Flightless

Sayne trudged through knee-deep snow, one gloved hand on the warm scales at the base of Merillian's neck, the other holding a hood tight around her face. The fur lining tickled her already red, irritated nose.

"Can't find a good war anywhere these days," she shouted over the gale and was rewarded with a mouthful of sleet.

Merillian slowed and twisted his head around to look her in the eye. His scales were crimson fire against the glare from the snow, his eyes smaller points of yellow flame. He blocked the wind a little; enough to allow Sayne to release her hood and rub some feeing back into her hand.

"When people struggle to eat, they do not care to fight." He unfurled his wings and wrapped them bright around her. "And they will not spare what little they have for a dragon and his mercenary."

Sayne shrugged back her hood. She dug into a tight pocket on the side of her jacket and pulled out a small wooden jar. It was flat, barely half an inch thick, with a lid that latched on to keep it firmly closed.

Tugging a glove off with her teeth, Sayne eyed the dragon, trying to keep her expression flat and unimpressed. A little difficult with the glove dangling from her mouth. "We need a job, Merillian." The words came out muffled.

They hadn't had a job in months. No armies to fight, no cities to defend. Nothing to do but walk, nothing to eat but what they scavenged, and nowhere to sleep but beneath what inadequate shelter they could find.

"That does not change the situation." He sighed; the rush of breath warmed her face. Sayne unlatched the jar with a quick movement and dug two fingers inside. While he shook his head at her, like a pendulum on his long neck, she smeared thick white paste over her nose and cheekbones. The stuff smelled lightly of lavender and clay. It usually protected her from the sharp sun in the high altitude where she and Merillian flew.

Storms had stopped that now. Ice in the sky, exhausting cold, and winds that could pummel a dragon even as large as Merillian, had grounded them.

"We could go south again, try where it's warmer. There's got to be some greedy bastard stealing land and hoarding livestock. They'd need a dragon rider, I'm sure--"

"Sayne." Merillian tightened his circling wings and lowered his muzzle until it was inches from her nose. "Everywhere we have been, all the places you thought we should go, were like this." He dipped his head slightly, indicating the city behind them. Dark and walled-in against the storm, they had not bothered to open their gates when they sent Sayne and Merillian away. "Now we are right where we should be. We come closer with every step. We cannot turn around now."

Every step. That was the problem, wasn't it? Her legs ached from fighting the snow; the tip of her long sword, made for battle on dragon-back, not for carrying on land, stuck into the ground. The leather that belted it to her hip chafed her waist, even through fur‑lined clothes of thick seal‑hide.

She forced herself a step forward and pressed her face against Merillian's cheek. "This isn't right."

"No, it is not." The dragon's voice vibrated through her like a second pulse. "That is why we are here, and that is why we are going there." Merillian drew his head back and stared up at a mountain piercing the heavy clouds above them. "The storms have brought us here, they carry dragon-magic on their winds. We will find this magic together, my love. This dragon who freezes the world."

"That's not what I meant," Sayne whispered. "We should be flying, my love. We should be flying." But she did not think he heard.

Sayne crouched at an opening high in the side of the mountain. Outside, sleet sliced through the night with a dark howl. "Are we getting closer?" She dreaded the answer, but it didn't stop her asking.

"Yes, Sayne. For the last time, yes." Behind her, away from the opening and the rush of wind, Merillian curled his mouth in a bemused smile. Sharp teeth, kept fastidiously clean, peeked out of the corners. "You do not need to keep asking me, the magic is clear. I follow it with ease."

Nodding, but not at all reassured, Sayne straightened and turned her back on the sky. She trekked deeper into the system of caves, the dragon a large, iridescent shadow behind her.

Darkness wrapped around them like a muffling hand. In the silence, the closeness, Sayne was sure she could feel the mountain above them. All that rock, just waiting to collapse. It can't have been good for a mountain to be so riddled with holes.

"Merillian?" she whispered. Her voice sounded loud inside her head, and Merillian's shuffling scales too far away.

He let out a short breath. "Yes?"

"I don't suppose we could have a little light?"

After a moment of silence Merillian began to glow. Just a little, enough to light the floor a few feet ahead and set minerals sparkling like rubies in the walls. Not his full color, not his rage red.

"Thank you."

"I did not realise you disliked the dark so." Still amused.

