by Audrey Faye
She set one hand on the wall for balance and headed to her right. There had to be a door somewhere.
The water rose higher up her legs, and she grimaced. Maybe the other way was better, away from the river, but she was almost at the end of the wall. She made her way gingerly around the corner. The stone underfoot hadn’t deterred the fishes any, but at least the footing was less creepy. She kept moving forward, feeling carefully with her feet. There were more breaks in the stone over here, and a clear tilt toward the river—but this was also the side with the door. She could see the stone arching over a large opening, one that had probably been the entrance to the interior of the house when it had been intact.
More importantly, it resembled the arch she had seen through her dragon’s eyes.
Lily walked faster now, caution thrown over by the stirring she could feel within. Not awake yet, but much closer. And with that stirring, a return of the weight. A dragon unhappy that morning had come.
She almost ran, not caring if she fell, rounding the edge of the arched entrance and charging in—and then nearly splashed face-first into the big pool of water flooding the whole room. She managed to get her feet back underneath her, but not before she was wet all the way up to her elbows. She cursed. She’d tripped down a set of stairs. The water was much deeper in here. She held up her arms gingerly and looked around. Three high windows let in light from the east, but it was early morning yet. She squinted into the shadows. Something as large as a dragon shouldn’t be hard to find, even in the dark.
Nothing.
She’d been so sure. The room looked exactly right, but there was no sleeping dragon on a ledge, or an awake one, either. She shoved her hands into the water. Her dragon was here. Somewhere. There must be another room.
Then she heard it. The tiniest of sniffles, cut off like its owner had been startled. She spun toward the sound, coming from the darkest corner of the room.
Nothing.
Another chopped-off sniffle.
Lily walked very slowly toward the corner, her heart in her throat, looking for the shadow that would be a quietly snoring dragon. And stopped in shock when she finally saw it, curled up, head on tail, nose sniffling quietly into the dim.
Still asleep—and no bigger than a cat.
Chapter 4
Lily waded the last distance over to the ledge in the corner, an elf in a waking dream, and froze as an eye opened. She caught a flash of her bedraggled self, seen through the eye that had just opened, and then the vision vanished.
No matter. Lily could see her dragon now. Hear her short, shallow breathing.
Scared.
Lily kept her voice as quiet as a whisper. “Hello.”
The spines on top of the dragon’s head quivered.
“I’m Lily of the Water Healer clan, and I think you’re my dragon.”
That pronouncement got exactly zero reaction from the watching eye.
She had no idea what to say next. When dragons chose their kin, the bond just happened. Everyone knew that. She’d never heard of a dragon who just kept watching their kin with suspicion. She cleared her throat a little, grimacing at the taste of the air. It was almost as bad as the water. “I don’t know why you’re in here, but this is a nasty place for a dragon to sleep.”
Two eyes watched her now.
“I don’t think you’re a baby, because you don’t feel like a baby and a baby never could have flown in here, but we need to get you out.” Into the sunshine and far away from this nasty water. Lily tried to imagine what might tempt her dragon off the ledge. “Maybe we’ll build a nice fire to warm you up.”
A tail splashed into the water, and the real room was overlaid with a vision of the room—without Lily in it. And a decided feeling of home.
Lily blinked. “You live here?” That was crazy. It was a stinky, wet mess.
The tail dipped back into the water. This time, the vision moved. Tiny, deep-blue claws on this very ledge—surrounded by bits of eggshell.
Lily gaped. “You were born here?” That was crazier than leaving an egg up a tree.
The dragon settled her head back down on her tail.
The tail she had just put in the water. Lily’s cold brain tried to catch up. Her dragon had just gotten wet. On purpose. And when she did, the moving pictures came. She stared at unblinking black eyes. “You talk through the water?”
A quizzical look.
Hmm. Lily put her fingers in the water, which probably wasn’t necessary, since she was standing in it up to her waist. But maybe it would make sense to her dragon. This time, she didn’t speak out loud. She only thought. Can you hear me?
Nothing.
Lily frowned. Apparently, the water only worked one way, but her dragon had seemed to understand her fine when she spoke. “Dragons hate water.”
Chittering, almost like laughter. The small blue-green dragon languidly put her tail back in the water and rested her chin on her claws.
Something in Lily’s throat felt too big to swallow. Her dragon was really weird. Just like her. “I like the water too. The elves of my clan like to swim and splash, and when the water is sick like this, we heal it.”
Mild interest, and then one of the black eyes closed. The heaviness, coming back.
“Wait!” Lily could hear the panic in her voice and tried to tamp it down. “Show me when you were born again.” There was something she needed to see.
The dragon raised her eyebrow ridges, but the picture reappeared in front of Lily’s eyes. She studied it carefully. Water, just like now, but not sick water. Sunlight streamed in, and she could see that the water was clear. The stone walls didn’t have water lines on them, and the hint of clearing she could see out the archway was neat and tidy and not covered in bush and bramble.
Lily could feel her sadness—and her awe. “You’ve lived here for a really long time.”
One black eye closed again. Not interested. Curling back up into the emptiness.
