**Kindling**
by Renee Carter Hall
The seven dragons of the circle lowered their heads and opened their jaws as one, and seven jewel-bright jets of flame shot to the center of the circle, enveloping the creature within.
At last, the fire ceased, and the young dragon in the center unfolded her wings, rearing and flapping to shake off the fine ash of her hatchling scales. She had been hatchlings' dusty rose; now, tempered by the fires of Kindling, her scales shone ruby, hard and bright, and her claws were like black diamond.
Watching, Jarek curled his tail around his body to keep from lashing it in excitement and impatience. His claws, though still soft, dug into the loose, dry earth, and he forced himself to keep his wings folded tight against his back, so he wouldn't bump into any of the others who had crowded around to watch. Everyone had gathered to see this summer's crop of seven-years become full members of the clan.
A full member of the clan... Jarek smiled to himself. In a few moments, it wouldn't matter that his wings were half the size of anyone else's in his year. It wouldn't matter that his toes were long and thin instead of flat and short, or that his scales were only ash-gray instead of showing some pastel hint of his future color. And most of all, it wouldn't matter that he was a fosterling, claimed by no one, fed by a charitable nest-mother until he'd learned to hunt on his own. No one knew who his parents were; he'd been found alone by a stream hours after hatching, at the edge of the dragons' ancestral mountain home. Alone, just as he'd been ever since.
Well, he corrected himself, alone, except for Rissa.
She caught his eye from the center of the circle, and he smiled back. His nest-mother's own hatchling, she had always been something of an older sister to him, even though they were the same age. She had been playmate and protector, quick to defend and comfort him when the other hatchlings reminded him he was a foundling, taken in by the Circle's pity, not really a true clan-dragon at all.
*But I will be*, he thought, and the thought made him want to breathe fire then and there. *I* will *be, and then they'll have to accept me. Even if they don't*--I'll *know*.
"Iarissa, hatched of Anali's egg," the lead dragon, sapphire Koros, intoned, "child of fire, child no longer. Our Mother Amaris has kindled Her fire in you. Take your place among the dragons of these hills, and keep the honor of those before you and those to come."
Rissa reared then, wings outstretched, head high, and sent a burst of red flame into the sky. Koros stepped aside for her to leave the circle, and then his gaze fixed on Jarek.
"Jarek, the Circle waits."
Jarek swallowed and went forward. When he was in place, he lowered his head to the ground and closed his eyes.
Koros bowed his head. "May Her fire temper your claws, your scales, your breath, your heart."
Jarek saw the flare through his eyelids, just before the flames hit his body. Joy surged like sunrise through him--
--and pain shot through to his bones, searing, he was burning, he couldn't breathe--he had never heard anyone cry out during Kindling, but the agony in his lungs and throat, the roar in his ears told him he was screaming--he couldn't understand, this couldn't be right, he was burning to death--
The fire ceased. He opened his eyes.
He tried to lift his head, but the pain stabbed along his neck, and he stopped. His skin felt tight and hot, and every inch of it hurt in a way he could never have imagined possible. A gust of wind stirred his limp wings, and he clenched his jaw to keep from crying out. He was crying, he realized, the tears stinging his face. It took him a moment to realize that the scraping rattle he kept hearing was his own breathing.
He saw, at last, that everyone--the Circle, the hatchlings, the new adults, the grown, the elders long past Quenching--everyone was staring at him.
Someone called his name, a single shout in the silence. But before he could even remember the voice, his legs buckled under him, his jaw slammed into the ground, and everything was instantly, blissfully dark.
\* \* \*
"Jarek..."
He opened his eyes slowly, hoping. Maybe it had been a dream, just a nightmare, and this was the day of Kindling, and he would finally find out what color he was...
Then the pain hit. And once his vision cleared, he saw Rissa, saw her bright ruby scales, saw the concern--the fear--in her golden eyes, and he knew it hadn't been a dream.
He raised his head as much as he could--he was in a cave, he realized, and the roof was low--and looked down. His scales were burned dark gray, even black in places, but his color had not changed. His claws were still soft. And his wings--it hurt so much to turn his head, to crane his neck back, but he had to see--his wings were charred to the point of being almost unrecognizable, and he could feel the sharp stiffness in them without even trying to move them.
He decided to start with the question whose answer he feared least. "Where am I?"
"One of Meda's caves," Rissa replied.
The healer. Of course. Now that the haze in his head was starting to clear, he caught the mingled scents of the various herbs, salves, and stores she kept in her honeycomb of caves. He had been here only a couple of times before, with the scrapes and stomachaches all hatchlings suffered.
Rissa smiled. "I'll go tell Meda you're awake."
"Rissa, wait." She turned. "What... what happened after I...?" he asked finally, not knowing exactly what to ask, and afraid of any answer.
"I helped Meda carry you here, and then they finished the Kindling with the other seven-years." Her voice softened. "You've been here three days. We were getting worried."
"Did the Circle say anything about... about what happened?"
Rissa studied some pebbles on the cave floor, shifting them with one claw, then another. "Well... Everyone was talking, of course; they'd never seen anything like it before. Koros has gone to the Egg to search memories. He said he'd be back at the new moon."
"The Egg of the World," Jarek breathed, at once awed and terrified. The stone held the ancient memories of dragons, sent through the last fire of each lead dragon before his or her flames were Quenched. If Koros had gone to the Egg, it meant that what had happened was very, very unusual.
"Maybe they'll try again," Rissa offered.
"Not until those burns are healed." Meda, the amethyst healer, appeared, carrying a shallow dish in a sling around her neck.
"Strange kind of wound, really," she continued, dipping her opal claws into the dish and spreading thick salve onto his scales. "Only seen these once before--a couple of hatchlings got in the way one summer when some new-Kindled seven-years decided to celebrate by seeing whose fire was brightest." She shook her head. "Thank the Mother the young ones seem to have a *bit* more sense these days."
Jarek wasn't listening. He was following one thought to another, step after step, and it felt like plodding steadily toward the edge of a cliff.
Every dragon, on reaching its seventh year, went through Kindling. The fire not only hardened claws and scales to fireproof and strengthened the wings for flight, it kindled the sacred breath-fire that lay dormant in every dragon. This fire gave power to the Egg, quickened the newly-laid clutches each year, and kept all of them warm through the bitter mountain winters. The fire was Amaris the Mother's gift to mark Her children, an echo of the breath with which She had made the world and all in it.
If he had no fire to kindle--if he could not even withstand Kindling itself--
Then he was no dragon, no matter how much he looked like one. He had no idea what he had done, but She had made it very clear that he had displeased Her somehow, and She had rejected him. Every other dragon had Kindled, in all of the history he knew, every winter story he'd ever heard. Except him.
He closed his eyes. Why had the Circle stopped? Why hadn't they just finished him, when it was obvious She didn't want him?
"Jarek?" Rissa. "Are you all right?"
He opened his eyes. Meda had finished tending him and was holding her claws in her hearth-fire to melt the remaining salve from them. He watched the purple flames and sighed.
"I'm just tired," he said finally.
Meda herded the young female out. "He needs rest, or those wounds won't heal. Go on. You can come back tomorrow."
Rissa was almost at the cave's mouth when she ran back and pressed her forehead to his cheek. "Don't worry," she whispered. "It'll be all right. Amaris will show Koros what needs to be done. And I'll be back tomorrow."
