In the Time of Dragon Moon (32 page)

Song broke out in my body. There would be no army threatening my people when I returned, no one surrounding the village, keeping them hostage. King Arden was smiling. Jackrun beamed. I felt warmth glowing in my chest as if I'd been given a new heart.

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” I trembled so much I could only half curtsy if I hoped to keep my balance.

“Don't thank me, Uma, thank Jackrun. He convinced me it was the right thing to do.”

Jackrun's eyes were bright. On my left, Vazan shivered snout to tail. The quaking rumbled through my body. She craned her neck and blew a riotous fire skyward. I raised my hands high in the air, palms up to her victory blaze, cupping fire and stars and Dragon Moon. Jackrun lifted his chin and roared brilliant red-orange flames. Then everyone seemed to be moving. Lady Tess dashed over with Duke Bion and Augusta. All three joined me, raising their hands palms up to the light in sudden celebration. And the dragons joined Vazan, breathing their flags of fire until the night bloomed bright with it.

King Onadon made circles with his hand, turning branching flames to shining orbs spinning overhead. This was not their moment of victory, but everyone joined in and hailed it just the same. My people were free. The reds were free.

The sky blazed brighter than the bonfire until the flames subsided. Jackrun's father laughed and slapped him on the back.

My arms still felt warmed by dragon fire, silken with caught moonlight when I lowered them at last to link fingers with Jackrun again.

“It has been a long day,” King Arden said. “There is one last thing I promised Jackrun I would say before I retired to my rooms.”

I blinked up at Jackrun's face. What now?

His Majesty said, “Your talent has not gone unnoticed. You have earned the right to become our royal castle physician, Uma. I offer you the position along with ample payment for your services.”

“Your Majesty, I . . .” Words fell away. I could not move.

“You would take Uma from ussss?” Vazan hissed at the king.

“Vazan, let me speak.”

“Are you English now?” she snapped.

“No, rivule. I am half English, half Euit.”

Her eyes flashed. “And you don't know where your home issss?”

I couldn't bear to look in her quicksilver eyes, or at Jackrun as they both waited for my decision. He wanted me to stay. She wanted me to go. But what did I want? The king's offer was tempting. I would be honored as the royal castle physician. And what he said was true. I had earned the right to practice medicine here.

But Jackrun's presence made this place home for me, nothing else. I looked from one face to another in the small, prestigious crowd.

How many hearts will you break if you go?
How many hearts would break if I stayed?

The king breathed a sigh of impatience. “Answer me, Uma.”

“Thank you, King Arden. It is a very generous offer, but I cannot accept.”

Jackrun withdrew his hand. I shivered as his warm energy drained out of me.

King Arden frowned. “You refuse my offer?” He was not used to anyone turning him down.

“My tribe is dying out, Your Majesty.” I straightened my shoulders. “We intend to live. Some of the women wait for my father's cure. They cannot have children without it. I am the only healer who knows how to find the herbs, prepare them, and administer them. I have to go home.”

“Uma, please,” Jackrun said under his breath.

Did he think this was easy for me? “Don't you understand anything? I was brought here against my will. My home is in Devil's Boot. My medicines are needed there.”

“Even though you told me a woman cannot be a true healer in your tribe?”

“I have to try.”

Jackrun drew back. “You could work here as an honored physician, Uma. I would have made a home for you.”

You are my home,
I thought. I pressed my lips together. I'd cry out, take it all back if I didn't.

His face fell. I wanted him to tell me he understood. He wasn't about to say that.

One by one people left the bonfire. Jackrun crossed the green with his father and His Majesties. The dragons spread out on the wide lawn. Lady Tess and Princess Augusta stayed outside under the stars.

“Uma,” said Lady Tess. “Come here.” The two women welcomed me between them by the burning wood stack. I could not feel its warmth.

The fire I wanted was gone.

My companions rested their hands on my shoulders as we faced the fire.

Castle Green

Dragon Moon

October 1210

A
T
DAWN
I set the Adan's trunk on the castle green and looked around again for Jackrun. He'd promised to meet me here before I left. Checking the gates and terrace stairs once again, I heaved a breath and adjusted my cloak. Damp grass soaked into Bianca's slippers. My toes were numb with cold. I wiggled them and stomped my feet to try and keep them warm.
Hurry!
I thought, as if I could summon Jackrun with my need the way my father used to call Vazan. She'd return from her hunt soon and would expect me to be ready to go the moment she landed, knowing her.

