Firebirds Soaring (30 page)

She did it, relieved and a little ashamed. His tunic was soft and worn and he smelled of smoke, sweat, and goats. He was warm beneath her, his gait smooth. She laid her head on his shoulder and fell into a light sleep. The ghost nets tugged at the edges of her awareness even as she slept.

When they reached the village, Father stopped at their house and added two water gourds to his belt. He replaced the guttering candle in the lamp with a fresh one. He gave Elexa some jerked meat to chew on and tucked some oatcakes into his wallet. Outside again, he stooped and took her on his back.

“Where are you going? What are you doing?” Yan’s acid voice asked them from the darkness as they left the house.

“We’re going up the mountain, Headman,” said Father. Then he said, in a voice that cracked, “My daughter takes my son’s ghost to his dragon mother.”

“Horst,” Yan said, his voice softer. “I share your sorrow. He was a fine boy. How did he die?”

“The wild dragons killed him,” Elexa said.

Yan let out a low, grating cry, the growl of stone grinding on stone. “They’ve broken their vows. They will be gone, one way or another, tomorrow. I’ll come with you. I have to talk with old Peder’s dragon mother.”

Father turned onto the path that led up the mountain, and Yan followed. Halfway through the climb to First Terrace, Yan grunted and pulled Father to a stop. “Let me take the child. You’ve carried her long enough.” Her father set her down, and Elexa went to Yan, then hesitated. She didn’t want this closeness with him, but her legs were wobbly even from the few steps it took her to walk from her father to Yan. She would never make it up the mountain on her own, not without sleep and more food.

Yan rose easily once she had clasped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. She felt the power of his muscles.

Elexa was surprised that Yan smelled so much like Father—smoke, leather, and male—though his hair was much bushier. As they neared the lip of First Terrace, Yan turned toward her. His breath smelled of onions. “Do you still have the other ghost, the Likushi man?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And you hold your brother, too? You understand their speech? ”

“Yes,” she said.

“What a selfish child you are,” he muttered, “not sharing this skill with the rest of us. Well, that’s going to stop. From now on, you will tell me whenever you encounter a ghost, and ask it the questions I instruct you in.”

“There’s a prize man,” said Pewet-lady, drifting along at Elexa’s right shoulder. “What is he lord of?”

“He’s the village headman,” Elexa said.

“Something less than a god,” said the woman. “Therefore, you can ignore him most of the time.”

Father laughed.

“What are you laughing at, Horst?” Yan growled. “You’ve just lost your son, and I amuse you?”

Father’s face lost its smile. His head hung.

“Do like Pewet-lady said, Father,” Kindal said. “Ignore him. I’m not lost, just different.”

Father smiled toward Kindal, who was gliding along by Yan’s left shoulder.

Yan stopped, stared at Father. “Why do you grimace? Has your grief made you mad?”

Elexa unlocked her ankles and kicked Yan’s thighs as she would a horse. “Don’t stop now, Headman. We have a lot to do before we can sleep.”

“What!” he roared, and wrenched her arms from around his neck, dropped her behind him. “I am not your beast!”

A crunching of small rocks, the shift and slide of something heavy over ground, a sudden rush of heat, a smell of sulfur and hot metal. Something roared above them, a jet of flame out over their heads, dazzling against the dark sky, temporarily blinding them. Heat poured down from the flame. The gush of light ceased, leaving a drift of feathery smoke rising toward the stars.

“Who comes in the night? ” a dragon asked, her speech full of gravel and almost void of voice.

“Forgive us for disturbing you, Guardian Birta,” said Yan. “The child brings ghosts.”

“Elexa,” said the dragon.

“Grandmother!” It was old Peder’s dragon. Elexa struggled to her feet.

“You bring ghosts, child? Who else has died, aside from the stranger?”

“Kindal,” she said, and burst into tears.

“Oh, child,” said the dragon, almost in old Peder’s voice. “Oh, child. I am so sorry.”

“The wild ones killed him, Old Mother,” Yan said.

She raised her snaky head and blasted fire into the air again. A gravelly growl rumbled through her stomach. “They gave their promise not to do such a thing. We cannot let them live here with a broken promise between us.”

