Dragon Pins

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. It depended on the season. As spring wormed its way up from the north, it drove the dragons before it. Their melodious, lilting calls were the sounds that heralded the blooming of the first flowers and the gradual thawing of the ground, ice-hard after the winter chill. First to arrive were the great hornivans and skysleepers, their broad wings barely moving as they caught the air currents rippling over the mountains. For most of them, the Valley was a short stop on a longer journey, one that would end a hundred miles further south, where the mountains reared still higher and the withy settlements fell away.

Then came the spirit torques and the arrowrods and all the other dragons who spent the summer around the Valley. They arrived in a torrent of beating wings, a thunder cloud descending upon the houses, perching on rooftrees and snatching quells from gardens when the withies turned their backs for a moment. The withies suffered this gladly, for the chance to fill their baskets with scales, ruffles, pins and dragon guano was worth more than a flock of quells any day. Even more valuable was the chance to meet with old and new friends. Then the spring migrants would disperse, leaving only the spratters and fletchlings to appear, hatching from larvae that had wintered underground and on rotten trees, waiting for the earth to warm.

When autumn came, the whole parade was reversed. The grub dragons slowly vanished as the growing cold sent them to sleep. Then the migrants would cluster in the Valley, the meeting-point for their journey north. The last hornivan would wing its way across the gloomy sky and vanish into the brooding clouds mere days before the first snow drifted in.

Such was the cycle of the seasons in the Neddermere, known to all in Stantold as Dragon Valley. The withies looked forward to each spring, not only for the returning light and warmth, but for returning friends. The oldest dragons had known generations of withies; it was like seeing grandparents return after a winter holiday. The children would clamour for stories of their ancestors, or attempt to sneak a pin out of a dragon's mane when they thought themselves unobserved. Spring was the season of celebration and autumn one of sorrow, as those same friends were bid goodbye and both parties wondered whether any of the faces would be missing come spring.

And then one year came when all of the faces were missing. The winter had been harsh and long; it surprised no one when the skysleepers did not arrive before the first spring moon. But the moon turned and not a single dragon came up from the north.

As she had every morning since winter began to fail, Mouse-ear closed the trapdoor of the house quietly and slid down the ladder to the ground, striking off down the Valley to where the Neddermere emptied into the River Neddon. Under her bare feet, the ground squelched, water-logged after the rain of the last few days. Here and there, grubby patches of snow still clung sullenly to the ground, slumped like drunken beggars. The sky was rippled with shades of grey that rushed across it like the waves on the lake beneath. Even the grass seemed dull after spending the winter sleeping beneath the snow. It had emerged crumpled and flat, as she did after a restless night with too many dreams. Soon, when spring reached the mountains in the south, it would be submerged in meltwater as the lake rose to fill the Valley from side to side. Already the water level was higher.

A mile and a half down the lake was the village of Nedderend. She waved at her friends, mud still sucking at her feet. Calls of 'Morning!' and 'Blessings to thee!' followed her as she passed between the village's stilt-legged houses and began climbing the ridge at the north end of the Valley. They buoyed her on her way, lending a spark of hope to what would no doubt be another fruitless trip.

When she arrived, only a little out of breath, the crest of ground was already occupied.

'Blessings to thee, Mouse-ear,' said the Nedderend speaker, nodding his mushroom-covered head.

'And to thee, Blewit. Are you here to watch for the dragons too?' Mouse-ear glanced at the pink and pale violet fruitbodies that grew from the speaker's curls. She really should renew her own hair plants soon.

'I certainly am. I hope they come soon.' A frown creased Blewit's light-green forehead. 'It's not right. The thaws have begun and the Neddermere will soon be flooded but we haven't seen a single skysleeper.'