Once again I looked back at the deserted stairs and gates. King Arden's flags tugged and slapped on the battlements. A windy day to sail. Tess and her family planned to ship out today. She didn't want to linger and see Tanya's execution any more than I did. Last night I'd told her about Bianca's many small kindnesses to me while I was captive here. I asked Tess if she might take Bianca home to Dragon's Keep before King Arden turned his anger toward her. Bianca might feel more at home in the summer castle where half-fey people like her, like Tess, were welcome. “I'll talk with Bion,” she said. I hoped he would agree.

In the distance, two small dots soared down from Morgesh Mountain's snowy ridge. As they flew closer I saw Vazan's red wings pumping in unison with Babak's mottled golden green. Vazan was a solitary hunter. I was surprised she'd let Babak join her this morning. Wispy clouds blushed pink in their wake. They landed side by side on the grass. Vazan licked fresh blood from her claws with her long forked tongue. Babak snapped his jaws and picked his teeth with the tip of his talon.

I bowed. “Was it a good hunt, rivule?”

“Not the choicest kill,” she said with a growl.

At last Jackrun crossed the lawn bearing two cloth sacks.
You're too late.
A sharp pain entered my heart. I'd wanted to be alone with him, to say good-bye before Vazan returned from her hunt.

He dropped the sacks and took me aside, leading me partway across the lawn, but not out of earshot—Vazan's and Babak's sharp ears could hear a mouse squeak from a mile away. We stopped in a darkened spot under a passing cloud. “Can't you wait a little longer before you go?”

Vazan was already flicking her tail. “I can't. I have to go home now.”

Jackrun touched the ribbon in my hair. It was the same color as the one that blew free the night we'd faced each other on the beach at Dragon's Keep, Jackrun offering to carry Father's trunk, me refusing his help. I had learned to stop refusing him. Now I had to again. “Why did you come out here so late?” I said, my voice pinched with anger.

He gripped my upper arms. “Tell me what you want.”

I turned my head; a sharp pain tore my heart like teeth. “Don't ask. It hurts too much.”

“Look at me, Uma. Tell me.”

“Let me go.”

“Uma,” Vazan growled. “It'ssss time.”

I freed my arms and crossed the lawn. Vazan eyed the Adan's trunk suspiciously. She took in the netting I'd brought out to strap it to her back. “You expect me to carry that?”

“Yes please, rivule.”

“I am not a mule.”

I put my hands on my hips. “It was the Adan's. It's full of medicine.” Father's Herbal was gone, but at least I could bring this vital part of his life home with me. The women needed the precious kea and huzana I'd carefully packed inside.

She dug her claws in the ground. “I will do it for you this once, you understand.”

“Thank you, rivule.”

Vazan lowered herself. Jackrun set the trunk on her back and threw the net overtop to secure it in place for the flight. My clammy hands felt useless as I helped tug the net down. Jackrun took it from me. I wanted to touch the dark curls that had pulled free from the leather strap at the nape of his neck as he tied the knots below Vazan's underbelly.

He straightened up before I had the courage to do it and held out one of the sacks he'd brought. “Food for your journey.”

I pretended not to notice his strained expression as I took it. No doubt I looked just as gray-faced. “We'll be all right, Jackrun.”

“Remember,” he said, but he could not finish. I drank him in, standing on the lawn in his fighting garb. He'd make his way to the weapons yard as soon as I left. Jackrun handed me the second sack. “Don't look, just put your hand inside.”

I pulled the drawstrings and reached in, feeling the shape of what must be a book, the back side of smooth leather, the front embossed. I bit my lip when I drew it out. The two trees burned onto the dark leather cover had strong trunks and branches. The oak and the willow did not touch aboveground, but their roots intermingled underneath. A disk that might be sun or moon hung in the sky above them.

I ran my hand along the sturdy-looking trunks and slid my fingers down to feel the interwoven roots.

“I couldn't sleep last night,” Jackrun said. “I breathed fire to heat the stylus nib and burned the tree patterns into the cover.”

“A new way to use your fire,” I whispered, my throat thick. “You are an artist like your mother.”

“No, not like her,” he said, shaking his head and looking down.

I wondered what book he'd chosen from the castle shelves. Wilde Island history or a book of verse or . . . I opened the cover. It was blank.

“An Adan needs an Herbal,” Jackrun said.

Tears sprang to my eyes. The loss of Father's Herbal was a hollow space nothing could ever fill; there was so much knowledge in its pages. But this blank book was the seed of something new.

Jackrun tugged my belt, drawing me closer. The impatient smoke tumbling from Vazan's nose coiled over Jackrun's dark head as his lips touched mine.

I leaned in. His arms were tight around me, his kiss deep and sorrowful until Vazan's hiss drew us both back heaving for breath.

