The Dragon Round (14 page)

Jeryon says, “It's already growing.”

“I hope we don't run out of crab,” the poth says. “It probably eats faster than they can breed.”

The wyrmling rides to the pond in Everlyn's hip pocket, sometimes poking its head up to look around, sometimes falling to the bottom to sleep. It alternates about every thirty steps by Jeryon's count. When she brushes past a branch, she knocks an enormous red rhino beetle off a leaf into her pocket. A furious battle ensues in the depths of her smock. Peace comes with a muffled crunching.

Jeryon wants to say something, but as the poth tries to settle her smock and collect herself he decides to save it for later. Beetles, at least, could solve the crab problem. There's no end of beetles.

Oaks shade the pond and shatter the wind into gentle breezes. Jeryon feels refreshed until he sees a bow drill beside the neat fire ring that puts his own to shame. “Where do you sleep?” he says.

She points to a patch of spongy orange moss near the ring. He chooses a spot farther away and separated from hers by a tangle of branches.

“I don't need a screen,” she says. “I'm not that modest.”

“I am,” he says. “I'll put the pen by the fire.”

The poth pulls the wyrmling out of her pocket by its scruff. “It could stay with me,” she says. “It likes my pocket.”

“It's not a kitten. It needs a proper enclosure so we can contain it and train it.”

“I don't think it's going to like that.” The wyrmling kicks and squrims.

“It'll have to get used to it.” Jeryon scuffs a square into the dirt and holds out his hand. “I need to cut some bamboo. Let me have the sword.”

“My sword,” Everlyn says after he
disappears into the woods. She looks at the square and for the first time notices how the trees box in the camp.

“What do you think?” she says and puts the wyrmling in the square. It promptly scuttles away. “I agree. We're going to need a lot of walks to make this place bearable.”

When the wyrmling reaches the pond, it snaps at its reflection. It gets a mouthful of water instead. It smacks its lips. It likes water. It drinks lustily.

“The box won't be so bad with you, though,” she says.

Jeryon returns with a twenty-foot-long culm
of green bamboo, then he drags in a ten-foot piece that's older, browner, and thicker.

“What should we call it?” she says. “We can't keep calling it ‘it.' ”

“Why?” He cuts off the brown culm's branches and reduces it to five two-foot logs.

“This could be a legendary dragon,” she says. “The first trained. The first ridden. It needs a legendary name.” She holds the dragon in front of her face. “Sea Blight. Cloudbreaker. The Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities.” The wyrmling shakes its head. “No, you're right. You're a good dragon. Another first.”

“We better hope so.” With one log Jeryon mallets the others into the ground to serve as corner posts.

“Why not Hope?”

“Why not Desperation?” He surveys his work. “It needs a practical name. Something easy to say.” He gives a post a whack, and a splinter
flies off. The wyrmling leaps out of the poth's grasp to pounce on it. “Like that.”

“Splinter?”

“No, Gray, like those spots appearing on its spine.”

“Actually,” the poth says, “that's not terrible.” Jeryon shrugs his shoulders. He whacks another post, trying to get them even, and a larger splinter flies off.

She looks at it and says, “Huh. Let me check something.”

Everlyn picks up the splinter, then the wyrmling, which she lays on its back across her hand. It spreads its arms so its wings flop over her fingers and wrist like two washcloths. Its head and legs loll as if broken. It's asleep. She prods the base of its tail with the splinter.

“What are you doing?” He comes over to watch.

“Sexing it,” she says. “My sister kept emperor snakes. She showed me how. It's sort of a snake, isn't it?” She probes some more. “I think our wyrmling's female.”

“Gray works either way,” he says.

She flips the wyrmling back over and sets her on her palm. The wyrmling wakes up, and Everlyn says, “Gray.” The wyrmling shakes her wings, revealing a few faint gray streaks in the white.

“That settles it then.” Jeryon smiles slightly, but enough for her to see.

“Wait, you
did
mean Splinter, didn't you?”

