Avian (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (2 page)

It wasn’t Katty.

Mrs. Crookin stood in the doorway wiping her hands on her apron. When she saw me, she started to smile. Her eyes got bright, and she grabbed me before I could even remember to hold my breath. She always hugged me so tight I thought I might suffocate.

“Jaevid!” She crooned at me, and started kissing my cheeks. “Look at you! So handsome in that uniform! Katty told me you were taken in by the academy. Training to be a dragonrider, is it?”

I blushed as she held me out at arm’s length. I was still wearing my fledgling uniform with the king’s golden eagle stitched onto the chest. I hadn’t bothered putting on my armor, though. It was still packed away in my bags. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh she’s going to be so excited to see you. She read your letters over and over.” Mrs. Crookin started wiping dirt from my face with her apron. “She’s out at the forge, dear. You should go surprise her.”

Katty had told me in one of her letters that she was going to be an apprentice for her father and learn to be a blacksmith, too. I knew that would definitely make her happy. She had always talked about wanting to learn her father’s craft. It was her dream.

I left my bag in the doorway and started out across the snow toward the barn where Mr. Crookin had built his own forge and bellows. Black smoke belched out of the stone stack, and I could see the bright red glow of the fire inside shining from the crack under the door.

My stomach was doing more aerobatics than ever as I started to pull on the handle. I opened it just a little, barely enough to peek inside and see what she was doing. All of a sudden, my heart hit the back of my throat like someone was choking me. It hit me so hard I couldn’t even think. I couldn’t breathe. All I felt was a burning, angry heat in the pit of my stomach like I’d swallowed a mouthful of dragon venom.

Katty was there, and I didn’t see her father anywhere. But she wasn’t alone. She was standing with a boy who looked like he was eighteen or so—a lot older than I was. He was a lot taller than me, too, with coal-black hair pulled into a short ponytail. He was wearing a blacksmithing apron just like she was, and they were laughing together. I didn’t recognize him, which bothered me the most. Mithangol was a very small city. Most of the younger men had bullied me at one time or another while I was growing up, so I knew who they were. But I had never even seen this boy before.

She giggled at him while he teasingly smudged ash on her cheeks, and when she turned around to start working again, I saw him put a hand on the base of her back. It made that angry fire in my gut burn all the way up through my chest. I couldn’t even see straight.

They hadn’t noticed I was standing there, so I shut the door and backed away. I went back to the house with my heart hammering in my ears. When I got inside, I picked up my bag and got ready to leave.

“Wasn’t Katty working out there?” Mrs. Crookin sounded worried. She was leaning in from the kitchen, looking me over for an explanation.

I couldn’t meet her gaze. I was sure if I did, she’d see how upset I was. “Yeah. But she’s busy. I’ll just come back some other time,” I lied.

Mrs. Crookin didn’t try to stop me as I gathered my bag and left. When the cold air hit my face, I realized just how angry I really was. I didn’t even understand why seeing her with that boy made me so upset. But it did. It felt like some kind of betrayal, even if I had no justification for it. Katty and I were just friends. We’d always been just friends. I had no right to be upset about who she flirted with. None of that mattered right then, though. I was so furious I was seeing red.

In my mind, Mavrik sent me an image of him burning the barn to the ground with Katty and that stranger inside. I shook my head, and looked up to the darkening sky. “Don’t bother,” I muttered.

I knew he would hear me even if he were ten miles away. We were linked now in a way I didn’t understand. While I was at Blybrig, I’d discovered I had a unique ability to call out to animals. They could understand me. But so far, Mavrik was the only one who could communicate back to me. That was our secret.

I dragged my feet through the snow as I walked down the road toward Ulric’s house. My thoughts were clouded and confused. I wasn’t even worried about seeing my family anymore. All I could think about was that stranger and how he’d touched Katty, smiled at her like that, and made her laugh. It made me so annoyed with her, and even more furious and frustrated with myself. I was so caught up that when I turned the corner to walk up the steep, muddy drive toward my family’s home, I didn’t notice the house.

Then I looked up.

