Chapter 1 - Flying and Flicker

May the ageless wisdom of an Ancient Dragon

Transform your soul.

May you fly as high as a mighty Dragon

To all the Islands of your life.

And may the matchless courage of a dragonet

Fire your heart, forever.

From Elegy by Hualiama of Fra’anior

Twisting free from her manacles, Lia surged to her feet. She rapidly gathered a six-foot length of chain between her hands.

At her sudden movement, startled oaths burst from two young soldiers assigned to their cabin. Clad in the midnight-blue of Fra’anior’s Royal Guard, the soldiers watched over Lia and Fyria, her royal sister, as a Dragonship bore them into exile–likely, to a place of execution.

“What’re you doing?” squeaked Fyria.

“Escaping,” said Lia.

Eyes bulging, the soldiers whipped out their swords. One snarled, “Not by the fires of this caldera, you aren’t!”

“Here,” said the other, crooking his finger in a crude gesture. “Little girl want to play–urk!”

Lia lashed out with the chain as he spoke. The metal links snaked around the man’s neck. She sprang sideways, up against the Dragonship’s cabin wall. Using her captive as a counterbalance, Lia stepped briefly along the lightweight wall to avoid the first soldier’s lunge, before dropping nimbly behind him. A swift kick of her slipper-clad foot propelled the man into the corner where her Royal Highness the Princess Fyria’aliola of Fra’anior–Fyria, for short–lay in chains.

Planting both of her feet, Lia used her full weight to spin the chained soldier about. His forehead struck a metal stanchion with a meaty smack. The soldier slumped. Unholy windrocs, that crazy manoeuvre had worked? No time to exult.

“Aye, I’m little,” she snapped, relieving the man of his sword. “Want to play some more?”

“Mutiny!” yelled the first soldier. “Help!”

Lia swayed away from his flickering blade. She pirouetted into her parry with the poise of a skilled dancer. A cut appeared on her arm as if by magic. She flung her elbow upward, catching the soldier in the throat. As he choked, Lia finished him with a sharp rap of her sword pommel to the base of his skull.

The cabin door crashed open. Half a dozen soldiers boiled into the room, led by the hard-bitten Captain of the Royal Guard, Ra’aba. “You,” he growled. “Ever the troublemaker!”

“Traitor!” Lia spat in return. She raised her blade.

Captain Ra’aba, called ‘the Roc’ after the windroc, a ferocious avian predator with a wingspan of up to eighteen feet, stilled his men with a gesture. “Hualiama,” he said, his scarred face twisting into a grin as he mangled her full name with great force, “Little Lia. I trained you myself. How can you possibly hope to best me?”

She said, “I can’t. But I will protect my family–”

“Your family?” he snorted. “You’re a royal ward–about as much a Princess as I am.” When she only raised her elfin chin as if wishing to skewer him upon its point, he added, “Everyone knows you’re an unwanted, bastard whelp of a cliff-fox the Queen took pity on.”

Hualiama flushed hotly. “At least I’m not a worm who betrayed the people who gave him everything. Go cast yourself into a Cloudlands volcano–”

Ra’aba drew himself up with a sneer. “You forget you’re speaking to the future King of Fra’anior, girl. Now, kneel and swear fealty, or it is I who will be casting you off this Dragonship.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Oh, little Lia, who’d stop me? A Dragon?”

Relish twisted his lips; the harshness of his scorn unnerved her. Little Lia. The nickname she hated more than any other.

Staring up into his flat, fulvous eyes, Hualiama realised why she had never trusted this man. Her sword-point wavered; the Roc still had not drawn his weapon. She knew how fast he was with a sword. Ra’aba had never been beaten. If the legends spoke true, no weapon had ever touched him, neither in training nor in battle.

“Last chance,” he said. His stance bespoke nothing but absolute command and confidence. Lia tried to summon her courage back up from her boots, as the Isles saying went. “Girl, you’re fifteen summers of age. You’re a foot shorter than I am, hopelessly clumsy with a blade, and if I’m not mistaken, today’s your birthday. Choose wisely. Choose life.”

“Just as you’re promising life to my family?”

