Actually, if it came to that, the sea itself was a constant, and so were the sky and the molten core of the planet. Mountains came and went, but the sea was the same. Tess couldn't help smiling to herself, a strained smile given the desperation of her situation, but a smile all the sa
me. Perhaps she was the one who was wrong, all this time, thinking of her own element as the only truly stable one when it was, in reality, the only one that changed—
A sudden splash came from below, as if the water itself wanted her attention. Tess looked over the edge, down the hillside where the creek plunged in loops and curves through the trees. Maybe it was just the sound of the falling water she'd heard, but it seemed different. Closer.
And then she noticed it. There was a path here, half-hidden in brush. She had to duck under the safety railing to reach it. A sign on a chain across the path read PRIVATE: NO ADMITTANCE. She ducked under that, too. From below, she heard more splashing. There was another pool down there, she guessed, hidden under an overhang of the rocks, invisible to the prying eyes of tourists.
The path was less a path than a plunge down the steepest part of the hillside, twisting in sharp switchbacks between boulders and spruce trees. It emerged beneath an overhanging outcropping of boulders, framed by thick willows and alders. The brush that had been neatly cut back around the lodge was allowed to grow wild and profuse here, to help conceal this place, she guessed. Steam and warm air wafted past her face, heavy with the sulfur smell of the hot springs.
Dragons were known for killing those who invaded their lairs.
She pushed back the brush anyway, peeking through.
She'd been right. There was a pool here, jewel-green, beneath a shelf of rock that hid it from all but the most determined searcher. Between the visibly rising steam and the heat she could feel from here, she guessed that this was nearly undiluted hot springs. Unlike the springs above, tempered by the cold-water stream running through them, these would be too hot for the tourists to touch.
Verdigris reclined in the near-boiling spring as if it was warm bathwater.
It was the first time Tess had seen a dragon, in its shifted form, up close. She hadn't realized why he was called Verdigris until seeing him like this. His scales were the color of copper with a green patina. Gleaming loops and coils of his great body sprawled in and out of the pool. His huge head rested in the sand, water lapping around his lower jaw, eyes closed.
Tess was frozen, unable to move. He was beautiful and terrible. No wonder her people feared and hated dragonkind. But she felt no hate. Fear ... yes, there was that. But also wonder.
Without looking around or opening his eyes, Verd spoke in a deep, rumbling voice that she felt in her chest. "Come on out. I know you're there. The stone told me."
Tess drew a slow breath and ducked through the brush. Rocks crunched under her shoes. There were no bones here, she reassured herself—at least none that she could see.
"You're persistent," Verd said. He shifted suddenly, his body collapsing from dragonform to his human shape.
He was completely naked, his bronze body long and glorious, half submerged in the rippling water. After a dismissive glance at Tess, he sank deeper and rested his head on a rock as if it was a pillow. The rest of him drifted just below the surface of the water, lightly touching the pebbles and sand of the pool's bottom.
"And you're relaxing in a pool while David suffers up at the lodge," Tess said sharply.
Verd closed his eyes again. "I'm consulting my memories. The hot water helps me think."
"Oh." Cautiously, she sat on a rock by the pool. Steaming water curled around the base of it, probably hot enough to sear her flesh if she touched it. "Have you found out anything helpful?"
"Hard to say. It's not like searching the internet. I have the memories of every dragon in my line, but it's like ... well, imagine trying to determine exactly what you had for breakfast on a certain day twenty years ago. Now multiply that by a hundred thousand."
"Sounds confusing."
"You have no idea."
Silence lay between them. It was peaceful here. Behind a screen of brush and rock, the outflow from the larger pools rushed down the little waterfall. Water dripped from the overhanging rock, plinking into Verd's private pool. Whenever he moved, wavelets lapped along the shore.
Now that she'd seen him as a dragon, something was puzzling her. Finally she got up the nerve to ask.
"You're a European dragon, aren't you? There are no dragons native to North America, at least none that David knows about, except for the feathered serpents in the south."
After a moment, Verd stirred himself enough to reply. "Why?"
"You don't look it."
"My parents were First Nations." At her puzzled silence, he asked, "Didn't David ever tell you how dragons reproduce?"
"You're born of molten rock, the same way my people are born from the rocks in high mountain places." She herself had been found among the roots of a pine tree, the usual way for oreiads to be born.
"Yes, but unlike you, we're not raised by others of our kind. We are born looking like the local humans, and we're generally mistaken for one of their babies and raised among them. Like a cuckoo's egg, raised in another bird's nest."
Tess swung her feet above the too-hot-to-touch water. The night air had been cool on the climb down, but it was so hot and humid by the pool that she was covered in sweat or condensation. Her lips tasted salty when she licked them. "You didn't even know you were a dragon?"