The Dragon Keeper
“So you would name me after a flower? Skymaw?” Sintara was not pleased. It seemed a silly, fragile name to her, but she had asked the girl. Perhaps in this one thing, she could humor the human. But still, she asked her, “Do you not think I deserve a name that has more teeth to it?”
The girl looked down at her feet as if the dragon had caught her in a lie. Quietly, she admitted, “Skymaws are dangerous to touch. They are beautiful and the fragrance is alluring, but the nectar inside will dissolve a butterfly instantly and devour a hummingbird in less than an hour.”
Sintara stretched her jaws wide in pleasure and concluded, “Then it is not just the color of the flower that makes you think of me? It is the danger it poses?”
“I suppose. Yes.”
“Then you may call me Skymaw. Do you see what the boy over there is doing to the runty red dragon?”
The girl followed Sintara’s glance. Rapskal had pulled an armful of needled branches from a tree and was energetically scrubbing his dragon’s back. Cleansed of mud and dust, even that stumpy little dragon sparkled like a ruby in the sunlight. “I don’t think he means any harm. I think he’s trying to get some of the parasites off her.”
“Exactly. And the wax from the needles is good for the skin.” Graciously, Sintara told her, “You are allowed to perform that service for me.”
AS THE TARMAN slowly nosed its way onto the muddy bank, Alise looked over the fantastic scene before her and felt rankest envy. Sun and heat baked the bare riverbank as the final hours of afternoon dwindled away. Scattered about on the bank were at least a dozen dragons in every imaginable color tended by young Rain Wilders. Some of the dragons were stretched out in peaceful sleep. Two stood by the water, waiting impatiently as a couple of boys holding spears walked slowly up and down the riverbank, looking for fish. On the ebbing edge of a sun-washed mudbank, a long gold dragon sprawled, his blue-white underbelly turned toward the last kiss of the sun. Lying against him slept a little girl, her pink-scaled scalp glittering as brightly as the dragon she tended. At one end of the long bank of mud stood the largest dragon of all, tall and black. The sun struck glittering dark blue sparks from his outstretched wings. A bare-chested young man, almost as heavily scaled as a dragon himself, was grooming the creature’s wings. At the opposite end of the beach, as if in counterpoint, a girl with a broom made of cedar boughs was diligently sweeping a sprawled blue dragon. The girl’s black braids danced against the back of her neck as she worked. The dragon shifted as Alise watched, stretching out a hind leg so that the girl might groom it.
“I didn’t realize the dragons had human tenders. I mean, I knew that they had hunters helping provide for them, but I didn’t realize that—”
“They don’t. Or they didn’t.” Leftrin had a knack for interrupting her in a way that was friendly rather than rude. “They’re all newcomers. Those are the keepers you heard about, the ones who are going to move the dragons upriver. They can’t have been here much longer than a day, at most two.”
“But some of them are only children!” Alise protested. It was not her concern for them that sharpened her voice. It was, she thought, simple jealousy. There they were, mere youngsters, doing exactly what she had imagined herself doing. Somehow, she had visualized herself as being the first to befriend a dragon, to touch it with kindness and win its confidence. The way Althea and Brashen had described the dragons, she had thought they would be like reptilian half-wits, awaiting, perhaps, her understanding and patience to unlock their innate intelligence. What she saw on the beach was another broken pane in the dream window; she was not to be the dragons’ savior, the only one who understood them.
Leftrin shrugged a heavy shoulder in response to her comment, mistaking it for concern. “Youngsters don’t get to be children long in the Rain Wilds, and especially not children like those. Look at them. It’s a wonder their parents kept them. You can’t tell me those youngsters are all late-changers. You don’t get claws unless you were born with them. And that young man there? I’ll wager he was born with scales on his head and has never had a bit of hair anywhere on his body. No, they’re all mistakes, the lot of them. And that’s why they were chosen.”
His blunt and cold appraisal of the dragons’ attendants shocked Alise into silence.
“And are you and the Tarman a mistake? Is that why you were chosen for the expedition?” Sedric’s voice was as acidic as the river.
But if Leftrin noticed the intended unpleasantness in his tone, he didn’t react to it. “No, me and Tarman are hired. And the contract’s a good one, tight as a contract can be written. And the terms are good, for Tarman and me.” Here he tipped Alise a broad wink, and she almost blushed. He spoke on as if Sedric could not have noticed it. “Not just because no one else would take it, but because the Rain Wild Council knows that no one else can do this job. Tarman and I have been farther up the river than any other large vessel. There may be a few who have gone farther, game scouts in canoes and such. But you can’t do what the Council wants done from a canoe.”