8. Jerrid
JERRID
Echo wasn’t moving when Jerrid and Brynja finally made it back to the clearing.
Jerrid’s stomach clenched, his heart rate escalating as he trotted toward her, dropping the meager bag of supplies. He skidded across the grass on his knees and pressed his palms against the dragon’s side.
Please don’t be dead. Please, please don’t be dead.
Echo’s scales were still warm to the touch, and after a few moments of breathless waiting, her side rose in a feeble breath.
“Ah, that’s my girl,” he whispered and pressed his forehead to her side.
Brynja kneeled beside him, and to his surprise, ripped open the bag.
At his questioning look, she grimaced. “There’s a reason I elected myself to come with you. I know what to do. Until I was selected to come to Gelaira, I was apprenticed to work with the wise woman in my village. She knew a thing or two about…this kind of stuff.”
She set a wooden bowl on the grass and pulled out a flask of water and a smaller bag of supplies. Jerrid watched uselessly as she laid out a spool of thread, a small leather pouch of needles of all shapes and sizes, a pair of metal shears…
She met his gaze at last. “Guess you weren’t lying about the dragon.”
He almost smiled at the reluctantly apologetic tone she had adopted. “No, I wasn’t lying.”
She threaded one of the largest needles and set it aside on a clean cloth. Then she stood and began to walk around Echo’s still form, examining her various injuries and clucking sympathetically.
Jerrid wished she would just get down to business and start helping Echo, but he supposed she needed to decide which injuries she should address first.
There were many to choose from.
At last, she began to wash away the blood and gore from a nasty gash on Echo’s left hindquarters. Echo didn’t awaken or stir, but Jerrid rubbed her side soothingly all the same. Brynja’s stitches were fast but hardly pretty to look at.
Stitching dragon skin wasn’t easy, even for master healers.
The scales got in the way. Brynja had to carefully position her stitches in the gaps between the scales.
In one instance where a scale had cracked in two, she elected to remove both halves completely and stitch up the oozing wound behind them.
After the thigh, she moved on to Echo’s forelegs and then to her wings.
Thankfully, the dragon hadn’t sustained too many injuries to her wings, but the ones she had received were no laughing matter.
Brynja stitched the tears together in grim silence, biting off the thread with her teeth, dragon blood speckling her right cheek.
She had guts. He had to give her that.
A lot of people, men included, would have quailed at the sight of all the blood.
He examined Echo’s wings as the human girl began to scrub her hands with the little water that remained.
He had no doubt Ava’s stitches would have been tighter and narrower, and he wished he’d found a way to bring her along.
But they hadn’t been given any choice. And in the end, he doubted Echo would care about a few scars.
Not when she had her life to show for it.
“I’ve done all I can.” Brynja stuffed her supplies back into the bag.
Jerrid frowned and rose from his crouch, one hand against Echo’s shoulder. “What about Echo? Will she be all right? When will she wake up?”
Brynja shrugged, an indifferent expression on her face. “I don’t know. She lost a lot of blood. She might not wake up.”
Jerrid’s gut twisted. “Well, then, we need to do something to help her. Maybe some herbs or something?”
The girl stood as well, slinging the bag over her shoulder. “If you want to try to spoon feed grass to a dragon, be my guest. I don’t know enough about dragon anatomy to know what is safe or helpful to give her. I could poison her.”
“Then I need Ava.”
Brynja’s head shot up, her shoulders stiffening. “No. She stays at the camp.”
“She’s a healer. She’ll know what to do.”
“She stays at the camp.” She emphasized each word with brittle clarity.
Jerrid’s fingers curled into fists, nails digging into his palms. He’d never been so tempted to hit a woman in his life. Didn’t she realize that she could be sentencing his dragon to death?
The anger inside him ignited and grew, Dragon stirring restlessly.
I’ll show her the error of her ways…
He turned away and mentally told Dragon to shut up. He would handle this. He could handle it without ripping anyone limb from limb.
“I’ll speak to the elf,” Brynja said at last, her words gruff. “If your wife has any suggestions, I’ll come back with whatever you’ll need to feed the dragon. It’s the best I can do.”
Jerrid lifted his head and swallowed his disappointment. “I can stay?”
“I’m not completely heartless,” she muttered.
“With all the blood she has lost, I’m honestly surprised she hasn’t been picked off by now.
She’s a sitting duck out here. She’ll need you if she stands a chance of survival.