He knew he should say something, thank her at least, but he was too exhausted to think anymore, and then she was gone.
\* \* \*
In his dream, he was in the Circle again, the seven dragons around him, Koros facing him.
"Amaris has shown me what must be done," Koros said.
And the seven dragons of the Circle shot their bright flames, and pain burned through him, and he knew he was dying, knew it was right, and strangely enough felt happy…
He woke. The cave was dim, the only light coming from the hearth, where the purple flames had died down to a bed of smoldering amethyst embers.
If only it had been real.
There was nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing left. Every year of his life, he had watched the Kindling, dreamt of it, his only true dream.
He remembered this night's dream. The hard fire in Koros' eyes... the pain... the release.
No doubt the Mother had sent him that dream, as the legends said She sometimes did, so that he would know his fate.
He huddled in the cool cave, feeling as if he should be crying, but somehow even that was taken from him now. He was beyond that, into nothing, into darkness. He wasn't used to sleeping alone; no dragon was. Rissa hadn't stayed. Meda could have stayed…
The thought came slowly up from the blackness. Why wait for Koros? Why wait for the Circle to judge him?
Perhaps there was still one way to regain Her favor. Perhaps if She saw that he understood what he was--unworthy of fire, even of life...
And healers, he knew, kept many herbs, to do many things. To heal wounds, to ease pain... Surely in all her stores, Meda kept something to stop the heart.
Now. Before anyone could stop him.
He rose and left his cave, pausing at the mouth to listen. He heard nothing, and followed the tunnel that meandered first left, then right, deeper into the mountain, lit here and there by purple coals in clay cups and rock niches. From time to time he reached openings of small caves, branching out, but he could smell nothing of plants in them, so he kept going, always pausing to listen for the scrape of hard claws on rock, but hearing nothing.
At last he reached it. The cave was large enough that he could stand full on his hind legs and not touch the roof. Bundles of leaves and flowers hung from stalactites, tied with braided grasses. Other herbs were piled on ledges, some still with clumps of soil clinging to feathery roots.
How would he know which one? If Amaris had abandoned him, would She even have the mercy to lead him to his death?
He shook off the question and went to the center of the cave, where several joined stalagmites had been worn flat and smooth into a small table. Here there was a small pile of dusty leaves with a heavy, bitter scent.
He would start with these. He took the lot in his mouth and chewed. His tongue burned, and the bitterness nearly gagged him, but he managed, at last, to swallow.
"Well, about all you'll do with those is give yourself a beautiful stomachache in a little while."
He whipped his head around, the pain of his burns forgotten in surprise. Meda sat at the edge of the firelight, her tail curled comfortably around her legs.
"I keep the others hidden," she continued matter-of-factly. "Nothing here will do you in, I'm afraid--though," she added with a wicked chuckle, "you'll wish something would, once those do their work. I keep them for when the hatchlings get into the green berries by the river."
A moment of silence. Then her tone changed. "Jarek."
He could hardly see her for the sudden tears in his eyes; she was a wavering amethyst blur. Still, he looked up.
"Jarek," she said again, and her voice was gentler than anyone's he'd ever heard, and so quiet that it didn't even echo. "Do you think She doesn't know what you are?"
He was trembling now, not from the plant, not from fear, but from a feeling he couldn't even name.
"Do you think," she said, still softly, "that the Mother who made the world, including your egg, I might add, who caused you to be hatched when your egg could have laid unquickened until it froze in the winter snow--do you think She would cast you out now, when She could have kept you from existing with half a blink of Her eye?
"She may hold all of time," Meda continued, "but trust me, She wouldn't waste seven years just to see one half-grown dragon suffer."
The sob he'd been holding back wrenched its way out of his throat and echoed back to him. He hadn't been able to cry before; he did now, and he felt Meda's head lifting his, holding him up.
"Jarek," she whispered, "I have lived two hundred and seven years, and I know enough of Her to be certain of this: Fire or no, dragon or not, all who draw breath in this world are Hers. Whatever you may truly be, She knows, and you are what you are by Her fire, Her claws, and Her heart."
At last the tears stopped. Jarek felt hollow and even more tired than before, but the darkness was receding now, slowly, and he was remembering how it felt to be able to think again, without it.
"What can I do?" he asked hoarsely.
Meda smiled. "Well, for the moment, we'd better get you outside. We'll talk again when you're feeling better."
\* \* \*
Meda slid the dish of porridge toward him just as the sun was rising. "Come on. Get something in your stomach."
Jarek groaned. The last two dishes he'd tried had come up by the time the dish was empty, and judging by the fact that the ground still felt like it was moving under him, he doubted this one would be any different. His only distractions from the nausea all night had been the raw pain of his burns and the low, crooning songs Meda had sung as she salved his wounds and bathed his head and neck in cool water.
"Eat," she urged again. "You've got a long day ahead."
Long day? All he wanted was to crawl back to her caves and sleep in the first one he found. But he took a mouthful, hesitated, and swallowed.
The sudden rumble in his stomach startled him--until he realized it was hunger.
Meda chuckled. "Didn't think you'd ever feel *that* again, did you?"
He managed a weak smile and took another mouthful. This time, the porridge stayed down, the ground miraculously stilled itself, and the herbs she'd added gave him some of his strength back. He stood slowly, testing, and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Now," said Meda, "come with me."
He followed her back into the caves. She stopped in a small one where the floor was covered with black grit. In the center was a bed of embers ringed by stones. Meda lit the fire, and purple light washed over them, rippling along their scales.
"I'm no Seer, first of all," she said briskly. "I'm just a healer, and the Mother-of-the-World speaks to me no differently than to anyone else.
"But healers travel, and once long ago I had to journey far from here to find a plant I needed. I met--well--there isn't time now for stories. But I heard it spoken of a sacred pool where the Mother will show one's true nature.
"I never went; I had to come back at once to prepare a remedy. And to be honest, I was old enough then to know my own nature, at least as much of it as I cared to know.
"But if what they say is true..." Meda sighed. "I wish I had more to give you, Jarek. It all sounds... well, silly, Amaris forgive me. At any rate..."
She drew a simple map in the grit with one claw. "Once you're out of the mountains, keep the sunrise at your back until you come to the river. Follow the left fork until you reach the forest. They told me the trees there are so thick you can't see the sky through the branches, and taller at their tops than any dragon could ever reach without flying. Only the pool is open to the sky, in the center of the forest, surrounded by silver trees. They say the water never ripples, even when the wind blows across it, and it's in that reflection that She shows you what you need to see."
She made him repeat the directions several times, then herded him back to her store-room while she bustled from cave to cave, filling a woven grass bag with supplies.
"These"--she pushed a bundle of thick stems with small glossy leaves under his nose; they gave off a slightly sweet scent--"are good for pain if those burns bother you too much, or for any injuries along the way. Chew one leaf at a time, slowly, and no more than three leaves in a day's time. Understand?"
He nodded. Next came two clay jars. "This is the salve for you. Once a day--twice is better--until you're healed."
Then, a flat bundle of something that smelled familiar but strangely sharp. "Dried meat," Meda explained, sniffing it. "Goat, I think... It doesn't taste like much, but you'll be glad of it if the hunting's poor."
