The Pygmy Dragon (6 page)

The chains jingled softly as they entered a towering hallway, so large it housed an entire prekki fruit tree. Arosia led her upstairs, to her parents’ bedroom, she said. Pip took in the fine furnishings and paintings on the walls, the trophies of Balthion’s time in the Crimson Hammers, the elite armed forces of Sylakia’s Island, where he had been a powerful commander, a Second War-Hammer. He had lost his leg in a battle against a wild, feral Dragon. The same Dragon had burned much of his left arm and side, leaving scars he had once allowed her to finger in melancholy fascination.

Pip was only just tall enough to see over the mattress of his vast bed. But there was Balthion, bright eyes crinkling into a smile, his hair and beard neatly trimmed for the first time since she had known him. He gave a glad cry.

Arosia helped her clamber onto a stool at his bedside.

They talked Pygmy. It was like old times. They ate a Sylakian delicacy together, a pot of slow-roasted ralti meat stew served with saffron rice, curried yoghurt and crusty mohili bread. Pip ate until her stomach creaked at the seams. Arosia kept breaking off more chunks of bread for her and scooping out the best portions of meat.

Balthion introduced her to his children. Duri was away visiting relatives, but she met his four younger brothers and Balthion’s wife Shullia, who welcomed Pip with a hug and a kiss on her forehead. “So this is the imp who has stolen your heart, Balthion? What a sweet child.” Shullia’s eyes twinkled. She had iron-grey hair and a way of looking so directly at Pip, she felt as though Shullia knew everything about her already. “You’d hardly make a rajal’s dinner, girl. They could feed you a little more.”

Shullia’s sweet, potent perfume made Pip cough. “You’ve been helping our Duri, I hear,” she said. “His grades have shot from the Cloudlands to the moons above. Balthion says you’re quite the fighter.”

“Not too many compliments, Shullia,” Balthion advised gruffly.

Pip ventured a smile. “Thank you, Lady Shullia.”

“Oh, lady this and lady that? Nonsense, child. When I was your age, I ran barefoot through the puddles of lower Sylakia Town. I was quite the scamp. As poor and homeless as one of those monkeys they have you living with.”

Just then, boots click-clacked in the hallway.

“Daddy.” A girl swished in through the doorway. “I’ve come back from the Academy of–oh, roaring rajals, is this the native from the zoo? The one you’ve been trying to civilise?”

A chill breeze seemed to have swept into the room. Pip was aware her mouth had dropped open, but the girl’s tone of casual contempt caught her so by surprise that she could think of nothing to say. The girl was half a head taller than Arosia, also fine-featured, but beneath a formal white headscarf her eyes were the grey of stormy skies. They dismissed Pip without need for speech.

“Telisia,” said Balthion. “May I present Pip? Pip, this is my eldest daughter–”

“I thought I smelled monkey droppings on the way in,” said Telisia, pinching her nose delicately. “And you’ve lent the native one of your dresses, Arosia? Adorable. Don’t forget to burn it afterward.”

Pip caught a stricken look from Balthion as she dropped her gaze. She felt sick. Beside her, Arosia and Shullia stiffened until they resembled the bars of the climbing frame in Pip’s cage.

“How’s the Academy, petal?” asked Shullia.

“Lots to tell,” said Telisia, touching one slim hand to her forehead. Pip had no words. Telisia was pretty, but the ugliness that came out of her mouth …

“Oh?” Master Balthion prodded.

Telisia affected a huge sigh. “Later. I’ve a headache, which the stench in here isn’t helping. Dad, haven’t you learned that you can dress up a monkey, but you can’t make them Human? Honestly.”

And with that, she swept out again, leaving a nasty silence in her wake.

“Oh, she can just go jump in a Cloudlands volcano,” Arosia snarled.

Balthion sighed. “That girl, I swear … Pip, I’m so sorry.”

Pip swallowed back a hard, sour lump of misery. “I thank you for this outing, Master Balthion. But I’d like to go home to my cage, now.”