Elexa pulled herself together. “Grandmother, I need to take Kindal to his own dragon. I have also the ghost of the stranger who died, and another stranger who doesn’t yet know what she wants.”

“Another ghost?” Yan yelled. He cuffed Elexa’s shoulder and knocked her down. “Another ghost? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Headman!” Father stood over her, facing Yan, his fists raised.

“Yan!” said the dragon. “Don’t you dare strike that child again!”

“She is keeping valuable secrets, Guardian Birta, secrets the village needs to know! Who is this other ghost? How can she capture ghosts at will? She threatens our afterlives! She must learn to obey!”

“You are not the one to teach her,” said the dragon.

“Who, then? I must keep my villagers safe from threats, no matter where they come from.”

The dragon’s tail shifted across the scree, restless, then stilled. “You have a concern, headman, and I recognize it. We will think on it. Don’t strike the child again.”

Yan bobbed his head, his frown ferocious.

“Child,” said the dragon, “tell me about your ghosts.”

“Kindal and the lady were caught by a ghost magnet south of the village.”

“A ghost magnet? A ghost magnet. It seems to me I’ve heard of this before. Wait.” She lowered her head and rested her chin on the ground, her jeweled, glowing eyes half-shut. “Mirrana, dragon spirit from five generations ago who bides with me, remembers this thing; it was set up in the southern hills by the priest Nakshli, who first started feeding us ghosts of the village dead. There were only three dragons living here then. Nakshli was the one who taught us to live with humans.” She raised her head. “That was an age ago, and we thought the magnet died with him. Has it been catching and holding ghosts all this while?”

Elexa turned to Kindal and Pewet.

Pewet said, “There’s a time limit. When the magnet caught me, there were two other ghosts on it. When the year turned to the anniversary of their deaths, they went on somewhere else. They said they had known ones who were there before they were, and it was the same for everyone down the chain of time; a year there in the hills, trapped by the magnet, and then the journey began again.”

“Oh,” said Elexa.

“What do they say?” asked the dragon.

“It holds them a year,” said Father, “then releases them.”

“Horst!” said Yan. “Are you a deadspeaker, too?”

“I only remembered how tonight,” he said.

“You can see your son.”

Father smiled sadly. “Yes.”

“Good. Two deadspeakers are better than one. One can say when the other is lying.”

“Yan,” Father said, nearly growling.

“Someone has to be practical. Your child is not known for her obedience.”

“Yan, enough. Elexa, tell me more about these dead,” said the dragon.

“The first ghost I caught this morning after the dragon flew over. He is Smudu-sir, from Likush. He wants to be eaten by one of the dragon mothers so he can be revenged against the wild dragon who killed him.”

“Does he understand what it means?” asked the dragon.

“I don’t think so, Grandmother. I don’t know enough to tell him.”

“We will welcome any who agree to be eaten. Take Kindal to join Maia, and let the others watch and learn. Yan, stay with me. We need to discuss strategy.”

Elexa bowed, then stood, hesitating.

“This way, Sister.” Kindal walked to the right to the limit of her net. Elexa followed him, her father beside her, the other ghosts trailing after.

Kindal stopped at a cave almost at the end of the terrace, near the trickle of a small stream. He waited at the cave mouth, peering inside. “They’re all asleep,” he whispered.

Elexa sighed. “Greetings, O great one,” she called.

Rumbles, slides, chirps, wings flapping, a brief flare of fire. A long pale neck and head emerged from the cave. “Who disturbs my sleep?”

“Kindal’s little sister,” said Elexa in human speech.

The head lowered so that the dragon could look her in the eye. “What message do you bring me?” she said in a softer voice. Her words were slurred and hissy.

“My brother is dead,” Elexa said.

The neck rose again, the head a dark silhouette against the stars, and the dragon screamed a mourning cry. Noise came from other caves nearby as other dragons woke and poked their heads out. Questions whispered in the hisses and crunches of dragonspeech.

“I’ve lost my human,” Maia cried to the others in dragon speech. Muted cries went up, not the full-scale jangling of their mourning for old Peder, but sympathy pains for someone they had all liked. Maia’s three-year-old fledglings huddled beside their mother and uttered small, pained cries and threads of smoke.

