Outside Gray suns her wings, which are as wide as Jeryon is tall. Like the larger squaluses, the wyrm’s turned a cool blue-gray on top, and will probably get darker, while her underside remains platinum. When she hears him, she furls her wings, rolls on her side, and lifts her leg for a morning scratch. He lays the bridle quietly on the porch where she can’t see it and jumps down. He would use his hand, but her hide’s so tough it’s no longer effective. He pulls a bamboo rake from underneath the porch and goes to work on her belly. She falls asleep. He stops. She heaves as if stabbed. More rake. She falls asleep again.
Jeryon retrieves the bridle and steps behind her head. He rakes her neck, which arches, and she yawns. With a practiced swoop, he slips the dragonbone bit past her teeth, catches the rising neck between his thighs, and sets the dragonskin strap in the bamboo buckle beneath her throat.
He holds her in place, getting her used to being straddled. It makes her skittish. Lots of things do. She’s constantly charging at things that aren’t there or chomping the air. He figures she’s just at an age for dragons. Gray’s four feet long, much of that neck and tail. As broad as her body is, riding her would still be like riding a racing hound or snap dog. They have a long way to go. If you don’t want to ride a horse until it’s at least two, how old would a dragon have to be?
Gray relaxes. He steps aside and whistles her to sit. She does, gnashing at the bit. She chewed straight through rope and bamboo, but in dragonbone she’s met her match. He unbars a woven crate lined with a dragonwing membrane pouch and filled with water, and he pulls out a white crab. It shakes its bound claws. He tosses it to the wyrm, who swallows it in a few bites. He takes a coil of rope from a peg on a stilt and ties it to the bit. For letting him, she gets another crab.
Jeryon releases Gray to lead her around the pond so she can get further used to the bridle. She smells more dragony than usual, which reminds him of the Comber. Jeryon realizes he hasn’t thought about his mates in a while, unlike during their first rainy season.
At first the cabin withstood the season well, then the pond overflowed and flooded it. As he and the poth scrambled to save their possessions, Jeryon pictured his mates dry in his quarters on the Comber, laughing at him and the Trust amid their render. When the rain became a torrent that battered the walls, and the wind chewed away the roof thatch, he wanted to tear the Comber’s stern deck open to get at his mates before they could reach Hanosh. Whenever he saw the poth drowning in her own hair and trying to keep a fire lit, Jeryon’s hands would jerk as if reaching out and flinging his mates into the sea.
Soon he would have the power to do that, he thought. Unfortunately, Gray had little interest in learning a new training game, Snatch the Mutineers.
One day as she was coming down the trail to the beach the poth caught Jeryon yelling a mate’s name while hacking a crab.
She looked at the slaughter on the beach and asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m hungry.”
“What a waste,” she said. “I’ve made us lunch already. Let’s talk about rebuilding.” She held out her hand.
He followed her back to camp. As they made plans for the spring over oyster grass salad, the crab corpses washed away along with thoughts of his mates. He took to eating more fish to keep them out of mind.
After the rainy season ended, they put the cabin on stilts. They reinforced it with timber columns and thatched the roof more thickly. To keep the rain out, they fitted the bamboo in the walls more tightly together, and made the windows smaller and higher in the walls. They also built shutters and planned to daub the walls before the next rainy season if they were still there.
Meanwhile the island yielded a bounty of fruit and vegetables that they struggled to eat before it rotted. For a month, they didn’t need Gray to fish for them. They even gained weight. And the camp turned gold as the shield the poth had replanted ran rampant. It was like living in a field of treasure.
Jeryon sniffs. For some reason the shield doesn’t smell so terrible anymore. He could stay here forever, he thinks. No one in Hanosh except the shipowners eats so well. The cabin is more sturdy than most of the places he lived in as a boy. And he has a schedule to keep, one set by the land and the needs of the day without the worry of living hand to mouth. He could almost thank his mates for it.
The poth, though, would want to go home. She talks about touring the League again from Jolef to Yness. As for Hanosh, she’s likely had her fill of their people. She gets antsy when they’re on the porch together for more than an hour. Then again, she’d be the ideal partner for a captain. She wouldn’t mind him being gone for six months at a time, and they’d get along fine for the month before he left again. They wouldn’t even have to live in any one place. They could catch up with each other at various cities.
It’s a clever arrangement, but not worth considering now. He pats Gray on the head. The wyrm’s still puny as dragons go. He and the poth, they have a long way to go too.
2
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