The Pygmy Dragon (2 page)

P
ip awoke with
a groan. Everything was dark, but she sensed a gentle movement of the floor, like a branch swaying in a breeze. Was she up in the air, in one of those Dragonships? Flying? Reaching out with her hands, she explored the blackness around her. Cool metal bars met her fingertip touch in every direction. The cage was barely large enough to accommodate a Pygmy. She sniffed the air, scenting other animals around her. One was a male rajal, she thought, a feline which stood taller than any Pygmy warrior. It smelled exactly like the black feline pelt No’otha had displayed outside his hut. He had sung the praise-song of that hunt so proudly, the slaying blow made with a braced spear as the rajal pounced upon him, claws outstretched …

That was all gone, now.

Someone had splinted her right arm using two rough sections of wood and strips of cloth. She checked her side. Bandages. Neat bandages.

They didn’t want her to die? Were they taking her somewhere else to die?

Pip settled back on her haunches to think. She had no weapons. She was trapped in a metal cage. Was there anything nearby, anything she could use? She searched until her fingers discovered a lock. Locks were a big person invention. No amount of rattling or playing with the mechanism would open it. She had only ever heard of locks and keys in stories about big people. Who would need a lock? Amongst Pygmies, everything belonged to the tribe. Stealing was unknown. What wickedness was this?

She had neither food nor water. She needed to save her strength for when she had a chance to escape. With a delicate touch, she explored the burns on her back. They stung as though the oil was still alight. What to do, but endure the pain? She curled up in her cage. In her mind, she walked the jungle trails for hours, until the cave of sleep drew her in at last.

Pip woke and slept many times. Her burns scabbed over and itched as if she were covered in fire ants. Nobody came to feed her or the animals. Her belly gave up gnawing on her liver. Pip tried to imitate the Seer’s stories about strange animals in the cold North which could hibernate. She told herself those stories again. Stories of rain which fell out of the sky so cold that it stuck to the ground. How could rain stick to the ground? The Crescent Islands never became that cold. The jungle was a Pygmy’s mother and father. What parent would let their child freeze?

Thinking of her parents made her weep again. She knew she might never see her tribe again. In her grief, Pip tore her face with her fingernails until blood dripped onto her chest.

She lost all sense of time. The rajal roared mightily a few times every day, but nobody came to give him meat. Pip was glad her cage was out of the massive feline’s reach. Somewhere, she heard the vast snuffling of an Oraial and the mewling of its baby. Even a baby Oraial was bigger than a full-grown Pygmy. She heard the sleepy singing of parakeets and once, a vast hiss that reminded her of an emerald python she had once tangled with as a child. A Pygmy warrior had rescued her, stabbing his dagger savagely into the snake’s brain. The tribe had feasted on python meat for a week thereafter. Later, a storm whistled outside the Dragonship and rain raised a steady roar somewhere outside. Thankfully, the vessel seemed to be moored somewhere, because although the winds buffeted the vessel severely, nothing bad happened. The rajal hated it. He snarled and roared and threw himself against the bars of his cage, over and over again. The crashing thunder and the steady roar of the rain reminded her sharply of her village. Pip chewed pensively on her knuckles. When would she see them again? Had everyone remained safe in the cave of warriors? Did they think she had burned to death?

Pip realised she was growing weak from hunger. She had not had a drink in days.

She had to escape.

That afternoon, bars of light suddenly flooded the hold. Big people moved between the cages, feeding the animals and sliding bowls of water into the cages. A chorus of crazed screeching, bellowing and roaring rose from the animals. Shortly, a ripe green tinker banana smacked Pip on the cheek, followed by a hunk of bread so hard it bounced out of the cage and almost out of reach. She hissed at the flying vervet monkeys opposite, scrabbling desperately to beat their paws. Thieves!

