contained a black, oily liquid. As she turned the glass, the viscous contents clung to the sides as if reluctant to obey the demands of gravity. She checked the cork stopper. It held secure but could easily be released with a twist. She briefly considered throwing the contents in the man’s face and while he was blinded thrusting the knife from the floor into his black heart, but the thought of what might happen to James stayed her hand.
“What do you actually want?” she asked.
“When you are next up there, on the plateau, you are to take a pleasant walk among the dragon fields. At each field you pass, you will pour a measure of this liquid into the soil. The neck of the flask is so designed as to dispense the required amount.”
“And this will do what?”
“It will poison the fields. It will blacken the stems and destroy the roots of the dragonyoung plants. It will prevent the wyrms from reproducing. Then as they all age and eventually die, their dominion over us will finally end. It will herald the beginning of freedom for humankind. Tell me that’s not a laudable aim.”
“I’m all for freedom, but at what expense? Slaughtering the dragon’s babies?”
“They aren’t babies. They’re plants, weeds, a blight on us all. We’ve finally managed to produce an effective weedkiller, and you’re going to be our deliverer, in more ways than one.”
“And if I’m caught?”
“The wyrms will likely kill and eat you. Hell, they’ll probably do that anyway once they find out that you’re the one who poisoned them. It won’t take them long. Frankly, we don’t care if you die, as long as you get the job done. Neither should you, for that matter. Consider yourself already dead; what you have to think about now is the life of your son.”
“You bastard.”
“So I’ve been told. When do you next visit Dragonhome?”
Jena briefly considered lying, but realised that it would do little good. Johnson Miller no doubt had spies watching her movements. “Tomorrow,” she said.
“So soon? Excellent. Then I shall return in two days for your report. If everything goes according to plan then your son will be returned to you. Entertain no thoughts of going against me. I will not hesitate to kill your boy.”
He strode out of the house, leaving the shoulder-bag on the floor. Jena considered her options. She could simply pretend that she had poisoned the dragons, but eventually it would become obvious that she hadn’t and Johnson Miller seemed to be a man who would exact vicious revenge. She could warn the dragons, but that would not help her to get James back. She could only see one course of action.
Bryan licked her hand with his smooth, wet tongue and Lizzie hugged her neck.
“Mam?” she asked, “What will you do?”
“I think I have to poison the dragon fields.”
---
The next morning she and Susi waited at The Scorching for a dragon to come and lift them to Dragonhome. Jena had told Susi all about her visitor of the previous evening, the kidnapping of James, and what she had to do. She had urged Susi not to come, but her friend had insisted on accompanying her. It would look odd for her to go alone, Susi argued, and might raise the dragons’ suspicions.
A sound from above announced the arrival of a dragon, which fell to earth gently in the centre of the charred clearing. Jena was relieved when she recognised the old Ptero that had taken them up the day before. The dragon nodded in acknowledgement as Jena and Susi crossed over to it.
“Good day,” it breathed, its voice almost a purr.
“Hello again,” said Jena. The flasks in her shoulder bag clinked as she climbed onto the dragon’s broad back and she spoke quickly in an attempt to cover the sound. “I’m pleased that you will be taking us up. The Bryo that carried us down yesterday seemed determined to break our necks.”
“I apologise. The Bryos do tend to be a little careless, I am afraid. In addition, I imagine that it resented being forced to interact with hominids and took its frustration out on you.”
“Don’t you resent us?”
“On the contrary, I have always rather liked your species, what few I have met. I maintain, and long have, that we dragons need not treat you as if you were ours to do with as we pleased, as mere minions. There should be more give and take between our species, more consideration. I am not alone in this opinion. My friends and I believe that we all could live in harmony, to the betterment of all, but we must obey the Dark Queen. She has the strength to bend us all to her will.”
“That’s very interesting. Do you mind if I know your name? I am Jena, and this woman frowning furiously at me is Susi.”
“What are you doing?” hissed Susi. “Don’t talk to it. It might take it into its head to eat us or burn us to cinders.”
