Song of the Earth

Prologue

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. They came and went like flocks of geese, but in a peculiar pattern. One which failed to follow the changing of the seasons and left the growing human populations of the Valley increasingly befuddled. A brave shepherd once ventured up the fertile slopes to question a beast four times his size, but although he spied an intelligence in its vermillion eyes that he had never found in his sheep, the beast seemed incapable of human communication. Still, the shepherd returned to his village alive and unsinged and eventually an astute farmer noticed that his crops always fared better when the dragons were at home, and their preference for wolf as part of their diet kept many a flock of sheep in swelling numbers. And so, for centuries, the small settlements of humans coexisted in harmony with their occasional neighbours.

***

Mirakka, the fifth Queen of the Ember line of dragons, heard the first plea from the Earth in a dream. In her mind’s eye, she saw vast forests of trees uprooted and great stones ripped from the bowels of the Earth to build high walls and castles. She saw whole populations of plants and animals decimated by a tide of hungry human bellies. She saw black smoke poisoning the clouds and fresh waters soiled with waste, as humans turned their backs on the filth they let build up around them. Mirakka’s eyelids flashed open in alarm, and she carefully lifted her scaled wings off of her sleeping children before shuffling to the mouth of the cave. As she peered out from the rocky outcrop into the Valley below, her dream became reality. She marvelled at how, after centuries of slow progress, the humans had quite suddenly encroached on every inch of space. The once lush, green slopes of the Valley were split completely into yellowing squares, growing crops to feed the hordes of people that now populated the cities and villages along the river. The river, once a glittering aquamarine, had turned to a dull brown sludge and the air above the cities twisted with thick, grey columns of smoke.

The Song of the Earth, the powerful melody that dragons followed from place to place to draw on its life-nurturing power, had become a scream of pain. Mirakka winced, from both the sound and the clear meaning of the message. For the sake of all life, the humans must be warned, and if they did not change, then they must be culled. She clawed the symbol of the wind into the dirt at the mouth of the cave and asked it to carry her message to all the dragons in the Valley. Then she let the words flow through her mind.

The Earth has need of us.

***

Mazeneen, the Princess Ember, knew something big was happening. Her mother and all her council thought she was too young to hear the Song of the Earth, but she had heard its heart-stabbing cry a month prior, and its wailing lament ever since, and she could feel the tension in the very trees that quivered softly around her. And then there was the fact that her brother was about as subtle as the rising sun.

She formed the words in her mind and pushed them out ahead of her, to where she had just seen her brother’s spike-tipped tail whip behind a tree.

Where are you going?

Keller’s horned head and emerald eyes appeared where his tail had been, peeking out of the forest in surprise.

Maze! Go back to the cave!

I’m going with you, she stated, her clawed feet eating up the ground between them before he could slip away.

No! Mother told you to stay here.

She told us both, she reminded him.

I’m old enough to help, and she needs protection. If something happens to her… His words in her mind trailed off.

…You’ll be King, Maze finished.

So, I should know what’s going on.

Well, if something happens to you, I’ll be Queen.

He rolled his eyes and a wisp of steam spurted from his right nostril.

Ok fine, you can come too but if it's dangerous, you have to hide.

I will, I swear.

They ran together out of the trees and onto the slopes, where they spread their wings and sprang onto the currents of the wind. Maze breathed in a deep lungful of air and let it out with relief. It had been weeks since she had been allowed to fly. The kiss of the cool air on her teal-tipped scales was the best feeling in the world. They followed the river down through the Valley, toward the largest of the human cities, a sprawling mass of timber and stone that obliterated any trace of plant life for miles and spread out on both sides of the river. Dark pinpricks in the sky grew larger, brighter and familiar as they approached, and great blasts of fire rained down on the city walls. In response, massive stones were hurled through the air from mechanical structures on the ground, and sharp arrows glinted along their paths into the sky.

Maze examined the scene in alarm. Out of the few spells she’d begun to learn, asking the wind to carry information to her had been the most successful, and she’d heard enough snippets of talk between members of the council to know that the humans had been warned that their ravenous savaging of the Earth must come to an end. Looking at the scene before her now, it seemed obvious that the warning had not been taken well.

We should land and hide, Keller advised.

They circled down into a field of long wheat, where an abandoned barn was large enough to provide cover and gave them a clear view of the battlefield. At first, they watched with anxiety tensing in their bellies, but it soon became clear, even with their lack of strategic knowledge, that the dragons were winning.

