“Dar, it has my egg!” she cried, and then the creature made a lunge for her throat. Instead of swinging the sword, she ducked and rolled to one side.
“Cut off its tail,” Dar yelled. He had a gleaming dagger in each hand and rushed the monsters attacking Leetu.
Kale tried to work her way around to its back, but the mordakleep, in spite of its size, twisted and turned cleverly. Dar stood behind a monster hovering over Leetu. He swung his dagger down in a wide arc and sliced off its long black tail. Without waiting to see the body of the creature dissolve into a puddle and drip through the leaf floor, he circled around and lopped off the tail of the next mordakleep.
Kale jumped and stabbed at the monster coming toward her, its hands poised to grab and tear her into pieces. More often her blade swiped thin air instead of the flesh of the mordakleep. At last the creature stumbled just as Kale fell to one side. Horrified, she found herself lying on the black beast’s slimy tail. With one whack, she severed the ropelike tail. She rolled away, gasping as the noxious smell rose from the dead creature.
Like the other monsters, this mordakleep disintegrated, once deprived of its tail. As the black form melted into a shadow and then seeped through the cygnot floor, it left behind the egg. Kale snatched it up, wiped the last drips of ooze from the shell, and held it against her chest.
Dar knelt beside her. She looked around and saw that all the monsters had gone. He rested a hand on her shoulder. Kale’s sobs almost prevented her from speaking.
“Did it k-kill the egg?” she asked. “Did it kill the b-baby dragon?”
“I don’t know,” Dar answered.
“Will Leetu know?” Kale again looked around the empty bower.
Dar squeezed Kale’s shoulder. “They took Leetu.”
14
IN WULDER’S PRESENCE
Kale peered along the tangle of cygnot corridors as if she would catch a glimpse of Leetu and her captors. The dim light of the shaded level revealed nothing more than straight branches connecting trunks at various intervals.
It’s hopeless.
“What can we do?” she asked.
Dar sat down beside Kale. “First, reach with your mind. Try to contact Leetu.”
Of course.
The words sounded hollow in her mind. She knew this would be the right thing to do.
How simple.
But Kale’s bruised spirit could not jump to the challenge. Fear and sadness fought inside her. Tears already overflowed, and the sobs that just a minute before had hindered her speaking threatened to return.
I have to calm down. I can’t do anything in a dither like this.
She closed her eyes. Dar still had a hand on her shoulder and his touch comforted her.
Leetu?
Darkness washed over Kale. She bent forward, then collapsed in a heap, pulling herself into a ball. She wanted to escape the anguish tormenting her. A void filled her soul. Emptiness pressed at her from every side. Oblivion threatened to hold her against her will in a place of no color, no sound, no life.
Kale cried out, calling for help in a twisted syllable that could not be formed into a word.
She felt Dar’s hand upon her shoulder and a violent shake. “What’s wrong?” He grabbed her other shoulder. “Kale, stop!”
She collapsed, stretched out on the bower floor. Gasping for breath, she opened her eyes and saw Dar bent over her with worry etched on his hairy features.
“I can’t do it,” she cried. “I can’t. When I reached out, I didn’t find Leetu but something hideous. I felt like my heart was being squeezed, and I couldn’t breathe.”
“It’s all right. There will be another way.” Dar sat back on his heels and seemed to consider the situation. “I’ll fix you some tea.”
Kale nodded. She wasn’t thirsty, but a cup of tea was normal. A cup of tea was something she used to have in the afternoon after midday chores and before supper chores. She’d had a cup of tea at Granny Noon’s. A cup of tea would be nice.
She didn’t move as she watched Dar make preparations. He set up a tiny cookstove from his pack, lit it with a match, poured pure water from their bottled supply into the two-cup teakettle, and then pulled out his flute to play as he waited for the water to boil.
Kale clutched the cold dragon egg to her chest in a hand cramped by fear and strain. Every bit of the mordakleep remains had seeped through the floor and disappeared. No stains splattered the leafy floor or the rough cygnot trunks. Grawlig blood had been a gruesome reminder of their battle when the three had fought off the mountain ogres before reaching Granny Noon. Dying mordakleeps left no blood.
