Chapter Nineteen
The boat on the mountainside was a problem.
So was the dragon beside it.
Glittering in the sun, the dragon was gold, its metallic scales bright against the cold gray rock, and its tail was wrapped around the hull of her boat.
Marin couldn’t see its head, but its ruby-colored wings were flattened on its back.
From a distance, it looked as tiny as a toy, but it was twice the size of Silver.
She felt her heart rise up into her throat. My boat!
“Oh!” Dax said happily. “I know where we are!” She felt him sit up straight behind her, and she turned her head to see him pointing up at the sky, where a sapphire-colored dragon with onyx wings was circling. “This is Ilreka, island of the dragons.”
“They’re huuuuuge!” Ree said, clearly as thrilled as Dax.
Marin was less thrilled. Ilreka was a several-day sail from Alyssium and even farther from Flicker. And her sailboat was stuck on a mountain with a “huuuuuge” dragon curled around it like it was cuddling it.
As Perri approached the island, Marin sat up higher and craned her neck to see it all.
The mountains towered above the sea. With sheer cliffs and jagged peaks, they looked painful, as if their sharp edges were capable of slicing open the sky.
She also saw dark patches on nearly every ledge and every fold of the rock—dragon caves, far more than she would have ever imagined.
There were, it seemed, a lot of dragons here.
“Um, Marin?” Dax said.
He’s finally noticed Silver.
“I see it,” she told him.
“See what?” Ree asked. And then: “Eeee. How did it get up there?”
“Magic storm,” Marin spat out. It didn’t require much more explanation.
Frankly, they were lucky that the storm and its kraken hadn’t done anything worse than fling them ridiculously far off course.
She’d heard stories of people who had emerged from storms transformed, the raw magic adding or removing limbs, changing their shapes, and stirring their minds.
At least this was better than spending the rest of their lives convinced they were crawfish, wasn’t it?
Staring up at her boat, she was having difficulty seeing herself as lucky. “Any ideas how to get it down?”
All of them were quiet as Perri swam closer.
“If this is Ilreka,” Dax said, “which it clearly is, because dragons, but if this is Ilreka, then according to the ‘Ballad of Ilreka,’ there should be a village—the home of the dragon-tenders. They might be able to help?”
“Perri, is there a village?” Marin asked. “Can you swim us there?”
He switched direction to circle the island.
Dax said, “Even trickier than getting the boat down from the mountain will be getting it away from the dragon, ideally before it’s crushed into a thousand pieces.”
Yes, she realized that. “I’m open to ideas.”
Ree began, “The dragons on Belde—
“You have dragons on Belde?” Marin asked. It wasn’t a large island. No mountains. No obvious lairs. Lots of buildings made of glass.
“Tiny ones,” Ree said, holding out branches to indicate size. “They’re pollinators in the sunflower maze. Anyway, they have a hoard, and if you trade them something, they’ll give up a piece of their hoard. Maybe this dragon will give up Silver in exchange for better treasure?”
Marin thought of the heartsinger ruby.
No. There has to be another way. She couldn’t sacrifice it, especially since she hadn’t yet even attempted to find Rijes Velk.
We’ll try talking to the dragon-tenders. Maybe they’ll have an idea.
Worst case, she could try talking to the dragon itself.
Somehow she didn’t think it would be nearly as friendly and cuddly as a marmoose. She hoped it didn’t like the taste of sailor.
The village of dragon-tenders was tucked into a cove framed by a thick forest of spruce and fir. Gray stone mountains rose up behind the trees, shadowing them. A few patches of blackened, burnt trees scarred the forest, but the rest was unbroken evergreen.
Various fishing boats were tied off to glass moorings, and a dock stretched out into the harbor. It had a sign at the end with the island standard word for “welcome” above a carving of a dragon. Marin wasn’t sure if it meant “welcome, we have dragons” as a threat or an enticement.
Close to the edge of the water, sandwiched between the sea and the forest, the houses themselves were packed together, each narrow and tall, made of gray stone as somber as the mountains, but the people between them, going about their business—they were as bright and bejeweled as the dragons themselves.
Their clothes were rich gold and scarlet and sapphire, and they wore scarves wrapped around their heads and piles of jewelry.
Several who were closest to the cove halted in their tracks and stared as the iridescent sea serpent carrying two people and a plant swam into the harbor.
As Perri swam past the first mooring, a glass orb floating on the water, blue smoke swirled inside the orb, and the mooring called out, “Eh? You a boat? Want to tie off here?”
