The Ghosts of Strangers Read online

  "I know who I want to be," said Pewet. "Granny Dragon, the first one we talked to. She can boss the headman, and he certainly needs it."

  "We can ask her."

  "Does she ever go flying? Does she fly north?"

  "We can ask her," Elexa said again. "Maia, Kindal, we are going to speak with other dragons about my other ghosts now. I'll bring you game tomorrow."

  "Thank you, Lex," said the dragon, in almost Kindal's voice, and then, in another voice, the dragon's own, "Will you bond with me?"

  "I can't bond until next year," she said. She hadn't heard of anyone bonding with a dragon whose children had already hatched, let alone babies who were three years old.

  Maia looked away. "It is only my greed that makes me say it," she said. "Though my boy lives inside me, I know I will miss him the way he used to be, and my children will miss him, too. Visit me, then, child."

  "I will."

  "I will, too," said Father. The dragon rubbed a whiskered cheek against his chest. The leather of his tunic burned a little, but he didn't flinch.

  They had to pass six other caves to return to Birta and Yan. One of the dragons accosted Elexa. "Have you a ghost for me?" she asked.

  "Will you fight the wild dragons?" Elexa asked.

  This dragon, blue with gold spirals along the underside of her neck, lowered her head. "I cannot," she said. "I have four fledglings to care for."

  "One of my ghosts needs a fighter. Another wants to go to Birta-Grandmother.”

  "I hear," said the dragon. "For the fighter, you will want the dragons of the second or third terrace, then, those whose children are grown enough to care for themselves. Ghost child, keep me in mind if you catch someone else. My name is Fass."

  "I'll remember," Elexa said. She walked on, her father beside her, the ghosts keeping pace.

  Yan scowled as she approached. She ducked behind her father and peeked up at Birta.

  "Kindal is settled with Maia?" Birta asked.

  "Yes. One of my ghosts would give herself to you, Grandmother."

  "Lovely," said Birta. "I have quite a taste for them. Bring her to me, Lexa."

  "Wait!" Yan said. "You'd eat a ghost not bonded to you?"

  "Whenever I can get one," said Birta. "Every ghost adds to my store of knowledge about the world. They are my true treasures, my hoard." Her mouth opened a slit in a dragon smile. "I'd eat you if I could," she whispered. Yan took a step back, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

  Elexa straightened. "Pewet-lady," she murmured. "Do you still want to do this?" She had never understood what dragons wanted with ghosts; they were just something she knew dragons needed that she was more skilled than others at finding. Old Peder had been so happy to be eaten, and some of the special others had, too. She thought of human ghosts she had caught and sent up to the dragons without thinking twice about it. Most had gone to Maia, but she had given ghosts to Tira's older sister Miri more than once, and to a few others.

  "I do want it," Pewet murmured. She glanced behind her, saw that Elexa's father was out of earshot, talking with Smudu, while Yan scowled. Pewet kept her voice low. "The other places I might go couldn't possibly be as nice or interesting. I was not a good citizen in life, Lexima. The people who chose to preach at me always told me I'd come to a bad end. How I look forward to proving them wrong."

  "Oh," said Elexa. She wondered if Birta would want a bad ghost. It had sounded as though Birta would take any ghost she could get.

  "Let's go," said Pewet. She slid her net-wrapped arm through Elexa's and drifted beside her as they approached Birta.

  Pewet stared up at Birta, whose neck curved so she could look down at Elexa. "I didn't realize she was so much bigger than the others," Pewet said.

  "She had her children long ago, before I was born. She bonded with Peder, the headman before Yan, and she stayed on here. Lots of times the dragon mothers leave when their children are old enough and they don't need our help anymore, but Grandmother didn't do that."

  "She looks like a fighter. Maybe Smudu should join her, too."

  "Grandmother, will you fight the wild dragons?" Elexa asked.

  "No. I need to stay with the new mothers and protect them. The other guardians will do it."

