The Pygmy Dragon (17 page)

“If you did, you would find no shadow there,” said Pip, bowing her head to hide her alarm. “If you fear me enough to demand these chains, then know that I fear the Shadow Dragon a thousand times more. It is a cold killer, a creature of another time and perhaps another place. Yes, I fear it is hunting me. Zardon said that even here, in this school, I should beware of those who might want to use my magic, or use me. I beg you, Dragon Elders–let me learn. Teach me. You Dragons are the mightiest magic-users in our Island-World. I will listen and learn from all your wisdom. I will do good, I promise.”

“The accused has spoken,” said Blazon. “Be silent, little one, whilst we confer in private.”
Dragons, what is your judgement?

The child lies,
Lavador growled at once.
Toss that creature into a volcano before she destroys us all.

The threat is real,
said Kassik.
We heard Emblazon’s report. No known creature of this Island-World behaves as he described. Evil is abroad, Dragon-kin. We must be great in cunning and wisdom. This little one has unspeakable power. How, I know not. We must not alienate her, lest she become the enemy. That, as Lavador rightly claims, would doom us all.

Suddenly, it struck Pip. They were speaking another language, yet she understood. It gave her a headache to listen to it, as though some unsuspected part of her brain had just been turned inside-out. They were talking mind-to-mind.

Dragon minds surrounded her, beautiful, shining Dragon thoughts, full of the wisdom and magic of the ages. Pip shuffled in her place, looking from one Dragon to the other. There was Lavador, all heat and anger, yet with a great heart–three hearts–pulsing within him, concerned for the hatchlings and fledglings and Dragon families entrusted to his care. Here was Verox, cold and cunning, and deeply jealous of her gifts. The other two Reds, bristling with hostility. Blazon, opposite, fighting a visceral fear that Lavador was right, yet seeking to uphold justice at all costs. Shimmerith, the beautiful Blue Dragon, with waterfalls of music rippling in her hearts, the healer and forgiver, who could hardly bear to see Pip accused. And there on the boulder, Master Kassik, the oldest of the Dragon Elders, a dark pool as still and wide as the night sky, a presence that overshadowed the others.

She’s only a hatchling,
Cressilida added.
Hatchlings are thoughtless; they need instruction from their elders.

You say this because you miss your lost one, dear heart.
This came from one of the Reds, whose name she had not learned.
Compassion born in sorrow; yet, I know you see into her soul. What do you see?

The little one’s intentions are pure.

Verox said,
Why don’t you invite her to swim in that lava pool with you, Blazon? She’ll soon spit out the truth, even as she entertains us with her screaming.

I’d have her for a toothpick,
said one of the other Reds.

Blazon said,
Shimmerith?

I am ashamed. I failed in my duty today,
said Shimmerith.
Her power was too great for me. Yet I have worked with this little one, and I believe Cressilida is right, her heart is good but her passions overruled. We must embrace her with a firm yet loving paw.

Pip had to interrupt. This was not right. Finally, she managed to work a few words past the fear constricting her throat. “Um, Shimmerith?”

“Silence, child!” snapped Blazon, with a quelling glare.

Pip bit her tongue in concentration.
Blazon. I understand you.

Blazon’s jaw sagged in disbelief and surprise. He coughed out a fireball. Pip instinctively tried to dive aside, but the chains made her trip and fall flat on her face–which saved her life. The fireball seared across her back and splattered against Shimmerith’s flank. She rolled frantically across the blistering rocks, trying to put out her smouldering trousers, smelling a sickly-sweet stench that she realised was her hair burning. A paw stopped her before she rolled into the lava pond; claws scooped her roughly into the air.

That was close,
said Shimmerith. The coolness of healing magic bathed her body.

Pip bit back a whimper. She had no time for weakness.
Um … what does this mean? Shimmerith?

Shimmerith looked helplessly to Kassik, who tipped off his boulder rather precipitously and stalked over to Pip, his ever massive footstep shaking the ground. His great, hoary muzzle lowered toward her. She wondered what insane twists of fate kept having her end up facing Dragon after Dragon at the sharp end of their fangs.

Trapped in Shimmerith’s paw, she had no choice but to face her fate. Any moment now his fangs would flash and impale her frail Human body, she imagined.

Instead, he said,
You understand every word, Pip?

