“We’re going to change everything, Alise. Everything. ”
COPPER AND SILVER they gleamed, side by side on the sandy riverbank. They were both stretched out in utter repose. Sedric’s back ached and his hands felt raw from the scrubbing, but Relpda shimmered as if she were a newly minted coin. She was growing again, he was sure of it. Both her neck and tail seemed longer and more graceful, and her wings were getting stronger all the time. Beside her, Spit’s ribs rose and fell in the slow cadence of deep sleep. Sedric glanced up at Heeby’s distant circling silhouette just in time to see the red dragon clap her wings tight to her body and dive on something; he knew a moment of purest jealousy. Then he looked at Relpda, and it all ebbed away. In time. Soon enough, the sun would catch on her copper wings in flight. For now, the deep sleep of her repose was satisfaction enough for him.
“I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as she is when she’s clean. Nothing gleams like she does. ”
Sedric was perched on the riverbank. A short distance away from him at the water’s edge, Carson straightened slowly, shaking water from his hands and arms. Both men had spent most of the afternoon grooming their dragons. Carson had gone hunting in the dawn and brought back a deer. The dragons had not been happy about having to share a kill, but he’d insisted. In the process of eating it, they’d managed to get blood all over themselves, and Sedric had insisted it was time they both had a good grooming. That task finished, Carson had discarded his shirt while he’d sluiced his hands and arms in the river.
He toweled himself with the discarded garment as he walked back to Sedric. There was silvery scaling on his arms now, and sparkling drops of water clung to the black hairs on his forearms and chest. The hunter was grinning. “Oh, I think I’ve seen a thing or two as pretty as she is, copper man. ” He tossed his shirt to the ground and then sat down on the sand beside Sedric. He ran a finger up the line of scaling on Sedric’s bare back. Sedric gave a delighted shiver and in response, Carson put his arm around him and pulled him over to lean against him. The hunter rested his chin on Sedric’s head and said quietly, “Let’s nap while they do. And when we wake up, I’ll take you hunting. ”
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“I don’t know how to hunt,” Sedric admitted.
“That’s why I’ll be teaching you,” Carson explained. When he spoke, Sedric felt the words thrum through his chest.
“Sounds like work,” Sedric complained. “Messy, bloody work. What if I don’t want to learn it?”
“Oh, these lazy Bingtown boys,” Carson lamented. He lay back on the sun-warmed sand, pulling Sedric over with him. The hunter put one arm over his face to shade his eyes. His free hand found the hair on the back on Sedric’s head and his fingers twined gently through it. He sighed. “I guess I’ll just have to think of something else to teach you, then. ”
Sedric sighed. He caught the hunter’s hand, brought it to his mouth, and kissed the palm of it. “I might be open to that,” he agreed.
THYMARA SAT ON the edge of the grassy sward, right where it met the riverbank. It was a peculiar sort of place. Behind her was gently sloping, open, dry meadow, carpeted in tall green grass. And then the meadow stopped suddenly, and there was a sudden drop in the land, and then the sandy, rocky edge of the river. She had never even imagined such a place before. It pleased her to be sitting on the edge of that meadow world, dangling her legs. The sun was warm on her skin, and it eased the deep ache in her back. She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sunlight. Warmth. Light and warmth felt so good to her now. She knew that the light and warmth were accelerating her changes. She could feel it now, the way she had once felt her teeth growing in. A pleasant, achy pain. She rolled her shoulders and felt her folded wings rub against the shirt that confined them. Sylve had helped her cut and hem slits in her shirt back, but it still felt odd to have them exposed. For most of the time, she kept them covered. Everyone, she told herself, knew she had them. Sometimes it felt silly to cover them.
On the other hand, she thought, everyone knew she had breasts. She covered those, too. She smiled slightly at the comparison. The boys seemed as intrigued by either.
She heard the swish of the grasses against his legs a moment before he sat down beside her.
“So. What are you smiling about?”
“Nothing, really. ” She opened her eyes and turned toward Tats. “What have you been up to?”