“Banishment,” he shrugged. “Uncomfortable and permanent, aye, but hardly deadly. After all, which Fra’aniorian Islander would accept me if I had royal blood on my hands? King Chalcion will abdicate; I shall ascend the Onyx Throne in his stead.”

He rolled his muscular shoulders, a silent threat. “Now, haven’t you fomented enough grief for one day, Hualiama? Join me, and I’ll promise you a place in my kingdom.”

Her family! Her little brothers! She did not care greatly for haughty, vain Fyria, but she loved her brothers and her mother, Queen Shyana, to distraction. Just that morning, the Roc’s men had staged a bloody, well-planned revolt. Lia had killed two soldiers with her own hand while protecting Princess Fyria, only to wake on Ra’aba’s Dragonship with a lump on her head and no memory of the balance of the day. Judging by the low, ruddy rays beaming in through the porthole, evening approached.

The Dragonship flew southwest, she calculated. Had they already crossed the rim of Fra’anior’s volcanic caldera? Would his threat land her on one of the rim-Islands, such as Ha’athior, or drop her into the Cloudlands, the realm of deadly, opaque gases which lay more than a league below the Human-inhabited Islands of her home?

She could not beat seven elite soldiers.

Allowing her shoulders to slump and her lower lip to quiver, she said, “You win, Ra’aba.”

He began to nod.

With a snap of her wrist, Lia hurled the sword at him.

Almost, the ploy succeeded. Had the Roc not been wearing metal wristlets, or had the blade struck his body armour slightly more squarely, Ra’aba would have been gutted like a ralti sheep prepared for a spit-roast. To her dismay, the blade deflected off his left wristlet, tearing a shallow gash in the armour above his hip. Blood welled up immediately, but not much.

Go! Lia dived for the second soldier’s blade.

Men piled on her. Grunting, wriggling, elbows and knees thrashing, drawing their curses as she jabbed a man in the eye … the soldiers subdued her, wrenching her arms behind her back, putting a dagger to her throat. A rough hand gripped her headscarf together with a handful of her pale hair, jerking her head upright, forcing her to meet the Roc’s gaze.

Ra’aba glared at her, the set of his scarred mouth so draconic, that Hualiama pictured him changing into a Dragon and lunging at her, talons poised to rend her flesh. His fingers explored the cut at his side. Ra’aba wiped the blood across his mouth, sucking the crimson off his fingertips with cold deliberation. Murder blazed in his eyes.

The Captain growled, “Fine. Let her go. Give the girl a weapon.”

“My Lord Captain …”

“Give her a cursed sword!”

Hualiama shook off the hands holding her, tasting blood in her mouth, too. A sword hilt pressed into her fingers. Her heartbeat raced off over the Cloudlands. She confronted the man said to be the most dangerous swordsman in the kingdom. He was tall and heavily muscled, yet possessed of a lithe elegance of movement that had always struck Lia as improbably feline. The burns splashed across his left cheek, running from his eye down across the corner of his mouth, flamed reddish-purple beneath the inimical fires of his narrowed eyes. He meant to kill her.

This was no way to spend a birthday. Mercy.

As if echoing her thoughts aloud, Fyria whispered, “Mercy, Ra’aba. Please. She’s just a girl.”

He snarled, “Nobody cuts the Roc and lives to tell the tale!”

Captain Ra’aba’s attack jarred Lia so powerfully that her teeth clacked together. He was a supremely skilled swordsman, but he hacked at her in a demented fury, by sheer strength beating her backward across the cabin. Always, Hualiama felt graceless with a blade in hand. Jerking this way and that, she kept Ra’aba out with a flurry of desperate parries. Great Islands, how could any man be possessed of such demonic strength? The Roc pounded Lia to her knees.

“Get up!” His finger crooked beneath her nose. “Fight me, you little dragonet. Fight!”

When Lia rose, he smashed the blade out of her numb fingers.

Fyria shrieked, drawing Ra’aba’s attention for a fraction of a second, allowing Lia to kick off the wall and upset his balance. As she darted past, the Captain swivelled and slashed at her unprotected back. The blade bit deep.