Why was that important? Again, Pip reached inside to summon the strange language.
It … feels weird, but I do understand. Am I speaking Dragonish, Master Kassik?

Indeed–perfect, eloquent Dragonish.
Kassik’s massive knuckle tapped her chest.
Humans
can learn to speak Dragonish, especially Riders. But only Dragons are born speaking our tongue with such fluency. Pip, you’re a Shapeshifter, like me. You are a Dragon.

Pip shrank back in Shimmerith’s paw. “N-n-no …”

His great eye, a furnace of saffron and earthy colours mixed together, fixed her with a gaze that was fierce, proud and altogether terrifying. He said,
This changes everything, little one. You are one of us, now.

M
aylin gave a
whoop of delight. “She’s back! Pip’s back, everyone.”

Whoops and catcalls accompanied Pip’s return to her dormitory. “Dragon-basher.” “Magician.” “It’s the mighty mite.” “Did the Dragons give
you
a spanking?”

Dazed and numb, Pip wandered over to her bunk and plopped onto the end of it. It changed everything? Truly? Kassik’s confidence had rattled her. She had seen nothing of the trail back to the school building, only the shattered remnants of her life sloughing away by the moment. Her past felt dislocated, close enough to remember, yet daily displaced by this new, captivating reality. Escaping the cage, she had begun to live as a Human, together with Humans, doing Human things–not cage things, no longer the living object of fascinated, pitying, debasing stares. Grubbing in the dirt for food. Leaping at the nearest tinker banana before another monkey stole it. Those things were gone, perhaps forever.

No, she had almost begun to believe. Almost.

“Pip?” Kaiatha checked her forehead. “What’s the matter? Did they punish you?”

“I have to clean and redecorate Nak and Shimmerith’s roost,” she said. “That’s the easy bit. Actually, Shimmerith has been really sweet about everything.”

“We’ll help,” said Yaethi.

Pip’s smile was a dagger half-drawn from its sheath, a whisper of sharp blade that threatened to pierce her own heart. She hated herself. She could not admit her fears. Instead, she said, “That rather defeats the purpose of my humble apology, doesn’t it? No, Yaethi, it’s worse than that.”

“What can be worse than handling Nak’s filthy underwear?” asked Maylin, making round goggle-eyes at everyone. “Ooh, there’s the dinner-gong. I’m starving. Race you–”

“Wait,” Pip blurted out. “There’s more …”

Kaiatha searched her face. “Oh, Pipsqueak. You haven’t been expelled, have you?”

“I’m on probation,” said Pip, automatically offering the only part of the truth that did not terrorise her mind. The other students rushed off for dinner as a body, leaving the small group of friends in a deserted dormitory.

“Petal, you’ll be fine,” said Maylin, loosing a snort worthy of a Dragon. “You should have seen your Ape friend take on Emblazon. I thought Emblazon would be–you know–snip, snap, Ape-steaks! I mean, an Oraial’s huge, but a Dragon–Pipsqueak?” Her face fell. “What is it? What–”

“I’m not Human!” she wailed.

To her chagrin, Pip burst into tears. Once she started, her tears turned into an unstoppable waterfall, a breach of the terrace lakes of her heart. Little by little, her friends wheedled the story out of her. At the end of it, they all sat back, stunned.

Yaethi was the first to speak. “Master Kassik thinks you’re a Shapeshifter? As in–how does that even work? Do you grow wings at night? No, that’s silly.”

“No.” Pip accepted a handkerchief from Kaiatha and wiped her eyes. “He started to explain, but there wasn’t really time. I was too shocked–I don’t believe–I
can’t
believe it.”

“Hold on,” said Yaethi, her pale face framed by her white silk headscarf, alight with excitement. “You said Master Kassik was there, Pip. How’s that possible? It was a Council of Dragon Elders, right?”

“I’m not supposed to–”

She snapped her fingers. “Great Islands! He’s a Shapeshifter Dragon. Come on, Pip, I’m right, aren’t I? I knew it. Only Dragons have that much magic. How come you’re a Shifter? Does it run in your family? No wonder you go all mushy around boy Dragons.”

“Yaethi!”

Maylin giggled. “A date with a Dragon, eh? Careful, they bite.”

“Maylin!”

“Grr,” said Kaiatha, pretending to claw Maylin’s face.

Her friends were impossible. Pip stuck out her tongue at them. “Guess what? One of you could be my Dragon Rider.”

