a moment before her hand suddenly leaped to her mouth. “Oh, Aranya.”

  She knew. Shame brought tears–thick Dragon tears–to her eyes. Suddenly Zip was there, crawling beneath her wing, kneeling beside her head. Her tiny fingers stroked Aranya’s muzzle, soothing. After a time of simply sitting with her and saying nothing, Zip’s hand rose to cup the teardrop brimming in the corner of her eye.

  “Now this is a jewel more precious than anything in the Island-World,” she said, gazing at the fluid yet crystalline substance. “The tears of a beautiful heart.”

  She poked the teardrop with her finger before tasting it with her tongue, much as a cat laps at milk. Her eyes widened. “Oh–wow. I see colours, Aranya, a constellation of colours surrounding me and … life, I imagine life, bursting … and happiness. Is this some kind of Dragon magic? Nak didn’t say anything about Dragon tears, did he? No, I didn’t think so.”

  Zip rolled up her trouser leg and experimentally smeared a small portion of the Dragon tears on the top couple of inches of her burn, which was healing well. The viscous liquid soaked in easily and left a pearlescent sheen on her skin. She raised an eyebrow at Aranya, who waggled her brow-ridges in approval. Zip treated the rest of her burn, but found half a handful still remained.

  “Shall we try this on your blisters?”

  Aranya opened her mouth and let Zip treat what she could reach. Her friend paused to collect the second teardrop from Aranya’s right eye. It was smaller than the first. When she was done tickling the back of Aranya’s throat, Zip licked the remaining residue off her hand.

  “Yum. Aranya, I’m sure it can’t be bad for you. Oh … sensation. That’s amazing!”

  She was definitely uncertain about the wisdom of drinking Dragon tears. But Zip did not appear to be poisoned, or unhappy–rather, she was bouncing about as though she had eaten far too many honey cakes. Her vibrant blue eyes sparkled and danced as she poked fun at her friend. She was making so much noise that when Aranya heard a footstep outside the cavern, it was already too late.

  A Sylakian warrior gaped at the scene. Aranya lunged at him. Bleating like a crazed sheep, the man raced up along the ledge with a Dragon hot on his trail. There was a Dragonship several hundred feet away, she saw, drifting along on the breeze. But the aft war crossbow spat a quarrel at her. Aranya ducked; stone splintered against her flank. Reaching out, she swiped the man off the mountainside and sprang for the Dragonship.

  Her ears warned her with a fraction of a second to spare. A second Dragonship, higher in the sky and closer to the cliff–deliberately hidden, she realised–had fired upon her. The shards of metal shot by the catapult stitched holes in her left wing as if by magic. Startled, Aranya hurtled directly into the side of the first Dragonship. Her neck snagged in the netting. Bellowing, tearing and clawing, Aranya ripped herself free. The archers on the gantry beneath her were shooting at point-blank range, but her Dragon hide was tougher than most arrows could penetrate. She lashed out with her tail, cracking the gantry and smashing a hole in the side of the Dragonship. Men tumbled into the sky. Deliberately, she reached out with her forepaws and ripped the hydrogen sack open.

  The Dragonship above held its fire as she lashed the gantry again, knocking more warriors loose and bruising her tail. Aranya dropped free and wheeled beneath the Dragonship, counting the seconds before that war crossbow could be reloaded. She had a better idea. Coming up beneath the crossbow platform, Aranya cleared it with a cunning swipe of her claws. Then she clambered up the side of the Dragonship and ripped another part of the sack open.

  Segmented into six or more sacks, a Dragonship’s hydrogen load could survive a certain amount of damage. But not a measured attack by an intelligent Dragon. The vessel began to sink. Aranya timed her leap free, waiting until she was out of range of the Dragonship still lurking above. She swung wide in the air, checking their cave. She must fetch Zip. At that instant, the Sylakian Hammers would see and cover the cave entrance with their deadly crossbows.

  Oh no. Worse–there were more soldiers working their way along the ledge.

  Aranya made a split-second decision. She darted back toward the cave, furling her wings for a fast landing. She smacked into the rocks beside the
entrance and scrambled inside. She groaned as the deep quarrel-wound on her shoulder opened again at the impact.

  Zuziana was throwing their equipment into bags at a furious rate.

  “Quick,” Aranya rasped. “Soldiers. Dragonship.”

