by Colt, K. J.
Her only redeeming feature, Laira thought, was her eyes. On their own, they were perhaps ordinary. But in her gaunt face, they seemed unusually large, a deep green tinged with blue. Whenever Zerra forced her to stare at her reflection—to see her slanted chin, her crooked mouth, her sheared hair like ragged porcupine quills—Laira would focus on those large green eyes. They are my mother’s eyes, she thought. And they are beautiful.
And so no—it was not Zerra’s scars that frightened Laira today, for she was no prettier. It was the rage in his eyes—the rage that promised another beating, that promised days of hunger, that promised he would hurt her, break her, make her regret every word and beg for mercy.
I need not fear him, Laira thought, staring up into his eyes. My father is a great prince in a distant kingdom. My mother told me. I am descended of greatness. I—
She was so weary with hunger—she had not eaten in a day—that she didn’t even see his fist moving. It slammed into her head, knocking her into the mud.
She lay for a moment, dazed. Her head spun. She wanted to get up. She wanted to fight him.
I can turn into a dragon, she thought. I did it once. I can do it again. I can burn him. I—
The vision of her mother reappeared in her mind, interrupting her thoughts—a memory of the woman burning at the stake, screaming.
I promised. I promised I would never shift again.
A weight pressed down on her wrist and Laira whimpered. Through narrow eyes, she saw Zerra stepping on her, smirking, and she thought he would snap her bone, tear off her hand. He wiped his other foot upon her face, smearing her with its filth.
“You’re right,” he said. “You are worse than shite. Your mother was no better.” He snorted. “I know what she told you. She claimed she had bedded some southern prince, that she spawned a princess. But you are filth. You are only a princess of worms. You will never leave this place. And someday . . . someday I will uncover the reptilian curse in you too, and you will burn like she did.”
He kicked her stomach and Laira doubled over. Through floating stars of pain, she saw him walk downhill toward their camp.
She lay wheezing and trembling. With her crooked jaw, she couldn’t even cough properly. She should be thankful, she knew. He had not broken her bones this time. He had not cut off her ears, which he had often vowed to do, or burned her body, another common threat. He had shown her mercy today.
“I must be strong,” she whispered. “I am the daughter of a prince.”
She closed her eyes, trying to remember that distant kingdom across the sea. Laira had been only three years old when Mother had fled with her, coming to this northern land, for the cursed ones—those who could become dragons—were hunted in Eteer too. In a haze, Laira saw faded images, perhaps memories, perhaps the stories Mother had told. Towers in sunlight. A great port that thrust into a city of countless homes. Walls topped with soldiers and lush gardens that grew atop the palace roof. Laira had seen villages here in the north; Zerra sometimes stopped at these small settlements, trading meat and fur for bronze and ale. But their old city across the sea . . . that was a place a thousand times the size, its houses not built of mud and straw but of actual stone.
“I want to go back home,” Laira had once begged her mother. “Please. I hate the cold north. I hate this tribe. I want to go home.”
Mother had only hushed her, kissed her brow, and smoothed her hair. “We cannot. We bear a secret, a magic of dragons. We had to flee Eteer, and Zerra is kind to us. Zerra gave us a new home. Hush now, Laira, my sweetness.”
Laira had blinked away tears and clung to Mother. “Is my father still there?”
Mother had rocked her. “Yes, my child. Your father is still there, a great warrior prince.” She showed Laira her amulet, the silver sigil of Taal, the god of the south. “This is the amulet he gave me, an amulet to protect us. You are descended of royalty. Never forget that, even here, even in our exile.”
Yet what was royalty worth, Laira thought, if she could not return? Cursed with reptilian blood, they had fled the distant land of Eteer. Yet how was Goldtusk any safer? Mother had died here. Laira suffered here.
“Should I flee this tribe as Mother fled her old kingdom?” Her eyes stung. “Dare I fly to that fabled, secret place . . . the escarpment? The hidden land where they say other dragons live?”