Hualiama arched in agony, grabbing for the air, for a wall, for the mail shirt of a soldier who kept her upright with a rough thrust of his forearm. The soldier spun her about; Lia’s green eyes flicked to Ra’aba, who bowed slightly, his expression turned unaccountably gentle. Lia wondered if he had decided to end his lesson. Had his pride not been satisfied by that cruel cut? She felt nothing, as though the nerves had been amputated so suddenly, they had been unable to signal her brain. Then, the muscles of his jawline hardened. Lia stifled a sob. Warmth dripped down her back, each drop a wordless testimony to the gravity of her wound.

“Pick up the sword, girl,” he ground out.

Several soldiers sighed, but no-one lifted a finger to help her. Fyria’s sobs from the corner betrayed what they all knew. Stiffly, Lia retrieved the fallen sword. She wondered if Ra’aba’s stroke had chipped chunks of bone off her spine. Her flesh flapped loosely, slapping against her back with a wet, plopping sound. Now, the pain roared through her like a hunting Dragon bellowing his paralysing challenge. Whiteness crashed over her vision. Lia pressed against the wall to keep from falling. Stand. Lock the knees. Fight!

She turned to face Ra’aba, despite the nadir of pain devastating her body. She raised her blade with a supreme effort. Lia hissed, “I’m ready.”

The Roc nodded, raising his blade to his forehead in an ironic salute to her bravery. He said, “Perhaps it is better this way.”

Lia stumbled into the attack, swinging her blade in looping blow, so sluggish that it seemed she fought underwater. Captain Ra’aba had no such difficulty. Sidestepping adroitly, he punched his left fist into her stomach.

His hand clasped a dagger.

The pain cut her in half. It felt as though her spine had been severed, for Lia lost all feeling in her legs. Only Captain Ra’aba’s iron grip held her upright, folded over the impaling blade. The sword clattered to the floor. Her lungs heaved for air. With each breath pain shot up her spine and tore into her skull like a blood-frenzied Dragon’s claws.

“Foolish girl,” he said.

She wheezed, “Why?”

Ignoring her, Ra’aba nodded at two of his troops. “You two. Throw this piece of trash overboard.”

His voice echoed as though he had shouted down a darkening tunnel. She had to move, to speak, but she was powerless. Lia knew she had to save her family. How odd, an inner voice said. Her life was not meant to end like this. As the Captain dragged her toward the doorway, spitting furiously at his unwilling soldiers, she met Fyria’s tear-filled eyes. The Princess must have thought being hauled out of the Palace in chains was the worst imaginable fate.

A brutal education.

Outside the cabin, the warm, fragrant winds of her beloved Fra’anior ruffled her hair. The Island-World seemed ablaze in fresh and miraculous colours, as though a Dragon’s breath infused all with mysterious wisps of white-golden fire, and in the slowing of time between her heartbeats, Hualiama understood not only that there was magic in the world, but that it pervaded everything she perceived, touched and smelled. The taste on her tongue was its fiery signature. She breathed, and an inrush of fire seared her spirit, yet conversely, brought an unexpected sense of serenity. The fire cleansed without consuming, a touch of love rather than torment. Was this a memory, or a fragment of insight garnered as her soul readied itself for an eternal flight?

Inanely, Lia realised that the soldiers had torn her headscarf away. She was improperly dressed.

The Roc lifted her five feet and two inches frame with ease. As he manhandled her toward the safety railing which lined the gantry beneath the Dragonship’s hundred-and-fifty-foot hydrogen balloon, Lia saw the unmistakable profile of Ha’athior Island’s double volcanic cone abaft their starboard beam. Ahead and several miles below lay a tiny side-volcano, nestled against its parent like a Dragon hatchling taking comfort against an enormous mother’s flank. After that? Crimson-tinged Cloudlands lapped unbroken from the Islands to the horizon’s skirts, a deathly carpet clothed in immeasurable, brooding majesty.

Strange. She had always wanted to experience Dragon flight.

The touch of cool metal against her back provoked a sudden, final outpouring of strength. Reaching behind her, Hualiama caught her long braid in her fingertips.

“Any birthday wishes, little Lia?” chuckled Captain Ra’aba.

“Rot in–” she inhaled sharply, choking on blood “–a Cloudlands hell.” Reaching up, Lia jabbed her three-inch long, razor-sharp hairpin into his windpipe, several inches below his left jawbone.