There were no lights burning in the windows, and the house was completely dark. It was getting kind of late, though. Maybe everyone had already gone to sleep? Still, it was strange that there was no smoke coming from the chimney. As cold as it was, Ulric would have normally lit the fireplace to keep the house warm all night.

I hurried up the drive toward the porch, noticing that the garden was dead and covered in snow. My stepmother, Serah, usually covered the ground with pine straw to protect the plants from the cold until spring. Cupping my hands around my eyes, I peeked in through the front window to see if anyone was still sitting up in the parlor. Sometimes Ulric sat at the side of the dying fire to smoke his pipe until really late.

What I saw put another hard, painful knot in my throat. I ran to the front door and started beating on it. To my surprise, the door just swung freely in. It wasn’t even locked.

The house was empty.

For a few minutes, I could only stand there in the open doorway while the cold winter wind howled past me. I stared through the darkness into the parlor and kitchen in front of me. There wasn’t a stick of furniture anywhere. Judging by the dust gathered on the kitchen counters and windowsills, they hadn’t been here for months.

Slowly, I began to realize the truth: they had left me. Ulric had taken his whole family, moved, and never said a word to me about it. Maybe it was naïve to expect him to tell me, but it still left me stunned.

“Jae!” I heard someone call out to me, and I recognized who it was right away. But hearing
her
voice didn’t give me comfort like it usually did. I didn’t turn around. I just kept standing there, staring into the empty house, wondering what I was supposed to do now.

Katty ran up behind me with ash still smudged on her cheeks. She was flushed and out of breath, wearing a dark gray dress and blacksmithing apron that were both covered in scorch marks. “Jae?” she said my name again.

I was going to have to face her eventually. At least now, she wouldn’t know I was upset about what I’d seen with her. I had bigger problems. “They left,” I muttered back, finally looking back at her.

Katty had grown. She looked different, and not in ways I necessarily felt comfortable with. The boys in town had always teased her and called her ugly because of her wild, frizzy curls and scrawny build. Her golden, curly hair was longer and it wasn’t frizzy at all. It framed her round face and made her look… very, very beautiful. Her wide blue eyes glittered in the darkness, but I had to look up to see them because she was taller than me now. All her freckles were gone, and now her skin looked smooth and soft. She had adult shapes to her body now that were almost hidden by her thick leather apron.

She looked a lot more grown up now. And for some reason, that made me more angry and frustrated than ever. Katty was only a few months older than I was, so I had always felt better about my lack of size because she wasn’t all that big, either. But now I knew for sure that I was doomed to be a tiny scarecrow forever. Even girls were outgrowing me.

“I know,” she said softly. “I came by a week ago to see if you’d come back yet, and they were already gone. This was left for you. I found it slipped under the front door. It’s from your brother. I hope you don’t mind, but I read it already. I wanted to know why they left without saying anything.” She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a wrinkled envelope.

I took it from her, scowling at it as I crammed it into my own pocket. Why they’d left didn’t matter to me right then. All I cared about was that now I was alone here, in a big empty house. I didn’t have any furniture. I didn’t have any clothes other than my uniforms. I didn’t even have food.

“Don’t worry, okay?” Katty reached out to put her arms around my neck. She hugged me, but it didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it just felt awkward and wrong—like she was comforting a little kid. “We’ll help you. We’ll bring you anything you need.”

“Thanks.” I couldn’t make myself say anything else. I was too upset. My jaw locked up and I clenched my teeth.

“I’m so sorry, Jae.” She hugged me even tighter. “I’ve missed you so much.”

For some reason, I didn’t quite believe her. She’d obviously had some company to keep her from being lonely without me. “Yeah,” I managed to answer dryly. “Well, I’m back now for three months.”

“You can come stay with us tonight,” she offered.

I backed away from her a little, looking into the empty house and trying to decide what to do now. Finally, I shook my head. “No, but thanks. I’ll be fine.”

She arched a brow at me suspiciously. I could see confusion in her eyes. “But Jae, there’s nothing here. You can’t possibly—”

“I’ll be fine,” I repeated. “Please leave me alone.”

This definitely wasn’t the welcome home I’d expected. Oh sure, I’d anticipated getting the cold shoulder from Serah and my siblings, being forced to sleep in the loftroom again, and maybe even getting a beating from Ulric just for old time’s sake. This had caught me completely off guard. I felt so lost.

