by Lyn Worthen
He moved slowly, caution in every motion. “Chelsea? Are you okay?”
I thought about the question for a second. “Umm…mostly?”
“I’m glad. We should get you home. Your mother is worried.” He sounded worried too, and I could guess why. It wasn’t hard.
The large lizard leaned down, touching my friend on the top of his head, then biting the back of his neck and giving him a shake. It wasn’t violent, more like a mother cat disciplining its off-spring. Apparently, both of us had left worried parents behind.
You helped Canusala, my son.
The voice which touched my mind this time was soft and distinctly feminine. I glanced at my father and saw his eyes widen. He’d heard her, too.
I cleared my throat and looked up, and up, at her. She was so huge it was hard to know where to look to meet her gaze. I chose one eye and focused there. “We helped each other.”
Why?
The question made me blink, and I hugged my aching legs closer to my chest, not daring to look down at the blood sticky fabric. “Because he was hurt and I could do something about it, so I did. Then he helped me fight the skitters.”
Skitters? She seemed to frown, her gaze drifting around the clearing before focusing on me again. Mantoptera. They have been long our enemy. They will eat our young if they can.
“They’ll eat our young too, ma’am.” My dad spoke, coming a few steps closer.
She snorted, her breath hotter than her son’s, almost uncomfortable. It seems we have some things in common, little human. More with the human than the mantoptera.
Dad reached my side, kneeling down and wrapping an arm around me. I almost started crying again at the relief of having him with me, but I wasn’t sure what the lizards would think of tears. I took a deep breath.
“Why can you speak to us, but he can’t?”
If it was possible for a winged lizard to be sheepish Canusala certainly looked it as I asked the question.
Lazy. He does not practice. She paused and nudged him in the side. Perhaps now he has reason to be more diligent.
In the distance the sky began to lighten, and a cry I now recognized as these lizards echoed on the breeze. There were more of them.
She rose, graceful despite the cramped quarters. We go to join the others now.
“Will we see you again?”
Yes! Canusala replied before his mother could. He was still too loud and both Dad and I winced.
Hrmph…we shall see. Go in safety, little humans. But do not be surprised if we visit you soon.
She bunched her legs up under her, leaping into the air. Her enormous wings flashed out, taking their first downstroke as she cleared the trees.
Canusala turned to us, butting me with his head. Glad am I to you meet.
I stroked the soft hide of his face and nodded. “Me, too.”
He stepped away and leapt as high as he could on his good legs. I could see he wouldn’t clear the trees, but it didn’t matter. As his jump reached the top of its arc, his mother was there, grabbing him and giving him a boost into the open air. His wings caught the morning thermals and as we watched the pair spiraled higher and then took off across the canopy towards the distant sea.
Dad shook his head, picking me up and carrying me to his bike like I was a little kid instead of nearly an adult. “I think you’ve got a lot of story to tell, sweetheart.” He glanced back at the sky and sighed, with a little smile. “I have to admit I never thought this morning would end with dragons.”
Dragons. I latched onto the term. “You know about them?”
“Not these, but I know stories from Earth.”
“I want to hear all of them.”
He kissed the top of my head, wrapping a compression sleeve around my leg before settling me on the bike. “Not until later. Right now you need a doctor and some dinner.”
He brought my ATV around, hooking it to his quad, and drove us out of the woods. As the clearing disappeared behind us I couldn’t help scanning the brightening sky, listening to the retreating cries of my new dragon friends.
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Melissa McShane is the author of twenty fantasy novels, including Servant of the Crown, Burning Bright, and The Book of Secrets. She lives in the shelter of the mountains out West with her husband, four children and a niece, and two very needy cats. She wrote reviews and critical essays for many years before turning to fiction, which is much more fun than anyone ought to be allowed to have. You can visit her at her website www.melissamcshanewrites.com for information on other books and upcoming releases.
About this story, Melissa says: “In planning this story, I thought about rites of passage and what a young dragon might be expected to do to prove herself an adult. That led me to all the old stories of dragons capturing princesses, generally for no reason other than to give knights something to do on a rainy Saturday, and I started to wonder what could possibly motivate those dragons – and what might happen if dragons didn't understand human culture or biology very well. So culture clash, and an unlikely friendship, are at the heart of this story.”
I asked Melissa to look beyond the “traditional” dragons for her story, and she rose to the challenge, giving us one of the few feathered serpents in this collection, in a setting far from the medieval castles of Europe – and a tale that, like its characters, is about more than outward appearances.
The Prize
Melissa McShane
The sun had barely touched the red granite peaks of the Achtotetl Mountains when Xochitl left her parents’ cavern, slipping through the narrow entrance without so much as scraping her scales along its edges or losing a feather from her wings. Likely, any of the flight seeing her awake this early would assume she was going on the hunt, but she intended to take no chances. She didn’t want an audience, not until she could return in triumph with her prize.
