“Stop it!” he cried out angrily, standing up and bumping his forehead on a jutting rock. The pain communicated in a way his anger had not.
Akki lifted her hands as if warding off a blow. The thrumming stopped.
“We have to think,” Jakkin warned. “We have to think and watch and listen. Pay attention.”
As he spoke an image formed in his mind, a sending from Sssargon. The helicopter was making a series of quick spiraling passes over the mountains. Sssargon drifted along lazily, looking like any wild dragon out for a late evening fly. He buzzed the helicopter once, then banked away as if satisfied that the metal bird was not a threat. Jakkin saw the copter through Sssargon’s eyes: a heavy, mindless object in the middle of wind eddies, communicating great heat and nothing else. It had no feathers and no smell and seemed, in Sssargon’ s view, pilotless.
“The men inside,” Jakkin sent to the dragon, trying to make his images clear. Landscape, emotion, things of the senses passed so easily through a sending, but other things . . . “Look at the men inside, Sssargon. What do they wear? What do they look, like?” If Sssargon could send a description, they would know who the men were—Federation rocket pilots or wardens or rebels. “Look at the men.”
But the questions didn’t seem to interest the dragon and neither did the men in the copter. He sent only a vague impression of a human at the throttle, and then, having tired of this latest game, banked to the right and returned to the ledge. They caught his sending announcing a perfect back-winged landing. “Sssargon lands.” A slight thumping outside the cave as his heavy hind legs touched down confirmed this.
“Sssargon home. Sssargon home. Sssargon home.” The three jubilant sendings heralded him.
“Sssargon home. Sssargon hungers. Scratch Sssargon.”
“Hush!” Akki’s voice overrode the sending. “And stay put. We’re already too crowded in here.” The hushing was really for Jakkin’s benefit, for Sssargon had made no outward sounds. Like his mother before him, and like Sssasha, Sssargon was mute. Only those who could tune in on a dragon’s sending could hear him. But his sendings were always louder than necessary, like a young boy clamoring for attention. “Hush,” Akki repeated, her tone still commanding. But her sending to the dragon was far gentler.
Sssargon swept his wings back and lay down at the cave entrance, looking for all the world like a dozing dragon guarding his cache.
The copter flew by once more and, apparently satisfied, the pilot found an updraft and the copter was quickly gone.
4
THE WHIR OF the copter had faded long minutes past but still they sat in the cave, waiting. Sssargon hulked in the entrance.
At last Akki sighed. “We can go out now,” she said, but she said it in a whisper. Then she laughed. “What an idiot I am. What idiots we are. They couldn’t possibly hear us with all that noise anyway.”
Jakkin stood and started toward the cave entrance, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he went. The others followed after.
Sssargon refused to move.
“Sssargon stays. Sssargon needs scratching. Sssargon hungers. Sssargon wants—”
“Sssargon shuts up!” Jakkin hissed at him, and pushed at the dragon’s nose while simultaneously sending large blue daggers into the worm’s mind. The dragon rose reluctantly.
Akki caught up with Jakkin. “Who are they?” she asked. “Who was in the copter?”
“And why are they here? Were they looking for us or just flying by?” Jakkin countered.
Questions, like little scurrying animals, rushed back and forth across their bridged minds. The dragons broke through with their own questions about food. They cared little about the copter now that it was out of sight.
Jakkin shrugged and went back to the cave, emerging with a handful of wort. He shared it out, saving the largest portion for Sssargon.
“Brave Sssargon. Sssargon eats.” After his announcements the hatchling finished his wort in a single bite, then rose onto his hind legs and gave a hop that sent him some three feet straight up into the air. He pumped his wings at the same time and took off, rocketing up.
As if on cue, the triplets went after him, throwing themselves over the cliffside to catch different parts of the air current, tumbling and bumping in a kind of midair brawl.
Finally Sssasha stepped to the cliff edge.
