Slither

ONE-2

Somehow, I manage not to pull away. “Why not Muuth?”

He considers a thought for a moment, “And I don’t want to find you dead when I return. Aren’t those satisfactory reasons? Think of it as an opportunity to show me what Muuth is teaching you. I’m keen to test your knowledge.”

Tell me why you really want me with you.

Out loud, I ask, “Do I have a choice?”

His eyes, fixated on my hair, seem to grow softer. “If you wish to remain here and die then, yes, you have a choice. Do as I ask, however, and you will live.”

Why the cryptic responses? And why in the world should I do as he says if I don’t trust him? Didn’t he just applaud my distrust? Now he expects loyalty?

Adom’s face becomes a granite slab. When he speaks, his voice affects the bored edginess of an aristocrat. “Silva’s also angry with you,” he says with indifference. “You’re neglecting the younglings.”

I don’t bother to tell him I stopped cleaning their cave a week ago. I’m certain he already knows. “Maybe Silva should spend more time with them herself.” Why mask my feelings now when I know exactly what will come next? He’ll punish me by making me climb the hazardous part of the mountain to find roots at the top. Or I’ll have to run barefoot in the piranha pit. Or he’ll order the young dragons to chase me through the ever-changing forest for sport.

“Where does this negativity come from?” he asks. “You were such a happy child once. You even used to like me a little. What happened?”

“I realized my life wasn’t worth faking niceties to the man who murdered my parents.” My panic subsides and cold resignation sets in. “What are you playing at?” I say through a sigh.

“Forgive me,” he says. “But when I say the word, you really should scream.”

That’s all the warning I need. If Adom wants me to scream, he wants the others to think he’s hurting me. He wants to send fear shuddering down their monstrous, twisted spines, to dry their mouths and shrivel the pits of their cavernous stomachs. He wants to show them that he is the king, the master of this mountain, the master of me.

Adom averts his gaze. “Scream.”

In the seconds it takes him to morph from human to dragon, his chest expanding, scales popping out of his skin like boils, I’m already at the door. I scream, just as he asks me to.

The full blast of flame doesn’t hit me, but it’s enough heat to sting my lower back. Good thing I tied my hair this morning—he misses singeing it off by a few inches. The monstrous roar he releases bursts a decanter on the table. The mirror cracks. But the fire inside me has nothing to do with Adom’s monster, and everything to do with my own. Only mine burns for revenge.

~ * ~

I lay on a pallet in Muuth’s spacious cave, his own “laboratory.” Unlike my sparsely furnished room, homey effects litter every spare inch of his cave. “Damn that dragon.”

“At least he didn’t really hurt you,” says Muuth. Then he lowers his eyes.

“Are you siding with him?” I ask, propping myself up by an elbow.

“No.” Muuth coughs. “Never. He’s still your captor and a fire breathing beast.”

Then he focuses his attention on connecting two wheels in a wooden box using a nail and a mallet. In spite of his dementia, Muuth can whittle clever gadgets to provide us with hours of entertainment. Once, he created pipes and stuffed them with leaves to smoke. He made a lantern of four stone slabs fastened to the cave wall. In the corner is a chair made from tree branches, a burlap sack, and sheep’s wool. Seashells; daggers made of wood and stone; and small, colorful glass beads all sit cozily on a shelf affixed to the wall. He even built a loft in a high crevice using flat planks of driftwood, where he keeps useful things he discovers on the beach. Netting. Glass. Things that wash ashore from distant shipwrecks.

None of his weapons or inventions could kill a dragon, though. Muuth has already tried everything, and all he gained from his efforts was a gauged out eye and a burn across the back.

Along the adjacent wall, a repurposed tree trunk displays Muuth’s most prized things, things he couldn’t have found along the beach, the things he must have had with him when he first arrived here as an unfortunate explorer. A wooden sphere with lines and numbers and a map of lands carved into it, on a spinning axel and surrounded by metal rings. Several beakers of colorful liquid that sometimes bubbled and burped and changed colors inexplicably. A large, oak, conical tube about eight feet in length mounted to a platform with wheels. While he sometimes took the latter outside and peered through an eyehole at the night sky, he never let me handle the device. He calls it a telescope.

I wince. “Why doesn’t he ever pick on you?”

“I’m so old he’s afraid I’ll die.” He wheezes with laughter. Then his smile sags. “And they can’t afford to kill me. Not yet, at least.”

Ona wants to kill me. Silva burns with rage because she thinks I’m neglecting the younglings. If Adom hadn’t roughed me up, Ona might think he’d grown soft. And a soft dragon is akin to mold on a cave wall to the dragon herd. Worse than useless. A nuisance. According to Muuth, before Adom overtook the others in a battle of strength, Ona was the herd leader. It’s Adom’s ability to inspire fear in the rest that keep them all in line.

My position in this fragile ecosystem isn’t secure. It’s an odd paradox. The dragons need slaves like Muuth and I. We cook and clean, affording them a certain luxury. Yet I’ll forever be haunted by the lullaby of my first nights here, the screams of others like me who didn’t please their masters quickly enough. Child slaves howling in the night.

