Children! Obedient as hungry dragons!
—Common parental lament, Kragrom
When Kaeldra awoke, the sun was shining. Tree boughs dripped, sloughed off snow in wet heaps. She crawled out of her snow-dusted blanket, careful not to disturb the draclings, who had burrowed in beside her.
Not far away was a vantage point where the land dropped off to the east. Kaeldra squinted into the distance, looking for a thread of smoke, a circling bird. But nothing marred the perfect blue of the sky. A bright snow-quilt spread across the shoulder of the mountain, smooth at the top, then draping and pleating below, where a tiny village nestled in its folds.
Maybe he is lost, she thought. Maybe he abandoned his pursuit and turned back.
With the sun warming her face and a village in sight, it was easy to believe that the danger was past.
There were four rabbits in the snares. Elated, Kaeldra ran back to the camping place, calling for the draclings. Embyr and Synge stumbled, yawning, from under the blanket. When they saw the rabbits, they perked up and jumped on her like puppies.
“Down! Get down, you two.” She threw each a rabbit. “Pyro, you lazy oaf! Wake up!”
She poked at the rumpled blanket with her foot. Pyro did not come out. “Food, Pyro! Meat!” The blanket looked flat. Too flat. She grabbed it in one hand and yanked.
Pyro was gone.
“Pyro! Pyro, where are you?” Kaeldra fell to her knees and dug through the snow where the blanket had lain. No Pyro.
Tracks. He would have left tracks.
The snow was trampled all around, but the only tracks that led far were her own. He must have left long ago, she thought, before the snow stopped. He could be anywhere.
“Pyro!” Kaeldra wailed.
〈Help!〉
It was the tiniest cry, like a needleprick in her mind.
Kaeldra leaped to her feet. She scanned the forest all around; the firs were black against the snow. She ran to the bluff and looked down.
Snow and snow and trees and snow.
〈Help!〉
No answer. Kaeldra dashed back toward the camping place, then slowed, then stopped. Embyr and Synge were no longer eating. They were staring at something—staring straight up.
Kaeldra followed the direction of their gaze. Floating high in the air, caught beneath an overhanging fir bough, was Pyro.
Kaeldra’s knees went weak. She had forgotten to tie them down.
“Pyro,” Kaeldra said, “you come down from there.”
The dracling pumped his legs futilely, like a beetle stuck on its back.
〈Help.〉
She couldn’t climb the tree. The trunk was too wide, the lowest boughs too high. She could try to rope him or—
Kaeldra thought back to the times she had seen the draclings float in their sleep. They would rise, puffing up, as if they had taken an enormous breath. Then they would flame and shrink and drop.
“Pyro,” Kaeldra said, “flame!” She closed her eyes and pictured a candle flickering in the dark.
Bright-rush!
The wet fir bough hissed; Pyro sank a little.
“Flame!”
Bright-rush!
The dracling dropped again, not far enough.
Praising and chiding by turns, Kaeldra talked him down. It was lucky that the trees were snow shrouded and did not catch fire. Gradually, Pyro took heart and even maneuvered a bit with his wings. This proved to be so much fun that he ventured higher, defying Kaeldra’s commands to flame. She grabbed a rabbit and held it up high. “Look, Pyro! Meat!”
Whomp! The dracling belched out a crackling flame ball and landed with a thud upon the ground.
When they had finished eating, the kestrel called. They set off down the mountain.
The sun shone all that day. From time to time the draclings played at flying. They wobbled low over streams and gullies, pitched, reeled, rose, and dropped in jerks, then crashed—more often than not—into trees and bushes. Kaeldra tried to stop them at first, imagining them wafting away up into the sky like wyffel fluff; but finally she gave up.
By dusk they had reached the place where the forest met the fields outside the village. The draclings pestered her with their plaintive hungrys, and Kaeldra, too, felt weak and shaky. They skirted the fields until a low barn came into view not forty paces from the edge of the wood. A two-story stone cottage stood a little way off.
The kestrel cried and swooped down on the barn. It preened itself on the rooftop in the fading light.
〈Stay here,〉 Kaeldra told the draclings.
She stepped out of the wood and crept toward the barn. She tried to move soundlessly, scanning the gloom for signs of people or dogs. Yellow light seeped from cracks in the shutters of the cottage. Kaeldra hoped the people were eating, their day’s work done.
The barn door was open. It was warm and dark inside. It smelled of manure and mildew and sweet dried hay. To her right, Kaeldra could make out the cows, their backs like giant bread loaves outlined in the dark. One lowed softly. She could hear them chew. There was another animal—a mule—among them; to her left, a large mound of hay leaned against the wall.
Perhaps the kestrel meant for them to bed down here tonight. It would be soft and warm, but—there was no food here. What would they do for food?
