Cherriese's Arc

Chapter 12 of 13

By the second morning after the calling, the small dragon could not lift its head. It lay near the spring where the new arrivals had set it down, wings folded wrong, breath coming in short clicks. Cherriese knelt beside it and pressed two fingers under its jaw. The pulse was fast and thin. The valley's magic ran shallow here, thinner than the air the creature had been born to. No one in the settlement had ever kept a dragon. No one knew what it ate, what it drank, what it needed to breathe. She had the guardians carry it to a woven basket lined with crystal moss, set on the flat stones past the healing tent. The fibers held a soft glow that warmed the dragon's belly without burning. The fairy cat from the calling jumped up onto the rim and stayed there, wings tucked, watching the small ribs rise and fall. Cherriese left them and walked to the glass-paneled dome she used for spellwork. She shut the door behind her. Inside, she opened her mother's spell book on the stone table and turned the pages by the light of the mineral veins in the walls. She passed the binding spells. She passed the calling. She found a summoning her mother had marked with a thumbprint of dried sap. The note beside it read: for creatures of higher magic, when the ground will not feed them. The cost was written underneath. Three days of her own strength, paid at once. She read it twice. Then she cut the sap seal with her wand. The spell pulled the air thin around her. She spoke the words and held the shape of what she needed in her mind: a fruit for a dragon, not for a fairy. Light gathered above the table and folded inward. A round fruit dropped onto the stone. Its skin was clear as river ice. Inside, seeds glowed like small lamps, and pale tendrils of light curled off the rind and drifted in the still air. Cherriese caught the edge of the table to keep from going down. She had paid. The fruit was here. She carried it out in both hands. The fairy cat stood when it saw her coming. Cherriese split the fruit on a flat stone. The seeds came loose easy, wet with light. She pressed one to the dragon's mouth. The dragon swallowed. She fed it another, then another, until half the fruit was gone. The clicking in its breath softened. The wings shifted under the moss. By the time the sun cleared the ridge, the dragon had opened its eyes and looked at her. Cherriese set the rest of the fruit in the basket beside it. She told the guardian at the tent to wake her only if the breathing changed. Then she walked back to the dome and sat on the step, because her legs would not carry her further. The dragon would live. She had three days of weakness to spend, and the next name on the wind was already closer than the last.