Twenty Fields of Stars

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Mama said they were driven out of the South-Eastern lands by the monsoons and attracted to our Valley by the strength of the magic from the other folk there. Dragons were heat-seekers by nature, the sun fuelling their fire-breathing lungs and molten scales. But our Valley was cold, so far south in this world that the rivers ran with ice and the mountains were capped white, subduing the dragons.

It had been Sasha’s idea to steal the scales.

Everyone knew that dragons shed their scales, the same way snakes shed skin as they grow, and a wood nymph had revealed to us that the discarded scales retained magical properties. We weren’t sure what exactly entailed magical properties, or how to get said properties from a scale, and all in all wood nymphs weren’t renowned for their candour.

Honestly, we were simply young and stupid enough to be excited by the idea of fighting a dragon, if it came down to it. I supposed there was something to be said for the vivacity and tenacity of youth.

Prince had drawn up the plan, though there wasn’t much to it given how little we knew about the habits of dragons. Particularly dragons who were surviving outside of their natural habitat. We had left at midnight and trekked up Broken Mountain, where for my whole life the red-tinged smoke from dragon fire had billowed from the summit like a crowning volcano. History books told us we were looking for a cave set into the side of the mountain.

I don’t say ‘trek’ to exaggerate—my poor, aching bones protested as we staggered over the last crag, the dawn only just breaking over the horizon. We had climbed hands and knees up the glacial mountainside, and my fingers were bleeding and stiff with cold even as sweat slicked the skin under my jackets.

The Valley stretched beneath us, still swathed in the dark night, the sleeping city barely visible. Ahead, the mountain crest exposed the gaping mouth of a cave, inky blue inside where the ice deepened too far for the eye to see.

Thank God. Personally, I had not mentally prepared for either the lack of a cave or a dragon waiting for us when we arrived.

Prince straightened beside me, his breath even as though he had simply been wandering down the city streets. I hated him for it.

Prince was the embodiment of tall, dark and handsome. Everything about him spoke of the night—his skin, his eyes, his hair, his personality occasionally. He was beautiful in a distracting, other-worldly way. It was not the kind of beauty that was accustomed to men; it was more feline, more baiting, flawless.

“Remember,” Prince said, commanding our attention as the rest of us collapsed against each other, “if you find scales, take them. No exclamations, just bring them back here and don’t go back inside—we’re not provoking luck today. If you spy a dragon, or any other sense of trouble, stamp three times, pray for an echo, and we all leave immediately.”

As though we hadn’t gone over the so-called plan a thousand times on the way here.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, doubling over and heaving in a ragged breath. I stuck a hand out feigning stabilising myself on Prince’s shoulder. “We get it—be quiet, don’t die. Steal some scales if we’re lucky.”

I glanced up at Prince with an exaggerated smile. His answering gaze was narrowed, but I could see the burn of excitement in his eyes.

I didn’t resent him for bossing us around; we all knew he was the most likely to bring us back alive.

And, actually, I wasn’t feeling scared yet. Adrenaline spiked through my veins and the palpable tension of the group had me leaping with nervous energy.

What else were we waiting for? We weren’t sure if dragons were nocturnal creatures, so the crack of dawn seemed to be our safest bet. And really, as the weight of the hike bore down on us, it seemed better to ride on the adrenaline than wait for the exhaustion to hit.

“We ready?” I asked.

Prince nodded and beamed. His grin split the world in half, honestly.

“Let’s go.”

There were five of us. Prince led the way, me close to his side and hand-in-hand with Sasha, our united trepidation tangible in the atmosphere. Sasha’s grip in mine was firm, the touch reassuring despite leaving me temporarily one-armed lest any beasts suddenly appear at that very moment. Sasha and I had forged our friendship as babies and had been inseparable ever since. She was a small thing with an entrancing smile and a halo of bright strawberry blonde hair, freckles blessing her nose and cheeks in mock innocence. Mama said our souls were connected, that the energy of our spirits had been entwined from birth. I didn’t know about that, but I could feel the way her presence grounded me. Sasha’s ebullient, judicious twin brothers, Fraser and Dock, commanded the rear of the pack, their stocky strength at my back comforting.

I had expected the summit to be forlorn, full of the kind of barren silence that ice generally lends. But I was wrong. Birds called overhead, and I could hear a distant, gentle hushing sound. The echo of our footsteps did not disturb the environment.

As we stepped into the cave and our eyes adjusted to the changed light, five gasps shattered the safety wrap of silence we had forced upon ourselves. Dock slapped a hand over his mouth as though to revoke the sound.