  Elexa walked Pewet to Birta, who lowered her head until her whiskery chin touched the ground, and then opened her jaw. Her split tongue was edged in black, a sign of age.

  "Ready?" Elexa asked.

  Pewet shivered, then said, "Sure. Plenty of room there."

  Elexa slipped her net off Pewet. "Go," she whispered. Pewet stepped over the thicket of curving iron fangs and onto the tongue. "She's there, Grandmother," said Elexa.

  The dragon closed her mouth gently, swallowed, rested her head on the ground, her eyes closed, her neck arching above her. Birta was still so long Elexa's hands folded into tight fists. Had something gone wrong?

  Birta's eyes opened. Blue flared in the green-yellow gem-fire of them, and the dragon laughed, a puffing roar of flame. "Glorious and good," she said. She cocked her head and studied Yan, who stood straight and glared back. "Couldn't I burn him just a little?" she muttered. "Toast a few toes?"

  "No," the dragon answered herself in a deeper voice. "Not yet."

  "What?" Yan roared.

  "As headmen go, you are better than some," Birta said in her own voice, "and not as good as others. I have not been a political creature in the past, but that may change. Watch your step, little man. Lexima, is Smudu still here?"

  "Yes," said Elexa. She backed up until she was even with the ghost and her father. She had known Birta six years, and given her two ghosts; now the dragon grandmother had a new name for her, and she wasn't sure she liked that.

  "There is something I need to tell you about the wild ones," Birta said.

  "What, Grandmother?"

  "Before you find someone to fight them, you should visit them."

  "What? What if they eat me, too?"

  "Jex killed three goats for them after your father brought the herd home tonight. I spoke to them just now. They killed Kindal before we got their promises to do no harm here; they did not know how we operate in the valley. You should talk to them."

  "They killed Smudu-sir and Kindal!"

  "They didn't know it was wrong," said Birta in her Pewet voice. "Talk to them."

  Elexa gripped her father's hand, looked up at his face. He nodded. It was not as if any of them knew how to fight dragons. But Smudu —

  She looked at her first ghost of the day, tall and proud, with his golden armbands, belt, and ear hoops, his long pale hair, his grim face.

  "My heart is hot," he said, "but I can wait."

  "We're really safe going up there alone?" Elexa asked Birta.

  "They will not kill any more of the valley's humans. If they do, we have vowed to kill them and send their spirits to nowhere instead of into the braids of spirit within us. They would be wholly lost. No dragon wants that."

  Elexa sighed and released her father's hand, then headed for the path to Second Terrace.

  Second Terrace was where the less social dragons lived, the ones who craved caves away from each other. Some of the dragon mothers who had already raised their children lived here, too, watching over the village even though their reason for being there had flown. Those had formed the strongest bonds with their humans.

  Third Terrace hosted visiting dragon children, those whose mothers had bonded with villagers, and who had themselves formed smaller bonds with the human children who brought them food and ghosts while they were growing. Some of the dragon children returned to raise their own children in MountainKnee; others left and never returned except for the midwinter dragon gather up toward the snowcap of the mountain, when wild and village dragons danced through the shortest day and fired through the longest night.

  Fourth Terrace, above Third Terrace, wasn't a place where any dragons usually lived. It was where dragon children were temporarily exiled to punish them when they weren't supposed to talk
to anyone.

  The path to Fourth Terrace was rough and showed no signs of recent use. Father helped Elexa climb. As they neared the lip above, Father called, "Greetings, o great ones," in dragonspeech. "Harm us not; we are here to talk."

  "Greetings," called a voice in dragonspeech from above. "Come without fear." The voice was high and thin and spoke with a dragon accent that softened some of the hard edges of the words.

  Father boosted Elexa up over the lip and climbed up after her. Elexa had never been this high on the mountain. In fact, she had never even been to Third Terrace before, and felt she hadn't properly seen it now; all they had done was cross it to get to the upward path, by the patchy light of Father's lantern and the better blue light of Little Moon.

