Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology (37 page)

Morelle froze.

“Since your father works at the university, I mean.”
 

Morelle's throat went tight. She shook her head.

“Don't tease her, of course she's been there herself. All young people are interested in the old times.”

“They seem particularly interested now.”

“Someone seems to have noticed a lot of children wandering off that way, more and more these days.”

“The university thinks it's time to investigate.”

“Seems like it might be a good idea for those young people to finish whatever it is they're up to. Before they're found out.”

Morelle's fingers went loose and the watering can clattered against the ground. She mumbled something about how it was getting late and she had community work in the morning. She ran down the stairs, pulling her apron from her neck as she went, while above her the grandmothers cackled away.

* * *

When Morelle stumbled into the house to grab her bicycle, she found her father sitting on the porch, one earphone in, frowning over a cup of tea.
 

“Do you know anything about this?” he asked, tapping the band around his wrist to pull up an urgent notice from the university.
 

Morelle read the headline quickly and turned to fuss with her bicycle, hiding the way her face went white.
 

She rushed to Vina's house as soon as she could think of an excuse. (“Extra work at the gardens, I need to … prune a bunch of … infected trees.”) Vina was already waiting.

“It's now or never.”

* * *

It was nearly midnight and there was still plenty to do, but when Vina sent the call out, everyone came. The cavernous room became a madhouse. Rhone shouted orders as the remaining pieces of metal were heated, cut, and tailored into the dragon's neck and head. Back at the tail, a dozen children struggled under the weight of a giant swath of skin with Lan at their heels, pressing and kneading it precisely into place.
 

Scouts staked out along the cliff side and causeway sent coded updates back to the base, which one boy translated and played aloud through a flowering sound projector rooted to his band. They caught sight of the approaching caravan from the university just before sunrise, cycling down the causeway while their transport animals trailed them from the ground.
 

By then, the dragon was nearly finished. They were connecting the final organs to the circulatory system and sewing the last of the skin up with the same quick-stitching glue used on cuts and wounds. Vina was at work between the wind turbines that rested in holsters above the dragon's shoulders. They would supply additional power to the equipment within the hatch that hung beneath the dragon's body. The hatch was part of its skeleton, but without flesh or organ: a fat metal belly to hold passengers and the necessary technology for navigation and communication.
 

It had taken Vina a while to work out the turbines, as she had assumed it would simply be a matter of repairing a few broken bits of wiring. It was only after days of frustrated tinkering that someone had come to the conclusion that they weren't meant to generate power. Rather, they were meant to generate flight, powered by a fuel tank the kids had long ago scrapped. Vina had needed to create a whole new system from scratch.
 

Morelle sat on the dragon's neck, molded from the excess metal of the wings, which had largely been replaced with thin flesh, similar to a bat's. She gazed down at the top of its head. Though the metal of its skull had already been welded shut, Morelle could, in her mind's eye, see straight through. She could picture the organ she had devoted what felt like the whole of her time to for the past weeks, or months, or whatever it had been. Looking down the length of the body, she could see past the layers of skin and muscle to the massive network of nerves branching from it, running down each limb, all the way to the tip of the tail.
 

The university caravan had reached the edge of the cliff, the sound projector warned, its petals pulsing with the vibration. They were searching for the entrance.
 

Vina jumped down from the shoulder and crouched beside Morelle.
 

“I don't know if I did it right,” Morelle said, barely audible above the chaos around them. “I know there are safeguards in place, the DNA seeds do most of the work, but … there's a reason they won't let us mess around with actual life.”

Vina put her hand on Morelle's shoulder. “Like you said, we're not just kids playing anymore. This is real.”

Morelle looked away. She could see the dragon's eyelids, closed in the suspended animation that allowed them to build it slowly, piece by piece. As soon as they injected it with literal lifeblood, it would dissolve enzymes, activate protein-linked receptors, set off a rapid chain reaction.
 

Someone cleared their throat. “You want to let us close her up before we get caught?” Lan was crouched beside them, patting down the skin of the dragon's neck.
 

