“Camille,” said Raseri, nodding toward the rising sun.
Quickly Camille shoved the stave into the loops, then took up the sparrow. She glanced at Raseri’s great, leathery wings, now partly unfolded, and said, “I’d better put you in the pocket, Scruff, else you might be blown away.”
Scruff chp ed a time or two, but then settled in, and Camille asked, “Where shall I, um…”
“You can straddle the base of my neck,” said Raseri, bending low and crooking a foreleg on the side where Camille stood.
Using the leg as a stepping block, Camille clambered up and took seat. A double row of great barbels ran the length of Raseri’s neck. “May I use these for handholds?” asked Camille, grasping the pair before her. They were somewhat soft and a bit flexible, like the barbels ’round the mouths of some kinds of fish.
“Use what?” replied Raseri, craning his neck about.
“Oh, those. Indeed.”
“I would ask two things more, my lord Dragon,” said Camille.
“And they are…?”
“Fly over Rondalo so that he might see I am all right.”
“I shall do so. And the other…?”
“Ignore any of my screams you might hear.”
With booming laughter, Raseri stepped to the lip of the sheer precipice and leapt out into space.
Camille sucked icy air in through clenched teeth as down the Drake plummeted, wind whistling past and blowing back her hood, her hair to stream out golden behind, the rocks below rushing up to meet them. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, for she knew they surely must crash, yet she stubbornly refused to scream. But then- Whoosh! — Raseri’s vast, leathery wings began beating, and he arced through the nadir of his dive and began to climb into the sky. Camille opened her eyes, as up and up he spiralled, and she gasped in wonder, for the view from the height was magnificent. Why, it was almost as if she could see the whole of Faery, though surely not. And she glanced down at Scruff, who was chirping in joy, craning his neck out from her pocket so that he could see. Then Raseri turned and flew back over his firemountain, and Camille saw that it was hollow, and thin tendrils of smoke streamed out from fumerols below.
Down the vale arrowed Raseri, toward Rondalo’s campsite, and, as they flew over, the horses shied and would have bolted, but for the tethers holding fast. Raseri circled and Camille waved, and Rondalo waved in return, a look of astonishment on his face. And then Raseri wheeled and thundered away, the rising sun at his back.
And down below, Rondalo sighed, and watched them wing into the distance-his implacable foe bearing off the woman he had come to cherish. When at last they were gone from sight, Rondalo stepped to the horses and stroked muzzles and soothed the animals with soft and gentle words. Finally he broke camp and saddled the mounts and laded the packhorse and then slowly rode away, his path taking him in the opposite direction from that in which the Drake had flown.
High across the world of Faery did the Dragon Raseri soar, mountains and rivers and steads and cities, villages and forests and lakes, and barren wastes of ice or sand or rock all passing ’neath his wings. And Camille was enthralled, for never had she imagined what flying would be like, and here she was, high in the sky, chill wind streaming through her hair, clouds like foreign castles and great chateaus rising all ’round. Scruff in her pocket chirped his approval, and Camille then knew what a loss the tiny sparrow had suffered, unable to fly as he was. Momentarily, Camille’s wind-driven tears became tears of sympathy, but then she was distracted by a great herd of shaggy animals thundering across the grassy plain below.
The sun slid up the sky and across and down, yet Raseri’s wings never seemed to slow, never seemed to tire. Through looming walls of twilight they flew, Faery borders, eight or nine altogether… Camille uncertain as to which.
But finally, as the sinking sun touched the distant horizon, the Drake began to circle down. “Yon is the river,” he called out to her, but, though she looked, Camille could see nought of a stream.
“Where?” she cried. “I can make out no river.”
“See the high, grassy ridge jutting above the forest below? Just down the long slope you will find the origin, else you will see nought whatsoever.”
Camille’s gaze first found the hillock far under, and then downslope she saw a glimmering, and of a sudden Camille could see a silvery ribbon originating at the glimmer and threading through the forest. How she had missed it, she could not say, yet there it was. She looked away and then back, and lo! the river had vanished entirely. Yet when she looked at the slope again, and then down to the glimmer, of a sudden the stream reappeared. Once more she looked away and again the river vanished, completely absent to her searching sight until she returned to the origin.
As if sensing Camille’s trial, Raseri called out, “It seems one cannot see the full flow of time lest one starts at the beginning.”
Camille let her gaze follow the course of the silvery stream, and in the far distance she could see a great glint of water-perhaps a vast lake, or even an ocean or sea-into which Time’s River did flow.
Down spiralled Raseri and down, to finally come alight upon the knoll.
“This is as close as I will go,” said the Drake, and he bent his neck low.
Again Camille used Raseri’s foreleg as a stepping block as she dismounted. She stretched and twisted to get the kinks out.
As she did so, “It begins there, the River of Time,” said the Dragon, pointing with his head downslope.
Camille could see in the distance, a cascade plunging over a linn, yet it seemed the water itself had no origin, either that or it sprang directly from a misty cloud hovering above, the vapor itself glimmering as if of a gleaming within.
Camille looked at the sky and judged the lees of the day, the sun some halfway set. “I should reach the linn ere darkness falls. If not, I have my lantern to guide me. Would you walk down with me?”
“Would that I were braver, yet I’ll not gamble ’gainst time. Even so, Camille, you have little to fear in these environs, for all Fey shun this place. Still, stay on your guard, for who knows what troubles time can bring? I would say this as welclass="underline" you have given me much to ponder, and I thank you for that. Mayhap someday I will be able to repay you for that which you did bring.”
What did I bring? Camille wondered. Yet she said, “Oh, Raseri, by bearing me here you have more than paid whatever debt you might imagine you owe, though for the life of me I cannot think why you would believe such.”
“Perhaps one day we will both know,” said Raseri. “But now I must fly, for yon is a peril I cannot face-the ravages of time.”
“Then go, O Lord Dragon, and be well,” said Camille, and she curtseyed there on the ridge.
Raseri dipped his head and then said, “Ward your eyes.” As Camille put a hand to her brow, with a great leap and thunderous flapping, Raseri took to wing, pebbles and dust and weeds and grass swirling about in a great cloud, Camille battered by the wind of his launch.
Up he circled and up, and then with a great skriegh, he arrowed away, his dark ruddy scales glittering crimson in the light of the setting sun. And it was then that Camille remembered a time in the Winterwood as she rode upon the back of the Bear, a great fell beast flying high above and sounding the very same skriegh. Was that Raseri even then? She watched the Drake fly away, the splendid creature he was, and when she could see him no longer, down the slope and toward the linn she did go.
She reached the waterfall as twilight ebbed toward night, and she set camp on the slope just above the cascade, and placed sleeping Scruff on a low branch of a sapling at hand. As she settled in for the night, she looked with curious eyes at the cataract; even this close, in the light of the stars, it seemed as if the water came out from nowhere at the very edge of the linn, though the silvery mist above may have obscured its source.