A
RoSIA HAD BEEN
pallid with rage. When she held Pip’s hand in the litter, she was still shaking. Pip did not know why Arosia felt that way, nor why she sat in a thin-lipped silence as her gentle friend dwelled on her thoughts. She looked at her fingers. Arosia’s fine, soft hand had clutched hers all the way back to the zoo.

The zookeeper unlocked her manacles. Slipping free of the unaccustomed dress, Pip handed over her outfit. “Thank you.”

The girl only nodded. Her eyes had a wounded-animal quality about them.

The cage door slid shut behind a loincloth-clad Pygmy girl. With a click, her world became bars and walls once more. Although her feet felt too heavy to move, she managed, somehow, to trace back the steps she had taken so lightly earlier. Why was Arosia acting so hurt, she wondered? She wasn’t the one relegated to the world of animals.

“Pip smell funny,” Hunagu murmured, half-asleep.

Pip crawled beneath the new shelter she had built them, drew the rajal skin about her frame and pulled Hunagu’s arm around her.

What did that make Hunagu? Some undefined half-Human half-animal?

That night, the shadow chased her through the jungle again. Pip jerked awake with a shrill scream. She could not seem to get warm, despite hiding completely beneath Hunagu’s arm. Had she sensed the creature again? Was it still hunting? Now every shadow in their enclosure seemed to gleam with dark, oily menace, to hide loathsome and fearful creatures of the dark. Pip admonished herself to stop jumping at shadows. But she did not calm down for hours.

Exhausted, she slept. The shadow brushed the edges of her mind.

Arosia and Shullia arrived early the following morning by pony cart, with three servants in tow and a list of demands that had the poor zookeeper hopping like the giant khaki grasshoppers her tribe used to fry and eat for a treat. Pip watched in mounting astonishment as a tub, a brazier, metal pots, five barrels of water, a mound of large green towels and three cavernous bags of outlandish implements made their appearance. She began to feel a little frightened. Some Pygmy warrior she was.

Hunagu grunted, “Water? Pygmy-girl wash? Pah.”

Shullia had a kindly but implacable air about her as she beckoned Pip over. “Right, petal. We need to have a talk. There are things my husband, that gruff old rajal, cannot teach you about being a woman. How old are you?”

“Fourteen summers, I think,” said Pip. “I don’t remember very well.”

“And you’re such a tiny sparrow,” said Shullia. “Actually, Duri’s been calling you a sparrow
hawk
behind your back. I think you rather scared him. That zookeeper. Says you shouldn’t get too clean. Ha. Kick his scabby rump to the next Island, I will. My Balthion calls you the most natural warrior he’s ever seen. He sent you something. Arosia?”

Pip’s head spun as Shullia’s thoughts jumped about. A natural warrior? Balthion had been drilling her and Duri mercilessly. In his first ten seconds of instruction, he had wiped out her smugness. Her bruises had multiplied since.

“Oh–they’re wonderful, Arosia.”

“They’re only training blades,” said her friend. “Do you like them?”

She turned the twin blades over in her fingers. They were a foot and a half long, perfectly balanced, but clearly blunted for training purposes. She struck a martial pose. “Prepare to die, thou beautiful … er, scoundrel.”

Arosia laughed merrily. “I am not unarmed, Pip.”

“You aren’t? But …” Pip’s voice trailed off.

“Look for my blades. I dare you.”

The servants emptied several barrels of water into the small tub. Steam rose into the frosty morning air. They lifted a screen into place. A screen! Pip chuckled to herself. These big people were too funny. They just weren’t comfortable in their own skins.

She shook her head. “You’re unarmed.”

“Even in the jungle, not all is as it seems,” said Arosia, putting her hands up to her hair. “Didn’t somebody just teach me that? Watch the ribbons.”

Arosia had twisted her hair around two crossed wooden pins. Pretty turquoise ribbons formed several bows behind her head, and trailed halfway down her back. They came away in her hands. Her hair tumbled free. Pip realised that the pins were in fact, wooden handles for the ribbons. The way they hung, five feet long, they had to be heavier than they looked.