“Oh, far too much trouble,” Maylin shot back at once.

“I get the first ride,” said Yaethi, “and ralti sheep droppings to you, Maylin. Pip, can you transform yet? You see, Shapeshifters usually come into their powers in their adolescence. That’s what the scrolls say.”

Pip felt compelled to protest, “No, it’s not real. Kassik’s wrong.”

Kaiatha said, ever so gently, “About speaking Dragonish? Pip, even I know that legend.”

“There’s a legend? Mercy, Kaia–can you stop doing this to me?” She wrung her hands, hating having hurt her friend now, the words just bursting out of her, “All I ever wanted was to be Human! Don’t you understand? Any of you? It was my dream.”

Sweet friends, they did understand. Pip read it on each of their faces. There was no need even for the words they spoke over her, for the reassuring touch from Maylin, Kaiatha apologising, Yaethi trying to rationalise her way around what they all knew, deep in their Islands, to be true. Master Kassik seemed convinced, Pip thought. He had already made changes to her schedule, combining her penance with training amongst the Dragons. Her heart squeezed painfully within her chest. She had to find the courage to ask the question which struck to the core of her devastated hopes.

“Oh, Yaethi, Maylin and Kaia …”

Her pain cut through the soft babble of friendship. Three pairs of eyes widened, expectant.

Kaiatha said, “Whatever it is, Pip, speak your heart. We can hear it.”

The question burst out of her like a hot splatter of lava. “Will you still be my friends, even if I turn into a Dragon?”

There was a brief, shocked silence before three sets of arms squashed her in the middle of a muddled hug.

“Silly Pipsqueak,” said Kaiatha, wiping her eyes. “Look at me, weeping like a Cloudlands-bound waterfall. We’re so happy for you. I couldn’t imagine anything more marvellous and magical in all the Island-World. The girl who was enslaved–she will fly.”

*  *  *  *

So much for flying. The following morning, after a pre-dawn breakfast taken in the deserted dining hall, Pip trudged along the trail leading to the volcano the Dragons called The Roost. An early mist wreathed the steep volcanic cliffs, but above, through gaps in the drifting mist, she saw several Dragons circling aloft. The Dragon Elders had tripled the guard on the Academy. Tripled! Workmen had removed the door she had smashed.

Glumly, she wondered if she would ever belong anywhere. Dragon? Human? She was neither, apparently. A Shapeshifter. Neither this nor that, as she had been all her life.

Ralti sheep droppings. Heaps of them.

The trail led up the saddle between two volcanic peaks, across a barren landscape of black rock and sulphurous fumaroles, before descending a gentle, bushy slope to the green lake’s shore. The water steamed gently, bubbling in a few places. Opalescent in the gleaming, golden dawn, the waters seemed to invite mystery. Pip paused in admiration. A muscular Jeradian carp breached before her astonished eyes, grabbing one of the foot-long, iridescent dragonflies which skimmed over the surface. Her joyful exclamation was stolen from her lips by the sight of a gold-orange Dragon spearing through the mist, snatching up the hapless carp mid-leap, and downing the eight-foot fish in a single bite.

The Dragon then seemed to fold herself double, switching direction to swoop down on Pip, who ducked instinctively.

“Sulphurous greetings,” she trilled, in a voice as melodious as the frilly edges of her wings. “I am Imogiel the Hatchling-Mother. Kassik assigned you to my care. May I show you to Nak and Shimmerith’s roost?”

Pip took the proffered paw with alacrity. Imogiel deposited her upon one broad, motherly shoulder and watched closely as Pip seated herself between her blunt, solid spine-spikes.

“Comfortable? You’ve done this before.”

Pip laughed brightly.
Usually as a Dragon’s captive, mighty Imogiel.

Imogiel bared her fangs.
Don’t think you’ve earned any trust yet, little one. Every Dragon knows what you said and did. Be thankful you live to serve your penance.

Abruptly, clouds rolled in to mist her sunny morning. Pip scowled at the lake as it receded in their wake.

At intervals up the steep flanks of The Roost, Dragons preened on rocky ledges and in the mouths of caves, taking in the early suns-shine, such as it was. Pip peered about with every sense alert. She saw a Red father instructing a fledgling with unmistakable sweeps of his forepaw. On a ledge above them, a young Yellow Dragon displayed his wingspan to an aloof, pretty Dragon the colour of a rosy dawn sky. Courting? Pip grinned. He would have to work harder than that.