  Zuziana threw the bags on top of Aranya and buckled them fast. She tossed the saddle upward. An unladylike snarl followed as she missed the right position between the spines. Zip scrambled up again to put it right. She dropped with the leather strap in her hand, rapidly drew it tight beneath Aranya’s chest and fastened it through the buckle. The pitiful handful of left-over arrows received an unhappy sniff of discontent. After that, nothing of value was left in the cave, apart from the Dragon hoard. Aranya would have preferred to forget all about that. Even now she felt a pang of loss. And the pangs of hunger, which simply had to wait.

  Shouts sounded outside the cave.

  Zip climbed adroitly aboard her Dragon. “Go, Aranya. Go fast and swerve once you’re out.”

  Taking a deep breath and bunching her muscles, Aranya launched herself out of the cave. She heard a thump and a low cry. By then she was airborne, rolling, watching the path of the inevitable shots descending and arcing her body to avoid them. She laughed. They had used up all their shots.

  That was when she realised Zip was not on her back.

  Her Rider staggered out of the cave, bleeding freely from a cut near her hairline. The Sylakian Hammers surged forward with cries of, “Catch her!”

  Aranya cut back through the sky, crying, “Run, Zip! Run!”

  It was terrifying not to be able to help. Aranya was too far away, the soldiers closing in, Zip looking this way and that, clearly dazed, before she broke into a stumbling run along the ledge, thankfully in the right direction. Aranya had to pull up sharply as another catapult shot hissed through the air toward her. Two catapults? Had they reloaded so quickly? She lost height. The Dragonship’s archers were trying to pick Zuziana off as she came into range. The Princess of Remoy was agile, weaving and bounding over rocks and bushes even at a full sprint. She began to pull away from the pursuing soldiers. But now another group of armoured Sylakian warriors appeared ahead of her, brandishing their hammers. She skidded on the ledge. Before anyone could react, she changed direction.

  Screaming, “Aaaraaanyaaaa!” Zip threw herself off the cliff.

  Aranya surged through the air with her utmost power. Zuziana fell ahead of her–gracefully, as though she were diving from a height into water–but the cliff was not vertical in this place. She fell toward the rocks. Aranya stretched out her neck as though that could make her fly faster. She seared through the cool twilight, faster than the shots that sought to track her. She could not reach her friend with her claws. The cliff was too close, the speed too much. Intuitively, she reached out with her wingtip, a dozen feet above the rocks, to cushion Zip’s fall at the expense of a tearing pain in her wing joint.

  Zuziana struck the rocks, but softly because of the elastic wing membrane beneath her. She bounced toward Aranya. The Dragon wobbled in the air, juggling the Remoyan on the surface of her wing as she swung away from the cliff. She slowed, trying not to lose Zip. Her Rider had a one-handed grip on the leading edge of her wing. Aranya’s throat throbbed. All that shouting and bellowing had been unwise. A speculative shot zipped by nearby, but they were passing out of range.

  After flying a little ways, Aranya relaxed into a glide. Her head snaked back to look at Zip, who offered her a wan smile, even though her face was a mask of blood. She quipped, “Thanks for the rescue, o Mighty Bewinged Princess of the Air.” But she grasped her side with her hand. “Not sure about the ribs, though. Definitely a nice bruise.”

  “You’re brave,” Aranya said, keeping to a whisper. Appallingly brave. “Want to get into the saddle?”

  Zip eyed the Dragonship floating up near the edge of Tyrodia Island. She seemed quite happy to remain exactly where she was. “They’ll be after us soon enough. Head out a point north of west, Aranya. There’s a tiny Island called Melkadia out there, a few leagues below Germodia. Hopefully they won’t know much about runaway Princesses.”

  “You need to uncurl your fingers to move,” Aranya offered, helpfully.

  A scowl that could have curdled milk was her reward. But as Zip balanced on her wing surface, she asked, “How’s the wing? Sore?”

  Aranya waited until Zip had secured herself in the saddle before admitting, “Stinging. But I think I can fly that far. Let’s pretend we’re making for Germodia first and change direction later.”

  “How did they find us, Aranya? Chance? Or something more sinister, like those new tactics you were telling me about?”

  They took stock, and realised they had lost their primary weapon against Dragonships–Zip’s bow. She remembered dropping it when Aranya pounded her head against the roof of the cavern. She sneaked guilty looks at her friend as she mopped up the worst of the blood. But the wound kept oozing.

  * * * *

  Toward mid-afternoon of the following day, two young Remoyan women walked into a town on Melkadia Island’s eastern peninsula. After they passed the hard-eyed gate guards, Zuziana whispered to Aranya to keep alert. They asked after a physician to have the deep cut on Zip’s forehead seen to. After that, they shopped around for a decent bow and cloth to make collars for the arrows.

