Sable's Arc

Chapter 5 of 18

The peace held for a week. Then the stranger came. Sable spotted him from the mossy watchtower at dusk, a man in a road-worn coat walking slow circles near the crossroads. He asked the miller about the dragon. He asked the baker about gold. Sable heard the word he kept saying: hoard. Word had spread that a dragon slept above an untouched pile of treasure, and now it had pulled him here. She found Edna Mull at her folding table, ledger open, that smile pinned in place. "A hunter's come sniffing," Sable said. "He wants the gold. If he climbs those cliffs with a bow, the peace breaks and the village burns." Edna traced a name in her ledger. "Then you must guard the roost. But you cannot hold it alone, child. One girl, one sling." Her flat eyes lifted. "You told me the beast trusts you now. Perhaps it is time to learn what it truly guards." Sable climbed the north face at first light. She left her sling looped at her hip and carried nothing to throw. The dragon slept on its ledge, breath slow. She did not wake it. Instead she found the cave mouth behind the roost, a dark crack in the stone she had never dared enter. She slipped inside. The cave held no gold. No coins, no jewels, no bright pile. Sable's boot knocked a bare rock and echoed. She followed a sound deeper in, a faint wet breathing that was not the great dragon's. She glided between the rocks, one hand on the wall. The breathing grew closer. In a hollow lined with dry grass, a baby dragon slept. It was no bigger than the rhino she had once carried up in a sack. Its scales were soft as new leather, its wings folded tight as wet leaves. It breathed in small clicks. This was the hoard. Not gold. The great dragon had never guarded treasure. It had guarded this. Sable knelt. The little dragon opened one eye, the same amber as its mother's, and did not flinch. It knew nothing of the village or the fire or the man with the bow. It only slept and breathed and trusted the dark. She understood now why the beast stayed. Why it purred through smoke and would not leave the roost. A parent does not abandon a nest. And a hunter who climbed for gold would find a child instead, and would not care. Sable backed out of the cave. Below at the crossroads, the stranger was buying rope. She could not guard two things at once, the roost and the village. But she knew the secret the hoard hid, and the hunter did not. That was a stone worth more than gold. She coiled her rope and started down. The peace no longer rested on a dragon's temper. It rested on a baby, and on whether she reached the stranger before his rope did.