Chapter 4 – The Red Islands
“How do we stay on?” Farthing had been told the story of the saddle and Geezen had made him promise to never suggest such a thing, even in jest, but the dragon’s back looked dangerous and exposed without some sort of harness.
“Well, there are two ways,” the dragon said archly. “You can sit in a basket like some baby while I carry it, though I may accidentally drop it if I get sleepy. Or you can sit on my back and hang on for dear life!”
“You can sleep while you are flying?” Farthing was amazed and more than a touch concerned.
“Oh, yes, every dragon can do it. Of course I can’t!” she yelled at him. “I would fall out of the bloody sky!”
“We need to start,” Weasel said with none of his usual humour. He was clean with a new robe (Farthing and Barkles had ceremoniously burned his old one) and was tying a soft bag around his shoulders. He walked up to the dragon, bowed his head slightly and asked formally, “Fren-Eirol, may I ride?” It was the old, almost forgotten formality that had existed in the sea dragon community before his saddle stunt. The dragon blinked in surprise and dropped her shoulder and a wing.
“You may ride, but ride as one who knows how to fly with grace,” she replied formally. Weasel nodded and lightly stepped up on to the strong wing and sat softly on her mid back. Farthing hesitated, unsure what to do. The dragon leaned down to him and whispered.
“Say as he said, but don’t worry, we’ll only do it this once.”
Farthing was not sure he understood, but he did as was asked. Giving a very awkward bow, he spoke the same words.
“Fren-Eirol, may I ride?”
“You may ride, but ride as one who knows how to fly with grace,” she replied formally once again. He looked uncertain what to do next and gingerly tried to step up on her wing, afraid he might hurt her.
“Oh, the gods, we will be here all day!” the dragon exclaimed, and she grabbed his belt with her teeth and flung him over her shoulders on to his stomach. He rapidly sat up, blushing like mad. Geezen walked up to the dragon, suppressing a grin.
“Fly well, Fren-Eirol. They are your charges now.”
“We spoke more this morning.” She nodded towards the magician who was showing Farthing how to hold on without annoying the dragon. “He cannot pick up a trace and he will definitely need the mountain peak at Taken before he can pick them up again. They are three days ahead of us and it will take me a good week to get there, maybe longer if the winds are not in our favour. Then he will have to get up to the top of the mountain and try from there. If it was a trade boat, we might be waiting for them at Taken, but this small vessel must be moving unnaturally fast to have escaped his senses so quickly. Perhaps they have a wind talker though I haven’t heard of one for years. I worry that we will still be behind them and I will be exhausted.”
“And if that is the case?” asked Geezen, almost afraid of the answer.
“Then do not expect us back this season. If we have to go to Bind, then we have a whole continent to search.” Geezen stepped back from the dragon. “Boy,” the dragon said to Farthing. “Don’t lose that scrawny fool. We will need him.” She bunched her powerful legs, leant forward and leapt into the air.
Barkles walked up to Geezen as they watched the dragon circle over the town looking for a column of warm air to aid her flight.
“There is a sight only from fairy tales. Geezen, there is nothing we can do now,” he told her quietly. “Apart from waiting.” He put his hand on her shoulder in the manner of an old friend.
“True, but I won’t be left here knitting clouds,” Geezen said. “I will have words with that Pepperpot and he will take notice if he knows what is good for him!”
Barkles laughed but hid a frown. Geezen was respected, well known, and had lived in Slypa Burh when young, but she was not immune from the back-stabbing politics that had plagued Redust in recent times. She was treading a dangerous path.
Farthing, meanwhile, was feeling sick.
“I am feeling…oh shit!”
“Don’t even think about it,” Weasel warned. “Think of nothing but the back of her head, and when you have that vision solidly fixed in your mind, then slowly look up between the horns of her crest and nowhere else. That is all you need to worry about for the moment.”
The thin magician was sitting cross-legged at ease on the dragon’s wide, mid-back, leaning against an enormous pack that the dragon had fastened on to carry their gear, while Farthing sat just below her neck, holding on with his knees as the magician had shown him. Weasel’s voice had changed since they had taken off. His accent had mellowed and become gently lilting and wry. It was as if he had travelled back to an older age.
