Draka

Morning found in a tree near where the road entered the forest. I’d slept by the lake, and then around dawn I got the drop – literally – on an unfortunate rabbit that stopped for too long under my tree. Since I was already awake by then I headed over to where I should be meeting Herald and climbed a tree for one of my vigilant naps.

Herald wasn’t the first person on the road. That went to Big Beardy, Short-and-Wide, Awesome Curls, and Baran, one of the first groups of adventurers I’d seen here. Curls and Baran must have hit a rough patch in their relationship, since they walked at the back and front of the group respectively and weren’t talking. I hoped that they’d work it out.

Still, Herald was earlier than I’d expected, though I figured I shouldn’t be surprised. She’d probably gotten as little rest as she thought she could get away with and then headed out as early as she could. She was riding Melon again, scanning the trees attentively. She looked well prepared, with her armour, sword and bow, as well as various small bags on her belt and a large pack strapped behind her.

Uncurling from my perch, I climbed the first few metres and then dropped. When I reached the road, making sure that the coast was clear, Herald was waiting, looking in my direction as I emerged.

“Good morning,” I said. “Good eyes.”

“Morning,” she replied roughly. She looked like hell, honestly, pale and with dark rings around her eyes. I didn’t doubt what Lalia had said about Herald not sleeping well. “Let us get going, huh? The village is in the mountains south-west of Karakan, so we will need to circle around. I think heading for the foothills first will be best.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. South? I’d never been farther south than this. This could be exciting! Herald was a mess and her family might be in danger or worse, so I shouldn’t think of it as a fun trip, but still!

We travelled west along the edge of the fields, following them into the hills as they curved south-west towards the mountains. Herald kept her bow strung and her eyes open, and her obvious tiredness hadn’t stopped her from shooting two rabbits by the time we stopped to rest Melon.

“I want to stretch the dry stuff as far as I can, in case the others are hungry,” Herald explained as she dressed the rabbits and made a fire. She lit it using a piece of flint, which she struck with a piece of steel that looked a bit like a knuckle duster. “This is your firesteel,” she said, showing me how she used it. “See, I had the smith make it oversized, so you should be able to hold it.”

“You remembered!” I said, honestly touched.

“Of course I remembered!” Herald scoffed. When she had the fire going I took the thing and put it on my hand, then tried hitting the large piece of flint with it. It worked! I actually made sparks! Nothing like what Herald had managed, but I was sure that was a matter of practice.

I handed the two pieces back to her, asking her to hold on to them for now.

“Can you keep an eye on these?” Herald asked me as she skewered the rabbit carcasses and set them to cook on a stand she’d made from a few lengths of wood. “Do you know what to…?”

“I know how to barbeque!” I said, slightly offended. Herald gave me one of her odd looks. She did that sometimes, and I still hadn’t figured out what she meant by them.

“Good,” she said and stood. “I will try to find some vegetables.”

“Yeah, shout if you need anything,” I said as she left.

Keeping an eye on the rabbits was easy. Turning them was harder, but I managed. The smell of roasting meat was indescribable. I had always liked anything on the barbie, but with my draconic sense of smell it was something else entirely. If I hadn’t just eaten two whole rabbits in two days I might have gobbled them up, which would have been a seriously arseholeish thing to do. The fact that this was the first cooked food I’d really smelled in a month didn’t make resisting any easier.

I’m not sure how long Herald was gone, but the rabbits were pretty much done when she returned with a handful of what looked like wild onions and garlic. She set the meat to cool, then unrolled a piece of oiled or waxed leather on the ground. After rinsing the onions and cutting them on a small wooden cutting board she quickly took the rabbits apart. She set one aside, then took out a small box of salt, which she sprinkled on the meat.

“You’re good at this,” I told her. “The wilderness stuff.”

“I had a good teacher. Lalia. She grew up in the forest. You have seen her with a sword…”

“More than seen her,” I added under my breath.

Herald smiled. “I suppose. But she is very good with a bow, as well. I do not think her advancements complement archery, but she is still almost as good as me, and I am specialised.”

“I’d rather not find out,” I commented drily.

“We both talked to her, Garal and I. I think she will warm up to you, if you give her time. Now dig in,” she said, and picked up a leg.

“Oh,” I said. “I–”

Herald just looked at me and bit a piece of onion, then nodded invitingly to the meat.

“You know what? Yeah. Cheers,” I said, and grabbed a piece with my teeth. Oh God, it was so good! I’d been eating raw meat. It had been fine, even tasty, though I had known that I missed cooked food. But tasting it… it was a whole other thing. I did my best to chew and savour the meat, which was tricky to do with the bones and a mouth full of fangs, and it was the best thing I’d eaten for weeks. I think I might have cried if I hadn’t had company.

“Oh, man, I’ve missed that,” I said after swallowing, bones and all.

“What,” Herald said with a speculative look. “Rabbit?”

“Nah,” I said. “Barbeque!”

