Drauga was getting worried. The sun was slowly sinking over the horizon, and all children were accounted for but one: Mira. Sweet Mira, with hair of spun gold and eyes that held an ocean of wit and intelligence within. She was growing older, and with her age came more responsibilities in caring for the rest of Drauga’s orphans. So, she had sent the girl down to the village to pick up the prosthetic leg that Drauga had commissioned for one of her boys, Yelen, who had shot up in height this year.
Mira could be trusted. Drauga knew this. The girl was clever, witty, and occasionally mischievous, but she was reliable. If she asked her to get something done, it would be accomplished quickly and efficiently.
Still, mothers are nothing if not worriers, and she’d been gone for hours. Maybe Mira got busy chatting with someone she liked. She was getting to the age where she might find a partner and marry. A part of Drauga hoped that Mira preferred women to men. Her children who fell in love with someone of the same sex were more likely to stay and help her with the rest of her hoard of orphans. More importantly though, she would miss Mira when she left. Drauga didn’t play favorites, but there was something about this child that made her think that she would do great things.
“Mother?” One of her younger children tugged on a wing, trying to get her attention.
She tore her gaze from the mouth of the cave that they called home. “What is it, Kiov?” she asked, affectionately nosing him.
He giggled and staggered at the weight of her nudge. “When is dinner? I’m starving.”
“When Mira returns,” she replied, worrying her tail between her front claws, an old nervous habit. She wanted to believe her daughter was running late, but a mother knows when something is wrong, the pit in her stomach telling her that Mira was somehow in danger. This instinct had saved many of her children over the years, letting her catch illnesses early and rescue any wayward orphans who had been injured while playing, so she’d learned to listen to it. “On second thought, I’ll go looking for her.” Raising her voice, she called, “Lor, Sava, come here please.”
Lor was busy teaching some of the younger children reading and writing, while Sava cooked. When they heard her call, both dropped what they were doing and approached.
“What is it, Mother?” Sava asked.
At eighteen and nineteen respectively, these were the oldest of her children, so she relied on them the most when she was not there. It rarely happened, but they had proven themselves more than capable in the past. “I’m going out looking for Mira,” she said. “Hopefully I’ll be back within the hour, but until I return, you two are in charge. Give the rest of the children supper and put them to bed if I don’t return by then. Try to keep to the routine like usual, and I’ll be back with your wayward sister soon.”
Lor wrapped his arms around her neck and squeezed. “Be safe out there, Mother.”
She nudged him affectionately. “And you do the same, loves.” Raising her voice, she announced to the rest of her hoard that she was leaving and that Lor and Sava would be in charge. Once she was sure that the rest of the children understood, she stepped out of the cave, unfurled her wings, and leapt off the face of the sheer cliff that she had made her home centuries ago.
It felt better to be moving, to pump her wings and gain momentum. Moving always feels better than waiting… Even when you aren’t truly going forward like you want. That was the danger of it. There is a time for movement and there is a time for patience, so she forced herself to go slow, retracing the route her children had been taking to the village for the past several centuries.
Every dragon had a hoard. The stereotype was that they coveted gold and jewels—and many did—but that wasn’t the only thing they collected. Some hoarded books, others hoarded quilts, and she’d even met some dragons that hoarded cats and chickens. Because she could have no pups of her own, she hoarded human children, taking in and raising the orphaned and the unwanted until they were ready to spread their metaphorical wings and fly. Many chose to stay close though, often becoming pillars of the neighboring villages and visiting her on occasion.
Because she was so much longer lived than the humans she raised, she had seen plenty of death, but she grieved them all. The easiest ones were those that died of old age. They had lived long, happy lives, and were inevitably surrounded by loved ones. Those that died in the prime of their lives—usually in childbirth or from an injury or illness—were harder for her to grieve. They had lived well, but fate cut their lives too short. The most devastating, though, were the children in her care that died. It wasn’t often. She did everything in her power to keep them safe and healthy, but mothers frequently left sickly babies and toddlers at the mouth of her cave in a last-ditch attempt to save them, and children had a habit of getting into trouble and hurting themselves. Sometimes, there was just no saving them.