He couldn't imagine himself being that hungry, but he nodded anyway.
"And last..." She handed him something pearly and light: one of her shed claws, renewed every hundred years. "Take this as my token, if any you meet along the way recognize the name of Meda the healer. And if you should find a home for yourself far from these caves, send that back to me with your message, so I'll know the words are yours."
He draped the bag around his neck, and Meda adjusted some ties to keep it secure.
She studied him a moment, then nodded. "Best get going, then."
\* \* \*
It was strange, Jarek thought, to think that Meda thought he might never come back. It was strange to even think of himself as being on a journey. The land here was so familiar to him that it was as if he had simply wandered off alone, as he often did when the other hatchlings played their games. Sometimes Rissa had come with him, to talk or play their own games with stones, or just doze in the shade by the web of streams here.
Rissa... He should have said goodbye. What if he really did never come back?
He stopped, then shook his head and kept walking. He wasn't leaving forever. He'd find the pool, find out how to get his fire, and come back home. Anyway, Meda would at least tell her where he'd gone, so she wouldn't worry.
By the time the sun was high, he was nearing the pass through the ring of mountains, out of their valley. But he was so tired he felt dizzy, and the midsummer sun blazed on his burned scales until every breath was a flare of agony. He found a cluster of trees, settled down carefully in their shade, and was asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.
"The Egg has shown me," Koros intoned, "that the false dragon has attempted to escape judgment by leaving our valley. We of the Circle are searching for him now. We will find him."
Jarek jerked awake. Something--a shadow--had passed over him. He scanned the sky. A dragon.
He shivered. They had already found him, and now--
Jarek shook his head. That was a dream. The Circle wouldn't care that he'd left. Probably they were glad they didn't have to deal with him anymore.
But that *was* a dragon circling overhead. He squinted, trying to determine its color, but the sun was setting, and the darkening sky made it hard to see anything but a silhouette, coming closer...
The dragon's descent was swift, and before he could see it more clearly, it was landing with a thump before him.
His eyes widened. "Rissa!"
"Meda told me. I'm coming with you." Rissa folded her wings and waited.
"But--coming *with* me?" He paused. "You know I can't fly."
Rissa shrugged her shoulders in a ruby wave. "Then we'll walk."
"But Riss..." He sighed. "I might be gone a long time."
"Then so will I," she said. "Besides, that salve--how do you think you're going to reach your back? Now," she said, opening her claws, "I brought dinner. Rabbits, or goat?"
Jarek smiled and took the rabbits.
They stayed under the trees and ate, and by the time he was down to two scraps of fur, he had decided he would like the company. It had sounded adventurous to set off on a life-changing quest alone, but he rather liked the feeling of lying here, under a sky sparkling with summer stars, with a full belly and his best friend sleeping beside him.
He watched her for a moment, the slow rise and fall of her breathing, the wisps of smoke that curled from her nostrils as she exhaled. He swallowed and blinked back tears. If that bundle of leaves had done what he'd thought it would, what would Rissa have done? If she cared enough to follow him, to go with him... how much would it have hurt her to know that he hadn't left on a journey, but had died in a dark cave while she slept?
Maybe She had cast him out. But just in case, he thanked Her anyway. For Rissa.
Now, if only she didn't snore... Jarek settled himself on the grass, curled his tail around hers, laid his neck comfortably across her back, and slept.
\* \* \*
The day dawned bright and clear, and they left the valley at a brisk pace. Most of the time, Rissa walked beside him, but wherever the path out of the mountains grew steep or rocky or disappeared altogether, she would fly ahead and scout out the way.
As they descended, they could see the river snaking off along the horizon. "We won't get to it today," Rissa reported, gliding in after a quick flight, "but probably tomorrow morning."
She landed and sighed. "I haven't seen anything bigger than a mouse out here. I guess we'll have to go hungry tonight."
"There's this," said Jarek, handing her a bit of the dried meat.
She sniffed it. "Well, it's better than nothing."
The meat took a lot of chewing to get to any texture they recognized, and the flavor was downright bizarre for dragons used to fresh kills, but it did ease their hunger a little, and near sunset they surprised a young rabbit. It wasn't enough for either of them, but Rissa let Jarek eat first--"keep your strength up, or those wounds won't heal," she explained, spreading salve over his wings.
Jarek crunched bone and chuckled. "You sound like Meda." Reluctantly he pushed the rest of the carcass aside and settled down to enjoy the feeling of the cool salve on his scales. "Rissa...?"
"Mm? Sorry if this hurts, I've got to get under the wing..."
"What exactly did Meda tell you?"
"That you were going to some pool where the Mother would send you a vision, I guess, to show you what you were."
"That's all she told you?"
"That, and that she knew I'd want to go with you, and she wouldn't stop me."
Jarek smiled, but he had to be sure. "She didn't say anything about the first night after I woke up?"
"No. Why?"
"Nothing. It's not important." In a way, he wanted her to know, and in a way, he didn't. He felt kind of foolish about the whole thing, ashamed that he'd ever been weak enough to consider it.
But if they reached the pool and it was nothing more than water, what then? What if that darkness closed in again? Would she stay then? He sighed.
"Something wrong?" Rissa asked.
"I'll just feel better when we get to the river."
Rissa blew fire over her claws to clean them, then stopped. "Oh, Jarek, I'm sorry, I didn't think."
"Didn't think what?"
"I shouldn't remind you. About not having fire. It's bad enough that I've been flying."
"It's all right. It doesn't bother me." And as he said it, he knew it was true, and it pleased him. At least *something* didn't bother him. And he would have hated feeling resentful of Rissa just because her Kindling had gone the way it was supposed to.
"Besides," he added, trying to sound casual, "I'll have my fire soon enough." *If She thinks you're worthy of it,* a voice from the darkness warned. *If you're even meant to be a dragon at all.*
"And then," Rissa said lightly, "we'll finally know what color you are. Do you know how many nights I've laid awake wondering? Sapphire, ruby, amethyst, onyx, emerald..."
"Probably I'll still be gray," he teased back.
"There's never *been* a gray dragon. And you'd get your color from your mother, like I got mine from my father."
Jarek was silent for a moment. "Well," he said finally, voice rough, "nobody ever saw my mother, did they? So she *could* have been gray."
Rissa touched her head to his shoulder. "I'm sorry. Again. Why don't we just talk about the weather? Still kind of hot for this late in the evening, isn't it?"
Jarek smiled. "I don't think she was gray, though."
"What do you think she looked like?" Rissa's voice was soft, and the only other sound was the hum and chirp of crickets and night insects in the long grasses nearby.
"Blue," he said finally. "I don't know why, but I've always thought she was blue." He'd never said that to anyone, but it felt nice to say out loud instead of just imagining it. It made him feel as if it could really be true. "Not like Koros," he added, "but lighter, like the sky in spring, just when it starts to get warm again, after it's been cold so long you've forgotten what real sunlight feels like."
Rissa rested her head on his shoulder and curled her tail around him. "Blue would be a beautiful color for you."
She was asleep a few moments later, but Jarek laid awake a long time after, listening to the crickets, holding the image of his mother in his mind, wondering, wishing, until her soft eyes faded and sleep gently took him.