Something tingled inside Kaeldra’s head. She whipped around. Embyr peeked around the barn door.
〈Embyr! I told you to stay! Go back!〉
Two more dracling faces appeared. 〈I said—〉
But it was too late.
The cows shifted and lowed uneasily. One turned its head, saw the draclings. The rims of its eyes shone white. It let out a bellow. A cloud of hens flapped and squawked.
“Shh!” Kaeldra said to the cow. “It’s all right. Just—” Another cow mooed. “Quiet!”
From somewhere outside came the slam of a door. Footsteps.
Kaeldra looked around wildly, searching for someplace to hide. The haystack. 〈Quick! Get in here!〉 She burrowed into the hay, the draclings fast behind her. The cows mooed and stomped. The mule brayed. A rooster crowed. Then the kestrel called, loud and long.
“Get away you, you bird!” Kaeldra heard. A boy’s voice. And the sound of something pelting against the barn thatch.
The kestrel called again. It sounded thin, far away.
“Missed ’im.” The boy’s voice came from so close Kaeldra started. She heard him murmuring comfort to the cows, heard his footsteps on the barn floor. The sweet, musty hay smell tickled her nose. She willed herself not to sneeze; she willed the draclings to stay still.
The mule and cows calmed. The chicken squawks diminished to a disgruntled cackling. Through a gap in the straws she could make out the boy’s shape as he knelt and spoke to some animals in a small hutch.
“He’s gone now, little rabbits. The bad bird won’t get you now.”
The boy spoke to them a while longer, too softly for Kaeldra to hear. Then he crossed to the barn door. Kaeldra waited until she heard the cottage door shut, then let herself breathe again.
Food. She still had to do something about food.
She shifted around in the hay until she found all three draclings. 〈You stay,〉 she told them. 〈Stay!〉 This time she had to make them understand. They had to obey.
〈Hungry.〉
〈I know you’re hungry, and that’s where I’m going right now. To find food. But you need to stay here. Stay! Do you understand?〉
She felt the draclings’ warm breath. It smelled like wood smoke.
〈Well? Do you?〉
〈Stay.〉 It was Embyr.
〈That’s right, Embyr. Synge?〉
〈Stay.〉 The voice was a whisper in Kaeldra’s mind.
The hay rustled. 〈Pyro!〉
〈Hungry.〉
〈I’ll get you something to eat. Don’t worry. But you have to stay. Stay.〉
〈Stay,〉 Pyro grumbled.
Kaeldra sighed, unconvinced. But what more could she do?
She crawled out of the hay and brushed the clinging straws from her clothes, then stood at the barn door, watching shadows move across the shutters of the cottage.
There were people in there, and food, and a fire.
A surge of homesickness welled up inside her.
Perhaps if she knocked at the door?
But what if they asked questions? What if they had heard of her somehow? What if they could tell she wasn’t a boy?
Kaeldra looked away.
Maybe there was a smokehouse. People wealthy enough to own a separate barn might have a smokehouse as well. She traced the edges of the cottage with her eyes, scanned the dark spaces on either side. Nothing. Maybe it was behind.
She walked quickly toward the cottage, alert to sounds, to movement. The moon threw her shadow across the ground. She shivered, remembering the gyrfalcon. Suddenly, atop the cottage, something moved. Kaeldra stopped, her heart pounding. She peered into the darkness.
Only the kestrel. It preened itself calmly, as if taunting the boy who thought he had chased it off. Kaeldra laughed inside herself.
And then stopped.
Inside the cottage, a dog was whining.
Shush! Kaeldra thought. Stop that!
The whining swelled to a high-pitched howl. The door banged open. Something streaked out—two things. Kaeldra tried to dodge them, but too late. A knee-high mop of fur slammed into her, knocked her down, sat on her chest. She looked up into the panting face of a shaghaired dog.
“Atta girl, Lufta!” It was a boy, the boy from the barn.
“Lufta! Get back here!” a man’s voice yelled. “Gar, you let the dog out agai—” The voice stopped.
“Yanil? What is it?” A woman’s voice.
Framed in the cottage doorway stood a tall man with graying hair and thick black brows, and a woman holding a baby. All around them, clinging to skirts and pant legs, were children, all manner of children: big and small, boys and girls.
They all stood there, staring.
Staring at her.
* * *
“Gar, and would you be getting our Coldran some pie?”
The boy from the barn leapt from the table, ran to the hearth.
“Let me! I want to do it! Let me!” A dark-haired girl collided with the boy, grabbed his tunic. “Please, please, oh, please!”
Coldran was the name that had slipped into Kaeldra’s mind when Yanil, the father, had asked. She had almost forgotten she was supposed to be a boy. “Kaeld—” she had said, then deepened her voice a little. “Coldran.”