He wheezed, “You …”

As Ra’aba recoiled, the flailing of his arms tumbled her over the edge. Lia screamed endlessly as she fell through the ruddy beams of a perfect Fra’aniorian suns-set.

* * * *

When a scream split the early evening sky, a dragonet lurking nearby almost spilled his mouthful of lemur intestines. What? He hated to be distracted from the spoils of his hunt. His green eyes narrowed against the glare of the sky-fires, the eyes of the Great Dragon which seared the world with their unrelenting gaze. One of those two-legged ground-creepers was trying to fly? Loops of grey intestines dangled either side of his jaw as he gaped at this spectacle. The creature thrashed its spindly, useless appendages as it plummeted from one of their fat flying balloons.

How awkward and ungainly! Imagine trying to fly with no wings?

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A premonition prickled his scales. The dragonet’s mirthful gurgle snagged in his throat, replaced by a hissing stream of fire. Wrongness. The thin wail of the creature’s terror.

Before he knew it, Flicker sprang off the obsidian boulder he had adopted as his table, knocking his favourite meal into a patch of nearby jiista-berry bushes. He flapped his wings madly, taking him over a rocky outcropping before a neat flip upended him. Tail jutting skyward, he chased the creature down the four-mile vertical cliff which demarcated the south-western periphery of Ha’athior Island. Faster! Pump the wings! In seconds he whipped by acres of lush overhanging trees, a dozen dark-mouthed caves and a flight of red dragonets practising their song-dance of praise to the Magma Dragon, which roared beneath the roots of their Island.

At two and a half feet in wingspan, and just under two feet from muzzle to tail-spike, Flicker was no unusual size for a dragonet of his nine summers of age, but his smoky green colour was unique amongst his kin. His egg-mother certainly thought him very strange, especially how he studied the ways of the creatures above the cliffs. It’s dangerous for dragonets up there, she scolded him. The two-legs put dragonets in metal cages.

What a horror!

But the mighty Dragons of the mountain peaks sang to his spirit, and the doings of the two-legs were endlessly fascinating. How could such stupid, flightless creatures force metal and stone to bend to their will? They made absurd squiggles on animal-skin scrolls, and were so hopeless at hunting, they had to keep giant ralti sheep penned up next to their stone warrens. They travelled with their clumsy flying balloons and fought other Human warrens with metal sticks, instead of working together under a warren-mother’s wise guidance.

Well, this one’s idiocy had to trump them all.

A strange-smelling red liquid splattered his face as he tucked his wings in to accelerate, just a few tens of feet away from the creature now as it tumbled into the void. Flicker gasped with the effort. If it could just slow a little, maybe extend that skin covering to make wings, the creature might slow its headlong fall. It made another screeching noise which set his fangs on edge.

Down, down it fell. The cliffs blurred past, the heat increasing by the second, the rocks and long, trailing vines flashing past his wingtips. Flicker inched closer, measuring the creature’s trajectory. It would strike near the base of the cliff, splattering its brains out on the slope before being picked over by windrocs and other aerial predators. Would its brains make a tasty meal?

Regardless, his seventh sense impelled the dragonet onward. He had to save this creature.

Reaching out with his paws, Flicker gripped the creature’s body covering and began to flap mightily. Great eternal fires, it flew like a rock! It did not even pretend to help. Obstinately, he struggled on, ignoring the pain in his wings and joints. If he could just change the angles enough, drag it a few more feet in the air … foliage slapped his cheek. More! With a scream of his own, the dragonet allowed his wings to cup the air, slowing them at the expense of a tearing sensation in his major flight muscles.

Whap! They slammed into a leafy branch, bursting right through it in a spray of greenery. The creature hurtled through a patch of tangled vines, stripping them in an explosion of ripe fruit and a flurry of leaves. The resulting rotation almost flung him free, but Flicker was not done. He dug his claws into the creature’s soft flesh, and flared his wings again.