Sayne scowled. She loosened the knots of dark leather that did up the jacket around her neck, and fished stands of her hair from the sweat on her shoulders. The caverns were airless and growing steadily warmer.

"It's not the dark I'm worried about."

Merillian bumped his nose against her shoulder. "You do not want to do this, do you?" His words were clipped.

When Sayne turned to face him his eyes were narrow. The spines at the top of his head and as far as she could see down his neck had grown dark. Sayne shook her head; she hadn't meant to upset him.

But she would not lie. "No, I do not. I understand that the world out there is freezing. And I know you want to help. But I do not understand what you think you can do--"

"It is freezing because of dragon magic, Sayne. A dragon is doing this."

"I know!" Exasperated, Sayne reached out to Merillian's muzzle. He pulled back, lifting his head, scattering light on wet stalactites. "You're not responsible for the rest of your kind." She let her hand fall.

"But I am still a dragon. Maybe you do not understand, but I cannot just let this be."

Merillian pushed past her, forcing Sayne up against the rock. It was sticky, warmer even than the air, and made a great sucking noise when Sayne hurried to follow him.

So slowly she didn't notice it at first, a faint glow began to lighten the caves. Not quite sunlight, something closer to the moon. Silvery and distant.

A low pulse thumped into her chest, like deep thunder.

"Did you feel that?" Sweat dripped down from her hair. It stung as it caught in her eyelashes, and she wiped it away with an impatient hand. It was getting hotter; somehow, it was getting hotter.

The pulse came again. A large heartbeat, slow, so deep she couldn't hear it but felt it instead.

Sayne shivered, despite the heat. Everything about this place felt wrong. From the sticky, sucking walls, to the freezing world outside. Dragon magic, Merillian had called it, but she had never seen him do things like this. His roar was fearsome, yes, and his eyes could arrest a man's will. But he had never summoned storms, never ice. And definitely not some sticky, mucous-like goop.

Sayne pulled her sweat‑slicked gloves off and yanked up her sleeve. The white bonding scar on her forearm was pink in Merillian's light. She touched it.

I fear for you, my love. Can't you see that?

For a moment he did not respond. And when he did, it was not through their bond. He forced distance between them.

"You do not have to follow."

But she did, of course. They were bound.

The glow grew stronger and the cavern slowly opened up. The roof became a large, domed ceiling, too even to be the rock's natural pattern. In the centre of the room was a raised path, one large enough for a dragon to walk in comfort.

The entire room dripped with the sticky fluid Sayne had found on the walls. It sluiced down from the ceiling in thick tendrils to pool either side of the path. Sayne pressed a hand against her nose and mouth. The stuff stunk, sulfuric and rotten.

A woman lounged in a throne-like chair at the end of the path. She draped over it like a doll, all loose limbs and wide, vacant eyes.

Another pulse rattled Sayne, deeper this time. Stronger.

Merillian hesitated at the opening before plunging head. He loped down the path, wings flat against his back, moving faster than a land-bound dragon had any right to. Sayne ran to keep up. "Merillian?"

He barred her way, stopped in front of the woman on her throne and shone his fighting red. Half blinded by his light, impeded by his bulk, Sayne stumbled to a halt behind him.

"Took longer than I thought." The woman sounded like the rustling of scales when she spoke. Sayne could see pale hands and a knee as she unwound herself from the chair.

Merillian reared, spreading his wings wide, all the black spines on his neck and body rattled like a challenged snakes. "Who are you?" He boomed through the chamber.

Sayne strained to see around him, hot hands slipping on the hilt of her sword as she struggled to pull it free.

The woman just laughed. "Are you the only one? None of the others have felt me?"

Merillian shook his wings, they rippled like fire. "Where is the dragon? I can feel his magic."

"Poor, human bound." Between the dragon's fluttering wings and his great back, Sayne could barely see the woman. She seemed to be raising her hands, pointing at Merillian. "You are so faded, so weak. So blind."

Silver light cracked through the cavern. Sayne lurched forward, unable to see. Merillian roared, not a painful sound, no, something angry. Horrified.

"You do not deserve a dragon's body."

And then a weight on her chest pushed Sayne back, and her feet found only emptiness. Merillian breathed into her ear and she opened her arms, she found him against her, small, soft, and she held on tight.

Light enveloped her and together, they fell.