Vazan was kneeling, waiting for me to climb on. I wavered, unsteady on my feet. The tearing pain in my heart was almost unbearable now.

“Uma,” Jackrun said fiercely. “Tell me what you want.” He took my arms again, gripping them harder than he had before as if to squeeze an answer out of me.

“I want to be the first female Adan of my tribe. And I want you.” I couldn't have both. Saying it aloud only drove the pain deeper.

“Why did you make me say it?” My tears blurred his face; I saw a smile in the watery sheen. He still held my arms, but gently.

“What,” I said with a sniff.

“You only had to say it, Uma.”

“But you can't.”

“Don't tell me what I can or cannot do, Uma Quarteney.” He kissed me, softly, quickly, and turned back to Vazan. “I've already said my good-byes inside in case Uma asked me to come south. Our castle physician shouldn't have to return to Devil's Boot alone. I'll escort her home.”

Vazan lowered her head and gave a low hiss. “Do not expect to be welcomed in Devil's Boot, king'ssss nephew.”

“It is an honorable thing for Jackrun to escort Uma home,” Babak said.

Vazan flattened her ears. “She needs no escort!”

“She is a lady, is she not?”

“She is a healer. A woman of power.”

“Babak, could you and Vazan stop arguing for once?” Jackrun said. “It's going to be a long journey as it is.”

Vazan narrowed one silver eye on Jackrun, the other still firmly on Babak. “If you come, you will not only enter Euit tribal territory, you will also enter mine.”

“As your guest, I hope, rivule,” Jackrun said.

“As a guest?” She shook her head, her neck scales crackling. “I cannot speak for the other reds back home. They have their own teeth and fire. I will be flying very fast,” she added, both eyes swerving to Babak.

I wanted to hold on to the joy that was bubbling up inside of me, but I was worried. “Vazan is right. You won't be welcome in Devil's Boot.”

“I don't expect to be. Not after my aunt and uncle abducted you and your father and left a garrison down there. If you could withstand living with the English, I can withstand whatever awaits me.”

He was leaving so much behind. A chance to train his fire with the dragons in Dragonswood, and there was another thing. “Jackrun, you are the heir.”

“I am, that is unless the king weds again and has another child. But King Arden has years of rule left in him. And if I'm to rule Wilde Island, I intend to see the whole of it first. A future king should know his people.”

“But—”

He put his fingers on my lips. “Uma, I've made up my mind.” He kissed my forehead, one cheek, then the other, the tip of my nose, as if his lips were searching out the right place until I thought I would go mad, until at last he found my mouth.

My earlier sorrow fell away as an old flower falls from the stem giving room for a new bud, opening to the sunlight that is warm and rich and full of life. His life, my life. Beginning now.

Devil's Boot

Fox Moon

May 1213

I
KINDLE
FIRE
to cook breakfast in our cave. Jackrun could easily light it, but I do not want to wake him yet. We flew to the south side of the volcano with Babak and Vazan yesterday to gather herbs. Jackrun sat up late with his documents, studying a civil dispute King Arden has asked him to settle. He can sleep a little longer.

I flip the spicy griddle cake and watch the batter bubble. I used to pick herbs here with my father in the spring. I grew up in his shadow, reading his Herbal, learning his secrets, revering the strong healing ways of men. In those years I buried my womanhood, my Englishness among the willow roots. Back then I didn't believe I could belong to my tribe just as I was. I buried much, hid much, just as Jackrun smothered a vital part of who he was when he hid his fire.

Things have changed, but they did not change quickly. The chieftain didn't want a female healer when we flew home more than two years ago. Nothing I said or Jackrun said changed his mind. He and the elders followed tribal law. They wanted things done as they had always been done. Even Vazan, who stood proud and vehement beside me, hissing words of praise over how I'd healed her wing, did not sway him.

But there are other ways: the slow-growing ways of plants, the ways of song, the ways of touch. The women who wanted children were hungry for my medicine. As the months passed, the men began to come to the healer's hut with their complaints. And I cured them. In winter, in the time of Cardinal Moon, the chieftain limped in with an inflamed foot. The
Adan-duxma
—physician's creed—says:
All people suffer. All people feel pain.
I suppose even the chieftain does.
I treated him. When his foot healed and he walked easily upon it, he nodded sternly and called me Adan.

He was not the first one to call me that. Jackrun saw me both as a woman and a healer before I could join the two together. He saw it as far back as our time in Dragonswood. At first I did not understand how to use the softer part of my being that Jackrun opened up—the part that loved as a woman loves, and healed as a woman heals. But in those last hours with the queen, I was forced to look to my womanly powers.

