The questions began. Whenever a curious Hand or lissair ventured too close, K'Pinkelek and Soorararas glared uncharacteristically and they beat a hasty retreat. The sun climbed a third of the way to noon before they concluded their inquisition. “What do you intend to do?” said K'Pinkelek.
Melissa tried to tick off her points by extending her claws like people count on their fingers, but it was ineffective because of the motion’s awkwardness, and because halfway through she realized it was a gross insult in siglissik and thrust her claw in the dust. Oops. “Heal Jessnee’s daughter to secure his assistance at the Wall. Appear before the Hands and get White Talon cleared of murder. I have skill in biology and chemistry, so I will discover the contaminant in the liosh that began this mess and research a way to counteract it. With that in hand, I will develop a process to purify liosh and reduce tensions between Hand and Claw. Then I will find a way to change places with White Talon and go home.” If I must.
“We must confer,” said Soorararas.
Melissa left the clearing and waited. Callyglip brought her salted fish which she greedily consumed. A half hour later, they recalled her.
“You will have your trial,” said Soorararas. “Today! But for your demonstrated ability to heal, we would turn you out. There is a prophecy, a secret not to be shared with outsiders. We recall the recent wound to your wing. It will be sufficient if you accompany me to Jessnee’s house. Outrace me, arrive first and earn our trust.”
“Excuse me,” said Melissa. “When White Talon’s spirit inhabited this body whole and happy, could she fly swifter than you?”
Soorararas affected his widest, toothiest grin, swung his tail about, and launched himself into the air.
Melissa swiveled her head and glared at K'Pinkelek.
He was lounging on the ground, chewing a savory root. “If you leave a half hour ago, you might beat him.” Chew, chew, spit. “Better yet, make it an hour ago.”
She flew.
* * *
After an hour, marsh led to brush, then to old forest, with ample space between the trees to allow Shoroko to spot approaching predators. He rode Fear, and Thedarra sat astride her mare, Torbu, but he called it Trouble, on account of its owner. The ride consisted of him remaining silent, and her quizzing him about his favorite foods, his opinion of the latest fashion in hunting jackets, speculations about who’d win top prizes at the next fair (really who’d win second prize, since everyone knew she’d come in first with Shorassa gone), and a dizzying array of topics he blocked entirely, until they reached the edge of the Remacaw.
“We’re halfway. Let’s break. There’s always plenty of fish in the brook. I’ll catch supper while you tend to the beasts.” He pulled a line and a pole-net from his pack and waded into the stream.
Thedarra watered the quaggas, then brushed them. “Did you hear what he called you? Beasts. Hardly.” She teased a tangle of burrs out of Fear’s mane. “The animal is the one who doesn’t take care of such a big, strong boy like you.”
Fear emitted a contented whinny and nestled his snout in her hair.
Shoroko stood with his back to Thedarra and tried to ignore her vivid description of the wonderful things she promised to do for the insensible creature, capped off by pulling Torbu close so Fear could sniff the mare appreciatively. That was not half as insufferable as the jig she did in mock imitation of his fish dance, when he gyrated his net and struggled to balance on the slippery stones, with slapping silverfish and red nippers wriggling in his net, angling for freedom. The dance gave way to a fire and smoke and stewing vegetables and happy stomachs.
“I’ll help you with your planting.” Thedarra tightened the belt on her saddle. “I know the price you won’t pay, so I’ll trade my help for Shorassa’s loom.”
His sister’s loom was the finest on Kibota, combining her natural ability and Jessnee’s engineering genius. This more than her pottery and glasswork had made their family the wealthiest in Agotaras Springs. In her generosity, she’d shared the secret of its construction with her neighbors, but none could match the subtlety of her designs. Her rugs, quilts, curtains and dresses were sought out even by the Claws, who found her products useful as gifts when dispatching delegations or settling quarrels. “That trade’s more costly than marriage.”