Jeryon says nothing and goes to the green culm. The poth laughs. And Jeryon thinks their prospects are about as good as the wyrmling's color. They might escape. They might not.

2

They spend the rest of the afternoon finishing the pen. After splitting the green culm into slats, they use some as uprights between the corners and weave the rest through them and into slits in the posts. They
reinforce the connections with bamboo threads. For hours they speak only with their work, which pleases them both.

The waste bamboo they use to light a fire for dinner and, to the wyrmling's delight, to warm some rocks for her pen. Energized by sitting on one, she runs along the walls so fervently they threaten to topple. Seeing this, Jeryon starts weaving slats for a lid.

“Where did you learn to do that?” the poth says. “Make pens and all?”

“You pick things up,” Jeryon says. “How much did she eat?”

“Two whole whites,” she says. “As much as me. I don't know where it went, especially after all she ate earlier.”

The wyrmling stops, looks up at them, and takes an enormous dump. It has to waddle forward to let it all out, as if the dump were having her. The gentle breezes by the pond suddenly become a liability, too weak to carry off such a heavy stench.

“I'll get some leaves to pick it up,” she says.

“I can make a trowel,” he says.

“No, that's all right.” Her altruism is undermined by how quickly she runs from the pen and how slowly she returns.

While waiting, Jeryon parses the smell. Lye, with a hint of old stable and older man.

After the poth disposes of the scat downwind west of the pond, they watch the wyrmling mount a rock and wrap her wings around it. Her head flops to the side and slowly rolls over, twisting her neck nearly all the way around.

“Is that normal?” Jeryon says.

“She may be part cat,” the poth says.

The wyrmling falls asleep. Everlyn strokes between her wings. The wyrmling's mouth flops open. The poth plucks a firefly out of the air and feeds it to her.

“Don't do that,” he says. “She has to ask.”

“It's just a little bedtime snack.” The wyrmling chews herself back to sleep, the firefly's glowing posterior sticking out of her mouth.

“She doesn't get to snack,” he says. “You can't just let her have every beetle that falls into your pocket.”

“That was an accident,” she says.

“She has to do something for it,” he says. “She has to learn that we control her food. Otherwise, she'll never obey, and we'll never get off this island.”

“What, by riding her?” she says. “I was just kidding earlier. It'll take years for her to be big enough to ride, if she even could be. We'll be found long before then.”

The wyrmling wakes up, chokes on the firefly, swallows it, and falls asleep again with a sigh.

“We should let her sleep,” Jeryon says. “Big day and all. First day.”

The poth grabs his wrist. “We will be found before then, right? How far south could we be? We weren't in the river that long.”

He sits back. “Remember when you asked how big the Xs would have to be?”

“Yes.” Her nails bite into his wrist.

“Half a mile,” he says. “A mile would be better.”

She throws his wrist away. “How far south are we?”

“We really should be thinking about—”

“Plotting a course?” she says. “How far?”

“More than a hundred miles,” he whispers. “Maybe two. My cross-staff isn't precise.”

She nods. “Your failed experiment.” She nods some more. “You knew. And you lied to me. No one is coming.”

“We're too far south,” he says, “which is why I can't let you inhibit her training.”

“Don't turn this around on me.” She stands up. Her plate falls off her lap. “I never should have trusted you. This is what Hanoshi do: You lie to get what you want. Your mates did. Your whole crew did. You did in Chorem, not telling them there was plague in Hanosh. How many sailors went to Hanosh and risked catching the flox so you could keep the price of shield down?”

“I wanted to give you hope.”

“While you hoped I wouldn't notice we're still here?” She snorts. “I see what you meant by desperation.”

He stands up and takes her arm. “I didn't lie. It'll just take longer than I thought to get you home.”

“Not me.” She pulls away. “My testimony. And for what? Justice?”

“Yes. The Trust will make things right.”

“Years from now? They've got their share of the dragon. They've probably forgotten you already.” She mimics washing her hands.

“Never,” he says. “I've given them everything. They must be searching. If they can't find me, it's my fault. I got our position wrong. I got us lost. It's my fault, not theirs.”

