The Book of Earth (17 page)

E
rde’s dragon-lore suggested that once well fed, a dragon could go several weeks before eating again. She hoped this proved to be true. She’d had enough cause already to wonder if much of the lore in her grandmother’s stories was out of date.

The outlook was promising at the moment, with the dragon sated and drowsy beside her on the ledge and three goats out of ten remaining, currently grazing away with surprising equanimity in the gorge below. One was a sturdy black and white spotted milker, taller and sleeker than the rest, evidently due to sheer force of personality. If there was any food to be found, this ewe would claim it for her own. After all, she had stared the dragon down.

Erde had assumed that the violent devouring of the bear was the dragon’s only way of dealing with a meal. She’d anticipated the worst sort of bleating and mayhem when she drove the little flock into the gorge and informed the dragon they were his. But the goats seemed almost not to notice the dragon lumbering among them, except for the big spotted ewe. She stamped at it and presented her horns. The dragon regarded her a moment, then lowered its own great horns in imitation. Erde would have sworn that goat and dragon were bowing to one another. Then the dragon turned away and delicately picked up one of the other goats by the scruff of its neck, like a cat with a kitten. The goat hung there placidly while the dragon carried it off to a hidden corner of the gorge. It returned six times and each time, ewe and dragon matched their unequal horns, and the dragon took another. After the fifth, Erde shook her
head in astonishment.
At least I’ll have milk to drink
, she told herself and promptly fell asleep.

When she awoke, the dragon was curled up beside her. Erde lay still, grateful to be warm and fed and dry, and glad of the chance to study her remarkable traveling companion, to look it over at leisure and in daylight, if the gray afternoon sinking through the dark pine boughs could be called daylight. She thought about the summer that had never really come, and wondered if she would ever see the sun again.

The dragon was muddy from its travels, and its long sleep inside the mountain had left a coating of earth so hard and caked even the constant rain had not managed to wash it off completely. But in the gray half-light, Erde saw that its dull, dust-colored “scales” were actually a richly tapestried hide of grays and browns, ranging from the warm russet deep in the joints between the big concentrically-textured plates on its back that resembled a flexible tortoiseshell, to the smooth and glowing sienna of its belly or the luminous ivory of its razor-tipped horns and claws. The richness was subtle, and brown was the overall impression, but the details were various and stunning. Erde was relieved. She’d been avoiding the conclusion that her dragon was ugly.

Her dragon. How could she call it hers? She didn’t even know its name. But it did seem to need her, or think it did, and this was both novel and flattering. It gave her purpose at a time when she could not have imagined one on her own. But now that the dragon was hopefully no longer so obsessed with its stomach, perhaps it was time to talk to it about something other than food. Erde settled herself squarely opposite its snoozing head and composed her interrogative in her mind.

—
Dragon?

Very quickly, she saw in her mind’s eye a dragon yawning and settling into sleep.

—
Dragon?

The dragon in her mind stretched, yawned more widely, and turned its back on her. Erde’s eyes narrowed in pique.

—
DRAGON!

The dragon in front of her raised its enormous head with
a low growl. Erde swallowed. It heard and understood her at least.

—
Did I not find you a fine dinner, Dragon?

The dragon resettled its jaws comfortably and blinked.

—
So will you talk to me a while?

She read assent in its mind but resignation in its eyes.

—
If you please then, Dragon, may I know your name?

She did not ask if it had one. All dragons had names. Her grandmother had said they were extremely proud of them, and that you must be particularly polite when requesting an introduction. Usually their names were unpronounceable and had to be translated into some poetic but inadequate German equivalent.

The dragon did not answer immediately. Perhaps it did not trust her yet. Erde waited. She sensed a struggle and the beginnings of distress. A great blankness filled her mind. Sadness gripped her throat. Not reluctance at all, but a huge, heaving effort to . . . remember.

—
What? You can’t remember your own name?

She had meant to ask more gently. Her own shock and surprise had gotten the better of her. A dragon that didn’t know its name? The poor creature’s sigh was like a great sob of shame, and Erde gathered every wit she possessed to try to soothe it.

—
You’ll remember. Of course you’ll remember. You’ve been asleep too long, that’s all. Try this: when I’m trying to remember something, I concentrate on the very first thought I had when I woke up
.

The dragon’s struggle felt like muscles toiling in her mind, like men rolling heavy stones uphill or dragging laden carts through the mud. It remembered waking slowly, being drawn as though to a voice . . . suddenly, the memory dam burst. A torrent of images surged through Erde faster than she could grasp: soft green hills, a buried vein of shining metal, farmer’s plow breaking the fresh sod, mountains shuddering with inner fire, bright young shoots pushing up through dark humus. Sand and hills and trees and rock and soil.

Earth
.

—
But that’s
my
name
.

The dragon looked at her as if she had foolishly stated the obvious.

—
We have the same name?

Again, assent.

Erde had never heard of a dragon having the same name as a person, but it did show an unorthodox kind of logic, if it—
he
, she now sensed—if he was to be her dragon.

—
There! You see? I told you you could remember!

But she sensed continuing distress. He had remembered his name, but not who he was or why he was there. Abruptly, she was deluged with doubt. Nothing seemed certain and nothing made sense. The value of life itself was in question. But Erde knew she was not given to such imponderables. It must be the dragon who was desperate for such answers. She tried again to soothe him.

—
Maybe we don’t all need to know our purpose right off
.

Earth flooded her with images of stalwart, all-knowing dragonkind, proper dragons who knew their purpose. It was a terrible disaster that he’d forgotten his.