“How so? If you give yourself to me in marriage and also the loom, the loom remains yours, so the loom costs you nothing. You have the means to make the bargain sweet.” She handed a fruit to Torbu.
Shoroko smiled. “How about we finish the job and see how much you get done first?”
They shook and rode off. The forest opened up onto the fertile western reach of the Clawtill Plains. They trotted along the stream, which would empty into the Faithful River southwest of the springs, and home. Fan-fan teams were out in force, pulling ploughs and turning the black soil. After an hour, Thedarra reached into her pack, took out fish for a snack and handed Shoroko some. “Shadow! On the grass.” She jerked her head up, but blinding sun made her eyes tear.
“What is it?” Shoroko whipped out his bow and strung an arrow. Another shadow passed. “It’s hiding in the sun. Dactyllary?”
Thedarra opened her mouth, but the shriek did not erupt from her throat. A black clot separated from the sun and dove. Like pumice shot from the flaming mountains of Blaze, the creature plunged. Thedarra raised her arms to protect herself. At the last instant the creature spread its wings, extended its claws and grabbed the pack of provisions. Torbu kicked his hind legs in reflex to repel the attack and sent Thedarra flying. She landed hard, but unhurt. The talons of the immense, retreating bird sliced the belt securing the saddle to her mount. Her clothes, spices and cookware lay scattered on the grass, and Torbu charged on, heedless of her whistling.
Shoroko dismounted and helped her up. He picked up a feather from the ground and turned it in his hand. “Rukh. Much worse than a dactylarry. You are fortunate to escape with all your skin.”
“It was fish, not fortune. Torbu knows the way home. We’ll never catch her.”
Fear looked at the two of them, snorted, and turned its back.
“No choice, boy,” said Shoroko. “We’re riding double.”
Shoroko added Thedarra’s stuff to his pack, swung his leg over Fear’s backside, and offered his arm to Thedarra. She rode behind, hands around his waist. Shoroko felt the smile on her face without looking, and resigned himself to hours of getting her hopes up, and the tantrums that would tumble out the other side of their long ride. He would’ve thought her asleep, but Thedarra talked in her sleep, and she sat quiet as an empty sky. Her delight in endless prattle had been eclipsed by the scent of his neck, which she inhaled like perfume. Her cockiness over her own bold strength, prize winning cooking, and wavy, dark locks she surrendered to her glad embrace of the muscles she’d dreamed of impossibly, and the courage of one strong enough to slay dragons and braver still to make friends of them. The fact that he knew these things, and knew he wasn’t imagining them, grabbed him in the gut. He liked that he could induce such feelings in a woman, just not this woman. Her embrace was more exhausting than the endless trail and the constant watch for death from above or below.
Eventually her breathing slowed, her grip relaxed, and she slumped against his back. The sun set, and Shoroko reined Fear to a slow walk. Two more hours and they’d reach the farm. When the night chirps and peeps picked up, he shook his head to keep nature’s evening serenade from putting him to sleep. That he managed, until Thedarra accompanied them and hummed a lament in her sleep.
As a girl, a song had always been on Thedarra’s lips. That changed during the last migration, after her Analek never returned. When Jessnee appeared a month later, it looked like there might be a change. He spent months building a machine to generate something he called lektrissy, and when he had it, his little box began to play music. While other girls courted the newcomer with the agile mind and good looks, Thedarra pestered him to translate lyrics for the thousands of songs stored in his music box. O
ne girl got his hand in marriage, but she got a thousand years’ worth of songs from a distant world.
One by one she memorized, sang, and discarded songs of love, war, and peace, of wandering, settling, and dying. She searched Earth’s corpus before abandoning her perplexing project. She’d searched, but for what? When Earth offered no song to express what was in her heart, she closed her ears to marvelous instruments and perfectly engineered sound, and retired to her cottage alone. Months later she reemerged, and sang no more. But when wrapped up in cooking, or chores, or lost in thought, she forgets herself and hums a haunting tune no one ever heard before. That was the tune she now hummed.
