Anne McCaffrey: Dragonsong

She had to stop running. She’d begun to sweat heavily and her back was stinging. She loosened her tunic belt, flapping the soft runner-beast hide to send cooling draughts up between her shoulder blades.

Past the first marsh valley, up over the rocky hump hill into the next valley. Cautious going here: this was one of the deep, boggy places. No sign of yellow-veined grasses. There had been a stand last summer two humpy hills over.

She heard them first, glancing up with a stab of terror at the unexpected sounds above. Dragons? She glanced wildly about for the tell tale gray glitter of sky-borne Thread in the east. The greeny blue sky was clear of that dreaded fogging, but not of dragonwings. She heard dragons? It couldn’t be! They didn’t swarm like that. Dragons always flew in ordered wings, a pattern against the sky. These were darting, dodging, then swooping and climbing. She shaded her eyes. Blue flashes, green, the odd brown and then…Of course, sun glinted golden off the leading, dartlike body. A queen! A queen that tiny?

She expelled the breath she’d been holding in her amazement. A fire lizard queen? It had to be. Only fire lizards could be that small and look like dragons. Whers certainly didn’t. And whers didn’t mate midair. And that’s what Menolly was seeing: the mating flight of a fire lizard queen, with her bronzes in close pursuit.

So fire lizards weren’t boy talk! Awed, Menolly watched the swift, graceful flight. The queen had led her swarm so high that the smaller ones, the blues and greens and browns, had been forced down. They circled now at a lower altitude, struggling to keep the same direction as the high fliers. They dipped and dashed in mimicry of the queen and bronzes.

They had to be fire lizards! thought Menolly, her heart almost stopping at the beauty and thrill of the sight. Fire lizards! And they were like dragons. Only much, much smaller. She didn’t know all the Teachings for nothing. A queen dragon was gold: she mated with the bronze who could outfly her. Which was exactly what was happening right now with the fire lizards.

Oh, they were beautiful to behold! The queen had turned sunward and Menolly, for all her eyes were very longsighted, could barely pick out that black mote and trailing cluster.

She walked on, following the main group of fire lizards. She’d bet anything that she’d end up on the coastline near the Dragon Stones. Last fall her brother Alemi had claimed he’d seen fire lizards there at dawn, feeding on fingertails in the shallows. His report had set off another rash of what Petiron had called “lizard-fever.” Every lad in the Sea Hold had burned with plans to trap a fire lizard. They’d plagued Alemi to repeat his sighting.

It was just as well that the crags were unapproachable. Not even an experienced boatman would brave those treacherous currents. But, if anyone had been sure there were fire lizards there…Well, no one would know from her.

Even if Petiron had been alive, Menolly decided, she would not have told him. He’d never seen a fire lizard, though he’d admitted to the children that the Records allowed that fire lizards did exist.

“They’re seen,” Petiron had told her later, “but they can’t be captured.” He gave a wheezing chuckle. “People’ve been trying to since the first shell was cracked.”

“Why can’t they be caught?”

“They don’t want to. They’re smart. They just disappear…”

“They go between like dragons?”

“There’s no proof of that,” said Petiron, a trifle cross, as if she’d been too presumptuous in suggesting a comparison between fire lizards and the great dragons of Pern.

“Where else can you disappear to?” Menolly had wanted to know. “What is between ?”

“Some place that isn’t.” Petiron had shuddered. “You’re neither here nor there,” and he gestured first to one corner of the Hall and then towards the Sea Dock on the other side of the Harbor. “It’s cold, and it’s nothing. No sight, no sound, no sensations.”

“You’ve ridden dragonback?”Menolly had been impressed.

“Once. Many Turns ago.” He shuddered again in remembrance. “Now, since we’re touching on the subject, sing me the Riddle Song.”

“It’s been solved. Why do we have to know it now?”

“Sing it for me so I’ll know that you know it, girl,” Petiron had said testily. Which was no reason at all.

But Petiron had been very kind to her, Menolly knew, and her throat tightened with remembered regret for his passing. (Had he gone between? The way dragons did when they lost their riders or grew too infirm to fly? No, one left nothing behind, going between. Petiron had left his body to be slipped into the deeps.) And Petiron had left more behind than his body. He’d left her every song he’d ever known, every lay, every ballad, saga, every fingering, chord and strum, every rhythm. There wasn’t any way a stringed instrument could be played that she didn’t know, nor any cadence on the drums at which she wasn’t time-perfect. She could whistle double-trills as well as any wherry with her tongue or on the reeds. But there had been some things Petiron wouldn’t—or perhaps couldn’t—tell her about her world. Menolly wondered if this was because she was a girl and there were mysteries that only the male mind could understand.

“Well,” as Mavi had once told Menolly and Sella, “there are feminine puzzles that no mere man could sort, so that score is even.”

“And one more for the feminine side,” said Menolly as she followed the fire lizards. A mere girl had seen what all the boys—and men—of the Sea Hold had only dreamed of seeing, fire lizards at play.

They’d ceased following the queen and her bronzes and now indulged in mock air battles, swooping now and then to the land itself. And seemingly under it. Until Menolly realized that they must be over the beaches. The sand was slipping under her feet. An unwary step could plunge her into the holes and dips. She could hear the sea. She changed her course, keeping to the thicker patches of coarse marsh grasses. The ground would be firmer there, and she’d be less visible to the fire lizards.

She came to a slight rise, before the bluff broke off into a steep dive onto the beaches. The Dragon Stones were beyond in the sea, slightly hidden by a heat haze. She could hear fire lizards chirping and chattering. She crouched in the grasses and then, dropping to her full length, crept to the bluff edge, hoping for another glimpse of the fire lizards.

They were quite visible—delightfully so. The tide was out, and they were exceedingly busy in the shallows, picking rockmites from the tumbled exposed boulders, or wallowing on the narrow edging of red and white sand, bathing themselves with great enthusiasm in the little pools, spreading their delicate wings to dry. There were several flurries as two fire lizards vied for the same choice morsel. In that alone, she decided, they must differ from dragons, she’d never heard of dragons fighting amongst themselves for anything. She’d heard that dragons feeding among herds of runner-beasts and wherries were something horrible to behold. Dragons didn’t eat that frequently, which was as well or not all the resources of Pern could keep the dragons fed.

Did dragons like fish? Menolly giggled, wondering if there were any fish in the sea big enough to satisfy a dragon’s appetite. Probably those legendary fish that always eluded the Sea Hold nets. Her Sea Hold sent their tithe of sea produce, salted, pickled or smoked, to Benden Weyr. Occasionally a dragonrider came asking for fresh fish for a special feasting, like a Hatching. And the women of the Weyr came every spring and fall to berry or cut withies and grasses. Menolly had once served Manora, the headwoman of Benden Lower Caverns, and a very pleasant gentle woman she’d been, too. Menolly hadn’t been allowed to stay in the room long because Mavi shooed her daughters out, saying that she had things to discuss with Manora. But Menolly had seen enough to know she liked her.