Rare sunlight filtered in through a window to light the copper in Merillian's hair. Sayne caught herself staring at it. She rolled the words over in her head, mouthed them, tasted what they sounded like. Merillian's hair. Merillian's hair.

His skin, dark like a ripened olive. Teeth whiter than snow. His eyes were still yellow, still wise. So he was Merillian, still. But Merillian transformed, oh so transformed.

"Sayne." His voice was different. Deep, yes, like a good man's should be. But it didn't resonate in her chest to rearrange her heart‑beat. It didn't fill her head like an echo. It wasn't a dragon's voice, and it didn't have a dragon's magic. "You are staring at me again." He turned his head slightly, to glare at her.

Sayne blushed and quickly looked away. Two days since she had woken, buried in snow, the peak of the mountain towering above them. Two days since she had discovered Merillian in her arms, Merillian naked, unconscious, cold, and human.

Human.

"I'm sorry."

He turned from the window. Moved one foot, then the other. He wasn't comfortable in his new body and did everything carefully. Ulac, the trapper who had opened the door of his small, stone hut to them, thought Merillian was slow. That much was obvious, from his sidelong glances and over-patient smiles.

A trapper. Oh, the vast ironies of life. Distractedly, Sayne rubbed at the scar on her forearm. Merillian had one too, on his leg, where the trap had caught him all those years ago. When they had forged their blood bond.

As a dragon, the scar had been invisible, but now--

"Sayne?"

"What?" Sayne met his eyes, saw his face, and quickly looked back down.

"You are staring again. Is that all you can do?"

Sayne, hand on her scar, frowned. She couldn't hear him, not the way she used to, not with the touching of thoughts, the caresses of mind their blood bond had created. Now, when she touched her scar, she heard nothing.

"I'm sorry."

"Yes, I heard." Merillian made his slow way to a bench close to the room's small fireplace. Embers burned within it. Sayne couldn't bring herself to leave to get more firewood. Not yet.

He sat, awkwardly. "Is this so very hard for you?"

Now would be a good time.

"We need more wood--"

"Sayne."

She had been immune to his magic for a long time now, but she couldn't resist that tone. She folded like a chastised child and sat right where she was standing, legs on the cold floor and back against the colder wall.

"If it is hard for you, can you not think what it must be like for me?"

"Of course I can. That's all I'm thinking about!" Because she couldn't let herself think about how it made her feel. To see him human. To remember him soft, in her arms, as they fell.

"I see." He hadn't learned to control his face yet. Red blotched his cheeks and his lips thinned.

"Merillian, how did this happen?"

His jaw clenched, like someone trying hard not to cry. Or, she thought, to stop himself from screaming.

She should be comforting him. Holding him. Reassuring him. Isn't that what humans did for other humans? But Sayne hadn't spent much time with people. She stayed on the floor, and tugged at a line of dry spider-grass coming loose from the compacted dirt.

"I do not know." He stared at the window with its open shutters. The sunlight was getting cooler, thinner. It would start snowing again soon. "The mountain, the caverns, was full of it. Dragon magic." He hesitated.

Sayne nodded. "Yes?"

Merillian copied the motion, frowning with concentration. "But when we got there, it wasn't. Or, at least, it wasn't right. It felt twisted. It felt dead."

Sayne sat so still she wasn't breathing.

"I don't know how I can tell it to you. How can I explain to a human--?" His voice cracked. "Dragon magic is rich. It is fire and flight, passion and will. What I found in that place, with that woman, was sickness. Sucking and death. I cannot explain it any other way."

Closing her eyes, Sayne remembered the cold light. The liquid dripping putrid and thick from the walls. She thought she understood.

"But it doesn't matter now." There was no passion in Merillian's broken voice. No will. "There is nothing we can do to help this world, to help ourselves. Now that I am changed."

"Merillian."

He was staring out the window again, this time at a world of white. White rimming the small squares of distorted glass. White draping the trees, carpeting the earth, falling from the sky. Only dark, grey clouds broke the pattern.

Sayne stood beside him and pretended to look out the window. Instead, she searched his face from the corner of her eye. Even though she caught fear in the quiver of his cheek, or a haunted emptiness in his yellow eyes, she was glad. For once, the dragon couldn't hide. For once, he was as open and fragile as she.

"Merillian."

