Hydra (12 page)

Besides his sheer size and heaviness, I’m reluctant to try to pick him up because, as I just mentioned, dragon talons are one of the few things that can pierce dragon armor (on the underbelly only, or if we’re not all the way changed over from human).

If Ed was a relatively skinny person, I could wrap my toes around him so that only the fleshy parts touched him, and the talons would link like a belt-buckle in front of him, and he’d be fine. It’s a tricky move insofar as there’s grave potential for stabbing, but when executed properly, it
can
work.

But I don’t know anything about picking up a hydra. He’s big enough around in his current form that my talons would dig right into him. I don’t know if his scales can resist them, or if I’d be stabbing him through ten times over.

So while I’m coasting above him, debating what to do and generally watching him closely so I don’t lose him again, he breaches a second time, this leap not quite so high, but high enough to bring him up right under my belly.

And at the same time as he’s doing that, he starts to change from a hydra to a man.

His flippers turn to arms with hands, and he grabs hold of one of my legs even as he’s still losing his long hydra tail.

The sudden weight tugs me instantly downward, and I strain to fly high enough to keep him out of the reach of the six-handed yagi.

I
have
to keep him out of their grasp. He’s terribly vulnerable in human form.

Ed pulls himself up my leg, hand over hand, like he’s climbing a rope.

I beat my wings hard just to fly a little higher, out of reach of the yagi, but not so high we could be easily seen. Not like I could fly that high, anyway. I was tired before. And now I have a heavy Scotsman clinging to my legs, dragging me down even more than he would tucked into an aerodynamically less-disruptive spot behind my neck.

Not that I’m complaining. Not at all. I’m relieved, more relieved than I can put into words.

It’s just that we’re in the middle of the Black Sea in the middle of the day, with nowhere to go and no strength to get there even if I had somewhere to go.

We can’t go down to the water again or the yagi will swarm us. We can’t fly on, continuing east along our intended route, because I will die of exhaustion long before we ever make it to shore.

The only other option is to turn sharply south toward Turkey, except that I’m a dragon in dragon form and its broad daylight. The sun is high above us. It won’t be getting dark out for many hours yet. It’s not safe to head toward land.

But where else can I go?

I veer southward toward the Turkish mainland. It’s not a good option, but everything else is worse. There are a few billowy clouds ahead, and I point my nose toward them as I beat my wings, struggling to keep the two of us high enough above the water that the yagi can’t grab Ed away from me.

The clouds may offer me a bit of cover, but at the same time, they’ll blind me to anything else around me.

I study the shore. I can see far up and down the coastline in either direction. There are piers, villages, beaches, and resorts.

But in between those, here and there, I also see miles of coastline with jagged cliffs, with thick trees above and sharp rocks below. Maybe, if I’m particularly lucky, I can find a stretch of cliffs inaccessible by road.

Making note of the most promising cliffs, I beat my wings toward the clouds and enter the thick mist. The beads of airborne water are cool on my skin, and I open my mouth wide, letting the humidity coat my tongue, the closest thing I have to a drink of water, considering that the Black Sea, besides being thick with yagi, is salty.

Then I focus all my strength on keeping us aloft, headed toward the cliffs. I am
so
exhausted. I thought I was tired the other night, but that was nothing. My muscles are sore, aching, in places screaming in pain with every flap of my wings. On top of that, I’m afraid Ed might slip out of my grasp at any moment, even though I’m not so much holding on to him as he is holding on to me.

It’s all I can do to fly toward the stretch of cliffs.

Toward the stretch of cliffs.

I can’t see them. I can’t see anything but disorienting whiteness all around, and glimpses of the sea between wisps of white below. I fly based on my internal sense of direction and my memory of where the cliffs were before I entered the clouds.

My wings are aching. I beat them strategically, timing my wing flaps and angling my body to use the least amount of energy while coasting the greatest distance.

Not that I can coast very far with Ed clinging to my legs. But if he tried to climb up onto my back, he’d only disrupt my gliding even more, and I think he realizes that. Or else he, too, is too tired to move any more than he absolutely has to.

The clouds break apart below us and I realize we’ve lost altitude. We’re in the open again, my feet inches above the water. I glance around for any sign we might be seen, panicked enough I’m fully awake now. To my relief, there are no boats right here, as the rocks protrude far out to sea from the coast.

The cliffs are not far in front of me—less than a mile. That is the good news.

The bad news is that they are high, so very high. I can barely keep my toes above the water. I can’t imagine flying high enough to reach the tree-shaded woods atop the cliffs.

