Chapter Two
Clouds rolled low across the slate gray sky, piercing the mountaintops and casting the icy bays in ominous dimness. To the east, white-tailed eagles screeched above Loch Seaforth and flapped their wings above the waves, hoping to catch a fish.
The bracing wind of early spring blew across River Wray’s hooded parka, sweeping it from her shoulders twice already and she hadn’t even passed the next village. She gave up trying to keep her hair tucked inside and gave her ear to the sounds of nature around her. She spread her gaze over the snow-dusted mountain range around her and Clisham mountain to the west, highest in the Outer Hebrides, her nemesis. She saw it every morning on her way to work, and each day she thought about conquering it. Climbing it wasn’t the issue. She’d climbed it before. Her dream was to fly beyond it, beyond all the mountains, to escape the confines of her life and her past. But she was afraid to go, afraid to face the multitude when just a few had such power over her. Maraig, as small as it was, was home. It was safe.
Part of her hated herself for clinging to what she knew, even though what she knew hadn’t been pleasant. She made up for her fearfulness in other ways, like standing up to bullies and never giving up on her dreams. She’d work tirelessly at it, as long as she had to and she’d take care of her family while she did it. But one day, she’d leave and it would be her music that propelled her.
She’d known from an early age that she was sensitive to the brutal grandeur of nature, moved to tears by the otherwise ordinary. She heard music in the mundane and when she was eleven, she composed her first piece. One day, her work would be picked up by someone big and then she would have no more excuses not to leave Harris.
There was nothing here for her but memories she couldn’t escape. As far as her love life went, it didn’t. She wasn’t interested in dating the same boys she used to beat up for teasing her. She’d been taller than most of them. Being long-legged and lanky had made her awkward. Her ginger hair, when almost everyone else’s was blonde, or dark like her sister’s, made her stand out. Her mother had abandoned them when River and Ivy were eight. Everyone in her village and the neighboring villages knew that Lena Wray had run off with her lover. That was when the teasing had truly begun. Most of the time, River had been so busy consoling her sister and cooking for her father that she didn’t have time to fight. Most times, she did fight though—and won. And then, of course, there was the fact that her father was the village lunatic, who claimed to have seen a dragon kill a man over twenty years ago.
Her childhood had made her self-conscious as a teen.
Over the years, she’d learned to ignore the whispers about her father. Her mother…well, that took more time from which to heal.
She’d grown into her six-foot frame, becoming more confident, even leaving Harris for two years to study at Edinburgh University and testing her wings a little. She’d met men, went to bed with one of them. She thought she loved him, but when she had to leave and return to Harris, she never heard from him again. After that, she stopped looking and went to work at the shop, composing her music at night.
She didn’t care if she was twenty-one, single, and living at home with her father and her fraternal twin sister. Despite the monotony of being in the same small place, with the same people, making the same choices every day, her life now was good. She didn’t mind living in a mostly harsh climate, in mostly barren land, surrounded by mountain ranges, forests, and water.
She dreamed of more though. She—
She blinked her eyes on the snow-carpeted crag ahead. She stopped, and so had the wind. Did she just see a slight movement against the wall? Something gigantic and as white as the late frost? A trick of her eyes? The shadowy sky? It had to be. It had looked as if a whole portion of the ridge had inched to the left.
She waited a moment in the stillness of the morning. Watching, listening. When she was sure there was no more sign of movement, she continued on. It was nothing more than her overactive imagination. It helped when she was composing her music, but not when she was alone. Many worked in Tarbert but they traveled by road. She always chose the more scenic route, the footpath less traveled.
She’d never felt as if she were in danger until this moment. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was as if something in the air had changed. It set off an alarm from someplace primal within her. Her flesh prickled beneath her parka. She looked toward the loch to get her thoughts off it. The birds were gone. Her gaze flicked back to the crag. It didn’t move again. She was going to have to pass it to get to work—just as she’d passed it hundreds of times before.