"Sayne?" He jerked a little, and glanced sheepishly over his shoulder. "I did not hear you."

Sayne nodded, her stomach tightening. Merillian used to know where she was, no matter how near or far. With him there, always watching, always feeling, she was never alone.

"What about the others?" Sayne rubbed at her bonding scar through layers of cotton and rough wool. "Others?"

"The other dragons. The wild flocks? Do you think they will come? They could stop the dragon magic, couldn't they?"

Merillian shuffled back to the fire. He hadn't left the room since they had arrived, not even to empty the chamber pot the trapper had supplied. A rough, clay thing he eyed with utter disgust.

"I do not know where the flocks are. Even before I was changed, I did not know. I was bonded, no longer welcome. As the humans did not welcome you."

Would they be welcome now? "But won't they--?"

"Sayne!" Merillian gestured sharply, and the tips of his fingers shook. "I do not know, do you not understand? The flocks could be anywhere, too far to feel the magic, or too far to survive the flight here. Dragons can die in this cold. They do not have sheep skin or plant trappings to keep them warm." He plucked at the clothes Ulac had provided for him, the lines around his face shadowed with distain. "So do not ask me if they will be coming to save us. We cannot rely on dragons anymore. Do you hear? You cannot rely on them!"

Mouth open, empty of words and tasting stuffy air, Sayne stared at him.

"Now, now."

Sayne spun to see Ulac by the doorway, arm holding up the woven fabric that covered it. His worn, brown skin wrinkled as he frowned. But worse than that, he was still dressed from his day in the snow. Dead rabbits in their snares dangled from his hand.

"The lady's only trying to help you, boy." Ulac stepped closer to Sayne, as though Merillian would ever hurt her. As though Merillian was a boy, for that matter. "Won't have no shouting at ladies in my house."

Merillian's eyes had gone wild, his rich skin pale with shock. He had never spoken to Ulac before, never seen him outright. Sayne had done all the negotiation for them. And she had never told him Ulac was a trapper.

"Mer--"

"You!" Merillian stepped forward and stumbled in his haste. He fell to his knees, face contorted, and raised a shaking hand. "What have you done?"

He was looking at Sayne. Hating, accusing. Quivering with his betrayal.

Struck dumb, Sayne took a shaky step back and into Ulac's chest. "Calm, Merillian. Please."

"They tried to kill me! Don't you remember when they tried to kill me?"

Of course she remembered! She would never forget the day she found him as a young dragon, barely hatched, trapped and dying in the forest near her home. When she had tried to set him free, and bound them together instead.

"You get me out of here, Sayne. Get me out of this. This thing you people call a body!" His final words dissolved into an inarticulate roar, a pitiful parody of his ferocious dragon sound.

Ulac laid a gloved hand on Sayne's shoulder. His grip was strangely light and gentle, for one who spent his life killing the small and the weak. "Are you all right, miss?"

Sayne, stomach heavy and nauseous, nodded. "Yes, he's just--" She swallowed the words. "Thank you."

Ulac patted her, the gesture awkward and boyish. "You need me, then you call." He left silently, taking his dead, trapped animals with him.

Merillian could not stand. His legs floundered as Sayne helped pull him to his feet. Finally, he found his human balance and jerked his arm out of her hands. Shaking, he stood uncertain and wobbly, staring at the floor.

"It is too cold." He wrapped his arms around his chest and lurched to his small pallet in the corner. "You humans are too soft, and it is too cold."

You humans?

"Merillian--"

"Please, Sayne."

"My lo--"

"Just go."

Numb, unable to argue with him even if she'd wanted to, Sayne left him to his misery. She stood on the other side of the door woven from blue wool and brown leather, and ran a hand lightly over its soft surface.

Would Merillian's hair feel like that? He hadn't let her close enough to touch it.

"He's a sick one, ain't he?"

Sayne jumped a little as Ulac stepped out of the dark hallway. Damn, the man could move quietly.

She rubbed her bond scar again. "No, not really." She didn't want the trapper worrying about some phantom sickness in his home. "He's just--" What could she say to explain it? A dragon in a human's body?

"I understand, miss. It's the winter. Happens to them all the first time. Get yourself stuck out here, can't go home, can't go out. Just gotta wait. The walls, girl, they drive a man mad. Get him walking if you can. Let him stretch his legs a little." Ulac nodded, smiled his wrinkled smile, and continued down the hall.