“You sound different,” Farthing commented, trying not to think of the circling that was taking them higher and higher over Wead-Wodder.
“He has forgotten to pretend to be stupid,” the dragon called back, breathlessly. “Not that it needed much pretence,” she added, baiting the finder. Weasel said nothing. He was looking through his bag, keeping his own counsel.
“How long do we go in circles?” Farthing was trying to stay his stomach, but this spiralling flight was making it near impossible.
“I am not a bird,” the dragon pointed out. “I can fly, but I need the high winds to make decent progress and I cannot keep up this flapping around for long. Once we get high enough, I can let the winds do some of the work, though they will be against us till I get much higher.”
“If they are against us, then won’t that slow the boat too?”
“Not necessarily.” Weasel lifted his head from his bag. “The high winds vary little in their direction, just in their speed and position, whereas the lower winds can be at the whim of any storm or guidance.”
“Guidance?” Farthing had not heard of people guiding winds before.
“He is talking about wind talkers,” the dragon explained.
“The fishermen talk of wind talkers, but they are a myth, I thought,” Farthing said.
“Might as well be. I haven’t heard of one for years; centuries maybe. There may not be any alive for all I know,” Weasel said evasively.
“You don’t sound like you believe that,” Fren-Eirol called back. Weasel just shrugged and went back to his bag. “Either way, this is as high as I can get here. There won’t be any talking now for a while.”
“Why?” Farthing asked, but the dragon turned herself into the wind and powered up to the fierce air currents that snaked across the sea. Within a second, the roar of the wind drowned out any remaining thoughts and Farthing bowed his head down to the dragons back to keep the wind from his eyes.
The dragon’s wings stretched out wider than Farthing thought possible. Only now could he really see the sheer magnificence of this irascible creature. Her silver and pale-blue skin and the vastness of her blue-white body reflected the lightly cloudy sky and seemed almost translucent. She was the biggest of the female sea dragons and was bigger too than some of the males, but Farthing had only seen her on the ground in any detail and never with her wings spread as they were now. This was for high flight, out of the vision of most, and few would witness it. The dragon curled her wings forward slightly, gliding for the moment and Farthing felt a kick as she used the force of the wind to give her lift. Far faster than their tortuous, circling ascent, the dragon shot up to dizzying heights. Slowly, the rush of air settled and the dragon started a slow, rhythmical beat of her wings, moving them forward over the ocean, leaving the security of the land behind.
Farthing let out the breath he was holding, searching for something to say.
“Do not talk, boy.” The dragon turned her head and fixed the gaze of the young man with one eye. “The air here is thin, not made for land folk such as you with your greedy lungs. Here I can breathe with ease, but you might feel dizzy until you are used to it. I imagine the ragged one is already sound asleep; I suggest yo
u follow suit.”
She turned her head back and Farthing leant forward and laid his head on the dragon’s neck. It was warm. He had not noticed that before, and now he also felt how cold it was up here, above the thin cloud layer. He was thankful for the warm, soft, wool-lined coat that Weasel had insisted he wore. He pulled it tightly around him and closed his eyes. In the thin air, as he drifted into an unsettled sleep, he thought of his sister. It was an unhappy thought.
“Wake up, son!” Farthing shook himself awake as he was pummelled on the back by the magician. “Fren-Eirol needs to rest.”
“Where are we?” Farthing blinked in the light streaming down from a cloudless sky. It felt like mid-morning.
“Over the sea!” the dragon shouted back. “Where else would we be?”
“I don’t know.”
“I have been flying for four hours and I need to rest.”
“How can you?” Farthing looked down at the water that stretched interminably in every direction. He was reasonably certain that dragons did not double up as ducks. Weasel had stood up on the dragon’s back, leaning into the wind; they were flying much slower now and much lower.
“We need to find a Reod Holme,” he shouted to Farthing. “Start looking!”
“A what?”
“A Reod … oh, a land lover; I had forgotten.” The magician sounded annoyed. “The Prelates Sea, where we are now, is littered with small islands. They are not actually islands at all, but a type of seaweed that grows in long reeds. They knit together over centuries and create floating islands. The dragons use them as places to rest on long flights.”