She moved her long neck up and down, head bobbing, as if she were trying to figure out the winds. Her sendings were rosy bubbles in a slow-moving stream, calm and indecipherable. Then, apparently satisfied, she stepped off the cliff and, after a long, slow fall, unfurled her wings to their fullest with a soft shushing and floated to the valley below as if she weighed no more than a feather.
After a quiet minute, Jakkin said softly, “They’ve landed.”
“Yes,” Akki replied. “And they’re grazing. When they eat, their minds go blank and all I get from them is a kind of quiet chuckling.” She laughed. “I wonder if we do that, too?”
Jakkin walked away from the cliff edge and sat back down on his haunches. “Maybe dragons can afford to be mindless, but we have to think, Akki.”
“About what?” She flipped her braid to the front.
“About the copters and who may be searching for us and—”
“What makes you so sure they’re looking for us? They could be looking for anyone. They might be looking for dragons. Or sightseeing.” She shrugged. “It’s been months since we ‘died.’”
“Who else would they be looking for?”
“Rebels.”
“The rebels are in the cities, blowing things up. Why would they come out here? There’s nothing to destroy.” His tone was bitter. “It has to be us the copter was searching for. The Fedders wouldn’t waste a copter on anyone small. Sightseeing, ha! What can they see at night? As for dragons, if they want to see dragons, they go to the pits.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure!” Jakkin’s mind added a solid exclamation point.
Leaning against the rock face, Akki mused, “If they’re looking for us, it can’t be the Fedders. What Federation rules did we break?”
“That bomb we were tricked into carrying must have killed a lot of Federation starship crewmen at the pit,” Jakkin said.
“Jakkin, I know you dislike politics, but even you know that we are a Protectorate world, not a member of the Fed Congress. Not yet, anyway. That means the Fedders have no rights here. They’re bound by our laws. It’s the wardens who enforce those laws. If the Federation doesn’t like what’s going on here, there’s only one thing it can do.”
“Embargo!” Jakkin said.
“Exactly—embargo. No Fedder ships in and no Austarians out.”
Jakkin added grimly, “And no outside bettors for the pits. No imported metals. No contact with the Federation worlds for fifty years. If that happens, we won’t be popular.”
Akki laughed, but there was nothing happy in the sound. It was brief and hawking, more like a cough than a laugh.
“Well, it can’t be the rebels looking for us, can it?” Jakkin said, as much to order his own thoughts as to ask for an answer. “They don’t have copters, unless they’ve stolen one.” “They’d like to do that, I’m sure,” Akki put in.
“But stolen copter or not,” Jakkin continued, “why would they be looking for us?”
“I could still identify them,” Akki said. “At least some of them. At least Number One, the leader of my rebel cell.”
A picture of the man who called himself Number One exploded with an orange-red ferocity that startled Jakkin because Akki rarely sent anything that strong. One minute the rebel leader was there in Jakkin’s mind, his mustache a parenthesis around a slash of mouth, the next he was gone into a million blood red pieces all shaped like tears.
Jakkin stood and shook his head vigorously to clear it. “Akki, that doesn’t make sense. We’ve been out here for months and too many things will have changed for the rebels. No one will remember you or care.”
> “It may seem long to us, but Number One is the sort of man who’d pick at his own scab to keep a wound fresh. And you and I are the only ones who could identify him as the real bomber.”
Jakkin looked over at her, his eyes wide. “There were other members of Number One’s cell besides you, Akki.”
Her answering smile was grim. “Do you honestly think they’re still alive? That wasn’t his way. He thought we would die in the pit. If he found out we’d survived that, he’d check until he heard how we ‘died’ on the mountainside. He’d want to be sure.”
Jakkin thought a minute. “Someone must have come back and found . . . they must have discovered Heart’s Blood’s . . . they must have seen her . . .”
Akki came over and put her hand on his shoulder. “Say it, Jakkin. Say it and be done with it. If you never say it, it’s not real. Say Heart’s Blood’s bones. Someone must have found her bones and not found ours. Say it.”
“I don’t have to say it to know it.”