\* \* \*
The hot, rich scent of meat woke him. "There's *something* around here, at least," Rissa said, nudging the kill toward him. It was something like the goats they were used to, but with larger, curling horns and a thicker hide. It was also delicious, but his hunger may have had something to do with that.
When they had both reduced the carcass to horns, hooves, and hide, Rissa salved his burns and they set off again. Jarek winced at the stiff pain, but the salve helped, and one of the leaves Meda had given him helped even more.
They reached the river in late afternoon, a wide stretch of water with gently sloping banks and trees whose roots reached nearly into the current. Jarek found a shady spot and settled down; the sun had burned his skin, and what few wounds were healing itched maddeningly in the heat.
A breeze washed over him, and he closed his eyes. There was something in the sound of the water that soothed him, something in the rush and ripple over rocks that could almost have been a whisper, a voice in his head and outside of it...
He woke with a start. It was just the sound of the river. He frowned and stood, walking down the bank until he was standing in the water, head lowered as if to drink, but listening instead. It was the sound of the water, but there was something else, something like whispers in a language he couldn't understand...
"Jarek?" Rissa stepped into the water beside him.
"Do you hear that?" he whispered.
She frowned slightly, then lowered her head. A few minutes passed. "I hear the water," she said carefully.
The sound had faded. Jarek shook his head. "Never mind. I was dreaming."
A flicker of a shadow coursed along the current, and before he realized what he was doing, Jarek struck his claws into the water and seized it--a fish, silver and struggling.
Rissa took a step back. "What is *that*?"
"It's meat." Jarek sniffed it. "I think."
Rissa sniffed it and jerked back. "You're not going to *eat* it... Are you?"
"You said yourself I'd need my strength." He closed his jaws on the fish and carried it up the bank, then dropped it and tried to get enough of a grip to tear off the scales.
He dug into the pale, cold meat and thin bones, crunching them together. He offered half to Rissa, but she shook her head quickly and turned away.
It was a strange flavor, but to his surprise, he found he liked it, and he caught several more until he was full. Rissa gathered enough courage to nibble at one bit, but it took so much effort for her to keep from gagging that she couldn't swallow it. She left the fish to him and excused herself to hunt real food among the trees.
"Well, this is the river," Rissa said finally, pausing to wash her meal's blood from her claws. "Where do we go now?"
Jarek mentally reviewed Meda's directions. "She said to take the left fork, but I don't see any. I guess we just keep going downstream until we find it."
"Down it is, then." Rissa checked the straps of his pack to make sure they weren't cutting into him. Jarek ducked back into the water for one more fish, eating this one whole. Rissa made a face, then shook her head and led the way downriver.
\* \* \*
They followed the river for days. Jarek began to wonder if he'd heard the directions wrong somehow--and then, at last, the river branched.
Jarek stopped and stared. Rissa looked, and sighed.
The river branched out into three streams, each as broad as the next. One stream would certainly have been said to be on the right, but the other two ran nearly parallel before disappearing into the distance.
"How long ago was Meda here?" Rissa asked.
"Years." Jarek shook his head. "We'll take the farthest left, I guess."
Meda hadn't said how far the forest was once the river forked, but the land began to change until there weren't more than a few trees in any one place, let alone a forest, and the soil became fine and dry. The wind carried an odd scent--like water, and yet not like it--and Jarek thought he could hear something like the voices in the river, only with a hissing roar behind it.
They crested a rise of pale grass and looked down to it: water, all the way to the horizon, rushing and tumbling where it washed up to the shore.
Jarek walked down to the shoreline, eyes wide as a new hatchling's, marveling at the wet sand under his feet, pouring dry sand through his claws. The next wave caught him, swirling around his feet and tail, and the chill of it sent a shudder through him. The wind whipped at his half-healed wings, and he had to fight the urge to open them. Maybe here, he could fly...
Rissa looked at the waves, took a mouthful of water, then spat it out, coughing.
"What's the use of water you can't drink?" she asked irritably, coming up beside him.
"Just think," Jarek said, "we might be the only dragons who've ever seen this."
"We might be," Rissa agreed grimly. "Meda would have mentioned this, wouldn't she?"
He didn't want to admit it, but even in his amazement, that truth had been a cold stone in his belly. They'd come the wrong way. Still... he almost didn't mind, if getting lost had been the only way to see this. Something in the inevitable rush of waves made his heart pound even as it soothed him, and he felt he could stand there for hours, for days, perhaps even forever, watching the white foam build, watching the wave crest and break and wash back…
Beside him, Rissa sighed. "I guess we'd better head back and see how far we can get before sunset."
Jarek pulled himself away from the waves, but not before picking up a shell and turning it over in his claws, curious. It was smooth as dragon-scales, polished a pearly pink by the waves, and it smelled like the sea. He managed to tuck it in his pack before they set out, and the thought of it there, a reminder he could touch, comforted him somehow.
\* \* \*
Rissa's claws scraped the inside of the clay jar. "That's the last of this one," she said, spreading the salve over his neck. "Good thing she gave you two. But maybe you won't need it much longer."
Jarek turned the shell over and over in his claws, tracing the spiraling curves. Something Meda had said was nagging at him, that and the fact that she'd given him two jars of salve.
"Only once before," he said, remembering.
"What?"
"Meda said she'd only seen these wounds once before. Why keep so much salve ready for something that rarely happens?"
Rissa shrugged. "Healers like to keep things ready. Maybe it has other uses."
"Maybe," Jarek said, but he didn't feel convinced. "Or maybe she knew she'd need it. If I lived through Kindling."
"Jarek." Rissa was looking at him as though he were a new hatchling. "You're not saying she knew this was going to happen to you?"
Jarek said nothing.
"She's a healer! You don't think she'd *let* someone get hurt?"
"I don't know." Jarek turned away. "I don't know what to believe. Maybe none of it was true. Maybe we didn't find the forest because it doesn't exist."
"We just went the wrong way," Rissa said. "All we have to do is follow the river back."
Frustration boiled in him. "And what if we never find it? What if the whole thing was just some story to get me away from everyone, so they didn't have to figure out what to do with me? So they didn't have to look at me?"
"Jarek, that's not true."
"How do you know?"
"I--I just--do..."
"What, the Mother told you? Everything's going to be fine? Well, She never told me anything, so She must like you better. You've got the fire and I don't, and you believe and I don't. You're one of Her people--and what am I?"
"Jarek--"
"Just leave me alone." He saw her recoil as if he'd struck her, and for no reason he understood, he added, "I never asked you to come with me anyway. Go back home to your own kind."
He turned and walked away, not wanting to look back, angry with her hatchling's faith, angry with Meda for being so mysterious, for hiding something he couldn't figure out, angry with Amaris, if She even existed--angry with himself for hurting Rissa. But there was nothing else to say.
\* \* \*
Night fell clear and cool on the dunes. Jarek could still hear the waves, but the voices, whatever they were, had fallen silent. The sky was dazzling, each star a separate flame. Each one, as he had learned from his first days at the feet of the clan's emerald Storyteller, had been born of Amaris' breath, as his own world had been.
Did he even believe *that* anymore? Perhaps the better question: had he ever believed it?
He stared at the stars, watching, hoping for something he couldn't even define, but he felt somehow that if he waited long enough, it would come, and then maybe he would understand…
"Jarek?"
