Aftermath
I am pretty much on my hands and knees today* due, I assume, to yesterday’s excesses**, and I have to finish reading the dadblatted FIRE proofs. So I thought I’d give you a little more FIRST FLIGHT . . . and spend a little more time reading its galley pages. ***
We’re about a third of the way in.† Our hero, Ern, and our hero’s foogit††, Sippy, have accompanied Ern’s brother, Dag, back to the dragonrider academy, and Dag is taking them to the dragon hsa for the first time.
After a lot more corridors and a lot farther going down, we came to another big sandy space. There was a fire burning in a stone-ringed fire pit in the centre of it. The smoke rose cleanly and straight up, and I looked up to see where it was going, but the ceiling, assuming there was a ceiling, was again lost in darkness, along with the chimney-hole. Dag made a curious humming, crooning noise. It wasn’t very loud and I don’t think it was just the creepiness of the surroundings that would have made me take special notice of almost anything, but it was a very attention-catching sound.
And an immense heap of darkness at the edge of the firelight uncurled itself, and made a crooning noise in return. This sound was no louder than Dag’s had been, but it could no more have been made by a human chest than a human could fly. It was like the echo of an earthquake. I was surprised the earth didn’t tremble underfoot. Sippy, however, was trembling like seven earthquakes, and he made no attempt to get away from my now-convulsive grip on his crest, but I thought the trembling was more excitement than fear. I was trembling too, but I wouldn’t want to say it was mostly excitement.
We stood still as Dag went toward the humming blackness. Against the firelight I could see what I guessed was a head and neck untwist itself from the top of the mound, and arch down toward Dag. Dag reached a hand up toward it; it was like a leaf trying to pat a forest.
But the forest liked it. The hum dropped down a few more earthshaking notes and the gigantic spade-shaped head–which I could now just make out in the twilight–came to a halt within human arm’s length of Dag’s hand. I thought dizzily of the sensation of a gnat landing on your skin; you could just about feel it if you were paying attention. And dragons must have thick skin. Maybe not on their noses. . . .
Dag left his hand on the dragon’s nose and turned his head toward me. “Come say hello. She knows you’re here and that you came with me. But it’s polite to greet her yourself.”
I walked toward them, feeling as if I was in a dream. The weird light and the weird echoy rustling noises that came from everywhere–and the sense of being so far underground–was part of it but it was mostly the dragon. This dragon. Her humming was almost inaudible now but she didn’t seem to want to dislodge Dag’s tiny hand, so as Sippy and I came closer rather than turning toward us there was a sort of half-imaginary tremor through the blackness that was perhaps her acknowledgement or her acceptance of our approach. When I was standing right beside Dag there was a ripple at the top of the head that I thought might be ears.
Dag said sheepishly, “I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never introduced anyone to their first dragon. When we do it as cadets, we kneel.”
This seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I knelt. Sippy prostrated himself without any prompting from me. I let go of his topknot and bowed my head so I didn’t see her move her head at last, but I heard it–do I mean heard? Underground in the dark next to a dragon your senses do funny things–and felt the surprisingly gentle whisper of her breath through my hair. I don’t know if she quite touched me or not, but I felt the heat of her on the top of my head. . . .
. . . all dragon eyes glitter. I know that you talk about eyes glittering–the evil enchanter in a fairy tale always has glittering eyes; so do the things in dark corners when you’re little and trying to go to sleep–but dragon-eye glitter is the real thing. I suppose almost everything about a dragon is scary, because they’re so huge, and also, of course, because they’re the only creature (that we know of) that can fly through the Firespace. But the glitter of their eyes isn’t like anything else.
I think that it’s the glitter of dragon eyes that’s the origin of all those stories about the beds of jewels that wild dragons are supposed to have made for themselves back in the days when dragons were wild, and used to eat children when they couldn’t find any sheep. Where all those jewels are supposed to have come from was always beyond me; even if you put all the kings and emperors and enchanters (good and evil) together and stripped them of everything they had, I still don’t think you’d get more than about one jewel-bed for one medium-large dragon out of it. But you see the glitter of the eyes and you do think of jewels. Nothing else comes close–not fire, not stars, not anything. Of course I, and most of the other listeners to fairy tales, have never seen more than the mayor’s beryl or topaz or whatever the local badge of office is, but we can all dream. When you see a dragon’s eyes up close–if you’re lucky enough to see a dragon’s eyes up close–you don’t have to dream. . . .
* * *
* To the hellhounds’ delight, of course. I had to keep sitting down for a minute this afternoon when I was puttering in the garden, and every time I did I had a sudden lapful of merry, sportive hellhound(s). This is not productive of anything but shouting, the undesirable distribution of muddy pawprints, and the dropping and probable subsequent loss of crucial hand tools. But it was too nice a day to keep the kitchen door closed–on cold days when I do close the door I have two small pointed faces staring at me reproachfully through the glass: go lie by the Aga, guys! You don’t want to help me plant bulbs/rosebushes/delphiniums/whatever!–which manifestation of human frailty hellhounds robustly endorsed. I have the clearly endorsed jeans to prove it.
** I did manage to crawl down to the wine shop^ and bought a Salmanazar^^ of a Cabernet Sauvignon that the proprietor assured me is not only one of the best wines in the shop at present but just the sort of thing my semi-detached likes. One of the things Jenufa is about is the bad side of all your neighbours knowing each other’s business: here is an example of the good side.
^ With attendant hellhounds. Whose harnesses I feverishly grasped while we were in the shop with all those glass bottles. I’m still functioning on the pathetic assumption that they will eventually, you know, develop some composure+ and meanwhile I need to keep them used to people and shops and standing in queues and so on. To the extent that I can enforce this.
+ Hellhounds? Composure? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha etc. . . .
^^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_bottle What’s with the Old Testament kings and bottles of wine?
*** And maybe go to bed early.
† I posted the first page on 21st August last year, if you want to refresh your memory.
†† A foogit is a medium-large-dog-sized hairy greenish more or less domestic animal which eats a lot and is silly.
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