Mira had been one of those sickly children abandoned at the mouth of her cave, and there was a time that Drauga wasn’t sure that she would survive their first winter together. She spent many sleepless nights keeping her warm, making sure she was fed, and holding her close. Mira came out of her fever deaf in one ear, but so full of life that it spilled out from her, invigorating others with her mere presence. Sweet, bold Mira, who climbed the highest trees and made the children laugh when they were frightened. Drauga prayed that she was safe.
Smoke billowed up from the nearest village, and she landed, her stomach already in knots as she took in the empty houses. The normally lively town was eerily silent. Signs of fighting littered the ground: swords, shields, arrows, and the occasional body. Raiders had attacked suddenly and only burned down one of the buildings, apparently more interested in the people than wanton destruction.
But Mira was not among the dead. Some of the tension bled from her body at that realization, but not much. Mira was not dead. But if she didn’t find her soon, she might suffer a fate worse than death. Drauga would not let that happen. If the raiders so much as harmed a hair on her head, she would lay waste to them and feast on their flesh. Taking to the sky once more, she circled overhead, searching for any signs of camp. Laden with prisoners as they were, they couldn’t have gotten that far, even if they took the nearby river to escape.
The river. All the boats were gone, commandeered by these monsters. When she landed, she found more signs of them having been there. Footprints littered the mud and sand, and all the boats’ moorings had been cut. Flicking out her tongue in search of any signs of her missing child, she tasted the air. Her children all smelled slightly of sulfur, a byproduct of living with a dragon and unique to their family.
There. Sulfur and a touch of sawdust. She had been to the woodcrafter before the attack happened. Drauga followed the smell until she reached a small holly bush. Judging by the way the ground had been disturbed, someone had been sitting or lying there.
Then, Drauga became aware of another smell. Blood. It came from the holly bush, the evening breeze carrying the odor along with a flicker of movement. A small blue ribbon had been caught on the branches. A ribbon much like the one Mira wore on her way to the village earlier today. She carefully extricated it and realized two things with a start: that it was the source of the blood and that something had been written with it.
DS
Drauga smiled, a feeling of pride welling like the fire in her chest. Her clever, clever girl. As the full moon began to rise, she took to the air once more.
There was a time when Mira was excited to go to the village on her own. It meant that Mother trusted her with responsibilities befitting her age, and she had no intention of letting her down.
Sitting on the raiders’ boat, though, she struggled to believe that it was only this morning that she’d leapt out of bed, raced to get dressed, scarfed down breakfast, and nearly forgot her favorite blue ribbon to tie up her golden hair. The ribbon was one of the only things she had from her birth mother, and as much as she loved Mother Drauga, holding it made her feel like she was with the mother she never got to know.
It was only one errand that she needed to run, but Mother always gave her a little extra so she could buy herself lunch and a treat while there. With a dagger concealed up her sleeve for protection, she practically skipped down the mountain, already imagining the taste of sweetberry bread and the new book she would buy to share with the rest of her family, after reading it herself, of course; that was the rule for anyone who used the extra coin Mother gave them to buy books.
The woodcrafter’s shop was on the outskirts of town, and she hummed a silly little tune as she approached. Stupid Farthy, one of the older orphans of the hoard, said that she was a bad singer, but Mira didn’t care. She knew Mother only took Farthy in because the village couldn’t stand her smell, anyway.
Mr. Nimar, the woodcrafter, was busy in his workshop when she entered. He set aside his hammer when he saw her, a twinkle in his eyes as he tapped his nose. “You’re one of Drauga’s kids, right?”
She nodded. “Mother commissioned a wooden leg for my hoardmate, Yelen.”
The woodcrafter nodded. “It’s in the back. Just a moment, please.”
Tapping her foot, she danced from side to side, eager for this chore to be over so she could have some fun on the village proper. The door opened again, and some unfamiliar men in pile-woven wool cloaks entered. Something about those men unsettled her. They stood tense, coiled like snakes about to strike, their hands hovering over their weapons. One of them looked to be about her age. He kept leering at her, studying her like a piece of meat and making her feel inexplicably ashamed.