Morelle and Vina hurried around her, their bare feet scraping up the shimmering, crocodilian scales of the dragon's neck. They stood on its back and looked around. There were at least fifty children in all, a good percentage of the entire youth population of both their own community and the neighboring one. Almost all of them were standing back slightly, looking up. They quieted, pinching their friends who failed to do the same, until the noise fell to a buzz.
 

Red tanks lined the back wall, from which snaked dozens of tubes. They spread out across the floor in ragged scribbles, ending at various points along the dragon's hide. Their design from above seemed to mimic the network of arteries and veins they would soon flood at, Morelle realized, her signal.
 

Vina grabbed Morelle's hand and squeezed it. Morelle nodded at the tanks.
 

Attached to the side of each of the tanks were large levers, which a few younger kids grabbed like monkey bars. They reached high to grip the metal with both hands, swinging their legs up off the ground behind them, slowly dragging the levers down with their whole weight. Dark red began to flow through the tubes, reaching the tail and haunches first, which began to twitch. When the liquid reached the wings, they fluttered and the kids nearby hurried back, the wind whipping their hair and clothes.

The neck shuddered. Vina fell from her perch, landing with a slight wince on the ground. Morelle put a hand on one of the turbine holsters above the shoulders to hold herself steady.
 

The neck stretched upward, and the dragon turned its head. Morelle watched its eyelids flutter open, revealing in spurts, like a flip book, the diagonal, snake-like slit of a pupil. It curled its neck back towards her until its nose was inches from hers. Its amber eyes narrowed. Morelle couldn't move.

A long tongue darted out and slurped across Morelle's cheek. Morelle pulled back and swiped her arm across her face to wipe away the saliva. The dragon drew its head back and closed its jaw, but forgot to pull its tongue in. It smacked its mouth like a cow and crossed its eyes, confused, before it managed to slowly reel the tongue back in.

Morelle reached out and brushed her fingers across its nose. It felt warm. The dragon nuzzled against her touch and she almost lost her balance. “I guess I got the domesticated bit of its behavior pretty—”

The sound projectors began to screech out a warning. The university caravan hadn't found the entrance, but they had found the wall of the room that ran along the side of the cliff. They were mere feet away from where the dragon stood, and had released tiny erosion bugs to eat away at the rock in between.

Morelle slid down the dragon's neck, stumbling slightly as she hit the ground. The dragon lowered its head beside her, panting like a dog. She put a hand on its neck to soothe it.
 

The wall began to crumble, and the dragon shuffled its feet nervously.
 

“It's okay,” Morelle said, but it whipped its head as the children surrounding it began to panic.
 

Sunlight flooded in through tiny holes in the wall and the dragon tried to back away. The kids behind it began to scream, and, frightened by the noise, the dragon rammed forward, bursting through the perforated wall.
 

Morelle and Vina ran after it, tearing through the stunned crowd of university faculty, none more so than Morelle's father. The dragon lumbered to the edge of the water, past the bird-shaped rock.

It took flight.

The rest of the kids stumbled out from the ruins, holding their arms up to block the red sunlight. They began to cheer.
 

The dragon pumped its wings, rising higher and higher. Morelle and Vina ran into the ocean, laughing and shouting wordlessly, and sometimes soundlessly, through straining vocal cords.
 

The spines along the dragon's back straightened and curled as it twisted its body towards a current. It stretched its wings out to their full size, preparing to glide.

But it couldn't. The metal skeleton was too heavy for the feeble flesh of its wings to support. The crowd below grew silent and still as it hung in the air for a few sickening seconds, flapping with quickly-fatiguing muscles. Morelle and Vina and Rhone and Aziza and the other fifty-some kids, along with the university faculty and Morelle's father, all watched on as the dragon twisted into a nose-dive and disappeared beneath the waves.

About Sam Martin

Sam Martin is a recent repatriate living in Philadelphia after two years in Seoul, South Korea. She studied writing and revolutions at Brown University. Unfortunately, this means she would not be one to call if you want to build a dragon.
 