Tears streamed down Laira’s bruised face, mingling with the mud. Others like her . . . humans able to become dragons . . . cursed, outcast, afraid. Men whispered of them. They said that Zerra himself had a twin brother, a weredragon, a leader of weredragons. Could it be true? Or was the escarpment just a myth as Mother had claimed?
Laira sighed. If she fled this tribe to seek a legend, she was likely to die. The escarpment lay many marks away; a single mark was a distance too far for her to cross alone, let alone many. In this world of harsh winters and roaming beasts, even a dragon could not survive alone. Her mother’s words echoed in her mind from beyond the years.
There are no others, Laira. Only us. We are alone. And Goldtusk is our home.
“Goldtusk is my home,” Laira whispered.
She pushed herself up onto wobbling arms. Bedraggled and covered in mud, she stared downhill toward their camp. The tribe’s tents rose across the misty valley, made of animal hides stretched over branches. Their totem pole rose among them, carved with animal spirits, topped with the gilded mammoth tusk they worshiped, the god Ka’altei. Deer, hares, and fowl roasted upon campfires, and the tribesmen, clad in fur and leather, tended to the meat.
The tribe’s source of power, a flock of rocs, stood tethered outside the camp. Great vultures the size of dragons, they gathered around a mammoth carcass, tearing into the meat with sharp beaks. Those beaks were large enough to swallow Laira whole. As she watched, the tribe hunters—tall, strong, and sporting jewelry of clay, bronze, and even gold—walked toward the beasts. One by one, they mounted the rocs and took flight, brandishing bows and roaring hunting cries.
“The hunters are strong and proud,” Laira said to herself, watching as they soared. “They are the nobility of Goldtusk. They are never beaten, never spat upon, never afraid.”
She rose to her feet, hugged herself, and stared at the hunters flying into the distance, their rocs shrieking.
“My old kingdom is forbidden to me,” Laira whispered. “The escarpment is but a myth. But I am the child of a warrior prince. I am noble and I am strong.” She clenched her small fists. She would become what she had vowed the day her mother had died. “I will be a huntress.”
That evening, the hunters returned upon their rocs, singing the songs of their totems. The great birds shrieked, beating their rotted wings, holding game in their talons: deer, boar, and buffalo. With splatters of blood, they tossed the carcasses down between the tents. Soon great campfires burned, and the game roasted upon spits, filling the camp with delicious aromas.
The women returned too, placing down baskets of berries, nuts, and mushrooms collected from a nearby grove. Though not as honored as the hunters, the gatherers too were praised; tribesmen blessed their names and reached into their baskets, feasting upon their finds.
Songs rose and ale, traded in what villages they passed, flowed down throats. One tribeswoman played a lyre, and people clapped and danced. Teeth bit into the roast meat and grease dripped down chins.
Laira spent the feast serving the others. She sliced off slabs of meat and rushed to and fro with clay bowls. She collected what bones the diners tossed into the dirt, bringing them to the camp dogs in their pen. She kept scurrying to the nearby stream, returning with buckets of water, then filling cups and serving the thirsty.
Never did she eat herself. When once she only sniffed at a bone, Zerra made sure to march over, slap her cheek, and tell her that bones were for the dogs, that she was merely a maggot. She kept working, belly growling and mouth watering.
When the feast ended, she could rummage through the mud. She would always find a few discarded nuts, bones, an
d sometimes even animal skin. As Laira worked, slicing and serving and rushing about, she made sure to drop little morsels—when nobody was looking—into the mud. She would dig them up later, and she would give her belly some respite.
As the sun set and the stars emerged, Laira drew comfort from the sight of the new stars, the ones shaped like a dragon—the Draco constellation. Mother would tell her that these stars blessed them, gave them a magic others thought was a curse. Laira glanced up and prayed silently.
Please, stars of the dragon, look after me. Give me strength to hide your magic. Give me strength to fly.
The feast died down. Men lay patting their full bellies, women nursed their babes, the rocs fed upon carcasses, and the dogs fought over scraps. Laira still had much work to do. She would be up half the night, collecting pottery and washing it in the river. But for now, she had a more important task.
Hands clasped behind her back, she approached her chieftain.