  “I wish we had smaller coins,” Zuziana said, after another shopkeeper had complained about their gold drals. “Don’t they want our money?”

  Aranya, transformed into her Human form, frowned. “I wish I knew if it’s us, or just a general dislike of foreigners. I vote we don’t sleep in town tonight. Maybe a meal, though. I could eat a–er, something other than sheep.”

  “You do look very Northern,” Zip said. “Pale skin and high cheekbones. Those eyes are definitely a giveaway. Who has amethyst eyes? Put your hood up, Aranya.”

  “I want my daggers,” said Aranya.

  “You are the weapon,” Zip retorted. “Fine, we’ll buy you a decent sword. There was a shop near the tavern. I’m hungry, too. Islands’ sakes, will you stop rotating your wrist? You’ll only hurt it more.”

  “Didn’t anyone teach you that Humans can’t fly?”

  Zuziana and Aranya picked a plain but serviceable sword for Aranya and a belt and scabbard to go with it. The shopkeeper wanted to overcharge them, but Zuziana bargained hard before giving in for what she admitted was a higher price than they should have paid. Then they decided to investigate the food in the tavern.

  “Ugh, lamb stew,” said Aranya, poking at the contents of her bowl. She cradled her cut and hurting left arm in her lap.

  “Mmm, gravy,” said Zuziana.

  “Being a–uh, I guess I just don’t fancy sheep.”

  The tilt of Zip’s eyebrow told her she had almost said the word they had agreed not to use. Aranya decided she had better fill her stomach anyway. She chewed uneasily while Zip went over to the bar to secure more bread to sop up her gravy. For such a wisp of a thing, Aranya reflected, she definitely owned a healthy appetite. She watched a man trying to draw Zip into conversation at the bar. Actually, there were two of them–not ruffians, judging by their clothing, but also just that little bit more insistent than was called for. Aranya’s hand stole to the pommel of her sword. Cutpurses? Or something more sinister?

  Zuziana tried to slip away from the men with a smile and a coy word, but they hemmed her in. A third joined their number. He said something.

  Aranya extended her Dragon senses. Her knuckles were white on the sword. She forced her fingers to relax.

  “–one they’re looking for?”

  Zuziana was acting giddy and spinning a story about her father taking her on her first trip away from Remoy. Her lie would have convinced Aranya. The men seemed uncertain; unsettled by her confidence, perhaps? She stepped between them, intent on escape, but one of the men put his arm out to stop her. Zip trod on his instep and jabbed her fingers into his solar plexus. Aranya chuckled to herself. Those men were about t
o learn they had baited a rajal.

  But one of them was faster than the others. He grabbed Zip’s wrist and twisted her arm up behind her back. “Why don’t you come for a walk with us, my pretty petal?”

  Zip poked him in the eye with her free hand. Twisting like a hooked fish, she fought him, but the man hung on. Another two joined the group from a nearby table, drunkenly intent on a ‘bit of sport’. That was unfair. Aranya saw the fear flash into her friend’s eyes, perhaps the memory of a whipping she had been helpless to escape. A thin wail of terror escaped her. But the men only laughed.

  Before she knew it, Aranya leaped to her feet. Her chair screeched across the floor behind her. The fire, somehow always there, made its voice heard in her ears, but she clenched her teeth in an effort to deny it.

  “Boys!” she called. “Why don’t you let the lady go?”

  “You want to play, too?”

  “Yes. Why don’t we play?” Aranya snarled. The pain in her throat only intensified her anger. “Let my friend go, or it will go ill with you.”

  “Ill?” laughed the man holding Zip. “Where you from, lady, talking like that?”

  “A Cloudlands volcano,” she replied. A crackling of fire entered her voice, unbidden. “Why don’t you pick another day to die, friend? Today, I’ll let you go free.”

  The men gaped at her. “You’re joking.”

  “Look, a tall one and a little ’un,” said another of the men. “Them Sylakians is lookin’ for these, innit true?”

  “Aye,” said the first. “She’s a Northern-looking lady.”

  Another group of men moved in from a table near the door. A local militia or watch, Aranya judged, watching them with narrowed eyes. Their options were evaporating fast. They should never have come to the tavern. At one level, she knew she would probably have to eat a few of these unfriendly locals before they paid attention. At another level, she realised that the Sylakians must have spread the story far and wide, for it to have arrived on this unremarkable Island, in a small town.