I knelt and held as still as I could, waiting as the dragon thunder grew closer. Talons scraped the bottoms of clouds, shredding the vapor into ribbons. Immense wings scooped air, swirling snow in flurries across the sky.
A trio of dragons swept toward the forest, silent as they slithered over white treetops. Only the wind of their passing and the occasional clap of their wings gave auditory evidence of their presence.
From my perch, surrounded by sylph whose chief desire was to protect me, I could almost appreciate the beauty of these dragons. Sam once told me that the first time they’d seen dragons, everyone had stopped what they were doing and looked up. They’d been entranced.
Until the attack came.
I waited, heart pounding in my ears. What if they hated music? What if that was why they always attacked Sam?
Part of me wished he were here, because even though we’d been fighting, the way I missed him was an ache in my soul.
But most of me was glad I’d come alone, because I needed to prove to everyone—myself included—that I was right and I could do this on my own, and because I couldn’t put Sam in this kind of danger. I almost had. It had nearly broken him.
“I can do this,” I whispered as a dragon swooped into the forest. Trees splintered as it surged through, a streak of gold in snow-covered evergreens. The dragon came up with what looked like a small bear, and then swallowed it whole. The other two dragons dove into the same area, each emerging with another bear. They didn’t even have a chance to roar before the dragons tossed them up and caught them, as though playing or showing off.
Was that it? Was that all they would eat? Dragons were huge. Surely they needed more. But they began moving eastward again, toward other hunting ground or home, I couldn’t be sure. I needed to start now.
As I stood, sylph coiled around me, so hot that sweat trickled down my spine.
“I can do this.” My breath wafted over the flute mouthpiece, making small hissing sounds. Sylph fluttered and began a deep, resonant hum. A chord, as though they were my accompaniment.
A high-pitched, terrified giggle escaped me. Then I set my mouth, pulled in a breath, and began to play.
Four notes. One, two, three climbing lower. Four jumped above, long and high and bittersweet. The first notes I’d ever played on a piano. The notes that began my waltz.
As one, the dragons veered off their course, turning back. Thunder cracked as they flapped their wings, but they made no other sound, gave no indication how they’d communicated.
Instincts urged me to run, hide. My backpack weighed me down, making my shoulders ache as I tried to hold my flute up at a right angle; Sam always made fun of the way I let my flute sag, reminding me I’d get a better sound if I held it up.
I moved away from playing the waltz, choosing something simpler instead: my minuet. It was the first thing I’d ever composed, a haunting little melody of my fears.
Music poured from my flute like silver silk, and the shadows around me caught on quickly, adjusting their voices to become the bass and countermelody. They lifted my flute’s sound high above the treetops, carrying it eastward. My shadow orchestra. They listened to me, watched how I moved and where I sped and slowed, adjusting their songs to mine.
Thunder cracked again as the dragons grew nearer. Their wings seemed to dominate the sky, blocking the mountains and forest as they glided toward me. Their eyes were huge and bright and blue, and suddenly I felt very, very small. Like prey. Soon they would be upon me, able to gulp me down like one of those bears, or that deer yesterday.
When the minuet came to an end, I didn’t stop playing. I repeated it, and the sylph continued their songs, though now they stretched out around me, wide and tall and just as terrifying as they’d been the night of my eighteenth birthday. As we spiraled through the music again, the sylph’s voices grew louder, more intense.
Heavy wind pushed from the dragon wings. One of the sylph cut in front of me, absorbing most of the chill and rush, though my face ached with sudden cold and my flute’s sound seemed sucked back into it for a breath.
The lead dragon opened its jaws wide, revealing four long fangs and a row of teeth, still wet with blood and matted brown fur. The stink of raw meat rolled across the wall, nearly choking me as I gasped for another breath to finish my minuet.
As I hit the last note again, the lead dragon reached me, its mouth wide open—
The sylph raised themselves in front of me, a wall of shadows burning phoenix-hot. Heat blasted my face, dry and ashy, and the dragon snatched itself away from me at the last second. It had been so close I could have touched its face. Only the stubborn need to appear strong kept me from staggering backward, away from the dragon and sylph.
Dragons roared in frustration, so loud and close my ears ached.
They wheeled around and snapped several more times, but the sylph continued to thwart them. Dark flames writhed around me, singing, blocking the worst of the wind from smothering me. They darted out to burn the dragons any time they approached too close.