Katty nodded a little, and started to look sad. “Okay, if you’re sure. I’ll come by tomorrow with something to eat. We’ll catch up.” She gave me a hopeful smile.

I couldn’t smile back at her. I tried, but the ability wasn’t there. As she turned to leave, I lingered in the doorway of the empty house and watched her walk away. I waited until she was far away, too far to see me through the darkness, to let my feelings show.

A few tears blurred my vision and left warm streaks down my face. I wiped them away quickly. Maybe if I were a normal-sized, halfway healthy looking young man like that stranger she’d been giggling with, Katty would have noticed me first. But I wasn’t. And I never would be. I swallowed my feelings quickly. No matter what happened, I was a dragonrider now. Dragonriders didn’t cry.

It started snowing again. Fat white flakes swirled in the air around me when I turned back toward the house again. There really was no point in going inside. Not tonight, anyways. So I shut the door and started for the barn instead. I called out to Mavrik, telling him to land, as I pushed open the heavy barn door. All the horses were gone. So was the wagon, and most of the tools Ulric had kept on hand for his work as a tackmaster. There was old hay still piled on the floor, and it still smelled like the oils he used to season the leather for the dragon saddles.

The earth flinched under my boots as Mavrik landed, and I heard him chirp at me worriedly as he crawled my way. The barn was barely big enough to squeeze him in. He had to curl up into the smallest dragon-ball I’d ever seen. He laid down with his snout on his tail and his wings folded up tightly against his sides. If he stretched at all, he’d take out a wall or the roof. It definitely wasn’t as comfortable as the Roost, but at least it was safe from the wind.

I rolled the door close again, and started looking around for anything left behind that I could use. I found a few half-burned candles and an old quilt that smelled like it had been used as a horse blanket. Using the piece of flint I kept in my saddlebag, and a hunting knife I’d stolen from a farmer a few months ago, I lit the candle and wrapped myself up in the blanket.

As I leaned back against Mavrik’s side, I finally took out Roland’s letter and held it up to the candlelight. His script was small, and it was hard to read, but what it said left my head spinning worse than ever.

Roland had officially joined the ground infantry about the same time Ulric and I had left for Blybrig last spring. He’d gone to training in Halfax, and been given a post as a cavalryman. Ulric and Serah had told him about their decision to move only a few weeks before they actually had. Apparently, Ulric had gotten an offer to buy a bigger house with a better workshop near Westwatch. They’d given this house to Roland to live in when he wasn’t away with the infantry, but he didn’t want it. So he was offering it to me, instead. He wrote that if I wanted it, it was mine, or I could try to sell it. He didn’t plan on ever coming back to Mithangol if he could help it. I didn’t blame him for that.

At the very bottom of the letter, in what looked like a last minute scribble, he wrote that he was being sent to the frontlines at Northwatch. He said that if I ever made it that far, I should try to find him. When I read that, I exchanged a wide-eyed look with Mavrik. Roland had never wanted anything to do with me before. He had always acted like I didn’t exist. I wasn’t sure what to think of that.

I read the letter over and over to be sure I hadn’t missed anything. All the while, my mind was racing with the question of what to do about the empty house. I didn’t know if I could sell it and leave Mithangol like he had, or if I should try to stay and make some kind of a temporary life for myself here. I only had three months. For a long time, I sat there staring at the letter while Mavrik purred himself to sleep. I scratched at his big ears and rubbed his scaly snout.

Finally, I folded up the letter and blew out the candle. There wasn’t anything I could do tonight. I was tired from traveling, and my mind was foggy with so many confusing emotions. I curled up closer to Mavrik’s warm side, putting my head against his neck and closing my eyes. I listened to him breathing as he slept.

I knew I couldn’t express to him with words how glad I was to have him there. Still, I knew he’d probably be able to sense my emotions the same way I could sense his. He probably knew I needed him now, when I had no one else to turn to. He wasn’t just my mount; he was my friend, my partner, and my greatest ally. Whatever happened to me now, I knew he would be there. I would never really be alone.