Once she had slithered high enough to be out of sight of the flight, she made her way southward, toward the Gash that separated the Lower Achtotetls from her rocky home. Flying would draw the flight’s attention, so she slid along the ground between the stones, serpent-like, using her slender arms for balance. Dust rose in the wake of her passage, working its way between her scales and dulling the soft feathers that covered the great arched ribs of her wings, but she wasn’t so vain as to sacrifice stealth for beauty. When she’d succeeded, she would take to the heights and let the powerful winds scour her clean.
The dust gave her an idea, though, and she amused herself by blending in with the surrounding stone, turning the bright emerald of her smooth scales and the crimson and ruby of her feathered wings a rough, black-spotted dusty red. Now that she was fifty-five and not a child anymore, she could maintain the illusion for hours if she had to. Someday, she would be as good a hunter as her mother, far better than her sister Pehuani.
Xochitl scowled at the thought of Pehuani. Beautiful, speedy, gifted at illusion, everybody’s favorite. She’d triumphed at her coming of age ten years ago, on her own fifty-fifth birthday, bringing home not one, but two humans, one of them a musician who’d written a song about Pehuani’s beauty. As if anyone cared about human music, with its banging and tootling, written only for what the ear could perceive. Well, Xochitl intended to do far better.
She would capture a princess.
Xochitl pulled herself up a sheer cliff face and wrapped her whip-like tail around the ledge at the top. Ahead, the Gash stretched like a black river cutting the red rocks in two. The narrow canyon was well-trafficked by humans, who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the dragons who lived nearby. Probably didn’t know, as humans had strange ideas about dragons, who resembled human gods closely enough to have caused embarrassing interactions in the past. Nothing lived on the stone this high in the mountains, but broad-winged gray birds flew overhead, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten yet. She sternly told her stomachs to quiet down and continued her careful pace. Once she had her prize, she would roast a bird or four.
She had found the hidden fold five twelve-days before, while out hunting. Nobody else in the flight ventured this far south, not out of fear of humans – who could be afraid of such soft, fragile creatures? – but because there was better hunting north and east of the Achtotetls. So no one else had discovered what Xochitl had: that the human travelers knew things an ambitious young dragon could use.
At first, there was little of any importance. News about traders traveling to and from the human cities on either side of the mountains. The knowledge that something the humans called bandits had been eradicated from the Gash. Xochitl gathered these were a type of human that preyed on other humans. What a ridiculous, barbaric concept.
More travelers appeared, these ones intent on speaking with the humans’ ruler. Their king. Then the travelers’ thoughts were filled with the knowledge that a princess would travel the Gash to marry the king of a city with the tongue-tangling name of Tehuaxaco. Xochitl knew from the musician’s stories that humans took marriage nearly as seriously as dragons did their own rituals. Capturing a princess on the way to her marriage… surely she would matter to the humans, and would be well-guarded, and that would be a challenge that would prove Xochitl’s worthiness to join the ranks of the adults.
The sun rose higher, warming the air to a degree Xochitl found uncomfortable. So much better to let the cold winds of the airy heights ruffle her feathers. She shifted position and waited.
Soon she heard, faintly, the sound of many feet marching along the hard-packed earth of the humans’ road. A shiver of excitement went through her, and the ruff of feathers at the base of her neck frilled out in anticipation. She calmed herself and waited for the caravan to come within range of her thoughts. This had to be it.
…only another ten miles… The thought brushed her mind like gossamer butterfly wings. She opened her mind to its fullest, and more thoughts came:
…so tired of this journey…
…wonder if the king’s men will feed us…
…princess is a spoiled brat…
Xochitl’s excitement grew. She didn’t care what kind of human the princess was so long as she made a good prize.
The scent of human bodies reached her now, tickling her nose and rousing her hunger – though of course she wouldn’t eat another rational creature. That would be uncivilized and disgusting. But they smelled of game, as if some of them carried meat, and Xochitl had to remind herself of her goal.
The sound of wood rubbing against wood, squeaking like mice and creaking like trees in a storm, joined the sound of feet on the road. The humans weren’t talking, but Xochitl clearly caught a thought, sharper and more intent than the rest: this would be a good place for an ambush.
Xochitl’s lips stretched in a smile, one of the few expressions humans and dragons had in common. She knew what an ambush was. And she had an excellent sense of the dramatic.
She grabbed the ridge in front of her with her six-clawed hands and hauled herself up and out of the fold, snapping her wings open and dropping her concealment. The sunlight caught her crimson wings and made the feathers glow like a burning sunset, and the green and gold of her scales sparkled in the sunlight. She flapped a few times, gaining altitude, then dove at the caravan, folding her wings to gain speed, then spreading them wide to skim over the procession.
She saw them now, a line of travelers arrayed before and after a contraption of wood draped in finely woven cottons – a litter, she corrected herself, proud of knowing the right human word. Human males in loincloths scattered. Some brandished spears and strange long wooden paddles whose black stone edges glinted, but she was already past and rising for another run.