“Helping Davvie learn how to care for Kalo. That is one big dragon. ”
“Does Fente mind your grooming Kalo?”
He smiled ruefully. “Not as much as Lecter does. Finally, I took him aside and told him plainly there was nothing to be jealous about. I was just helping Davvie with his dragon. I’m not interested in Davvie that way at all. ”
She found herself smiling back at him. Things had become a bit easier between them of late. It felt almost to her as if they had gone back to being the friends they had been back in Trehaug. She studied him now, unabashedly considering how his scaling was progressing. “Fente is changing you fast,” she observed. The dragon had not echoed her green in him, but had chosen instead bronzes and blacks. His scaling was fine, almost undetectable. Fente had outlined Tats’s eyes in black and bronzed his skin. She was keeping his hair and brows as they were. Thymara found herself nodding in approval of her choice. It seemed to her that most of the other dragons were changing their keepers in their own images. Fente had chosen to keep Tats as he was, right down to giving color to the fading slave tattoos on his face.
“She says it’s the warmth of the sun here, and the light. How about you? Has Sintara continued to change you?”
“I continue to change,” she said simply. Despite their confrontation in the river that day, nothing had been resolved. Sometimes that seemed the most surprising thing of all. The other keepers never quarreled with their dragons. Their dragons seldom spoke harshly to them; they didn’t have to. The keepers knew they were harnessed with glamour and didn’t care. But she and Sintara were not like that. They spoke their minds to each other, and she found that didn’t displease her. After their last crisis, their relationship had resumed as it had been before. Thymara tended the dragon and brought her food when her hunting went well. She enjoyed Sintara’s beauty, just as she would have enjoyed living in a fine house, just as she had once enjoyed the art and music of her neighbors in the Cricket Cages. She didn’t confuse that beauty with Sintara herself.
“You’re quiet,” Tats spoke carefully.
“I’m thinking. That’s all. ”
“You think a lot lately. ”
“That’s true. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. ”
“I didn’t mean that it was. ”
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“I know. ”
He shifted unhappily and then sighed. “Thymara. Did I ruin everything between us?”
She turned to look at him and gave him a genuine smile. “No. Of course you didn’t. You just, well, actually, we just pushed it to a point where we had to talk about what would happen next. It wasn’t bad that we reached that point. ”
“But nothing happened next,” Tats grumbled softly and looked away from her.
It made her smile. “Oh, something happened. It just wasn’t what you expected. I said no and I meant it. I still mean it, Tats. But it’s not about you. It’s about me dealing with what I’m becoming, and dealing with it one change at a time. ”
He glanced over at her. His lashes were long and thick as they had always been. “Then it isn’t…forever. It’s just a decision for now. ”
“Tats,” she began, but she was interrupted when Rapskal flung himself down beside her. She jumped; she still wasn’t accustomed to him being back. A smile spread across her face of her own accord. It was incredibly good to have him back. Tats made a small sound in the back of his throat, but the smile he gave their friend was genuine.
“So, let’s see them!” Rapskal greeted
her.
“See what?”
“Your wings, of course! Everyone else has seen them but me. Take them out, I want to see them. ”
“Rapskal, they’re not, well, they’re not finished yet. ” She couldn’t think of what else to say. She wasn’t sure how to express what she meant to say, and then it came to her. “I’m not ready for people to see them yet. ”
He turned his head to one side. Sunlight ran down the scaling along his jaw, and she had to suppress the impulse to trace the same line with her fingers. He gave a confused shrug. “But people already saw them, in the river that day. Even I saw them, if only for a minute as we flew over. So it’s only fair I get to see them now, because everyone else got a chance to see them then. ”
“That doesn’t make sense. ”
“Please. ”
She tried to think if he’d ever said please to her before. If he had, it hadn’t sounded like that. She didn’t answer, but only reached over her shoulder to where the openings were cut in the back of her shirt. She began to grope for the tips of her wings.
“Oh, I’ll help,” he offered, and before she could refuse, she felt his fingers on her wingtips as he gently guided first one and then the other out of her shirt. His gentle touch put a shiver up her back and when she shook, she felt her wings suddenly quiver in response.