  Fourth Terrace was narrow, with cliffs starting upward only a few feet from the edge. To the left was a cave entrance with a heap of smoked bones beside it. The scent of charred meat lingered. A dragon face peered out at them; the scalloped edges of its lifted crest made it a female. Its skull was slenderer than the skulls of dragons Elexa was used to, and it had a ruff of spikes around its face the likes of which she had never seen before. It hissed a flood of smoke toward them.

  "Great one," said Father. His voice trembled. Elexa was not sure if it was rage or fear that charged his words.

  "What are you doing here?" asked the dragon in dragonspeech. It used the "you" reserved for animals, not people.

  "Birta-dragon grandmother told us to speak with you," Elexa said. She used the animal "you" too.

  The dragon emerged from the cave to stand on the narrow ledge of Fourth Terrace. She spread one wing for balance. Elexa recognized the underside pattern of leaves against dark: This was the dragon who had killed Smudu Kush. She cried aloud and ran toward the dragon, not even aware of what she was doing. She raised her arms. She had no knife, no bow and arrow. No weapon at all. She ran at the dragon with her fists. The dragon lifted its front two legs and closed hot talons gently around Elexa's torso, holding her as she howled and screamed and thrashed, pummeling the dragon's arms with her fists.

  "I have vowed not to hurt you, morsel, but it is difficult when you act like prey," said the dragon.

  "Elexa," said Smudu. "Stop."

  "This is the one who murdered you!"

  "Don't make it eat you, too."

  She could not stop panting. In the pile of bones by the entrance to the cave, she saw human skulls. She wanted to pull them from the pile and flee down to the village, where she could give them a proper farewell and a decent burning. She hated the dragon who held her.

  "Elexa," said her father.

  She turned, breath hissing in and out through her nose.

  "Look." He came close to where she and the dragon were locked together and held up the lantern. "Look at her." He used the dragonspeech word for "her" that meant person.

  Elexa drew in long, slow breaths and stared at the dragon. It was thin; she could see every rib in its chest. Its skin was patchy and rough. The talons it held her in were warm, not hot, not burning her the way every direct contact she'd had with dragons before had. Its eyes glowed dully, not with the bright gem-fire she had seen in every dragon's eye below.

  She stood silent, conscious now of each talon wrapped around her like a finger, with no claws pressing into her at all.

  The dragon was dying.

  It opened its talons and released her. Elexa took three steps back, but didn't flee.

  "I did not know," the dragon said. "I did not know you were people." This time it used the plural "you" for people. "All I knew was that you were out in the open instead of hiding, and our need was great."

  "Where did you come from?" she asked.

  "We lived on an island far from here. There were no humans on it. I had never seen them until we came to this continent, and we had to do that, because a mountain grew overnight on our island and the hot rock that came out of it killed everything living except things that could fly away in time. We flew and flew. We didn't know whether there was anyplace to fly to. We were exhausted by the time we reached this new land. We saw scurrying, two-legged things. We found some of their mounds, and they were simple to break open so we could snatch the meat. It was easy to catch, and it tasted wonderful. None of them spoke to us."

  As the dragon talked, Elexa's father murmured behind her. During a pause in the dragon's speech, Elexa heard her father's words. He was translating the dragon's story for Smudu.

  "My sister has two eggs to lay, the last of our line. We could not let them die unborn. Everything else flew or ran too fast for us to catch, so Jakar and I caught humans."

  Elexa's breath hissed through her nose. She thought of Kindal, one of the last of her line, dead now except in spirit. Kindal, her kind, occasionally irritating older brother, who had taught her to hunt and listened to her problems. He had been the friend who comforted her when Tira wouldn't speak with her, and when Maro, the secret friend Tira wanted, didn't speak to her either, after their meetings were known.

  Kindal wasn't the last of his line. Her father still lived, and though he had never seemed interested in finding a second wife, who knew the future? Elexa was alive, and would marry and have children if she found a boy she liked. The future was open.

  The dragons had lost their whole world.