Sayne stayed pressed against cold stone, and wondered if Merillian would ever stretch into his human skin. No matter how much walking she made him do.

The snow had stopped falling, and a thumbnail of a moon shone intermittently from behind the clouds. A sharp wind blew them along and bit through Sayne's thick jacket.

But Merillian's hand was warm. And as she led him out, over the crunching snow and from under heavily laden trees, that was all she allowed herself to feel. Merillian's hand. In hers.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" She forced brightness into her voice.

Merillian was like a dead weight; she had to pull just to get a small step out of him. He stared up at the trees; they shivered in the wind and shed snow with each quiver. "How long do you think they can stay like this? The trees? Before they die?"

"Here." Sayne pulled Merillian to the edge of a small, rocky incline. Granite was dark against the white ground, even more so in the night. "Isn't it lovely?"

Sayne had taken Ulac's advice herself, and gone walking around the trapper's small building. She had discovered they were still quite high up, still on the same mountain, really, where the woman waited and conjured up her storms. From this point, this little ledge, they could see the valley below. Eerily lit by snow and fleeting moonlight, it was all white, with spots of dark trees and even the occasional light. Fires, houses; small specks like stars in a bleached sky.

Merillian took a sharp breath. "I--" He cleared his crackling throat with a disorganized splutter of a cough. "I did not realise we were so high."

"Me neither." In the silence, with beauty spread out before them, Sayne edged closer to him. She wore her dragon-riding clothes. She had given Merillian her woolens to wear on top of his own, but he still shivered, small movements that traveled along his body like tremors.

Sayne leaned against him, and Merillian didn't move away. Slowly, so slowly it felt like he was taking all night to do it, Merillian wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

"Thank you." In his voice she heard thanks, and fear, and regret all at once. "Thank you for bringing me here."

Merillian, holding her. Merillian, warm and soft. Human.

It didn't matter if the trees died. It didn't matter if the dragons disappeared. It didn't matter if the world stayed frozen, forever. Merillian was holding her.

"It's lovely. It's almost like flying." Longing in his voice. Longing so intense Sayne could feel it in her gut. It was like hunger. Like thirst.

Sayne leant against him, feeling his arm around her, his breathing. His heartbeat. And remembered the feeling of his wings beating, the great muscles moving beneath her thighs.

Merillian wasn't looking at the snow, and he wasn't looking at the trees. Sayne lifted the woven door and stepped into the room to find him leaning against the window, staring into the sky. Sayne had lost count of the days they had stayed there; it was all a mush of Merillian and snow. Weeks, probably. And still, he looked to the sky.

He heard her come in this time. He turned his head and smiled. Something both joyful and sad.

"My love, where have you been?" He held out his hand to her.

Sayne didn't take it. She placed a bowl of soup in it instead. "There isn't much rabbit. Ulac says they are all dying, they aren't meant to live in cold like this for so long. None of us are." She pressed a chunk of bread, already thin and flat but now growing stale, into his second hand. "We can't stay here for much longer. There won't be any food."

He frowned.

"This is your share. Eat it." She watched as he drank the soup and chewed on the bread. He didn't have to concentrate so hard now to guide his hand to his mouth, or keep soup from dribbling down his chin. It was almost natural.

"Will you stay?"

"No, I'm helping Ulac, we need food."

A shadow passed across Merillian's face. "The trapper." He glanced away and continued to eat. Sayne let the door fall behind her, knowing if she lifted it again, if she just glanced in, he would be staring out the window. At the sky.

 

He even slept with his face to the window. Sayne stood in the dark, listening to Merillian breathe. So shallow, so quick, compared to the dragon she had slept beside for so many years. Grimly, she shifted the sword at her hip and reached down. So gently he wouldn't feel it, so softly she hardly could, Sayne touched his hair. She ran her hand over it, two long, slow strokes. It was soft, and light, far lighter than her own. Like it barely existed.

Human Merillian was beautiful. He was not far above her, like a dragon. Not too mighty to need her touch, or too strong to want her aid. If he remained human, they would still be bound. What's more they would not need to fight wars for coin. They could have a place. They would be accepted.

It was what she wanted, but it was not right. Sayne straightened and shifted her sword back. She could not let Merillian live his life with the memory of flying. Always looking to the sky, longing.