Pip blinked at the light. She realised she was in a large room. It held many cages. She saw a male rajal snarling and clawing at a big, bearded man, who tossed a haunch of spiral-horn buck at him from a safe distance. Next to her, a great golden python slept, coiled up. No, the eyes were slightly slit. The reptile was alert, observing, probably considering her value as dinner. She saw bright parakeets and monkeys stacked in piles of cages. Across the room a sturdy metal cage dominated the entire space from floor to ceiling. It held a female Oraial, judging by the turquoise blazes of colour on her cheeks, but even in that space she could only crouch down at best. Her massive, shaggy head was matted with blood. She must have suffered a terrible wound, for her eyes seemed glazed and her movements were slow. She held a baby Ape to her chest, suckling. The Oraial reached for the tinker bananas a man thrust into her cage, and crammed the entire two-foot bunch into her mouth at once.

A gourd landed next to her foot. She snatched it up before a monkey stole it. A welcome gurgle suggested that it held water.

Pip uncorked the gourd and drank greedily before realising, too late, that she should eke out her water. There was no telling when she would be fed again. She bolted a quarter of the banana and nibbled glumly at the bread, torn between her need for food and the musty, stale taste filling her mouth.

Her belly’s shouting won.

A Pygmy warrior’s ears took in the Dragonship’s sounds, that day. Pip tried to imagine where she was being taken. She taught herself to recognise the different sounds of night and day. Too soon, hunger robbed her senses of their acuity. She lapsed into a deeper torpor than before.

She roused to the deep groaning of overstressed ropes. Shouts sounded faintly through the hull. The low throbbing of the Dragonship fell silent. New noises. A change to the everlasting bobbing on the breezes. Her nostrils flared at the tang of unfamiliar spices drifting into the stuffy cargo hold. Pip sensed they had landed. So did the animals. They stirred, and groaned or chirped or chattered weakly.

Nothing smelled or sounded the same.

Without warning, a team of labourers swarmed into the cargo hold. There was much shouting and cursing, especially from a one-armed big person who seemed louder than the rest and acted angry about everything. Hands swung her cage through the air. Pip landed with a bruising thump in the back of a cart. They piled monkey cages haphazardly around her. She kicked at several pairs of furry hands trying to sneak the remaining quarter of her tinker banana from her. Pip ate the last bite, but discovered that she had lost her water gourd. Stupid!

The cart lurched away. Pip could see only snatches of the bright sky, far wider than she had ever seen it from beneath the jungle canopy, and three moons clustering together as if to comfort each other–the Yellow, Blue and Jade moons. Strange big person huts, the biggest huts she had ever seen, marched past the sides of the cart. They built huts from stone? A babble of strange languages assaulted her ears. The cart lurched to a halt in a squalling, bawling, chaotic marketplace.

Impressions and noises hammered against her mind. Big people came to stare into the back of the cart, coins clinked greedily into the merchant’s paws, monkeys screeched at their new owners, parakeets sang to delighted children and fingers jabbed Pip’s sides. She snarled and bit one of them.

The merchant crashed the butt of his stick into her ribs. “None of that.”

Pip did not need to know Island Standard to grasp his meaning. She sank back, murdering him in her mind.

Shortly, a hulking big person who was missing most of his teeth unlocked her cage. Pip sprang for her freedom, but clearly, the man had been expecting this. Whipping out a cudgel, he knocked her half-senseless. The ground swapped places with the sky. Next she knew, cold metal bit her wrist. She was shackled to a post.

A haze of madness rose before her eyes as she fought the chains. Pip screamed like an animal. She jerked and frothed and writhed. The big person began to laugh, but then he swore unhappily as she ripped the post clean off its moorings. Pip was more surprised than he was. She froze, staring at the sturdy post in astonishment. She had broken that? But that moment’s hesitation was too long. A net fell over her head and shoulders. Her feet swung off the ground.

“Netted me a Pygmy,” said a deep voice. “Shut yer yapping, yer mongrel.”

