dragon bard (beta)
Chapter two: makina stalksong
This is a work in progress, meant for newsletter subscribers only! Please keep the link private, and excuse any typos, etc--fully edited book to come fall 2021!
The hatchling glowed from the heat of the earth, scales tiny and perfect where it lay curled against its mother’s bulk. Makina could still trace the trail of cooling magma back to the hole the tiny dragon had torn in the caldera floor, the mother’s trumpets waking them all before dawn. Five seasons they had waited for this, for the brood of twenty-three eggs the mother had laid to return from the magma.
Makina itched to scoop this newest one up, to nuzzle its blunt nose and curl its finned tail into the crook of her arm. She resisted—not only because the heat turning its leaf-shaped scales translucent would sear the flesh from her bones, but because of its mother’s gaze. She knew that gaze, had held it herself during her first few years on the ice, raising Kaden in Halflung Caldera, fifty miles to the north. It was the gaze that said nothing would come between the mare and her child—not anyone in the caldera, or on the ice, or even the spell of the dragonlull itself, beating out steadily above them. The trainer had warned about this, during Makina’s orientation to the ice years ago. It was one of the few times when the lull’s rhythm could fail to keep a dragon docile.
Makina stepped to the side slowly, breathing deep and keeping her eyes down. The mother, a great copper-scaled creature, watched with liquid steel eyes as Makina pushed the protective wall back around the brood. It was only a sheet of beaten iron, but designed to give the illusion of privacy and security, like the isolated calderas wild dragons bred in. With any luck it would keep the mother from trying to move her brood. They couldn’t afford to lose this mare and her hatchling, plus the two that had surfaced yesterday. And Makina thought she understood something in that half-lidded gaze, a promise of violence if anything came between the mother and her young.
“Rest easy, Sleetbank,” Makina said, using the name her son had given to the beast. He named all their dragons, though it was frowned on among settlers. “You're safe. Your children are safe. Nothing can get us here. We’re too far out.”
Except for Sleetbank’s kind, of course, but she did her best to make sure no dragons were poached near their land. Kaala send it was enough.
Makina shoved the hinged wall closed, iron grating on basalt. In the stillness that followed, something deeper than thought registered, something trained into her from hard years on the ice and harder years in the old world before them. She tensed, stilled, thinking at first it was the mother reacting to the moved wall, but all was quiet there. Makina took a breath, listening for footsteps or a snatch of human conversation on the wind. Poachers maybe, like the pack that had come two weeks ago.
She heard nothing—and that was worse. Her heart seized.
“Kaden!” she cried, spinning for the caldera wall. “The lull!”
He crouched over it on the rim, one arm deep in the gears, windpaddle disconnected and drifting in the breeze.
“Got it!” he cried, jerking his hand back. The lull started again, its steady beat augmented with a new, skittering layer of rhythm. Something Kaden made, no doubt.
“Got what?” she snapped at him as he descended the rim, dragon Galesea like a looming shadow behind him. She took a breath, willed the fear and tension to leave her body. They were fine. The danger had been an illusion.
“The lull,” he said, like it was obvious, then flashed her his trademark smile. It was the kind of smile that would have worked on her when she was a teenager. The kind of smile that was working on the girls in the neighboring calderas, if the rumors were to be believed.
Makina raised an eyebrow. “The lull that keeps a dozen dragons from suddenly taking flight and freezing us dead in the process?”
“Mom. It was four beats. I do it all the time.” He brushed the snow from his fursuit, standing head and shoulders above her. When had he gotten so tall? “Do you like it?”
“It’s fine.” She eyed him, the new growth of stubble on his chin. He was the spitting image of his father. One of the reasons they could never leave the ice. “Something you’re practicing for your songs?”
Kaden shrugged. “I might use it. I kind of like this one.” He cocked his head, getting that faraway look that she would never understand. She’d never had an ear for music.
“Well do your mother a favor and leave it be for the next few days. Or did you forget we have a new brood down here?”
“That's what this rhythm is for! I think this one should be more soothing to Sleetbank.”
Makina held back a sigh. This was what happened when you grew up an only child in an isolated caldera: your imagination ran away with you. She'd had no such luxuries, as the youngest daughter of a household of nine. Maybe that was why she couldn’t hear what he did in the attachments he made to their lull. Still, she loved his imagination, even if she didn’t understand it. She just thought it would have stopped by now, this fancy that he could talk to Galesea, and his fascination with rhythm. Though he did have a way with the beasts, and all the visitors commented on how well behaved their herd was. If only it would keep him here.
“Well why don’t you rake in some algae while you see what it does,” she said. “Keep the next hatchling from boiling it all, if they come up under the pond.”
Kaden shrugged and went for the rake. She had no need to tell him, really. The survival strategies that were still conscious to her, that still felt unnatural 16 years later, were second nature to him. He was better at all of it than she was, and had been since he was eight or nine. Another product of being raised on the ice.
Makina scrubbed her rust-stained hands on a bit of worn cloth. She had that natural feel too, for darker things. Skills she had no use for, out here.