Hearing her voice at its softest reminded Shoroko of Thedarra the little girl. The melody told him what she’d been up to during her solitude. Finding no one else to sing the words she longed to hear, she’d written them by herself, for herself, never to share.
She needed to let them out. Those words, those memories, those endless empty-bedded evenings needed an answer. She had to open up or she’d push people away forever. One word from him and she would break, but that dam burst would sweep him away. The man who did that would be hers forever, and he refused to be that man. Even so, he found himself whisper, “What could be your words?”
Thedarra shifted positions and mumbled in her sleep, “My words, my words, no one else can take them.”
Shoroko thought, then said, “Words you will not sing, you cannot keep.” Why am I asking her to sing her song? There is a reckless joy in prying secrets from others, even secrets worthless to us. But secrets obtained without price can carry an enormous cost. Shoroko had made two wishes, a silent one to stay unaware, and an audible one to know. He was heard, and a sleeping woman sang her plea to the stone of sorrow.
Sing out stone!
Call upon the thunder,
Send out dusty hooves
And darken April skies;
Uproot crops,
Uproot loving families,
Steal the only feast that
Fully fed my eyes.
O my garden,
you were newly planted,
O my flower,
you had never bloomed,
O my walls,
I should have built you higher,
O my arms,
should have never let you go.
Sing louder stone –
See the beasts are stirring,
Sing louder stone –
The birds have taken wing,
Sing louder stone –
I hear only nothing,
Nothing, and I sob alone.
In your census,
don't my sighings tally?
In your census,
don't you count my groans?
In your census,
where's my journal entry?
Where's the team who'll carry
my heart safely home?
The herds you bind,
You bind together,
You bind together,
Happy pair by pair;
The hands you loose,
You loose and sunder,
You sunder sending him
I know not where.
Barren plot,
how will you be replanted?
Budless shoot,
how will you ever bloom?
Broken fence,
by what hands be mended?
Burning heart,
must loneliness consume?
Census stone,
Call me and I'll follow,
Census stone,
Call my true love too,
Census stone,
Teach your secret song to us,
Please! Call and lead us home.
When Thedarra sang the last verse, the lane appeared. His family’s farm was two hundred lisstai away. In the moonlight, he knew every rock and tree. A breeze blew in from the field. He inhaled and smiled at the fragrance of freshly turned soil. Turned? Did they plough already? His father must be stronger than he gave credit for, not just to overcome his grief, but to plough so many fandrels without him. They probably haven’t finished, but with such a good start, I should be able to get back to Melissa on schedule. Finally something goes right.
Fear saw his stall and picked up the pace. Thedarra awoke. “Where are we?”
“Minutes from a warm bed. See, the lights are on and I smell a fire burning.”
The sight of home choked him up. Shoroko didn’t see a roof, he saw a trip to Remenee for tar to seal the leaks, and hours at the sawmill cutting timbers. He didn’t see windows, he saw Shorassa and White Talon tinting glass and hanging the panes. But when he saw the doors flung wide, he did see his darda and emmaw standing in the candle light with relief written on their faces, and arms held wide in greeting.
“You’ve made a great start on the planting,” said Shoroko. “We came to help. I couldn’t see much in the dark. How many fandrels are left to plough?”
His darda put his hands on Shoroko’s shoulders and beamed. “We are terribly sad about – about your sister – but we must rejoice over the gift we received today. The fields are plowed. All the fields.”
Thedarra and Shoroko blurted at the same time. “How?”
His emmaw clapped her hands. “It was a Black. Can you believe it, a Black!”
His darda said, “No Black’s been seen in thousands of years!”
“A black Claw?” said Shoroko.
“It swooped down and clawed the ground,” said his emmaw. “So fast, like a blur it swept along the ground and carved furrows as easy as icing a cake.”
“It’s an omen,” said his darda. “Migration years are hard, but this time we have help. A Black! This has never happened before!”