I’ll be back when I can. If I’m not back before nightfall, I suggest you start a fire.
It may make the more cautious predators think twice before attacking. ”
“And the ones that aren’t cautious?”
She shrugged, her face devoid of all expression. “Then you’re on your own.”
Without another word, she turned on her heel and strode back toward the ruins. Jerrid watched her go, the sliver of hope inside him a taut, fragile thread.
He spent the afternoon collecting wood for his bonfire. His stomach gnawed with hunger, but he didn’t dare eat anything from the forest. It could all be poisonous, and it wasn’t worth the risk.
Not yet anyway. Hopefully Brynja would bring food and water back with her. If not, he’d have to delve into his limited store of supplies.
Echo stirred for about ten minutes and licked some water from his cupped palm. He gave her the last drops from his skin. Maybe there was some water north of that mud pit Ava had stumbled into. But investigating meant leaving Echo unprotected again.
Twilight fell early in the Shadewood, the sun sinking behind the trees in the west and casting long shadows across the clearing.
He used the flint and stone from his pack and started a fire, gently blowing on the infantile flame and feeding it dry moss until it grew strong enough to lick at the rotting wood he’d found.
A thin wisp of smoke curled upward into the darkening sky.
He sat down with his back against Echo’s side, the warmth of her scales heating his back while the fire began to warm the front side of him. Shades, was he tired.
But he didn’t dare go to sleep. Not until Brynja came back at least. Maybe he could convince her to stay the night to help him out. Surely, she wouldn’t want to walk back through the forest in the dark. If she was even coming today at all.
Maybe she had decided to come tomorrow morning instead. Or maybe she had decided not to come back at all. He crossed his arms over his chest, not putting it past her to have abandoned him and Echo to their fate.
He shuddered to think what she might have planned for Ava. He shouldn’t have left her alone at the camp, but Brynja hadn’t given him much choice.
A branch snapped in the woods.
Jerrid’s head snapped back. He crouched before the fire, lifting a stick that he’d whittled to a sharp point earlier in the day. Easing to his feet, he scanned the forest and searched the shadows for signs of an attack. Was it dire wolves? Myrk hounds?
He gripped the stick hard and breathed in slowly through his nose and out through his mouth, keeping himself calm. Composed. Prepared.
Another branch snapped in the darkness, and something crackled through the brittle undergrowth. He inhaled sharply as he turned toward the sound, keeping himself between Echo and the incoming danger.
Movement rustled again in the darkness, and then…
Something melted from the shadows on the other side of the clearing. It was too small to be a myrk hound—a young dire wolf, then? But no, it didn’t move like a wolf. In fact, it seemed to be walking on two legs…
Jerrid lowered his stick, frowning as the figure slipped closer to him. It looked way too small to be Brynja.
“Who’s there?” he called. “Brynja?”
The rustling stopped.
Then a small voice called back, “No. I’m not Brynja. She isn’t coming.”
Jerrid’s heart sank, but he quickly shoved the emotion aside to brood over later. The voice that came out of the darkness sounded young, like a child’s voice. What the blazes was a child doing in the Shadewood this time of night?
“You best come closer to the fire,” he called gruffly. “It isn’t safe.”
The shadow slunk closer. As it approached, the fire cast light over two small pairs of shoes, tattered pants, and then an equally grubby tunic. At last, the figure’s full form stepped into the firelight.
It was a boy, hardly more than five or six years old, with reddish-brown hair and more freckles than seemed proper for one single person. He smiled tentatively at Jerrid, his cheeks round and smeared with dirt.
“I came to see you.”
Jerrid gaped at him. “Does your mother know you’re out here? What are you doing by yourself?”
“I came to see you,” the lad repeated, as if that explained everything.
“That’s…very nice. But where are your parents?”
The boy trudged closer. Jerrid set his makeshift spear down, his gaze flitting over the shadows behind the boy. Surely, he couldn’t be out here alone…
“Oh, they’re back at the camp. They’re probably looking for me by now. It’s almost my bedtime, you know,” he said cheerfully, still smiling. “My name’s Roar. What’s yours?”
“Jerrid. And do you mean to tell me you ran away and came out here all by yourself?”
“Yup. I wanted to see the dragon.” He leaned around Jerrid to get a better look at Echo, his eyes widening in wonder. “Well, now, ain’t she a beaut! Look at those claws! They’re bigger than my head! And those teeth—what chompers!”
He stumbled forward with hands outstretched as if he meant to pet Echo.