Hydra (19 page)

So we’re drawn to remote areas like this one.

Zilpha muses, “I always thought of Siberia as being desolate, but this is beautiful. It’s a wonder more people don’t live here.”

“The winters are crazy harsh, I guess. And it’s mega remote, you know. If you can’t fly in like we do, it would take days and days to get here.”

“But it’s the perfect place for a dragon to live.”

I can’t help laughing at the accuracy of her statement. “Too bad Eudora figured that out first.”

“I wonder if there are any others.”

“Dragons?”

“Dragons,” my sister affirms. “Living in the mountains out here. Maybe that’s part of what keeps people away, you know? Myths of fire-breathing creatures, wild country, harsh winters.”

“Well, Ion lives out here, too.” I name the other arch-enemy of our family, the dragon who nearly killed my father a little over two decades ago.

But at the same time, I sense what she’s getting at. Zilpha has been searching for a husband for years, even before she was old enough to marry, hoping to have one picked out and ready to go before she even needed him. She feels impatient that she hasn’t found one yet.

She sighs wistfully. “In the stories, you always hear of dragons living in mountain caves.”

“The altitude helps us take flight easily,” I acknowledge, not quite comfortable with the direction this conversation is taking, trying to steer her to something practical. I like to speculate about the possibility of other dragons as much as anyone, but does my sister really think there might be another dragon out there, somewhere among the endless mountain peaks? Why does she care anymore? She doesn’t need to find one, not if she’s got Ed.

Unless she has no intention of marrying Ed.

My pulse quickens with something akin to dread. Why is Zilpha talking about this? Doesn’t she like Ed? Why would she reject him? It would hurt his feelings even more on top of the way I’ve let him think I don’t care for him…and how can she reject him, after I’ve let him think that about me specifically so he’d draw closer to her?

In spite of my efforts to steer the conversation away from the topic of other dragons, Zilpha is undeterred. “I wish there was some signal we could transmit to send a message if there’s another dragon out there—that we’re here, we’re friendly, and we’re looking for them.”

“That’s one of the difficulties we have as a species. It’s hard to find each other when we’re all in hiding.” I pause, thinking, then continue. “Still, don’t you think that’s something our spies would know about? That’s what they’re up here doing, right? Keeping an eye on dragons? If there’s more than Ion and Eudora out here, they’d have some idea.”

“I’ll talk to Jala tomorrow.” Zilpha agrees readily.

It’s been burning in my gut through the whole conversation, and given how strongly Zilpha has stuck to the idea of finding another dragon, I can’t walk away without knowing why she’s so determined when she doesn’t need to be. “Why do you want to find another dragon?”

She whips her head around, meeting my eyes for the first time since I joined her on the rock. “I need a mate.”

“What’s wrong with Ed?”

Zilpha makes a condescending sound in her throat. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. What’s wrong with him?” My face may be a bit flushed right now, but let’s blame that on the rosy light of dawn. I know Ed has some minor deformities and can’t fly and all, but he’s fun and sweet and considerate and strong and handsome and hunky. And he has amazing skills in the water. Besides all that, he’s the Loch Ness Monster. He’s legendary.

“He’s a brute,” Zilpha answers back. “He’s not sophisticated or cosmopolitan or romantic. He’s none of the things I’ve ever dreamed about in a husband. I want a guy who can serenade me. I bet Ed can’t even play an instrument with his hands the way they are. I’ve been dreaming of a husband all my life. I picture a man who’s cultured, who knows about history and politics and people, who can have fascinating conversations. A guy who can cook various cuisines, who travels to exotic destinations and can speak multiple languages. Ed can barely speak English.”

“He’s perfectly literate. He just has an accent. The man’s like 600 years old. He has an old Scottish accent. You make him sound like he’s some kind of caveman.” I’ve always known my sister was a romantic at heart, that she had a vision of what she wanted in a husband—a lofty vision few real guys could ever fit. And she’ll never find a dragon like that, so she might as well abandon the idea.

“He
is
some kind of caveman. He’s been holed up in that castle, in that lake, for centuries,” Zilpha insists. “I know I seem like I’m desperate to marry, but I’m not
that
desperate. I have fire inside me. Ed’s like cold water. I’ve thought about it, Wren, but I just can’t. Cold water on fire? He’d douse me.”

“You’d rather risk being single forever than marry Ed?” I’m aghast. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with hiding out at Nattertinny Castle for centuries. Especially if Ed is there. And I don’t think of him as cold water at all—and I’m the one who’s afraid of water, or at least deep water. I’m the hydrophobic.

