Dragon's Milk by Susan Fletcher

Author:Susan Fletcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

chapter 17

Mayke you a slit in the serpent’s belly; tayke out its entrails and stuff with sour-fruit and scallions. Scoop out of the earth a pit and lay thereon a bed of coals. Pat the serpent with wet clay; set it in the pit. Cover with earth and mayke a fire on it. When four days have passed, unearth the serpent and crack open the clay.

—Ancient Kragish recipe

The draclings were gone.

She felt their absence first, and then, opening her eyes, scanned the darkness. A wall of trees loomed before her; behind, across a clearing, a fire smoldered.

No draclings.

Kaeldra closed her eyes again and tried to think back, tried to remember how she came to be here, on the ground, in the dark, all alone. But her thoughts leaped about like the shadows of a bonfire; they would not be still.

She sat up. There was a tinkling sound. A rill of glass shards shivered down her back. Glass littered the ground, glittered in the moonlight.

Her hands hurt. Looking down, Kaeldra saw that they were riddled with tiny cuts. She picked out the largest slivers of glass then got to her feet, shaking out her clothes and hair. Glass cascaded about her in a glittering spume.

What had happened?

Memory flared: draclings flaming, an explosion.

Explosion. Just like— The thought stopped her heart.

Fiora. Fiora had exploded, too.

She moved toward the cart, dread seeping into her chest, glass crunching beneath her boots. Smoke rose from the wreckage; charred wood spiked up from it. She could not tell what was there and what was not. She needed to look under things; she needed to move things.

Kaeldra ran to a tree and broke off a low branch, then raked through the wood, through the potsherds, through the bright, brittle rivers of glass.

The draclings had teeth. She found no teeth.

The draclings had bones. She found no bones.

Her hands went limp; the branch dropped to the ground. “Thank the heavens!” she whispered. She sank down with a crunch, tried to piece together the fragments of her thoughts.

An explosion. And before that, the draclings had flamed. And before that, the apothecary had found out about the draclings. And before that—the dragonslayer.

Kaeldra shivered. Where were the draclings now? Where was Hokarth? His nags were gone, she saw; their hoof prints led into the wood. Had he pursued the draclings? Had he captured them? And the kestrel—where was it?

Kaeldra looked up, searched for its shape in the tree branches.

It was gone. They all were gone. Perhaps—the thought came to her unbidden—perhaps she might go home.

“Home.” She said it aloud and felt a sudden lightness, as if a burden had been lifted from her back. She had wanted—it hurt to admit it—she had wanted to be free of the draclings. She didn’t want to be the dragon girl. It would be so easy now to go home, home to Lyf and Mirym and Granmyr.

Perhaps, Kaeldra thought hopefully, the kestrel would lead the draclings to Rog. They could hunt now, a little. They had fire.

But there were wolves and hunters and bands of angry farmers.

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