Craning her neck, she tried to find Mr. Nimar in the back. After another tense, agonizing minute, he reappeared holding the wooden leg. When he saw their new guests, he froze, his eyes wide. “Who are you?”
And that’s when the screaming started. Though Mira’s ears were not quite as good as others’, even she could hear the sounds of battle and terror emanating from the outside. The leader of the men grinned wolfishly, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, ready to draw it the moment she or Mr. Nimar made one wrong move. “Please, we have very little,” Mr. Nimar begged. “Have mercy.”
“It depends,” he said. “We’ve heard rumors of a dragon in the area with an extensive hoard, and that you’ve recently had dealings with it. Tell us where to find it, and we won’t kill you all.”
“She comes to me. I don’t know where to find her,” he said, which was half true. Most knew where to leave any unwanted or orphaned infants and children, but very few braved the climb aside from the cunning women who lived deep in the woods.
“I don’t believe you,” the leader replied, and with a silent signal, the men drew their weapons.
“I can help you,” she squeaked before she could think better of it. The men stared at her incredulously, save for Mr. Nimar, who looked somewhere between shocked and horrified. Mira continued, “If you let the people of this village go, I’ll show you where you can find the dragon you seek.”
The boy her age scoffed. “You? What would you know of dragons?”
She put her hands on her hips. “More than you.” Pulling out her purse, she dumped the contents onto the table Mr. Nimar used for his transactions. It wasn’t like she was getting books or sweetberry bread anyway. “Where do you think I got this coin? I know where its hoard is.”
The men gasped, their eyes widening at the gold she carried with her. Though Mother hoarded children, she was not above collecting wealth. That said, most of it belonged to her own mother and was gifted to her so that she could support her ever growing family. Mira had never met Grandmother Kyaja. The dragon had decided to go into a decades-long hibernation shortly before she was born, but the older kids who remembered Grandmother spoke fondly of her. Mother was unusually generous for a dragon, and cheerily parted with her gold if it meant making her children happy.
These raiders wouldn’t care, though, that this dragon raised orphans with as much love as any birth parent could give. No, they only cared for the wealth, which meant that Mira had to protect her family from them. “Let everyone else go, and I’ll take you to it,” she repeated.
The leader grinned. “A compromise, perhaps.” Two of the men approached Mr. Nimar while the boy and another man approached her, their weapons glinting in the morning light. The boy held his knife to her throat, standing so close that she could smell his rank breath. The leader cupped her cheek in the parody of a familiar gesture. “Lead me to the dragon, and I’ll let these villagers live as slaves. Refuse, and we’ll kill you all where you stand.”
She swallowed. A whole village would be harder for Mother to rescue than just her, but not impossible. “Agreed.”
He stepped back. “Ulf, bind her and take her to the river while we round up the rest.”
“Yes, Father.” As he tied her arms in front of her, he leaned in close and whispered, “If you’re good, I’ll make you my bride.”
Mira resisted the urge to spit on him. If she wanted to survive long enough for her mother to find her, she had to be clever. As they walked to the docks, she made a mental inventory of what she had: a small knife, barely useful in a fight; a hair ribbon, also useless; the clothes on her back; and the other captives. And her mother. She didn’t have to fight the raiders off to escape. That wouldn’t be necessary. All she had to do was keep them distracted until her mother found her. But how would Mother know where she was?
The ribbon.
Ulf sat her down away from the other prisoners. She supposed she was now too important for them to risk her somehow sparking a rebellion and escaping. All they saw was a girl with no muscles on her too-small body and the fighting experience of a gnat, but they were being somewhat careful.
They had posted a guard on her, but he was inattentive, seeming to prefer staring into space or chatting with his fellow raiders than babysitting a thirteen-year-old. She let out a sob that was only partially a performance and curled herself into a ball. Keeping an eye on her guard to make sure he wasn’t paying attention, she untied the ribbon from her hair. Sitting up, she concealed it in her sleeve until she was sure her sobs were being ignored.