The four males bearing the litter had dropped their burden and run. One human wearing a colorful robe and golden earrings ran to the litter and crouched beside it. Xochitl couldn’t make out what she was saying, and her thoughts were a confused tangle easily blocked out, but she had an air of authority and calm competence that reminded Xochitl of Ilhuicatl, the dragon queen and someone Xochitl wanted desperately to impress. This had to be the princess.
She swung around, filling her lungs with warm air that stank of sweat and fear, and glided past, roaring at the humans who hadn’t run. The sound filled the Gash until the air shook with it. Humans dropped their weapons and flung their hands over their ears, crying out in pain and fear. Xochitl made another turn and flapped her wings once, twice, gaining speed. She flexed her tail, making the tuft of feathers at its tip spread wide. This would take expert timing.
The princess looked up just as Xochitl’s whip-like tail closed around her waist and lifted her off the ground. She sucked in air filled with the dust raised by Xochitl’s attack as if she wanted to scream, but coughed and gasped instead. Xochitl flapped her wings again, gaining altitude, and prayed the princess wouldn’t struggle. There was always a chance the human would put up enough of a fight to be dangerous to herself, and while Xochitl had never dropped anything unintentionally, she might accidentally crush the princess in her coils, and that would look bad.
But the princess didn’t struggle. Xochitl glanced down at her, wondering if the human was unconscious, but she clung too tightly to Xochitl’s tail for that. She had her face pressed against Xochitl’s scales, with her short black hair completely concealing her features. Xochitl breathed out in relief.
She flew north paralleling the mountains for a dozen dozen heartbeats and then descended to the foothills beyond the forest, where she landed gracefully on her belly, holding her tail well off the ground. Closing her wings around her torso, she gently set the princess down on the scruffy, dry grass and released her. The human clung to Xochitl’s tail, her eyes closed, for a heartbeat or two before letting go and staggering backward on those long, awkward-looking legs.
“Holy One,” she said, falling to her knees.
That was more evidence that Xochitl’s captive was of royal birth. Human commoners were more terrified of dragons than worshipful. The princess’s reverence, to Xochitl’s surprise, embarrassed her.
“I’m a dragon, not a god,” she said. “Get up.”
“But you look like a god,” the princess said. “I thought dragons were animals, incapable of speech.”
“Well, now you know better. Get up and stop groveling.”
The princess slowly got to her feet. “What do you want with me?” she asked, staring down Xochitl with startling brown eyes. In a dragon, such a color would mean blindness, but the princess obviously saw her.
“I won’t hurt you, princess,” Xochitl said. “You’re my prize.”
“I’m your—” The princess blinked. She straightened her blue and red robe and said, “How do you speak my language?”
“It’s the other way around,” Xochitl said. “Humans learned their language from dragons. But I’d still understand your words even if we didn’t share a language. I can take the knowledge from your mind.”
“You read minds?”
“More or less.”
The princess took a few brave steps forward. “Why do you want a princess? To eat?”
Xochitl scowled. “Dragons don’t eat humans. That’s disgusting. Do you want to ride, or should I carry you?”
“I don’t understand.”
Xochitl sighed, letting a trickle of smoke escape one nostril, and sat up on her tail, ready to pounce if the princess showed signs of fleeing. But the human sounded more curious than afraid. That was a good sign. Some prizes panicked, or burst into tears, or tried to attack, and that all looked bad
for the young pre-adult who captured them. “You’re my prize,” she said patiently. “Capturing you and caring for you for a twelveday shows I’m responsible enough to be an adult.”
“An adult.” The princess’s eyes narrowed. “And you needed a princess to be an adult?”
“Nobody in the flight has captured a princess for as long as anyone can remember,” Xochitl said. Pride swelled her heart. It had worked! “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. I’ll take you to your king when the twelveday is over.” And she wouldn’t be in Pehuani’s shadow anymore.
“I see,” the princess said. “And what would you have done if you hadn’t captured a princess?”
“Tried again later,” Xochitl said. “I – it was important that it be a princess.”
“Oh.” The princess tilted her head to look Xochitl in the eye. “How did you know I was a princess?”
Xochitl gestured with a slender hand, the claws retracted in case it scared her prize. The other humans had all been astonished that dragons had arms, even if they were small and relatively weak. “You aren’t carrying a weapon,” she said, “and your clothes are bright and colorful. We know human women like that kind of thing.”
“Oh,” the princess said again. “That… makes sense, I suppose. But this can’t be where you’re going to keep me for twelve days.”
“No, I have a place prepared,” Xochitl said. “With the flight. So, do you want to ride, or should I carry you?”
“Ride… a dragon?” The princess sounded startled, but not alarmed. “Really?”
“I thought, since you’re a princess, it might look more noble.”
The princess walked around to where she could look more closely at Xochitl’s back. “It’s as if you were made for human riders,” she said, mostly to herself.
Xochitl snarled and swung her head around, almost in the princess’s face. “Don’t ever say that again,” she said. “Dragons aren’t human pets.”
The princess recoiled. “Sorry,” she said. “I just meant it looks like I won’t fall off. I would love to ride, if that’s still acceptable.”