“Don’t go back to sleep.” Lily used the voice Irin used on Lotus when she flew barrel rolls through the village. “Are there any other dragons here? Any people? Who feeds you?”
A brief, wavery vision of a fish.
Lily felt sick. Her dragon had hatched here, maybe as far back as Alonia’s great-grandmother’s time. And lived with only fish for company since then. “You can’t stay here. It isn’t good for you.” Dragons needed connection with others—it was why they had kin. And other dragons. And why everyone bugged Kis all day long.
Lonely dragons got sick in the head.
Maybe like this one. A dragon who didn’t want to wake up.
Lily reached out a hand, slowly, where the black eye could see it. “I have a dragon friend named Lotus who really likes to be scratched under her chin.”
Suspicion was back in the black eyes.
She needed a distraction or her finger was going to get chomped. “Do you have a name?”
Puzzlement, but less suspicion. “A name is a thing that people call you. A word that only belongs to you.”
A blue-green tail swished in the water and caught the first rays of direct sunlight.
Lily stared at the shimmering scales, enthralled. “You’re so beautiful, just like the colors of the ocean.”
More puzzlement, and wordless curiosity this time.
Lily let her mind think of the view of the sea from the cliffs beyond the village, just in case her dragon could read her thoughts, even a little. Most dragons could. “The ocean is every shade of blue and green, and when the sun shines, it sparkles just like your scales. And it’s big. Water in every direction as far as you can see.”
A pink tongue snuck out and licked her finger.
Lily’s heart lurched. “Would you like that for a name? Oceana?” She liked it. It sounded fancy, and the total opposite of fire.
Another lick, and the emptiness pushed away a little more.
It needed to go away completely, but that was never going to happen waist deep in stinky water or
on a ledge where her dragon had slept alone for the last hundred years. This place was some kind of terrible dungeon, and she needed to break Oceana out.
She reached forward the last little bit and slid her finger under Oceana’s chin. The dragon startled and then rubbed a little, just like a cat. Lily kept her motions really small. This might be the first time her dragon had ever been touched. The thought made her want to weep. “I live in a village near the ocean. It has lots of dragons, and people who make milk curds, and rondos that are nice and warm to sleep in.”
Oceana seemed mostly interested in the finger scratching under her chin.
Lily’s knees started to knock together from the cold. “We can’t stay here. It’s not safe and this water is sick, and the people around here don’t know about dragons.” She had no idea what they might do to one the size of a cat. Big dragons could take care of themselves, but Oceana was tiny. “I think you need to come back to my village with me.”
Suspicious eyes, but Oceana didn’t move her chin away.
Lily scratched like her dragon’s life depended on it. “You could stay with me. Our rondo is small, and Alonia sleeps there too. She talks too much, but the dragons really like her, and she’s got a good heart, even if she’s a bit silly sometimes. She puts up with me when I’m cranky, and she always knows where to find the first spring berries.”
A strong vision of berries on a bush, red and plump and juicy, and remembered delight.
Lily knew that bush. It grew in swamps, and the berries weren’t nearly as tasty as they looked. It hurt her heart that those might be the best thing her dragon had eaten since the day she was born. “There are more kinds than that. Black ones and blue ones and shiny purple ones that are my very favorite. Kellen bakes them into pies sometimes.”
A flicker of interest, but the emptiness was closing in again. Lily gulped. She didn’t know how to push it back. It was too strong in this place. “Please. I need you to come with me.” She reached for Oceana with two hands and picked her up, almost wanting to shake her. “We’re supposed to be together. I can feel it, even if you can’t, but we can’t stay here.”
They’d go to sleep on the ledge together and never wake up, empty and cold and surrounded by water that only knew how to help things die.
Two black eyes studied hers, and then a blue-green tail wrapped around her arm.
It was all the answer she needed.
Chapter 5
Lily cuddled her dragon tight to her chest and made her way across the last stretch of water to her friends. They all stared, absolutely silent, as her steps rippled the water, stirring up dank smells. Alonia’s eyes were as big as stew bowls, but Sapphire and Kellen were smiling.
Lily nuzzled her chin into Oceana’s spikes and carefully made her way up the muddy incline. The relief she felt stepping out of the swamp was immense—and caused instant terror in the creature on her chest. Oceana hissed like a feral cat and stabbed her claws into Lily’s arms, her back spines sticking up every direction.
Lily nearly dropped her, wincing from the pain, and scrambled to hold onto her terrified dragon. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine. These are my friends.”
Oceana gave her a baleful glare and jumped out of her arms and back into the swamp. She swam over to a half-rotted log protruding out of the murk and climbed out, shaking droplets off her back. Then she shook the water off her wings and hissed again.
Alonia took a step back, mouth gaping. “Your dragon swims?”
That didn’t seem like their biggest problem at the moment. Lily grimaced and stepped back into the swamp, prepared to go tangle with a really annoyed dragon.
“Here.” Kellen pulled a small wrapped package out of the pouch at her waist. “It’s my fruit tart from last night.”
“She’s a baby,” Sapphire said dubiously, eyeing the still-hissing dragon. “She needs milk curds. That will hurt her belly.”