Kale shivered, remembering Leetu efficiently shooting off arrow after arrow into the melee of grawligs below the tree where the emerlindian perched. Kale had thought Leetu invincible, a mighty warrior from The Hall, Paladin’s capable servant. Where was Leetu now?
“Is she alive?” The question burst from her lips. She hadn’t meant to speak her doubt aloud.
Dar stopped blowing across the small hole in his silver flute. The lilting tune cut off on a high note. “I don’t know.”
“Will we be able to find her?”
Dar slipped the long, shiny instrument into its velvet case. “Wulder knows where she is. He knows our concern.”
“But what good does that do us?” Kale’s voice came out strident, loud, and impatient.
“Us?” Dar shook his head and reached for his pack. “Kale, in your mind you’ve made us the center of what is happening. Wulder is the center.”
Kale’s head pounded.
“Wulder knows what happened.” Dar put tea leaves in the kettle and took it from the small fire. “We need to wait, Kale. Paladin, no doubt, has a plan, but we don’t know it. We wait. In his time he will show us the way.”
“We have to wait here?” Kale looked around the empty bower. Leetu’s book lay open near the place where she was attacked. Her packs waited for her to pick them up to resume their journey. “I don’t want to wait here.”
Dar came to her, holding two heavy ceramic mugs. Spirals of steam drifted up from the dark liquid within. “I put lots of sugar in it.” Dar smiled, not his usual face-splitting grin, but a tight smile. He handed her a cup. He then sat down beside her to sip from his own mug.
“Waiting is a state of mind,” he said. “The point isn’t whether we are moving or not, but whether we have made our own plans with insufficient information. Sometimes people make plans just to be doing something.”
“I’ve never been in charge of making plans,” said Kale.
“Good.” Dar winked at her. “It’s a bad habit.”
She didn’t think the village council would agree. They spent hours making plans, unmaking previous plans, remaking plans.
A small smile lifted the corner of her mouth. She felt a little better. She tipped the mug to her lips. The hot, sweet tea felt good in her mouth.
“Dar, why did you tell me to cut off the mordakleeps’ tails? Why did that kill them?”
“Mordakleeps have hundreds of gills on the tips of their tails. A foot or so from the tip are their lungs. Mordakleeps must keep the end of their tails in water all the time, or they suffocate. Fortunately for them, they have very long tails that stretch even longer. Unfortunately for them, if the tail is severed from the body, they die instantly.”
“How did you learn all these things?”
“I like to learn. I listen. And I figure any bit of information that comes my way is not by accident. Paladin has a way of giving his servants what they need.”
“He teaches you?”
“Oh, yes.” Dar drank from his cup and smacked his lips. Kale knew Leetu would have frowned at him. She didn’t want to think about Leetu.
“I thought you had to go to The Hall,” she said.
“To learn?” Dar looked genuinely surprised. “No, Kale, Wulder is everywhere, therefore His lessons are everywhere.”
“I know Wulder made all things, and Pretender tries to copy His work.
But I didn’t know Wulder is everywhere. How could that be?”
“You’re thinking of Wulder as having a body and moving from place to place.” Dar stood and pivoted in a circle with his arms outstretched.
“Wulder is everywhere. You can see His power by recognizing His work. When a flower opens, that’s His work. When the stars twinkle at night, that’s His work.”
He paused, facing her. He let his arms fall to his sides. “Look at me, Kale. Right now, I am standing with Wulder all around me. I’m under His protection, within His will, standing on His pledge. And Wulder is, at the very same moment, in me.”
“Me, too?” asked Kale.
“Yes.” Dar knelt in front of her, his earnest face only inches away.
She looked into his dark brown eyes and saw strength and peace. She wondered at his patience with her. Often her marione masters gruffly explained things they thought she should already understand.