Gingerly pushing myself off the ground, I half turn to a sitting position and give my friend a long, thoughtful look.

“What are you thinking, child?” he asks.

Deep wrinkles on his withered face remind me of the bark of an ancient elm tree. Muuth taught me how to survive both in this world and in the world outside. He taught me how to read, taught me arithmetic, and how to please the dragons. I love him dearly for all he’s done for me. So I can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt when I say, “Adom asked me to go with him.”

His eyes dim and Muuth picks up a stick from the ground and draws a deep line in the sand. There is a heaviness between us for a moment while he digests the news. “Well?”

I swallow, hard. “Do you think I’ll pass it up?” I sniff. “Maybe I won’t come back.”

His face grows thoughtful. “I hope you don’t, lass.” Then he drops the stick, rubs his face, and makes a small sighing sound. “We’d best stop dawdling. You’ll be asking for another taste of fire-breath if the food’s not ready by suppertime.” He pats my head.

“Maybe I could poison them tonight?” I suggest, as he hoists me up.

Muuth strokes the pockmarks on his leathery skin, dimpled bits of extra flesh that remind me of the fungus growing along an old tree trunk. “There’s only one poison that can kill a dragon. You’re lucky if you never hear it mentioned again.”

I flash him my best conspiratorial look. “Don’t keep it from me.”

“Sun’s acid.” His gray gum houses few teeth, a spotted tongue peeking between the spaces. He cackles and points to his one bad orb. “At first, you can’t even see it with a naked eye.”

“Compared to a well-dressed one?” I joke.

He points to his collection of mysterious odds and ends. “Girl, before you and before this god awful place, I had a life. I had a wife, a daughter, and my inventions. The dragons lived among us, infiltrating us, and there were more like him who...” he spat, and continued. “Then one day I saw it, sun’s acid.” He looks far away, like he had opened his mind and peered directly into the past. “And I don’t like to think about what came after. The acid fell, a cloud of black that came from the sun and blotted out the whole valley. The soldiers turned to stone. Most of the dragons on that battlefield perished.”

This is a story I’ve never heard before. “Can you make it?”

“No, I can’t make it.” His voice comes out snappy and annoyed. “It comes from the sun.”

Why does he look so cross? “But you said you couldn’t see it with just your eye. How did you find out about it? Was it in your laboratory?”

His forehead crinkles. “I was in my laboratory, tinkering with one of my devices.” His eyes stray to the telescope. “I saw the black dots on the sun. Didn’t know what it was then. Not three days later, the acid fell.”

“And it summoned the stone soldiers?”

“Now you’re just hurting my head,” Muuth groans. “I’m a scientist, El. Not a magician.”

I recall my studies. “But the history textbooks say a witch summoned the stone soldiers, and that they battled the dragons and killed them all. Maybe she summoned the sun’s acid?”

“Don’t believe everything you read in those books,” Muuth grumbles.

Sun’s acid, I repeat to myself. It’d be nice to be able to forecast the end of a few dragons.

Adjusting the front of my tunic, I follow him to the cave where we keep the animals. Inside, great masses of emaciated sheep, cows, and pigs pack the area, secured by wooden fences and ropes wrapped with thorny vines to keep the animals inside. We check each stall to make sure there is plenty of water and food for the creatures. Muuth cleans the stalls and feeds the animals each morning, so there isn’t much work to do now.

We open the gates and allow twenty grungy sheep to waddle out of the encampment. Muuth opens another gate so two of the cows wander out with affected dignity. Then six wiry pigs join our motley, macabre crew. We lead the creatures, eager for freedom, to a space in the cave meant for butchering and hanging the meat. There is ice from the top of a mountain lake packed along the walls, and a stream of water not far from here for washing up after the deed is done.

I shiver, but it isn’t the cold that unsettles me. Animals bleat and squeal. Muuth unhooks the tarnished cleavers from the wall. He hands one to me. We make fast work of it, expertly slitting throats and skinning the animals. Muuth has a special invention that speeds the work, pulling the meat from the bones and sinew by turning a crank with a wooden wheel.

I’m good at this. Muuth and I function smoothly, like the clock Muuth put together using dozens of carved wooden pieces made to fit exactly. Everywhere I look, there is blood in frosty piles, magnified by ice blocks. I can smell it in the air. My fingers and arms are coated in it. And yet, it doesn’t frighten or faze me. The dragons made me a butcher, like them, and like them I don’t even think twice about it when I kill. It has become almost second nature to me.

Ona used to watch us work. As a child, I always vomited afterward, and he used to rumble with glee as he heard me retch. Someday, I’ll take the cleavers and cut through Ona’s neck flesh, and then show him the same courtesy he shows me as he gags on his own black blood.

