“All right! All right!” Looking at Ari’s mom she said in the nastiest tone possible, “If I have offended, I ask your pardon.”
“My pardon is freely given,” Ari’s mother said, a glint in her dark eyes. “But hadn’t you better ask pardon of my son’s L’lorna as well? I believe she is also waiting for an apology.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, “No, no—it’s all right,” just to keep the peace, but I kept my mouth resolutely shut. If Ari and I stayed together and I wound up living in the Sky Lands, I would have to deal with this woman on a daily basis. I couldn’t start out by letting her think I was a pushover.
So instead of letting her out of the apology she owed me, I did my best to imitate Ari’s mom’s cool, level stare as I looked at her.
Sasha Sanchez looked like she would rather chew broken glass than apologize to me but her husband’s Drake nudged her again, so forcefully that her chair almost toppled over.
“All right!” she practically shrieked, reaching back to slap him on his broad green snout. The Drake reared his head back with a snort and shook it vigorously. Apparently she’d slapped a tender part of his nose and it hurt.
“Sasha? We’re waiting,” Ari’s mother said.
Sasha Sanchez looked at me in such a way that…well, I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “if looks could kill.” Anyway, she was staring at me like she was hoping to turn me to stone just with a nasty look. When that didn’t work, she finally had to apologize.
“Have I offered offense,” she ground out through gritted teeth with slitted eyes, “Then I ask pardon.”
“Freely given,” I said, just as Ari’s mom had.
“Very good.” Ari’s mom smiled genially at the seething woman. “See? That wasn’t so bad. You must treat your future queen with respect, Sasha. I won’t always be here to hold my son’s Drake back from making you sorry for your quick tongue. Now…” She clapped her hands together. “Let’s have some entertainment—shall we?” And she rang the golden bell again.
The entire Feasting Hall had been watching the little show-down between Ari’s mom, Sasha Sanchez, and me. Everyone had been completely silent, as though waiting to see how the conflict would play out. But the tinkling tones of the golden bell seemed to break some kind of a trance and everyone looked at Ari’s mom expectantly.
“Tonight,” she said, raising her voice and speaking clearly again, so all the Drakes and their wives could hear her. “We have one of our most famous bards to sing to us. I have asked that he would sing us the Ballad of how Drakes Merged with Men. I think it will be good to remind ourselves that we all came from the human world in the beginning.”
She looked pointedly down to the vast open square between the four tables where a minstrel with brightly colored clothes and an instrument that looked a little like a guitar with a round, drum-like back, had suddenly appeared.
“Ah, Lords and Ladies, Drakes and L’lornas,” he began with a flourish. “How honored I am to be among you tonight! Please be so kind as to grant me your attention as I spin for you the tale of our first beginnings…”
86
Kaitlyn
I sat forward in my chair, eager to hear the bard’s tale. And I couldn’t help thinking how smart Ari’s mom was. She was reminding everyone that all of their ancestors had once been human with not a drop of Drake blood. Also, how had people merged with dragons in the first place? There had to be some kind of magic involved, I thought. I was curious to find out.
The bard made another sweeping flourish that caused the long sleeves of his colorful robe to billow and then he began strumming his instrument with one hand while tapping its rounded bottom with the other. It was almost like he was playing a guitar and a drum at the same time—the gentle notes he plucked from the strings blended with the soft, rhythmic thumping and created an almost hypnotic melody.
I waited for him to start singing, but instead the bard began to speak in a kind of chant which somehow went with the music better than if he’d tried to sing.
“Long, long, long ago,” he began. “In our grandfathers’ grandfathers’ time, we lived in the world of humans. A world without magic—a world without Drakes.”
All around the room, people shook their heads at this awful thought but no one broke the spell the bard had created. Softly, he continued to chant.
“Then, one day, a simple farmer of the human land called Espana, found the first rift. And through it he saw a Drake flying—but then, of course, the Drake was just a dragon. For they had not yet merged with men.”
There were snorts from the assembled Drakes and I saw some puffs of smoke go up.
“This farmer, he was brave—the courage of a Drake had he,” the bard chanted. “And through the rift he came, to see this new land so wild and free.”
I wondered privately if I would have had the courage to step through a hole in the fabric of reality to a whole different land—a land where I had seen a huge dragon flying—and wasn’t sure.
“The man met the dragon,” the bard went on. “And his courage was rewarded. For rather than frying him for supper, the dragon invited him home. But a sad home it was—for the dragon had no mate. He told the man his sorrow—the sorrow of all his kind. For the she-dragons had all died and none could save them.”
How sad! I couldn’t help thinking. To