“Don’t they know where they are?”
“They float!” repeated Weasel. “They don’t stay in one place!”
“Oh.” Farthing looked out across the ocean. What clouds that had been around in the morning had burnt away and the sun shining on the water glared in his eyes. “What am I looking for?”
“Red,” Weasel said. “The reeds have red flowers this time of year which makes it easier.”
The dragon flew on. Farthing didn’t want to contemplate what would happen if they did not find one of these Reod Holmes. He imagined that dragons could float much as humans could, but that would mean they could also drown like humans. His eyes were drawn to the horizon. As he squinted, he thought he could see a shape. It raised up like a smooth hump.
“Is that land?” he asked Weasel, pulling the magician's arm.
“Not out here, it isn’t. Too far.” The two of them squinted a little more. “Are you certain you can see something?”
“Yes, I think so.” Farthing shaded his eyes slightly and thought he saw a flash of red. “Can you get a little higher?” he shouted to Fren-Eirol. “I think I saw red, but I am not sure.” The dragon nodded and powered up into the sky a little way. Farthing lost his bearings for a moment and looked around wildly.
“Don’t do that!” the magician told him. “You won’t see a thing that way. Hold still.” Farthing did so, and his eyes moved along the horizon.
“There!” he said, pointing.
“To the South-southeast,” Weasel supplied to the dragon, who could not see where Farthing was indicating since he was behind her head.
He realised his error. “Yeah, sorry.”
The dragon gently banked and then powered herself up a little higher once more.
“Sharp eyes, young man,” she praised Farthing. “That is an island indeed, and one of a reasonable size. It is a little off our route, but it will be welcome all the same.”
The wind was now against them and the dragon took a slightly tangential course towards the island which was still many leagues away. Farthing stared at the strange shape. He had assumed the floating islands would be flat and said as much to Weasel.
“The smaller, younger ones are, but the larger ones are almost proper islands. Over the centuries, they have become bigger and the rotting seaweed has turned to earth allowing other plants to take root. What you are seeing is a hill. It has no rocks, but it is a hill all the same with trees and ferns and anything dropped by birds. In ancient times, some even had human communities on them.”
“Would this one have had?”
“It doesn’t look big enough so is probably too young and they don’t last forever,” the magician answered. The island was growing in size as they approached. Farthing realised they were higher than he thought and the dragon was able to glide much of the remaining distance, slowly losing altitude. It took nearly an hour before they were in reach of the island and the Dragon was tired.
“There are some grassy areas near that hill,” she called back. “I will land there. It will be safer.”
“Safer?” asked Farthing.
“The closer to the edge you get, the younger the weed,” Weasel explained. “You can fall through and get trapped. Most drown or suffocate. It is why they are useless to trade ships; they cannot make landfall easily.”
“Makes sense.”
“When you think about it, they should not be floating at all, but the rotting vegetation builds up gasses in huge pockets that help keep the whole mass floating. They occasionally explode, but there is always a downside to everything.”
Farthing's eyes widened in alarm.
“The idiot is fooling you boy; the islands never explode!” The dragon chuckled and banked low over the leading edge of the island.
Farthing began to understand the unnaturalness of this strange land. There were no beaches or coves, but instead, long thin tendrils of weed that became progressively more tangled under the water until they pushed themselves above the surface in coiling, snake-like, bulbous tangles. Farther in, the reeds became matted and covered with small red buds, which explained the colour. Farthing could see that here it was solid and a large group of seabirds had made their nests, burrowing between the tendrils, and blocking the gaps with vegetation. Farther in still and the reeds, now piled up on top of their rotting forebears, were replaced by thin grasses and more familiar vegetation, though the red buds still pushed through giving the grass a crimson hue.
“Nothing can stop them growing altogether,” Weasel shouted as the dragon caught a current and used it to glide up the gentle slope of the hill. “I have heard speculation the oldest plants on the big islands may be hundreds of years old, half-rotten and yet still keeping tendrils in the ocean while they push their red offspring into the air. It probably explains why they all have hills in the middle.”
