“I’m sorry about Veras. I hope she manages to rejoin us. There are already so few female dragons.”
“Exactly,” Greft said, as if that proved some point for him.
But Jerd looked at her, weighed her comment, and decided Thymara was sincere. “I can’t feel her. Not clearly. But it doesn’t feel like she’s gone, either. I’m afraid that she’s injured somewhere. Or just disoriented and unable to find her way back to us.”
“It will be all right, Jerd,” Greft said soothingly. “Don’t distress yourself. It’s the last thing you need right now.”
This time both Thymara and Jerd shot him furious looks.
“I’m only thinking of you,” he said defensively.
“Well, I’m thinking and speaking about my dragon,” Jerd replied.
“Perhaps we’d best get the fish cooking before the fire burns too low,” Sylve suggested, and the alacrity with which the fish were taken up and fixed on wooden skewers over the fire attested to how uncomfortable the near quarrel was making everyone.
“Have you asked the other dragons if they can feel her?” Sylve asked Jerd as they began to ferry the cooked fish and other foods from the fire to the main raft. Boxter had found shelf mushrooms and onion-moss to share, welcome additions to an otherwise bland meal.
Jerd shook her head mutely.
“Well, my dear, you should!” Alise smiled at her. “Sintara and Mercor would be the best ones to approach with this. I’ll ask Sintara for you, shall I?”
The words were said so innocently, with such a hopeful helpfulness. Thymara bit down on her anger. “Do you really think so?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t she?”
“Well, because she is Sintara,” Thymara replied, and Sylve laughed.
“I know what you mean. Just when I think I understand Mercor and that he will do any simple favor I ask of him, he asserts he is a dragon and not my plaything. But I think he might help with this.”
Jerd struggled for a moment and then asked quietly, “Would you ask him, then? I didn’t think to ask the other dragons. It just seemed to me that I should know if she is alive or dead. I should be able to feel it, without help.”
“Are you that close to Veras?” Thymara asked and tried not to let envy creep into her voice.
“I thought I was,” Jerd said quietly. “I thought I was.”
ALISE LOOKED AROUND the circle of dragon keepers. In her hands, she held two broad, thick leaves topped with a piece of partially cooked fish. A mushroom and a tangle of shaggy greenery topped the fish. She balanced a fruit that Thymara had called a “sour pear” on her leg. They’d given her the same share that any other keeper had received. She’d slept alongside them and now ate with them, but she knew that, despite her efforts, she was not one of them. Thymara did not make as much of their differences as the others did, but the girl still deferred to her in a way that kept her at a distance. She felt that Greft resented her, but if she’d had to say why, the only reason she would come up with was that she was not of the Rain Wilds. It made her feel desperately alone.
And being so useless did not make it any easier.
She envied how quickly the others seemed to have adapted and then reacted to their situation. They shifted their lives and responded to recover from the disaster so quickly that she felt both old and inflexible in comparison. And they spoke so little of their losses. Jerd wept, but she did not endlessly rant. The calm the keepers showed seemed almost unnatural. She wondered if it was the response of people who had grown up with near disaster at every turn. Quakes were not a rarity to them, any more than they were to the people of Bingtown. But all knew that in the Rain Wilds, quakes were more dangerous. So many of the Rain Wilders worked underground, salvaging Elderling artifacts as they unearthed the buried halls and chambers of the ancient cities. Cave-ins and collapses were sometimes triggered by quakes; had the keepers been inured to loss from an early age?
She wished they had been less reticent. She wanted to howl at the moon, to shake and rant, to weep hopelessly and fall apart. She longed to talk about the Tarman and Captain Leftrin, to ask if they thought the ship had survived, to ask if they expected the captain to come searching. As if talking about rescue could make it a reality! It would have been strangely comforting to discuss it all, over and over. Yet in the face of all these youngsters simply dealing with this disaster, how could she?
She picked the steaming fish apart with her fingers and ate it with bites of the mushroom and strands of the onion-moss. It did, indeed, have the flavor of onions. When she finished, she ate the “plate” it had been served on. The bread leaf was untrue to its name; there was nothing of “bread” about it. It was thick and starchy and crisp, but to her palate, unmistakably vegetable. When she finished it, she was still hungry. The sour pear at least helped her with her thirst. Despite its wrinkled skin, the fruit was juicy. She ate it right down to its core and only wished there was more.