He grabs at her arm again. She steps back. He nearly falls like a man whose cane has slipped.

“Believe with me,” he says.

She steps forward. She lets him clutch her sleeve.

“I can't,” she says.

He steadies himself. He lets go. “I won't lie to you again.”

“I won't forget that.”

Gray wakes and opens her mouth. Everlyn reaches out and grabs another firefly. She holds it in front of the wyrmling. When she sits, the poth lets it go. The wyrmling snaps it out of the air.

“At least you're not Ynessi,” she says. “They'd want to butcher your mates in their beds. I didn't refuse a part in your murder to take one in theirs.” She looks at him. “That's not justice. I'd sooner stay here than help you do that.”

“I do things by the book,” Jeryon says. “I trust the book. I trust the people who wrote the book.”

Everlyn goes to her orange moss bed, lies down facing away from him, and wraps herself around her sword. Gray climbs atop a corner post to watch her before turning to Jeryon.

He finishes assembling the lid. It's a difficult task with shaking hands. What would he do if he found his mates helpless in bed? What
if the book is wrong again? Jeryon flicks Gray into the pen, sits the lid, and weighs it down with rocks.

For a long while Gray squeals inside while he stirs the fire. He can't get it to burn exactly as he would like it.

Jeryon wakes before dawn to a
crunching near camp. He grabs a spear and crouches, but doesn't see anyone. He peers through the screen of branches. The poth is asleep.

The lid is on the pen, but he checks anyway. The wyrmling is gone, as is the bottom of a slat, chewed to flinders.
Why
, Jeryon thinks,
do I permit myself to sleep?

More crunching draws him to the pond, where a long line of beetles troops across dead leaves. He follows.

Where the poth buried Gray's scat, the wyrmling's created more, a formidable mound of it, drawing the beetles. The wyrmling stands beside it, plucking the beetles as they approach the mound, twisting them in two, then popping the halves into her mouth. When she sees Jeryon, Gray sits and looks at him. He's hardly placated, especially when the poth appears behind him.

“Apparently she wants to control her own food,” the poth says.

“She'll have to learn,” he says, picks the wyrmling up by its scruff, and carries it kicking to camp. He puts her in the pen and piles stones around it to prevent any more breakouts.

The next night Jeryon sleeps beside
the pen. He's worn out from spending the day killing blue crabs, gathering with the poth, and constructing a box to keep beetles as training treats. When he wakes up, he finds a hole scratched through the lid of the pen and another through the beetle box. Fortunately, the wyrmling has created enough dung in the beetle box that more training treats are already crawling toward it.

“I think she's mocking you,” the poth says.

“You were a willful child, weren't you?”

“And you didn't get anything you wanted,” she says. “Don't treat her the same way. A leash only reminds a dog that it could run away.”

Some like a leash
, he's not foolish enough to say.

For lunch Gray eats two crabs. The wyrmling sits and looks at him before receiving each one, Jeryon's relieved to see.

The wyrmling's filled out so much her legs barely keep her belly off the ground. The poth suggests they track its growth with a culm. Jeryon cuts a ten-foot-long piece and scores a line around it to act as a base. She stretches out the dragon, and he makes a mark at its snout before scoring a connecting line. The poth also measures her wingspan and, with a piece of palm leaf fiber, her girth. She records these on the culm, and he notes the day: day nine. They'll measure again in three days, rotating the culm to create comparison lines.

That night Jeryon puts the dragon down and lays heavy brown bamboo logs atop the lid of its pen. He hangs the repaired beetle box from a tree.

Jeryon prods the poth awake with
the butt of his spear. “She's gone again. I don't know where.”

His trying not to look concerned is very disconcerting.

“The beetle box hasn't been rummaged,” he says. “I don't smell new scat.”

“Have you—”

“I've walked all around the pond.”

She notes that the slat that replaced the one the wyrmling had chewed earlier has also been chewed to flinders, and the surrounding rocks have been moved. She kneels and puts her cheek to the ground to see if the dragon left a trail.