“I can only see one hill though it is more irregular than I thought it would be.” Farthing gazed at this most unlikely land with fascination.
“This is fairly young, maybe only a couple of hundred years old. The big ones tend to be much farther south and some of those are a couple of leagues across, with several low hills, valleys, and even large freshwater pools. Though eventually the biggest break apart.”
Farthing shook his head in disbelief. To the sea fairer perhaps none of this would have been of surprise, but the odd job on the boats had never taken him more than a morning’s fishing distance from Wead-Wodder. The wind suddenly roared as the dragon banked sharply and lifted her wings to halt her progress. She landed with two neat steps and a groan of relief.
“Off!” she ordered, and the two humans leapt off her back. “Go find some food or do something useful,” she told them. “It is my turn to sleep!” Without further comment, she rolled on to her side and untied the large backpack filled with her own things and items the humans needed. She didn’t bother to unpack, just arranged the bag on the ground like a pillow, curled up and closed her eyes.
Weasel picked up his bag, indicated that Farthing should do the same and started up the hill. Farthing messed with his bag, trying to get it comfortable, but it kept slipping off his shoulder.
“These bags are a sodding pain!”
“They are dragon-friendly,” Weasel called back as he strode purposefully up the hill.
> “In what way?”
“They are soft and stay where you put them. Dragons don’t have scales and do not like being hit with sharp objects any more than do you.” The answer was unnecessarily sharp; Weasel was in an ill humour. He carried on marching at a pace up the hill which Farthing found surprisingly difficult to match. When they eventually reached a gentle ridge, Farthing caught up with him and grabbed him by the arm.
“Look, apparently, I need you, though from what I have seen so far I am not sure what good you will be, but I don’t understand why you are in such a foul mood. You got paid.” Weasel looked at the young man, so obviously worried about his sister, and he sat down on a broken log and gazed up at the cloudless sky. They were surrounded by small, stunted trees bent into strange twists and turns, ragged bark laced over with moss and lichen.
“Son, I really do not know what has happened to your sister or the Prelate’s daughter, but I do know that is not as simple as it looks. At this point, I have to ride a dragon that I stupidly upset many years ago, I am going to have to use skills that drain me completely and give me vile headaches, and what is more, to keep on the good side of the dragon and of Geezen I have had to promise to not drink. Trust me when I say that for reasons you cannot even begin to comprehend that is the biggest problem of all. Now, I am sorry if my mood is off, but yours is no better, though I do understand your reasons. If I am going to have to put up with you, then you are going to have to put up with me. This might turn out to be a very long journey.”
“What you do you mean?” Farthing forgot his irritation for the moment.
“Always with the questions! Right, let me explain, or try to. Attempting to find something over large bodies of water like seas is usually seen as impossible, but it can be done. At least, I can do it to a certain extent. We are three days behind the boat, but thankfully our mode of transport is rather faster, or it should be, except we have to keep stopping. Although we have not caught up much time yet, I had still hoped to be getting a faint echo of something by now, but I have nothing.”
Farthing frowned. “Are we going the wrong way?”
“Sensible question, son. Stick with those, but no, I don’t think so. If they had headed either way up or down the coast, I would not have lost them so quickly in the first place. So, they have headed out here, into the deep water. When you forced me to try back at Wead-Wodder, I did pick up a few things that worried me.”
“You said you found nothing!”
“To be honest, I might as well had done, for all the help it would have done you at the time. I didn’t see the point of giving you information that was useless to you.” Farthing frowned at the finder. He didn’t quite feel like hitting him again, but it was a close call. “And hitting me won’t solve anything,” Weasel pointed out as if reading Farthing’s mind. “What I did pick up was that the boat was going very fast.”
“Picked up a good wind? Fast tacking?”
“Much more quickly than that. Too fast for any boat I know.”
“Is this the wind talker that you and Eirol mentioned?”
“Might be, and it's Fren-Eirol to you until she tells you otherwise. Dragons can be very touchy about that sort of thing. Well, Fren-Eirol is.”
“Sorry.”
“Wind talkers are rare; very rare. In fact, I am not convinced there are any left; I haven’t heard of one for centuries.”
