While moving in open sunlight meant she could be observed, she’d rather see trouble from a distance than worry what might be around the next scraggly pine tree.
Water was plentiful—the mountains were shedding their winter weight of snow, and it came down in innumerable streams. The streams carried more than just refreshing water and bits of bark and leaf on a long journey down the mountain; they were full of tasty frogs that wiggled delightfully as they went down Wistala’s long throat.
By evening she’d crossed over two shoulders and had to face a decision. The mountains curved away west before going north again, and she could save herself a good deal of time by cutting across the valley, going the same distance in a quarter of the dragon-lengths. But it would mean plunging into thick forest. Trees could mean men, or worse, elves.
But trees also meant warm-blooded, furry, four-footed feasting, marrow-filled bones to crunch, and juicy eyeballs for sucking.
Appetite and the desire to hurry north, hopefully to find Father somewhere plotting destruction to the dwarves, won out over caution. She descended into the valley.
Patient trees waited for her. Soon she could see only slivers of sky around the tops of pines.
“Grounddragon look look!” a blue jay shrieked. It fluttered to a lower branch to scream at her: “Nestraider! Nestraider!”
Birdspeech made hatchling babble seem sophisticated.
“News! Dragon lives?” a swift answered from a nearby tree. Wistala couldn’t see it.
“Lives, lives, the grounddragon lives,” the jay called back.
“I won’t raid your nests,” Wistala said. “Why would it be news that I live?”
“Such news! News! Sparrow say grackle say thrush say elf-hawk say elves kill grounddragon,” the swift called.
“Nestraider! Nestraider!” the jay insisted.
“I will raid your nests if you don’t shut that thorn you use for a beak. When was this grounddragon killed, swift?”
“Not-today,” the swift answered.
Perhaps birdbrains had room for only two concepts of time: something that happened today and Everything Else. Auron might still live, somewhere. The birds might be gossiping about a killing in the area from weeks and weeks ago.
But she wondered—and her fire bladder went cold. Could birds keep a thought in their singsong heads that long?
Mother said some elves understood birdspeech. Wistala didn’t want her comings and goings sung about through the whole forest. She knew she couldn’t convince them to lie. Then she’d have to come up with an alternative truth they could understand. “Good riddance. We not-dragons don’t like them.”
“Nestraider! Nestraider!”
“You look like a dragon,” the swift said, and Wistala finally spotted him sheltering in the notch between two thick branches. She’d seen him only because he raised his whitish chin to speak.
“No, I’m a not-dragon. Though we look a lot like dragons and are often mistaken for them, that’s why we hate them so.”
“Nestraider! Nestraider!”
“Not-dragons don’t raid nests!” Wistala said. She marched off into the forest, tail held high, exposing her vent to the still-screaming jay.
“I’ve met a not-dragon,” the swift bubbled. “The sparrows must hear of this!”
The next day she cut through another wooded valley and crossed a low rocky ridge in the middle of the forest. It was honeycombed with caves of assorted sizes and, unfortunately, empty nests. There was good snake hunting in the rocks. All she had found to eat in the forest was a white-eyed possum, which had been wandering around in the daylight in a muddled daze. It stank like disease, but she still ate it. Mother had said that the illnesses that plagued mammals wouldn’t affect dragons.
Snake hunting was all quickness, and it appealed to Wistala. One good thump behind the head, and a snake’s back was broken, leaving a thick feast that fit neatly down one’s throat. She got one bulging black-cave serpent that had recently eaten a large rat or a baby raccoon, judging from the size of the bulge in its midsection, thus giving her two meals with one jump.
She felt dirty, and found a rock where she could bend and stretch and extend her scales to the afternoon sun. Sunlight cleaned the crevices around the scale-root almost as well as water but felt a sky’s worth warmer, especially with a snake dinner inside.
A prrum might even have been forming in her throat, until her memories betrayed her: Auron would have been a fine snake-hunter, quick as he was. Why couldn’t he be with her?
Stop it, Tala. Auron is in the past, gone save for a scratch on a rock and your memories.
Except for his head and his claws, perhaps. What sort of wretched hominid ritual are they being incorporated into? Mother said the hominids used dragonkind for medicines and magic, if they were lucky enough to get one down.