Wings of the Guiding Suns

by M. Pax

Sita's bare skin—sans scales, sans feathers or fur, sans protective secretions—missed the warmth of the sun globes that had kept her snug since the day she'd hatched. Yet the chill gripping her couldn't numb the thrill of being summoned to her mother. Aching to stand in her presence, Sita wanted nothing more than to do her proud.

Sita strolled deeper into the starship, traveling an acre-long hallway, ignoring doorways to glowing rooms. She didn't need to view her reflection in the transparent section of the hull to know she didn't resemble her mother. Since sprung from her egg six months ago, Sita had known. She had grown some, but still barely stood five and a half feet tall. She had brown flesh and dark hair cascading to her waist. Missing were a set of glorious white wings, horns, a tail, talons, and the full telepathic abilities of dragonkind. Yet she had been born to carry out a noble mission—to save a race of beings about to be erased from existence.

Blushing porcelain gladioli chimed as she navigated the gardens, their notes exciting the musical strings swirling among the swooping designs etched into the window panes of the hull. The flowery motifs had been tinted in greens, blues, and golds. Through their soft pigments, the stars beckoned, buoying Sita in a sea she couldn't fully sense with the body given to her. Her mother could taste the rhythms of the solar strands. The desperate sorrow upon them had lured Mother and prompted the hatching of Sita.

The gardens emptied into the Chamber of Darlig, a massive room of crystal and light. An enormous glass vessel shaped like a heart took up the center. Etched wings draped over the sides of the urn, and red light emanated from inside. Above it, making up the support structure of the chamber, was the carving of Mother—a sitting dragon with four powerful legs, wings the breadth of a house, and a graceful head larger than Sita. The twisting horns and strong jaw gave Mother an air of wisdom. Her tail and the tips of her wings were edged with tufts of fur. Sculpted in alabaster, it was a true likeness of Darlig, Sita's mother.

Shutting her gaping mouth, Sita approached the radiant vessel and pressed her forehead to the smooth glass. “Your splendor is astounding,” she whispered.

“As is yours.” Her mother spoke in the tones of a rhapsody, bass notes mingling with soaring sopranos.

“I'm nothing like you.”

“Your appearance is the same as those you've been created to guide, and you're exactly like me where it counts, daughter.”

“I don't resemble dragonkind in the least.”

“I've been remade into a ship. My appearance isn't true to dragonkind either.”

“But you have every ability of a dragon and the shape of your hull is dragon.” Sita's fingers brushed over the glass urn containing the essence of her mother. “Why did you decide to reincarnate into a ship?”

“Embrace me, and I'll show you.”

Wrapping her arms tight around the red glass chamber, Sita pressed her cheek against her mother's heart. Sita's head filled with images from Mother's life. They shuffled into order and Sita experienced Darlig's earliest days as if she had lived them.

Mother had first been hatched as a different being. Not a dragon or a ship, she was bioengineered to save a race of beings from becoming extinct. “Like me,” Sita whispered, caressing the glass urn.

More of Darlig's past unspooled in Sita's mind. Mother's first body had a shape similar to a dragon's—leathery wings with claws, a long beak, and serrated teeth. A dangerous edge glinted in her eye. Mother soared over towering trees and a thick swamp. Smoke smothered the sky, and ash fell like rain. Flames roared on the horizon, racing closer to the last refuge. Beings of a reptilian nature gathered, wailing at the heavens for salvation.

“Who are they?” Sita clasped at the sorrow building in her throat. “What happened to them?”

“The planet below us was once theirs. Millennia ago, it had been hit by an asteroid and all life upon it floundered, about to be extinguished.”

The roars of the dying beings filled Sita's ears. She clasped her hands over them, steeling herself against the pain blistering her skin as if she stood among the searing blazes. “You saved them. Why do they again need rescue?”

“They don't. Different beings ask for assistance. The ones under my mission had heeded my guidance and evolved into the Uikeas classes. I wanted you to know it's possible to guide beings not yet ready to embrace Accord.”