Cherriese's Arc

Chapter 13 of 13

By the third morning, Cherriese could not stand. She had walked from the dome to the dragon's basket to check the breathing, and her knees folded on the flat stones near the spring. She heard the fairy cat hiss before she felt the ground. Then the small dragon was over her, wings spread wide, body planted across her chest. It clicked at the air and bared its teeth at anything that moved. The guardians came first. The dragon snapped at the closest hand and drove them back to the gilded fence the valley people had set around the healing tent. The healers reached the bars and stopped there. Two tried to climb through. The dragon launched at the gap and they fell back into the grass. A woman with bandages called to Cherriese by name. Cherriese could not answer. Her tongue felt slow. Her eyes tracked the dragon's tail as it whipped past her ear. The creature would not let them near. It had imprinted on her in the basket, fed from her hand, healed by her cost. Now she was on the ground and it was guarding her body the way a thing guards what it owns. Cherriese saw a husband at the fence, palms up, telling the healers to wait. She saw the fairy cat circling at a distance, wings low. The dragon's claws gripped the stone beside her shoulder. A pale crack opened in the rock under its weight, and a faint blue light bled from inside the fissures, climbing up the pillar of stone that had stood there since the calling. She had to move the dragon herself. She reached one hand to her collar and pulled out the pendant her mother had left her. The crystal was pale, threaded with silver veins like winter branches. She pressed it against the dragon's throat and spoke the soft words her mother used for frightened creatures, the charm she had learned before she could read. The dragon's eyes slowed. Its breath evened. The teeth closed. It lowered its head onto her shoulder and stayed there, watching the fence but no longer striking. She turned the pendant in her palm and pressed it to her own chest next. The silver veins warmed. The amulet drew from itself, not from her, the way her mother had built it. Light moved into her ribs and her arms came back. She sat up under the dragon's weight. The fairy cat walked to her side and lay against her hip. The healers at the gate lowered their hands and waited. Cherriese got to one knee, then to her feet. She kept one hand on the dragon's neck and walked it through the gate herself. The healers parted. She told them she would not collapse again and that the dragon would not leave her side. She had a guardian now that could not be bribed. She also had a creature she would have to feed for the rest of its life.