Tortall (35 page)

“We saw everything,” Grandpa said as Ma took care of me. “Tuerh created a vision pool in the well, in case we had to flee the village. We saw what our friends did for us.” He soothed the heron he was tending. “Where did the dragon come from, Ri? I have not seen one leave the mountains since I was a boy.”

“The green dragon,” Ma said as she put ointment on Mimic’s bite and bandaged my arm. “I thought it was a story you made up, Pa.”

“Never got a close look at it, only the underside,” Grandpa said, the heron calm enough now that he could stitch the wound in its back. “The shadow glided over me and I looked up. Bright, bright green it was, and—” Grandpa looked beyond me, his eyes gone wide.
“Huge.”

Ma also stared that way. I turned around as the crow squawked its greetings to the newcomer. Mimic—now as long as three men laid flat, crowned with a pair of crescent-moon horns and six long, nimble antennae that never ceased their moving—clung to the hillside with his hind feet. They, too, had grown with the rest of him. His claws were the size of sickles and the color of red jade.

Forgive me
, he said to me, touching Ma’s bandage with the edge of one scarlet wing.
But you would not let go. I could not let the feathered cousins die
.

“You’ve
always
been a dragon?” I asked.

The crow shrieked, asking Mimic,
How long must I be this way? I know it will help, her tying my wings to sticks, but it’s
boring,
and you know my people hate to be
bored—

Mimic reached for the crow with three of those very long, silvery antennae. Without thinking, I held the bird up.

Do not speak such things for Ri to hear
, Mimic told the crow as he ran his new antennae over it.
She knows what you say now
.

My ties, made so carefully, dropped from the crow, along with the splints. It stood up in my hands and flapped its fresh-healed wings.
I apologize
, the crow said to me. Now I knew she was female.
You have been very good to us. Better than some, who chase us away from their nasty herb gardens, not that we would touch those bad-smelling things
. She
flapped away, loosing a white blob of dung that struck Grandpa on his head.

As he yelled curses at the crow, I asked Mimic, “Did you mean for me to hear the speech of animals? Is it true, I started hearing real voices? I thought I might be crazy!”

It is a gift of the dragons
, Mimic explained. He spoke not with his mouth, but with his mind.
You drank the river water that cured my fever, and took some of my essence with it. I did not mean to make it worse by biting you, but you would not release me. I am sorry. You will learn how to hear what you wish to hear and close out the rest. It is very confusing at first
.

I thought of being able to talk to the animals as I cared for them, and grinned. “I will learn,” I told him. “It will make things so much easier. And you can help me now.”

But Mimic was shaking his big head. The one copper eye that I could see was unhappy.
I cannot stay, Ri
, he told me.
I speak now so all of you will hear me
. Ma, Grandpa, and all of the healers who had come to help drew closer.
I know I must leave. I am much too big. Where will I sleep? I am not a bird. I would eat far more than the village could spare. And I can feel the herd animals trembling. They can smell me. They are terrified of me, even the sheep who were my friends. I have made the choice to grow. That means my time with you is over. My people are calling me to the mountains
.

“Why should you go to your people?” I asked, confused. “They haven’t done anything for you!”

“I’d like to know that myself,” Grandpa said. I could see that Mimic was making the other healers nervous. The birds who could walk were going to him, though, leaning against
his hind feet. Mimic spread his immense wings to shelter them from the sun, as the crow had once sheltered him.

Dragons must be careful about breeding
, Mimic told us.
There cannot be too many of our kind. When she mates, a female dragon lays her eggs far from the dragons’ home. My mother placed her clutch on the other edge of the Great Plain. We are born knowing these things
. As if we could see through the hill, we turned to look. I shook myself and fixed my eyes on this new Mimic.
We are hatched looking in no way like dragons. Then we must prove ourselves worthy to be them. We must survive the journey across the plain. Few of us do. If it had not been for you, Ri, I would have perished
. Mimic bowed his great, shiny head and touched his nose to my face. He smelled of dry summer winds and the air before a storm.

“You still haven’t explained how you went from lizard to dragon,” Grandpa said. “You didn’t grow that way. It was magic!”

It was the last step
, Mimic replied.
It must be a choice. Life as a small one can be happy. We must decide that it is time to grow up. Time to take on the life of the dragon. My choice was simple. I could be a dragon, or I could watch my friends die
.

Mimic looked away toward the mountains.
My only regret is that I could not save more
, he said.
And I wish that I did not have to go. But I will continue to grow, you see
.

“You must go, indeed,” Grandpa said. I hid my face in my hands. For a minute I hated them both for saying it so openly, as if it were nothing.

Mimic touched his great head to mine again.
I
had
to
choose, Ri
. I knew he spoke only inside my mind now.
It was time. But it is not all bad. When
you
choose, you will come to visit me, yes? You will be able to find me, and I will know you are coming. Just as you will hear the voices of the little brethren and know where their pain is. You are part dragon now
.

He backed away from all of us carefully, so none of the birds would be knocked over when he rose on his hind legs. Slowly he flapped his great wings once, twice, thrice. He leaped, scooping air under his wings. He shoved it back at us, making us stumble. Then he was airborne, climbing higher into the sky.

I said little for the rest of the day. I was too busy trying to sort all of the voices in my head as I patched, splinted, and sewed. I found if I stared at one bird, or one dog, as I did when I went to see how my herd and the dogs were faring, I could hear that creature’s voice clearly. The others faded some. I practiced with the mice in the walls in our house—Ma was wrong; we had some. Then, when it got quieter, I thought about what Mimic had said.