Zerra sat upon a hill overlooking the totem pole. Several of his hunters sat around him, drinking ale, gnawing on bones, and belching. When the men saw her approach, they lowered their mugs and narrowed their eyes. Zerra grunted and shifted upon the boulder he sat on.
“Return to your work, wretch.” He spat. “Wash our pottery and clean up our scraps, then sleep among the dogs where you belong.”
Laira took a shuddering breath. She thought of her mother’s eyes. She thought of the stars above. She thought of her distant home, a mere haze of memory. She raised her crooked chin—the chin he had shattered—and tried to speak in a clear, loud voice. That voice was slurred now, another victim of Zerra’s fist, but she gave it all the gravity she could.
“I can do more than clean and serve, my chieftain.” She squared her narrow shoulders. “Allow me to serve you better. One of your hunters has fallen to the fever. One of your rocs, the female Neiva, is missing a rider. Tomorrow let me mount Neiva. Let me hunt with you.”
For a moment the men stared at her, eyes wide.
Then they burst out laughing.
Zerra tossed his empty bowl at her. It slammed into her face and shattered. She gasped and raised her fingers to her cheek; they came away bloody.
Not waiting for more abuse, Laira turned and fled.
She spent that night trembling as she worked—scrubbing dishes in the stream, cleaning fur tunics, and collecting bones for the dogs. Her blood dripped and her belly felt too sour for food. When finally her work was done, she curled up among the dogs. They licked her wounds, and she held them close, and her eyes dampened.
“I am a daughter of a prince,” she whispered into their fur, trembling in the cold. “I am blessed with forbidden magic. I will be strong. I will hunt.”
When dawn broke, the tribe moved again. They packed up their tents. They mounted their totem on wheels. Their hunters flew above upon rocs, shrieking in the wind, while the rest of the tribe shuffled below through the mud.
Laira brought up the rear as always. Sometimes, walking here at the back, she had dreamed of slinking behind a tree, running to the hills, even shifting into a dragon and flying away. But the rocs forever circled above, and if she lingered too far behind, Zerra would swoop down and lash her with his crop. And so she walked on, weak with hunger, her head spinning, following the others. She had not eaten more than morsels in days, and her belly rumbled, but there was no food to be found. When they crested a hill lush with grass and bushes, she picked a few mint leaves and chewed them, staving off the hunger for a while. When she saw worms in the dirt, she managed to grab one. She swallowed it down quickly before disgust overwhelmed her.
That evening she served the camp again, preparing food, cleaning, washing. And again she approached Zerra.
He sat upon a fallen log thick with mushrooms, gnawing on a bison rib. Laira stood before him, half his size, a weary little wisp of a thing. She raised her chin, straightened her back, and said, “Let me hunt.”
He clubbed her with the bone, then laughed as she fled.
“I will be a huntress,” she vowed that night, huddling with the dogs. Among them she found a bone with some meat still on it, and she ate the paltry meal. “I am the daughter of a prince. I am blessed with forbidden magic. I am strong and I will hunt.”
Because hunting did not only mean honor, a rise in status, and perhaps true meals and no more beatings. Lying among the dogs, Laira stared up at the dragon stars.
Hunting meant flying.
She had never forgotten the beating of her wings, the feel of open air around her. She had flown only once as a dragon, the day her mother had died, but the memory still warmed her in the cold.
“If I cannot fly as a dragon again,” she prayed to those stars, “let me fly upon a roc, a proud huntress of my tribe.”
For six nights she approached Zerra, demanding to join the hunters. For six nights he scoffed, tossed bowls or bones or stones her way, and laughed at her pain.
On the seventh night, she waited until he retired to his tent.
That night she approached that tent, the greatest one in the camp, a towering structure of tiger pelts and cedar branches topped with gilded skulls. Fingers trembling, Laira did something she knew could mean death, could mean burning at the stake.
She pulled back the leather flap and she stepped into her chieftain’s home.