Queen Adela was so lost in the end. Father would not have fed her, bathed her, rubbed her sore back. He wouldn't have sung to her the night before she died. I'm glad I was there to sing her to sleep, to give her those last hours of care and peace before she was poisoned. Wicked as she was, she was human and she was suffering.

Joy and sorrow are songs women have long known. For women are healers.

I kneel down by Jackrun and say his name like a chant. He awakens, stretches, and gives me a loud kiss that makes me laugh before he goes outside to wash in the stream.

A year after Queen Adela died, King Arden sailed to Dragon's Keep and met Bianca again. His love for her rekindled. They married on Dragon's Keep. Jackrun attended the wedding and saw them happy. I hope King Arden will not turn on her someday and blame her for his losses. I hope he will always remember her innocence. Bianca has given him a son—a child with dragon, human, and fairy blood—so the fey have their wish fulfilled in another. And Jackrun is free.

Free to explore what it means to be the Son of the Prophecy, the firstborn of his kind. Free to live the life he chooses. He trains up his fire with the red dragons here, gaining mastery of his power. He hunts with our warriors, preferring the wilderness to walled castles. He answers King Arden's requests and travels north to south, east to west, settling island disputes as he once did for his father. I hum the last two verses of the fairy song as I wait for him to come back inside.

And when these lovers intertwine,

Three races in one child combine.

Dragon, Fey, and Humankind,

Bound in one bloodline.

O Bring this day unto us soon,

And forfeit weapons forged in strife.

Sheath sword, and talon, angry spell,

And brethren be for life

These words speak of a man with power. Not a king so much as someone who is free to travel place to place, communicate for all, settle conflicts so that sword and talon and angry spells are set aside. Jackrun has just begun this challenging ambassador's work, the work of a lifetime that might take him to other islands, even other countries if it's necessary or if it pleases him. He loves to travel. He's not a man who can stand still for long.

Jackrun steps back inside and looks down at me, tucking his thumbs under the red dragon belt Mother gave him as a wedding gift. Mother and I both cried when he looped the Adan's belt around his waist.

“Maybe I shouldn't take it,” he'd said, awkward at our tears.

“No,” Mother said. “It's perfect for you.” And it was. It is.

Jackrun squats by the fire. “How is my queen of the May?”

I smile. He'd heard Mother's song. “Do you call me that because it's May or because I am your queen?”

“Both,” he says, leaning down and kissing the back of my hand. He eats a spicy griddle cake, drinks the brew I seethed, and frowns.

“You'll get used to the bitter taste,” I say. “It's good for the stomach.”

He laughs. “I don't have to like it, do I?”

“No. You just have to drink it.” The scar on his lip gleams under a drop when he pulls the cup away. He wipes it off with his little finger, and stares at me across the fire. His smallest finger is the length of my fox mark. I know because he likes to rest it there.

“Where do you want to hunt for herbs today?”

“In the valley six or seven miles from here.” We'll bring home more kea and huzana this month. Three women gave birth the first year we were home. Five more our second year, including Ashune. Melo has a little sister. Mother helps me in the birth hut, beaming as she passes on her midwife's knowledge. A widow now, she finds joy in midwifery. I hold the wriggling newborns in my arms, males and females, tiny but strong. They are our future.

This year I'll treat more women, and though we will be away up north for a while on Jackrun's business with the king, I plan to fly home in time to cradle the precious little ones a moment before I give them to their mothers. This is a small price I demand.

Jackrun finishes his last griddle cake. He likes the spicy food I prepare. It would be difficult if he did not. I don't know how to cook anything else.

“Shall we walk or fly today?” he asks.

“Fly if Babak and Vazan don't mind taking us.”

Jackrun gives me a wicked smile. We watched their mating dance in Dragon Moon. I never would have thought Vazan would choose such a colorful male, but they love to fight and she is fierce in her love for him.

“We'd better wait a little longer before we ask them,” Jackrun says. He knows if he disturbs them in their den before they are ready, he's likely to be scorched by Vazan's ferocious fire. Jackrun leans closer. “Uma.”

The way he says my name stirs the secrets of my origin, the dreams the earth feeds me down in the dark underneath. Some people say my name and do not hear the sound; they do not know who they are calling, what they might awaken. He awakens the heart, the memory of my beginning in the stream, deep waters, sun, wind; he awakens my powers.

He kisses me, and we stay in our cave longer to shed our clothes, touching skin to skin, entangling like roots, searching for the darker places where we are fed with joy.