Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits (36 page)

Most of the other First Flighters flew their dragons—real-time flew, I mean, not Flew. Dag didn't. I didn't say anything, but he saw me watching the other ones. The world turns the colour of the dragon's wings when a dragon shadow passes over you. It's like magic. It
is
magic, even if it isn't the kind you have to measure and count. I was sure that if I knew the right incantation I could do anything, standing in the shadow of a dragon's wing. I believed it so hard that I found myself holding my breath when it happened, as if waiting for the words to come.

ʺFirst Flighters fly our dragons for us, not for the dragons,ʺ Dag said, half dreamily, and I knew he wanted to fly too, and wasn't going to, for Hereyta's sake. She'd taught Dag everything he needed to know, and it was up to him to remember it, not to play schoolboy games with her because he could. She'd get him off the ground again on the day, but real-time flying, especially flying toward the Firespace, is gruelling at best, and it might hurt her. Just not as much as what followed would hurt her. ʺIt's only we still don't believe we can. That they'll do what we say, you know?ʺ

I nodded.

ʺThey will, or they wouldn't be at the Academy being fumbled by cadets in the first place. Young or stroppy dragons don't get cycled through the academies, not till they get middle aged and cooperative. And flying's not the thing, not really. Taking your dragon into the Firespace is. Being able to. Anybody with the nerve could get an old mellow dragon off the ground after fifteen minutes' training. You could fly Hereyta. She'd go sweet as a lark. The Firespace—in there you can only so much as keep breathing because you're with your dragon. Here's something they don't generally talk about—it's not just the first time into the Firespace tied in behind a tutor or a dragonmaster that most cadets pass out. Or even the second or third. A lot of the three years most of us spend working with dragons before we're ready for First Flight is just learning to keep your head on straight after you make that transition. And the most important thing about working with dragons is the connection to the dragon.
Nobody
—no human—is any good in the Firespace, and it's obvious pretty soon if you're going to be one of the ones who can cope at all, or not. In there, there's no place to stand—at least no place any human has ever found—so you have to keep flying—and there's something funny about up and down too. It's too hot to breathe and you can't see anything except cloud. Red cloud. And you still have to be able to remember how to get where you're going. Out here comparatively speaking we're almost equal.ʺ He looked up at our scintillating red-gold mountain, and then looked at me and smiled.

Equal. Right. At least I could be glad I wasn't going into the Firespace. I couldn't be very glad, though, when Dag and Hereyta weren't going there either.

I thought Dag deliberately didn't stop or look up when the other dragons flew over us. For Hereyta's sake. So I stopped stopping or looking up too. Besides, now I knew what might make her hum, nothing was more absorbing than trying to please her enough that she did it again. When you bring your dragon outdoors, she usually preens. This includes stretching her wings out as far as they'll go and then vibrating them like plucked strings. The morning after my interesting conversation with the
zedak,
when we brought Hereyta outdoors, she stretched her stiff right wing out as steadily and straight as her left one, and when she shook them she hummed, and I about thought I'd died and gone to heaven (one of the better heavens, one with dragons).

But that was a very odd day all around, because for the rest of it it was like being back home, except the people who kept sidling up to me and trying to pretend they weren't were all wearing Academy uniform. And they were mostly First Flighters who certainly weren't going to go to the Academy healer and admit there might be anything wrong for fear they'd be pulled out of First Flight. After the first few I kind of wanted to sidle myself into the kitchens and drop a lot of quietleaf in the kettles they kept hot over the fire, to lower the general tension level, but I'm way too cowardly. But I had to tell the last two who wanted something to help them sleep to come by our room after dinner because I'd run out of the quietleaf in my little wallet by then. I hoped I still had some in my pack.

The day before First Flight I don't think Dag said a word to me. It was worse than the last day of the journey to get here had been. His silence the day before First Flight had not only a wall but a moat and a lot of jumpy sentries with bad attitudes around it. But I don't think any of the other First Flighters said a word to anyone either. It was like you could tell a First Flighter by the fact they weren't saying anything. I don't think anybody even said ʺpass the saltʺ at meals. If they wanted salt, they grabbed it. If they couldn't reach it, they went without. And all their dragons had three eyes.

We went down to the
hsa
last thing, after dinner, after dark—after curfew, except most if not all the other First Flighters were doing exactly the same thing and there are always tutors and dragonmasters around, and nobody said anything. Sippy had the good sense to be subdued, at least by his standards and almost by mine. I could feel it—don't ask me how—that Hereyta was waiting for us, that she knew we'd be there, last thing at night, after curfew, after any time a cadet is allowed to be visiting his (or her) dragon, the night before First Flight. Did that mean she knew that she was in it? Did that mean she knew . . .

She didn't move into the firelight this time, but I was beginning to learn to feel my way around the darkness that is dragon as opposed to the darkness that is just darkness. She was belly-flat to the ground although her head was up, the long neck carrying it some unguessable length above the reach of the firelight. Her eyes were closed when we stepped into the firelit circle, but then she opened them and we had shining dragon eyes beaming down on us like stars. Two stars.