“There’s got to be another dragon out there.” Zilpha studies the horizon, now fully lit by the dawn.

“You don’t know that there is. Maybe Ed’s your only option.”

“I’m going to live a long time.” Zilpha unfolds her legs from their seated position and prepares to stand. “I’ll take my chances.”

I stand, too, ready to be done with this conversation before I say something to make yet another family member angry with me. I could tell her all the fantastic things Ed has going for him, but she’s already demonstrated that she’s made up her mind. She’ll only fight me.

When I turn to head back to the camp, I see a movement among the trees. My hand falls to the hilt of the sword strapped in its scabbard to the belt at my hips, and I sniff the air for anything that might smell like yagi, but then I recognize a sheepish face as the figure steps around a clump of trees.

“I came to fetch ye. We’re all bedded down for the night.” Ed explains.

Zilpha darts past him toward our camp, leaving the two of us alone.

I glance at the trees Ed emerged from. Was Ed hiding, listening to us? Maybe he came upon us while we were talking, realized it was a bad time to butt in, and ducked out of sight. In my mind, I quickly I review everything Zilpha and I said. We were certainly talking loudly enough, he could have heard us from the trees—heard us distinctly enough to catch every word, actually.

And none of it would make him feel any better than my thoughtless comments two nights ago. I should really stop speaking. Ever.

Ed’s standing in front of me while I sort this all through. I’m trying to think if there’s anything I could say to make the situation better instead of worse.

I’ve got nothing.

Ed looks down at his hands. “I canna play the piano, or the bagpipes or the guitar. None of that. Me fingers aren’t flexible enough.” His confession sounds apologetic, with a twinge of grief.

I reach out and take his hands in mine. “They’re good hands,” I try to tell him, but my voice has gone raspy and hollow and I don’t know if the words came out right. Instead of trying to speak again (it doesn’t feel like I’d have any better luck on a second go) I lift his hands to my lips and kiss his knuckles.

I know, I know. This is not the way to make Ed prefer Zilpha to me. I know that. But you know what else? I don’t know how to make Zilpha and Ed love each other. I’m going to keep trying, of course, but I haven’t yet found the key to unlock that puzzle. I just know that Ed is hurting, and I can’t walk away without trying to comfort him.

So then I stand there for who knows how long, with his hands in mine, his knuckles pressed against my lips, staring into his eyes as though I might find the answers there. Oh Ed, why can’t you just fall in love with Zilpha?

And why does Zilpha care if Ed can play an instrument, or any of those things? She’s a good enough pianist herself to make up for any lack of skills in her mate.

“I was hatched in 1482,” Ed admits softly, “but me egg was laid three years before that, so I’ve never been clear on what age that makes me.”

I squeeze Ed’s hands. What can I say? He was hatched before Christopher Columbus sailed to America, before the vast majority of the events I ever learned about in history class even happened. “You’re timeless,” I whisper, my voice still gone.

But Ed only looks sad. “I’m a relic. Maybe I don’t belong in this world any more than a caveman.”

He starts to pull away, to walk away, but I squeeze his fingers and pull him back, “All dragons are relics. My grandmother Faye didn’t think she belonged in this world either, remember?”

Ed hangs his head and lets go of my hands. As he’s turning to leave, in a brogue made thick by emotion, he says, “Maybe she was right.” And he walks away.

Given his heavy accent, I have to sort out the words after he speaks them, so it doesn’t even register what he’s said until he’s a few steps ahead of me on the way back to the camp. I stand there, stunned, a moment longer. How can Ed think that?

I follow him back to camp, but he’s already bedded down on the other side of my sleeping brother Ram, with some trees on the other side of him, so there’s no room for me. I could walk over there, but I’d risk waking and upsetting my brother. And I don’t know what I’d say anyway, so I leave it at that.

Still, it troubles me as I make my own bed of pine needles and stretch out with my cloak draped over me (did I explain to you about the cloaks? We carry them in our backpacks when we travel in colder climates. They don’t get shredded, either, if we have to change into dragon form unexpectedly). I’m still thinking about it as I try to fall asleep, but I don’t have the answer.

I mean, I know we may be relics, but we still have a place in this world. We’ve fought to keep that place, and we’re trying to find mates so we can continue on for another generation. I know we deserve to exist.

I’m just not sure why.