The mouth had opened into a cavernous lake, the icy ground sloping to a luminous pool holding captive the stars. It surely didn’t look like water. The pool stretched deep into the cave, gently tapering off somewhere far away, leading into more blue-black dimness. This was the first field of stars, witnessed by us thieves.

But the glittering basin wasn’t the most shocking part—no, it was that the cavern had opened above us, letting the silky dawn glow seep into the space, illuminating not only the pool but more greenery than we had ever seen before. Luscious jade vines hugged the cavern walls, and glowing violet flowers peeped from freshly opening buds. The vines were dense, as though a forest wall enclosed the pool of stars, and they seemed to breathe, responding to some breeze I couldn’t feel.

The immense otherworldliness of the space stole my breath, and a rare feeling of intense emotion gathered in the pit of my stomach. I thought for a moment that I might cry. Pure, unfiltered embarrassment prevented any such thing from happening.

“Shit,” Prince breathed, crudely translating my thoughts and startling us all.

“Shh,” Dock hissed, “what happened to no exclamations?”

Prince glared at Dock but kept his mouth shut. He gestured to the wall, where the shoreline left a pathway skirting the lake.

We started forwards again, each of us hot on the others’ heels, and crept lightly around the basin. The magnitude of the cave was gobsmacking, and it occurred to me that I may have underestimated the sheer size of a dragon. The thudding of my heart against the brackets of my chest strengthened with each step I took farther from the entrance of the cave. Our footsteps were hushed against the ice, our breaths so controlled that they were barely audible, but I wondered how strong the senses of a weakened dragon were.

Exhilaration blurred time such that we reached the other side of the lake in what felt like a matter of seconds. Expecting tunnels or the lick of flames, my posture relaxed reflexively as I realised that the deep blue-black extending deepness of space turned out to be a shadowy wall of ice out of reach of the dawn.

The cavern was a simple, glamorous igloo, a lake of stars encased by a forest of flowering vines.

“Shit,” Prince said again, louder this time.

I laughed a little hysterically, the sickening sense of suspense crashing suddenly. The dragon would inevitably reappear but right now the cavern was glaringly, marvellously empty despite the lively feeling of the space.

“Shit what?” Fraser said, his voice soft as though not confident of our solitude. “I’d take not being eaten by a dragon as a hell-yeah.”

So much for being excited by the idea of fighting a dragon, if it came down to it.

“Shit, the lack of a dragon is also the lack of scales,” Prince bit.

His voice rang strong and loud, echoing in the cavern, proclaiming his fearlessness. Disappointment was heavy in his shoulders, but there was a wide-eyed curiosity in his expression.

“We’re in the cave of a dragon looking at tendrils of flowers and we’re still alive, that’s a pretty good story to me,” Fraser shot back.

“Ah, always the romantic,” Sasha interrupted, giggling gently. She stood by me, our closeness feeding each other’s confidence. “Let’s look around, maybe they only shed, like, one scale per hundred years.”

She was joking, but Dock and Fraser looked so earnestly at each other that I hoped she might be right.

I started to feel like the hike was worth this, anyway. I had never seen living flowers, and I didn’t need scales or tales of fighting a dragon to make this moment. That was Prince’s agenda—he needed the fabled magic of the scales the most, after all.

As I took in our surroundings, I felt a startling sense of kinship for this magnificent, brutal creature who had manifested such an enchanting space. I knew I would never see anything like it again. Even the fairies in the Valley did not have the strength to design such beauty, and the scent of magic here was mesmerising.

At that thought, caution urged suspicion of the inviting magic of such a sinister animal. It occurred to me suddenly, erratically, that even our frozen, fatigued land was embraced by empowering sunlight. Even as we stood there, marvelling, the dawn light was flooding steadily in.

The back of my hand fluttered against the back of Sasha’s as I stepped away from our group, towards the pool.

“Have you ever seen anything like this,” I said, the statement half in awe to myself.

Prince came over to where I kneeled at the edge of the pool contemplating the glistening cove, crouching down to my level.

The twins and Sasha were grazing their fingertips over the icy, vine-ridden walls, the tempo of their conversation increasing as they grew more comfortable with our isolation.

“It’s incredible,” Prince said softly.

“What is it,” I asked him rhetorically, drifting a hand over the pool.

Prince caught my fingers gently, cautiously guiding them back to me as though nervous I would touch the surface. He shook his head lightly and looked down at me, fixing his dark eyes on my face. I could feel the eye contact all the way down to my toes.

“I don’t feel nervous here, and that’s making me nervous,” he said, the hint of a smile gracing his mouth.

I nodded, grinning frankly, staring back at him. “I get it. My senses feel like they’re in a dream, but my brain is telling me that a beast is going to come flying through that cave opening any second now.”

