Robin McKinley - Fire - Tales of Elemental Spirits

Sippy squeezed through the little people door with me and I took hold of his topknot on the far side to keep him near me. Holding an ear isn’t fair for long; it’s just for when you really need him to pay attention. His topknot was nice and long and I could get a good grip and he could still turn his head.

There was the rustle of vastness all around us. It took an effort of will to look up from the top of Sippy’s head. I looked up. There was a sharp slope down from the doors and then a big empty sandy space just beyond that. It was pretty scuffed up but at the same time you knew it got raked all the time, and there were the rakes, leaning on either side of the doors. The piece at the bottom with teeth was about as wide as I am tall, and the length of the handles was twice that. Beyond the sandy space it was too far away and dark to see clearly, but that’s where the rustling came from.

Dag set off at once down a corridor. We were still mostly above ground and there were windows here although they were over our heads, and the corridor slanted downwards. Pretty soon it was more shadows than light, and then the lanterns began, sitting in niches in the walls (the first ones low enough for mere humans to fill and trim and light them; then when the second overhead rank began there also started to be the occasional ladder hung against the wall). Every so often there was a wide gap in the walls—a gigantic doorway—with its own shadows and its own flickering light. And its own hot charred smell.

We met the occasional other human. I recognised the cadet uniform, but there was another uniform too. One of the men in the other uniform stopped as we came toward him. ʺ Singla Dag, honoured sir,ʺ he began. ʺYou sand-for-brains chucklehead, Dag, don’t you know enough to climb back into your uniform before you come to the hsa ? I won’t report you, but there are plenty who will.ʺ

ʺI forgot,ʺ said Dag, humbly for Dag.

ʺI believe you, or I’d send you back. I still should send you back. If you hear anyone coming, hide behind a dragon, will you?ʺ

ʺYes, Hlorgla Dorgin,ʺ said Dag, still humble.

ʺMmph,ʺ said Dorgin, and looked at me. ʺYou must be one of his brothers,ʺ he said.

ʺI—er—yes, sir,ʺ I said.

ʺYou look like him,ʺ said Dorgin.

ʺNo, sir,ʺ I said.

Dorgin smiled suddenly. ʺYou’ll grow into those feet,ʺ he said. ʺI’ve seen dragons like you. Keep your brother in order, will you? I wonder what else I should be telling you, besides don’t let him go to the hsa out of uniform?ʺ He gave Dag another glare and walked on.

ʺThat was Dorgin,ʺ said Dag unnecessarily.

ʺHave we met anyone who’s going to report you?ʺ I said.

ʺI don’t think so,ʺ said Dag, whose mind was obviously leaving this uninteresting topic.

ʺYou wouldn’t want to tell me what Fistagh looks like?ʺ I said innocently.

Dag gave me a sharp look and then laughed, although the laugh was almost as sharp as the look. ʺI’ll hide behind a dragon like Dorgin said, okay?ʺ

After a lot more corridors and a lot farther going down, we came to another big sandy space. There was a fire burning in a stone-ringed fire pit in the centre of it. The smoke rose cleanly and straight up, and I looked up to see where it was going, but the ceiling, assuming there was a ceiling, was again lost in darkness, along with the chimney-hole. Dag made a curious humming, crooning noise. It wasn’t very loud and I don’t think it was just the creepiness of the surroundings that would have made me take special notice of almost anything, but it was a very attention-catching sound.

And an immense heap of darkness at the edge of the firelight uncurled itself, and made a crooning noise in return. This sound was no louder than Dag’s had been, but it could no more have been made by a human chest than a human could fly. It was like the echo of an earthquake. I was surprised the earth didn’t tremble underfoot. Sippy, however, was trembling like seven earthquakes, and he made no attempt to get away from my now-convulsive grip on his crest, but I thought the trembling was more excitement than fear. I was trembling too, but I wouldn’t want to say it was mostly excitement.