“I brought his ghost to you, Mother,” Elexa said.

“He wishes to nourish me a last time? Truly wishes it?”

Elexa turned to Kindal. “It’s a different kind of death,” she told him. She had talked to Birta about it after she had taken other ghosts to their dragons. “You choose your rebirth, and you aren’t alone. You will be part of a person instead of the whole person; but that person is your dragon mother. Do you want this, Brother?”

“I do.”

She sighed. “Come with me.” The other ghosts followed her as she approached Maia, whose head lowered until her chin whiskers brushed the ground. She stared at Elexa from one yellow-orange eye. Elexa held out her arms, hands at shoulder height, and said, “Stand here, Kindal.”

He came and stood between her outstretched hands.

“He is here, Mother. He gives himself freely.” Elexa stepped back, thinning her net around Kindal.

“Thank you, bondling,” said Maia. “Come in,” she whispered to Kendal. She dropped her jaw, showing her twin-tipped tongue and dagger teeth, with light from internal fires climbing from her throat.

Kindal shook his shoulders and stepped onto Maia’s tongue. Elexa removed her net from him. Maia closed her mouth slowly, and Kindal crouched down, glancing up at the roof of her mouth. The teeth of the lower jaw fitted with the teeth of the upper jaw like puzzle pieces, and then Kindal was gone.

Maia lifted her head high and swallowed. She kept her head high as the children crept along her sides. Elexa gripped one hand in the other and twisted.

At last Maia shook her head and lowered it until she was staring at Elexa again, her yellow-orange eye flecked with green now. “Oh,” she said, her human speech clearer, her tone higher. “Lex! There’s light all around you, and some of it’s purple!”

“What?” Elexa laughed, half-breathless.

Maia cocked her head. “You look different from here. Everything does.” Her head swung as she surveyed the valley from her perch. Then her nose dropped to touch each of the babies at her sides. “Hey! Peep! Seek! Hi! Hey!” They chirped. She glanced toward Elexa again. “The others are still here, yes? I don’t see them anymore.”

“They’re still here.”

“Kindal?” said Father.

The dragon’s head wavered, as though she shook off drops of water. “Maintain dignity,” Maia muttered to herself, in a deeper voice. “Man, I am not your son, but he is here, a part of me now. I have many other parts, dragon, human, animal. They do not stay separate for long, but you may still speak with them. Sometimes one can answer out of the midst of them.” She turned to Elexa, her mouth open a fraction in a dragon smile. “I love my bondling, Lexa, but I didn’t know how funny he was until now. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Elexa. She looked to her other ghosts.

“Who would eat us?” asked Pewet.

“I don’t know,” Elexa said. “The only dragon mother I’ve spent much time with is Guardian Birta. I catch all the ghosts I can, though, and I’ve been giving them to Kindal to feed to Maia. Everyone gives their dragons ghosts if they can.”

“Ghosts of people?” asked Smudu.

“No. Usually animal ghosts. I am the only one who captures people.” Mineworkers who had died young, orphans who had never found a home in life, a peddler’s daughter who fell from her wagon on a steep mountain path; human ghosts adrift above the village. Not as fresh as the animal ghosts, but clinging more tightly to the world; she had talked to each of them. A few of them she had not liked at all; the killer, and a woman who did nothing but berate Elexa and scream that her life would have been better if only she had not been surrounded by idiots and selfish fools.

“I know who I want to be,” said Pewet. “Granny Dragon, the first one we talked to. She can boss the headman, and he certainly needs it.”

“We can ask her.”

“Does she ever go flying? Does she fly north?”

“We can ask her,” Elexa said again. “Maia, Kindal, we are going to speak with other dragons about my other ghosts now. I’ll bring you game tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Lex,” said the dragon, in almost Kindal’s voice, and then, in another voice, the dragon’s own, “Will you bond with me?”

“I can’t bond until next year,” she said. She hadn’t heard of anyone bonding with a dragon whose children had already hatched, let alone babies who were three years old.

Maia looked away. “It is only my greed that makes me say it,” she said. “Though my boy lives inside me, I know I will miss him the way he used to be, and my children will miss him, too. Visit me, then, child.”