Sable's Arc

Chapter 14 of 18

By morning the mother dragon was calm, but she was too big for the willow. Sable crouched under the green branches and watched the beast shift. Her hatchling slept in the fold of her neck, but the mother could not rest. She turned, and a low branch cracked. She turned again, and leaves rained down. If she kept thrashing, the willow would break open. Then the whole road would see a dragon curled in the tree, and the hunters would come. Sable needed to calm her. Fish had fed the hatchling, but the mother would not eat from a net. Music had drawn her here, but the chipmunk was gone home. Sable ran her hand along her belt of river stones and found no answer there. She left the willow at a run and went down to the village for help. She found Pastor Paul Brightwell in the vegetable rows behind the chapel. He was the old man who had rallied twenty fishers to feed the hatchling when Sable could not do it alone. Now he knelt in the dirt, pulling ripe tomatoes into a basket. He did not look up when she came. "She won't settle," Sable said. "The mother. She's breaking the tree apart." Paul brushed soil from his hands. "A restless creature is a hungry one." He stood slow. "Or a scared one. What calmed the little one?" "A song. A cat. Warm things." Sable's voice cracked. "I have none of that up there now." Paul looked at his garden. Then he picked up the basket and set a warm loaf on top, still glowing from the chapel oven. He added a berry tart, its crust bright with strawberries and blackberries. "Dragons don't eat bread," he said. "But you're going to feed the fishers who guard that tree. And a fed guard stays. Come." They climbed together. Paul was slow, but he did not stop. At the willow he laid a hand on the trembling trunk and hummed, low and even, the way he sang at funerals. The dragon's ear flicked toward the sound. Sable pressed close and hummed too. She had no tune, only the steady note the hatchling knew. The mother went still. Her huge head lowered against the roots. A monarch butterfly drifted through the branches and lit on her snout, and she let it stay. The cracking stopped. The willow held. "Warm things," Paul said quietly. "You had them. You just had to bring them up the hill." Sable breathed out. The dragon slept now, safe under the leaves. But she saw the truth as Paul packed his empty basket. One old man's song would not hold a dragon forever. The beast needed a den of her own, wide and hidden, far from any road. And there was no such place in the whole valley that the hunters did not already know.