She felt his thoughts snuff out, and that made her a little sad. Little Ones burned so easily.
A second flamestrike engulfed her. The fire warmed her, but didn't frighten her. The Little One was afraid, though. Sharply, suddenly filled with fear. She felt it from all of them, but especially from the one beside her. And pain. The Little One was in pain. And panic. And terror. The emotions rolled into her from the Little One. She didn't know what to do with them. She'd never felt these things before. Bad things that made her want to run away.
The newcomer dragons were still close. She could still feel their thoughts, hot and fierce. They were circling around. They meant to come back.
She seized the Little One gently in her left foreclaws and hurled herself down the river, picking up speed with each stride. One of the other dragons swooped over her. She felt its thoughts and held the Little One close as the dragon above raked her with fire.
It passed over her head. As it did, she launched herself into the air and snapped at its tail. She still clasped the Little One tight to her breast. It was out of its mind, screaming and thrashing. Its thoughts were a jumble, disconcerting and incoherent. They made her feel strange. When another dragon swooped past her, she snapped at that one too and lashed it with her tail. She felt its surprise as it veered away.
Up, up, up. Faster and faster. Away. Sometimes she thought the Little One was trying to tell her to let it go, but its thoughts were chaos, broken and messy, and it kept contradicting itself. Three of the new dragons were following her. They were bigger than she was. They felt older. They had Little Ones to tell them what to do too. She could feel their determination, their hostility.
Another dragon dived from the sky above. A dragon she knew, one of the strong ones. One of the dragons that had come from her nest place. It shot down like an arrow and smashed into the closest dragon behind her, sending them both tumbling towards the ground. She heard the shrieks of other dragons echoing around the valleys, and with them came a surge of excitement. The dragons behind her were all gone, spiralling down together, snapping and lashing at her nest-mate.
She felt a shriek of terror from one of the Little Ones, abruptly cut to nothing. Then they were all gone, too far behind for her to hear their thoughts any more.
The excitement faded. The Little One held in her claws was calmer now, and her own thoughts were less confused. A part of her wanted to go back and play with these new dragons, but the Little One's thoughts were clear: it wanted to get away. Far, far away. It didn't know which way she should go and it didn't care, so she flew whichever way caught her eye, along valleys, between mountains, over lakes. She'd never seen this land before, or anything like it, with all its strange shapes and colours and so much sparkling rushing water. She dragged the tip of her tail through shimmering mirrors, soared and dived and snapped at waterfalls, and spiralled around mountains, riding the currents of rising air. Eventually the light faded, the sun set and the Little One's thoughts went quiet. She could feel herself slowly getting too warm, but the landscape was simply too fresh and exciting to ignore, and so she flew on, playing with it until the heat inside her was positively uncomfortable. Then she landed by a lake. She carefully put the Little One down on the ground, out in the open where she could see him, and bounded into the delicious ice-cold water. She splashed and played under the stars until she was cool again, and then curled up around the Little One and went to sleep.
She dreamed. Far, far away, things were happening. Immense things. Somehow she was a part of them, but they were so far away, she couldn't see them, couldn't hear them, couldn't remember them. She tried to fly towards them, but they kept moving away, eluding her, darting out of the way when she lunged for them.
Abruptly the sun was in the sky again, creeping over the surrounding peaks. She yawned and stretched out her tail and arched her back. The Little One was awake again. She could feel its thoughts. It was hungry.
Yes. Hungry. She was hungry too. She looked at the Little One and bared her teeth, as she always did when it was feeding time.
Tm sorry, Snow. You'll have to find your own breakfast.'
She looked around. She didn't understand most of the noises that the Little Ones made, but sometimes their thoughts were enough. He didn't have any food for her. He was in pain too. And he was afraid. She didn't like those thoughts. They made her feel anxious, and so she stopped listening to them. She thought about being hungry instead, waiting for the Little One to do something about it. When he didn't, she bared her teeth at him again.
'Hunt,' he said. 'You have to hunt.'
Hunt. She knew that noise. It meant flying and chasing and, yes! Catching and killing and eating.
She rose onto all fours and then lowered her neck, inviting the Little One to climb onto her back.
'I can't, Snow. I'm a Scales, not a rider. I'm not allowed.'
The noises made no sense. Hunt meant that a Little One sat on her back and told her where to go. She lowered her neck even more, rubbing it against the stones on the ground.
'They'd put me to death if they knew.' The Little One started to walk in circles. Its thoughts were confused, still laced with pain, Still frightened. 'Only riders ride dragons. That's the law. We should go back. What happened? Were we attacked?' It shook its head. 'Oh, I wish you could speak. What if they're still there? The queen won't be back yet, will she? Oh, what to do? I can't ride with you, Snow. There's no saddle; I'd fall. But we can't stay here, and you can't find your way home on your own. I don't even know where we are. Do you know where we are?'
She rubbed her neck against the ground again and bared her teeth once more. Hunt. Hungry.
'You want to eat. Yes, you must be hungry. Oh, but there aren't any alchemists here. You have to drink the water they make for you. You'll get sick otherwise. We'll have to go back.'
Hunt. Hungry. She made the gestures again. She was starting to get frustrated, and the Little One's thoughts were confusing her. She couldn't make any sense of them.
'I can't climb on your back, Snow. There's no harness. I can't reach.' The Little One walked to her left foreclaws and tried to open them. She didn't understand what he wanted to do, then she caught a picture from his mind, of flying through the air at night, and she was carrying him.
Yes. The way they'd come here. Carefully she raised herself onto her back legs and held out her foreclaws. The Little One nodded and made noises, and in his thoughts she saw that she'd understood him. He climbed into her claws, and she gently closed them around him.
'Hunt!' he said.
Hunt. That was something she understood.
24
A Memory of Flames
They hunted. She ate. The Little One ate too, and then they climbed into the sky together again. The Little One wanted to go somewhere, but it didn't know which way to go, so she flew again as the fancy took her, into a wilderness of crags and broken stone and boulders the size of castles. She tried to hunt there too, but the land was barren and empty. When night fell, she found a place to land and went to sleep. The dreams came again, as distant as ever.
The next day they flew back out among the valleys and rivers. It rained. She liked that, liked the feel of it. The Little One started telling her which way to go. She understood its thoughts: Left, straight, right, up, down. She knew the noises too, but when they were racing through the air, the noises were all lost in the wind, and she had to pluck the thoughts out of the Little One's head. She began to wonder whether this Little One was somehow broken. The other Little Ones that sat on her back had thoughts that were much clearer.
'We're lost,' said the Little One. She didn't understand, but she could see in his thoughts that he was anxious. He was always anxious. Mostly she blocked him out.
They looked for dragons but they didn't find any. The next day was the same. And the next. But at night, when she slept, something was beginning to change. The dreams were coming closer. She didn't notice it at first, but after a few days a strange understanding came to her. She wanted the dreams. More than anything else, she wanted them. They were important. More important than food or shelter or even than the Little One. She didn't know why; they simply were. With that one revelation came another. They would come to her as long as she stayed here, away from the others, alone.