Turning her back to him, she used her teeth to pull down the sleeve that concealed her knife. She bit down on the soft leather of the pommel and pulled the blade free, taking it with her dominant hand. Then, she pulled out the ribbon. Now, for the hard part. Biting her lip to keep from crying out from the pain, she sliced into her pointer finger. A bead of blood formed, and she used it to write DS on the ribbon. Mother would figure out that she meant downstream. She was smart like that.
After concealing the ribbon in a nearby holly bush, she got to work cutting the rope binding her. She was careful to only weaken it, leaving a few woven strands so that it would still stay together. Otherwise, she risked them discovering the blade.
Carefully, she slid the knife back into its sheath on her gauntlet. Now all she could do was wait and cry until Mother came. By her estimation, Mother would become worried when she hadn’t returned before dark. The raiders were busy at the moment, their arms laden with their spoils and swarming the boats like ants. The people would be the last to board. It was easier to guard them on land. If they were in the boat, then some might jump into the water in a desperate bid to escape and likely drown in the process. At least on land, they could be chased down.
It might take an hour or two for them to load the boats with their stolen goods and then a few minutes more to drag the people on board. At the moment, the sun was high in the sky, and given that it was mid-spring, there was probably about seven hours of daylight left. A five-hour head start on a boat working with the current. Maybe she should have said upstream, but that would have brought them closer to Mother and the rest of the hoard, which was the last thing she wanted. At least this way if Mother couldn’t find her, she and the rest of the family would be safe.
All she could do now was wait.
She listened to the men as they talked, picking up on the fact that the leader was Ulf’s father, a warrior named Ragnar. They had come from the islands up north in search of treasure, and this was the boy’s first raid. After about two hours—judging by the sun’s position in the sky—they loaded her onto the ship with the rest of the raiders rather than the one containing the prisoners.
The ones who were not in Mr. Nimar’s workshop stared at her with open curiosity. Mira kept her back straight and her head held high, just like Mother taught her to. All her life, people who weren’t a part of the hoard would stare and whisper when they saw her. Mira Draugasdotter. Mira, daughter of the dragon. She did her best to make Mother proud by ignoring the stares and commanding respect, while also treating others the way she wanted to be treated. The stares of these raiders were no different.
“How far downstream do we go?” Ragnar asked.
Mira squinted at the horizon, trying to figure out the best route to slow them. She considered sending them towards the rapids or waterfall, but that risked the lives of the villagers on the other ship. No, that would not do. It was better to just go straight. Mother was more likely to find her on a direct route. Raising both hands, she pointed straight downstream. “Ten miles that way, I think. I usually walk there through the forest.”
“You think,” Ulf scoffed. She was really beginning to hate the boy. He was broad shouldered and brutish, apparently more brawn than brain.
“My feet have memorized the land better than any map,” she retorted. “It’s that way. Her cave is near the river.”
Ragnar nodded. “I am choosing to trust you. If I discover that you’ve lied to me, you will learn a new definition of the word pain. Am I understood?”
She swallowed, her mouth going dry as he gave the rest a signal to set sail. For most of the journey, she sat in silence aside from occasionally reassuring them that they were going in the right direction.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Ulf said as the sky began to turn red.
The old poem sprang to mind:
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.
Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.
He leaned casually against the mast where she sat and nudged her. “I asked you a question.”
“No, you didn’t. You just made a comment, so I assumed that not understanding anything was simply a statement of fact.” She didn’t feel the slap, not at first. As someone raised around nearly thirty other siblings, she was used to occasionally being hit, but those were never done with the intent to cause true pain. Stars danced in front of her eyes. Her cheek stung, and red poured down her nose.
He looked down at her with an infuriatingly smug grin. “Why don’t you try that again?”
“What don’t you understand?” she gritted out.
“Sir.” He was enjoying this, the sadistic prick.
“What don’t you understand, sir?”
“Why the wooden leg? Both of yours seem to be functioning fine.”
This? Not the fact that she seems to know a dragon? Very well, she had an easy answer for this question. “It’s for my brother. He lost his leg to gangrene as a child.”