We stood still as Dag went toward the humming blackness. Against the firelight I could see what I guessed was a head and neck untwist itself from the top of the mound, and arch down toward Dag. Dag reached a hand up toward it; it was like a leaf trying to pat a forest.

But the forest liked it. The hum dropped down a few more earth-shaking notes and the gigantic spade-shaped head—which I could now just make out in the twilight—came to a halt within human arm’s length of Dag’s hand. I thought dizzily of the sensation of a gnat landing on your skin; you could just about feel it if you were paying attention. And dragons must have thick skin. Maybe not on their noses. I hoped dragons didn’t blow through their nostrils the way foogits did.

Dag left his hand on the dragon’s nose and turned his head toward me. ʺCome say hello. She knows you’re here and that you came with me. But it’s polite to greet her yourself.ʺ

I walked toward them, feeling as if I was in a dream. The weird light and the weird echoy rustling noises that came from everywhere—and the sense of being so far underground—was part of it but it was mostly the dragon. This dragon. Her humming was almost inaudible now but she didn’t seem to want to dislodge Dag’s tiny hand, so as Sippy and I came closer, rather than turning toward us, there was a sort of half-imaginary tremor through the blackness that was perhaps her acknowledgement or her acceptance of our approach. When I was standing right beside Dag there was a ripple at the top of the head that I thought might be ears.

Dag said sheepishly, ʺI don’t know how to do this. I’ve never introduced anyone to their first dragon. When we do it as cadets, we kneel.ʺ

This seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I knelt. Sippy prostrated himself without any prompting from me. I let go of his topknot and bowed my head so I didn’t see her move her head at last, but I heard it—do I mean heard? Underground in the dark next to a dragon your senses do funny things—and felt the surprisingly gentle whisper of her breath through my hair. I don’t know if she quite touched me or not, but I felt the heat of her on the top of my head.

Everything was fine. Then Sippy leaped up from his imitation of a hearth-rug, and licked her nose.

The head disappeared instantly, whipping back up and away from us into the darkness, and the rest of the darkness blurred at the edges as it shifted backward. ʺOh, Sippy, ʺ I wailed. I didn’t suppose an unwanted lick on the nose would be one of the things that made a dragon spit fire, but I didn’t want her even a little bit mad at Dag five days before First Flight either.

It took me half a minute to realise that the noise I was hearing was Dag laughing—a normal, easy, proper laugh, like it wasn’t costing him anything. And there was another noise too that later on I learnt was the sound of him scratching one of her forelegs. Dragons’ claws are very flat, so you can just about reach their ankles when they’re standing up. ʺI was going to take her outside anyway. Let’s go now before Sippy gangs up on her.ʺ He set off at a brisk trot and I heaved myself along in his wake. I wanted to protest the pace, but when you think about it, you running flat out is still a slow amble to a dragon. And furthermore it was uphill. Sippy dashed ahead of us and then dashed back, but he had to make do with jumping straight up in the air since Hereyta was keeping her head well out of reach. It looked a little like his swerving-and-leaping game.

Outside in daylight . . . dragons are beautiful. Their skin shines rainbow colours, although a green dragon is green under the rainbows, and a red dragon is red, and so on. As I say, I’d seen a few little ones that did hop-stops to the bigger towns near us, and I thought they were beautiful and proud and just a little bit arrogant—which they were. That’s what dragons are like. But Hereyta just about knocked me over, just looking at her. She was a kind of red-gold; when she stretched her wings the iridescence made them look like they were on fire, and when she gave them a flap you would swear you could see the fire running down their edges. I mean, yes, all dragons are beautiful—all the ones I’ve seen, anyway—but Hereyta was special. Hereyta was amazing. I knew this, even if I had never seen a dragon up close before, and even if she was Dag’s dragon so I was going to like her even if she was foogit-sized, dung-coloured, and warty. And even if she had only two eyes.