Chapter Fifty-Two #2
The silver dragon sighed, the sound coming from very far away, as though it rose from the deepest depths of the earth.
‘Fire-spoken-and-soaring-on-exalted-sky-and-deep-notched-trees-with-great-hope-in-many-veined-hearts did not have the strength to bring you home. I knew it. I will know it now, when I agree to do what you have asked of me.’
Frida blinked, surprised. ‘What I . . .’ Then she blinked again, the violet fiery patterns of the egg, more precious than anything, staining her eyelids.
‘What I’ve asked of you?’ The beginnings of another, deeper kind of understanding began to settle over her shoulders. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked warily.
The silver dragon just waited, solemn.
She gazed at him. Slowly, she got to her feet, unable to stay still. It was like an itch under her bones. She might have argued, might have claimed that she hadn’t asked anything of him yet. But her words on the top of the cliff came back to her, tumbling unchecked from her mouth.
‘I’ve already asked,’ she murmured.
Still, he waited.
She looked down at herself, staring at the faint purple light flickering beneath her skin.
Ever-present now. ‘You will ask Lucky to give me this, in a hundred years, because I’ve already told you that’s what will happen.
’ With a wild laugh, she slapped her forehead.
‘Sea and skies! When I told you about Dian in the zoo, about Lucky striking the tree, about Lucky sending us back in time . . .’ Her eyes again landed on the egg, her ears buzzing.
‘You didn’t know any of that. After Lucky hatches, you’ll only give him the instructions that you do, because I’ve told you that you will.
Outside the cave when I first arrived.’ Her voice dropped, not sure if she should be terrified or awestricken.
‘The little stink who came to dinner. That’s what Lucky called me, the first time we met.
You didn’t know any of this before I came here,’ she repeated.
It spun and spun in her head, delicate and complex as Moth’s webs.
She remembered her mum’s words, rich as honey.
I swear your eyes are purple, Friduska. You have magic in your DNA, I’m sure of it!
Round and round it went. Her eyes had always been purple, even before she’d met Lucky.
Because this had all already happened, was still happening, she was already magic, even before she was born.
As if the silver dragon heard her, he said in confirmation, ‘There is no beginning, or end. There is just time and dirt.’
Frida quickly snapped her mouth shut. Helplessly, she dropped to her knees before him. ‘Why?’ she asked again. ‘Why would you agree to any of it?’
A deep weariness settled over him. As he lay there, she took in the wan colour staining the delicate triangular scales around his nostrils, the fatigued slump of his wings, the frail length of his tail, slung tightly around one of Lucky’s paws.
The night was velvet black, the glow of the egg winking like a campfire.
She sank down on her heels. For a while, the silver dragon said nothing. Then in the stillness, he spoke,
‘There are humans not so far from here, you know.’
Frida stared at him, not comprehending. Then she looked down at her clothes. ‘This is where you got these?’ For a moment, an ominous thought crossed her mind – had he killed for them? But he just laughed, seeing her expression.
‘There are humans and there are humans, Frida Rose. The humans I speak of still embrace magic in their blood, and they have knowledge that has been lost to many. Like myself, they are stewards of the sacred places of this part of the earth. We are kin, of a kind. Not too long ago, I think, for human time is confusing to me, these people met the human that I see in your mind, the one you spoke of, the one you call Joshua. With coppery hair and smiling lips and brutality bound into his skin.’
She swayed.
‘He was a child, but they saw the things he might do. They read the patterns of the worlds changing and shifting with this boy, and they saw our paths crossing impossibly. We wept together, for joy and for grief, when they told me they’d seen the shape of my son who wasn’t yet hatched.
And even though it would not stop all the harm that was to come, we agreed that when I heard him moving through the earth in a way that was beyond his strength, with a strange human on his back who spoke with a dragon’s tongue, I would answer.
I would pay the cost of bringing you both here and sending you both home again.
’ He gave Frida a hard look, and finished with, ‘I did not know why, and I did not know what you would ask of me. I did not know that you would ask for the gift of my son’s precious dragon fire. Now, I know.’
Lucky, on his other side, stirred. His drool patch glimmered in the light of the sickle moon. She didn’t know what to say.
Her heart was pounding so painfully, she wondered if it might burst.
‘What was the cost? What was the cost you had to pay?’
Lucky’s father watched his son settle back into sleep.
He did not answer, but she thought she knew.
‘Your life,’ she said through her tears. ‘Is that it?’
‘Yes.’ The sound of the single, crushing word was like a hammer falling.
His silver ancient life.
‘How will it happen?’ she asked, her voice breaking.
Around them, the jungle, thick and full and primeval, seemed to hush.
Achingly slowly, he turned his great head to look at her. ‘The earth will take me back when it chooses, but my energy bleeds out. The universe demands the price of what I’ve done.’
‘Will it be soon?’ she gasped, her head twisting towards the giant egg about to hatch.
The silver dragon’s slitted pupil was pure jet, floating in a sea of devastated lava. ‘That is not given to me to know. But yes, I think so. Although soon means something different to me as it does to you.’