“I can twirl three times in the air, want to see?” another girl asked. Her hair, Kaeldra noticed, was almost as light as her own.
Kaeldra started to reply, then said “Umph,” as a pudgy finger jabbed her stomach. “What’s that?” demanded the finger’s owner, a small boy.
Kaeldra moved her arm in front of her stomach, covering the cheese she had slipped down her tunic when no one was looking.
“Hof!” his mother said. “And will you sit down and be mindin’ your manners?”
The baby in her lap sucked on its fist. “Gub!” it said happily.
Kaeldra felt bad about stealing food from these people. They had invited her to their table, fed her until she felt stuffed. They had treated her not as a stranger, but as a friend.
She looked round the room, which was larger and more richly furnished than Kaeldra’s cottage. There was a stone hearth with a chimney in one corner. Oil lamps spilled golden light across pewter plates. Behind the wooden shutters, she caught a gleam of glass.
It would be nice to live here, Kaeldra thought. She wished the draclings could take care of themselves. She wished she could stay here with this family, feeling full and warm and wanted.
Something clunked on the table before her: a steaming-hot pie, bubbling with a red, sweet-smelling liquid. The boy whirled away. The dark-haired girl pouted. Across the table, the eldest girl smiled at Kaeldra, then looked quickly down at her plate.
At the front door, Lufta yipped.
“Quiet, Lufta!” Yanil said. “I don’t know what’s got into that cur tonight.”
“She can’t help it! She got bit,” Gar said.
“By a wolf,” one of the girls added.
“Or a dragon,” another girl said.
“Gub.” The baby smeared pie in its hair.
“No such thing as dragons,” Gar said.
“Says who?”
“Says me!”
“That man said so.” The dark-haired girl turned to Yanil. “The apothecary man. Didn’t he, Da?”
“So what does he know?” Gar said. “He never even saw one. He just said—”
“Children!” Yanil’s voice cut through the bickering. He glared at them from beneath his bristling eyebrows, although a touch of amusement flickered at the corner of his mouth as he turned to Kaeldra.
She wanted to ask about the apothecary, but Yanil spoke first. “So you’re bound for Kragrom, are you?”
“I’m to be apprenticed,” Kaeldra said. “To a blacksmith my grandmother knows there.” She listened to the lie as she said it, to see if it sounded true.
“What’s that?” Hof asked, tugging at her coin purse.
Kaeldra smiled and gently detached his fingers from the purse.
“I’ll be goin’ that way myself,” Yanil continued. “Well, not all the way to Kragrom, but I’ll be cartin’ some brew to Regalch, by the Kragish Sea. You could bide a night or two with us, couldn’t you? And ride with me as far as Regalch? I could book you on a vessel bound for Kragrom. It’d be a boon to have another man along.”
Kaeldra gaped, so astonished she couldn’t think what to say.
“Yes, please stay,” the eldest girl said. She smiled, raised her eyelashes, then lowered them again. With a jolt, Kaeldra recognized her look. It was the kind of look that Mirym exchanged with Wynn. A private look. A girl-to-boy look. Kaeldra gulped and took a spoonful of pie.
“What’s that?” Hof was reaching for her hood. Horrified, Kaeldra felt it begin to slide off her head.
“I can dance the jeika, want to see?”
“The man said—”
“Did not!”
“Quiet, Lufta!”
“Gub!”
The smile froze on the eldest girl’s face. Yanil’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. Even the dog was quiet.
Kaeldra grabbed for her hood, but too late.
“He’s a girl!” Hof said.
“I—” Kaeldra choked. The words stuck in her throat. She groped for something credible to say, something to explain why a boy would wear his hair in a braid, or else why a girl would pass herself off as a boy. Dimly, she heard a squawking of hens, a mooing of cows, the braying of a mule. At the table, no one moved.
Suddenly, the kestrel screamed. The dog set up a frenzy of barking and scratching. The cows were bellowing now; the hens screeched.
“What in the name of—” Yanil jumped up and ran to the door. There was a scraping of benches, a pounding of feet.
Squeezing into the doorway, children crowded all around her, Kaeldra saw the draclings.
They were flying.
They drifted, wobbling, through the air, then flamed down at three panicked rabbits. Embyr flopped down on one, then dragged it wriggling and kicking along the ground. Pyro missed, landed snoot-first in the dirt, lunged, and heaved himself down upon a rabbit.
“By the sun’s blessed rays,” Yanil whispered.
Kaeldra’s legs refused to move. She willed them to go, but they wouldn’t. Then the kestrel called again, and she was pushing past the family, she was out in the barnyard.
“Flee!” she shouted to the draclings.
“Flee!”