Sayne left the trapper's building in silence and climbed. Back up through the night, to the opening Merillian had found, and into the mountain.

 

Merillian had left a trail, a faint painting of fine scales on the cavern's sticky walls. Sayne followed it to the large, domed room.

Sayne stuck her makeshift torch into the thick mucous on the wall, amused when it held firmly, and drew her awkward sword. A pulse sent the steel humming.

With her expression set, her back as straight and dignified as she could manage, Sayne strolled down the path in the centre of the room. Casual, loose. Feet squelching.

The woman watched. She lay on her chair, legs and arms draped over the sides. Her head was tipped back, her face upside down, but still she followed Sayne with wide eyes and a demented grin.

The sorceress sat up as Sayne approached her throne. The woman's skin was pale and sunken, tinged with grey. Her eyes were just too wide, whites showing around large pupils, brown irises almost lost. Straggly dark hair hid half of her face and covered shoulders clothed in a threadbare dress.

Sayne hesitated as a pulse shuddered against her. The dress was colorless, so dirty it had lost any pattern, so torn it had no shape left. What kind of sorceress was this, that could summon dragon magic but couldn't keep herself clean?

For a moment, the woman stared at her. Too-wide eyes strangely blank, her manic grin slackening at the edges. Then it tightened and she blinked. Once, very slowly and deliberately. "The human? I'm surprised."

Sayne tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword. "I can't just let you do that to him. Don't you understand? We are bound."

The woman's eyelids drooped, like she was tired. Her hands loosened on the arms of her chair. "You do not know the meaning--"

Sayne didn't let her finish. She swung her sword once and threw it at the throne. The woman snapped to her feet, hands lifted. White light surged through the cavern.

But Sayne was ready. Eyes tightly closed, she dove to the floor and rolled as above her, her sword cracked. Splinters clattered to the path, sharp shards landed on her back, catching in the thick hide of her riding jacket. Sayne winced as one poked through into her shoulder blade.

As she came to her feet Sayne dug a hand into her pocket. The woman stood like a statue, hands outstretched. Her splayed palms were traced with silver light.

Sayne whipped out with a snare, stolen from the tracker as she left his house. She tightened the noose around the woman's wrists, pinched them together and pulled. The woman staggered off balance. Her hands were glowing again.

Another sharp yank on the snare kept the woman's open palms facing the floor. Sayne leapt behind her as she struggled to stay standing and kicked her down, face first into the liquid that pooled on the cavern's floor.

Sayne stood above her, trying not to breathe the cavern's sulfurous air too deeply. The woman barely struggled. Her outstretched hands pulsed with a sharp light. But the liquid had subsumed them, and held them firm. Her head slowly sank down, and the last twitches of her weakly kicking feet stilled.

Gingerly, Sayne reached into a second pocket and drew out a small, fiercely sharp knife. Its handle was ivory, engraved with aimless twisting patterns, and the blade curved up at the tip. Another thing stolen from the trapper, but it seemed she wouldn't need it to dispense the final, merciful blow.

Blood dripped down her arm as Sayne pushed up her sleeve. She gasped as the movement jarred the shard in her shoulder. Fingers shaking, she touched her jagged bonding scar.

Merillian?

Nothing but silence.

Groaning, Sayne crouched and carefully rearranged her sleeve. Her sword lay in shatters across the cavern, the woman was dead, but Merillian wasn't a dragon again.

Grimly, Sayne stared at the woman's body. She frowned, and aching, leant forward. The woman was too dead. Her hair had become wispy, suddenly, thin and grey. The skin on her back and neck cadaverous, the color of moldy chalk. And her dress, where tattered and dirty before, was little more than threads. Even as Sayne watched, it unraveled into dust.

Would the snow keep falling? If she had killed the sorceress and Merillian hadn't changed back, what would happen to everything else? Would it freeze?

Holding her arm against her side, Sayne staggered to her feet. Exhausted, she approached the throne.

There was something on the other side.

Moving slowly, sluggishly, like she was drowning and she didn't much care, Sayne stepped behind the chair. An opening, a small gap in the rock. The liquid was thick around it, like pus on a wound. As Sayne passed though the whole thing throbbed.