He studied her for a moment before shrugging, apparently accepting this answer. A flicker of movement in the sky caught her eye and she grinned. Ulf looked over his shoulder, apparently trying to follow her gaze. “What are you grinning about?”
“My mother knows I’m missing. She’s going to be very displeased by your people and the way you treated me,” she said, this time giving him a smug grin.
Ulf scoffed. “Why should I care about the pleasure of a single crone?”
There were shouts from behind him as Mother descended, and he turned around in time to see her land on the boat with a thud powerful enough to shake it. Her red-and-black scales shimmered like embers in the late evening sun, and smoke billowed from her flared nostrils. She scanned the crowd for a moment, and then her gaze settled on Mira. Some of the tension relaxed from her body, but not much. She was still on a boat full of battle-hardened humans.
Mira flashed Ulf a grin and broke the rope binding her with ease as she got to her feet. “Perhaps you should care. Because that is my mother.”
Drauga could have wept with relief when she saw Mira. Her little girl was alive, but judging by the smell of her blood and the red dripping down her nose, she was not wholly unhurt. These men hurt her daughter.
She was not a fighter. She had not joined in any wars and was too popular among the locals for any errant knights to be directed to her doorstep. On the rare occasion that she did get into a fight, she often erred on the side of mercy. Not today. Not with her daughter taken and bleeding.
The raiders drew their weapons and charged. It may as well have been children playfighting with sticks. The swords and axes did little to pierce her armor of scales, and she knocked the men aside like wooden toy soldiers. Biting the head off one, she spat it out before grabbing another by the chest, crushing it in her massive jaws like a peanut in its shell. This only served to enrage the others.
Good.
She was enraged too, so much so that she could feel the flames forming inside her. With a roar, she let it out, the smell of cooked pork filling the air. Those that did not die fled the ship, including a boy that looked to be about Mira’s age.
Mira.
The girl, having taken shelter on the bow of the ship, clung to the wooden dragon’s head. She was not a strong swimmer, so she was reluctant to jump into the water. Unfurling her wings, Drauga flew to her, scooping her up and carrying her to shore.
Setting her down, she examined her, gently running her claws up and down in search of broken bones and serious wounds. “Are you hurt, Mira? I smell your blood.”
She wrinkled her injured nose. “I’m fine, Mother. A nosebleed and a pricked finger won’t kill me.”
Drauga relaxed just a little. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
But then Mira looked behind her. “What about the other villagers? They were on the boat behind us.”
And indeed, she could see them chained and huddled together. They were friends to her, so it was her turn to be friends to them. Taking off, she made quick work of the guards on that boat, this time having enough self-control to avoid setting it on fire.
Once all the raiders were dead or had fled, she broke their chains.
“Thank you,” the head of the village said as they got to work changing course and rowing upstream. “We owe you a debt.”
Drauga smiled. “It’s the least I can do after all you’ve done to help me.”
Once she was sure that they were on their way home, Drauga returned to her daughter. Mira sat, shaking, by the shore, the stress of the day finally hitting her as she threw herself into Drauga’s arms and sobbed.
“What happened, love?” Drauga asked. “Why were you on a different boat than the rest?”
“They wanted to kill you,” she cried.
Drauga blinked. That, she had not expected. “Me?”
“For your hoard. They wanted all your gold and would probably take the rest of us as slaves or worse, so I acted like I was going to take them to you so that they wouldn’t kill anyone else, but I was really leading them away, and…”
Drauga hushed her, a feeling of pride glowing in her chest, though tempered a bit by the terror of what happened that day and what might have happened if it all went wrong. Mira risked her own life and freedom to keep the village alive and her family safe. If Drauga hadn’t gotten there in time, she could have lost her forever. But if Mira hadn’t gone with the raiders, the village likely would’ve been massacred, and they would have eventually found their way to Drauga’s home. “You were very brave to protect us like that. My clever little girl. I’m so proud of you.”
At that, Mira sobbed harder, and Drauga held her until all the tears had been rung out of her body, and her fear had been replaced by exhaustion. Scooping the sleeping Mira in her arms, Drauga unfurled her wings and flew them home.