*

I wake up thinking maybe my mom would know the answer, or at least know how my grandma Faye got over thinking she didn’t belong in this world. But then I remember that my mom is mad at me for saying I don’t want to be like her—which if you think about it, is a dumb reason for being mad at someone. It’s not like I don’t still love her. Of course I love my mom.

You can love someone or something without wanting to be like them. I love roasted elk meat, but that doesn’t mean I want to
be
roasted elk meat.

So, the bad news is I don’t know how to ask my mom about my grandmother’s existential conundrum. But the good news is my dad has gone hunting and returned with two more elk (Zilpha is right about how awesome it would be to live here. Siberia is thick with elk. Who knew?) And I guess if I have to pick between understanding the meaning of my existence or eating roast elk, I’m going to go with the elk, at least for this morning, because after having flown all night for two nights in a row, I’m am insanely hungry, never mind that I already ate a large portion of elk for supper last night. And I can’t eat and talk at the same time, not really.

So I eat.

When we’re done with breakfast, we gather our things and take to the sky again. The wind is nearly still tonight. What little bit of breeze we do have is hitting us head-on, but as long as it stays gentle it’s actually helpful at keeping us aloft. We’re not flying as fast as we might with a tailwind, but a gentle headwind creates some of the best conditions for gliding (if you’ve ever flown a kite, you can visualize how this is true).

And since we don’t have too much further to go, there’s no need to fly hard and fast. We reach the woods near the spy house a couple hours before sunrise, and we land among the trees. As planned, my father and Felix proceed ahead of the rest of us to let the spies know what we’re up to. My brother Ram and my mom go hunting, leaving me and Ed and Zilpha alone in the woods. We switch over to human form and pull our cloaks immediately from our backpacks, shivering as we wrap them around us, because the farther north we go into Siberia, the colder it gets.

I’m wary because it’s still dark out and we’re only about five miles from Eudora’s fortress, which means there are probably yagi around somewhere, and from what we know of them, they can track dragons by scent. Because of the likelihood of encountering yagi in the area, we’re all doubling up—Dad with Felix, Ram with Mom, me and Zilpha with Ed.

So then I’m trying to think how to use this time to generate something between Ed and Zilpha, but my brain is foggy from a long night of flying, and I don’t know how to get them together. I’ve been trying for days, really, and they don’t seem any closer now than the moment they first met.

Before I can think what to talk about, Ram and my mom return with a bear and a couple of musk deer. And then I’m back to the conundrum of not being able to talk because I’m eating. And before I can even finish that, Felix arrives to tell us we’re clear to proceed to the spy house.

I take to the sky with mixed feelings. In some ways, I’m excited that we’re closer to learning what the water yagi are, and hopefully destroying Eudora’s means of producing them. But I’m also worried about the dangers Ed might have to face.

And it feels like I’m running out of time to convince Zilpha to fall in love with Ed. Maybe that’s not true, maybe time is open-ended for us since we’re more or less immortal, but I can’t imagine Zilpha spending time with Ed once our mission is completed—especially considering that she isn’t really spending time with him now, anyway.

We reach the spy house and my concerns about Ed are replaced by the uncertainties of all we still need to accomplish. The spy house is a cabin in the woods, hardly noticeable until you’re upon it. We’re still three miles from Eudora’s fortress, and three miles from Ion’s place (those two are also three miles apart from one another—all together, Ion’s, Eudora’s, and the spy house sort of make a triangle, or maybe more like a rectangle if you include the lake).

Dawn is nearly breaking, the eastern mountain backlit by graying sky, when we step inside the cabin. The lights are dim and the curtains drawn. We keep our voices hushed. We may be miles from Ion or Eudora, but there are sure to be yagi in the area, and there’s every chance our enemies have spies watching our spies.

The light isn’t much, but it’s more than the star-lit sky we’ve been flying through, so I can see our hosts clearly. I haven’t seen Xalil in years. Maybe it’s because we dragons don’t age at all, so the contrast is greater when we compare ourselves to humans, but he seems to have grown horribly older since last I saw him. Where once he was tall and strong, he’s grown stooped and gray and feeble.

Jala, however, has grown from a child to a woman. Her mother was good friends with our mother when we were growing up, so my sisters and I were playmates with Jala even though she’s four years older than we are. When we were little, we looked up to her. And while our age difference might not be so noticeable now that she’s twenty-four and we’re almost twenty, we still respect her as an authority on the local area, even though we’re royal dragons and she’s a human villager. Also, dragons tend to treat most people with respect, regardless of age or station or any of those human classifications, because that’s the way we are.