“Say it so you can be done with grieving. And done with the guilt.”
He moved away from her touch. “I’m not grieving. I’m not feeling guilty.” But his mind betrayed him again, for the pictures were all of red dragons lying in horrible bloody parts and a boy with a bloody knife standing beside her. Knowing the sending had reached her, Jakkin turned away and spoke in a low voice. “I didn’t cry when my father died under the claws of a feral dragon, though I was just a child when it happened. And I didn’t cry a year later when my mother died of overwork and loneliness. I didn’t cry when my friend, your father, Sarkkhan, was blown up in the Rokk Pit when it should have been me. And I won’t cry now.” But his sending turned gray and was shot through with blue tears, speaking a different truth.
Akki used the same quieting tone she used with the hatchlings. “It’s all right. It’s all right to cry, Jakkin.”
He shook his head. “We don’t have time for tears. We have to think. Someone knows we’re alive and is looking for us.”
“They may know we’re alive, but they don’t know everything,” Akki said. “They don’t know how we’ve changed. How we can see and hear with dragons’ eyes and ears. How we can talk to dragons and each other with sendings. How we can survive the cold of Dark-After.”
Jakkin nodded slowly.
“And they don’t know that we’re living here!” Akki said triumphantly.
“Here is where we shouldn’t be. Fewmets, Akki, why didn’t we see that before? It’s been crazy to stay so close . . . so close . . .” His voice stuttered off again, though his mind sent a picture of the mountain landscape broken into shards, the pieces looking remarkably like the bones of a dragon.
“You’re right,” Akki said. “If they look in Golden’s Cave or the Lookout or here . . . why, there’s no way anyone is going to believe dragons made those cups.” She gestured toward the cave.
“Or the braided vines,” Jakkin added. “Or the mattresses.” He looked out over the mountain pass, now hidden by the darkness. Once he’d seen it as a jagged, threatening landscape. Over the last months he’d come to know its beauty. And how it reminded him of a dragon’s necklinks, not only handsome but essential for defense. He and Akki knew these mountains as no one else did. They were part of the landscape now. But if the rebels found them, their lives would be forfeit. If the trackers were wardens or Fedders, and they were caught—well, there were worse things than death. Austar had no physical punishment excepting transportation. Break the laws a little, and you were fined. Break the laws a lot, and you were sent offworld, transported to another of the penal planets where life was even harsher than on the tamed Austar. Ice planets like Sedna or water planets like Lir, where the voices of dragons and the color patterns would be gone forever.
“Jakkin, please don’t do this.” Akki’s hands were pressed to her head. “Please talk to me. All I’m getting from you are sendings of windstorms and fire, snowstorms and storms at sea. That may be good enough for the dragons, but I need words as well.”
“Words? All right, then, how about these words—we’re leaving. Now. We’ll take jars of berries and boil but leave everything else.”
“Fine,” Akki said, her voice hushed. “We can find other caves. Better ones.” Her tone was cheery, but the picture from her mind was of empty, cheerless rooms.
Suddenly Jakkin wished she had disagreed and put up a fight. He wished she’d come up with an argument to make them stay. Yet he knew the decision to leave was the right one. Then why did he feel so bad?
“It’s all right, Jakkin,” Akki said. She put her arms around him.
He broke away angrily. “Lizard waste, Akki. How can I be strong when every little doubt or fear broadcasts itself to you. I hate it!”
Akki turned away, biting her lip and letting a stray apology wind into his mind. He fought the sending for a long, bitter moment, but at last accepted it, twined it with a blue braid, and let the two colors slowly fade as he walked back into the cave.
***
USING CARRY-SLINGS fashioned from woven weeds, they packed the jars, carefully separating them with mattress grass. They corked two jars of boil with pieces of wood Jakkin shaved down to fit. Then he helped Akki slip the smaller sling over her shoulders. She in turn helped him take up the heavier load.