He sat upon a flat stone, polishing his leaf-shaped sword with oil and rag. None in the Goldtusk tribe knew the secrets of metal; only the loftiest warriors owned jewelry of gold or knives of copper. Most still tipped their arrows with flint. A sword of pure bronze, captured from the corpse of a great champion from the northern villages, was the most valuable artifact the tribe owned aside from their gilded tusk. It signified to all that Zerra was mightiest of his tribe.
But I come from a kingdom of bronze, Laira told herself. Mother told me that thousands of warriors there wield bronze khopeshes—great swords shaped as sickles—and that my father leads them all. I will be brave. I will not fear this man.
Before he could rise to his feet and strike her, she spoke.
“Why do you hurt me?”
He froze, risen to a crouch, and stared at her. He said nothing.
Her voice trembled and her knees felt weak, but she would not look away. She stared into his eyes—one baleful and blazing, the other drooping in the ruined half of his face.
“I did not burn you,” she said, voice slurred from the wounds he had given her. “My mother had the curse. She could become the reptile. And she paid for her sins. I am not diseased.” Her eyes stung and she clenched her fists, refusing to cry before him. “You beat me. You starve me. You make me sleep with the dogs. But I am no reptile. I am not my mother. I have served you well, and whenever you beat me down, I stood up again. Whenever you hurt me, I grew stronger. My face is ruined now as yours is. And our spirits are both strong.” She took a step closer. “In the mud, in the dog pen, in puddles of my own blood, I proved my strength to you. Let me show you this strength upon a roc, a bow in my hand. I will hunt with you, and I will prove that I’m worth more than scrubbing your feet.” She took another step, raised her chin, and stared at him with all the strength she could summon. Her tears were gone. “I will kill for you.”
Slowly, his joints creaking, he rose to his feet. He loomed over her; the top of her head did not even reach his shoulders. He stank of ale, sweat, and his old injury.
“You have the curse.” His voice was low, full of danger. “You lie, maggot. Your mother had the reptile in her veins. You carry it within you too.”
“I do not!” She raised her chin, staring up at him, refusing to cower. She would show him her strength in this tent. “You lie to yourself so you may hurt me. I cannot fly as a dragon, but I will fly upon a roc.” She raised her fist. “I am small and weak; you made me so. But my spirit is as strong as bronze.”
Quick as a striking cobra, he reached out and clutched her throat.
She gasped, unable to breathe.
“Your spirit is s
trong?” He leaned down to bring his face close to hers. His breath assailed her. “I could just . . . tighten my grip. And your neck would just . . . snap. Like a pheasant bone. You are a woman, and all women are weak.”
She sputtered, struggling for air, forcing down the urge to strike him. His grip loosened just the slightest, and she whispered hoarse words.
“I am a woman, yes, my chieftain. And I have a woman’s strength.” Even as he held her throat, she tugged at the lacing of her cloak. The patchwork of rat furs fell to the ground. “I have a woman’s gifts to give.”
He released her throat, and she gasped and held her neck, sucking in deep breaths. He took a step back and admired her. She stood naked before him, chin still raised.
She was not comely, Laira knew. Years of hunger had left her body frail. She had not the wide hips or rich breasts the men liked to carve into their images of stone. Red marks covered her skin—the scars of the leeches Shedah, the tribe’s shaman, often placed upon her. The crone would mix the blood in potions she drank; she claimed that the blood of a princess gave her long life. Shedah lingered on in her mockery of life, and the leechcraft left Laira bruised and added to her fragility.
And yet, despite her meager size and marked body, lust filled Zerra’s eyes. Men such as him, hunters and conquerors, were easy to please. They saw every woman, even a scrawny and broken thing like her, as lands to conquer.
“I will give you this body,” she said. “But my chieftain . . . you must give me a roc.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and strangely she no longer trembled. She was no longer afraid. She did not feel exposed. She felt, for the first time in years, in control of her life.
This body, she thought, is the only power I have left.
He doffed his own cloak and removed his tunic. He stood naked before her. The scar that covered half his face—the burn of dragonfire—spread down half his body, twisting his arm, chest, and leg, and even half his manhood bore the marks.