It wasn’t like
talking
with animals. Their thoughts were simpler. That much I had learned already, listening to the birds on the hill, the village’s cats and dogs, the sheep in the fold, and the mice. Mimic had spoken to us like an equal, to me like a friend. He had been giving me advice without making me feel stupid, as my parents and Grandpa did. He wanted me to understand that here, in my valley, I would always be a child if I only did a child’s work. Only the heads of the combined flocks were adults. Even they were sometimes
treated as children, big children who knew a lot about the care and keeping of cows, sheep, and goats.

Before I went to bed, I talked to Peng. It took me a while to make my point, because he was already half-asleep. When he finally realized that I meant what I said, he almost strangled me with his hug. I slept well, dreaming of Mimic.

At breakfast Ma stared at me when I turned my shepherd kit over to Peng. He knew the signals for the dogs and the sheep, since he had gone out with me most of the spring for training. I finished my breakfast slowly after he left, grateful that Ma knew I would explain myself when I was ready. Once done, I walked down to Grandpa’s place.

He was grinding herbs when I came into his workshop. Seeing me, he asked, “A bit late today, aren’t you?”

“You never said what time I had to come here to learn,” I replied.

Grandpa set his work aside and gave me his attention. Like Ma, he seemed to understand that the events of the day before called for big changes in my life.

“I don’t know how good I’ll ever be with people,” I told Grandpa. “But I’ve got the dragon magic now. It helps me hear creatures. It may help me do other things. And I suppose it’s time for me to grow up, just as Mimic did.”

Did Grandpa know what I was thinking? He traveled out of the valley for new herbs, and sometimes he sent his pupils into the mountains to study. I thought of my friend, flapping his way up into the cloudy sky. I might have to walk to see him again, but at least I was taking my first step.

My dad left for good when I was ten. My mom kicked him out. “Fine!” he yelled. “I’ve had it with you, your family, and all that screwy New Age Goddess crap! I shoulda left years ago! Now watch—you’ll turn my own daughter against me!” He grabbed his bag and walked out. He didn’t notice I was standing right there.

I should have said something. Instead I stared at my however-many-great-grandmother’s portrait. It hung in front of where my dad had been standing. There was Whatever-Grandma in Victorian clothes, laced in tight, with that crescent moon tiara on her head. He was so clueless he didn’t even see Mom’s family was into the goddess stuff back then, before anyone ever said “New Age” with capital letters. But that was my dad.

After the divorce, he found a girlfriend. They got married and had a kid. Kevin was sweet, but I stopped visiting. They were always joking, asking if Mom and my aunts sacrificed any cats lately, or did I brew up some potion to get a boyfriend. I told Dad it wasn’t funny and then that he was boring my socks off. Finally I just told him I couldn’t
visit, because I had practice. He bought it. Clueless, like I said.

But when it came to Mom’s family portraits, and her religion, he wasn’t the only one who thought it was just too weird. By the time I was in sixth grade, the friends I brought home were noticing the crescent tiaras and full moon pendants. They’d notice, and they’d ask, and I’d try to explain. I’d make them nervous. Then the jokes and whispers began. In seventh grade, the witch stuff blended in with whispers that I was too weird, even stuck up, maybe a slut. I didn’t even know where that had come from, but sixth grade had taught me I couldn’t fight any of it. I acted like I couldn’t hear. I would read for lunch and recess, by myself in a corner of some room. I kept my head down. I didn’t even try to make friends. I didn’t see the point. Sooner or later I would have to take them home. There they’d see the portraits and the jewelry. They’d ask their questions. Back to square one.

The only good thing was track. I’d found out I was good at it in grade school. With a summer of practice and middle school coaches, no one on our team could catch me by the time the seventh-grade spring meets rolled around. I came in second in the district in all my events but one, and that one I won. Winning was like a taste in my mouth. Everyone I raced against was a possible source of whispers, but I couldn’t hear them if they ran behind me. They’d have to catch me to make their words hurt.

In eighth grade, I won all of my middle school events at the all-district meet. A bunch of the high school coaches wanted me to come to their schools, but Mom had other
plans. At the last meet of the year, she introduced me to the head coach from Christopher Academy. Christopher offered a full scholarship, if I wanted it.

Wanted
it? Christopher was one of the top private schools in the city, with one of the top track teams in the country. If I did well there, I could write my college track ticket. Better: nobody in my school could afford it. Nobody. And nobody else was getting a scholarship. My teammates didn’t talk to me, but I heard everything. They would have told the world if they had gotten into Christopher Academy. It was out of their reach. Christopher kids were like Beverly Hills kids on television, clean and expensive gods and goddesses. Nobody at my school would dare to talk to them. There wouldn’t be any whispers in those expensive hallways.

When she saw I wanted this school and this chance, Mom went a little nuts. Over the summer, we moved from the old family apartment in the Village—and wasn’t my aunt Cynthia happy to move in when we left—to a squinched-up little place on the Upper East Side. Mom took a second job, tending bar at night to cover those expenses. The new apartment was near the school and near Central Park, where the Christopher runners trained. I could practice with the team and not have to worry about taking the subway home after dark, Mom said, putting her altar up in a corner of her tiny bedroom. I felt guilty. Mom and her sisters were true believers in the family religion. She wasn’t happy with just a medallion, not even a proper hunt-Goddess figure, instead of the shrine in our own place, but this was only for four years, I
told myself. Maybe the new place wasn’t so much, but I could have friends, and bring them over, and only have to explain horseshoes over the doorways.

Anyway, I wasn’t a believer in the family Goddess after middle school. If their Goddess was so wonderful, why didn’t she fix my life? She protected maidens, right? Wasn’t I a maiden? My dad was right about that much—the worship was screwy.