Rough fingers unlocked the chain.

The big person cuffed her a few times, viciously. Pain roared through her broken arm. Pip subsided. Let him think she was cowed. Cradling her arm to her stomach, she stared between the ropes at her captor. He wore big person clothes–clunky leather coverings on his feet and a sweeping cloak across his broad shoulders. He dangled her aloft in one hand. Amid a thicket of facial hair, bits of gold flashed between his teeth. Before, she had only seen that much hair on an Ape. She wondered how many lice lived in his beard.

He whacked her again for good measure. “What you asking for a Pygmy?”

“For your zoo?” said a voice behind her. That was the voice which had been wheedling all day long. Pip understood only a few of the words, but she knew what the man was doing–he was buying and selling animals, including her. What was a zoo? This big person’s hut?

The men spoke back and forth over her head for several moments. They pretended to grow irate with each other, but soon laughed together. They clasped forearms. Gold flashed in the bright sunlight.

At least the twin suns had not changed, Pip thought, unlike the rest of her world. This big person could take a flying leap into the Cloudlands. Just let him buy a Pygmy warrior. A warrior all of eight summers old, a little voice in her head told her. She had not even walked the jungle ways, crossing the great vines between the Islands.

What could she do? Wait, with the patience of a rajal. Jungle animals knew how to wait.

The big person passed her to another. “We’ll put her with the Oraials.”

“Biggest and smallest?” he said.

“They live together in the jungle, don’t they?”

Swinging in the net like a captive flying vervet monkey, Pip stared around her with renewed interest as the two big people threaded their way through the busy marketplace. So this man thought he could keep her in his hut, did he? He was as fat as a wild pig and even more stupid. She would escape after nightfall.

T
he men LOCKED
the rajal in a barred cage opposite. The feline, which hulked to the height of a big person’s shoulder, paced back and forth, his yellow eyes slit and wrathful. But his cage was nothing like Pip’s. She stared at the freshly painted walls in dismay, outlined against the cloudless afternoon sky like cream-coloured lips upraised in an everlasting cry. The walls were seamless, many times her height. Unclimbable. Pip despaired. Everything smelled new. In three places, huge, curved crysglass windows allowed her a view of the outside world. This was big person work. A team of women swept and cleaned outside one of the windows. The chief of this village certainly liked to keep his hut neat. Only a great chief would have so many servants.

But this place was like no hut she had ever seen.

Her new home held two prekki-fruit trees. Two! Her heart howled at the wide-open sky. Where was her jungle, the comforting undergrowth, the leaves and vines hemming her in above and all around? Before she knew it, Pip found herself hugging the tree, panting hard. She saw a thick rope swing hanging from a sturdy branch, and nearby, several logs had been fastened together to form what was clearly a climbing frame. The thick rope looped over from the tree to the top of the frame, just like the jungle vines of her home reached from Island to Island, looping above the poisonous Cloudlands.

Did they think she was a monkey? A chattering
monkey?

Fury burned away the self-pity that had begun to steal her courage. Then she gasped. The chief had mentioned Oraials. Suddenly, the looming walls made sense. Terrifying sense. She was about to have a huge wild Ape for company. Every Pygmy knew how dangerous Oraials could be, especially mothers with babies. A wise Pygmy gave Apes plenty of room.

Pip turned her mind to food. That was not hard. Her stomach was a tiny knot next to her backbone. The tree had fruit, but one taste made her spit. Unripe. She could fill her stomach, but she would pay for it in cramps and pain. Pip picked one of the hand-sized, purple fruit and gnawed it as she looked about uneasily. In one place, a door was recessed into the wall. It had metal bars too narrow for her to slip between. She trotted over to peer through the bars. All she saw was a stone room. At the far end was another door, identical to the first. No Oraial could fit through those doors, Pip reassured herself.

Instead, they lowered the Apes from a Dragonship.

