Энн Маккефри - The Impression

To Felessan's speculative eye, the eggs hardening on the Hatching Ground looked different. Well, maybe not very different. Maybe not different at all. Perhaps it was just his knowledge that this time, this Hatching, was to be his first try at Impression, and that put the eggs in an entirely new light. The idea that he was considered worthy to Impress one of Pern's great dragons delighted and scared him.

The sunlight shone through the high openings to the Weyr Bowl outside, refracting gloriously off the mottled eggshells. Since F'lar had taken him arid two other boys in the Lower Caverns aside two nights earlier to tell them that they were eligible to be Candidates if they so chose — as if anybody with sense would turn down such a chance— Felessan had made several detours from his chores to pass through the great echoing cavern. Which egg held a bronze dragon, and which a blue? To Felessan's knowledge, no one had ever been able to work out a system to tell the smaller eggs apart. Of course, the queen egg was easy to pick out. It was mostly gold, like its occupant, it was bigger than all the rest, and it rested, lovingly protected, between the claws of its broody golden mother.

Ramoth opened one great jeweled eye about halfway and regarded the boy passively. To his relief, it showed the blue of sleepy contentment rather than the red or yellow of annoyance. Felessan was afraid that she was sizing him up and passing judgment on him: “Might make a blue rider, but no more than that,” as the elders and senior Weyrlings had been doing for two days now. He did not see where the others got off making remarks about him. Faranth only knew how they had tricked the dragons they rode into choosing them in the first place! He clapped a hand over his mouth, for fear of letting the unkind thoughts become words. What if Ramoth heard him? Who knew what affected Impression?

The sleeping chambers were crowded this last sevenday, with the addition of the new boys found on Search from Hold and Hall. Most of them were strangers, but Felessan recognized Borand, who was from Lemos Hold. Borand had once accompanied a supply train making its trip to the Weyr, and the two of them, along with many other boys from the caverns, had spent a long, hot afternoon stacking cloth sacks of river grains in the storage caverns under Manora's watchful eye. He was glad Borand had come to Benden. Only two of the other boys his age in the Weyr were standing to the egg this time, and the others were eyeing the three chosen ones with an air of suspicion. He did not know why none of them had been picked as Candidates this time. He was hardly sure why he had.

How did one Impress a dragon? All they had heard from the senior riders were oblique warnings that meant nothing. “Don't do this … don't do that… mustn't ever do this…” And most enigmatic: “Don't let your dragon eat too much.” “You must never be afraid of your dragon,” F'nor had cautioned the boys before handing them over to Felena for the fitting of their robes. “He will never hurt you.” That was all very well, but how did one attract a dragon in the first place?

There were nearly twice as many Candidates as there were eggs in the sand. F'lar liked to give the dragonets a wide choice, but it always meant that there were just that many disappointed boys left standing on the ground when the Hatching was finished. Felessan shrugged. Just so long as he was not one of them, he did not care. It was worse with the girls, of course. Anywhere from two to ten of them, and only one queen dragon to Impress.

The boys had all had a chance to touch the eggs. Felessan had shivered when he stroked one of the elongated ovals, and Ramoth had looked at him. He remembered the time he and Jaxom had sneaked in to have a look at the clutch from which Ruth had eventually Hatched. The boys' adventure had not hurt the dragonets, but Felessan had feared for sevendays that someone would know he had done it.

“Another day to go, they say,” a boy from the Minecrafthall complained as Felessail returned to the sleeping chamber to get his hunting snares and knife. “I'm to break up firestone till the noon meal. I could have done that at home.”

“My duty is to hunt tunnel snakes in the storage tunnels below the kitchen cavern,” Felessan offered. Hunting was his talent, and he was proud of it. “Want to come with me?”

“No, thanks,” the boy said, patting his stomach. His name was Varon. He was a chunky lad with a head of black hair and dark freckles dusted across his cheeks. “I might get stuck where a wisp like you would fit through.”

“I'll come,” a red-haired boy said with a smile. Called Catrul, he came from a small hold in Bitra. He was built much like Felessan, with long legs and a skinny frame that spoke more of missed meals than hereditary slenderness. He took from his pack a two-tined hunting knife, which Felessan eyed with envy. It was just the right configuration to take the head off a tunnel snake with a single chop. “I'd rather do that than scrub pots. The scaled kind is good to eat.”

“These are smooth-skinned,” Felessan said apologetically. “May I try your knife?”

“If I can borrow one of your snares,” Catrul countered, handing over the shining blade. “Let's go.”

Catrul was as adept with snare as with knife, and Felessan was pleased that his new friend enjoyed hunting as much as he did. The trick of killing tunnel snakes was to avoid their sharp claws and teeth and strike at their unprotected backs and necks. The boys watched in silence as one of the beasts crept closer and closer to the place where Catrul had spread a snare. The snake, invisible in the darkness, passed cautiously over the single grains of glows dispersed along the corridor. The boys could measure its progress by how quickly the glows disappeared and reappeared. Another man-length, then another— “Pull, Catrul!” Felessan cried suddenly. With a whoop, the redheaded boy sprang to his knees and fell onto his back, yanking the cord taut.

From the side, Felessan dove over the flailing pair of stabilizers that were the tunnel snake's middle limbs and yanked the tail and hindquarters back and down. There was a snapping sound as the snake's neck broke. It twitched in a frenzy for a few seconds, then fell still.

“Whee-oooop!” Felessan picked up the carcass by the tail and shook it.

“Not so loud!” Catrul complained. “You'll scare all the rest off.”

“I don't care,” Felessan shouted, enjoying the way his voice echoed all the way into the depths of the Weyr. In the distance, it broke into two sounds, a shrill echo almost above the range of hearing, and a vibrato thrum that bounced off the solid stone walls around them.

“Ow!” Catrul said, pressing his hands over his ears and crouching against the dark floor. “That's loud!”

“Yow!” Felessan cried again. The echo sprang away, but the thrumming filled the cavern around them and continued long after the higher-pitched sound had died.

“How'd you do that?” Catrul asked, listening to the sound in wonder. He swept the glows together in a trembling palm and felt for the basket.

“I'm not doing it.” Felessan looked around, big-eyed. “That humming sounds like it's coming from above. The Hatching! The eggs are Hatching!”

“Now? It couldn't be now! We're not ready!”

Felessan was already running through the dark passage toward the kitchens, coiling the snares up as he ran. “We'd better get ready. It's happening!”

They dashed through the Living Cavern and into the Inner Cavern. The humming was louder out there, and people were rushing back and forth, hurrying to make all ready for the guests who would be arriving to witness the Hatching. Felessan looked around for Manora, but he guessed that his foster mother was at the hearths, overseeing the preparations for the Impression feast.