Prince smiled and looked back down. His shoulders were drawn tight, his hands in fists on the ice floor, and I could see the fatigue of our night settling in. He had wanted this so desperately, and even though I had spent days vehemently fighting him about making this journey, I was fighting the desire to reassure him now.

“Why do you think we can’t see our reflections?” I asked, my hand stretching back over the pool, hovering just above the shimmering surface. I peered into the space where the reflection of my hand should be.

“I don’t know the answer to anything,” Prince mused, staring down at my fingers too, and I thought he wasn’t just talking about this cave. History thickened between us, and then Prince moved on.

“It’s the oddest texture, like silk that has trapped the sun.”

“Are you feeling poetic this morning, too?” I teased, battling the impulse to stroke the pool.

I could feel Prince roll his eyes, and then he stiffened, and my whole body responded. A sensation of dread flickered through me as my head snapped up, eyes scanning the room habitually before landing on Prince’s face, my hand moving to his arm in some motion of terror.

But Prince was grinning, that proper ground-splitting grin, and I relaxed as quickly as I had tensed, the fear replaced immediately by excitement. And a giddy little somersault in my gut.

“I’m a step behind you here, what is it?” I prodded.

Prince’s hand darted out, and by the time my warning had formed his hand had swept into the pool, not through a liquid, but instead picking up a sliver of silky starlight as though it were a cloth.

I caught on immediately.

“Shit,” I joked.

The pool wasn’t some mythical star-water that existed only in a dragon’s den—we were looking at a mass of discarded scales. They were soft and slippery as though they had melted under the sun, and each scale glittered in opaque shades of silver and blue.

“Guys,” Prince called over his shoulder, his hands full of molten scales, his eyes boring into mine with a depth of wonder and exultation I had long since seen.

Sasha and the twins ran over wordlessly, like they could sense our excitement but the fear of our circumstances was still a little too debilitating.

“What am I looking at?” Fraser asked, a frown creasing his freckled forehead.

“Scales,” breathed Sasha in response.

Their three almost identical faces lit up in unison.

“Man, I don’t think we’ve brought enough bags,” Dock said, his eyes wide as he stared around the cavern with renewed vigour.

“Are they wet?” Fraser asked, reaching hesitantly to take a scale from Prince.

Leave it to Fraser to worry about how messy the task ahead would be.

But the scales weren’t wet, or hot, and they were light as air. The task ahead was going to be very easy. Elation crept up on me.

The boys broke out in a discussion concerning exactly how much of this lake of scales we should, and could, take back down the mountain with us. The trouble we would be in when we returned was going to be severe even without hauling sacks full of magical contraband through the city.

A splinter of suppressed anger hitched in my chest, and I pushed away from the boys and their scales, crossing over to one of the green, breathing, igloo walls. I drew in a slow breath, dragging frigid air into my lungs, regaining control of my own breathing. I trailed a hand through the dense foliage as I rode out the wave of frustration, the desire to soak up the magic through my fingertips irresistible.

“Should we take some of these flowers, too?” I called after a moment. “Does anyone know what they are?”

Sasha was beside me in a heartbeat, so close our shoulders brushed, her unbridled delight charging the space between us.

She reached out to brush her fingers over a button-sized bud of deep, velvety purple. Even if they couldn’t be sold at the Red Market, the flowers were too entrancing to leave behind.

“They look like sapphire-eye, don’t they?” Sasha said.

“Um, sapphire-eye like the pods dragons are born from?” I asked. I raised an eyebrow at her, hoping she was kidding.

“It’s just a legend,” Sasha said, shaking her head at me and smiling broadly. “That makes no sense in evolutionary terms, it’s likely just a symbol of the presence of dragons.”

“We’re not really in a place to be tempting legends today,” I quipped back, “especially when this weird ice garden looks like it’s breathing at me.”

Sasha frowned and flicked a glance at the vines. “What?” she asked.

“Don’t you see the vines swaying?” I said, eyebrow still raised. It wasn’t an observation I expected Sasha to miss.

Sasha’s eyes widened in something that looked remarkably like horror.

“What?” she said again, this time so softly I could barely hear her, though her eyes were trained on mine.

Fear had struck in my stomach at her expression. My muscles tensed, and I was hyperaware of the boys chattering behind us and Sasha’s strained posture beside me. Our eyes made such fierce contact that I felt her sudden, confusing panic deep in my bones. For a moment, neither of us moved, as though moving would hasten reality. Then, guided by a force stronger than both of us, our gaze was led back to the gently rising and falling green walls.

And within the tendrils of leafy sapphire-eye, our gaze met the giant, unblinking, amber eyes of a dragon.