“What do they do?”
“Well, some think they conjure winds, but that is impossible. The wind is the result of a huge change of air pressure in one place compared to another; the air rushes in to fill the hole and that is the wind, it is not just a local puff. No wind is constant, outside of the rare storm, and there are eddies and various air currents within that wind, little changes of pressure. A wind talker can find those and find paths through the wind, changing direction using the small air currents. That can speed up a boat considerably over a very long trip if they have a really good tillerman.” Farthing shook his head trying to work this out. It didn’t make sense to him at all, this talk of paths through wind, but something was going on.
“So, that would make them this fast?”
“I don’t know and that is what is bothering me. On its own it might not be enough. You can add a couple knots to the speed of a boat which would cheer up most traders, but this boat is covering more sea than we are over the whole day if I have guessed right. I don’t think a wind talker could not do that, not on her own.”
“Her?”
“Wind talkers were all women; older mostly, as it took a lifetime to master; though there have been some young, instinctive ones.”
“But if it is not a wind talker, what is it?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a wind talker, but it might not be just a wind talker. They would have to have a wave talker too, I would guess.”
This was getting more complicated still. Farthing sat on the ground and sighed.
“So, what is a wave talker then?” he asked, sounding depressed.
“Pretty much the same as a wind talker, but with sea currents. On their own, just like the wind talker they can make a tiny bit of difference to a boat by understanding where the small movements of water are and either use them or avoid them, but it is not especially dramatic. Working together with a wind talker, and if whoever is steering knows how to use the information they give, they can make a huge difference. This is not suddenly speeding up, understand, this is a difference over a whole day. That might be enough to explain their speed, but it would be difficult working that closely and it would take a lot of practice.” Weasel stood up, adjusted the soft bag, and started back up the hill.
“Well that explains it,” said Farthing with conviction. “They have both.”
“No, it makes it even more confusing,” answered Weasel, turning to face him. “You see, as far as I know, there is only one wave talker left in this entire world of Dirt.”
“So, they have him then. Her?”
“Him. Wave talkers are all men.”
“Well, they have him working for them.”
“No, that they don’t. And this I know for certain. Actually, it is probably the only thing I know for certain.”
“Why, who is this wave talker?”
“You are looking at him, and I am crap at it.” Weasel carried on to the next ridge leaving Farthing staring at the retreating back of the magician. Much to his annoyance, he was having to go through some rapid reassessments of the wiry drunk he had dragged out of the inn just a day before. He grabbed his bag and raced up to join him. Matching his pace, Farthing tried to be less angry.
“So, why could there not be another wave talker? I don’t understand any of this.” He paused for a second. “Sorry.”
“Magicians of any sort are rare and only from a very limited number of families, and they pass on abilities down the generations. They aren’t necessarily all the same and some will be finders, other will be menders or healers and so on; the majority are healers in fact. I am talking about genuine ones here; most are fraudsters. Wind and wave talkers are different, however. There have only ever been a few families who produced wind talkers, and only one that has produced wave talkers which is my family. And for some reason, only one child ever gets the skill, and not always every generation. My grandfather was a wave talker, though never used it because we were landlocked, and passed the skill on to me. But my brothers and sister did not inherit any skills. My father wasn’t any sort of magician and is dead, as is my grandfather, so that leaves only me.”
The top of the hill flattened out into a small forest of stunted trees. They were unlike anything Farthing had seen before, but studying them more closely, he recognised some of the leaves. He picked one and it looked like an ash leaf, but the tree was tiny and twisted like an old man.
“They get like that on these islands.” The magician answered the unasked question. “It is all the wind and the constant movement;
they grow, but they are corrupted.” Farthing could see what the magician meant, but something else was nagging at him and he was not sure what to say. “You have something to say?” Farthing jumped at the direct question. “If you frown any more your eyebrows will fall off!” It was a hint of the better-humoured Weasel, but only a hint.
“How old are you?”
Weasel looked surprised. “I didn’t see that coming,” he admitted. “To be honest, there is a little bit of an argument over that, but give or take fifty years, I am, well, several hundred.”