This time felt different. This time, her hair crept away from her skin and her heart felt racy. She tried to think of other things as she grew closer, like the two years she’d spent at University studying music, and Colin…no, thinking of him and how easily he’d forgotten her would only make her feel worse.
She kept her eyes straight ahead. She could see the road to Tarbert up ahead and quickened her pace. She wasn’t one to frighten easily when it had to do with anything but actually leaving Harris. She was used to her imagination taking off now and then, making her blood rush through her and her heart pound. In fact, part of her wished it happened more often.
She heard a sound like the wind blowing off the crag. Her heart thumped and, again, she stopped. She turned. She had no idea what she expected to see, but it wasn’t the outline of something that seemed out of place along the ridge. She squinted her eyes. The shape blended in perfectly with the snow but shadows fell on it in a way that made it look as if it were separate from the rock.
What was it? She took a step toward it, curiosity prompting her forward. Was…it…moving, rising and falling slowly, deeply? Her heart almost failed her when she realized it was breathing! She didn’t have time to doubt her observation or her sanity when a whole section of the crag shifted and what had been an outline a minute before, came to three-dimensional life before her, uncurling its huge, spiked head from its powerful, spaded tail.
This isn’t real. River told herself over and over while snow, shaken from its place by the thing’s movement, drifted down on her. She wanted to run, to scream. In fact, she was screaming—in her head. She was too stunned and terrified to use her vocal chords except to expel tight, little cries she tried for some foolish reason to muffle with her mittens.
Heavily-armored in pearly white scales, it rose up high above her on its gigantic legs. Arms, slightly smaller, and long, white talons clawing the air. It turned its spiked head and aimed its debilitating lapis gaze straight at her.
She didn’t move, didn’t breathe as she stared into its chillingly beautiful eyes. It had a wide, angular snout and scaly nostrils that blew out a gust of warm air, pushing her hood back from her head.
Dear God, help her. She tried to cling to consciousness. It was a dragon. Her mind couldn’t take it in for a minute. It was a real dragon. Her father had been right. He’d spoken many times, in fact, too many times, of a great blue-green-colored beast flying across the sun, blackening the land and flying into someone’s penthouse window. No one believed him and he’d lost much because of it.
Drawn to the magical, River had always wanted to believe dragons existed. Now, she did. Dragons were real, and big, and very dangerous, living in obscurity among humans.
The fantasy had just gone dark.
She wanted to faint so that when it killed her, she wouldn’t feel its long fangs ripping through her. It was enormous, with tear-shaped scales and…her knees nearly buckled beneath her…giant, leathery wings that stretched out over twenty-five feet.
But since she didn’t faint, she decided to try to save her life—and the lives of others. Dragons breathed fire, didn’t they? It could kill Ivy, her father, the people from the village. Who could fight this thing if it flew off to any of the villages? They wouldn’t even know it was there until it was too late. She would have walked right by it. Her heart thumped so hard it made her feel sick.
Obscurity was its weapon.
“Wait!” She held up her hands. “Don’t eat me!”
It looked at her as if it understood what she was saying, as if there was intelligence behind its piercing gaze.
“I’ll…I’ll make a deal with you,” she managed, thinking she should close her eyes to help her stay conscious. Looking at it sapped the breath from her lungs. “Don’t eat me or go to the villages and I promise I won’t say a word about your existence.”
What was she doing? It didn’t understand her and, even if it did, her end of the bargain didn’t hold much weight. She wouldn’t say a word if she was in its belly.
The beast stretched its neck toward her, binging its jaws close, enveloping her in its breath. She finally closed her eyes, fighting back a scream, waiting for the pain.
I don’t eat people.
His voice, husky and male, resonated through her head and rumbled through her blood, her bones, dominating every other thought. Her eyes shot open. Was that…his voice in her head? How? How was she hearing him? She covered her ears with her mittens and finally fainted.
Just before she lost consciousness, she would have sworn the dragon licked its chops.