But maybe he was exhausted from getting us here. And we still had to get out.
Then I stared at Arac, wondering what the Firespace was doing to my sight aside from eliminating green. Arac looked like a god in the Firespace: noble, incredible, glorious. It was probably just as well I couldn’t see Hereyta properly; it would probably kill me, like it killed the king who actually made it to the Mountains of the Sun and looked into the pool at the top of the tallest one and saw into the heart of the world. There are some things you’re better off not knowing. Although the story says that king died happy.
Why wasn’t Dag yelling at me for being a dangerous, suicidal, brainless fool?
ʺThat was interesting,ʺ Setyep offered after a few silent minutes of drifting.
Dag made a short muffled barking noise like a foogit having a bad dream. It wasn’t a laugh.
Sippy, as if answering, yipped.
ʺI suppose,ʺ said Dag, after another reflective spell of drifting, ʺwe could at least go where we’re supposed to.ʺ
Setyep’s silence this time had a different quality to it. I looked over at him and he was frowning. ʺYou . . . er . . .ʺ
Dag made the barking noise again. ʺYes. I did learn my route. It seemed only, you know, polite. Since they’d given us one and everything. ʺ Both Setyep and I knew it wasn’t the Academy he cared about being polite to.
ʺWe won’t be going the same way,ʺ said Setyep.
ʺI know,ʺ said Dag. He pulled his tapping stick out of his boot and looked at it.
More worried silence. Nobody knew if a two-eyed dragon could navigate in the Firespace either, but since two-eyed dragons couldn’t get into the Firespace in the first place, there hadn’t been anything to find out. Like a question that begins ʺif humans could fly, then what if. . . .ʺ
ʺIf I don’t see you, I’ll come back,ʺ said Setyep. ʺI can get the coordinates out of Thispec. And Arac is happy to find Hereyta.ʺ
ʺThanks,ʺ said Dag. And again, ʺThanks.ʺ
ʺUm,ʺ said Setyep, and then he tapped Arac on the shoulder and made a talking-to-dragons noise, and Arac slid away from beside us, unpleating his wing from Hereyta’s; and then he banked and did one of those impossible bird-like turns and was gone away from us. I turned my head to watch them, but they disappeared into the murk almost at once.
Dag looked at his tapping stick. ʺWe’re trained to use these on their shoulders. They’re trained for us to use them on their shoulders. The idea is supposed to be that our arms aren’t long enough and when you’re flying you want your directions to be as easy and clear as possible. But speaking of easy and clear, nothing ever is here, and the view feels like it’s better from up here, or would be if there were a view. There’s no way to tie yourself in up here for the transitions of course but that didn’t work so well last time, did it?ʺ
I braced myself again. Now Dag was finally going to yell at me.
But all he said was, ʺI think all rules are suspended.ʺ He reached over and tapped the tip of his stick as far as he could toward the right-hand edge of Hereyta’s face. ʺHrroar,ʺ he said, or something like that. And Hereyta, still keeping her face perfectly level, did a swing right and set off . . . somewhere or other.
ʺCoordinates?ʺ I said. ʺIt’s like flying in soup.ʺ
ʺYes, it is, isn’t it?ʺ Dag said calmly. ʺMost of your second year at the Academy is about learning to work with dragons. Then your third year is about getting around in the Firespace. Ever noticed the little tattoos on the palms of our hands? You get those at the end of your first year, with your first cadet star for your uniform. That’s to give the magic somewhere to stick, and you have to use a little magic. Sometimes they sizzle faintly so you know they’re working—although they don’t make you go in the right direction, they just let you go somewhere rather than around in circles. If Hereyta has trouble . . . Hekhuk,ʺ he added to Hereyta, and she sank a little, through the soup. I was half expecting a squishing noise as she beat her wings, but they were more silent here than in the ordinary world. In our world. After a moment he added, ʺIt’s not like there’s another special mark for if your dragon has only two eyes.ʺ
Great puffs of redness gusted out under Hereyta’s wings, like clouds, only with iridescent threads through them. Not like soup. I was still glad the navigating wasn’t up to me. I felt faintly sickish, and trying to look around made me dizzy.
I’m not sure how long we flew through the gloom. Dag murmured and tapped a few times. Once I saw him scratching the palm of his left hand with his fingers—the hand that didn’t have the stick in it. But he and Hereyta seemed so calm. Well, I’d never seen Hereyta anything but calm, and maybe Dag was just in shock. Like me. Sippy’s breathing had slowed down but he was still collapsed. If I hadn’t had a lot of other things to worry about—and having him collapsed was extremely convenient at the moment—I’d’ve been worrying about him too.
After a while, a short or maybe a long while, I have no idea why, but I started to feel that we were getting near . . . something. Whatever. Wherever. And I guess I was right, because Hereyta . . . stopped. Mid-air and all. Mid-murk. I hadn’t thought about it before, but when we first came through, we’d still been gliding. Slowly, but moving. If there were an up or a down here you might almost say soaring. And it was as if her wings unfolded a whole extra length that they never had in our world, or maybe they’d picked up some of the murk, maybe the murk weaves itself onto the edges of dragon wings . . . maybe my eyes had gone funny. But when she stopped, it was like her wings shuddered out another span, like shaking out a wadded-up bedspread, except Hereyta’s wings already went on forever.
Dag leaned forward and patted her, her nose, I guess, the part of her nose right in front of where he was sitting. And then he stayed that way, leaning forward. He put his tapping stick down, and pressed both palms against her. Kind of like I had, just before she jumped into the air and started flying. And he bowed his head. I don’t know if he was thinking or . . .
I didn’t think he saw me. I stood up. Carefully. Even with leagues of wing stretching out on both sides standing on a dragon feels pretty insecure. (How did she manage to stay so still?) When I stood up, I was right in front of the great black hollow that was her missing eye.
Sippy stood up with me, pressing himself against me. I gently dug his face out of my thigh and turned him to look the direction I was looking—the direction Hereyta was looking, with her other two eyes. I rubbed the place between Sippy’s two ordinary eyes, where the little ridge and hollow in the skull had produced the myth that foogits had once had a third eye. The place that’s supposed to make a foogit lucky.
And I thought about something Ralas had told me about healing. ʺA lot of the time you haven’t got a clue. It’s not made any easier by the fact that no one will tell you even as much as they know themselves what’s wrong because they’re ashamed that it is wrong. So you just wade in and do it. It’s all you can do.ʺ
This had been about a year ago. She often told me things like I was another grown-up, or like I was her apprentice, and I never knew whether to shut up and be grateful, like she’d forgotten who she was talking to and if I said anything she’d remember and not say any more, or whether to risk asking her a question—letting her see that it was me paying attention. This time I couldn’t help myself. ʺDo what?ʺ I said.
She laughed. ʺIt. It.ʺ
I looked into the murk. I rubbed Sippy’s head. I leaned back against the spiked rampart that was the bottom front edge of Hereyta’s empty eye socket. I chose a direction. I braced myself. I tried to remember Arac and Hereyta and Sippy in the field behind the hsa. I looked at Sippy. He was already looking up at me. And there was a waitingness under my feet too. Hereyta was waiting.