Instead, I drag myself forward, beating my aching wings, determined to keep Ed above the rocks that jut up from the sea all around us. Soon there are more rocks than sea, and I feel the release of a heavy weight, realizing full seconds later, in my stupor, that Ed has let go and landed amidst the rocky outcroppings that litter the space between the land and the sea.

It occurs to me that I have no more reason to keep flying. We’re not technically to land yet but we are among the rocks, and I’m too tired to care anymore, anyway.

I land, changing into human form and slumping down on a slab of rock in a sliver of shade from a tall boulder, and letting my body sink into the grasping claws of sleep.

“Wren, open yer mouth a bit, can ye?”

Unsure if Ed’s voice is real or if I’m dreaming, I open my mouth.

“Drink.” Ed’s got his water bottle pressed to my lips. I drink in slow sips, then slip back into the fog of sleep.

Who-knows-how-long later, when Ed’s voice again rouses me, this time with the offer of fish to eat, I open one eye just far enough to look around, and see that Ed’s moved me under the cliffs to a place where the beating waves have carved a shallow cavity from the cliff wall. It’s not quite what I’d call a proper
cave
, but it’s enough to keep us out of sight from the sides and above. Considering how far the rocks stretch out in front of us, both above and below the water, I doubt any boat will get close enough to land to see us.

We’re safe, at least from humans.

I eat the fish.

Ed shares his water bottle with me.

“I’m surprised you still have water,” I mumble, thinking out loud.

“We drank it all, aye,” Ed explains, “but I walked the coast a bit—wanted to make sure we weren’t going to be spotted. No one for miles on either side, but there was a trickle of waterfall down that way a bit, so I refilled me bottle.”

“Good idea. But weren’t you tired?”

“Aye. But not so tired as ye, and I thought it necessary.”

Eating has lifted me from my stupor, and I adjust myself, trying to find a comfortable resting position among the rocks. I’d like to lean back against something, but everything is lumpy and jagged and set at wrong angles. My muscles were sore enough before. Now they’re extra achy from the cold hard stones.

“Something troublin’ ye?” Ed asks as I shift and wince.

Every position I try seems to jab at bruises and tender places I didn’t know I had. “The rocks are painful.”

“Here’s a smooth spot.” Ed sweeps one hand across the level surface beside him. “You can lean on me.”

Part of me doesn’t think I should get any closer to Ed than I already have, but another part of me wants to be close to him. More than either of those opinions, though, is my all-consuming need to rest, preferably in a position that’s not utterly painful.

I join him on the flat slab of rock, and he wraps one arm around my shoulders as I lean back against his chest. My legs are sticking out sideways from the direction of his legs, and he’s propped against a boulder which I can’t imagine being any more comfortable than anything I tried to lean against, but he doesn’t seem to mind and for all I know he’s a different creature than I am, anyway. Maybe hydras like resting against hard rocks.

With that uncertainty swirling through my thoughts, I fall asleep.

Normally, when I’m exhausted from being a dragon, I sleep a hard, dreamless sleep. Maybe it’s because I don’t feel safe here, on the edge of the sea where the yagi might still attack us, or maybe my subconscious is trying to process all the questions churning in my thoughts, but my sleep isn’t dreamless.

It’s fitful and fearful. I’m fighting yagi. I’m in the water. They’re pulling me down. I don’t know who Ed is, and I can’t find him, but if I can’t find him I’ll never know who he was. I’ll never know what I missed. I’ll miss out on something important. Ed is important, but the yagi are pulling him away from me, deeper and deeper into the dark water. I can’t reach him. He’s gone.

“Eeeed!” I’m calling out his name, trying to find him, when I awaken.

His face is close to mine. “Shh, hush now, yer fine. I’m here. Hush.”

It’s dark out. Night. Maybe we should take advantage of the darkness and try to travel toward Azerbaijan, but I’m too exhausted to make it far and I doubt we’d find as good a resting spot as this, not without going out of our way.

My heart is pounding from the struggle in my dreams. I breathe slowly in and out.

“Yer fine, Wren. Yer safe,” Ed whispers in soothing tones.

I listen to his words, focusing on the calming rumble of his voice, both as his breath whispers past my ear and his chest echoes beneath my other ear. It’s like a weird surround sound, one ear treble, the other bass. Slowly the meaning of his words sink in.

I’m safe.

“Ye ’wake now?” Ed asks.

“Was I dreaming?”

“Sounded like a nightmare to me.”

Panic seeps through my muddled thoughts. Who knows what I might have said in the midst of my troubled dreams. I was so worried about Ed, about losing him—I didn’t give away feelings that aren’t necessarily real, did I? “Did I say anything?”

“Ye were shoutin’ for me, like I was getting pulled down by those creatures yesterday. That scare ye, did it?”