—
You’ll remember. Just give yourself time
.

But the dragon would not be consoled. Feeding upon itself, his distress increased until it filled Erde’s entire head and brought tears to her eyes and great racking sobs to her throat.

—
Dragon! Earth! Please!

Surprise, a grasping at self-control, then a grumbling kind of apology. The dragon rose morosely and moved off down the ledge.

—
Wait! Don’t go!

He sent back an image of goats.

—
Oh. Um. Will you . . . ?

Cautiously, she pictured a question of him eating the spotted ewe.

Emphatic negative. Offense that she should think such a thing, when the she-goat had not yet given him permission.

Permission? Nonplussed, Erde sent back gratitude, which Earth did not seem to understand until she imaged herself milking the goat and drinking the milk. He responded with agreement, then slid down from the ledge to accept graciously the self-sacrifice of any goat except the spotted ewe.

*   *   *

Watching him lumber away into the gorge, Erde had a stark sense of having failed him. But how could he expect a mere human girl to provide answers to such deep questions?
Even if you did think of a possible answer, it only led right into another question. Such as, if Earth, being a dragon, had a specific purpose in life, it followed that she also had a purpose in being with him, and what might that be? She doubted it was anything so simple as feeding him and offering him moral support.

But meanwhile, he did have to eat, and because of what Alla had said and because her grandmother would surely have wanted her to, Erde accepted feeding the dragon and keeping him safe as her responsibility. This gorge would not shelter them forever. It was nearing September and even if the weather suddenly became seasonable again, one could expect the fall snowstorms relatively soon. Her near disaster in Tubin told Erde she had to move on and quickly, away from the inhospitable weather, away from her father’s huntsmen, away from the murderous reach of Brother Guillemo Gotti, far from this perilous neighborhood where everyone knew her face and name and took her for a witch.

T
hey traveled by nights and slept out the days in whatever deep thicket or rock shelter they could find. Each day, Erde was less tired when she lay down than she’d been the dawn before, and less painfully sore when she awoke. The burden of her pack and Rainer’s sword lightened as the long miles passed.

Earth learned to travel more quietly and with less interest in the countryside. Though the food-flock was soon reduced to the she-goat, he showed no interest in eating her. After a while, since the goat was agile, traveled well, and seemed content in their company, Erde did not even bother to tether her. She followed of her own accord.

As they put a safer distance between them and Tor Alte, Erde encouraged the dragon to hunt, especially as the time since his last meal lengthened and he continued to show little inclination to do so on his own. She began to wonder if he knew how. At dawn, their quiet time between travel and sleep, she conjured hunting images for him, graphic and colorful enough to inform an idiot, drawn from the days before she’d refused to ride with her father’s hunt. Earth responded with his unflinching golden stare and an aura of eager incomprehension. Eventually, Erde stopped their night’s travel early and banished him to the woods, insisting that he stay out there until dawn. For the first few days of this new regime, he slunk off reluctantly, only to return as soon as she’d let him. But one morning he was gone until the day was bright and Erde began to worry. Only a day ago, he’d come hurrying back to report that a hunting farmer had discovered him in the woods and run off shrieking. Earth did not understand the man’s terror.
Erde thought it had even hurt his feelings. But this time, she sensed his satisfaction even before she heard him rustling back through the underbrush. He’d heard a doe calling, mortally wounded, and she had begged him to end her misery. Erde thought he was more pleased at having eased the doe’s pain than for the meal she’d afforded him.

*   *   *

The weather stayed dank and gray and unseasonable, but Erde did not suffer as long as the dragon was near. Earth, it turned out, was no cold-blooded reptile. To sleep pressed against his golden belly was like sleeping inside the hearth. Erde often woke in a sweat, dreaming of hot coals, and was forced to move some distance away from him in order to sleep comfortably.

Each dawn, before giving in to her exhaustion, Erde unwrapped Rainer’s sword and laid it out beside her, to shine in the early light. Then later, wrapped in heat and fever, she dreamed of him and her father fighting at Tor Alte. Her memory of Rainer’s face was more elusive with each dream. She fought to preserve it, but was always distracted. There were stranger things than that entering her dreams: bleak scorched landscapes she didn’t recognize and voices whispering words she couldn’t understand but knew were full of grim foreboding. These dreams were always plagued by wildfire and torn by harsh clangings and roars she could not identify. They were thick with the odors that hung over the smithy’s forge, metal and smoke and acid. Erde could not recall having dreamed in odors before.

One cold gray noon, she woke up screaming, or thought she’d been screaming. She knew it was impossible, only part of the awful dream, but her throat was raw and the dragon was awake, staring in concern.

—
A dream. Only a dream
.

It took some explaining, but finally Earth seemed to understand, and he allowed as how there were places he also went when he was sleeping. They were not very nice either, but he did not seem to have any choice in the matter. She asked him to show her some. The first image that rose up in her mind told her that she and her dragon were sharing the same dreams, or rather, their dreams were mixing, but increasingly, she was dreaming his.

Like the Summoning. Erde called it that for lack of a better name. Often, as she shared Earth’s dreams, came the distinct sensation that someone was calling them. Sometimes she actually heard a voice, but then it was Alla’s voice or her grandmother’s, and she could never understand what they were saying. Sometimes the summons was as vague as Earth’s insistent expectation during their first night in the cave. Earth still looked to her for explanation, but she had nothing to offer him. Certainly she could not admit that each evening, she awoke more certain that there was some duty they were meant to be performing, and were failing at. She wished it
was
Alla’s voice she was hearing. Alla would know how to answer a dragon.