A great pulse, a beat, sunk into her skull. The silver light strengthened. It groped at her eyes and mouth with a stinging color, a sour taste.

Hands outstretched, Sayne crept forward.

She found something soft. It yielded to her touch as she pressed, but sprung back when she jerked her fingers away. Bulbous and large it loomed above her, clinging to thick mucous on a low, rocky ceiling.

--ne?

Sayne shook her head, rattling away an echo of Merillian's voice.

There was a silhouette within it, dark and twisted in on itself. Sayne could make out the edges of form. A tail, haunting and curled. A head, jaws open, rows of tiny, sharp teeth black against the light. Half a step forward and Sayne lifted her hands. She didn't touch it, not quite, but reached up to small curved claws.

The shadow of a dragon, locked away in silver.

"Where is she?" A thin voice trickled through the cave. High, panic stricken and young. Like a child.

"Who?" Sayne spun, blinking against the light.

"Is she--?" The voice grew quiet, trailed off. "She's gone, isn't she?"

Slowly, feeling certainty, feeling dread, Sayne turned back around. She stared at the tiny dragon curled up in its ... egg? Hand shaking, she touched the surface; she pressed small indents into the membrane.

"Who's there?" The voice was stronger, behind her, right at her ear.

Sayne leaned into it. The egg was warm. "Who are you?"

The voice was silent for a long moment, but Sayne could hear a heartbeat. Soft and constant. "I am the not-born dragon." This time, when it spoke, the not-born didn't seem so young. Its voice was smooth as fine cloth. "Where is Kiara?"

"Kiara?" Sayne nestled in, closer to the not-born's warmth. The air at her back, that had seemed so hot before, made her shiver with its chill. "The sorceress?"

"She was my--" the not-born hesitated "-- she was my friend. What did you do to her?"

Sayne shook her head. "Not me, not-born." That made her smile. "She was dead a long time before I came here. I just finished it. I think."

Sayne.

Sayne snuggled further, away from distant voices.

"Why would you do that?" the not-born snapped.

"Had to. She was freezing the world. Everything was dying. Couldn't let her do that."

Another long silence.

"Freezing the world?" Mild annoyance this time. "Do you see these caverns? Do you feel them? They are warm, are they not, wet and nurturing. That was the idea. Not freezing." The voice hesitated. "Maybe she was too dead after all. Maybe I held onto to her for too long."

Sayne let out a great sigh, one that stretched her lungs. "They are warm. They make me want to sleep."

"Yes. So lovely."

Sayne.

"Will you be my friend, then?" The not-born was young again, little and lost. Sayne's hands tightened on the egg, reflexively. "I don't want to be alone."

Sayne.

"My friend, just mine." Such a sad sound. Sayne's heart reached out to it. She knew what it felt like to be so alone. "And then, when you're my friend, no one else's, all mine, then you'll understand."

Numbly, Sayne nodded.

"Tell me your name, little human. Just your name."

Sayne opened her mouth.

Sayne!

Sharp ice shot down her arm, shocking against the heat. Sayne jerked back and stumbled away from the egg.

Sayne? What are you doing? Your name is mine, Sayne. You are mine!

Merillian?

Fierce hope surged through her, far hotter than the cavern, than the egg, than all of it together. He was a dragon again! He had to be. How else could he call her though her scar, why else would he claim their bond? He was whole again, and he could fly.

Merillian?

But only silence answered.

The light of the not-born danced; it twisted patterns on the cavern walls. "The dragon!" The not-born roared, and Sayne sagged forward. Her arms lifted, her hands outstretched, and she had no way of stopping them. They clutched the not-born's egg. "No! You are my friend, mine! No other dragon can have you. Here, I will open your bond again so you can tell him that. I might be a not-born dragon, but he is only human now. Tell him!"

Again, the scar on Sayne's arm lit with cold fire.

Sayne? Merillian sounded panicked. At once so close, as close as the bond could bring them, but still too far away. The not-born lay curled and shadowed in between.

Merillian? How--?

A not-born! The dragon was a not-born!

"Tell him!"

Sayne gave up on her legs, she fell forward, rested against the egg and used everything she had to focus on Merillian. His impossible voice.

What are you doing there? Sayne?

Her mouth no longer worked. And even within her, even that voice she used to speak to Merillian alone, was sluggish to respond. She felt hollow. Empty of breath.