Rissa settled herself beside him. "It's a beautiful night, isn't it."
He traced aimless lines in the sand, not knowing where to begin. "Iarissa," he said softly.
She turned to him, obviously surprised to hear him use her full name.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean any of it... not about you, anyway." He sighed. "I have to tell you something. Maybe it doesn't matter now, but..."
He lifted his gaze to the sky. It was easier to tell her about that night in Meda's cave when he didn't have to look into her eyes, to see how she was reacting.
When he was finished, he dared a glance, and took some hope in her expression. She looked sad, but it was not a look that made him feel ashamed or foolish.
"I shouldn't have left that night," she said at last. "I should have stayed with you."
"And defy Meda?" he said, laughing despite himself. "I don't know. It's like she expected it of me. Like she wanted me to try, as long as she was there to stop me. I don't understand it, but I can't ask her now, so..." He let it go.
"I can't explain how I felt that night," he continued. "There was just... nothing, anymore, nothing for me, nothing that meant anything. It wasn't pain as much as emptiness. I don't want to feel that again, but part of me is always afraid it'll come back."
"It won't," Rissa said simply.
Somewhere halfway through this laugh, the tears he'd been holding back finally fell. "And how do you know?"
"Because we're going to find the pool," she said softly, "and Amaris will show you what you need to do, and whatever it is, we'll do it."
His voice dropped to a rough whisper. "I wish I could believe the way you do."
She placed her claws over his and rested her head on the arch of his neck. "So do I," she said finally. "Because you don't seem to believe in yourself."
For an instant, he almost felt angry again, but he smiled instead, and it faded. "I guess you'll have to believe for both of us, then."
There were at least a hundred other things he could have said, he thought later. How he never would have gotten so far without her. How grateful he was that she was here. How he wished, now, for fire: not to be the dragon he'd dreamt of, but to be worthy of the fire-flight in the spring, to spiral out of the high mountain clouds with his claws clutching hers.
Instead, he was silent, listening to the waves, with her cheek now pressed against hers--and she drew away.
"Jarek--your tears..." She tasted them again and frowned.
"What?"
"They're strange." She searched for the right word. "Bitter. Like the water down there."
He blinked. "Aren't they supposed to be?"
He tasted hers; they were sweet, like the summer berries the hatchlings sometimes ate.
"I don't understand," he said.
She shrugged and settled down to sleep. "It doesn't matter."
But it did. He couldn't sleep, and once she was snoring he pulled away carefully and walked to the water's edge. He looked at the stars, and the prayer was so fierce that it burned his eyes and throat and came out instead as a command.
"Tell me what I am!"
He waited, heart pounding, half the night, but no answer came, and at last he fell asleep on the sand.
\* \* \*
The next morning, they set back the way they'd come, back where the sandy marsh became a river again.
"If we just *knew* we were going the right way," Jarek said with a sigh.
"There's not exactly anyone to ask," Rissa replied. "Unless you count the fish."
Jarek wished he could ask the whispering voice of the river, but he could never make out enough to understand any words--if it was even a voice at all. He stopped now and stared down into the current, watching the shadows of fish, trying to listen…
The splash in front of his nose startled him. He jerked back, coughing, blinking water from his eyes. Only after the surprise did he see what had splashed him: a large bird with brownish-black wings, a white belly, and a black stripe across its eyes.
The bird cocked one yellow eye at him, then flapped its wings and flew off, clutching a silvery fish in its talons.
Rissa watched the bird fly off, then followed. "We can ask him," she said. "Come on--he's headed to the trees."
"Ask him?" Jarek panted, trying to keep up. "You mean--it can talk?"
"Did you sleep through *all* the winter stories?" she called back, taking flight. "They're sacred, too, remember?"
He did remember now. Birds were creatures of the air, as the dragons were, and laid eggs as they did. No dragon dared hunt birds or raid nests; it was as unthinkable as killing a hatchling. And this was a hunting bird, who shared the great claws that dragons used to catch their prey.
*Amaris probably holds that bird in more favor than She does you,* the voice from the darkness whispered. Jarek tried to ignore it and concentrated on keeping up.
The bird settled on a low branch and jabbed his hooked beak into the fish, twisting it as he pulled back to tear the skin. He was swallowing great chunks of the meat when Rissa and Jarek reached him.
Rissa cleared her throat. "In the name of Amaris, Mother of all flight, we greet you."
The bird regarded them a moment, then resumed eating. Rissa shuddered, watching him, then tried again.
"I'm Rissa; this is Jarek. We're on a journey, and we've gotten lost, and I was hoping you'd be able to tell us if we're going the right way."
Stab, twist, tear, gulp. Jarek was beginning to wonder if this bird was some kind of outcast himself, or if Amaris had, perhaps, made him mute as punishment.
After another moment, the fish was only a ragged scrap of bone and scales, and the bird dropped it casually from the branch, then looked at them again.
"Personally," he said, "I never have long discussions on an empty stomach. And mine is not yet full, so if you'll excuse me..." And he flew off to the river again, circling, hovering, then diving, splashing full into the water before he rose again, wings streaming water, carrying another fish.
He ate silently, and when he was finished he dropped the remains next to the other, cocked his head to them, and said, "Well, then, what are you exactly?"
Rissa blinked. "We're dragons."
"Dragons," he repeated. "Good, good; I'd have thought the Mother was cursing some poor bird with such a bulky body and weak wings. I'd never have believed you could fly, miss, if I hadn't seen it myself."
Jarek opened his mouth to speak, not sure what he was going to say, but it was certainly going to involve something about being more civil to Rissa--but she cut him off.
"As I said, sir--"
"Name's Chereek," he said. "I fish the river from here to the forest."
"The forest," Jarek said, heart pounding.
"Yes, the forest. Big lot of trees, dark place, no room to open up your wings?"
Jarek ignored the taunting tone. "The forest where the trees are so tall and close that you can't see the sky?"
"That's the one."
"That's where we're going," Rissa said. "Could you show us the way?"
Chereek ruffled his feathers in what might have been a shudder or a shrug. "I don't go in the forest myself. Don't really care for it."
"But you wouldn't have to go in," Rissa pressed.
"Miss," Chereek replied, "I'll remind you that I don't *have* to do anything. And I haven't heard anything yet that persuades me to do anything for you at all."
"It would be nice," Rissa said, more to herself than to Chereek.
"Nice!" Chereek echoed. "Certainly it would be nice as far as *you're* concerned, miss. I don't argue that. And if I leave this part of the river, I'm sure it'll be nice for the fledgling upstart who moves in on *my* prime hunting grounds."
"I meant," Rissa continued, keeping her voice so smooth and level that Jarek marveled at her control, "it would be nice of you."
Chereek ruffled his feathers again, and this time it did look more like a shrug. "*That* sort of thing, miss, matters to the ones who flock. And I have never been one of *those*. It has never mattered a mouthful to me what anyone else says or thinks." With that, Chereek left his perch and went back to circling the river.
Jarek blew out an irritated breath, wishing he had fire to ignite it. "Helpful fellow, isn't he?"
Rissa smiled. "I think I have him figured out. Just give me a little more time."
"Come on, Riss. I don't think we're changing his mind anytime soon."
She winked. "Watch me."
Chereek came back with another fish, this one twice the size of the ones before. "You still here?"