A nearby mooring, this one made of red glass with red smoke inside, shouted, “Are you trying to steal my turn, Mauris? It’s my turn to have a boat!”
“It’s not been my turn for ages, Flari!”
“Hardly my fault. Told you plenty of times—you’re too needy! You scare captains away,” the red mooring said to the blue. “Also, you need to clean your glass because that is not a boat.”
Perri trilled in agreement.
Dax whispered in Marin’s ear, “Are the moorings alive or enchanted?”
“Is there a difference?” she whispered back.
By the time Perri reached the dock, a tight crowd had gathered. Marin didn’t blame them—this had to be an unusual sight, even on an island packed with dragons.
Untying their ropes, she lifted Ree onto the dock first and then she balanced on Perri’s back and gripped the edge of the dock. She hoisted herself up and then reached a hand down to help Dax. “You’re amazing,” she told her serpent friend. “Please rest, play, eat, whatever you need to do.”
Ree and Dax echoed her, thanking Perri profusely, telling him how marvelous he was.
The serpent chirped at them, pleased with himself, before ducking beneath the water, leaving only a ripple that spread out, rocking all the moored boats. Marin coiled up the vine ropes and hefted them over her shoulder.
The three of them walked down the dock toward the waiting crowd of gawkers.
Marin was aware her clothes were soaked, her boots were squishing as she stepped, and her hair was as knotted as a bird’s nest. Probably all of that paled beside the fact that they’d arrived on the back of a sea serpent.
She wondered whether the villagers were impressed or appalled or a mix of both.
A woman stepped forward out of the crowd.
She was clothed in gold fabric from neck to ankle.
Her wrinkled cheeks were painted with swirls of gold, and her hair had been braided with so much gold thread that it was impossible to tell what color her hair actually was.
She pressed the palms of her hands together and bowed.
“You ride to us on a dragon of the sea. You are most welcome here, cousins! I am Surot, headwoman of Ilreka.”
Marin mimicked her gesture and bowed back at her.
“Thank you, Headwoman Surot. We’re happy to be here and honored to meet you.
” She had no idea if there were any ritual words she was expected to say, but she hoped that was polite enough to suffice.
“I’m Marin. This is Dax and Ree. The sea serpent is Perri.
You don’t have to worry—he won’t harm your boats. ”
“We have long suspected that sea dragons are as noble and intelligent as our sky dragons,” Surot said. “It is wonderful to have confirmation of that. You and your beast will be added to our songs.”
Dax perked up at that. “Songs?”
“Boat first,” Marin murmured to him.
Surot asked, “Can we offer you food? Clothes? Supplies?”
“Yes, thank you. That would be amazing.” She wondered how to broach the subject of her boat and the golden dragon.
She didn’t know these people’s culture, but it was abundantly clear that they venerated the dragons.
I should tread carefully. She considered how to frame the question so it wouldn’t immediately put Surot on the defensive.
Ree hopped forward. “Hi! I’m a sailor.”
“Ahh,” Surot said, clearly not knowing what to do with that bit of information.
“Our boat is stuck on the mountain with a dragon,” Ree said. “Can you help us get it down? Can’t be a sailor without a sailboat, you know.”
Well, that solved the problem of how to ask.
Startled, Surot looked behind her, up the mountain, but the sailboat wasn’t visible from this angle—it was farther to the east on a ledge a mile or so up. Marin wondered if the hull had been damaged and what she was going to do if it had.
“There was a magic storm,” Marin explained before Surot asked.
She launched into a description: “We were crossing the sea between the southern isles and Alyssium when the purple clouds gathered on the horizon.” She described how they’d tried to outrun it.
“The swells grew around us, and the sky howled … and then we saw the lightning kraken.”
Gasps echoed through the audience.
Hopping up and down, Ree added, “It was enormous! Lightning everywhere!”
“It filled the sky,” Marin said.
“The captain tied us to the mast and herself to the helm,” Ree said, “but the seas—”
“When the winds tossed the boat into the sky, I lost consciousness.”
“I thought it would devour us,” Ree said. “But it threw us—its tentacles were whips of lightning, and it threw us as far as it could, out of the storm and into the sea.”
Dax took up the story, describing how he’d untied them all to keep them from drowning and how they were saved by the silverbacked turtles.
“Perri saved me,” Ree said. “He’s my hero.”
Surot asked, “Perri is your sea serpent? He brought you here?”
“To retrieve my sailboat, Silver,” Marin said.
“Ahh,” Surot said. “You mentioned it’s with a dragon?”
“A golden one,” Dax said, “with red wings. Very beautiful.”