“Several hundred…” Farthing shook his head in disbelief.
“It is an offshoot of being a magician, I am afraid. I have outlived all my siblings though they didn’t care for my company anyway.” There was a note of bitterness in his voice that even the young man could not miss.
“So, how long can you live for? I mean, are you very old for a magician?”
“Well, I don’t know. Healers seem to live a long time. But most of the rest don’t make it past fifty, as far as I can see.”
“Why?”
“Popularity. Or lack of it. In case you hadn’t noticed, we have slightly less appeal than a Prelate, which tends to make us targets.”
“But, you could live even longer?”
“I suppose.”
“So, your grandfather, who was a wave talker is dead …”
“Yes, I told you that. And he only lived till sixty something, I believe.”
“What about your great-grandfather?” Weasel stopped and looked at the young man. “Or your great-great-grandfather,” Farthing continued. “Or even further back. I suppose they were all wave talkers too?”
“Not all of them; as I said it doesn’t always appear in each generation, but some of them, I would think.”
“Well, could one of them still be alive?”
Weasel had actually thought about this before. It was not impossible, but it was very unlikely. If you went back in time long enough, long before the prelates and the conservative religious mores that the system of the Prelatehoods was built upon, magicians were respected, some even revered like the great and possibly mythical Dierren, but magicians had, over time, fallen out with everyone, it seemed. The Church of the True denied their existence, the citizens only dealt with them when they needed something, and everyone seemed to hunt them down almost for sport. Part of the problem had been with those magicians who had what was called speaker ability. They could communicate ideas with each other over long distances which had appealed to war leaders, but there had always been the suspicion that these magicians could read minds, which they couldn’t, but it resulted in myths and untruths and distrust. The dragons, especially, were very uncomfortable about them. Whatever the truth, magicians with true speaking ability seemed to have died out.
“I know some of my family history and longevity does not feature highly.” Weasel looked around him, feeling like someone was watching him.
“But you do not know the fate of everyone?” Farthing watched Weasels face, trying to read his expression. The magician turned and looked into his eyes.
“It is unwise to try and read the thoughts of someone like me, boy,” he snapped. Then his expression became thoughtful. “And no, I do not know the fate of everyone, not the ones from more ancient times at any rate. But they would be old indeed; it is almost beyond consideration.”
“Almost,” repeated Farthing. The magician fixed him with an eye.
“And over thinking this will not get us fed,” he said turning towards the trees. “Come on, all the bigger islands have rabbits. Let’s go catch some.”
They had been wandering in circles through the sparse and twisted woodland for more than an hour and had at last found rabbit tracks. Up here, on the highest slopes of the gentle hill, there was no sign of the tangled seaweed that formed this itinerant land. They could have easily been anywhere on the mainland. Farthing crouched down watching a small bank littered with burrows. The sea wind had gained a bit in strength and for some reason, it made Farthing feel a little queasy.
“Remember, this entire island is floating,” Weasel had pointed out earlier. “And even though it is huge, the sea is a hell of a lot bigger. In a storm, you can feel a definite swaying beneath your feet.”
The whole island just felt unnatural to Farthing. It just didn’t have a right to exist from what he could understand. Here he was, crouched down on earth firm enough and deep enough to allow trees to grow and rabbits to burrow, and yet it was floating on what could be a stormy and unforgiving ocean when the wind got going, enough so that most boats avoided the central and southern regions of The Prelates Sea entirely. Weasel appeared from behind the bank carrying four recently dispatched rabbits.
“Can you clean them?” he asked. Farthing nodded. Fresh rabbit was a rare treat, but he occasionally managed to get them for him and his sister. “Good. Since I did the catching it is only fair. We need some wood too, which you can carry.” The magician pulled some string from his bag, tied the rabbits up and slung them over his shoulder, then marched off to a small copse of gnarled fruit trees.
“How did rabbits get here?”
“Sailors, or, at least, their wrecks. Traders often carry livestock for fresh food on long journeys. Although landing large ships on these shores is difficult, and finding one sheer luck, they do occasionally get wrecked on the reeds. Over time, the rabbits and rats from wrecks have made it to the shore, and these islands have built up a rabbit and rat population; very popular with some of the bigger birds.” He pointed at the trees around the copse. “Pick up any fallen wood, there is plenty around and then we need to get back and sort these rabbits. I will get some water.”