~ * ~

Hours later, in another cave with an open view of the forest, I stir stew over a cauldron while Muuth pours more water into the bubbling broth. It’s a sign of prestige in the herd to consume meaty stews and roasted chops. The others envy the herd leaders for the luxury of having food brought to them. The rest hunt on their own, capable of finding meals to scorch. The island has a host of wildlife: fish, birds, and beasts in the forest. We have wild cattle and horses that graze on the other side of the mountain. Occasionally, the dragons will leave the island to hunt, but it is only under Adom’s direction. They avoid cities and places where wealthy Tranars live. No one listens to simple farmers and peasants, so they can plunder with discretion on those lands. And if they’re seen, one blast of fire takes care of the witnesses.

The gong rings. Dinnertime. I wipe condensation from my brow.

Muuth steers the wagon to me. Seven horses pull it. He helps me hoist one of the cauldrons off the ground. We carry it to the wagon. Ten more cauldrons follow, each one heavier than the last. This routine, at least, has made me strong.

I hop onto the front of the wagon while Muuth steers the horses to the central cave. Dragons eat, sleep, reproduce, and give birth there. They use it as their conference hall, the only place large enough to support all eighty-five of them. The open roof of the mountain provides ample sunlight and a convenient exit. As the wagon creaks into the cave, horse hooves clicking against the stone path, dragons watch us with green and gold eyes.

Muuth pulls back on the horses’ reins, and the wagon slows to a stop. Sharp talons scratch against the ground. Other dragons breathe more heavily, sucking in the scent of the food with massive nostrils. Ignoring the sounds, I spring off the wagon and move to the back. Muuth rolls out of the driver’s seat and shuffles to my aide. We maneuver the first cauldron, careful to touch only the wooden handles and to cover our hands with the gloves Muuth made for us.

We serve Adom first. He glares at me silently in his dragon form, flecks of violet glowing in his eyes. I hope his cauldron is the one I spat in.

“Over here,” Ona rasps in dragon tongue. He points his claw down. Speckled brown, yellow, and red, Ona’s scales seem to match his impetuous and unpredictable personality. I can’t find a pattern in his scaly form, almost as if he’d found a vat of colored paints and splashed them on his body with no regard for aesthetics. He has a lean tusk that protrudes from one side of his mouth, but nothing on the other. His tail is deformed at the end, twisted into a stump the size of the trunk of an elm tree.

Muuth and I struggle to roll the cauldron to him. I recall what Adom said earlier. Ona wants to kill me. I take careful pains not to spill his food. His clipped ear twitches.

After Ona, we lay cauldrons by the four breeding dragon females. They’re the fattest of the herd, and I can tell them apart by their varying shades of gray. They are unremarkable except for their considerable girth. They can barely fly, and almost never leave the mountain.

Next we dole out cauldrons to three other males. Two of them, Neller and Greego, have wings that also function as fins. They often skulk in the water around the island and emerge for meals in the mountain as it suits them. Neller is a sea green with a lovely comb on the top of his head that looks like kelp. Greego is sandy white, and the scales on his broadside glisten like diamonds. They both can travel deep to the bottom of the ocean floor, and sometimes they do not emerge for days or even weeks. Muuth tells me that even sailors from Trana recognize the existence of sea monsters, and their maps contain dire warnings about which parts of the ocean to avoid in order to keep from meeting a horrible, watery, serpentine fate.

Canna and Nerama, the youngest of the dragon leaders, come after the first eight. Canna isn’t a breeder yet, but she soon will be.

The dragons ignore us while they slurp their meal. They converse in the clucking dragon tongue I’ve come to comprehend. It isn’t a fluid sound, but scratchy and guttural.

Dragons of lesser status occasionally meander into the central cave to sniff the cauldrons of the dragon leaders. The rest of the herd can come and go through the central cave as they please, but they are not welcome to partake of the food or participate in the conversation.

“You could slit their bellies when they collapse from overeating,” suggests Muuth while we sit in the shadow of the hulking beasts and wait for them to finish their food.

I struggle to maintain a straight face. “Only if you roll over their claws with the wagon.”

He scratches a bald spot. “I’ve got the cleavers.”

Our dark jokes give us fragments of levity in an otherwise pallid life, but there’s real longing behind the banter. Freedom. I haven’t tasted it since I was nine. Only glimpses here and there, when running from the mountain. When was Muuth’s last free moment?

Then Silva’s words catch my ear. “I think they’re talking about me.”

Muuth shrugs. “She’s complaining you haven’t cleaned the younglings’ cave.” I’m used to Muuth translating for me even though I can understand most of what they say by now.

My back burns, sensitive from this morning’s treatment.

As if he can read my thoughts, Adom speaks up in lilting dragon tongue.

Muuth leans in. “If he catches you neglecting the younglings again, he’ll kill you.”

Adom said earlier that he wants me to survive. That he plans to take me away from Onyx Island tomorrow. Then again, Adom always tells half-truths. My stomach sinks. He’ll kill me, someday. Even though he dangles Trana in front of me, I’ll never let my guard down.

Let him try. He’ll fail, and I’ll kill him, instead. I won’t suffer my parents’ fate.