Another, sturdier branch smacked the creature in the side. Thankfully he missed that one, but lower down, there was a huge branch overhanging the red-hot lava flows a mile below. So low already! Right in the danger zone, beyond which even dragonets feared to venture. This was his last chance. Flap, flap and flap again! Wrench this lumpen creature by any means possible into the right trajectory, screaming, muscles burning, magic assisting … thump! They bounced. Rebounded twice more, and then lay swaying on a broken, leafy bed.

Flicker opened and closed his jaw.

I am awesome, he told himself, and fainted.

* * * *

When he woke, a volcanic twilight enflamed his world in auburn and gold hues. Flicker began to stretch before stopping with a grimace. Unholy monkey droppings, what a bad idea. He eased his wings. No more flying for him, not for several days, he suspected.

Oh … the creature lay right next to him, face-up to the blushing skies, breathing shallowly. It had a green cloth covering on its body, and a large patch of crimson stained its stomach area. Was that its blood? He flinched. Grotesque! Not even a hint of gold, unlike the blood of Dragons.

Wake up, weird creature, he chirped.

It did not move.

Flicker stretched out a paw curiously, hesitated, and then pricked its limb with his talon. How daring was he? The creature’s skin was so supple, it yielded immediately to his touch. More red welled up. He winced. What was the matter with its hide? It didn’t have hide? Now, what word had the scrolls used? Skin, yes. He rolled the unfamiliar word across his forked tongue. They had skin, not Dragon hide, a covering so smooth and colourless it reminded him of a newborn, blind rodent. His stomach-fires soughed uneasily. Its limbs were long but supported no wing struts or elastic membranes. How could it have hoped to fly?

Instinctively, his tongue flicked out to taste the creature’s blood, finding it rich and metallic, full of enigmatic undertones. Without warning, a vision struck him. A big creature beat this smaller one with a flat piece of metal. They exchanged meaningless sounds. The little one attacked, but it was not as powerful a beast as the one with the fungal growth on its face. The big one stuck a shard of metal into this one’s stomach.

Flicker’s throat swelled. Murder? A fight to the death?

Was this creature a female of their kind, rather than a handsome male like him?

By the fires of the Ancient Dragons, she had to be the ugliest female of a species he had ever encountered! Flicker shifted closer to examine her face, fascinated and repelled in equal measure. When she sighed and shifted, he shrank back, all three hearts tripping along, but then she made a purring sound like a sleeping dragonet. Well! What a foolish idea, sleeping outdoors at night. Perhaps she was as stupid as she was ugly? Just look at her flat, squashed muzzle, and her tiny nose. How could she scent food with that thing? Strange blades of grass sprouted from her head, grass as pale and golden as the wisps that grew lower down the cliffs, near the caldera, bleached by the heat and gases. Her paws had talons, but they were weak and clearly impractical for rending her prey.

The dragonet cocked his head to one side, his eyes roiling with Dragon fire. Well, you’re not dead, he said, speaking Dragonish telepathically. Say, ‘thank you for rescuing me, Flicker.’

She snored.

He tried speaking aloud. I do declare, you’re the bravest, most beautiful dragonet in this entire Island-Cluster, Flicker. I am eternally in your debt.

Drool slipped from the corner of her mouth; saliva laced with more of her freakish blood.

She was wounded, probably dying! Her body fluids oozed forth steadily–and he prattled on like an empty-headed parakeet about his looks? Abruptly, Flicker retreated, muttering, I’ve done you wrong, strange creature.

That night, sore-pawed and even sorer of wing and muscle, he hunted up and down the cliffs for the herbs and roots he needed. Using several broad fli’iara leaves as his worktable, the dragonet shredded and prepared his materials, making a selection of poultices which he masticated carefully in his mouth, adding his highly antiseptic dragonet saliva to the mashing process, and no small dose of magic. The Ancient One had taught him well.

Only, would his medicines work on one of their kind?

Flicker eyed the branch judiciously. At least he had picked an excellent landing place. The branch jutted four hundred horizontal feet from the main Island, but had a soft, leafy crown which he had picked out perfectly. He blinked his double eye-membranes several times, showing his happiness. Even this clumsy female could not easily fall from their nest among the leaves, although he worried about windrocs, vultures and feral Dragons, to name just a few aerial predators.