  "I regret that we took away a person who meant something to you, with no hope to continue him," said the dragon. She lifted her head and peered past Elexa's shoulder. "Or is there a hope?"

  Elexa turned to glance back the way the dragon looked. Smudu stood there. "She can see you," Elexa whispered.

  Smudu strode forward, stood beside Elexa. "Do you see me, my murderer?"

  Elexa translated the question into dragonspeech. Other dragons were aware of the presence of ghosts, but she had never spoken to one who could see them.

  The dragon cocked her head. "I do. You glow in the shape of the one you were before. You are wrapped in something gray. I didn't know your kind left spirits."

  As Elexa translated, another head snaked out of the cave darkness above the wild dragon's shoulder. Its raised crest had the sharp edges of a male, and it, too, had a ruff of spikes around its head. It stared at Smudu.

  "You killed me," Smudu said to the female. "Give me your life in exchange."

  Elexa translated for him as best she could, then turned to him. "What do you mean, 'give me your life'?"

  "Let me be eaten by her, the way the others were dragon-eaten."

  "Is this what you really want?"

  "I don't know," he muttered. "I think of my daughter and my wife, and what I would do to protect them, if I could. I understand now that the dragon was protecting her sister. If I am inside her, the way your brother went inside the other, and the woman went inside the grandmother — can they shape what their dragon hosts do?"

  Elexa shook her head. "I don't think so."

  "I couldn't make her take the gold I wore and carried at my death home to my wife and daughter?"

  Elexa shook her head again.

  "You may not be able to order her, but you could ask her," said Father.

  Smudu nodded. "Ask her for me, please."

  "You took this man out of his family and left them in want," Father said in dragonspeech. "Would you accept the gift of his ghost? Can you return his gold to them?"

  The dragon lowered her head, her eyes half-lidded. "I don't know about the gift of his ghost. I understand others here share their lifebraids with human and animal ghosts, though this seems strange to me. I cannot return the man's gold to his family until after my sister's eggs are laid and I am sure she has enough to eat."

  "The village will feed all three of you, and the babies," said Father. "It's been a good year for goats."

  Elexa thought of the blue-violet stone she had found that morning, somewhere in Sanric's hoard now. She could sense it through cloth and walls; she knew its radiance. She would be able to track it down. If she explained to Yan, would he help her reclaim it? It would pay for several g
oats, or she could take it to Smudu's family.

  Leave Mountainknee. See the places her ghosts had told her about. Get away from Sanric and Yan, the death of her brother, the loss of her friendship with Tira.

  Leave Father alone?

  "Will you give my sister a child?" asked the dragon.

  "To eat?" Father said. "Certainly not."

  "A slave child, like the ones the other dragons have."

  "We aren't slaves!" Father cried. "Both gain from the bond. You would have to give to the child who bonded to you. But we had Bond Night a month ago, and all the children who were ready bonded with dragons. We have no more unbonded thirteen-year-olds."

  "What about this one?" asked the dragon. "The ghost catcher."

  "She is too young, and unprepared," said Father.

  Elexa said, "I won't bond with a murderer!"

  The dragon said, "Jakar and I have killed humans, but my sister has done nothing but try to survive and keep her children alive. She has killed no one." The pale head lowered, snaked toward her, its crest rising, the dim eyes glowing brighter. "How prepared do you have to be? We don't know your ways."

  "I don't want to bond with your sister." Elexa backed away from the dragon, her hand reaching for Father's. She wanted to bond to a dragon she had spent a year courting, someone she knew would be kind to her, someone she could respect. These strange dragons with ghost vision and no morals didn't appeal to her.

  Father took her hand in his, placed his other hand on her shoulder to steady her. The world swayed, she was so tired. She leaned against her father's steadiness.

  Smudu strode past Elexa to the dragon, who slid her head sideways so she could watch him with one eye. "Leave the child alone. Take me."

  Father repeated what he had said in dragonspeech. Smudu's murderer turned her head one way, then the other, studying the ghost with each of her eyes in turn.