How could my life end like this? Suddenly, something catalyzed in my heart. It was the same spark of resentment and pride that made me remember who I was, and where I had come from. Maybe it was all of the pokes and prods and kicks from Dagan and his overseers that made me finally snap. It all just seemed so unfair.
“You are NOT going to eat me so easily!” I rolled over and screamed up at the beast, raising my finger and pointing at its snout. “I am a Child of the Western Wind! My mother is an Imanu of the Daza! And if you’re going to gobble me up, you can at least do it with me looking straight at you!” I screamed at it, not really knowing what I was saying but at least wanting the creature to know who I was.
For someone to know who I was, in my final moments.
But then, the massive black dragon did something I did not expect. It drew back its mighty head on its long neck and chirruped at me. “Skree-ip?” It blinked several times, as if confused at what I was doing and why I wasn’t screaming in terror. It looked at my pointing finger, and then looked at my face as if it was saying ‘What?’
In the four years of being here at the Masaka mines, I had never once seen a dragon. I had never known that they were this big. This one had a long snout with nostrils at the end that flared like a horse’s, over a maw that was filled with teeth as long as my arms. Its eyes were large, and, if I wasn’t lying here underneath it I would have called them beautiful. They were intricate and patterned like lichen on a plain’s boulder. From just in front of two large, ragged and torn ears swept back two brackets of horns.
If dragons are anything like deer, then that means it’s a male. And a fully grown one at that.
And then came the bulk of its body. Large scales as big as the guards’ shields, far larger than the hand-sized ones I had been picking up, spread out from its shoulders and down its arms, each one precisely overlapping the next. Its spine was marked by bony ridges, none of them as sharp as the horns on its head.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of it as I marveled at the way that the scales grew smaller and seemingly more delicate as they swept down around the creature’s belly. I saw the way that the fading light caught them and turned them indigo and viridian, like a crow’s feathers.
But then, my eyes had to take in the thing’s paws, which were huge and ended in gigantic talons like a bird of prey. The dragon was making absolutely no move to eat me, but it easily could have, any moment it wanted.
It was then that I saw how the great beast was holding its wings. One side was concertina folded up along its side like a bat, while the other was spread out awkwardly to one side and dragging on the floor.
It was wounded! Maybe that was why it hadn’t eaten me. Maybe, just like me, it had more important things to think about than a human woman. Now that I had a chance to breathe and really look at it, I saw that its eyes were returning to a slightly covered, almost pained expression. It was leaning on the leg on the other side of its body, as if its entire left-hand side was tender.
How are you supposed to talk to a dragon? “Uh, sorry for shouting,” I whispered, and gulped nervously, slowly moving to a crouch.
The black dragon pulled back a little more, leaning more heavily on one leg as it tried to fold its injured wing – and suddenly growled in pain.
“Woah!” The sound of an adult male dragon growling was like rattling shields and the roar of the mines’ furnace works. It was terrifying. I froze, but I knew that it wasn’t directed at me.
What can I do? I looked at the creature’s awkwardly held wing, and then up at its half-lidded eyes. It regarded me steadily, and I felt my heart lurch in my chest with sympathy for the poor thing.
“Maybe you and me aren’t so different.” I muttered sadly. “You’re injured, stuck up here in that cave when all you want to do is to feel the wind under your wings.”
And there was me, stuck down in the mines, trying to remember the feel of the Soussa on my cheeks. It was a sort of freedom, wasn’t it? Feeling the wind, knowing that you could follow it anywhere.
“But neither of us are free right now, are we?” I said sadly as I slowly shuffled to my feet. “Not yet, anyway,” I murmured as I backed away from the dragon. “But we will. You’ll see, you’ll heal, and I’ll escape.”
I found a large rock with a scooped-out sort of depression in the middle. I very slowly took my water skin (with the dragon’s eyes following my every movement as I did so) and poured its entire contents into the bowl. If the thing couldn’t fly, then I don’t know where it would get its water from, unless it was licking condensation from the walls of its cavern. I then put the hunk of bread beside it, doing my best to dust off the mold.
“I’m sorry, it’s all I have. It’s not very nice, but it’s all they’ll give me,” I said sadly, as I gave the dragon one last look and looked to the spilled carry-basket on the floor. I could leave it – but that would only mean more beatings. I was already on my fourth brand, and manacled – what worse torture would Dagan do to me if I came back empty-handed? “I hope that you get better,” I said awkwardly, slowly reaching down to snatch the handle of the carry-basket and drag it towards me. Don’t get mad, don’t get mad. I fervently prayed as I stepped back down to the slope, and back to the trail that led down to the mines.
I could feel the dragon’s eyes watching me on my long, shuffling journey down – but strangely, I no longer felt frightened. I wasn’t even scared of the stonedogs that were still somewhere out there in the night. If I had managed to survive encountering a dragon, then there really wasn’t much else that would dare harm me in the mountainous night.
Chapter 4
Tamin
“What time do you call this?” barked the very rotund figure of Toadie, my overseer. By the time that I had managed to hobble and shuffle back down the track to the edge of the great wooden wall, it was fully dark and there was already a team of people with torches standing by the open door.
“We were just debating whether to come out and find you!” Toadie swiped his hand towards my head – but I managed to duck it, as usual.
“Or whether to search for your body in the morning,” chuckled one of the guards, leaning against the open gate with his big fur cloak wrapped around him, and smoking something that smelled foul out of a small clay pipe.
Yeah, they probably thought I’d been eaten by stonedogs or fallen down a gully or something, I thought. Not that any of them would care, would they?
Apparently, however – I realized that they would care, as the overseer continued to shout at me. “You know if I lose one of you, I’m the one who gets my wages docked? Do you know how selfish you’re being!?” he snapped, pointing back into the camp, where even the dull firelights of the dormitories in the canvas windows looked inviting right about now.
Not that I was going to see them close-up, was I? I was still supposed to go straight to a night shift down the mines after this. Despite everything that I’d been through. Maybe it was standing next to a dragon this evening that gave me the courage to turn to overseer Toadie and say, “Look, can I just get some sleep? I’ll work double-shifts tomorrow.”
“You what?” Toadie was having none of it as he angrily pointed at my feet, made me sit down as he knocked out the metal pins holding my shackles in place. It felt good not to be lugging them around.