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“And the Great Drackan resumed its place upon the stone.” The child’s eyes sparkled with delight. Honai rolled the parchment again and set it back on the shelf. The child jumped on the bed, her dark curls bouncing between her shoulders as she pulled the skirt of her nightgown as far out as it would go. Honai laughed. “What are you doing?”
The smile the girl gave her wet nurse was fierce and wild. “I want to be a drackan.”
Honai smiled and walked to the bedside. The girl jumped high, landing blindly on her knees as the nightgown whipped over her head. Honai giggled with her, tickling the child’s body, then straightened her out on the mattress. “But I’m sure the mighty drackans are not so careless as to let their wings cover their heads?” The girl grinned, wiggling under the quilts. Honai situated her in bed and knelt. “Why do you wish so much to be a drackan?”
“They’re the greatest things that ever lived.”
Honai smoothed a lock of dark hair from the child’s face, frowning in mock consternation. “These are the same drackans I know, yes? The terrifying, ruthless brutes, who destroyed villages, ate livestock, and burned forests with their firebreath?”
The girl patiently shook her head. “They only killed people who scared them. They only ever wanted to fly and protect their babies. And they saved the one boy who would not run from them. He believed in them, and I believe in them.” She held up her hands, casting shadows upon the bed, and pulled a face at them. “I wish I could hear their stories.”
Honai stood and straightened her skirts. There was no point in arguing with a child’s vibrant imagination, especially before bed. Especially this child. “Well, I’m sure they have their stories, my dear, but they are not for tonight. Sleep well, and perhaps you may dream of your drackans.”
“Yes,” the girl sighed, squirming in tired excitement. “And they will tell me everything.”
Honai kissed the child’s forehead but paused at the doorway to the chamber. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and the wrongness she sensed quickly became a sound. It mocked the flapping of Lord Kartney’s banner in the wind, posted high above the watchtower. Many nights, it was the only sound outside the castle. But this noise was no banner. It was louder, thicker, splitting through the air with intent. In a matter of seconds, a calm night of normalcy shredded into terror. It had finally come.
She turned toward the window, knowing the truth and fearing it all the more. There hovered a great red drackan from the High Hills, head stretched out tight on its neck, body hovering with the rhythmic beat of its wings. The drackan’s armored scales shone in the firelight—brown with a tinge of fiery, metallic red. The broad wings almost scraped against the cold outer stone of the tower as it pushed a dignified head through the opening almost too small for it. The length of its neck crossed the room toward the child’s bed.
The girl had pushed herself up, wide-eyed and glowing with excitement.
The seconds stretched long and thin before Honai’s wits scattered, and she screamed. A voice, much louder than it should have been, echoed through the room. It came from the beast itself, though the bone-crushing jaw never moved, the eyes never left the child’s face. A bodiless, sexless voice, dark and ancient.
‘You do believe in us, fledgling. I think it high time you had your wish.’
Honai stared in mute horror as the beast’s ridged snout hovered above the child’s legs. The girl reach out a tiny hand, steady and calm. Glassy, intelligent eyes passed between the hand and the small face. Judging. Waiting.
“I am not afraid,” the child stated boldly and lightly touched the creature.
When finally Honai could move again, her terror rushed her out of the chamber and through the castle. She ran down the stone halls, bumping against the corners as she turned through the corridors.
She finally reached the dining hall where Lord Kartney sat drinking with his men. “Milord,” she gasped.
The dark-haired lord turned from the table to look at her with a half-smile still playing across his lips. He noted her concern and stood abruptly, the smile fading into a worried frown. “What is it, Honai?”
The woman stumbled and fell to her knees at his feet. “Milord, a... a drackan... in the child’s room...”
He whispered his daughter’s name and brusquely turned to his men. Wordlessly, they followed him through the castle halls. The drackan’s diminishing tail vanished through the open window just as they burst through the door. Kartney unsheathed his sword and rushed to the window, wildly slashing out, but the bare steel caught only the frigid night air.
A scream of fear and misery echoed from the tower of Brijer Turret, lasting almost as long as it took for the child’s bed to grow cold.