Mouse-ear nodded, rubbing the long fingers of her left hand together, over and over. ‘I can't think what's keeping them. Even in bad weather, a few should have got through by now. Normally we’re chasing the gods'-hairs out of the gardens this time of year.' She gazed out over the land as it fell away to the North, the Neddon glittering in the weak sun as it turned almost at once to rapids. Pale light wavered across the sky, as though they stood under the waters of Neddermere and the sun could barely make it through the waves. But the horizon was empty of anything but the clouds. ‘If they don’t get here, we won’t see them. How will they mate? And who’s going to keep the deer from stripping all the plants-’ She shut her mouth, in case she gave in to the hollow fear inside her, lurking like rotten wood beneath healthy bark.

'Blessings to thee,' panted a new voice as sodden footsteps approached.

Mouse-ear didn't know the withy approaching, but she greeted them politely, glad of the momentary distraction from her own worries. She looked to their forehead for their name plant as she did so. Most of their hair was covered in a mat of waythorns, the spikes curved in on themselves to prevent injury, but in the middle was a tall, crowning spike of sedge, leaves hissing in the wind.

‘And to thee, Sedge,’ Blewit replied, confirming Mouse-ear’s guess.

‘No sign?’ Sedge frowned too, a shiver passing over them like grasses in the wind. They, like Blewit, wore the polished wooden medallion of a speaker around their neck. They must have come from a village on the west bank; Mouse-ear knew most of the speakers on this side of the mere.

‘Not so much as a fallen scale,’ Blewit said, shaking his head so that his mushrooms shivered. Tiny spores drifted down, visible to a withy’s sight as a glowing puff of dust.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Sedge said hollowly. ‘Very wrong. You mark my words.’ They fiddled with the hem of their tunic. ‘No dragons… It’s never happened before. It won’t be good for the land.’

And what’s bad for the land, is bad for us, Mouse-ear added silently. An old saying, but a true one. She came up the ridge for that painful hope that she might see the dragons arrive. She came for hope, but never left with anything but more worry. Sedge’s dire pronouncements only made it worse, an insect chiselling away at the rotten wood within, widening the hole.

The sun crawled higher over the mountains and shot the grey clouds with white, but nothing came up from the north. Mouse-ear sighed.

‘I must get back. It’s my turn to muck out the quells and the goats.’ It was so ordinary, in the midst of this unnatural spring.

Blewit wrinkled his nose. ‘Not a nice job. I… I expect I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Because they won’t come today, he implied. ‘Daya keep you.’

‘See you. Daya keep you both too.’

She turned away from the view, the spreading glory of the sunrise doing nothing to dispel the anxiety that nested inside her like a chewing grub, hungry, gnawing. She had hoped, as she did every morning, to see that glint of violet in the distance, the growing shape, the fuzziness hardening into clarity. Setting eyes on Tax-radhi, the arrowrod who had been coming to their village, their house, for more seasons than she or any of the house could count. The pins in her mane would rustle, flaring and dipping as she reached the climax of a story, preening as she gave the youngsters, and not-so-youngsters, rides. Sitting with the adults in the lightening evenings, bringing the news from the north countries. But no. The morning’s trip had been wasted, as had the one before and the one before that.

By the time she reached her house, trudging beneath the platform to where the quells and the goats milled, she knew how the grass felt after the winter, flat and listless.

She picked up the pitchfork and plunged it into the pile of dried grass and stalks they used as animal bedding, shaking the fork to filter out the manure. Her house-sister, Dragon’s-mane, always said hard work helped to clear her head. Mouse-ear, as she nudged inquisitive goats aside and tried in vain to erect the broken barricade to keep the animals out of the shelter, found just the opposite. Using her hands freed up her mind to circle round and round the same worry again and again, like a crow waiting for a sick goat to die.

Bending backwards for a moment to ease the ache in her back, something caught her eye. A tiny patch of earth shivered. It heaped itself up into a miniature molehill, then split apart to reveal the blind, white head of a newly-hatched fletchling.

‘Daya’s cracks,’ Mouse-ear swore, the pitchfork falling from numb fingers.

Now they would have to dig over the entire pen to stop the fletchlings swarming the animal feed or, if they were unlucky, the animals themselves, but that wasn’t what made her curse. The appearance of the grub dragon meant something worse.