Dar winked before he continued, his funny face serious and yet cheerful at imparting what must be old knowledge to him. “So many people don’t know who Wulder is or what He’s capable of doing. Their ignorance doesn’t make Wulder less of a being; it makes them less. Until they know, they can’t be whole.”
He leaned back and sighed, spread his arms out in a gesture of explanation, and continued, “It’s so simple, Kale. Everything hinges on His willingness to be involved with our world. When a mountain stands instead of tumbling down, He’s holding it there. If He were to leave…” Dar shook his head. “If He were to leave, all that He holds in order would spin out of control. But He will never leave.”
“How do you know?”
“He made a pledge…and He sent Paladin.”
“You must think I’m awfully stupid.”
“No, Kale. How can you know things that haven’t been told to you? Where you lived, no one knew the things you are destined to know. You’re special, Kale. Wulder’s guiding you on a special path.”
“I don’t know if I want to be special, Dar.”
Dar grinned, put down his empty mug, and pulled out his flute. “Yes, you do, Kale. I want to be special, Leetu wants to be special, you want to be special. Wait until you meet Paladin.”
“Why? What difference will that make? And besides, someone like me is not likely to meet Paladin.”
Under Dar’s breath, the flute let out a short, happy trill of notes. A mischievous grin stole over his face.
“Should I tell her?” he asked no one in particular. Then he blew a light warble from his silver fife.
Yes! I want to know!
Kale pressed the egg hard against her chest until the smooth roundness of it hurt. She reached with her talent and gasped as she encountered a wild rhapsody in Dar’s mind. His joy flowed from him and washed over her. With so much excitement buzzing through her, she could no longer just sit. She jumped to her feet and stood awkwardly for a moment like a marionette just before the puppeteer moves her strings.
Then the music lifted her and directed her steps. At first it felt as if someone else was helping her keep time to Dar’s melody. Someone else controlled each leap and pirouette. Gradually, she knew she was the one responding to this extraordinary elation. She danced around and around the bower.
Dar’s jubilant song poured out through his silver flute. It filled the air and flowed into Kale’s heart. Within the rhythm of the music, she embraced freedom, freedom to respond to the presence of Wulder.
Out of the shadows of the trees came kimens. First one and then three, then six, and then a dozen. Light as down feathers, they swirled in and out of the branches, around Kale and Dar. They fluttered in the dappled light of sunbeams filtered through layers and layers of intertwined cygnot branches.
Kale paused to watch the dizzy dance spiraling around her. She’d seen kimens occasionally in River Away. Then they were dressed in greens and browns, the floating material of their clothing fluttering with each breeze. These dancers wore pale colors glimmering with a special light that for moments rippled in rainbow hues before gleaming white, silver, yellow, and gold.
Kale looked down at her moonbeam cloth cape. It too had taken on the wondrous colors. She lifted the egg high above her head and rejoined the dance. Nothing was more important than expressing the celebration sweeping through her heart, her veins, her whole body.
She became aware of the kimens’ singing. Their voices blended with the notes of the flute. She wanted to understand the phrases, but she didn’t recognize the language. She wanted to sing the song, but she didn’t know the words. Still, nothing dampened her joy. She danced.
The melody soared and then calmed. Like autumn leaves floating on gentle zephyrs, the dancers drifted, skimmed, fluttered, and settled on the cygnot floor.
With her eyes closed, Kale lay still. The last notes of heavenly music faded and floated away through the branches above. She breathed rapidly and deeply, but her body was not tired. She listened to the leaves rustle, or was it the kimens’ tiny breaths? The sound faded, and she knew without looking that the delicate creatures had left the arbor.
She could feel her own heartbeat, the thump, thump in a vein in her neck, the steady pulse in the palm of her hand.
Her eyes flew open and focused on the egg.
“Dar,” she called. “He lives. The egg is hatching. Dar, come quickly.”
15
ONE DRAGON
“What should we do?” Kale asked.
Dar sat down beside her in tailor-fashion with his legs crossed. “You’re the one who read the book.”