I came. To kill the sorceress. So you could fly. So both of us could fly.

They were meant to be on the wind. Together.

The woman? Is she dead? Listen to me, Sayne. Is she dead?

She was growing wings. They were small, and stunted, all of her was small and stunted. Unformed. But she was growing wings now, in the shape of arms, hands, and feet. New human wings.

Dead? Yes.

"You are already mine, you can feel it. Tell him, and give me your name. You can be my wings, human. We will fly."

Oh, Sayne. It wasn't her, it was never her. Merillian called to her across the snow. The not‑born will use you, like it did her. It will bind you in a soul bond, and work its magic through you, live through you, because it never had a life of its own. You do not want to be in a soul bond, Sayne. A blood bond is sharing, a blood bond is love. But a soul bond will suck you dry.

"Too late." Was it her voice that said that? Or the not-born? It was hard to tell the difference.

Get away, or it will take you.

"What is my new name, little human?"

It will take you away from me.

Sayne found her legs. Collapsed beneath her, stiff like the rock, cold and sore. But she stood on them. She hooked her fingers into soft, dragon-egg skin and pulled herself upright.

Go, Sayne. Go.

"No." She spoke to the not-born around her, in her, and Merillian, bound through her scar by blood. "I came here so you could fly."

Sayne?!

One hand clutched the dragon egg, and with the other Sayne groped for her pocket. She had wings, wings that were fighting her. Then she had Merillian, pleading with her to leave, to abandon him to his fate. To his beautiful, human fate. But between then, surrounded by silver and pleading voices, Sayne found the small knife.

"What are you doing?" The not-born's voice was a child's voice again. Sayne kept her hand steady. She could feel its loneliness, its fear, she was full with it.

"I know," she whispered as she drew back, one hand still touching the egg, still linked to Merillian through the not-born's power. "I know what it's like when you don't belong, not even with your own kind."

Don't listen to it. Sayne, run!

She steadied her legs, pressed them firmly onto the wet rock. "But I cannot let you keep doing this." She thought of Kiara, all empty and dry. But then, it can't have been the not-born's fault that he was never whole. "And you need to understand, I already have wings."

"Please."

"I need them back."

Sayne?

Sayne released the dragon egg. The heartbeat surged around her, the light rose up to drown her, but she stabbed into the egg's soft, bursting hide.

Liquid gushed from the tear and the light dimmed. The pulse fluttered in one last, desperate beating. Sayne leapt back, slamming her bleeding shoulder against the wall. In the last vestiges of that light, she saw it. Shriveled, not-quite made. Semi-scaled skin as black as the night, tiny eyes closed tightly, and little wings only half grown. The not-born slipped free of its egg and lay lifeless on the floor.

 

At least the snow had stopped falling. Sayne stepped out of the caverns to a white world, to mountains around her, a thin trail of smoke from the trapper's cottage in the distance, and weak afternoon sun.

She dropped her spent torch and hugged her aching arm. Tiny droplets of blood stained the snow at her feet. Her fingers fretted with the hem of her sleeve, caught between wanting to touch the scar, wanting to know if he could answer, and fearing silence.

Then Merillian, like fire against the blue, soared down from the mountain top and landed smoothly on the snow.

A cold wind whipped into her skin as they stood there, staring. Sayne smiled, Merillian lowered his head and cocked it. It sent a thrill across her skin.

"We can fly again, my love." Merillian stepped forward and rubbed his hot muzzle against her shoulder. Sayne pushed up her sleeve and pressed a hand on her scar.

Never do that to me again. The touch of his mind was far warmer than any fire.

She laughed out loud. I will make no promises I cannot keep.

He drew back and stretched his wings. "Well then. Where would you like to go?"

Sayne pulled herself onto his back, pressed her body against his hot scales and breathed him in. "Anywhere, my love. Anywhere."  ◊

---

Joanne Anderton lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband (who paints) and 2.5 cats (who try to play with the brush). They keep her entertained. She loves speculative fiction and has been making up strange stories for as long as she can remember. When she's forced to step out of her head and interact with the 'real' world, she works in the distribution and marketing side of a small Australian press. Joanne's writing has appeared in Deep Magic, Flash Me Magazine, Book of Shadows: Vol One, Flashspec 2 and Staffs & Starships. She tests the self-destruct button for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.