The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(64)

“We need to show him what we’re doing,” decided Nell. She approached the dragon’s head, which made Jalo nearly apoplectic with anxiety for her. She placed her hand on the rough, dry scales between its eyes and looked into them.

“We’re trying to help you, aye,” she said softly.

“He doesn’t understand you,” said the Faery. “Get back. He could still be dangerous.”

“He can understand this,” said Nell, stroking the dragon between his eyes and looking at him intently. “Become a dragon, Charlie, and breath fire on the stick.”

Charlie obeyed, becoming a dragon roughly the same size as the injured one. Jalo held up the fire stick and Charlie breathed a thread of flame onto it. Immediately it flared. The hurt dragon watched with its golden eyes, not moving any other part of itself. Nell pointed to the fire on the stick and then held up the gourd. She stroked the dragon between the eyes again. Jalo quenched the fire stick with a word and she held it towards the hurt dragon. The dragon stared at it balefully.

“Please,” Nell entreated the dragon. “Please try. I know you’re in pain, but please try.”

They repeated the same demonstration a number of times, to no avail.

“He’s too badly hurt,” Charlie concluded. “We’re going to have to frighten him, and even then I’m not sure he’s got the strength to fight back. What should I turn into? What are dragons afraid of? Bigger dragons?”

Nell’s eyes filled with tears. She stroked the dragon’s nose. “We cannay,” she said. “He’s been through too much already.”

“Lah, do you want to help him or not?” asked Charlie.

“If you want my opinion, this thing’s done for,” said Ander, who had kept back and watched in silence until now. “Kindest thing you can do now is cut its head off with that sword.”

“No!” shouted Nell. She turned towards the dragon desperately. “Nobody’s going to cut your head off! I promise!”

The dragon lifted its head an inch or two off the ground and opened its jaws. All that came out was smoke.

“Try again,” Nell said encouragingly.

The dragon looked at her forlornly, then belched forth a tiny ball of red fire that the Faery skillfully caught as the flame rolled out over its tongue. The fire stick flared and Nell unstopped the gourd again. Jalo plunged the fire stick into the mix and the potion burst out of the gourd in silver swirls. Hurriedly, Jalo spoke the words the witch had taught him and the bright swirls fluttered over the dragon, dousing the green fires and settling into his wounds. The dragon’s eyes closed.

The spell took much of the day. The dragon remained very still as the potion melted into light that moved like little eddying pools in his wounds. Jalo and Nell passed the time by comparing passages of Faery poetry and human poetry.

“They make you memorize all that stuff at that fancy school?” Ander asked, impressed by the long recitations Nell was capable of.

“We dinnay have to memorize them,” said Nell, “but I have a good memory, and some of these I wrote papers on, so I’ve read them over and over. Lah, this one’s old but it’s a classic, aye. It’s by Lapto, about the creation of Di Shang.”

She recited it in full and the others listened.

Ander shook his head. “I never read much poetry. I spec I’ve been missing out.”

“But human poetry seems so often to amount to mere stories in verse,” said Jalo. “Surely the point of poetry is that it is...like music made of words. Listen, here is another poem by Shira.”

“All you’ve done is poems by Shira,” complained Charlie.

“Well, yes, she is our greatest poet. Listen carefully and you will hear how the rhythm builds a sensory impression of water.”

“What is the poem called?” Nell interrupted.

“We don’t title our poems,” said Jalo a little primly. “The subject ought to be self-evident. As in this case. You could not possibly think the poem to be anything but water in words. To name it would be superfluous.”

He recited, and the other three listened in awe. His words swept away the terrible surroundings. They could feel the cool ripple, the silken depths. It was like having one’s mind immersed in a shining pool. When he had finished, none of them spoke for a while, not wanting to shake the feeling the poem had left them with.

“It’s very different from human poetry, aye,” Nell conceded at last. “Will you teach it to me?”

Jalo looked pleased and was about to reply when the little dragon lifted its head and rose to its feet. Light poured off it in rivulets and streams. It stretched its wings out, raised its head, and wailed. It was a cry of such wrenching grief that they were all frozen where they stood for a moment. Then the dragon lowered its head and looked at Nell.

“It worked!” she cried.

Without thinking she ran to it and placed her hands on its bright, scaled face. The dragon kept its eyes steady on her and there was something like kindness in its gaze.

“Now let’s see if it will lead us to Swarn,” said Nell.

~~~

The fuel reserves were getting low, so they agreed to leave the helicopter in the Dead Marsh. The Faery rode his myrkestra, Charlie flew as a gryphon with an anxious Ander clinging to his back, and Nell, feeling triumphant, rode the dragon. She was sure Eliza would be very impressed when she heard how Nell had gotten Charlie to the healing cave, enlisted the Faery’s help and saved the dragon. She imagined over and over again how she would tell the tale. “At first, the Faery seemed more inclined to kill us then help us, but it wasnay too hard to win him over. I just explained how essentially we were all on the same side...”