"Isn't that heavy?" Rissa asked.
"Hardly. I can carry fish twice this big. It's all a matter of muscle."
"You've caught fish that big?"
"Used to, all the time. Not so many big ones around now." Chereek settled into eating.
"That must have looked very impressive… to the females, I mean," Rissa said, keeping her tone light. "*I'd* be impressed, anyway."
Chereek paused. "Maybe to some of them. Not to the ones worth having." He went back to gulping down the fish.
"Ah." Rissa waited until Chereek was down to the last few scraps. "What do the ones worth having want?"
Chereek made a high, shrill sound that might have been laughter. "If I knew, miss, I'd tell you."
Rissa thought a moment. "I think," she said slowly, "I would want stories."
"Stories!" Chereek cocked his head and studied her as if she'd suddenly changed color.
"Well, think about it," Rissa said. "*Anyone* can fish. But sitting on a nest all day has to get boring. If it were me, I'd want a mate who could fish and tell me stories. The kind of stories that take you somewhere else, that give you things to wonder and dream about. And then when the chicks were hatched, he could tell them, too, at the end of the day, when the sun sinks down and the river turns golden…"
Chereek considered this. "Stories. Hm. Wouldn't have thought it."
"Of course," Rissa continued innocently, "you *do* have to be awfully clever to tell stories."
"Clever!" Chereek looked as if he wanted to say something else, then fell silent instead. "The way I see it," he said at last, "telling 'em's the easy part. Getting 'em sounds harder. They're not swimming around out in the river, you know."
Rissa nodded sagely. "Very true. They can be hard to catch. But... I know your experience with dragons is very limited, sir, so you couldn't have been expected to know this..."
"If you're aiming for something, miss--dive."
"...but dragons are well-known for their storytelling."
"Are they now."
"Oh, yes. Why, all winter we stay huddled together in our caves and tell each other stories until spring comes. Never the same one twice."
"And you... remember them?"
"A few dozen or so really well. Those are my favorites."
"A few dozen..." Chereek looked a bit unsteady on his perch for a moment.
"Tell you what," Rissa said. "Why don't you come along with us to the forest--just so we don't get lost, since you know the way so well--and I'll tell you a few of the best ones along the way."
Chereek studied the sky for a minute or two. "All right, I suppose," he said finally. "But I ask you, miss--what if they don't like dragons' stories?"
Rissa smiled. "Then they're not worth having."
\* \* \*
Over the next day and a half, Jarek relived many of the tales he'd first heard as a hatchling. Some were comic tales, others were parts of historic sagas, and others were dramatic tellings of Amaris' creation of the world. Rissa even pulled out a few rhymes used to teach hatchlings good behavior, and Jarek chuckled, imagining the same rhymes being taught to osprey chicks.
From time to time, Rissa would pause in her story, just long enough for Chereek to ask impatiently whether she was going to finish. The osprey seemed to be tolerating both of them almost to the point of friendship, though he had an obvious preference for Rissa's conversation.
It was only midday, but as they stopped to rest--Jarek strongly suspected that Chereek was stringing the trip out to allow for more tales--they watched the sky grow dark with towering clouds. A few raindrops hit Jarek's back, and he shuddered. The air was getting heavy; back home, they'd be taking shelter in the caves. Here, though, they were out in the open. The forest was in sight, but he wondered if they would reach it before the storm hit.
He realized Chereek was worried when the osprey did the unthinkable and actually interrupted Rissa's story.
"Miss, I hate to stop you at the good part, but I think we'd best move fast. I don't like the look of that sky."
Just as he finished speaking, they saw a flash of light at the horizon, and thunder rumbled in the distance.
Rissa glanced worriedly at the sky, then at Jarek.
"You two fly ahead," Jarek said. "I'll catch up."
Rissa blinked. "But--" Another crash of thunder, startlingly close, stopped her.
"All right," she said. "But hurry." She hesitated, then pressed her forehead to his cheek. By the time he was able to fully register the touch, she had pulled away, unfolded her wings, and taken flight, with Chereek winging his way ahead of her.
Jarek watched her for a moment, admiring the ruby fire of her scales against the gray sky, how graceful the sweep of her wings as she flew...
Another white flash of lightning brought him back to his senses. He set off at the fastest pace he could manage, a kind of lumbering trot that still woke every nerve in his body with ever-sharpening pain. The wind picked up, tearing at his scorched wings, and he barely kept from crying out.
The rain came a moment later, pelting him with stinging drops. He was having trouble seeing very far ahead, but he thought he saw Rissa's blurry shape descending into the cover of the forest, just before the clouds opened into a downpour.
The whistling rush of the wind turned into a roar. It suddenly changed direction as well, and now he was forced to crouch, head down, almost crawling forward. His wings had gone numb; he didn't notice except as a welcome respite from the pain. The wind whipped tears from his eyes and blew leaves into a green-and-silver frenzy that slapped into his face and plastered themselves against his wet scales. His head was so low against the wind, his vision so blurred, that he did not know he had reached the forest until his forehead touched the bark of a massive tree.
He raised his head. There was no sign of Rissa or Chereek.
The roar of the wind was deafening; it filled his ears until he felt as if his head would burst from it. The rain had subsided, and the ground under the canopy was still dry. The leaf litter swirled and blew into his eyes and nose. As he coughed, feeling each spasm racking his injured lungs, he began to fear that soon he might not even be able to breathe.
Jarek forgot those worries in the next instant. A flare of light blinded him, and the thunder seemed to be right at his head. The tree he was standing under exploded. One branch glanced off his head, stunning him a moment, and as he stood dazed, the fragments caught fire and the forest swept into flames around him. The speed of the fire amazed him; he stood and watched, trying to clear his head, trying to think…
"Jarek!"
It was a faint, thin cry above the wind. He couldn't tell where it was coming from, but the fire was closing in fast, and as its heat reached him, his body recoiled from it and sent him racing deeper into the forest.
He remembered who would be calling for him. "Rissa!"
No response.
He tried to call again, but the smoke choked him. His chest burned, and he could not draw another breath. The air was thick and gray and strangely fading…
*Amaris*, he thought vaguely, his mind searching for the words, grasping them slowly, Amaris, Mother of all... I...
He stumbled, then felt a coolness on his feet that he still dimly recognized as water. Then he slid, into the coolness, into the gray, into darkness and silence at last.
\* \* \*
It might have been hours, or minutes, or perhaps only seconds.
Jarek opened his eyes. At first, he thought the fire was still burning around him, because of the brightness that dazzled him. But there was no heat, and the fresh air held no trace of smoke.
He was in a pool of water, submerged almost to his chin. As he lifted his head, he saw that although the rest of the forest had been charred black, the trees immediately around the pool had not burned, and their bark and branches shone silver in the strange light.
Then he realized. This was *the* pool, then.
Well, he could come back. After he'd found Rissa.
He hauled himself out of the water with a little regret. It had felt wonderfully cool and soothing on his burns, and even now they weren't hurting at all. He'd forgotten how it felt to be able to move without pain.
Then, as he stood on the burnt ground, feeling the water drip from his scales, he felt something under his claws. He looked down. Wherever the drops of water fell, green grass was growing, bright as spring on the scorched earth. It came up as he watched, as if he were seeing days in the space of a moment.