Large sections of the city wall were crumbling, houses were on fire and human bodies littered the ground at the base of the wall, most in piles of ash. Some dragons had arrows embedded in their scales, but all lived and continued to fight with vigour.

A metallic screeching drew their eyes to an entrance in the city wall, where a large iron grid was being lifted. A band of men on horses rode out, fleeing the city.

Cowards, Maze thought smugly.

They stopped suddenly and turned back to face the battle. One man wore a glimmering crown and Maze knew from what her mother had told her that the man must be a King.

Their Kings and Queens are not like ours, Maze. They adorn themselves with jewels and precious metals to try to demonstrate their power, and their people elevate them into the realms of divinity. Humans are greedy, material wealth is all that matters to them.

The King faced a man who wore a long, midnight cloak and carried a staff, and they moved their mouths at each other in that peculiar way in which humans communicated. The cloaked man dismounted and the men on horses spread out around him, raising their bows in a protective circle. The cloaked man started to carve into the ground with his staff and from her position in the barn, Maze couldn’t see what he drew, but it seemed to attract the dragons’ attention. They descended in droves and many spewed fire from the air, where it bounced off an invisible dome that surrounded the band of men. The largest dragon, the familiar size and blue scales marking her as Maze’s mother, landed directly in their line of sight, blocking their view of the man and his staff. She snapped and spat balls of flame, and then swiped with her claws, but she failed to break through the circle of men. A group of them, the King at the forefront, started to swing their swords in her direction and Maze set off running through the long grass, a painful fear for her mother’s life swirling through her belly and stoking the fire in her throat.

Maze! No! Keller’s cry pushed into her mind.

And then the wave came. A ripple of power that swept the grass aside and rushed over Maze’s scales and out into the Valley. It was only as strong as a gust of wind and yet her legs suddenly failed her. She fell and careened into the ground, a peculiar ache setting in from what she would consider a light fall. She quickly pulled her front legs out from under her but struggled to raise her body off the ground. She looked down, wondering why her claws hadn’t secured her to the earth and found a set of tiny human hands curling in the grass. She looked around for the small child that she had surely crushed, but the hands moved with her, and she stared at the tiny pink fingernails in horror. When she looked beyond them, her terror increased tenfold. Where her mother had stood, blocking her view of the men, there was now a small human woman on her knees before the King, with long, yellow hair fluttering about the point of the sword protruding from her back.

Thud!

Bodies fell from the sky. Human bodies. And the sheer horror of her reality kicked her in the gut.

She glanced behind her. A yellow-haired human boy stood a few feet back, his emerald eyes roving through the sky, then to her, then ahead, filled with a growing fear.

Keller?

Silence.

KELLER?

Either he ignored her, or her words hadn’t formed in his mind. She looked back at the woman she was now sure was her mother. She slumped forward onto her front, and the sword slid further through her body.

MOTHER!

Maze tried to stand on her strange legs but found that her front legs were far too short for that to work. She tried to crawl forward, but the limbs failed to follow her commands and she ended up face first in the grass several times. Her eyes burned, and a hot liquid blurred her vision and ran down her cheeks, as the question of her mother’s fate consumed her.

Mother! Mother! Mother!

She dragged her useless body forward but before she could get close enough to the human body that was her target, heavy arms clumsily grabbed her from behind. She fell back against a chest and looked up at the yellow-haired boy.

Keller?

He didn’t respond, but his emerald eyes gazed furiously into hers, like he was trying to send a message. She recognised those eyes, although they were much smaller than they used to be and his pupils were perfect circles instead of slits. He nodded towards the scene ahead, then shook his head. She wasn’t sure what he meant. Don’t get too close to the men? Or don’t bother because Mother is dead. No! It wasn’t that. It couldn’t be.

The human men watched dispassionately. They gazed around the field at all the bewildered creatures who tried to right themselves in their new bodies, looking repeatedly between the empty skies and the suddenly increased numbers of humans around them. The bodies that had fallen from the sky weren’t moving. The real humans stood tall on two legs and their bodies were draped in fabrics. All of those who had been dragons were dressed only in their human skin and hair. The men’s mouths opened, strange sounds emerging, before they pulled ropes from their horses and began roughly hauling the people-who-had-been-dragons around to tie them together.

