Chapter 3 - Caves

Hualiama rested in a small, sandy cave–really just a shelter hollowed out by animals beneath a vast boulder–as the dragonet worked indefatigably in her care. Flicker disappeared for hours on end before returning with treasures such as ripe, tasty prekki fruit, landas gourds which yielded sour but palatable milk, and offerings of small animals which he hunted and killed. Raw monkey meat made her sick, but she found lemur and bat very acceptable.

Dragonets were vain, thoughtless creatures, she had always been taught. Flicker’s knowledge blew that Island right out of the Cloudlands. The day following their escape from the storm, Flicker made Lia understand that she should lie on her stomach while he cleaned out the wound on her back, numbed it with one of his powerful concoctions, and then proceeded to sew the flapping skin and muscle tissue together with the use of long, thin thorns and a thread he chewed and teased apart from a fleshy, succulent type of grass. He slathered more of his healing herbs on the wound.

His tiny paws were fabulously dextrous. Flicker seemed able to do anything a Human could do, and more. The dragonet was certainly intelligent! They passed the hours teaching each other words and phrases in their respective languages.

Lia sang for him, which he clearly loved. The dragonet’s eyes would fill with fire as he basked in the sound and often, he chirped insistently for more. Once, he showed her a dragonet dance, but acted embarrassed afterward.

Moving with great care because of the thousand-kitten claw-prick sensation of the stitches criss-crossing her back, Lia cut ferns for a bed, not the hundred-foot trailing ferns from the cliff face, but the softer, smaller type which flourished around boulders and in any moist crack. Flicker immediately appropriated the soft pallet. Lia scolded him until she realised that he meant for them to sleep curled up together, much as a pet feline might creep into a warm bed.

Then, he purred up a miniature storm and spent all night trying to burrow beneath her neck. Perfect.

Finding flint, Hualiama taught herself how to strike a fire, starting with dry moss and twigs, before adding slightly larger sticks. Now she could spit a small bird or bat and roast it over a dancing fire, making her meals much more palatable. The dragonet ate from her fingers with the finicky care of a cat, and woe betide her should she allow fat or juice to drip onto his scales! His love of intestines, however, made her want to cackle like a yellow-breasted parakeet. He was so disgusting, especially his delight in fiery burps during mealtimes, or his predilection for playing with his prey before killing it. But one evening, a week after they had fled from the storm, he nosed her hand aside as she reached for the flint.

“No. Flicker do,” he said, very clearly, and lit the fire for her with his breath.

Flicker clever boy, she replied in Dragonish.

He arched his back against her hand. Scratch.

Flicker turned his muzzle to gaze at her as she coughed dryly, trying to protect her stomach by not coughing too violently. “The air isn’t good,” she said, signing at the cave roof. “I think we should climb, Flicker.”

Fly? he said, hopefully.

Climb. Humans no fly.

His snort of fire let her know his opinion of her disability. Hualiama chuckled, especially when he added, Food ready?

Flicker eat Dragon, she teased.

Flicker eat like Dragon, he corrected her grammar, but purred contentedly nevertheless. Tomorrow, we should climb, Lia.

“What’s your family like, Flicker? Do you have family? A mother, who–er, hatched you?” He seemed more interested in the lemur as she skinned it. “Fine, have the intestines.”

Thanks, straw-head.

Lia wished she knew everything the dragonet said. The dragonet laughed at her for no apparent reason, sometimes, or ribbed her gently with words she did not understand. She was convinced Flicker must think her stupid, because he often acted as if he expected a response from her, yet he had not to her knowledge spoken or otherwise tried to communicate with her. Flicker was smart. He learned so quickly that Lia struggled to keep up. Once he learned simple questions, everything had a question. She dreaded teaching him the word ‘why’. Her brother Elki had been fixated on why questions for several years, driving her parents up the proverbial Island cliff.

“Well, I’ll tell you about my family,” she told Flicker. “I’m adopted, what we call a foundling or ward. My wards, who I call my parents, are King Chalcion and Queen Shyana of Fra’anior, which is the main Human Island of this Island-Cluster, and also the name of the volcano itself. Just to confuse you.”

Flicker ruffled his wings drolly. I’m not confused.

“Oh, is that so?”

Her sarcasm brought a hundred-fang dragonet smile to his lips. “Carry on, Human girl.”

“There are twenty-seven inhabited Islands around the rim,” Lia informed him. “Some Islands belong to the Dragons and others to us Humans. Well, the politics are a little complicated–maybe another time. Anyways, a young Dragoness found me as a days-old babe in a cave on Gi’ishior Island. That’s a mystery, because no Humans live on Gi’ishior. It’s where the Halls of the Dragons are, after all, the great seat of the Dragon Elders who rule all of their kind. Nobody knows who abandoned me there. I wish I knew that Dragoness, so that I could thank her …”

Lia stared into the heart of their fire, struggling to master an overwhelming sense of desolation. Why would her mother abandon her? Why? Didn’t that just scream, ‘You rested nine months in my womb, and I never loved you?’