She sighed and turned for the garden, precious rectangles of dirt bounded in rough iron. Gardening was maybe the settler skill she was worst at, but it wasn’t fair to always put Kaden on it, and the beets needed thinning again. All twelve rows of them. Maybe she could make a stew of them for dinner—another thing she was bad at. But at least there, she could use her knives.
Somewhere in the middle of the third row, her basket half-full and a trail of slightly mangled beet greens behind her, the part of her that was always on alert caught the syncopated rhythm of an approaching lull. Visitors. Maybe more poachers.
She stood and ran for the stairs up the caldera wall, but Kaden was faster, pulling on furs against the chill outside the caldera’s trapped heat. She got to the top just as he was calling across the ice, a blast of chill air sending her hair streaming out behind her.
Her shoulders relaxed—it was a single figure with a single dragon. Nothing she couldn’t handle. A man, from the stature, approaching old age if her eyes read the gait right. No visible sign of weapons, though that didn’t mean much with the cursed thick furs they had to wear here. She missed being able to judge her opponents at a safe distance.
“Mom,” Kaden said without turning. “It’ll be fine. He’s not a poacher.”
Or a warden, she added inside. She’d be fine if neither ever showed up again. “You don’t know that. It never hurts to be cautious.” She dropped her shoulders as she said it, trying to look casual. Kaden could always read her moods, but she’d rather the visitor didn’t.
“Cautious with this, you mean?” he asked, pulling his daggersword in a loose-wristed grip. “We’ve literally never needed to use one of these.”
“And even if we literally never have to,” she said, hating the way the speech of the neighboring caldera kids was getting into her son’s vocabulary, “it still doesn’t hurt to be ready. Now put it away, or he’s going to think you mean business.” She spread arms in the universal gesture for peace and welcome, a move the figure returned. Which still meant nothing, but it was a start.
Makina passed the wait for the figure to get in earshot running over the weapons she had secreted around the caldera, tapping the small blades hidden on her body, and relaxing her breath into Watcher’s Rhythm: a long in breath, a twice-as-long out breath, and a half-as-long pause between. The familiar structure brought calm with it, and she smiled ruefully at herself—worked up over a single old man approaching across the ice. Maybe she was getting old, too. Or just rusty.
“Ho, traveller!” she called when he was close enough. “You are welcome within our walls, to share our meals and rhythms, and we welcome songs of the wider world.”
“And songs!” Kaden added, which wasn’t part of the traditional greeting, but made the traveler grin.
“Makina Stalksong, is it not?” he called. “And this must be young Kaden, grown up into a man already!”
“It is!” the boy called back, grinning.
Makina resisted saying that he wasn’t quite a man yet, racking her brain for who this could be. “And you are?” she called.
“I must be grown too, then, if you don’t recognize me,” he said, voice dropping to a normal level as he approached. He chuckled. “Grown old, that is. Alumag Stormchant.”
Makina tensed. Beside her, Kaden gasped. “The Bard?”
Makina itched to scoop this newest one up, to nuzzle its blunt nose and curl its finned tail into the crook of her arm. She resisted—not only because the heat turning its leaf-shaped scales translucent would sear the flesh from her bones, but because of its mother’s gaze. She knew that gaze, had held it herself during her first few years on the ice, raising Kaden in Halflung Caldera, fifty miles to the north. It was the gaze that said nothing would come between the mare and her child—not anyone in the caldera, or on the ice, or even the spell of the dragonlull itself, beating out steadily above them. The trainer had warned about this, during Makina’s orientation to the ice years ago. It was one of the few times when the lull’s rhythm could fail to keep a dragon docile.
Makina stepped to the side slowly, breathing deep and keeping her eyes down. The mother, a great copper-scaled creature, watched with liquid steel eyes as Makina pushed the protective wall back around the brood. It was only a sheet of beaten iron, but designed to give the illusion of privacy and security, like the isolated calderas wild dragons bred in. With any luck it would keep the mother from trying to move her brood. They couldn’t afford to lose this mare and her hatchling, plus the two that had surfaced yesterday. And Makina thought she understood something in that half-lidded gaze, a promise of violence if anything came between the mother and her young.
“Rest easy, Sleetbank,” Makina said, using the name her son had given to the beast. He named all their dragons, though it was frowned on among settlers. “You're safe. Your children are safe. Nothing can get us here. We’re too far out.”
Except for Sleetbank’s kind, of course, but she did her best to make sure no dragons were poached near their land. Kaala send it was enough.
Makina shoved the hinged wall closed, iron grating on basalt. In the stillness that followed, something deeper than thought registered, something trained into her from hard years on the ice and harder years in the old world before them. She tensed, stilled, thinking at first it was the mother reacting to the moved wall, but all was quiet there. Makina took a breath, listening for footsteps or a snatch of human conversation on the wind. Poachers maybe, like the pack that had come two weeks ago.
She heard nothing—and that was worse. Her heart seized.
“Kaden!” she cried, spinning for the caldera wall. “The lull!”
He crouched over it on the rim, one arm deep in the gears, windpaddle disconnected and drifting in the breeze.
“Got it!” he cried, jerking his hand back. The lull started again, its steady beat augmented with a new, skittering layer of rhythm. Something Kaden made, no doubt.