And then, just as suddenly, he knew someone was watching him.
She was a dragon, white, but with every color shimmering lightly over her scales, so that she seemed to be first one hue, then another. She was no larger than any dragon he'd seen, but even so she seemed to fill the entire clearing. And the light, he saw now, was coming from her, washing over the ground, washing over him and the silver trees.
There was no question.
"Amaris," he breathed. He hesitated--took a step forward--and then She was directly in front of him, and Her voice, though silent, filled his head and thrummed in his chest.
*Jarek.*
He tried to catch one of the questions that swarmed in his mind, but they scattered before he could find words. At last he seized one. "Am I dreaming?"
She regarded him. *Would it matter?*
He couldn't find an answer. He just kept staring. Except for Her color, She could have been any dragon of the mountains--except for Her color, and the feeling that filled him, the feeling that was something of laughter and something of weeping, something of endless restlessness and something of endless peace, the greatest strength and the greatest weakness he'd ever felt. Had She not spoken his name at the start, he would surely have forgotten it himself.
You wanted to know what you are. Look, and I will answer.
She blew across the pool, and the water rippled, rushed, foamed, then was still.
Jarek craned his neck to see--then pulled back, looking down at his body, his claws, his wings. His breath came so fast it was merely one gasp after another.
He saw he was not only healed, but transformed. His scales were pale blue, with a shimmer to their surface, so that light played over them as if they were water. His claws were shining pearl, and there was thin webbing between his toes.
He looked back at his reflection in the glassy pool. His face was still the same except for the color, but a frill extended along his neck, just flexible enough to move a bit as he turned his head. His tail was a bit longer now, and it flattened near the end.
Her voice filled his head again.
*You had no fire to kindle, Jarek, not because you were unworthy, but because you were not born for fire. You are a child of the water, and it is part of you as you are of it.*
"The water," he said softly. "The voice I heard in the river. In the waves..."
*Was mine.*
He turned away from the pool, overcome, then stopped.
*Ask.*
"Why didn't you come to me before?"
He was embarrassed at how he sounded--half accusation, half hatchling's whine--but She didn't seem to be offended.
*It wasn't time.*
He looked at Her again, Her eyes so fierce and kind, so beautiful and infinite, shining with the light of all the summer stars, and sadness filled him.
*Speak.*
"It's only... I wish I looked like you." For She was a fire-dragon, and the dragons of the mountains were truly Her people, and more than anything, now, he still wished to be one of them, because of that.
Her laughter filled the clearing.
*Look well, my son, and tell of it to any who will hear.*
She walked a slow circle around the pool, and with each step Her form shimmered like Her scales and changed: the fire-dragon She had been, the water-dragon he was, the rabbits and goats of the mountains, a flurry of shining fish, a thousand other creatures he'd never seen and couldn't name, until at last She was the fire-dragon again, and She stopped, and regarded him, and waited.
"Meda was right," he said at last.
Amaris nodded. *Among your people I am called another name, and they tell of how I created the world from water and moonlight instead of fire.*
"My people?" His heart pounded at the words.
*They are not far.* She lowered her head and blew a slow breath, and silver light flowed out, forming a bright path through the burned forest. *They have been waiting for you.*
Her light was fading slowly, and he knew She was leaving. He hesitated, then dared. "Amaris."
She waited.
"If the dragons of the mountains say you created the world through fire--and the dragons of the sea through water--which is true?"
She smiled, and Her gaze was patient.
*Both. And neither. And much, much more. This alone I will tell you...*
She was gone, now, but the whisper resounded in his mind.
*I never left you. I never shall. Child of the water, follow my path.*
He was alone, and the only sound was his own heartbeat, his own breath. The silence bathed him.
"Jarek!"
The cry was desperate--Rissa--she burst into the clearing--and stopped so fast at the sight of him that she had to dig her claws into the earth to keep from falling.
She stared at him. "Jarek?"
Jarek smiled and nodded, swallowing past the sudden lump in his throat. "It's me."
"Jarek," she repeated softly, and he saw the same wonder in her eyes that he'd seen in his own. She circled him, her eyes wide, taking everything in. Then she laughed quietly, and the sound chimed through the stillness. "Didn't I tell you blue would be a good color for you?"
He laughed with her, and they stood for several long, sweet moments, claws clasped, tails half-entwined, his forehead pressed to hers. Then he pulled away.
"Did you see Her?" he asked softly.
Rissa smiled, eyes bright, and nodded. They said nothing more as they followed the path out of the forest.
\* \* \*
The path led them to the ocean again, but a different kind of coast this time, a rocky cove where the waves crashed into salt spray and cliffs dropped sharply to the sand. As they reached the edge of the cliff, the silver path faded.
Jarek looked down to the cove. At first, all he saw were rocks and salt-bleached sea grass, but then a glitter of dragon-scales caught his eye, and another, and another--and then he could see them. He watched as one of them stood in the surf and craned its neck to see the top of the cliff. One by one, the dragons slid out of the waves, came out from shady spots between the rocks--caves, he figured, among the cliffs--all of them with their gaze focused at the top of the cliff where he and Rissa stood.
"I guess we'd better go down," Rissa said, and with that she unfurled her wings and soared down to the beach.
Jarek paused, then laughed at himself, unfolded his wings, and leapt. Perhaps in the valley he wouldn't have been able to fly, but here the strong wind off the sea nearly lifted him off the ground the moment his wings were spread.
He landed with a spray of sand, then looked from one dragon to the next. It was like looking at a reflection that shifted and changed. Their color was nearly the same as his, though the older dragons tended more toward blue-gray and the younger toward blue-green. And the hatchlings... With a pang of recognition, he saw that every one of them looked as he had: gray scales without a hint of color.
He wasn't sure where to start. "My name is Jarek," he said, raising his voice to be heard over the surf. "I was born in a valley far from here, surrounded by mountains on all sides. I was raised as a fire-dragon."
He paused, not sure where to go from there, and in the silence a female dragon came forward. From the way she moved and the way the others moved aside for her, Jarek knew this was the sea-clan's lead dragon.
He bowed his head to her, and she nodded in reply. "I am Naida," she said. "My questions will seem blunt, but I must ask them before I tell you more. Jarek of the mountain fire-clan, when were you born?"
"Seven years ago."
"And what do you know of that hatching?"
"I was hatched when they found me, alone by a stream."
There was a murmur from the assembled dragons. Naida nodded. "And what brings you to us?"
"It's kind of a long story," Jarek said, smiling despite--or because of--his nervousness.
Naida smiled back. "Then I will tell you mine instead.
"Our kind rarely travel, as it is with your clan, no doubt. But a hot-blooded male from the mountains, astray and exploring, found us, and he took for his mate a young female newly come of age, called Lyanna. He wanted to take her back to his homeland. She agreed, but the journey was difficult, and on the way she became very ill. He left her by a stream and flew to the mountain clan's healer.
"When she saw Lyanna, the healer came to us, for although we know the sickness and how to treat it, the dragons of his clan had never seen it before."
So Meda had been here, Jarek thought, remembering her words, that she'd had to travel far for a remedy.
"The birds are kind messengers," Naida continued. "Without them, we would not know what followed.
"When the healer returned, Lyanna was near death, and by then the healer's art could only ease her passing. She found, though, that Lyanna had managed to lay a single egg, what would have likely been the first of several, had the illness spared her."