His parents’ excitement carried him through the next hour until he collapsed in bed. Only in the quiet did the plaintive phrases return. Thedarra’s song accompanied him into his dreams, and for the first time, they were of her.
Chapter 13: A Seed is Planted
April 8th. Talon Mountains, south of Seremarid Gap.
Melissa felt like her wings would fall off. She followed the course of a corduroy road that dissected the swamp. It went west into the foothills of the Talon Mountains, before turning north to the Seremarid Gap, where it would cross Wall Ridge on its way into the southern reach of the Aliosha Mountains of Blaze. K'Pinkelek was flying lazy circles over the work party below. She prepared to join them, until she saw the glint of a pond beside the road to their north. I am filthy. She signaled her intent to K'Pinkelek and banked northward. After splashing down, Melissa relaxed until the first quagga trotted into view.
K'Pinkelek landed, curious to learn whether Melissa had outflown Soorararas. “Where is your swift companion?”
“Swiftly chasing my wind,” said Melissa.
Jessnee galloped up, vaulted from his mount and ran to the water’s edge. “Jafiri? How is my daughter?”
Melissa crawled from the water and shook herself dry. “She is well.”
Jessnee’s shoulders relaxed.
“But not cured. I bathed her in blue flame. The lesions vanished, her fever broke, and her strength returned. She stopped vomiting and can tolerate food. Your wife helped me prepare slides before and after. Your microscope…”
His face turned red and he slashed the air with his arm. “My microscope isn’t powerful enough to make a diagnosis!”
“The eyes of a white olissair increase magnification a hundredfold. Your scope showed a positive change in the infection raging inside her, but it remains. There is a limit to my curative powers. I can repair damage, but not expel parasites. Her bolstered immune system should fight off the disease, but she remains contagious.”
Jessnee sank to his knees. “Thank you. The incubation period is two weeks. I should be able to finish my work at the wall and return before…”
Melissa knew his hope, but said nothing. His wife, Fia, was running a low fever by the time Melissa left, but she had exhausted her flame on their daughter. “Have we any
liosh?”
“We refilled the barrels a hundred lisstai back.”
“I’ll inspect them for contamination.” Melissa excused herself and flew off. The liosh proved safe. She drank her fill and returned to find Soorararas had caught up.
“I swung north to scout the situation at the wall. Jessnee, inform the Hands they must not delay; we fly at once. The fortifications are in danger. K'Pinkelek, warn Blaze; Rampart is stretched thin and your kindred are nearest. White Talon…” Soorararas spoke the name delicately. “Your swift journey to Jessnee’s house qualifies you for your next test. You bested me by flying as fast as a Green, the slowest of whom outrun me. In what lies ahead, you will not need the strength of a Red, you’ll need the strength of ten.”
* * *
April 8th. Farm near Agotaras Springs.
Shoroko rose before the sun and filled one of Jessnee’s contraptions with seed. It had a wide bar with a row of vertical tubes connected to a hopper. The doctor demonstrated his seed drill at a fair the previous year, and helped him construct his own. After he hitched the quaggas, Thedarra mounted the seat and began pedaling. The pedals cranked a piston which pressurized the hopper and shot the seeds along feeder lines to the tubes, then injected them into the ground. Shoroko walked alongside the team, pacing the animals to keep up with Thedarra’s pedaling. By evening, all his family’s fields were planted.
Shoroko watered the team and turned them out to pasture. “Tomorrow we’ll run the drill over to your farm, Thedarra. We won’t need it again till second planting.”
Thedarra stretched her arms over her head and arched her back in a ‘notice me’ way. “My darda won’t know what to do with all his spare time. Easiest planting ever. What are you doing after supper?”
“Taking the first watch up on the mountain. I heard it was quiet last week, but any day we should see movement. Don’t want to be the one who falls asleep and let’s a pack of tuskers flatten a granary.”
A Most Refined Dragon Page 13