“Ohhh,” he said. “Open them. Let me see the pattern. ”
She glanced at him. The expression on his face was rapt. She looked shyly at Tats. He was staring at her wings as if trying to grasp the concept that they were part of her now. “I’m still learning how to move them,” she said quietly. Suddenly she wanted both of them to see her wings. She closed her eyes and focused on feeling the sunlight touching her wings. Sylve had been right, she suddenly decided. They were like fingers coming out of her back. Fingers, long fingers on hands…she opened her eyes and looked down at her hands. She closed her fingers together and then, very slowly, aware of every muscle, every movement, she opened them.
She knew it had worked when she heard Rapskal catch his breath. “Oh, they’re lovely. Can I touch them?”
“Rapskal, I don’t think…” she began, but he wasn’t listening.
“They’re like Heeby’s wings were at first. The skin is as fine as parchment, and the light shines right through the colors. I’m going to hold them open all the way so I can see them. ” He crawled around behind her, and she felt him take the outermost tip of each wing in each of his hands. Then, as carefully as if she were a butterfly, he opened her wings fully to the light. She could feel the difference, could feel the light and then the warmth of the sun touch them. Warmth spread through them as if it were water flowing.
“The colors just got brighter,” Tats said quietly.
“You should do this every day,” Rapskal said decisively. “And you should practice moving them, too, to make them stronger and help them grow. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to fly. ”
“Oh, she won’t be able to fly with them,” Tats told him quickly, as if fearing that Rapskal had hurt her feelings. “I heard Sintara tell her that. The dragon said she should just be grateful to have such beautiful wings. She won’t be able to fly with them. ”
Rapskal laughed merrily. “Oh, that’s what everyone said to me about Heeby, too. Don’t be silly. Of course she’ll be able to fly. She just has to try every day. ” He leaned forward and spoke by her ear. “Don’t worry, Thymara. I’ll help you practice every day, just like I did with Heeby. You’ll fly. ”
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SINTARA HAD MOVED far up the hillside. From her vantage, she could look out over the wide, sloping meadow before her. Kelsingra. They had returned. The tall spire of the map tower and the gleaming stone roofs of the city beckoned to her from the other side of the deep, swift river.
Earlier today, she had watched Heeby hunting. She’d seen the red dragon open her wings and spring almost effortlessly into the air. Her wings had beat hard for a moment, and then she’d caught the motion of the air over the river and lifted. In a few moments she had dwindled to the size of a crow, and then to a hunting hawk. Heeby had circled high over the city, and Sintara had watched her and remembered in agony exactly how it felt, how you cupped your wings just so to capture a rising wall of warmer air, and how you spilled wind from your wings to go sliding down the sky.
She remembered. She knew. She was a dragon, a ruler of the Three Realms, a queen of earth and sky and water. Kelsingra with its wells of sweet silver was just across the river. A real dragon would simply open her wings and fly there.
She had opened her wings and felt the sun on them, felt them warming in the kiss of light. She moved them slightly and felt the wind they made. She recalled how Thymara had mocked and defied her, calling her lazy, even stupid. She recalled all of Heeby’s foolish early efforts at flights. How ungainly she had looked, how clumsy as over and over again she had tried to fly and failed. She’d had no pride, no dignity at all.
She heard a distant cry, the shrill whistle of a hunting dragon. Her keen eyes picked out Heeby as she suddenly folded her wings and stooped on something. Something large, Sintara was suddenly certain. Something large and meaty, something hot with blood.
She shook out her wings to the summer sunlight. The hillside was wide and green before her. And across the river was Kelsingra, city of Elderlings and dragons.
She ran half a dozen steps before she had the courage to beat her wings. Her feet left the ground briefly, and then she crashed down again. But she didn’t fall. Her wings were open and wide and they caught her and cushioned her fall.
“Sintara!” she heard someone shout in awe. “Look at Sintara!”
Another dozen running steps and this time she beat her wings more slowly and powerfully.
And when she leaped, she left the ground behind.
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