Pip crouched beside the tree to watch the mother and her baby being lowered from the oval Dragonship hovering overhead. It was a strange beast, a huge brown balloon with ropes supporting a cabin dangling beneath it. Some sinister big person magic made it stay up in the air. Outwardly, Pip showed no fear. Inwardly, she was shaking like a trailing vine caught in a spring storm.

The Apes lolled about. Sleeping? The men untied them and fled, taking their ropes with them.

She waited until the Dragonship was long gone. The Apes did not stir.

Pip strode restlessly around the perimeter of her new territory, daring to touch the great wall with her fingertips. The crysglass was amazing–as transparent as a spring of water, and as hard as granite. She stared through at the coal-black rajal, prowling just like her. The feline lidded his eyes. The tail went still. Even with armoured glass, metal bars and a wide paved space between them, Pip froze. That pale gaze had a way of making her feel like a slab of juicy meat about to be shredded by his fangs.

She moved on, exploring a small stand of bamboo at the opposite end of the cage. There was little else. Pip’s eyes kept jumping to the Oraials. The mother began to stir.

Shortly, she scratched her stomach and sat up. Pip could almost read her thoughts, from the itch to the slow awareness of her new surrounds. She touched the matted wound on the side of her head, clearly in pain. Her arm curved around her baby. He wasn’t that much of a baby, Pip realised, being at least a foot taller than her, and built like a small boulder with long arms and short, bandy legs. His black eyes lit on her from the safety of his mother’s arms.

Then, something strange happened. The baby made noises. The mother’s brow furrowed. She spoke to him, and they both looked directly at Pip. They had talked to each other! Oraials talked? Pip stood very still and tried to act as though she belonged. In a low voice, she said, “I’m not afraid of you, great one.”

The Ape’s dark eyes burned at her for a long time. Finally, deliberately, Pip turned her back and walked over to the tree. She hunkered down, and waited.

*  *  *  *

The suns rose and set. Once a day, they were fed. Once a day, the mother Oraial ate every scrap thrown down from the walls by the big people, and Pip starved. The unripe fruit gave her unbearable stomach cramps. She tried eating the young bamboo shoots, but the mother Oraial quickly decided those were her food and forced Pip to run for her life. She dug for grubs and earthworms. Washed and swallowed whole, they were not too bad. Pip stalked a rat but failed to catch it.

If she so much as glanced at the baby Ape, the mother began to growl, low in her chest. Pip learned to read the danger signals. But she needed food. First, she tried shouting to the big people. Nobody paid her the slightest attention. Even the water trough the big people had put just inside the metal gate, which they filled infrequently, was guarded now by the mother Oraial. Pip had to sneak over to take a drink in the dead of night, preferably before the Yellow moon rose.

Then came a day full of unfamiliar music and loud bangs. The voices of many big people sounded nearby. There was cheering and clapping. Big people came to press their noses against the crysglass. Many had children with them, no bigger than her.

The mother Oraial went mad. She spent half the afternoon charging at the windows, crashing her head and her fists against the crysglass, making the big people scream and laugh.

After that, she ignored them.

The big people came daily, endless crowds of visitors. Pip experimented with making the big people laugh. It was easy. All she had to do was to pull strange faces at the children, or do a Pygmy dance, or show them her backside. The laughter had a cruel, mocking tone, however. It made her so sad. She asked the spirits why they had let her be taken to this strange hut–this zoo–to be stared at by big people, but there was no answer.

One day, a man they called a zookeeper took pity on her and threw a nice, ripe green tinker banana right over to Pip’s feet. Without thinking, she picked it up. Pip’s fingers trembled as she skinned the fruit. A whole banana. She could not remember the last time she had eaten her fill.

The mother Oraial grabbed her arm. She tore the banana out of Pip’s fingers, deliberately placed it in her own mouth and swallowed without chewing. Then she threw Pip against the climbing frame.