“Got what?” she snapped at him as he descended the rim, dragon Galesea like a looming shadow behind him. She took a breath, willed the fear and tension to leave her body. They were fine. The danger had been an illusion.
“The lull,” he said, like it was obvious, then flashed her his trademark smile. It was the kind of smile that would have worked on her when she was a teenager. The kind of smile that was working on the girls in the neighboring calderas, if the rumors were to be believed.
Makina raised an eyebrow. “The lull that keeps a dozen dragons from suddenly taking flight and freezing us dead in the process?”
“Mom. It was four beats. I do it all the time.” He brushed the snow from his fursuit, standing head and shoulders above her. When had he gotten so tall? “Do you like it?”
“It’s fine.” She eyed him, the new growth of stubble on his chin. He was the spitting image of his father. One of the reasons they could never leave the ice. “Something you’re practicing for your songs?”
Kaden shrugged. “I might use it. I kind of like this one.” He cocked his head, getting that faraway look that she would never understand. She’d never had an ear for music.
“Well do your mother a favor and leave it be for the next few days. Or did you forget we have a new brood down here?”
“That's what this rhythm is for! I think this one should be more soothing to Sleetbank.”
Makina held back a sigh. This was what happened when you grew up an only child in an isolated caldera: your imagination ran away with you. She'd had no such luxuries, as the youngest daughter of a household of nine. Maybe that was why she couldn’t hear what he did in the attachments he made to their lull. Still, she loved his imagination, even if she didn’t understand it. She just thought it would have stopped by now, this fancy that he could talk to Galesea, and his fascination with rhythm. Though he did have a way with the beasts, and all the visitors commented on how well behaved their herd was. If only it would keep him here.
“Well why don’t you rake in some algae while you see what it does,” she said. “Keep the next hatchling from boiling it all, if they come up under the pond.”
Kaden shrugged and went for the rake. She had no need to tell him, really. The survival strategies that were still conscious to her, that still felt unnatural 16 years later, were second nature to him. He was better at all of it than she was, and had been since he was eight or nine. Another product of being raised on the ice.
Makina scrubbed her rust-stained hands on a bit of worn cloth. She had that natural feel too, for darker things. Skills she had no use for, out here.
She sighed and turned for the garden, precious rectangles of dirt bounded in rough iron. Gardening was maybe the settler skill she was worst at, but it wasn’t fair to always put Kaden on it, and the beets needed thinning again. All twelve rows of them. Maybe she could make a stew of them for dinner—another thing she was bad at. But at least there, she could use her knives.
Somewhere in the middle of the third row, her basket half-full and a trail of slightly mangled beet greens behind her, the part of her that was always on alert caught the syncopated rhythm of an approaching lull. Visitors. Maybe more poachers.
She stood and ran for the stairs up the caldera wall, but Kaden was faster, pulling on furs against the chill outside the caldera’s trapped heat. She got to the top just as he was calling across the ice, a blast of chill air sending her hair streaming out behind her.
Her shoulders relaxed—it was a single figure with a single dragon. Nothing she couldn’t handle. A man, from the stature, approaching old age if her eyes read the gait right. No visible sign of weapons, though that didn’t mean much with the cursed thick furs they had to wear here. She missed being able to judge her opponents at a safe distance.
“Mom,” Kaden said without turning. “It’ll be fine. He’s not a poacher.”
Or a warden, she added inside. She’d be fine if neither ever showed up again. “You don’t know that. It never hurts to be cautious.” She dropped her shoulders as she said it, trying to look casual. Kaden could always read her moods, but she’d rather the visitor didn’t.
“Cautious with this, you mean?” he asked, pulling his daggersword in a loose-wristed grip. “We’ve literally never needed to use one of these.”
“And even if we literally never have to,” she said, hating the way the speech of the neighboring caldera kids was getting into her son’s vocabulary, “it still doesn’t hurt to be ready. Now put it away, or he’s going to think you mean business.” She spread arms in the universal gesture for peace and welcome, a move the figure returned. Which still meant nothing, but it was a start.
Makina passed the wait for the figure to get in earshot running over the weapons she had secreted around the caldera, tapping the small blades hidden on her body, and relaxing her breath into Watcher’s Rhythm: a long in breath, a twice-as-long out breath, and a half-as-long pause between. The familiar structure brought calm with it, and she smiled ruefully at herself—worked up over a single old man approaching across the ice. Maybe she was getting old, too. Or just rusty.
“Ho, traveller!” she called when he was close enough. “You are welcome within our walls, to share our meals and rhythms, and we welcome songs of the wider world.”
“And songs!” Kaden added, which wasn’t part of the traditional greeting, but made the traveler grin.
“Makina Stalksong, is it not?” he called. “And this must be young Kaden, grown up into a man already!”
“It is!” the boy called back, grinning.
Makina resisted saying that he wasn’t quite a man yet, racking her brain for who this could be. “And you are?” she called.
“I must be grown too, then, if you don’t recognize me,” he said, voice dropping to a normal level as he approached. He chuckled. “Grown old, that is. Alumag Stormchant.”
Makina tensed. Beside her, Kaden gasped. “The Bard?”