“It is odd,” she said thoughtfully between bites. “I have read about dragons that breathe fire. Those are the ones in all the stories. And I have read about those that do not. But there is no record of dragons, fire-breathing or not, that use fire as a tool. The book I read said that fire dragons would kill their prey with fire and then eat them whole, charred or raw. I would not imagine that fire-less dragons would care much about cooking their meat.”

“Yeah, so?” I asked, not sure where this was going, nor that I liked it.

“In fact,” she continued, her eyes narrowing slightly, “I still have not seen any description of a dragon like you, with black scales and an intelligence like yours. Dragons are supposed to be cunning, capable of speech, certainly, but never more intelligent than a small, vicious child.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. The dragon was aggressive and all, but I never thought of it as dumb or childish. “So you’re saying I’m a genius for my species. Thanks, I guess?”

“Perhaps,” she said, and I could see in her eyes that she was going in for the kill. “But you say such odd things. Like species. And it is not just your choice of words and idioms, but things like how you know what it is like to be a young woman. How you miss your friends, which is very strange for a solitary creature, which dragons are, supposedly. When I told you how I missed my dog you told me that you also had a dog when you were growing up. Is that not odd for a predator like you? And,” she said, raising a finger as though she were presenting the most damning evidence of her case, “you know how to grill meat on a skewer.”

Shit. I’d been careless. I had said too much and Herald was too attentive and too smart. But maybe she hadn’t figured it out, not really. Maybe–

“Draka,” she said, putting down her food and looking me in the eyes intently. “Are you an enchanted princess?”

What do you say to something like that? Me, I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed some more. I laughed until I was lying with my neck flat on the forest floor and my wings were jerking weakly above me. It was just, the whole… Herald was smart. I knew that. And she was probably well read. She laid it on a little thick sometimes with the diction, but she was seventeen and trying to be her own woman, so no harm there. To hear her say some ridiculous fairytale crap like that, her face totally straight, completely serious… I couldn’t help myself.

When I finally got myself under control and looked at Herald she looked much less offended than she deserved to.

“I’m…” I started, having to bite down another chuckle. “I’m no princess. Whatever my dad told me.”

“There it is again,” Herald said seriously. “And I note that you are not disputing the ‘enchanted’ part.”

Well, shit. She wasn’t letting this go. How was I going to get her off the trail?

Should I try to get her off the trail?

I was tired of not having someone I could talk openly with. I thought of Herald as a friend. My only friend here. And she had called me a friend and treated me like one. Didn’t she deserve my honesty? Who was I ever going to confide in if not her?

I studied her. She was still completely serious. She didn’t look offended, either, just tired and like she was waiting for something.

"Will you keep anything I tell you to yourself?" I asked her.

"I already consider everything you tell me to be in confidence," she said seriously.

“From everyone? Even your family?”

She only hesitated for a moment. “Yes.”

"Alright," I said, and thought about it. “Tell you what,” I told her, getting to my feet. “I’ll tell you all about it once we’re moving again. Are we ready to pack up here?”

“We are.” All the remaining food was simply wrapped up in the leather mat, which she tied with some string. Utensils were packed away, and I put some dirt on the fire. We left the circle of stones and the cooking stand in case someone else passed by and wanted to use it. No harm in that.

Melon whickered in protest as Herald led her away from the tall grass she’d been munching on, but she was as obedient as ever when Herald mounted up.

It was well into the afternoon when I started talking. We had kept up a decent speed and had made it to the hills west of Karakan, where we could cut south along the mountains without worrying about meeting anyone. Even if we did, there were plenty of places for me to hide out until they passed. The constant movement was doing me good. My bruises didn’t ache so much as long as I kept moving, and while flying would always be the superior choice for travel there would be times, when flying would either give me away or simply not be possible, like in the mines. For the first time in a long time, I was enjoying some cardio.

Of course it didn’t hurt that the view from there was amazing. I had seen the farmlands and the city in the distance, from my cave’s ledge and from the air, but with the way the forest rolled and sloped there was rarely a clear view. From here I could appreciate the fields, green or yellow with ripening grain that waved in the wind. A wide river flowed from the mountains in the south, joined by smaller ones and winding lazily north-east through the farmland until it reached the city, and I could see boats floating on it. Past the fields, far in the distance, I could see the city. Its sandstone walls, its tiled or thatched roofs, and its towers were barely visible, but the mass of it sprawled. It must have been miles wide, and I wondered if the figures I’d heard were right. I could easily imagine three or four hundred thousand people living there, large as it was. And beyond that was the coastline, passing the city and then sweeping back in to form a narrow, rocky peninsula and a natural harbour for the city. I imagined the harbour full of ships, but really, I couldn’t see anything at that distance. It made me long to fly over the city and see it for real.

We had travelled in relative silence, only pointing out interesting things to each other. I hadn’t been sure where to start or how much to tell Herald and she hadn’t pushed me, with her only sign of impatience being an occasional sideways glance.

“You’re right,” I started. “I am enchanted, or cursed, or something. There’s some kind of magical bullshit going on, anyway. I’m not a dragon. I mean, I wasn’t born like this. Or hatched, I guess. I’ve only been like this for… a month, I guess.”