Here is Shimmerith’s roost,
said Imogiel.
Be respectful, young Pip, or Shimmerith might just toss you into the lake for fun.

Pip eyed the drop pensively. The lake had to be two thousand feet below her position.
You’re awfully stern for a Hatchling-Mother
, she said, speaking her thoughts in Dragonish before she thought the better of them.

Imogiel flexed her claws crossly.
Shall I send you back to the Elders?

Pip scrambled down her flank in a hurry, landing first on the top of her bent foreleg, then taking the ten-foot slide to the ground with an ungainly yelp.

“Come in, Pip.” Even Shimmerith’s Dragon-voice was melodious. She heard the flutter of Imogiel’s wings as she dropped away from the ledge.

She entered a broad but shallow cave, tucked away to the left of the entrance. A wide, curved crysglass window provided plenty of illumination. Pip sniffed the air. Damp, rot, and …
phew, Shimmerith. Did something die in here?

That’s Nak’s area,
she said.
I’ve grown used to it.

Shimmerith sounded nonchalant, but she examined Pip with eyes that effervesced with magic.

She shrugged, trying to mask her irritation.
Shimmerith, you were there. Nothing happened. The Dragon Elders tore scales off my hide, Master Kassik turned Brown-Dragon, I apologised, and I still speak Dragonish today, in case you’re wondering. I mean, I need to think about it, but I can.

Little one, are you a Dragon, as Kassik believes?

I wish I knew.

You do speak Dragonish as though born to it.

Pip wrinkled her nose. She was convinced she smelled a dead rodent. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the end of a bed protruding from behind a tucked-away alcove furthest from the cave entrance. Nak’s booted foot dangled off the end. Clothes were strewn about in piles that seemed designed to breed new forms of insect life. Shimmerith’s bowl-shaped bed in the centre of the cave was no better. Pip saw several ralti sheep bones and part of a skull half-hidden beneath Shimmerith’s belly, and her ralti-skin rugs smelled rank.

She did not know what to say. How could she avoid insulting Shimmerith again?

Um … Shimmerith, where would you like me to start?

Anywhere you like, little one. Just don’t disturb Nak before noon. It’s not worth it.

How’s about we make you more comfortable?
Pip struck a note of cheer she did not feel. This job was going to be worse than she had imagined.

By mid-morning, Pip had a much better appreciation of exactly how much worse. She dragged every stinking, mildewed ralti skin out of Shimmerith’s bed and piled them on the ledge outside the cave. There had been a leak in the cave roof–still not fixed, of course–as Nak was apparently far too lazy to care for his roost or his Dragon. Clearing out the remaining sheep bones and fish-heads, Pip disturbed a nest of grey rats and received a nasty bite on her left calf for her trouble.

“Where do I get fresh sheepskins?” she asked Shimmerith.

The Dragon opened one eye sleepily. “Ask Mistress Mya’adara. She knows everything.”

Pip hiked back to the Academy. She returned with three sheepskins and dragged them all the way up to Shimmerith and Nak’s roost.

Those smell nice and fresh,
said Shimmerith, shifting to allow Pip to arrange her bed beneath her. She pawed the skins with evident approval.
I think I’ll need another twenty or thirty, or so. Can you arrange that?

Sure.

That’s why it was called ‘punishment’.

She managed to haul four sheepskins up the mountain on her next journey. Pip arrived hot, sweaty and breathless at the roost. Nak perched on the end of his bed, looking as though he had wrestled all night with a Dragon and lost. “Ah, my personal servant,” he said, with heavy sarcasm. “I’m hungry. What have you brought me to eat?”

Pip would dearly have loved to hit him.

Instead, she bowed. “What may I bring you, Rider Nak?”

Nak stroked his chin. “Ah. Allow me a moment’s contemplation, my fine minion.”

Five further journeys brought her to the end of her day’s work. Shimmerith smiled a gap-toothed Dragon smile at her.
See you tomorrow, little one. Roost well.

She was asleep before she hit her bedroll.

The following day, she ran herself ragged behind a team of masons who had arrived at her request to repair the leak in the cavern roof. Nak assisted by offering her services to fetch cool drinks and snacks from the kitchens, which made him very popular with the workmen. Pip, however, caught several snarky comments about the state of Nak’s ‘stinking hovel’.