“Razor ribbons,” said Arosia, whirling them about her head. “A weapon my Dad invented. They’re reinforced with a flexible metal thread. The actual blades are the last third of the ribbon.” Pip reached out. “Careful. They’re as sharp as Immadian forked daggers. Well, close.”

She touched the ribbon gingerly. Arosia was right. Any more blade, and the tying process would slice off one’s hair. She said, “Pretty deadly.”

Arosia chuckled. “Good joke. I’ll teach you how to use them, if you’d like.”

“Really? I’d love that.”

“
After
your bath,” said Shullia, clucking her tongue like a mother hen. “My Telisia might be wrong about many things, but she was right about the contents of your hair. When last did you wash this bird’s nest?”

“Not since she came to the zoo,” said Arosia.

Pip grumbled under her breath as she climbed over the tub’s rim. But she sighed as she sank into warm water for the first time in her life. Delicious. No wonder the scrolls had described baths with enthusiasm.

Pensively, Pip asked, “So, do you truly think I’m a person, Shullia?”

“Heavens above and Islands below, girl,” Shullia scowled. “You’re not some project we spend our pity on.”

Arosia smiled at her mother, and then at Pip. “Pipsqueak, my Dad finished his research … oh, last year, I think it was. Why do
you
think we keep coming to see you?”

“So you can watch me beat up your brother?”

But Pip knew that was not the real answer. She looked from mother to daughter, searching with her heart, indeed, with her entire being.

Shullia nodded at Arosia, who hesitated a long time before saying, “We–our family, that is–tried to buy you from the zoo, Pip. But the zoo owner said you were too big an attraction. He wouldn’t take any price.”

“Pygmies are not people, under Sylakian law,” Shullia added.

“The law is wrong, mother.”

“Ay, petal, that it is,” said Shullia. “My Balthion wants to change the law. He hopes his research into Ancient Southern languages and Pygmy culture will change hearts and minds. But I fear it’ll take a very long time, Pip. Perhaps longer than your lifetime or mine.”

Pip sank down in the water. “I’m … I don’t know what to say. I’m grateful.”

“I’m sorry we failed you, Pip,” said Arosia.

“You haven’t. You’re my friends. That’s enough for me.”

Three washes of her hair later, and a great deal of talk about the ways of women and big people and Pygmies, Pip examined herself in a polished crysglass mirror. Her curly dark ringlets, oiled and brushed out after much tugging and muttering on Arosia’s part, gleamed like the darkness of a stormy night. Her eyes were as black as her hair; so dark that one could barely discern the pupils. She touched her hollow cheekbones. Shullia had complained to the zookeeper about her diet. Pip wondered if she was looking at a stranger–it felt so queer, seeing the person Pip in the mirror, knowing the thoughts within her, but not recognising the exterior.

“Beautiful,” said Arosia, wiping her eyes when she thought Pip was not looking.

Shullia said, “Look. Look deep in the mirror, Pip.”

She looked. Tears glistened in the corners of mirror-Pip’s eyes.

“See?” said Shullia, clutching her shoulders fiercely, as if by the power of her grip alone she could impress her words on Pip’s soul. “That’s a person you see there. You think, you feel, you love, you hurt, you cry, you laugh, you hope and dream. You’re a person. Don’t ever let anybody tell you otherwise. I know, because I’m a person, too.”

*  *  *  *

Deep in the fall of that year, as another cruel winter curled its icy claws around Sylakia Island, Hunagu suddenly took ill. One day, he was his usual cheerful self. The next, he complained of a headache and a runny nose. Pip teased him about the rivers of snot an Oraial could produce. The third day, he was unable to raise his head from the ground. It hurt too much, he said.

That was the morning Pip found two dead flying vervet monkeys in their cage.

She asked Balthion to summon the zoo veterinarian, who was visibly wary of approaching the sick monkeys. He examined Hunagu and prescribed a rash of herbal remedies, but Pip knew he had no clue. Master Balthion urged her to leave Hunagu. She refused.