The fletchlings and the spratter were always the last to appear. The migration was not just late. It was not just bad weather keeping the dragons away. Sedge was right! Something’s happened, something bad, to stop the migration, stop it, not just delay it.

They aren’t coming.

The fletchling squeaked and squirmed unpleasantly, like an oversized maggot. Mouse-ear drew the dragon pin, one Tax-radhi had given her as a present, from her belt and ran the grub through. She hooked it out of its case with a practised twist, last year’s muscle memories returning to her and climbed the ladder as quickly as she could, leaving the pitchfork abandoned on the ground.

‘Mother!’ she called, flinging the trapdoor of the veranda open with a crash.

‘What is it, dear?’ The house-mother, Highland-saxifrage, tutted as she turned away from the stove and saw the dirty footprints Mouse-ear was making.

‘This,’ Mouse-ear said, shaking the impaled fletchling in her house-mother’s face.

‘Wha- Oh.’ High-sax’s yellow eyes widened. ‘Oh no…’ She gazed at the dead fletchling for a moment, her mouth slightly open as fear flitted across her face. ‘And there was no sign this morning? None at all?’

‘None.’ Mouse-ear’s free hand fiddled with the end of her hair. She might be an adult, but here, with her house-mother, she could indulge in the childish fantasy that the grown-ups would know what to do. ‘It must be something really bad to keep them so long,’ she said, her voice small. ‘Do… do you think Tax-radhi is all right?’

High-sax ducked under the dragon pin and pulled her house-daughter into an embrace, the warm-earth smell of her hair very comforting. ‘I’m sure she is.’

Mouse-ear pretended not to hear the slight tremor in her house-mother’s voice.

‘Finish with the goats and I’ll have breakfast ready for you,’ High-sax said, carefully avoiding the dragon pin again as they broke apart. She slid the fletchling off of the weapon and added it to the pan on the stove, where it sizzled and released a cloud of fragrant steam. Fletchlings might be a nuisance, but at least they tasted good.

Mouse-ear wiped her dragon pin on her tunic, then sheathed it again. She brushed a hand over the wilting ivy leaves in her hair. ‘All right,’ she said, nose twitching at the scent of fried fletchling. From outside, the sound of a pollen-hawker calling out his wares drifted in, a slim root leading back to normality, a promise that whatever had happened to the dragons, the rest of the world was still there.

Halfway back down the ladder, she froze. A yowling cry tore through the air. She clutched at the smooth wood to stop herself falling and gazed up at the sky. To the north, a violet shape had appeared, jerking and twitching as it hauled itself through the air. Shouts came from the village as the other withies spotted it too.

Could it be Tax-radhi? She was hardly the only violet arrowrod but…

The dragon howled again and cries echoed up in reply from the watchers, names of friends called out in fear. A whip crack sounded and the dragon lurched downwards again, its flight erratic, laboured.

Mouse-ear clung to the ladder, the wood biting her fingers as she tightened them. Was it her imagination or was the dragon aiming for their village? Her house, even?

Another shriek, hard and brittle with pain as it passed overhead. It stretched ragged, cracked wings, shuddered and then ploughed into the ground.

Mouse-ear was thrown from the ladder and she went sprawling through the grass and muck.

Dazed, she spat grass out of her mouth and wiped the mud from her eyes. She looked up and saw the slumped, violet shape that had torn through the earth and into the waters of the Neddermere.

She pushed herself to her feet, fingers sinking into the mud, and sprinted forward.

It was Tax-radhi all right. But the last time Mouse-ear had seen her, she had been healthy, scales bright and gleaming, plump after a summer of good game. The thing before Mouse-ear now was faded, half the scales missing, the rest pale and dirty. Cracks split her claws and her wings were so full of holes and sores it was a miracle she had flown at all.

Mouse-ear waded into the water with her neighbour to haul Tax-radhi’s muzzle from the water. The dragon’s fierce, black eyes opened, now clouded and bleary, and fastened themselves on Mouse-ear.