But the new quarters had proved to be more than just a physical separation, Sean realized as he and Carenath trudged along. Dave Catarel had put his finger on it in his wistful comment about being forgotten.
This walk is long. I would rather fly on ahead, Carenath said, doing his little hop-skip beside Sean. Once again Sean thought that his brave and lovely Carenath looked like a bad cross between a rabbit and kangaroo.
“You were designed to fly. I’ll be happy when we both fly “
Why do you not fly on me, then? I would be easier to ride than that scared creature. Carenath did not think much of Cricket as a mount for his partner.
Scared creature, Sean thought with a chuckle. Poor Cricket. How easy it would be to swing up to Carenath’s back and just take off! The notion made the breath catch in his throat. To fly on Carenath, instead of shuffling along on the dusty track. The adolescent year for the dragons was nearly over. Sean looked about in deep speculation. Let Carenath drop off the highest point, and he would have enough space to make that first, all-important downsweep of his wings . . .
Sean had spent as much time watching how fire-lizards and dragons handled themselves in the air as he once had patiently observed horses. Yes, a drop off a height would be the trick.
“C’mon, Carenath. I’m glad I didn’t let you fill your belly. C’mon, right up to the top.”
The top? The ridge? Sean heard comprehension color the dragon’s mind, and Carenath scrambled to the height in a burst of speed that left Sean coughing in the dust. Quickly! The wind is right.
Rubbing dust particles out of his eyes, Sean laughed aloud, feeling elation and the racing pulse of apprehension. This is the sort of thing you do now, at the right time, in the right place, he thought. And the moment was right for him to ride Carenath!
There was no saddle to vault to, no stirrup to assist Sean to the high shoulder. Carenath dipped politely, and Sean, lightly stepping on the proffered forearm, caught the two neck ridges firmly and swung over, fitting his body between them.
“Jays, you were designed for me,” he said with a triumphant laugh, and slapped Carenath’s neck in affection. Then he grabbed at the ridge in front of him.
Carenath was perched on the very edge of the ridge, and Sean had an awesome view of the bottom of the rock-strewn gorge. He swallowed hastily. Flying Carenath was not at all the same thing as riding Cricket. He took a deep breath. It was also not the time for second thoughts. He took a compulsive hold with legs made strong from years of riding and shoved his buttocks as deeply into the natural saddle as he could.
“Let’s fly, Carenath. Let’s do it now!”
We will fly, Carenath said with ineffable calm. He tilted forward off the ridge.
Despite years of staying astride bucking horses, sliding horses, and jumping horses, the sensation that Sean Connell experienced in that seemingly endless moment was totally different and completely new. A brief memory of a girl’s voice urging him to think of Spacer Yves flitted through his mind. He was falling through space again. A very short space. What sort of a nerd-brain was he to have attempted this?
Faranth wants to know what we are doing, Carenath said calmly.
Before Sean’s staggered mind registered the query, Carenath’s wings had finished their downstroke and they were rising. Sean felt the sudden return of gravity, felt Carenath’s neck under him, felt the weight and a return of the confidence that had been totally in abeyance during that endless-seeming initial drop. The power in those wing sweeps drove his seat deeper between the neck ridges as Carenath continued to beat upward. They were level with the next ridge, the floor of the gorge no longer an imminent crash site.
“Tell Faranth that we’re flying, of course,” Sean replied. He would never admit it to Sorka -he could barely admit it to himself– but for one moment he had been totally and utterly terrified.
I will not let you fall, Carenath’s tone chided him.
“I never thought you would.” Sean forced his body to relax, forced his long legs down and around Carenath’s smooth neck, but he took a firmer grip on the neck ridge. “I just didn’t think I’d stay aboard you for a minute there.”
Carenath’s wings swept up and down, just behind Sean’s peripheral vision. He felt their strong and steady beat even if he did not see them. He could feel the air pressure against his face and his chest. There was nothing around him but air, open, empty, and absolutely marvelous.
Yes, once he got the hang of it, flying his dragon was the most marvelous sensation he had ever had.
I like it, too. I like flying you. You fit on me. This goes well. Where shall we go? The sky is ours.
“Look, we better not do much of this right now, Carenath. You just ate, and we’re going to have to think this thing through. It’s not enough to fall of a ridge. Oooooooh – ” he cried inadvertently as Carenath banked and he saw the wide-open, dusty, Thread-bare ground far, far beneath him. “Straighten up!”
I wouldn’t let you fall! Carenath sounded nearly indignant, and Sean freed one hand to give him a reassuring slap. But he quickly replaced his hand on the ridge. Jays, a rider can’t fly Thread hanging on for dear life!
“You wouldn’t let me fall, my friend, but I might let me!”
Trying to quell his rising sense of panic, Sean hazarded a glance at the ground. They were nearly to the rank of caves that had become their home. Sean could see Faranth on the height where she must have been sunning herself. She was sitting on her haunches, her wings half-spread. In a few sweeps of Carenath’s powerful wings they had covered a distance that ordinarily took a half hour of up-hill-down-dale slogging.
Faranth says that Sorka says that we had better come down right away. Right away. Carenath’s tone was defiant, begging Sean to contradict the golden dragon and anything that shortened their new experience. We are flying together. It is the right thing to do for dragons and riders.
It’s a fantastic thing to do, Carenath, but as we are now home, can you land us, say, by Faranth? Then you can tell her just how we did it!”
Sean did not care if Sorka had hysterics over his spontaneous and totally unplanned flight. He had done it, they had succeeded, all was well that ended well. The dragons of Pern finally had riders! That would change the odds in Joel’s book!
The other seventeen riders, including Sorka, once Faranth had reassured her about Carenath’s prowess, were delighted at their tremendous advance. Dave wanted to know why Sean had been so precipitous.
“Couldn’t you have waited for me? Polenth and I were just behind you. You scared the living wits out of me for a moment, you know.”
Sean clasped Dave’s arm in tacit apology. “It was what you’d said about being forgotten, Dave. I just had to try, but I didn’t want to endanger anyone else in case I was wrong.” Sean caught Sorka frowning at him and pretended to flinch. “I was all right, love. You know that! But – ” He glared warningly at the others seated on the rugs around him. “We’ve got to go about this in a logical and sensible way, folks. Flying a dragon’s not like riding a horse.”
His glance held Nora Sejby’s. She certainly was not the sort of person he would have said would Impress a dragon, but Tenneth had chosen her, and they would have to make the best of it. Nora was accident-prone, and Tenneth had already hauled her partner out of the lake and prevented her from falling into the crevices and holes that pitted the hills around the Catherine Caves. On the other hand Nora had been sailing across Monaco Bay since she was strong enough to manage a tiller and she had checked out on both sleds and skimmers.