When the men approached Maze and her brother, they both tried to scramble away, but the men’s long strides caught up with them quickly. They tried to kick and swipe with their tiny fingernails but they were small in comparison to the men, very small. One simply picked her up, locking his arms around her and there was nothing she could do. When he placed her on two feet to bind her hands, she wobbled precariously as she looked up at him, her head only reaching his middle. Yes, she was a child and much smaller than an adult dragon, but she had been far larger than a human man. Now, she seemed to be the smallest creature on the battlefield. Her and her brother were surely the only children foolish enough to have made an appearance.

Keller stood a little taller, tied up behind her, the long line of rope connecting numerous dragon-people, who stared at each other in shock and horror. What of the children and the dragons who weren’t here? Were they human now too? She was closer to the woman she was sure was her mother, but the woman lay still in a pool of yellow curls and bright, crimson blood. Maze was fairly sure that dragons and humans had that in common, they both bled. And if they bled that amount in proportion to their bodies and if their eyes were still and staring, they were dead.

Maze opened her mouth and a high, shrill scream pierced the air. Each and every former dragon followed suit, realising that it was the only sound they currently knew how to make, and the only way to try to release the panic and the pain.

***

Maze didn’t understand anything that happened after that. They were dragged into the city, most falling heavily and scraping their feeble human skin repeatedly on the rough stones embedded in the ground. They tried to mimic the way the humans walked on their two long legs, since their two thinner, shorter legs were tied up in front of them, and most managed it eventually, but not without numerous injuries sustained from falls. In the city, hordes of humans were yelling and throwing stones, and every impact sent a sharp stab of pain through her body. Her eyes continued to spew hot water and blood seeped from cuts on her skin. The stones wouldn’t have even registered if they’d hit her scales. Her claws would have sliced through these ropes as if they were water, and her wings would have carried her away from this torture.

Wings.

Humans didn’t have wings. She glanced up at the back of the dragon-person in front of her, broad and brown but marked by two white lines that curved over the bones of their upper back. That was where their wings would have sprouted had they still been a dragon. What did the white lines mean? Did all humans have them? The real humans all had materials covering most of their skin, so she couldn’t tell.

They were made to stand before a towering castle, whilst humans all around made ear-stabbing noises with their mouths. When the King, wearing his shiny crown, and the cloaked man with the staff stood on a high platform in the large open space before the castle doors, a silence descended for the first time in what seemed like hours, leaving Maze’s new, delicate ears ringing.

The King had killed her mother. The man with the staff had worked some powerful magic on them all. He had been carving a symbol into the ground. Did he ask the Earth for help like dragons did? Did the Earth allow him to do this? She felt a deep, dark slither of hatred work its way up her body, leaving her cold. She had never felt something so strong and powerful, so overwhelming. Her fingers curled in on themselves, an odd human reaction to anger perhaps, and her body shook with rage. A human body was quite responsive to emotion it seemed, but she didn’t care if anyone noticed. She hoped that the two evil men before could see the loathing on her face. But they didn't look at her once. She was so small she barely existed, and her neck hurt having to look up at everything. She vowed that one day, if she weren’t dead, she’d be as big and strong as she could get, and she would make them look, and she wanted to see fear in their eyes.

They were led to one side of the castle, amidst more yelling from the crowd, down wide, stone steps and below a grid of metal that was lifted to allow them in and closed behind them. They descended into a dark, cold area filled with metal bars that separated the space into cages. The human men roughly untied them from the long rope and pushed them inside, locking the doors before retreating up the stairs and out into the light, firmly closing the metal grate with a harsh clang.

After that, the only thing that filled the silence was a far-off dripping and the strange sounds of distress that some of the dragon-people had begun to let loose from their throats. Maze listened carefully, but the Song of the Earth was silent. As she stared at the crumpled faces, damaged skin and watery eyes of her people, she felt something hard work its way up her throat and push out of her mouth. It was a hoarse sob of despair, and the hot salty water began to flow fiercely from her eyes once more.

