12
As soon as she was out of sight of the exercise grounds, Asta’s whole body began to shake.
The day had warmed, and she was heated from the race, in spite of her damp clothes.
But her body would not stop shaking. She didn’t know what was happening to her.
Her mind was a cacophony of disparate images: Pikki pointing at her jumpsuit and laughing; Felix and Essie spinning down the track; the raceway erupting with fire and light and noise; the race through the city; Nat going under those dark waters; the canyon, the tunnel, the rush of the ground; the fear in Felix’s face, the sadness.
They mounted, one on top of the other, until it felt like they were going to crush her.
She could not catch her breath, and her heart physically hurt.
Carmine stopped in the road and swiveled his head back to look at her.
She wanted to reassure him, but her chest was so tight that it was hard to talk. ‘It’s okay, Carmy.’
The dragon looked doubtful. He tugged at her pantleg until she half climbed, half fell off his back.
He drew her to his side with a gentle nip and tucked her against his shoulder, holding her there with the side of his face.
She could smell the dragoness of him – a dry, musky odor.
Slowly, the steady hot jets of his breath penetrated into Asta’s panic, and her own breathing evened out in rhythm with his.
Asta knew that it was her responsibility to take care of Carmine, her job to fret over the temperature in his stall, the freshness of his bedding, the fit of his harness.
That was what she owed him as his rider.
But she had learned a long time ago that the job went both ways.
Carmine was tuned to her, attentive and patient.
He never judged her and couldn’t lecture.
All he did was love her, and it filled her with a fierce, extravagant, almost feral love in return.
When the quaking of her body had eased into an occasional shivering aftershock, Asta took hold of Carmine’s harness and led him back to the stables to clean him up.
There was a hose at the far side of their housing unit.
Asta took off Carmine’s harness and sprayed him down.
She wiped as much of him as she could reach with a towel and then led Carmine back to his stall.
There, she rubbed balm over his scales with a heavy flannel cloth until his sides shone.
As she worked, her jumbled thoughts quieted.
Carmine lay down in his stall and let her do her work without complaint. His eyes looked heavy, and his breathing was thinning in that sleepy way it did when he was a hatchling trying to stay awake against all odds. That was good. He needed to rest for tomorrow’s preliminaries.
‘They’ll be by with your lunch in an hour or so, bud,’ Asta said quietly. ‘You nap until then.’ Carmine churred and let his eyes close. ‘That’s a good boy.’
Asta leaned her back against the door of his stall and admired him from that little distance.
His neck was tucked around his body in one direction, his tail in the other.
He looked like an enormous cinnamon bun with horns.
The pattern of vermillion in his rust-red scales, the speckles of blue down his nose and haunches, the tufts of feathers at his chin and tail were as familiar to Asta as her own face.
He was the single surest thing in her life, Asta thought. Everyone else felt like uneven ground. Nat with her hot-and-cold games. Her parents and their disappointment. Felix, too. They all threw her off balance.
But not Carmine. He was always there for her, always ready to carry her into the sky. Asta quietly closed the gate to his stall and went back to her room for a quick shower before heading to the track.
She met Yixin and Gem at the funnel cake stand outside of the main entrance to the raceway.
The second heat of the Drake Class Prelims featured the fan favorite Gil Gilroy, riding Pepper.
Gilroy and his drake had won the Silverscale trophy for the Barakat House two years prior, and the crowds were thick with the blazing orange and yellow of the Barakat shield.
Yixin held a grease-splotched paper plate with a bit of dragon-wing-shaped funnel cake on it.
The powdered sugar on Yixin’s chin and fingers told Asta what had become of the rest of it.
She extended the plate to Asta as she came near.
Asta pinched off a curl of the pastry and bit into it.
It was still hot and crisp from the fry oil.
The smell of sweet fried dough reminded Asta of Saturday evenings on the farm when Mama made donuts and cooled them on wire racks all over the kitchen.
Asta would lurk in the TV room, one eye on the doorway, waiting for her mother to start washing the dishes in the sink so that she could sneak in and steal a donut from the counter.
Yixin shoved the plate at Gem. ‘Take this.’