Besides the food, they packed Jakkin’s knife, the old book of dragon stories Golden had given them, and a spear Jakkin had made by sharpening a dragon femur he’d found in one of the lower caves. They knew they’d have to browse for other food, but they were both expert scavengers by now. In the mountains berries, mushrooms, and skkagg for boil were common all year around. If they were lucky, in the higher meadows they might find lizard eggs and even kkrystals, the translucent six-legged insects that lived in lizard nests. A kkrystal dipped in beaten egg and crisped over a fire was delicious. Insects had no sendings, or at least none they could hear, and so Jakkin and Akki felt no remorse about eating them.
Akki walked around the cave one last time, as if memorizing it. There was so little there, yet it had taken them months to make it seem like home.
“We might never see it again,” she whispered.
“If we don’t leave soon, we might never see anything again,” Jakkin answered. Quite deliberately he shaped a picture of a copter in his mind, a blood red copter winging toward them. There were three men in it, one wearing a Fedder flight cap, one a warden’s hat, and the other had a mustache over a slash of mouth.
“If we don’t leave soon, I might change my mind,” Akki added.
Jakkin was glad she had said it, and he worked very hard to keep the same thought out of any of his own sendings.
Walking into the false dawn, they scarcely felt the bitter cold.
5
THEY WALKED UP the path for an hour in silence, both intent on masking their minds, the only sounds the occasional rattling of a loose pebble rolling down the mountainside or the pick-buzz of ilikka wings. Then the path widened and made a great turn and they found themselves in the Upper Meadows, a plateau some three kilometers across.
Even in the dark Jakkin knew the place. He did not need to see the gray-green furze cover broken by the mounds of berry bushes to recognize it. He knew there was a cliff face on one side that sat like the crown of a hat on the plateau’s brim. The place was engraved forever in his mind. It was here that Heart’s Blood had died for them. He drew in a deep breath, and when he let it out again it sounded like a sigh.
Akki reached over and touched his hand.
“I finally found a path, you know,” she said. “It’s through one of the caves. Well, not exactly a cave, but more like a tunnel.”
He didn’t answer, but they both had the same awful thought leaping in lightning strokes from mind to mind: If they had found the tunnel those many months ago, Heart’s Blood need not have died.
“Close your eyes, Jakkin, and I’ll lead you past.”
He knew she meant past the remains, the bones, all that was left of his beautiful red
dragon. Obediently he closed his eyes and held out his hand. At her touch his mind replayed the final scene when Heart’s Blood, smoke streaming from her nose slits, had risen in a hindfoot stand. Front legs raking the air, she had taken three shots fired at them from the near dark. One had struck the rocks right above her uplifted head. One had shattered the cliff beside Akki. And the third had raised a bloody flower on Heart’s Blood’s throat. He recalled how she fell, slowly, endlessly, forever.
Akki pulled him by the hand, whispering encouragements while he concentrated on not crying. When she stopped suddenly he almost fell over her.
“Bend your head,” she said, “and walk forward.”
Shuffling along, he felt the cool dampness of a tunnel surround him, like a dash at the end of a long sentence. He opened his eyes.
“The bones are outside,” Akki said quietly. “But that’s all they are—just bones. Not ghosts or demons or—”
“They’re Heart’s Blood’s bones,” Jakkin said. “And we both know it.”
She nodded. There was nothing more she could say.
***
THE TUNNEL WAS short and opened onto a steep pathway where strange half-shadows played on the path under a sky lightening into gray dawn. For several more hours they climbed, winding upward without speaking.
Jakkin could feel Akki’s longing for the caves they’d left, caves that were now only minor pocks in the landscape. That longing crossed his mind as an endless gray sending, but he didn’t let her know how much she had let her feeling leak out, for it began to occur to him that one way to become private was to respect another’s privacy. Instead he hummed monotonously to disguise his reaction.
When they reached a sharp switchback they both rested for a moment, drawing in deep breaths that slowly synchronized. Akki leaned against the rock wall and made no move to go on, but Jakkin stepped around the turn, doggedly determined to continue.