Ширли Мерфи - Nightpool

The male bellowed to shake the peaks and breathed lightning and flame into the sky, so the winds grew searing hot and beat around the twining two with gale force. The male was old; this would be his last breeding. He was heavier and much larger than she, and of rougher build, but he was as graceful as a male can be in the mating dance. When Dawncloud’s inner clock was sure, she rose directly into the sunset and he followed her, and they danced the final rituals, then bred high above Tirror in the orange-stained sky.

The old male died soon after breeding. The female mourned him briefly, then left him on the stony ridge. She moved high above clouds, south toward Lair Island, toward the peak on which she herself had been hatched, toward that jutting tangle of bare mountains that rises between Dubla and Fendreth-Teching. She sensed other creatures there, but they would soon be gone, for she would allow no threat to her eggs.

*

In Rushmarsh the crowd of otters exclaimed over Teb. Their leader, Feskken of the pale tan coat and dark muzzle, escorted the raft to shore, scowling at the few who complained and sending them on other business. ‘The boy will die without rest. He needs food and quiet until morning.”

Charkky and Mikk looked at Feskken gratefully and pushed the raft in among the grasses of Rushmarsh, where they would be safe for the night. There they fed Teb again with chewed seafood and told their tale to Feskken and the gathering of otters in the great meeting holt in the center of Rushmarsh, a holt woven of the living green grasses of the marsh and so quite invisible from any distance, as were all the holts in Rushmarsh. Feskken sent two otters to pack Teb’s wounds with damp moss and to feed him horserush tea to ease the pain. Teb hardly knew he ate or drank, and kept falling in and out of consciousness. The horserush tea made him sleep, and he knew nothing more until he woke the next morning on the raft again when the first wave hit him. He was sweating with pain again and shivering, and the otters were afraid for him. They gave him more of the tea, carefully stored in a clamshell, and again the pain eased, and Teb lay watching the sea roll and heave, and drowsing.

“Mitta will help him,” Charkky said. “She’ll know what to do.” He splashed more cold salty water over the seaweed that packed Teb’s leg and touched the boy’s cheek with a hesitant paw. Teb only blinked at him. “I wish he could tell us his name,” said Charkky. But Teb couldn’t, he couldn’t dredge any name up out of the darkness.

“He’s weary with pain,” Mikk said. “He’s half gone in shock and sickness.”

The journey took half the day, the two otters pushing and pulling the raft, a slow cumbersome way to travel for those who could flip through the sea like hawking swallows, weightless and free. By the time they sighted Nightpool, both were weary indeed of the slow, willful raft that bucked and halted at every wave. Teb had thrown up twice and was so white they were sure he would die.

“We shouldn’t have brought him,” said Mikk. “We should have left him on the battlefield.”

“You know you couldn’t have.”

“What is Thakkur going to say?”

“What is Ekkthurian going to say is more the question.”

“Who cares what Ekkthurian says. He’s nothing but a troublemaker.”

“Well, whatever anyone says, it’ll come soon enough. Look, they’re gathered on the cliff, and there’s Thakkur.”

*

The dragon took one meal after the breeding, dropping down onto a mountain pasture to snatch up sheep and goats. She ate only the aged and crippled, hunting the domestic mammals as the wolf hunts, for food only, and selectively. She had seen other dragons below her as she traveled, common dragons lairing in the mountains over which she flew, but there were none like herself. None frightened her, though if they came for her eggs, she would kill them.

At midmorning she took possession of the entire tangle of peaks that made up the Lair, driving out two common dragons, several king lizards, and a black python, and eating their eggs and newborn so they would not return to their nests. Then she began to uproot trees from the countryside below and, on the highest peak of the Lair, to weave her nest from the trunks, curving the smaller branches and twigs inward to make a soft bed. She sensed the five young within her with a terrible joy of love and possession.

When she was ready to lay, she killed two angora goats and three sheep, and laid them around the nest in a circle, then ripped their bellies open. These would receive her five eggs, to warm and nurture them. When all was ready, she crouched, bellowed again to shake the sky, and began to lay.

*

Teb’s first view of Nightpool was a towering black rock jutting up out of the pounding sea. Then of a crowd of otters silhouetted along the high cliff looking down at him; then, like birds swooping, they dove into the sea and came up bobbing all around him, chattering and sending the raft rocking. Pretty soon he was being carried up the steep cliff, biting his lip against the pain of movement. It was all like a disjointed dream—some parts fuzzy, or filled only with physical pain, then a scene coming suddenly clear. Then he was in a cave, lying on a low stone shelf, and otters stood looking down at him. One, a plump female, began to examine his leg, feeling the broken bones with fingers so gentle they were like the touch of a moth. She felt Teb’s fevered face, then began barking directions in a sharp, keening voice that sent young otters flying out the door. “I want wood for splints. Get straight driftwood. I want horserush, crush it well and make the tea with it, stir it and stir it until it is all brown. I want moss dampened in the sea, and braided eelgrass for binding the splints. And I want fresh clay in the biggest clamshell, well moistened.”

When she had sent the young otters away, she sat with her paw on Teb’s forehead, studying his face, her big dark eyes very gentle. He could hear voices outside the cave, and some of them were angry. Arguments flew in and out of his consciousness as he dozed and woke.

Once he felt his head lifted, and then he tasted the familiar horserush brew. And then later he felt a tug at his clothes and saw that the female otter was cutting away his trousers with a sharp clamshell. His boots were already gone. She undid his tunic, lifted him again, and slid it off, then covered him with a thick moss blanket. The chain was gone from his leg. It had been on his left leg. It was his right leg that was so filled with pain. He thought he remembered something like flame searing off the chain, but nothing would come clear. There were voices somewhere nearby, still arguing, but there was no one in the cave save the small, pudgy female. He could hear the argument clearly.

“The boy can’t be kept here; such a thing is impossible.”

“Of course we’ll keep him. He needs help.”

“He won’t even tell us his name. I call that suspicious.”

“He can’t tell us his name. Can’t you see how sick he is?”

“It’s far too dangerous to have a human here. It’s never been done,” said the querulous voice. Teb tried to shut the voices out. The pain was coming back, and he felt sick.

“Hah! Thakkur can’t let him stay. The council will vote him down.” And then the voices grew silent suddenly.

Teb saw a white otter enter the cave, rearing tall, his coat like snow against the dark stone wall. He stood looking down at Teb, searching his face with great dark eyes.

“I am Thakkur,” he said quietly. Then, “Come, Mitta, let’s look at the leg.” He pulled the moss cover back, then scowled, touching Teb’s leg delicately. “It’s twice the size of the other leg and purple as sea urchins. Can we heal it?”