5. Aurora
AURORA
Receiving Day, to hear my father tell it, was one of the most important days in the Academy calendar, superseded only by Hatching Day.
It was less important and much less private than the various Mating Flights that happened roughly once a month and were restricted to the inhabitants of the Academy only.
But Receiving Day was treated as a celebration. I saw families gathered around their sons—members of other Great Houses, I was sure—at least to judge by their dress and mannerisms. All of them looked proud and happy and excited and they were all wearing their best clothes.
The aerial view was spectacular, but I was glad we were finally at our destination.
Riding dragonback was thrilling of course, but after the initial thrill of being hundreds of feet in the air wore off, I became very aware of how cold I was.
The freezing air bit through my clothes, chilling me to the bone.
It was even worse since I had no fat to keep me warm.
I envied Jorn’s flight leathers which insulated him from the biting cold.
G’lornie landed us at the edge of the crowd that was gathered in the vast stone bowl, which was located in on the lowest ledge of the enormous dormant volcano where the Academy was located.
“the Old Drake” the cadets all called it—or so my father had told us—though it had a more formal name in the Ancient Tongue.
Looking up at the higher ledges, I could see the enormous heads of full-grown dragons poking out of their caverns, looking down curiously at the gathering of humans.
Other couriers, some riding common Blue drakes and others on common Greens—none with any gold or silver or bronze markings on their wings—were landing on the perimeters of the crowd as well. I saw boys about my age slide off their backs and then the couriers took off again.
“Well, this is where I leave you, lad,” Jorn said, twisting in the saddle to look at me. “Just jump down now.”
“All right but where am I supposed to go?”
I looked around at the crowd in confusion.
It was the most people I’d ever seen all together in one place.
Aside from the Noble families and cadets, there were food vendors hawking their wares, a few scribe-priests in long white robes, and older boys and men dressed in the uniform of the academy with the golden dragon stitched on the left sleeve.
All of them moved with purpose, as though they knew exactly where to go.
I, on the other hand, felt suddenly completely lost. How could I possibly belong in this hustle and bustle where I didn’t know a single other person? How could I pull off my deception among so many sharp eyes?
Jorn gave me an awkward but comforting pat on the knee.
“I know it seems overwhelming, but you’ll find your way. Don’t worry—they won’t let everyone mill about like this for long. In a little while one of the older cadets will come call all the new recruits and take you where you need to go.”
“All right. Er…thank you,” I said and started to slide off G’lornie’s back.
But Jorn gripped my knee tighter, stopping me.
“Wait, lad—there’s something I must say.”
He had a troubled look in his mild brown eyes that made my heart start pounding. Did he know my secret? Had he found me out?
“What?” I asked bluntly. If he was going to call me out, he’d better do it now.
But his next words surprised and confused me.
“Be careful during the Mating Flights,” he said to me. “Try to make yourself scarce, if you can.”
“Make myself scarce?” I frowned and shook my head. “I don’t understand. I don’t have a dragon of my own yet—how could the Mating Flights affect me?”
“Just keep out of the way of the older cadets,” he advised. “They get…agitated during such times. I’m telling you like I told my own lad—steer clear of your older classmates if you can. If you can’t, well, there’s no shame in it—Academy tradition and all that. But still, just do your best.”
I frowned, even more confused than ever.
“I don’t understand,” I said again.
“I know, but you will,” he said cryptically. “All right lad, time to get down.”
And then he practically pushed me off G’lornie’s back.
I backed away, looking around in confusion as the little Brown took off again, his stubby wings working hard to hoist him and his rider into the sky. What had Jorn meant? What was he warning me of?
I didn’t know and there didn’t seem to be any way to find out. In the meantime, I was at the fringes of the biggest crowd I’d ever seen in my life and I had to find my way into it, somehow.
The air was filled with the babble of voices.
“Oh, I’m so proud of you, Freedrick!” a woman at my left elbow was saying as she pressed a kiss to the forehead of a plump, pink-faced boy in a richly embroidered cloak.
“Meat-sticks! Meat-sticks! Get your tasty, piping hot meat-sticks here!” a vendor to my right was bawling.
He was waving long wooden skewers with fat sausages impaled on their ends.
Rich streaks of orange grease dripped from the sausages and slid down his hairy arm, but he barely seemed to notice as he wove his way through the crown, crying his wares.
The rich, heavy smell of the meat made my stomach growl again, though it was mixed with the various perfumes and colognes from the rich families around me.
And over everything hung the deep scent of burning cinnamon, as though a bonfire of the rare spice was raging somewhere near—the scent of dragons.
“May the God and Goddess bless your service in the Academy,” I heard a scribe-priest saying as he pressed his palm to the forehead of a scrawny-looking boy with a shock of red hair and a face full of freckles.
“Amen and amen,” his mother and father said piously, nodding in unison.
My own father had never had much use for the scribe-priests, so I watched the little family with the scrawny son with interest. Though I supposed I couldn’t really call anyone else scrawny.
As far as I could see, I was the shortest and smallest new recruit here.
Lifting my chin, I tried to look taller as I stepped into the crowd.
Almost everyone I saw was better dressed than I was. But I couldn’t let myself worry about that—I was too busy trying to make the Dragon Glass pendant I wore work for me.
“I’m a boy,” I told it mentally, focusing on the gold-flecked obsidian dragon’s head in the hollow of my throat. “No, a man.”
I was of age, after all—all the new recruits were. The Academy didn’t take anyone who wasn’t an adult—though the boys around me looked awfully young and inexperienced, which was exactly how I felt.
But I was getting away from my purpose.