“Yes. It scared me a lot.” I’m wide awake now.

“Scared me, too. I understand why yer afeared of deep water, the way those devils pull ye down. But I got away. Thanks to yer help. Don’t know as I’d have made it otherwise.”

I bury my face closer against his shoulder. I’ve got one arm slung around him already, but now I hold him tight, still terrified by how close he came to getting pulled under for good.

“What were those devils?” Ed asks. “Same thing as attacked ye in the Caspian Sea?”

“Yes. The same exact thing.” I suppress a shudder, and then tell him everything I know—about Eudora, the regular yagi, and my theories about these new adversaries, which I’ve dubbed water yagi, for clarity’s sake. And while I’m on the subject of Eudora, I fill Ed in on her history, including the fact that my mother made her fully human a little over two decades ago—which is why, in addition to wanting to destroy all dragons generally, she has a particular hatred for our family.

As I might have expected, Ed takes an immediate and strong dislike to Eudora. “I canna see why she’s been let live. At the very least, she ought to be imprisoned where she can wreak no harm.”

“We’ve got spies watching her, but that’s about the best we can do. It’s too dangerous to attempt a direct attack. There aren’t many dragons in the world. We can’t afford to lose any.”

“I’d fight her,” Ed murmurs, his body tensing behind me as though he’s envisioning the battle. “I’d risk my life to keep ye safe, and the waters free of these devils.”

Fear for Ed’s safety rushes through me. Eudora is so dangerous, and so are the yagi. I don’t want anything to happen to Ed. I almost lost him out on the water.

It occurs to me that I need to know—even though I’m afraid of what I’ll learn—I need to know what he is and what he capable of.  Is he bullet-proof? Is he talon-proof? Not only might I rest more peacefully once I know the full truth, but we’ll be able to fight more effectively. We’ll make a better team.

So I take a deep breath and pose the question. “What kind of dragon are you? I mean, I know you’re a hydra, but I don’t know what all that means.”

His chest tenses beneath me, and for a few seconds I’m afraid I’ve asked a question he doesn’t know how to answer. He did say before that he’s never met another hydra, or something like that. Is he an orphan, then? Maybe he doesn’t even know what he is.

But he breathes out a slow confession. “The history of the Scottish people and the history of her dragons are intertwined more than most folks realize. Seven hundred years ago, the Scottish Highlands were thick with dragons. Every castle, every district, had a dragon king and queen and family, and they lived at peace and ruled the sky. Insofar as there was peace, it was the dragons that kept the peace. Some folks thought it shouldn’t be that way—that people, not dragons, should rule.”

“Are you that old?” The question escapes my mouth involuntarily.

But Ed doesn’t look offended. “Nay, not quite. But me parents were. They were the dragons to who built Nattertinny castle. They ruled over the loch and the surrounding lands. So much of Scotland was built by dragons. Even the kilt was designed by us, since we kept splitting our pants when we changed into dragons. Mighty sensible in design, kilts are, for dragons. Humans took to wearing them as a status symbol since those in authority—the dragons—wore kilts.”

The history of the kilt is interesting, but I’m still stuck on what he said just before. “Your parents were dragons?”

“Aye.”

“You mean water dragons—hydras—right?”

“Nay. They were dragons, much like you, with wings to fly, and all. They could swim in the lake, too, but not like me. I never met a dragon who could hold their breath like me, or stay underwater like me. Perhaps, if they could, they’d still be alive.”

Sorrow underscores his words, so I stay silent, even though questions are shouting in my mind. If Ed’s parents are dragons, what happened to make him a hydra? Is he technically a dragon, too, or something else entirely?

Ed keeps on with his story. “Some folk—not just people, but dragons, too, though I don’t understand how they could turn on their own kind—some folk decided dragons were too wild. Not civilized enough for the world as it was becoming. Too powerful for their own good, even. And they hunted down the dragons. They fought them and killed them.

“It was in one of these battles, while I was yet an egg, that Nattertinny Castle was attacked. Me parents were outnumbered and they fled. Me mother tried to carry me egg away to safety, but she had to fight off her attackers, and she did what she could. She dropped me egg into the loch.

“Me egg stayed in the water for three years—far longer than most eggs incubate. I suppose the cold waters sent me into a dormant state, or maybe ‘twas me injuries that set me back. Whatever it was, me parents had been chased away. They took shelter first on the Shetland Islands, and when those were attacked, they fled to Faroe. But me mother feared for me safety all that time. She’d noted the spot where she’d dropped me egg, and eventually, when the violence against dragons died down, most of them bein’ killed off or banished by this time, she sneaked back and pulled me egg from the loch.