“Where from?” The island was floating on a salty sea and Farthing didn’t see where any water would come from.
“The islands get plenty of rain and it collects in some of the stranger plants.” The magician didn’t explain more and wandered off, foraging amongst the undergrowth for whatever qualified as being stranger.
While Farthing looked for firewood, he wondered whether the boat carrying his sister had passed here or somewhere like it. He took a deep breath. He was desperately worried about his sister. Why ever had they been taken? The Prelate’s daughter was worth something, even just as a ransom, he supposed, but his sister? What was she worth? Would she just be in the way? To him, she was worth his life. To a kidnapper? Nothing that he could think of. Then he thought of Bind. The Prelates were conservative, religious and oppressively dictatorial at times, whereas Bind had a much sparser population and was bigger. It probably made it a less oppressive place to live, maybe even better, but some countries in Bind also had something The Prelates did not have; slavery. For the moment, Farthing did not even want to think about that and he started gathering wood to take his mind off the frightening concept that his sister had just become an object for sale.
When they returned down the hill, the dragon was missing, though her bag with the rest of their things was staked to the ground.
“She’s gone to check her sense of direction, I would think,” Weasel explained. “The islands tend to spin slowly and if you do not keep your bearings, you can be in trouble. Probably another reason why traders avoid the islands unless they run into them.”
“What will she do for food?” Farthing was gutting and cleaning the rabbits, pulling their skins off and automatically laying them out to dry without thinking what he was going to do with them on the back of a dragon.
“Well, not rabbit, that’s for certain!” the magician said, laughing. “And I doubt she will want those drying out on her back,” he added, pointing at the still bloody pelts. “She will fish when she needs out here, but she doesn’t have to eat often and won’t want to be full while flying. She will eat properly when we get to Taken.”
“How long will that be?”
“With us on board, five or six days. On her own she could do it
quicker because she can fly much higher, use the very high winds and would not need to stop as often. But you would die that high up.” Farthing looked puzzled. “The air is thinner, so you couldn’t breathe properly.” He still looked puzzled. “The air is denser nearer the ground and humans are ground-hugging creatures….” The look hadn’t changed. “Anyway, forget the why, five or six days is the bit you need to know.” Farthing nodded. He got that bit.
A shadow brushed across the ground and Farthing looked up to see the dragon high above at full wing stretch, almost stationary. From here he could see that her wings at their thinnest were gossamer-like and the sun glowed through them, breaking into a kaleidoscope of colours dancing across his eyes.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Weasel said quietly. “I have never got used to that sight.”
“I have never seen the dragons do that at Wead-Wodder.”
“She must have caught an updraught and is enjoying it for a moment. Around the town, they just get on with working; they play when they are out on their own.”
“Are all dragons so beautiful?”
“The sea dragons are especially and Fren-Eirol more than most. People don’t realise just how thin dragon wings really are, or how big, for that matter. Low to the ground they don’t glide much so don’t stretch right out. They can even look awkward and clumsy, but not when they are flying like that. Even the red mountain dragons with their dark hides look stunning when the light glows through their wings.”
Fren-Eirol turned gracefully and then pulled her wings close to her body, shooting towards the ground like an arrow. Barely a hundred feet from the ground she half opened her wings like a canopy and slowed herself with a loud thwack as her wings caught the air. She settled on the ground and neatly pulled her wings in. She looked at the two wide-eyed humans and smiled at the younger one whose mouth hung wide open.
“Enjoy the show?” she said with a laugh. “You can close your mouth now, boy!” Farthing did so, with a snap. He smiled in embarrassment. “I am going up the hill for a scratch on those trees.” She nodded at the rabbits. “Eat quickly; we should try and cover as much sea as possible before nightfall.”
“Is flying at night difficult?” Farthing asked.
“Flying is easy. Finding an island is impossible.”
“Oh, I see.” He started preparing the fire before he made any more of an idiot of himself.