“I’m Auren Lysandra, son of Arden Lysandra and I’m absolutely masculine through and through,” I told the pendant. “I’m—”
And then someone laid a hand on my shoulder, startling me, and I jumped and let out an unmistakably girlish scream.
“Whoa—sorry there,” a friendly sounding voice said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
I turned quickly and saw a short, compact boy with mild brown eyes and brown hair staring at me. Even though he was short, he was still half a head taller than I was. He was wearing an inexpensive looking suit that was nonetheless neat and clean, and he had a quizzical smile on his face.
“Oh—you scared me!” I put a hand to my heart and then realized that it was a girlish gesture. I deepened my voice and scowled at him. “I mean, don’t go sneaking up on a fellow like that!”
“Sorry,” he said easily. “You just looked confused, and I thought maybe I could help.”
“How can you help?” I asked rudely, still trying to play my part. “You don’t have on a uniform—you’re as new as I am.”
“Well, in a way,” he agreed easily. “I’m a new recruit, that’s true. But I’ve lived near the Old Drake all my life. My father is a courier.”
“Oh, I see.” I felt abruptly bad for being rude. He seemed to be trying to make me feel at home and I had sneered at him.
“I’m Jorn-o Twaller,” he continued.
“Wait—Jorn-o?” I frowned. Adding “o” to the end of a name meant “son of” as in “son of Jorn.” And the boy had said his father was a courier.
“I think it was your father who came to get me and brought me here,” I told him. “Unless there’s more than one Jorn in the Courier Division.”
“There isn’t and I know he brought you—I saw you slide off G’lornie’s back. He flies really high for a Brown, you know. And he’s extremely intelligent.”
“Yes, he is,” I agreed, remembering how the little Brown had pushed away the second piece of bread and the worry for me that I had seen in his golden eyes. “He’s a wonderful dragon,” I added.
I seemed to have said the exact right thing because Jorn-o’s kind and homely face broke into a wide smile.
“He is,” he said. “Come on—do you want me to show you around before the upperclassmen come to get us?”
“Yes, please,” I said, nodding. “I’ve been feeling kind of lost here.”
“Oh don’t worry—that’ll pass once you get to know the Old Drake,” Jorn-o told me. “There’s six levels—did you know that?”
I shook my head. I’d heard my father talk about his time at the Academy many times, but he hadn’t really spoken much about the geography of the dormant volcano that housed it.
“Well, there are. We’re standing on the lowest level—the Receiving Bowl,” Jorn-o said, his voice taking on a lecturing quality. “Anyone can come here—it’s open to the public. But the rest of the Academy is strictly for the professors and cadets who live here.”
“What’s up those stairs?” I asked, nodding at the polished stone steps at the far end of the vast bowl-like area we were standing in.
“The Assembly Hall—it’s technically still part of the first level,” Jorn-o told me. “They the second level is where we’ll be living—that’s for the cadet’s quarters, the mess hall where we eat, communal baths—”
“Wait a minute—communal baths? As in…everyone taking a bath together?” I felt my heart turn to a stone in my chest.
“Well, sure—it’s not a big deal.” Jorn-o shrugged.
It absolutely was a big deal to me.
“How many people are we, uh, bathing with?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
Jorn-o frowned, as though he thought it was odd I should ask, but answered anyway.
“You know—whoever’s in your dorm. First-years are put into dormitories, about twenty boys to a dorm. They all share a necessary room and eat at the same table, that kind of thing.”
“So…you’re saying there’s no privacy? None at all?” I asked, my voice going high on the last word.
“What do you want privacy for? How can you get to know the cadets in your class if you don’t live with them?” Jorn-o asked. “You have to be able to trust the riders in your group when you’re in formation and you have to know them if you’re going to trust them.”
“I just…I’m used to having my own bedroom and bathing room, that’s all,” I muttered, wondering what I was going to do.
“Well, you only have to be in the dorms for your First-year,” Jorn-o told me.
“Second-years get roommates and Third and Fourth years get their own rooms. And Wing Leaders, of course—they get their own rooms as well. Of course the professors get a room to themselves that’s right next to the cave their dragon lives in. ”
“That’s all very well, but a year is a long time to live in a dorm with twenty boys,” I muttered. How in the world was I going to manage this? It had never occurred to me that I wouldn’t have my own room at the Academy. Why hadn’t I thought of this?
“If you’re shy, don’t worry about making friends,” Jorn-o said, clearly mistaking the source of my anxiety. “You’ll get along fine—you’re a Lysandra, after all. Auren Lysandra—right?”
I frowned.
“How did you know my name? Did your father tell you he was going to get me?”
Jorn-o shook his head.
“Just said he was going to collect a candidate from an ancient and remote Great House. But look at you…” He gestured at me with one hand.
“I mean, that blonde hair and those pale purple eyes? Nobody but a Lysandra has such coloring. You’re probably the most recognizable Great House of any of them.
Well, besides the Skorens, of course,” he added. “But they stand out for other reasons.”
“They do? How?” I asked.
Jorn-o shrugged.
“You’ll understand when you see one. Anyway, be careful of them—they have short tempers. Not that you’ll probably run into any as a First-year cadet. The upperclassmen mostly keep to themselves. Well, except in the Mess Hall and during Mating Flights,” he added and then looked troubled.
His words reminded me of what his father had said, and I was about to question him further when a loud baritone voice rang out.
“New recruits! Listen up and pay attention!”
Everyone stopped what they were doing and conversations died away as all eyes turned towards the voice.
I didn’t know it then, but my fate was sealed the moment I saw the cadet who was speaking.