The days dragged by. Pip fretted over Hunagu, who grew weaker and weaker, while she remained stubbornly healthy and well. The strange disease did not touch her, but it took every monkey in her cage, young and old. By now, Hunagu was too weak to speak. She dribbled water down his throat by propping his mouth open with a stick, and washing the herbs down. She could make him eat by patiently mashing up leaves and shoving the pulp down his throat until his swallowing reflex took over.

The zookeeper handed Pip a shovel through the bars and told her to bury the monkeys, as deep as she could. Strangely, the monkeys seemed only to have fallen asleep. There was neither sign of distress on their faces, nor wounds nor sores on their bodies. However, when she moved the first monkey, a clear liquid poured out of its mouth. Drowned? Pip covered her mouth, trying not to gag.

Then she threw down the shovel and ran. She knew she had to shift Hunagu onto his side.

Now Balthion’s teachings came to the fore. With the help of several rocks and long, sturdy bamboo poles, a tiny Pygmy girl and two of the zookeepers were able to lever the Oraial onto his side. He coughed wetly, a deep rattle in his chest, and fluid poured out of him.

He endured, but only to become weaker.

The frosty nights were the worst. Pip stayed awake, nursing her friend, feeding him water and mash she warmed over a small fire. She swaddled him in every scrap of cloth she could beg from the zookeepers, but Hunagu coughed and shivered and moaned all night. He struggled for every breath. Pip exhausted herself helping him. She had almost nodded off, early one evening, when Hunagu suddenly raised his head and said:

“Hunagu go to spirit world.”

“No,” Pip cried, before she was fully awake.

“Tonight,” he said, slumping again. His eyes closed.

Pip sat beside her friend, shaking uncontrollably. The Jade and Blue moons rolled slowly overhead, casting an eerie light into their shelter. Hunagu’s breathing slowed.

She fell into a strange dream-state in which Hunagu walked away from her, his powerful body rolling forward with every reach of his great paws, ascending a smooth green mountain. The suns blazed down from the sky, but a mist rose around his body, like steam rising off exposed rock after a sharp thunderstorm.

Pip ran after Hunagu, crying and shouting for him to stop. But no matter how hard she ran, the Ape did not slow, nor was she fast enough to catch up. She cursed her little legs. She screamed at the heavens. She implored him to turn away from death, and choose life. Hunagu only moved faster. Eventually, he turned and regarded her with eyes grown as green as the verdant mountain slope.

“I must leave, little one,” he rumbled. “The spirit world lies ahead. The living cannot go there.”

“Don’t leave me, Hunagu!”

Pip ran on, desperate, sobbing, wanting only to be with her friend and to hold him.

“Stop! Do not enter the spirit world, or you’ll die.”

“Please, Hunagu,” Pip cried. “Turn back. Come back with me. There’s still time.”

“It’s time to leave.”

“Hunagu. Hunagu!”

Her screams vanished into a world deaf to her fate, to her needs. All was against her. Even the heavens made no response, nor the spirits. Cold, numbing, uncaring Island-World. Pip stumbled and fell to her knees.

“Please … don’t leave me …”

Then, in that place of utter loss, her tears switched to fury. She had already lost too much–her parents, her tribe, her home and her life. Now her only friend? It was too much. Pip reached deeper than ever before, deep into the unknown foundations of her being. She tore from herself an enigmatic power, a word that rang the world as though a giant bell had tolled, just once, a word of such devastating command that it tore the fabric of the green mountain and brought the suns to a standstill.

I forbid thee!
Pip roared.

Hunagu shuddered to a halt. He turned; his green eyes terrible to behold. He said, “What have you done, Pip?”

Slowly, gathering speed, the Ape thundered down the slope toward her. As he rushed on, he seemed to gather force like a breaking storm, and wings and teeth to match that force. Pip quailed. The dream-Ape slammed her out of her reverie and back into the real world.

Pip woke with a wordless cry and the taste of blood in her mouth.

Hunagu slept. But for the first time in weeks, he breathed easily.