“I’m grateful to have a family, truly I am–but it isn’t always easy. The King was married once before, to Queen Si’ilmira, but she died giving birth to Ka’allion. I call him Kalli, just like I’m Hualiama, but everyone calls me Lia. He loves to read all the time, and he doesn’t laugh much.”

As she spoke, she drew people in the sand with a stick. “I have two other brothers, Elka’anor and Fa’arrion, who I call Elki and Ari. You’d like Elki, because he’s a mischief-maker, like you. He’s twelve. Ari is only nine, but he’s already taller than me, which I find rather depressing. People think he’s simple because he can’t talk properly, but I think it’s more like you and me, we just don’t understand each other yet. Then, there’s my sister Fyria. She’s half a year younger, but also taller than me, and a great beauty. I’m afraid you probably wouldn’t like her.”

* * * *

Flicker slurped down a length of intestine, wondering at the catch in her voice. He was starting to understand the Human girl’s emotions–her face was an ever-changing scroll, alarmingly so at times, as unpredictable as the storm which had chased them off the branch. He knew happiness, and thoughtfulness, but what was this emotion, which made her eyes grow moister than usual?

“She’s like her father, you see,” said Lia.

Sadness. He understood sadness. Dropping the intestines, Flicker sprang over to her, making Hualiama yelp and drop her stick.

See? I can also be impulsive, he grinned, wriggling against her chest, talons carefully sheathed, producing a giggle and a momentary interruption in her sorrow–ah! Perhaps it was like tickling, which dragonets did with their hatchlings to encourage good growth of the wings? Not that she had any wings to grow. He rubbed her neck. Tickle, tickle.

“Flicker, stop, that tickles! I was being serious.”

This is ‘tickle’, said Flicker, prodding her ribs. Learn the word, flat-face, or I’ll tickle you some more.

Actually, he was embarrassing them both now. Lia was a female of her kind, and he a male, and her excitable response made him imagine rubbing necks with a sweet female dragonet, and roosting together in a cosy cave like this one. Flicker’s belly-fires growled in discomfiture.

“You really are hungry,” she said, misunderstanding him completely.

“Hungry,” he agreed, grateful she had misread his response–for that was bathing in Dragon fire, as the dragonets liked to say.

He wondered what passed for beauty among her people. Long straw? A regular but woefully flat muzzle? And those horrid flaps she called ears, those could not possibly attract a mate. Her eyes, however, might conceivably enthral a male of her kind. They were pleasingly fiery, often seeming to spark when she became animated, or mellowing when she sang. Straw-head had no wings to flutter prettily, but perhaps Humans liked the filaments which adorned her eyelids? They were a pleasing adornment when she shuttered her gaze, or glanced at him with that impishly veiled glimmer when she was tugging his wings or making a joke.

Lia prepared the meat with deft strokes of her dagger, splaying the lemur so that she could pin it with her sticks and set it to cook. When she had done that, she returned to her drawing. “Father. Mother. Brother, sister. Three brothers.”

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Oh. She meant the eggs of her clutch, and the parents who had laid them. Flicker taught her the right words in Dragonish. Then, he hesitantly set his paws to the sand. This earned him the bright expression she called a smile. He really needed to make her understand that showing one’s fangs was seen as aggressive amongst Dragons and dragonets. Ooh, perhaps he could draw expressions …

They spent a hilarious evening swapping notes on Human and Dragon facial expressions. Flicker learned that her eye-fluid was called tears, and when her eyes leaked, she was either sad or happy. Utterly baffling! She did not have transparent, secondary nictitating membranes to protect her orbs, unlike him, so she could not express subtleties of emotion with her inner membranes. Humans could snarl. They could know fear, surprise, hatred, anger and consternation. Indeed, she was a much more complex creature than he had assumed.

Still, she could not fly.

After snoozing the night away curled up against her stomach, Flicker rose with the dawn. Lia woke too, and taught him a sweet lullaby as they collected their few possessions.

“Ready,” she said.

Ready, Human girl? Great. I’m a fantastic scout. I know the paths of this Island like the palm of my paw. I will lead you. Flicker pointed. How is your wound?

My wound is good, she repeated, pronouncing the lilting chirps carefully. “It still pulls, Flicker. I’ll need to climb slowly.”

He insisted, Have to climb! Arm?

Lia checked the rude splint she had carved for her upper arm, five lengths of stick bound around her arm as tightly as she and Flicker could manage with vines. She tried to lift it; shook her head.

“Not good?”

“No, Flicker. Not good at all.”

He managed, “Flicker find good fly.”

Path? That would help, Lia replied.