His deft paws made short work of tearing her covering and pulling it aside, revealing a deep double puncture wound in her belly. Nasty. He drew out the shard of metal which had made the wound, before licking the site clean with care. The dragonet wrinkled his nose at the odour of her skin. She tasted salty. At least it was not a foul taste, but he decided he should wash out his mouth at the first opportunity. No telling what unmentionable diseases her kind might carry.

The dragonet stuffed the holes full of his most potent healing mixture. There, that should stop her leaking. Muttering fussily to himself, Flicker covered the wound’s open lips with another poultice, before checking the rest of her body for further wounds. She had an impressive collection.

Just let the Ancient One see him now!

Since no other creature was nearby to express due admiration, he congratulated himself, Ha, I’ve saved the life of a two-legged straw-head, a mighty and worthy deed!

By the radiant light of the Yellow moon, Iridith, which covered half of the southern horizon, Flicker saw that the branches beneath her body were slick with blood. He sighed. What dragonet had a chance of lifting such a lump of flesh? How demeaning, now he had to crawl through the branches beneath her body to find where else she was wounded.

The gash on her back, however, made his fiery eyes darken with anger. See what that fungus-faced, mange-ridden rat had done! A flap of skin roughly the size of his right wing hung loose from her back, torn and dirty, already attracting flies. How did flies find an open wound so quickly? By the stench of her blood? If he did not treat this, she would be infested with maggots before the next Blue moon. Admittedly, maggots tasted much like lemur meat, they were just squishier. Yum.

Perhaps she might share her maggots with him? There was an agreeable thought.

With a contented gurgle, Flicker returned to his medicines. Now, where to start? If she was anything like a dragonet, her hide was a sack which held the fluids inside. First, the wound must be thoroughly cleaned. After that, the muscles should be returned to their rightful places, and the hide sewn together to prevent it from shifting about while she healed.

He worked for several hours more before deciding, with a huge yawn, that his heroism and dauntless service ought to be rewarded with a nap for the remaining three hours of darkness.

* * * *

Lia dreamed the blasphemous dream.

Once, she had dared to tell Fyria about her dreams. Her sister relayed them to their father; King Chalcion beat her with his fists. That was the day she learned, to the tune of a broken rib and a split lip, that people did not dream about flying with Dragons. Only wicked, depraved girls dreamed about soaring over the everlasting thermals of Fra’anior’s great caldera upon wings a hundred feet wide, which cut the moons like crystal blades.

She woke with a choked-off sob. A daytime thermal drove hot, faintly rancid air up from the depths. Up at Island level, a league above the Cloudlands, the air would be fragrant with the scent of a thousand pollens and rich with birdsong and dragonet-song, but down here, the heat shrivelled her lungs. Lia’s eyes traversed the lush green precipice rising above her until it was lost in the mists above. She wondered dully why she roosted in a tree.

Captain Ra’aba’s dagger! Falling through the twin suns’ warm, radiant beams … she was alive? Ridiculous! Off-the-Islands crazy.

Despite the heat, her body felt chilled. Hualiama shifted her aching neck to examine her wounds. Shock jolted her as she discovered a green dragonet curled up against her left shoulder, purring softly in his sleep, just like a wild rajal kitten she had once tried to tame. How sweet! The tiny paws twitched slightly and the eyes darted about behind the animal’s shuttered eyelids as though it dreamed. She saw multi-jointed wings, folded neatly back to its sides. It had a row of spine spikes which exactly matched those of the Lesser Dragons who roosted at Gi’ishior Island to the west of her home, and at Ha’athior, and claimed many other Islands for their homes. But Fra’anior’s great volcano was the most ancient and beloved of Dragon roosts, where Dragons lived on the peaks and in the caves, and Humans on their Islands, in an often uneasy truce.

Lia moistened her lips with her tongue. She remembered small, fluttering wings, and the sharp clasp of talons. This dragonet had rescued her, landing her on Ha’athior Island? That was the only possible explanation. She had explored the caldera and its twenty-seven Islands many times, sailing her single-handed or solo Dragonship with her brother Elki, or alone. Even Elki, more mischievous than a troop of monkeys rolled together, had never set foot on holy Ha’athior Island. Dragons tended to take a dim view of trespassers. They dropped them into lava flows or hurled them into the Cloudlands.