Gem, who disliked sticky hands, held the plate of funnel cake like it was dusted with poison rather than sugar. ‘Excuse me. I wasn’t the one who ordered this crap.’
‘But I need to be official now,’ Yixin said. She wiped her sugary hands on her pants and straightened. ‘Follow me, if you please.’
‘Do you want this?’ Gem asked Asta.
Asta took the funnel cake, twisting off the last bites as she walked after Gem and Yixin across the outer track. They gave a wide berth to the drakes and riders that were running slow paces behind the starting line.
On the other side of the track, Yixin showed her blue medical badge to the security guard, who summoned a cart for them.
Yixin rode in the front with the driver.
Gem and Asta climbed onto the back seat and held on as the cart navigated around the illusion-glittering obstacles – adorned for the oceanic theme of the day with coral overgrowths, gently swaying kelp, and other maritime accoutrements.
Asta so rarely paused and looked at the courses she raced.
It was actually quite lovely. Here, the glittering prow of a ship; there, a cliff with seagulls circling.
The flames of the fire hedges danced inside the mouths of strange and wondrous sea creatures, all crafted by magic.
Felix was probably eating this up. Their cart carried them on toward the center of the track and its looming white spire.
The medical tent was set up at the base of the Needle.
The emergency teams inside were busy checking shelves of salves and bandages and reviewing the course layout.
Minor injuries in a race were attended to in the pits, but the judges, at their discretion, could call in the medical team for any injury to rider or dragon that they deemed serious enough.
Riders were quick to get themselves and their dragons back on their feet after a spill, even if it meant limping across the finish line, as attention from the Silverscale medical team was an automatic forfeit.
‘You have to stay out here,’ Yixin said, indicating the boundary of the tent.
‘And if that siren goes, just’ – she waved her hands like she was sweeping them aside – ‘get out of the way. Fast.’ Satisfied with her instructions, Yixin ducked inside the canvas walls of the tent to sign in for her shift.
Asta tossed the paper plate and the burnt bits of funnel cake into a trash can and sized up the other non-medical guests lingering around the tent.
Support crew, mostly, judging by the purple stripes on their badges, but Asta spotted one other red rider’s badge on a woman with a cap pulled low over her eyes, her hands shoved into the pockets of a warm-up jacket sporting the prominent logo of Hiebler Aeronautics.
Asta turned her attention to the parts of the course she hadn’t spotted on their cart ride through the terrain.
Wide tunnels receded into pitch-darkness at the base of the mountain.
She wondered if she could fly through one.
Illusory waves crashed around the closest tunnel’s opening and ran up the side of the mountain scramble.
Above the reach of the foamy waves, goats grazed placidly on wildflowers and long, bowing grasses.
The goats were yet one more Silverscale custom that had been carried on for generations.
Asta had a vague recollection from Mx. Parsons’s course-design class at Pillar that these bucolic mountain scenes had something to do with honoring the first dragon breeders who had tamed wild dragons up in the mountains centuries ago.
Asta couldn’t remember when the Needle had first been built, but that had been around a while, too.
She glanced up at the VIP deck, which extended nearly over her head.
Well-dressed spectators were making their way up and down the metal staircase that spiraled to the deck.
She spotted Mr. and Mrs. Seraphin at the railing above, peering through binoculars in the direction of the starting line.
Sofia Seraphin was a petite woman with Felix’s dark hair and a very prim mouth.
Asta remembered how surprised she had been when she first heard Sofia speak.
Her accent sounded to Asta like an actor on a TV show pretending to be fancy.
She did not think that real people spoke like that, with those peculiar turns on the vowels and sharpened consonants.
Asta was close enough to see that Mrs. Seraphin was wearing black pants with large golden flowers on them.
Always the family colors. Always. Her blouse was bright white, with creases as sharp as her accent.
She wore dark sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat.
Peter Seraphin’s hat was the color of fresh cream and had a tan band around it. He wore a tailored suit, the gold crown of the family crest sewn conspicuously into his lapel. He stood with his arm around his wife and spoke quietly to her, pointing out something on the starting line.