The Oraial topped thirteen feet tall in her customary stance, stooped forward as she leaned on her calloused knuckles, her hugely muscular shoulders bulging beneath her short tan pelt. She handled Pip as though she weighed no more than a scrap of cloth. The Pygmy smashed into the logs. Her right arm, which had been healing well, cracked against the wood. Pip squealed in pain. She had never heard herself make a noise like that, a sound like a wild pig struck in the stomach by a Pygmy warrior’s arrow, followed by a drawn-out whimpering as she tried to block out the throbbing agony in her arm. Her wrist flapped away from her forearm at a strange angle. She wanted to faint. Pip vomited a trail of thin brown bile from her empty stomach.

Dimly, she noticed the two Apes taking a keen interest in her plight. Odd. What was the mother Ape thinking? Pip sank to the ground. She must have passed out, because when she awoke the Mystic moon shone directly above her, gleaming with uncommon, lone brilliance. By chance, her good hand fell on an uneaten tinker banana.

A whole banana? She peeled it by holding the fruit between her knees while she tried not to jar her broken arm. The Oraials were fast asleep. But there, in the soft ground near her head, was the pug-print of an Oraial’s knuckles. The Pygmy girl placed her hand against it to measure, but that was far too small. She tried her arm from elbow to fingertips. The Oraial’s paw was larger still. Unbelievable.

The following morning, two sets of black Ape-eyes watched her with the patience of python considering its sleeping prey. Pip stood at a window and tried to attract someone’s attention. Maybe the chief still had the person in his tribe who had helped her before?

Around noon, a man came to the metal gate and called to her. She considered him fearfully. He yelled again; an unmistakable hand-gesture followed. Clenching her good fist, Pip willed herself not to show any sign of fear. She padded over and slipped through the opening. Inside the stone room, two more big people waited for her. One was the chief, the other a strangely-dressed man who looked at her with kindness in his eyes. He examined her arm. They talked. Then suddenly, the two big people grabbed her by the shoulders and waist. The kind man took her broken wrist in both of his hands, and pulled. Pip screamed.

She swam back from a dark place. The mother Oraial was bellowing and attacking the bars of their gate, which had already bent in several places. The din was appalling. The man touched her arm again. He shifted the bones. Pip heard a grinding sound in her mouth. It was her, grinding her teeth together with a sound similar to the mortar and pestle she used to use to crush mohili wheat kernels.

The pain was over. Sweat bathed her body. The kindly man tightened ropes around the wooden splits on her arm. Pip felt as though she had been run over by an Oraial, which was not far from the truth.

He pressed a sprig of herbs into her good hand. “Eat,” he said, miming the motion.

Pip tried several of the words she knew in his language. “Thank … big person.”

The chief seemed very annoyed by this. He thrust her toward the maddened Oraial. “Make it stop, Islands’ sakes!”

The men retreated, apart from the quivering zookeeper, who pointed at the gate. “I’ll open it a crack. You get in there, alright?”

Pip did not understand the words, but his manner was clear. As she approached the gate, the mother Oraial took a backward step. She appeared to calm down, although she was still breathing hard. Her baby–who managed to be cute and fluffy despite being bigger than any of the big people–babbled away cheerfully. Pip slipped through the narrow crack between the gate and the stone wall. She heard it click shut behind her. A key rattled in the lock.

From behind, nostrils snuffled against her skin. Pip dared not twitch a muscle as the mother Oraial took in her scent. A cavernous snort blasted hot air over her neck. Closing her eyes and biting her lip, Pip tried very hard not to imagine she was confronting one of the Ancient Ones, the Dragons so beloved of Pygmy legend. Her newly splinted arm received a great deal of attention. After a time, however, the Oraial appeared to be satisfied. She said, “Huh-ka-ra.”

And her hand tucked Pip against her breast, just like her baby.

She cried, then, both for the loss of her own mother, and the simple joy of knowing she was accepted, even by an Ape.