Nobody crossed a Dragon.

And whoever had dreamed up the misnomer ‘Lesser Dragon’ to describe an awesome reptilian predator which grew up to a hundred and twenty feet in wingspan, and could devour a three-thousand pound ralti sheep in a sitting, had to have a flock of chattering lovebirds for brains. Dragons were the mightiest creatures of the Island-World, bar none.

That did not stop some people from dreaming about them.

Craning her neck gingerly, Hualiama worked out that she lay on a leafy, spreading branch a mile above an open magma pit. She was further down the cliffs than she had ever been, probably being poisoned by the Cloudlands’ toxic gases. Her right arm was heavily bruised, almost definitely broken. Between her shoulder blades, her back ached as though Ra’aba had cut her open a second time. And her stomach–great Islands! Someone had cleaned the wound and stuffed it full of green pulp. She saw very little bleeding on the outside, but she did not want to think about the mess inside.

This must be the dragonet’s work–just look at the neat piles of herbs stacked on broad leaves near her left hand, and the sticky green mess still visible on the animal’s paws.

Impossible. Dragonets were beautiful, amazing, and as thoughtless as the average clump of rocks. What they could do was sing. Often, when taking vocal training as was required of all Fra’aniorian royals–proper or adopted–Hualiama would hear the trilling descant of dragonets accompanying her vibrant soprano. They seemed to prefer her voice even over her youngest brother, Ari, whose developing tenor was widely regarded as the finest voice of his generation. Big Ari. His speech was a muddle, but when he sang, the very Islands sat up, wide-eyed and agog.

Would she ever see her family again?

She was alive. Quiet, hopeless tears slid down Lia’s cheeks. If they were fortunate, her family would be marooned on an unmarked boulder somewhere in the trackless reaches of the Cloudlands.

When a volley of sobs shook her body, the dragonet stirred.

* * * *

Flicker awoke from a dream of being a hatchling again, sleeping alongside his egg-mother, safely cocooned in the warm heart of a dragonet warren.

Unfortunately, his waking was not quite so peaceful, as he found himself cuddled up to his patient. A squeak of dismay escaped his muzzle as Flicker instinctively tried to flap away. Agony! He tumbled muzzle over paws, but something jerked his wing.

The creature had grabbed him! He bit her paw.

“Ouch, you little rajal!” she cried.

Don’t you touch me, you freak!

“Islands’ sakes, little one, I didn’t … I only wanted to save you a fall.”

Flicker hissed, flaring his wings and mock-charging the two-leg. Ooh. He grimaced. Whatever damage he had done, he could not escape … don’t touch me. Grr! By the First Egg, the wretched little windroc had dared to grab his wing! Dragonets were extremely fussy about their wings and tails.

She withdrew her left hand. “Down, girl. Take it easy,” she said. “Here, I won’t hurt you. Did you make these herbs? And treat me? I feel surprisingly good, thank you.”

Meaningless monkey-chatter issued from her flat muzzle, but when she indicated the herbs, he realised that the creature must have some sort of tiny brain after all. Well, didn’t he know that? They used tools and built their communal warrens–so why couldn’t they talk like normal creatures?

Now, her strange face became animated. He began to say, You’re the ugliest … Flicker pulled up with a gurgle of surprise. He was quite certain she was baring her fangs at him, but as he gazed into her smoky green eyes, exactly the same colour as his scales, an inexplicable power seemed to seize his body. His hearts expanded in his chest. A singing began in his ears; not Dragonsong, but a deeper, more spine-tingling melody, a type of magic he had never experienced before.

All Flicker knew was that he neither wanted to move, nor could he.

Her lips parted even further, exposing her pathetic incisors; those gimlet eyes crinkled at the corners. With more of her soothing noises, the creature reached out to touch his neck with her worm-like digits. The dragonet trembled.

“You’re a beautiful, perfect little Dragon,” she said. “Are you hurt? Did you hurt yourself, saving me?”

Don’t, that’s … very nice. Flicker’s scales prickled as she stroked his neck, growing bolder. A low vibration of satisfaction emerged from his chest. Listen here, flat-face, you’re taking liberties … I can’t believe it. I’m actually touching a two-leg. By the First Egg, just wait until I tell my warren-mates!