A woman approached her. She had seen enough of the farming humans near her home in the Valley to mostly distinguish between male and female human faces, and without clothes covering their bodies, it seemed that most had more obvious features. The dragon-woman before her had dark skin and Maze realised that humans came in a limited range of colours, ranging from a deep, dark brown to pale as milk. None of the vibrant blues and reds and greens of dragon scales. The strange, soft hair that grew from their heads varied from black to brown to white with the odd splash of copper here and there but overall, they were quite a dull species. The woman crouched down and wrapped her warm arms around Maze, pulling her close, and Maze felt oddly comforted, even as her heart continued to feel like a deadweight in her chest. Human emotions were strange, easy to trigger and hard to control.

The woman pulled back and her deep brown eyes met Maze’s. She opened her mouth and the sounds that fell out became oddly recognisable.

“Muh… Maz… Maz-en-een.”

It was different, hearing words through her ears and processing them more slowly in her mind, but that was her name and a spark of hope fluttered to life in her belly. Perhaps they would be able to communicate with each other. She replayed the movement of the woman’s mouth in her mind’s eye and tried to repeat it.

“Mez-ez-zee.” Her voice was softer and higher than the woman’s but her words hadn’t been right. She experimented, making more sounds with her mouth, realising that some required the mouth to be open, some were made with closed lips and some with the tongue and teeth.

“Mazeneen,” she sounded and felt a tugging at her lips in response to her satisfaction. The woman responded similarly, and Maze got the sense that the human expression meant something good.

Other dragon people had been watching and listening, and they each started practising with their mouths, repeating the same word, until Maze’s name echoed along the rows of cages in the gloom.

***

After several days, someone started marking the setting of the sun by scratching a sharp stone against the wall and after ten days more, the flutter of hope that had sparked to life in Maze had died. The dragon-people could talk to each other - that was a good thing - but it was clear from the coming and going of the guards with food and water that they couldn’t speak the language of humans, so no threats or pleas were understood. Sometimes the guards brought in more dragon-people, many of whom were children, distinguishable by their wobbly gait, lack of speech and terror-filled eyes. It was clear that the magic had touched every dragon and that their fear was confirmed. Their kind no longer existed.

Human bodies produced more waste than dragons and although they tried to keep their excrement to the corners of the cells, the smell was foul and even in the bare, stone cell, each person was becoming more and more filthy. The human body seemed to dirty itself through sweat and tears and festering cuts. Many of her people were ill, their foreheads hot whilst their bodies shivered, and some of them kept spewing up the oat-sludge they were fed.

Maze recognised some of the things her body was telling her. Thirst, hunger and tiredness were all things she had experienced as a dragon. Only everything felt more intense. She hungered for more than the measly portions of oat sludge they were given and found herself dreaming of the wild boar her mother would bring home, whilst her belly pinched with pain. They were given water twice a day, but it wasn’t enough, and the thirst burned her head and her throat. They had been given clothes but at night, the cold was biting, survivable only by huddling together in a great, big pile of pathetic human bodies. Beneath the cry of her basic bodily needs, Maze felt a keen sense of desperation and hopelessness that intensified her misery and when she tried to sleep, she would see a sword driven through her mother's body, sometimes dragon, sometimes human, and she'd wake screaming and sweating.

One day, word was passed through the cages that a dragon had died. Maze had been scratching yet another symbol onto the wall and begging the Earth to help them, but nobody could hear the Song and nobody could summon even a light breeze to whistle down through the prison. They were completely alone and helpless and every dragon would die thanks to their weak human bodies if they didn’t get out soon.

After the guards came and found the body, the King and his Wizard finally deigned to visit their prisoners, their faces scrunched up against the smell and the pitiable sight before them. Maze curled her hands tightly around the cage bars and glared at them with the heat of the fire she had lost. The Wizard’s eyes danced down to her and away, then back, widening slightly when he read her face. He murmured something to the King, who nodded with a look of grim determination. When they left with their company of guards, Keller’s hand fell upon her shoulder. She flinched. They had all been surprised by their human instincts to touch one another and she was still getting used to it.

“Sassenor once lived close to a village and spent time with the humans. He can understand a little of what they say. We’re to be sold as slaves, the young only.”

“Why only the young?” she asked.

“The Wizard says that young hearts and minds can be changed and that we will forget our hatred.”

“I will never forget,” she bit out.

“We must not. We must learn all we can Maze, learn to walk and talk like them, act as they do. We must make them forget who we are, so that we can discover how they cursed us and set ourselves free.”

“I will Keller, I swear it. I will make them pay for what they’ve done.”