Naida paused. "The male went mad upon her death and would listen to nothing. We are told he leapt, wings folded, from the nearest mountainside, and that your healer spoke the Mother's words over him. Then she quickened your egg in the stream, guarded it there until hatching, and took you back to her people.
"That is where my story ends, young Jarek, and yours begins. We did not know if we would ever see you, but we hoped you would come to us someday.
"Son of Lyanna, you are welcome here. Come rest until the day's catch is gathered, and then you can tell us your part." Her eyes sparkled. "We have waited long to hear it."
\* \* \*
Jarek and Rissa found a shady cove where the mist cooled them, but as exhausted as they were, neither could sleep.
"She knew," Rissa said finally.
Jarek knew she meant Meda, and he nodded. "She knew everything."
"She could have just *told* you!"
Jarek rested his head on the rise of her back, just in front of her wings. "I'm kind of glad she didn't," he said softly.
He had almost drifted off when she spoke. "Jarek..."
"Mm?"
"I'm sorry about your parents. About your father."
"I know how he must have felt." Jarek sighed. "I feel like I *should* be sad, but the truth is, I never knew them. I'm only disappointed to lose a hatchling's dream.
"But Riss... Your mother was kind enough, but... You're the only family I ever had. And you're still right here, at least for a while--so it's hard to feel like I've really lost anything."
She turned to face him and raised one scaled eyebrow. "For a while? Where am I going?"
His heart pounded. "I thought... Now that I'm here, I thought you'd--you'd go back home. Back to the mountains. I mean, now that we know what I am, it's kind of--kind of over--"
"Jarek, stop." She nuzzled him lightly. "Listen to me. I loved you before we knew what you were. I loved you when you were a half-burnt hatchling, and I still love you now, and I'm staying with you." She paused, and for the first time he saw uncertainty in her eyes. "Unless you... want me to go?"
He found he couldn't speak, so he just shook his head. They lay beside each other several long moments, watching the waves, watching the dragons catching fish beyond the breakers. The sea-dragons soared over the water, then plunged straight down, rising with the fish struggling in their claws.
"I don't think there's much to eat around here except for fish," Jarek warned.
Rissa drew herself up bravely. "I'll learn to like it."
\* \* \*
That evening, as the sun sank into the horizon, Jarek told them his story, everything from the Kindling to their arrival at the cliff. He left out seeing Amaris at the pool, though. It wasn't that he thought they wouldn't believe them... it just didn't seem necessary to tell, somehow. And yet, he thought Naida guessed--or, he thought later, perhaps Amaris had come to her as well.
When he was done, he met the others of his clan, two aunts among them, as well as nearly a dozen hatchlings of various ages who teemed about his ankles, declaring themselves his cousins.
But everyone was watching Naida as she approached and took Jarek's claws in hers. There were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling.
"I have not told you everything," she said, dipping her head in apology. "Lyanna was my daughter, and I am happy to welcome her son home." She paused, then nodded to Rissa. "And his mate as well."
*Home.* The word warmed him from within. As strange and new as everything felt, he knew Naida was right.
\* \* \*
"Jarek, come play with us!"
Jarek ignored his cousin's call. "Some of us," he called back, "have to hunt, or you'll all have empty bellies tonight!"
He soared over the ocean, looking for the shadows of fish below the surface. He'd thought he would need a lot of practice, but to his surprise, this method of hunting had felt perfectly natural from the start, and his claws rarely turned up empty.
The hatchlings at the shoreline imitated his movements, racing along the water's edge, tumbling over each other until their gray scales were coated with wet sand. Jarek chuckled, watching them. He'd had a certain bond with the hatchlings since his arrival the previous summer, probably because everything had been as new to him then as it was to them. The hatchlings had taught him how to ride the waves into the shore, how to play their favorite games, which creatures could be played with and which would bite or sting. And as winter had turned the ocean rough and dark, Jarek had sat with them and listened, rapt, as the sea-clan's Storyteller told them the tales of the Mother.
Now a shifting shadow caught his eye. He swept into a dive and caught a silver fish so large he had to hold it firmly with all front claws. Then, the prize secure, he beat his wings against the wind, heading up to the top of the cliff where Rissa waited.
Her nest was a pile of smooth stones, warmed carefully by her fire, and she crooned a quiet song as she turned both stones and eggs. He dropped the fish nearby--she would heat it before eating, the only way she said she could eat the things--nuzzled her briefly, then dove down the cliffside to the shore, opening his wings and skimming along the sand.
He landed in a smaller cove, protected by a ring of boulders that kept the strongest breakers from reaching the shore. Here, nestled in a pool that stayed even at low tide, two translucent eggs rested on a tangled bed of kelp and sea-grass. Naida was standing watch; she nodded to him and took off as he landed.
Jarek checked that the eggs were cushioned and that the water wasn't too warm or too cool, then settled himself on the sand. There was nothing around that would challenge a sea-dragon, but the soft eggs were another matter.
Naida had told him that long ago, the two clans often took each other's dragons for mates. Gender, it seemed, ran along the same lines as color did for the fire-dragons. So the three eggs Rissa tended would be male: fine ruby-scaled fire-dragons. And these two, just far enough along now that he could see the shadows of the hatchlings forming within, would be female, and children of the water.
When his sons reached their seventh year, they would journey with their mother to the valley for Kindling. When his daughters came of age, he would lead them to the sacred pool they called the Birthwater, and would see their gray scales shimmer to blue. The thought of it kindled a fierce, awe-filled love in him that was as much wonder as pride.
A familiar cry made him raise his head, and he saw Chereek's silhouette against the blue sky. The osprey landed on the rocks in front of him and cocked his head at the eggs.
"My, my. Don't waste much time, do we?"
Jarek only smiled. "If memory serves, you'll be minding nestlings yourself soon enough. How is the clan?"
"All well, as far as I saw. I found their healer and told her your message. Gave her that claw, too, of course. And the shell." Chereek's mate, Jarek knew, had carried the shell he'd found on the first beach, as a gift for Meda.
Jarek nodded. "Thank you."
"That Egg of theirs showed... oh, the blue fellow, I forget his name--"
"Koros."
"That's it--showed him what you were. They wanted to know more, so I told them what I could. Think I told it pretty well, too. Made a nice story out of it." Chereek paused. "Speaking of stories, you don't suppose your mate--"
"She's been thinking up new ones the whole time you've been gone," Jarek said.
The osprey nodded. "Good, good. Can't have too many, you know. Keeta does like a story at sunset... Well, if you'll excuse me, I have a river to get back to." And with that, Chereek took flight again, circling over the waves, then angling back over the cliffs and out of sight.
Jarek watched the waves as they broke again and again on the boulders beyond the cove. He thought of the mountain clan, of Meda, of the green valley where he'd been hatched, and all the while, each wave sent up a hiss of white spray, rushed foaming onto the beach, then washed back in gentle ripples. There was a whisper underneath the sound, a suggestion of breath in the rhythm. It was a sound of contentment, a sound of peace. And though Jarek couldn't make out any words, he thought he recognized the voice.
The End
*This work and all characters (c) 2007 Renee Carter Hall ("Poetigress"). May not be reprinted or redistributed without written permission.*