“This is no longer cute,” Jeryon says.
Red sits up and licks its wounded hand. It picks at a scale on its belly and eats whatever it found there. It flaps its wings, which are starting to stiffen, folds them, and snaps its tail. Ordered again, it crawls to Black.
Red sniffs Black’s snout, strokes it, licks it, the gracious victor, then claws out an eye. Red holds it up, bites it in half, and chews it thoughtfully. Red likes it. It eats the other half. As Black hisses and flails, Jeryon lowers his hand between them. Snap. Bite. Sit. Glower. Look. And the hand goes up. Red slides its claws around Black’s remaining eye and plucks it like a shega. Black spits and mewls as Red eats it, then, appetized, moves in for the feast.
Again the hand, the sitting, the glare, the raising.
“I didn’t think a dragon could be trained,” the poth says.
“Neither did I,” Jeryon says, “but who’s had the chance? Dragons hide their eggs in remote locations and move them at the slightest sign of a threat. Few have ever been seen, let alone taken.”
They can’t look as Red devours Black’s tongue, then tears off a piece of Black’s face, which finally kills the wyrmling. This doesn’t suit Red, so it climbs over Black’s ruined head and uses its horn to crack the shell.
“So where’s its mother?” the poth says as Red breaks through the top of the shell and digs heartily into Black’s shoulders. “Is that her down there?”
“I’m hoping she’s the one the Comber killed,” Jeryon says.
The dragon slurps and chomps. When it’s done, it slides out of the shell, a sticky mass of pride and gore, and wipes its face with a claw. It does a terrible job. Jeryon holds out his hand, and the wyrmling climbs onto it, curls up, and falls asleep. Blood puddles around it.
“Has anything been written,” the poth says, “about how big a dragon would have to be to fly us away?”
The issue of whether they’ll stay at Jeryon’s camp or the poth’s is settled by the need to keep the wyrmling safe. The white crabs would treat a wyrmling penned on the beach the same as they would a fish head handed into a crab pot: like bait.
Before heading for Everlyn’s pond, they retrieve his collection of blue crab carapaces, his stash of wild olives and shega, his bow drill, and a few spears tied in a bundle with bamboo thread. He leaves the rest. It won’t take long to re-create them.
While Jeryon gathers his stuff, the poth kills a crab for the wyrmling, which is hungry again. It sits quietly as Jeryon cleans it, glancing at him. He still makes it go through the hand dance before letting it have some meat.
Jeryon says, “It’s already growing.”
“I hope we don’t run out of crab,” the poth says. “It probably eats faster than they can breed.”
The wyrmling rides to the pond in Everlyn’s hip pocket, sometimes poking its head up to look around, sometimes falling to the bottom to sleep. It alternates about every thirty steps by Jeryon’s count. When she brushes past a branch, she knocks an enormous red rhino beetle off a leaf into her pocket. A furious battle ensues in the depths of her smock. Peace comes with a muffled crunching.
Jeryon wants to say something, but as the poth tries to settle her smock and collect herself he decides to save it for later. Beetles, at least, could solve the crab problem. There’s no end of beetles.
Oaks shade the pond and shatter the wind into gentle breezes. Jeryon feels refreshed until he sees a bow drill beside the neat fire ring that puts his own to shame. “Where do you sleep?” he says.
She points to a patch of spongy orange moss near the ring. He chooses a spot farther away and separated from hers by a tangle of branches.
“I don’t need a screen,” she says. “I’m not that modest.”
“I am,” he says. “I’ll put the pen by the fire.”
The poth pulls the wyrmling out of her pocket by its scruff. “It could stay with me,” she says. “It likes my pocket.”
“It’s not a kitten. It needs a proper enclosure so we can contain it and train it.”
“I don’t think it’s going to like that.” The wyrmling kicks and squrims.
“It’ll have to get used to it.” Jeryon scuffs a square into the dirt and holds out his hand. “I need to cut some bamboo. Let me have the sword.”
“My sword,” Everlyn says after he disappears into the woods. She looks at the square and for the first time notices how the trees box in the camp.
“What do you think?” she says and puts the wyrmling in the square. It promptly scuttles away. “I agree. We’re going to need a lot of walks to make this place bearable.”
When the wyrmling reaches the pond, it snaps at its reflection. It gets a mouthful of water instead. It smacks its lips. It likes water. It drinks lustily.
“The box won’t be so bad with you, though,” she says.