“Freedom first Maze, then vengeance. There is little we can do in these weak bodies other than get them to trust us. Don’t do anything foolish.”

“I will follow your lead, Keller. You are our King, after all.”

“King of what?" he whispered, almost too quiet for her to hear.

***

The guards returned later that day, and as Sassenor had heard, the children and young adults were indeed hauled out of the cages, bound tightly to a rope and dragged back into the castle courtyard. A crowd stood quietly watching and murmuring to each other before a man began moving down the line and gesturing at each dragon. Hands were raised and shouts were heard amongst the crowd, before the dragon child was untied, exchanged for coins, and pushed away through the crowd.

Keller was sold ahead of Maze, but before he could be shoved at the towering man who had purchased him, Maze leapt forward and grasped his worn shirt tightly between her bound hands, unable to lose one more thing that was precious to her. The seller and the buyer looked down at them with stern expressions, muttering to each other and gesturing between the two of them. More coins were exchanged, and Maze was untied from the rope. She looked at the buyer in surprise, wondering if there might actually be some kindness amongst humans. The large man grasped each of them tightly by the shoulder and pushed them away through the crowd, down a road embedded with pebbles and lined with people and houses.

“At least we’re together,” Keller breathed.

The man’s hand bit into her shoulder, pulling them to a stop as he barked something at Keller.

“What do you think he wants?” he muttered to Maze. Before she could respond, she was on the ground and a sharp kick was delivered to her belly, knocking the breath from her body. She looked back at the man in shock, who stared at Keller, holding a finger to his lips with one hand and pointing his other at Maze, who lay desperately gasping for air on the ground.

His meaning was quite clear. No talking. And perhaps the reason he had purchased siblings was nothing to do with empathy and everything to do with control. If one did something wrong, the other could be punished. Keller looked at Maze in alarm but didn’t say another word. When he reached down to help her, the man shoved him away and hauled Maze roughly to her feet. She remained bent double as they moved through the city, wondering if humans could recover from the crushing of their insides. Even dragons couldn’t do that, but their scales could absorb heavy impacts, so it was rarely a problem one had to battle.

At the end of the road was a high wall with a grand, wooden gate, watched by guards on either side. At the sight of the man barrelling towards them, one called beyond the wall and the gate was opened, revealing a wide courtyard and a tall house. The inside wall had a roof protruding a short way inwards and people worked here and there under it, tending horses, mending weapons and washing clothes. They all stood to bow at the man who marched across the courtyard, before they eyed Maze and her brother with curiosity. The man barked something at them, and Maze thought she was starting to recognise a word that the humans often threw around in her presence. She thought it was their word for what she was, a dragon. By the shocked and furious expressions that lit up the peoples’ faces, she was pretty sure that was it. She supposed that levelling parts of the city and setting fire to their homes hadn’t put her kind in the humans’ favour. Still, they had been trying to save the Earth, and from what Maze had overheard before the battle, she was sure that the humans had received a serious warning and ignored it. They had brought this upon themselves, and in the end, they weren’t even the ones suffering the most.

They entered a large space within the house, which was dominated by a curling staircase, and the booming voice of the man who held them echoed up and around the lofty ceiling. People began to emerge from doorways, and a woman with three young children appeared at the top of the stairs. She heard the word dragon announced again and watched the looks of curiosity change to anger, with a churning in her painful belly. The only face that didn’t appear hostile was the face of the youngest child, a girl about her own size and stature. She smiled brightly at Maze, who felt her own mouth tug up at the corners shyly, before the woman quickly pulled the girl behind her. She assumed the woman must be the girl’s mother, and she felt a pang of grief wash over her.

The people around began to disperse and Maze was shoved at a scowling woman in long, grey clothes. She turned frantically to reach for Keller but the large man held her back, speaking harshly. He turned suddenly and smacked Keller hard enough across the face to knock him to the ground. She froze, her eyes filling with hot and hateful tears that blurred her vision. She got the message. Do as you’re told, or watch Keller suffer. Keller’s emerald eyes met hers with a painful understanding. Don’t do anything foolish.

They were in the same house at least and they both knew what they had to do. Learn how to be human, learn their ways and their secrets and find a way to break the curse. She took a deep breath, willed away the hot water in her eyes and directed the full force of her loathing at the face of her new master, as she let the woman pull her away. He was another human to add to her growing list. She’d have her revenge, even if she was foolish enough to die trying.