The Dragon Keeper

“Da! No! It’s dead, it’s already dead! Da, run, get out of there!”



He heard her. He halted at her words and even looked up at her.



“Da, it’s dead, you can’t help it. Get out of there. To your left! Da, to your left, the red one! Get clear of it!”



The yellow and the green were already preoccupied with their dead fellow. They dove on it with the same abandon they had showed toward the deer. Strengthened by their earlier feast, they seemed more inclined to quarrel with each other over the choicest parts. Thymara had no interest in them, except that they kept each other busy. It was the red she cared about, the one who was lurching unevenly but swiftly toward her father. He saw his danger now. He did what she had feared he would do, a trick that often worked with tree cats. He opened his shirt and spread it, holding the fabric wide of his body. “Be large when something threatens you,” he had often told her. “Take on a shape it doesn’t recognize and it will become cautious. Present a larger aspect and sometimes it will back down. But never turn away. Keep an eye on it, be large, and move back slowly. Most cats love a chase. Don’t ever give them one.”



But this was not a cat. It was a dragon. Its jaws were wide open and its teeth showed white and sharp. Its hunger was the strongest thing in it. Although her father became visually larger, it showed no fear. Instead, she heard, no, felt its joyful interest in him. Meat. Big meat. Food! Hunger ripped through it as it staggered after the retreating man.



“Not meat!” Thymara shouted down at it. “Not food. Not food! Run, Da, turn and run! Run!”



The two miracles happened simultaneously. The first was that the young dragon heard her. Its blunt-nosed head swiveled toward her, startled. It threw itself off balance when it turned to look at her and staggered foolishly in a small circle. She saw then what had eluded her before. It was deformed. One of its hind legs was substantially smaller than the other. Not food? She felt a plaintive echo of her words. Not meat? No meat? Her heart broke for the young red. No meat. Only hunger. For that moment of oneness with it, she felt its hunger and its frustration.



But the second miracle tore her from that joining. Her father had listened to her. He had lowered his arms, turned away, and was fleeing back to the trees. She saw him dodge away from a small blue dragon who reached after him with yearning claws. Then her father reached the tree trunk and with the experience of years, ascended it almost as swiftly as he had run across the ground. In a few moments he was safely out of any dragon’s reach. A good thing, for the small blue had trotted hopefully after him. Now it stood at the foot of the tree, snorting and sniffing at the place where her father had climbed up. It took an experimental nip at the tree trunk, and then backed away shaking its head. Not meat! it decided emphatically, and it wobbled off, charting a weaving path through the hatching grounds where more and more young dragons were emerging from their wizardwood logs. Thymara didn’t watch the blue go. She had already slithered up onto the top of her branch. She came to one knee, then stood and ran up the branch to the trunk of the tree. She met her father as he came up. She grabbed his arm and buried her face against his shoulder. He smelled of fear sweat.



“Da, what were you thinking?” she demanded, and was shocked to hear the anger in her voice. An instant later, she knew that she had every right to be angry. “If I had done that, you’d be furious with me! Why did you go down there, what did you think you could do?”



“Up higher!” her father panted, and she was glad to follow him as he led the way to a higher branch. It was a good branch, thick and almost horizontal. They both sat down on it, side by side. He was still panting, from fear or exertion or perhaps both. She pulled her water skin from her satchel and offered it to him. He took it gratefully and drank deeply.



“They could have killed you.”



He took his mouth from the bag’s nozzle, capped it, and gave it back to her. “They’re babies still. Clumsy babies. I would have got away. I did get away.”



“They’re not babies! They weren’t babies when they went into their cocoons and they’re full dragons now. Tintaglia could fly within hours of hatching. Fly, and make a kill.” As she spoke, she pointed up through the foliage to a passing glint of blue and silver. It suddenly plummeted as the dragon dived. The wind of wildly beating wings assaulted both tree and Rain Wilders as the dragon halted her descent. A deer’s carcass fell from her claws to land with a thump on the clay, and without a pause her wings carried her up and away, back to her hunt. Squealing dragon hatchlings immediately scampered toward it. They fell on the food, tearing chunks of meat free and gulping them down.