When the poth can stretch without feeling like her skin will tear, he lifts his shirt back up over her shoulders, and she rebuttons it. He comes around the bed and offers her his arm. Her feet are sore. She doesn’t often wear her boots, and her legs stiffen when she doesn’t move for a while. They go outside. He climbs off the porch into the saddle and straps himself to it. He and the dragon move together. They didn’t always.
His first effort to ride Gray was comical, the dragon lying down before taxiing him around the pond for the price of a beetle per step. Their first flight was nearly tragic. They were on the beach and she flipped out her wings to toss him off when the wind caught them and threw dragon and rider into the trees. Their first real flight was little more than a hop across the shega meadow, but it was exhilarating for them both. For a moment they were one.
Their next test was a glide from the meadow cliff to the beach. As they yawed and plummeted in the tricky winds, he realized he couldn’t steer the dragon the way he would a boat. He had to point out a destination and give Gray her head to figure out the best way to get there. As with a razor, he had to let the dragon do the work.
Everlyn insisted on hearing everything, and he cringed a bit when relating this part. She didn’t disguise her glee at being right about this and, by extension, so many other things.
Soon he and Gray were making trips across the island, then circuits around it. They flew out to sea to the point where the island had nearly vanished and soared high enough for the sea to flatten into a smear of blue and white. Jeryon would have screamed with joy as they plunged had vomit not stoppered his throat. A month ago, he felt confident that Gray could stay aloft long enough to reach the League. He began preparations for leaving the poth. She began arguing to take the dragon up.
He was apprehensive, given her pain and limited mobility, as well as her unfamiliarity with the actual process. She recited from memory every lesson he had learned. She said she wasn’t going to watch the first broken dragon in history fly away without having a chance in the saddle. Gray sensed her desire and would lower her neck beside Everlyn to let her sit on her shoulders. Jeryon couldn’t refuse in the face of joint opposition. And he had no right to, she reminded him.
He would have called it a mutiny, but that would have spoiled the moment. Instead, he asked that she ride the next day. He wanted to prepare a surprise for her.
The next morning he lotioned her thoroughly, she ate a fair quantity of boneset and golden shield, and he led her out to Gray, already saddled. Her seat was good, and the pain slipped out of her. He told her to end her ride by cruising over the Crown. She asked why. He remained clay-faced.
At first the dragon flew close to the ground and so slowly she thought Gray might land. Everlyn couldn’t believe the dragon was babying her too. She yanked the dragon up hard. Jeryon’s stomach fell to hear her scream, then rose when he realized what a wonderful scream it was. It was the scream of the whole sky greeting the morning. He watched the dragon turn and glide. She was, he would tell her later, a great rider. As she passed by the third time, he could see she was getting fatigued, and he pointed at the Crown.
She cruised north over the beach to come at the Crown from the seaward side, a long dramatic slope. Later she would recall finding Gray’s egg, fighting the crabs, rendering the dragon, and many walks up to the Crown with Jeryon, but in the moment she only recalled that she should occasionally breathe. As she came over the top, she discovered Jeryon’s surprise: a huge pile of wood in a ring of stones. She brought Gray around, aimed the dragon at the pyre, and dove at it. At the last second she gave the command to fire: “Comber!” The dragon’s flames exploded off the wood and roared high enough for Jeryon to see it at camp and cheer. She soared off in a great circle around the pyre, laughing. She couldn’t feel her body at all.
Two hours later, Jeryon looks past Gray’s slowly waving tail and sees the island sink into the horizon. He rubs his beard. He’s let it get long and full. He feels bushier too.
At midday the dragon spots a pod of razorback whales also traveling north by northwest. She bobs toward them. He reins her in. They have no time for hunting. Then he considers: Razorbacks are exceedingly fast for whales, and other galley captains would race them to see if their rowers could keep up. Jeryon never went in for such exercises in ego. The rowers would have to move at double-time, which would exhaust them quickly and cost them more time later. He does wonder, though, just how fast she can go.