“But you were born? Human, I mean,” Herald asked.

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” I said with a sigh, which came out more like a huff. “Basically, I fell. I like to climb rocks. Probably sounds strange to you, doing something like that for fun, but I love it. Damned good at it, too. Good enough to get paid teaching others how to do it, arrange trips to good walls, stuff like that. And I like to take risks. I like the danger. The thrill."

I could see by the curving of her lips that she knew exactly what I was talking about.

"So", I continued, "I went climbing alone, in a cave of all places, and I had a bad fall. Really bad. At first, when I woke up here, I thought that I’d died, or gone into a coma or something, and this was all a dream. But now… it’s been a while, you know? And everything feels real. Completely real! And I sleep and dream here, and I wake up and everything is the same. So now I don’t know what to think.”

“That sounds terrible,” Herald said quietly. There was no judgement there, no scolding me for my carelessness. Just sympathy.

“You don’t know the half of it. I don’t even know if this is my own body that was changed, or if I took over someone else’s. There’s…” I almost told her about the dragon inside me, but decided not to. Too soon. I didn’t want to freak her out more than necessary.

“It doesn’t feel like my body,” I said instead. “I can feel every part of it, and I can move like I’ve always had it, but it still feels wrong. Like, you're right, you and Makanna. I feel too small! And sometimes when I wake up I stand up and try to walk on two legs, which works for a while but I get tired real fast. Or I try to use my hands for something that they can’t do, or I forget that I can, you know, fly?”

I gave a small flap of my wings to make my point.

“You must miss your home,” Herald said carefully.

“Hell yeah, I do! I miss my people, you know? My friends, and my family. I miss my phone and my music, and eating ice cream on the couch with Andrea. I miss climbing, but at least I can fly now, so that’s something. And I miss just hanging out or going out to get drunk and dance with my friends. I even miss my ex-boyfriend. My last weekend I was going to call him to come over for… you know? But Andrea talked me out of it. Wish she hadn’t. God, I miss getting laid!” I said with a groan. “I mean, it had been a while, sure, but at least I always had the option to go out and find someone, if I wanted to. Now… It’s not like I've been in the mood, but I don’t know if I could even, y'know, take care of myself like this.”

I looked at Herald. She did indeed know, judging by how stiffly she sat in the saddle, how dark her face had become, and how she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Ah, shit, I’m sorry!” I couldn’t help but laugh. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you!”

“I am not embarrassed,” Herald lied into Melon’s mane. “I am not some blushing maiden. I have… done things!”

“You’re still blushing, though,” I teased. “I'm not judging! What you do is your business, and whatever consenting adult you may involve."

Herald went even darker. I could almost see the heat coming off her face.

"Sorry, sorry," I said, laughing even harder. "I get it, change the subject! You know, it’s not all bad. This body, yeah? I miss a lot of things but there are good sides, too. When I forget about what I’ve lost I feel free, in a way that I think I’ve been looking for my entire life. Sure, I’ve got to survive on my own, but I think I’ve got that down now. Food and shelter and all that. And I can fly. That almost makes up for all the downsides. It’s like… There was this poem my granddad loved. ‘I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth, and danced the skies…’” I paused. “Something about silver wings, I think?”

Herald looked at me blankly.

“I don’t remember the rest. It sounds better in English, anyway, and I’m not enough of a poet to describe what flying is like. The rush of the air, the way the world looks from up there… Sometimes I go up and I just fly for hours, for the joy of it. I hope that tells you something.”

Of course, I didn't tell her about the really dark moments during those first few days. Moments when I'd been high in the air, looking at the ground, so far below me, and the hunger and confusion and loneliness made me think about just folding my wings and hoping that I would wake somewhere better. I wasn't ready to admit that out loud, and I'd left those thoughts behind me pretty quickly.

Herald was looking at me again, a little dreamily, her mouth curled into a small smile as I talked.

“Oh!” I said, interrupting my own train of thought as something occurred to me. “And you know what? It’s been a month and I haven’t had a period yet, so I might be rid of that!”

“Gods!” Herald covered her mouth as she giggled. “I had not thought of that! I think that makes me more jealous than the flying! Rich women here use healing potions to get it over with in a night, but even a cheap one will cost you ten Eagles and anyway you can only use it once the bleeding starts. You are so lucky!”

“Yeah,” I preened. “It’s pretty great. Fingers crossed, though I’d better give it a year, I guess. Hope I don’t go into heat or some bullshit like that. Do reptiles go into heat?”

Honestly, I was glad that Herald had figured me out. Or been suspicious enough to get me talking, at least. It was so nice, just talking openly about what had happened. I still wasn’t comfortable telling her about the dragon in me. She’d have to remain a secret for the meantime. But being open felt good. And if Herald had been honest with me about her advancements, which were apparently the most important secrets you could have, shouldn’t I do the same? We’d hopefully be working and fighting together, right?

“You know what?” I told her. “I can do other stuff, besides flying and fighting, that would be just impossible where I’m from. Remind me to show you when it gets darker.”