I leaned against the bottom of her shoulder. She'd moved the foreleg out a little from her body on the side with the stiff wing, which I'm sure was about the wing and not about expecting me or knowing where I'd want to lean, but it meant I could get in between it and her body. I never thought about how this might be dangerous, me being bug-sized and all, and maybe her not paying attention. She was paying attention. I don't know where Dag went. Sippy came and leaned with me. We just stood there and leaned and nobody said anything or hummed anything either. But I felt better after and I was pretty sure Dag did too.

But she still only had two eyes.

I know Dag didn't get any sleep to speak of that night because I didn't either. I did offer him some quietleaf—I did have some left in my pack—but he refused so I didn't have any either in some kind of stupid loyalty. I lay there trying to be quiet while he tossed and turned and muttered to himself and periodically sat up and stared out the window like he was thinking about running away. Maybe he was. But I bet he was thinking about running away with Hereyta. He wouldn't have left her behind to face the shame of a First Flight without her partner, even if it maybe looked like the way to spare her shame, because if Dag wasn't there she wouldn't have to fly. She was only a dragon, what did she know? But why had she been waiting for us that evening? She knew. Whatever was going to happen he wouldn't do that to her. But smuggling a dragon out of anywhere, even a place already full of dragons and built to have dragons moving through it, would be a little difficult. So that's probably why he kept lying back down again with a long sigh.

Mum and Dad had told us lots of stories when we were all little, and a lot of those stories had dragons in them. There was always lots of flying and lots of heroics in those stories. Dragons lost eyes in these stories occasionally but you never heard about what happened to them after. You always knew it was tragic though—worse than the old human veteran limping home leaning on his cane.

Except there was one story I'd been half remembering, but more to the point half forgetting, ever since Dag had come home looking like a condemned man, and told us about Hereyta and First Flight. It was a story Ralas had told me, a long time ago, when I'd first brought Sippy home, and it was mostly about a foogit, which was why Ralas thought I'd like it. But I was sure there was a dragon in it. And I could
almost
remember that this particular dragon had only two eyes. And as I say, dragons don't stay in stories when they lose an eye. But I couldn't remember anything else about the story—the two-eyed dragon should have stuck better, but I was foogit-obsessed at that point. I kept trying to remember anybody's name—the dragon's, the foogit's, even the human's or humans', since there had to be humans in it too—because if I could remember a name I'd ask Eled, casually, if he knew a story with someone named whatever in it. I just wasn't going to say to him, hey, you don't happen to remember some weird old story about a foogit and a two-eyed dragon, do you? With Sippy standing there. And Hereyta.

Sippy was still subdued at breakfast, although being subdued didn't stop him from eating everything that came his way. I've said that years tended to stay together but the third-years on First Flight morning had invisible ʺdon't come nearʺ signs all around them. I would have hung back myself except Dag broke his twenty-four hours of silence to say, ʺWhat? Come on. Watching Sippy eat may give me some appetite.ʺ It didn't seem to.

I probably knew all the First Flighters by name but my eye lingered on the ones I'd had conversations with or slipped some quietleaf or gimpweed or something to. Setyep was looking as green around the edges as Dag was. Doara actually smiled at me, but it was a smile that said ʺYes, I know how bad I look, don't even try and guess how I feel.ʺ I smiled back. Maybe it was the colour of the cadets' formal uniforms, yellow and red, that makes fair people look grey and dark people look purple and anybody in between green. And the third-years seemed to walk ever so slightly funny because they had their tapping sticks in their boots. The sticks are really slender and your formal boots have a loop for one anyway, so it wasn't that a tapping stick in your boot was crippling you. It's just you knew what having it there meant.

Eled still just looked like Eled, but I thought it was costing him. And Fistagh was looking rather too well, as if he was under a small glamour, which I think he was. He had a funny half smell about him that I recognised from Ralas. I did wonder if it was legal, which I doubted, but even if I'd ratted him out it wouldn't have given Hereyta a third eye.

Fistagh had a girl with him. She was extremely pretty, and they both knew it. One other First Flighter, Vorl, had someone who had to be his brother with him, they looked so much alike, but Vorl's brother wasn't small and scrawny except for his ears and feet, nor was he accompanied by a demented foogit.

When Dag stood up with the others I grabbed Sippy's topknot and looked uncertainly at Dag.

ʺYou don't have to come if you don't want to,ʺ Dag said in this awful flat voice that didn't sound anything like him. ʺIt's okay.ʺ

I shook my head violently. ʺIt's not that—you must know it's not that. It's okay with
me
if you want Sippy and me to stay out of the way and not, you know, not embarrass you. I can go back up to the room and sit—sit on Sippy—till—till—ʺ

ʺTill it's all over?ʺ said Dag. ʺYes. Well, if it's really all the same to you, I'd actually rather you came.ʺ He turned away, not checking to see if we were following. Of course we were. I let go of Sippy's topknot but he stayed right beside me, nearly as glued to my leg as Fistagh's girl was to his side.

The First Flighters drew lots for the order they filed out of the
hsa.
We were near the last. It gave us plenty of extra time to adjust, readjust, de-adjust, and super-adjust every scrap of Hereyta's harness six times. Maybe sixteen. I say ʺusʺ but it was mostly Dag. He knew where the bits went and I still only sort of knew. The tip of Hereyta's nose followed Dag's every tiny motion, back and forth, up and down, round and round. She did this a lot anyway but this morning the nose-tip was about a hand's-breadth away from the back of his neck.