Flicker rewarded her linguistic efforts with a spiralling double backflip.

* * * *

Poor dragonet. Flicker had little patience with her inability to fly, Hualiama realised, although he was happy to spend hours coaching her in the nuances of Dragonish, which was so ridiculously complex, Lia despaired of ever talking properly. As promised, he scouted for the best paths. However, the cliff was vertical or very near vertical, a miles-high wall of rock and vegetation which disappeared into the misty skies overhead. Many places had overhangs, or were so tangled as to be impassable to anyone without wings.

Three hours later, having made less than five hundred vertical feet of progress, Lia sat on a fallen tree trunk, put her head in her hands, and growled her frustration to all and sundry.

Flicker nipped down to alight on the trunk beside her. Lia do good, he said.

“Lia feels as useful as a spade without a handle.”

The dragonet looked quizzically at her.

“Look, you’ve got two wings. Why don’t you just lend them to me?” She made a fluttering motion with her hands. “I’ve always wanted to fly. I never dreamed about much else, nothing that’s worth telling, but I dream about Dragons all the time. Aye, it’s stupid. I had a flying lesson last week and look where it landed me. Now I’m too weak to climb this stupid cliff.”

To her surprise, the dragonet put his paw on her knee. “Lia brave.”

She knew that Flicker set great store in bravery, but that was the very quality which seemed to have deserted her just now. Despondently, Lia said, “Let’s say we climb this cliff all the way up to the Human world, Flicker. By some miracle, I make it back to Fra’anior Island. What then? Captain Ra’aba will be King, and I’ll be the girl he threw off a Dragonship. I can’t fight him, Flicker. He’s stronger and faster with a blade than any man has a right to be.”

“Lia kill bad-bad man.”

“Lia has two small, clumsy hands, and …” Suddenly, words exploded from her in a scream, “I’m too little and I just can’t do it, you brainless, stupid animal! Can’t you understand? Oh …”

Her outburst had driven him away. Shaking, Lia watched the dragonet disappear above an overhang. She was alone. Too bitter, too furious and ashamed even to cry, Hualiama stared at her fingers. Fingers that became clumsy, blade in hand. Slender arms that would never have the muscle to beat a man like Ra’aba. Not a drop of magic pulsed in her veins. No, the not-quite Princess of Fra’anior was no-one special.

“I’m not enough,” she whispered. “All I ever wanted was to be a Dragon, and here I am, trapped in this pathetic body. I’ve had a chance many people would kill for, being adopted by a King. Even that has slipped away. I just wish I could be … more.”

Were these just childhood dreams, a fantasy which should have evaporated like the mists of a Fra’aniorian dawn as she grew up?

She was who she was.

Growing up was a favourite mantra of her father’s. Lately, it seemed to her that Shyana’s influence had tempered his rage, but the King daily trod the cliff edge between political machinations and open hostility with the Dragons. Hualiama had long ago learned to placate him, or she faced being beaten by fist, belt or boot, and once even with a heavily jewelled sceptre. His moods could change at the snap of a finger. Unfairly often, it seemed, she was the target. Lia knew why. Being the royal ward simply meant having to enjoy less love than her royal siblings.

Why should she always strive to prove herself to King Chalcion?

Was this why she yearned to know the Dragons? A soul-deep cry for Dragonish love? Lia winced as this forbidden notion slipped into her mind. Beat it out–immoral, deceitful girl! On that Island lay a fate worse than being dumped off a Dragonship.

As the twin suns wheeled overhead, shortening Ha’athior’s westward-facing shadow until she was no longer protected from the direct glare, Hualiama tied the pitiful scrap of material she had cut off her dress-hem atop her head. Oh, horror of the deepest Cloudlands, she was showing her knees to these lemurs! She giggled manically. No point in dying of exposure, least of all for decency’s sake. Moisture steamed off the vegetation trailing down the cliff. Somewhere nearby she heard the trickle of a waterfall, which would likely evaporate before ever reaching the Cloudlands, adding to the day’s haze. Lia picked a likely route, and wormed her way upward.

Hmm. Those linger-vines …

The tough, fibrous vines grew hundreds of feet long, and formed the staple of the ropes used around the Isles to tie Dragonship cabins beneath the bulging hydrogen sacks, to haul goods and to make nets for fishing the terrace lakes of several of the Islands, not to mention many other uses. Experimentally, she looped one beneath her leather belt. Aye, that could work. Tie herself to one vine in case she fell, while climbing another? One-handed?

Lia looped a section of vine around her legs. Now she could hold it with her feet, while she stretched for the next handhold.

Aye. It took her half an hour of slithering up vines to crest the overhang, but Lia was rewarded with the discovery of what appeared to be an ascending animal-trail leading southward around the Island.

“Ha,” she said, “I don’t need a dragonet, I just need Human brains and ingenuity.”