There was an odd huffing grating sound, which Jena realised was coming from the Ptero. The dragon was laughing.
“We are not all martinets,” it said gruffly. “I, for instance, make it a rule never to eat anything with which I can hold a conversation. And my name is Luedtke. I will be your pilot today. Please prepare for take-off.” He arced his wings and they rose gently from the ground.
“Luedtke, would you mind answering a question?”
“Not at all, hominid Jena. The more we learn about each other the more pleasant will our lives be.”
“OK. You have no gender, right? No male-female divide?”
“That is correct. This is much simpler than your own arrangements, which seem to me to be unnecessarily complicated. For one thing, it takes two of you to make a new hominid. Inefficient. In addition you appear to choose your clothing and face-paint based entirely upon the shape of your genitals. This strikes me as hilariously pointless.”
“Actually, I agree with you there. But here’s my question: how come, if you are truly androgynous, you have a Queen? Why not a Monarch, or simply Leader - a title with no gender implication?”
“Ah, that is pure affectation on Daf’q’s part. She romances that it sounds impressive. Typical Pino behaviour.”
“How did Daf’q get to be in charge?”
“Well, she’s the Pino.”
“Sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Very well. How much do you know of dragon society?”
“Just what I’ve seen. You are grown in fields, there are different kinds of dragon, you sometimes eat people—”
“Or burn us alive with incandescent flame from your mouths,” added Susi, uncomfortable with her friend’s conversation with the dragon. Jena, on the other hand, was fascinated. Not only was she learning new things, the talk was helping to distract her from worry about James, and from what she must do once they were up on the plateau.
“Shall I let you in on a secret?” asked Luedtke, and continued without waiting for a response. “We cannot actually breathe fire. That is just a story, one of many, put about by the Bryos to keep you hominids in check. We do not excrete coal from our rear ends, either.”
“I hadn’t heard that one,” admitted Jena.
“Oh. Then perhaps the propaganda begins to lose its hold. But rest assured, hominid Susi, we cannot burn you.”
“I thought that The Scorching was created by an angry dragon’s fire?”
“The burned, flattened area where we met? Happenstance, only. Certainly the fabled battle took place as stated, in a storm, but dragon breath did not cause the devastation. Sheet lightning struck and devastated the area just as the dragons attacked. We claimed that it was our doing, of course, to frighten the hominids into submission. It has become a useful threat to hold over your heads, but an empty one in reality. We can no more breathe fire than you can. What we can do, however, is to rip out your insides with our claws, or hold you down while we pluck off your limbs. I would rather not, to be honest, but we do have that strength.”
“Don’t trust it,” said Susi. “It’s a trap of some sort.”
“If this were true we would have known years ago,” said Jena. “Why are you telling us this now?”
“No hominid has ever ta
ken the trouble to speak to me before. Mostly they just quiver at the sight of us. One man cried, I remember.”
“The reputation of dragons is fearsome, true. Most people are terrified, but those few of us who are given access to Dragonhome must become more comfortable and converse with you.”
“Not really. You are the first to talk to me for, well, ever. It is quite refreshing.”
“I agree. But please carry on. You were telling us about Daf’q?”
“Was I? Ah yes, my apologies. I tend to drift off the point these days. It comes to us all with age, I am afraid. So, the reason Daf’q is our ruler… well, you know that we dragons are of five families?”
“You are? I hadn’t counted.”
“Yes. For instance, I am of the Pterodophyta. Now let me see. A little history, perhaps. An unimaginably long time ago, hominids found a way to grow winged creatures from five separate fauna divisions. In my family’s case, the ferns. We are Fern Dragons.”
“Wait. People created dragons?”
“Indeed. You did not know this? I imagine the idea was to create a new beast of burden that would perform a lot of fetching and carrying, or perhaps to make steeds swifter than any you had. Whatever the reason, we dragons didn’t take to being created slaves and turned the tables, instead making you serve us, tend to our needs, keep animals to provide us with food.” Luedtke snorted. “Look after our teeth. You know, it has always seemed odd to me that a race that has been subject to persecution and slavery as we were should want to inflict those