Kellen shook her head. “I don’t think she’s a baby. See how her spikes are darker on the tips? She’s old.”
Lily already knew that. She took two careful steps toward Oceana, trying to project a calm she didn’t feel. Black eyes watched her balefully, but the hissing had stopped. “These are my friends. They’re going to help me get you back to the village I told you about.”
She heard Alonia’s whispered protest, sharply cut off. There was no way they were taking a dragon to a wedding, even a really small one. Slowly, Lily unwrapped the smushed tart and broke off a small bit, holding it out on her palm. “Smell this. It tastes a whole lot better than fish.”
Oceana eyed the crumbs suspiciously.
Lily kept her voice low and singsong and took another step closer. “You must be hungry. You just woke up.”
A pink tongue flicked out and grabbed the tiny nibble of tart.
Lily waited. The black eyes didn’t look any friendlier, but she could feel surprise. Pleasure. “Liked that, did you?” She picked up the cloth that held the rest of the tart. “You can have the rest after we get out of this stinky pond.”
Kellen gasped quietly behind her, but Lily knew what she was doing. She’d watched Irin with the baby dragons and Kis often enough. Sometimes you just had to say how things were going to be. “I’ll carry you, but you need to let my friends be close by. They’ll help find us food and water and places to sleep on the way home.” Which was going to be roughing it, because all their packs were back at the wedding.
“I’m not sleeping in the dirt,” Alonia said crossly. “I know some trails through the forest we can take to go around the town, but we’ll pass close to the field on our way by. I’ll go get our things.”
“I’ll go,” Sapphire said dryly. “You’ll stop to talk to a boy and we’ll never see you again.”
Lily started to tell them all to be quiet, and then she saw Oceana’s head, tilting like she was listening. She backed up toward her friends and kept her eyes on her dragon. “Kellen should go get our things. She’ll have the least explaining to do.” The rest of them were in their dance finery, and any young woman still wearing that in the morning would have many questions to answer.
Oceana was still watching.
Lily backed up the mud slope and held out the fruit tart to her friends. “Want a bite?”
Alonia looked horrified, but Kellen held back a giggle. “I could eat the whole thing right now.”
A pink tongue slurped the entire tart before she finished speaking. Oceana danced away again, her tail back in the water, and glared balefully at Kellen.
Alonia shook her head. “She’s just like you, Lily. All piss and vinegar.”
Scared piss and vinegar, no matter what anyone else thought. Lily bent down. “You’re not going to like this next part. We’ll walk along the river for as long as we can, but we need to head deeper into the forest soon, away from the water, so no one sees you.”
Oceana felt puzzled.
They could explain the strange relationships of humans and elves and dragons later. “We’ll try to stop by water every night, but it’s going to be a dry and dusty walk.” She thought about the dim dark inside the ruins. “And the sun will shine on us all day long, so you’ll probably feel hot and itchy.”
Oceana’s tongue darted out and licked a crumb off her nose.
Kellen giggled. “She’s a dragon. They like sun and dust.”
Not this one. Lily knew that as well as she knew her own name. “She’s not like other dragons.”
Sapphire wrinkled her nose. “Can we maybe wash her off, if she doesn’t mind water? She doesn’t smell very good, and you don’t either.”
That was the best plan she’d heard in days. Lily held out her arm to Oceana. “Come on, stinky creature. Let’s go play in some clean water for a bit.”
Oceana didn’t move. She just sent a picture again. Of her room. Of her ledge.
Lily sighed and crouched down. The swamp and ruins didn’t seem like a place anyone would want to stay, but to her dragon, they were home. “You’ve never gone anywhe
re else, have you?”
No answer, but blue-green scales shivered, even though it wasn’t cold.
Lily shook her head. Great. She’d bonded with a swamp dragon. “Leaving your home isn’t fun. I know that. I remember leaving mine, and I was cranky for a long time. I missed all the food I knew and my favorite hiding places and even a couple of the people who were nice to me.” There hadn’t been a lot of those, mostly because she hadn’t been very nice back. “But the place I went was a lot better. I think you’ll like it there.”
Skepticism.
Lily snorted. People always tried to reason with dragons, and it never really worked. It was time to be tough again. “You can’t stay here. You’ll be safe in the dragon kin village.”
Black eyes narrowed.
Kellen squatted down beside Lily and smiled shyly at Oceana. “There’s a big oven in the kitchens there. I like making fruit tarts.”
Oceana tilted her head and made a soft whirring sound.
Lily grinned. Bribery worked too. “I’ll pick the berries. Now let’s go to the river and get clean. They won’t feed us if we smell like swamp monsters.”
Oceana blinked and marched off, nose in the air, straight toward the river.
Lily followed as fast as she could move her feet. They really did smell terrible.
Chapter 6
Lily plunked down in the dust at the side of the small trail they were following and glared at her dragon. “We can’t stop here. We need to get up this infernal hill and back down the other side and into the forest before somebody sees you.” Which would be a lot easier if Oceana hadn’t flatly refused to be carried. Zooming around in the forest was one thing, but out here, nobody was going to mistake her for a really oversized sparrow.