“Wait, just wait,” said Kale. “That’s all we can do. The book said to be patient.”
“Sounds like good advice.”
She realized Dar had given her this same advice earlier. She looked up to see a familiar wide grin breaking over his face. She smiled back.
“The book said to let the dragon hatch out on its own. I can hold the egg, but not peel back any of the bits and pieces of the shell as they crack.”
“How long will it take?”
“Fifteen minutes to an hour and a half.”
“Time for another cup of tea.” He got up and went back to his cookstove.
Kale cradled the egg, intent on watching every moment.
A crack widened, and a wee bit of shell pressed outward.
“Dar, there’s a hole. A tiny hole.”
He looked up from dropping tea leaves into the kettle. “Can you see the dragon?”
Kale examined the grayish membrane exposed by the hole. “I think so.”
“What color is it?”
Is that the dragon’s skin? “I can’t tell.”
“I bet it’ll be green.”
Kale remembered what she’d read only the night before. The minor dragons had different abilities. All could fly. All could mindspeak with people. But some were fighters, some peacemakers, some masters of fire, some healers, and the list went on. The color of their scales indicated which subspecies they fell into. Thinking of the times she’d been healed by holding this egg, Kale nodded. “A healing dragon? Green. Yes, I think so too.”
Dar brought her a fresh cup of tea while she watched, but he didn’t hover over the egg as she did. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him go back to his cookstove. He poured oil into a small pot and, out of his provisions, made a soft dough.
Kale heard a sizzle. She lifted her eyes to puzzle over what he was doing. He rolled dough into a thin rope and dropped it into his pot. An aroma of sweet bread arose with another rush of furious sizzling. She had no idea what he was making. Her attention went back to the cracking egg.
“Dar, it just broke out a piece the size of my thumbnail.”
“Can you see the color now?”
Kale wrinkled her nose. “A dull green. Not nearly as pretty as your Merlander. But the book said the color will brighten after it hatches.”
Dar brought her a tin plate piled high with finger-sized crispy bread. She took it absent-mindedly, placing it on the leafy floor beside her.
She put one of the skinny fried sticks in her mouth.
“Mmm, this is good,” she said, but her eyes were still on the egg cupped in one hand.
“Fried mullins,” said Dar.
Kale nodded.
“Granny Noon gave me the recipe.”
Kale nodded again and took another bite. Dar shrugged and walked back to his improvised kitchen. She noticed he looked dejected when he sat down and pulled out his harmonica.
“I’m sorry, Dar. They really are good.”
Dar chuckled. “Don’t worry about it, Kale. It’s only right that your attention is on the hatchling. Let me see if I can come up with a tune suitable for the emergence of a minor dragon.”
He placed the wide instrument to his lips and blew a reedy scale, then settled on a stately melody known as “The Dragon Dance.”
Kale watched as another piece of the egg broke away. Anxious not to drop the baby should he suddenly tumble out, she placed her other hand beside the one holding the egg. The dragon’s head pushed through and slid across her wrist. Its wings emerged and then tiny front legs. It rested. Kale watched it take a long breath and let it out. Another and another. Then with a jerk, its hind legs kicked the shattered shell away.
“He’s out,” she whispered. “He’s out.”
With eyes still closed, the baby dragon rubbed his ridged chin over Kale’s skin. She cradled him with one hand and picked away the bits of discarded shell with the other. Soon she felt the familiar thrum she recognized from when the dragon had first quickened in the egg. It lay in her hand, gently stretching, rubbing its scaly skin against her roughened palm. It twisted on its side and then its back, seemingly trying to move every bit of its hide into contact with Kale’s hand.
As she watched, the gray-green color took on a richer hue. Shades of emerald green appeared on its back. Lighter, brighter shades lined its sides. Its underside glistened with the pale green of a new leaf. She marveled at its miniature claws and the delicate membranes stretching over its wings.
The dragon opened tiny eyes, dark and glittering, and looked directly into her face. Its eyes locked with hers, and she took in a sharp breath as she felt the mind connection snap into place.