Her scowl, however, told the truth. She missed Flicker, despite all his silly posturing. Endless chatter, silly witticisms … no mind. Whistling a jaunty tune to pick up her spirits, Lia scrambled over the rocks, following a trail clearly never meant for the tread of a Human foot.

The jagged volcanic rocks made short work of her pretty royal slippers. Lia hurled the remnants over the edge with a frustrated shriek, before biting her lip. She could have used those. For firelighters? A smile curved her lips as she peered out at the Island-World through veils of trailing ferns and vanilla-scented flowering vines, and between trees growing horizontally out of the cliff side, bowing their boughs as if in worship of the great, uncrossable ocean of Cloudlands. Briefly, a cloud of luminous orange giant monarch butterflies swirled out of the foliage, the hand-sized insects wreathing her body as though intending to clothe her in a most splendid raiment.

That was when she spied a slit reptilian eye peering at her from the greenery just beside her head.

“Unholy windrocs!” she gasped, throwing herself backward.

The python struck, but missed by inches as Lia scrambled along in full retreat, trying somehow to keep one eye on her footing and the other on the reptile’s advance. Now she knew what type of trail this was–a trail frequented by pythons large enough to make a tidy meal of undersized royal wards. The trail skirted the cliff edge beneath an overhang in this part. No climbing here. She needed to pass the snake.

Right. May her courage swell from the size of a mouse’s meal to Dragonish proportions.

Hualiama eyed the golden-backed python as balefully as it eyed her. “Come here! I’ll give you this dagger to eat.” She felt for a stone near her foot. Swoop, strike! “Get out of here! Go on!”

Snakes as large as pythons were uncommon on her Island, but Lia knew that in theory, noise and vibration should chase them off. They were ambush predators, not fighters. See, father? All that scroll-worming in the royal library, mostly in search of Dragon lore were she honest, could come in useful in situations like these. Shouting, dancing like an excitable spider monkey and pelting the snake with rocks, Lia chased it off into the undergrowth.

“Come near my family again, Ra’aba, and I’ll do the same to you.”

Lia strutted down the trail, and promptly sliced her toe open on a sharp sliver of basalt.

Midday and early afternoon saw her taking shelter beneath a dead chagga tree, which bore a type of hard-shelled, bitter fruit good for throwing at windrocs or chasing off pestiferous monkeys, of which there seemed to be an endless supply. Hualiama peeled a poor-man’s-apple and ate it without great relish, despite the hunger snapping in her lean belly. The day’s sultry heat robbed her of appetite. Her tan limbs gleamed. Sweat trickled down her neck as her lungs laboured to expel the syrupy air. Oh for a cool breeze, or another waterfall!

Dangling her feet over the cliff edge, Lia gazed out over the pristine Cloudlands, imagining she had Dragon eyes and could see all the way to the Western Isles, hundreds and hundreds of leagues away, to places with evocative names like Naphtha and Ur-Tagga and Xorniss. Where would Ra’aba have sent her family? Would that her soul could have winged across that great void, the unknown, depthless expanse of deceptively puffy ochre clouds, to be with them. Did Shyana gaze to the horizon, mourning her daughter’s death? Did she feel how the beauty of infinite solitude engulfed Lia in waves of aching so intense, that each heartbeat threatened to become her last? Did the Island-World’s majesty both crush and elevate her spirit to exultation?

Here she crawled, an insignificant ant on the wall of the world.

Late that afternoon, when Hualiama crawled beneath a gnarled tree trunk so massive it stood four times her height, almost entirely blocking the trail, she found her waterfall. Thirty feet wide, it was utterly impassable.

A problem for tomorrow. Lia moved forward to lean into the spray, whispering, “Mercy, that’s delightful.” Extending her hands palms-up, she cupped handfuls of water and tossed them over her head and upper body, shivering at the chill pleasure. The suns lowering in the west beat pleasantly on her back.

Lia! Flicker dropped onto her shoulder.

Surprise almost pitched her into the hissing white flow. Lia wobbled; Flicker snatched at her hair and tore a good chunk out trying to pull her to safety.

Her face seemed stuck between a smile and a frown as she regarded the irrepressible dragonet, slowing her panting deliberately. Finally, Lia settled on, “You lovely little pest. Where’ve you been all day?”

I see your straw is useful for something, said Flicker, cleaning the strands off his paws. I was visiting my egg-mother and warren, thank you very much. They were worried about me, unlike your parents … ah, do you have any lemur intestines?

The dragonet looked so cute and contrite, Hualiama had to forgive him, even though she understood only one word in three. “Thanks for coming back, you little scamp. I missed you like I’d miss a mosquito in my ear. Where shall we roost tonight?” Cave here?

Flicker nodded. Through the water-that-thunders, flat-face. Follow me if you dare.

And he plunged into the flow with the facility of a trout fleeing the snap of a windroc’s beak.