Sable's Arc

Chapter 11 of 18

The village fed the hatchling now, out in the open. Every dawn, boats rowed to the deep channel and sacks went up the cliff. The crying had stopped. But this morning Sable stood at the crossroads and saw two strangers with a rope and a long spear. They were asking a fisher where the dragon roosted. Dragon hunters. They hunted for coin, and the whole village had turned the secret into a road anyone could walk. Sable found Chromis at the docks, loading a boat. "Hunters," she said. "At the crossroads. They know there's a dragon up there. Somebody told them." Chromis set down a coil of line. "How many?" "Two. One has a spear." "The cave stays hidden." He said it flat, then closed his mouth on the subject. Sable had spent months hiding the hatchling. Now a hundred people walked its ledge like a market path. She could not un-tell what the village knew. But she could change what the hunters found. She ran to the chapel step, where Halloween decorations from last autumn still leaned against the wall. Grinning carved pumpkins. Three cloth ghosts stitched with wide painted eyes. Beside them a folded festival banner showed a pair of skeletons in fine old clothes, arm in arm. Sable grabbed all she could carry. She climbed the north face to the goat ledge, the one the dragon was too big to see. Below the roost sat a wooden lockbox built from smooth river stones. The fishers kept spare gear in it. Sable dumped the gear and dragged the box into plain view. She set the grinning pumpkins on top. She hung the ghosts from a branch and pinned the skeleton banner where any climber would see it first. Then she found the peacock. It belonged to a village woman and had wandered up after the fishers. Its long tail dragged bright feathers over the stone. Sable coaxed it onto the lockbox and stepped back. The hunters climbed at midday. Sable crouched on her ledge, sling loaded, and watched. They crested the rim and stopped. Before them stood painted pumpkins, dangling ghosts, and a strutting peacock fanning eyes of green and gold. A festival shrine. Foolish. Harmless. "There's no dragon here," one said. "Village prank." "Somebody's coin trick," the other spat. "Bring us up the cliff for a scarecrow." They spat, coiled their rope, and climbed down. Sable waited until they reached the road. Then she breathed out. The trick had worked once. But she saw the flaw as the peacock screamed and a fisher waved from the water below. Anyone in the village could still lead a hunter straight up, and next time the climbers might not laugh. The secret was a hundred mouths wide now. She could dress the roost as a joke, but she could not close a hundred mouths. To keep the hatchling safe, she would have to make the whole village choose to guard it.