Wonderingly, she said, “When you look at me like that, I could swear you’re trying to talk to me, little one. Are you talking? Do you like this?”

Flicker shifted restlessly. Enough. Remove your paw, scoundrel.

She jerked her hand back as he made a token snap toward her trespassing digits. She said, “Gently, my beauty.”

How do you survive with no Dragon hide? he wondered, awash in confusion and wonder. Aren’t you cold? Do you have belly-fires, like me? What is this water leaking from your eyes? What magic did you summon? Why did the fungus-faced one try to kill you?

She was looking around, taking in her precarious perch in the V between two branches, supported from beneath by the thickness of the secondary growth, which twined together beneath her body. Flicker moved to his pile of medicines and selected a leaf. She needed to eat at least a pawful to keep the infection at bay. Right. Since he was so brave, this should be easy.

* * * *

“No!” Hualiama flinched as the dragonet rushed toward her.

The movement jerked her right arm. She distinctly felt the bones grate together, a few inches above her elbow. A deep groan accompanied the blenching of her face. Fire spread in her stomach as fresh blood began to seep from one of the puncture wounds.

Eat, insisted the dragonet.

“Er …” Hualiama flopped back on the branch, which swayed and dipped alarmingly. Dancing dragonets–she chuckled to herself as the phrase crossed her mind–she was right near the end, a bird in her leafy nest. How a small dragonet had dragged her to safety, she had no idea, but she had the scratches and burn-marks from branches to prove what the miniature Dragon had achieved. “You want me to eat that concoction?”

It looked like something the dragonet had regurgitated.

Don’t you know what’s good for you, two-legs? said Flicker, flicking his eye-membranes in irritation. This is medicine for the pain.

Feeling too weak and dizzy to refuse the strangely insistent dragonet, Lia sniffed the mess being waved beneath her nose. Actually, it smelled rather agreeable, like one of Queen Shyana’s allegedly ‘uplifting’ or ‘invigorating’ herbal brews she swore by for all ailments.

“Can you–” she squeezed her eyes shut, mouthing a word which would have earned her a reprimand from one of her tutors back at the Palace. She began to sweat and shiver simultaneously as the pain swept over her. “I’m going crazy. Talking to a dragonet in my crazy bird-perch.”

Eat, chirped the dragonet, making the sign again. Eat.

Eat, she chirped back.

Fine, I’ll feed you, you useless … what did you just say?

Lia knew she was badly wounded. The song of her body was anguish, a counterpoint to the consuming grief over her family’s fate. King Chalcion was a proud, unbending man. This would be a dagger to his gut. As for Queen Shyana–she was sweet and accommodating, the person to whom Hualiama had always turned. She truly treated Lia as a daughter, unlike the King. Should she be ungrateful for her position in the royal household? No. But the royal life was not all blossoms, as the Islands saying went.

The dragonet’s paw touched her lips. The animal fed her patiently, pawful by pawful, as Lia forced herself to swallow. Perhaps it thought she was a wounded hatchling? She had never imagined animals could care like this. There was something deeply peculiar about being tended by a dragonet, she felt, sinking back against her bough-bed, the type of impossible magic often served up in dreams. Yet, only reality could hurt this much. Lia spied on the creature as it worked. Fussy little thing, deft of paw and as nervous as a wild rajal kitten. Clearly undecided on a choice between two different mounds of herbal mush, the dragonet bit its little forked tongue exactly as her second-youngest brother, Elki, liked to do when he studied with the royal tutors. The dragonet chirruped to itself before hopping over to examine her broken arm. Quite the little physician. She had no doubt of its intelligence.

A monstrous lassitude swept over her Island like a sinister thunderstorm enveloping Fra’anior. The howl of the tempest sang her sorrow, while the jagged bolts of lightning represented pain, searing her body again and again. Even when Lia lay unmoving, it hurt to breathe.

Later, among her delirious dreams, she felt water spilling down her cheek. Lia opened her mouth instinctively, parched. Was it raining? Or was this the dragonet’s work once more?

The branch swayed in the hot volcanic breeze, rocking her to sleep.