He waited, watching the sun. The stag had plans of his own, and vanished below the ridgeline. Auron tried to get the sun’s angle right and crept down the gully, turning color at every pause. He crept under a boulder’s shadow, turning half-white to match the snow beneath, and caught sight of the stag. It had crossed over to the other rim of the gully, in the direction Wistala had gone. He glimpsed the herd now and again. The deer seemed to vanish against the trees when not moving.
He hoped they wouldn’t wander down the gully of their own accord before Wistala was ready. But the herd left the shelter and came to a meadow where rich new grass already stood thick on the ground. Auron peeped an eye up over the edge of the gully and watched. The canny stag, after a long look at the meadow, moved to put himself downwind of his females and offspring again.
Auron got a flash of a mental picture. Faint, it faded in an instant, but he had the impression of Wistala being above the gully.
He ventured out into the meadow, not moving toward the herd but creeping along the tree line, feet plunging into the frigid water of a mountain marsh. Deer heads came up, ears twitching, and as one the herd returned to the gully. Auron angled back for the place he had last seen the stag. He heard the deer moving down the gully. If he could just keep—
The stag exploded from almost beneath his feet, bounding down the slope as if he were made of lighting. The other deer leaped away, fawns already able to keep up with their mothers even in flight, white tails flashing in a confusing mix of directions. Auron had no choice but to run in pursuit.
He scuttled forward in a dragon dash. In open ground, he might have had the stag, but the trees made his sprint a clumsy one. He ran along as best he could after the first burst, but the sounds of the deer faded into the woods. Wistala would be heartbroken, they would go hungry for another day—and it was his fault.
“Auuuuu-ron!” he heard a high, trilling call of his young sister. “Blood and mud, I’ve killed!”
New vigor in his limbs at the thought of blood-warm food, Auron located on the sound. Wistala was already dragging the carcass up a grandfather of pines, the still-twitching body of a yearling buck fully her own size in her jaws. Auron looked at the kicked-up ground where she had pounced from the hundred-limbed tree.
“What are you carrying it up there for?”
“You want to fight wolves for your dinner?”
Auron’s stood up tall on his legs, his lips pulling back to reveal the full length of his hatchling teeth. “I’d like to see them try, hungry as I am.”
“Then get up here and join me.”
He coiled and sprang up to her place on the bloody trunk in a single leap. She hung the kill in the crotch of a tree. Together, they ate.
Chapter 6
I feel like we’re going back up the mountain,” Wistala said the next day.
The mountains marched north to the horizon, but to the south the ground was lower, a gap in the mountains’ teethlike wall. They had been traveling since dawn, watching out for each other by taking turns. While Wistala rested, Auron would move through the pine woods until he was about to lose sight of her. Then he would jump up a tree and keep watch while she caught up and then went ahead until she could hardly make him out.
“We need to cross over to the west. This is the easiest way.”
Wistala snorted. “Easiest? I’d hate to try the hardest. I don’t want to leave the trees, Auron. We’ll still need to hunt.”
Auron aligned her head with his, pointing to a bare ridge with their noses. “When we get to that spot, we’ll be able to see west.”
“You know this how?”
“Mind-pictures from Father.”
“Father hardly gave us any. Oh, I wish we had our wings.”
“Wishing won’t get us up the hill.”
“I never said any such thing—Wait, Auron, there’s something ahead.”
Auron heard it, too. They hugged tree trunks, pressing their bodies flat to the scabby-barked boles. Auron put himself toward the sound of pine needles being crunched underfoot, with Wistala on the other side of the trunk. He turned a deep brown and kept one eye open. His sister touched his tail with the tip of hers.
A flat-faced mountain of muscle and fur appeared, moving on all fours. It picked up a hint of their scent and stopped, turning its colossal head to and fro with its short snout in the air.
“Bear. Alone,” Auron thought to her.
“Dragons can’t eat bears.”
“Not dragons our size. You should see this thing. If we climbed a tree to get away, it would just push it down.”
“It doesn’t know we’re little, though. Do we smell like little dragons or big dragons?”