The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(35)

Some like a leash, he’s not foolish enough to say.

For lunch Gray eats two crabs. The wyrmling sits and looks at him before receiving each one, Jeryon’s relieved to see.

The wyrmling’s filled out so much her legs barely keep her belly off the ground. The poth suggests they track its growth with a culm. Jeryon cuts a ten-foot-long piece and scores a line around it to act as a base. She stretches out the dragon, and he makes a mark at its snout before scoring a connecting line. The poth also measures her wingspan and, with a piece of palm leaf fiber, her girth. She records these on the culm, and he notes the day: day nine. They’ll measure again in three days, rotating the culm to create comparison lines.

That night Jeryon puts the dragon down and lays heavy brown bamboo logs atop the lid of its pen. He hangs the repaired beetle box from a tree.

Jeryon prods the poth awake with the butt of his spear. “She’s gone again. I don’t know where.”

His trying not to look concerned is very disconcerting.

“The beetle box hasn’t been rummaged,” he says. “I don’t smell new scat.”

“Have you—”

“I’ve walked all around the pond.”

She notes that the slat that replaced the one the wyrmling had chewed earlier has also been chewed to flinders, and the surrounding rocks have been moved. She kneels and puts her cheek to the ground to see if the dragon left a trail.

“You can track?” he says.

“You have waves. I have leaves.”

She was never good at tracking, but a few leaves have been overturned nearby, bits of beetle lie beyond them, and tail carvings and footprints mark the soft dirt beyond the fire.

“She’s left the camp,” the poth says.

They hurry beyond the oaks. Gray crouches in the trail between the stream and the beach. Her head is down, her butt raised, her tail poised.

“Don’t spook her,” Jeryon says. He takes a slow step toward the wyrmling, flexing the fingers of his free hand.

The poth blocks him. “She’s hunting something,” she says.

“I hope it’s not a blue crab,” Jeryon says. Now he readies his spear.

The wind is stiffer here, and when it gusts the wyrmling lifts her snout to smell it, shakes her hindquarters, flings out her wings like wispy sails, and catches it. She’s picked up and flung with a high-pitched “Eeee!” over their heads.

“She can fly!” the poth says.

“But can she land?” Jeryon says.

They watch the wyrmling float like a kite all the way to the center of the pond, where the wind gives out. It squeals and falls, flapping frantically, and disappears.

They run to the edge and wait for Gray to emerge. She doesn’t. They wade in tentatively then push toward where she went under. The bottom is soft, and their steps quickly muddy the water.

Jeryon crouches down and slides forward, dragging the bottom with his fingers.

“Don’t!” the poth says. “You might step on her.”

“You have a better idea?”

She shakes her head, stands an arm’s length away, and searches in a parallel line. They reach the other side. Nothing.

Jeryon turns to her. “I hate losing things,” he says.

“We’ll find her,” she says.

A gust of wind cuts through the oaks, and they hear “Eeee!” again. Jeryon drops his spear and catches Gray with a smack just as the wind gives out. He hands her to the poth.

“It’s the pocket for you,” she says.

“If she won’t stay,” Jeryon says, “we can at least work on ‘Come.’ ”

The poth spends much of the next week gathering with Gray poking out of her pocket. She finds spreads of oyster grass, whose roots and greens make a good salad; patches of haveet, whose purple taproot is sweet, if woody, and whose seeds and greens can be made into an anti-poison; and a pulse bush, whose beans will make a fine soup if she can make a pot. She’s also delighted to find some golden shield, which she replants around the camp.

The abundance and diversity of plants surprise her. If she didn’t know better, Everlyn would think they were the vestiges of a once great garden.

Meanwhile, Jeryon spends hours reinforcing the pen, standing guard, rebuilding the pen, standing guard, and redesigning the pen’s elements. All he succeeds in doing is driving the poth away from camp.

Finally, Everlyn says, “She could just sleep in my pocket. I’d feel her trying to escape. For one night, let’s try it.”

Jeryon throws down his tools. “Fine. I could use the sleep.”

When the poth holds up a beetle in the morning as a reward, and Gray sits and looks at the poth just as the wyrmling looks at him, Jeryon is surprised at how upset he is that she was right. The crabs will suffer for this, and, he thinks for the first time, so will his mates.

3



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In two weeks the wyrmling doubles in size to more than a foot, and her wingspan stretches to eighteen inches. She looks like the most ungainly of butterflies.

Although she still plays Wind Catcher, her new favorite game is Beetle Pole, which has enabled Jeryon to teach her some commands. He lances a beetle with a bamboo needle to which he’s tied a long thread of palm leaf fibers, wraps the beetle a few times, and lances it again to hold the beetle tight. He whistles twice for Gray to come to him and sit, then he casts the beetle like a lure. She can’t attack, however, until he whistles three times quickly; otherwise, he pulls the beetle away.