Dragon Offering

Lustra – who wouldn’t die to leave it? To fly – even in the gullet of a silver beast – up and up, out and away, higher than the southwind, into the expanse of the innumerable stars?

The idea of summoning a dragon would never have occurred to my mother, when she lived, or to hers. But theirs was a different age: our queen was young then, and the fishing was better, too. Much better. Now we race home at twilight with every haul, dogged by slick-winged drakes.

The ancient Queen still clings to life, despite all our prayers. She offered up our only Princess to a Dragon for more youth, three years ago, and got other treasures as well, if you believe the stories. But none of them have ever left her Islot Grise, and now we’ve lost even the hope of one day seeing another head beneath the crown. And it’s occurred to me, and to others before me – if she can trade with Dragons as it pleases her, with the blessing of her kept priests, then why not us as well?

Most of the bodies we offer up are the mouths that can’t be fed anyways. Most of the time the gulls eat them. But sometimes a starving drake deigns to feed on them, and a few precious scales are left behind. These can be traded south for a month’s fodder at least. The empty spaces left at our tables feed our dreams for longer, but no one talks about that.

No one ever comes back after being taken by a Dragon, either, but it seems to me that that’s not a bad part of the equation anymore, the way things are in Lustra. And I have something no one else has – I have a way to summon one.

One of the old queen’s zealots, out of her favor and hiding in our village, told me how to do it before he passed out last night at the headman’s table. The others thought he was of no account. Only I recognized him as real. Only I dared break the last taboo, and take his box from him.

Belief says I ought to have dropped dead on the spot. I didn’t. And when I didn’t, I got to thinking.

I took his starbox and brought it out here to the Spit, and now all that’s left to do is say the words to light it.

Hours pass. As sunset falls, I hold a star in my hands.

In the darkness, its white-blue light reflects off the luminous eyes of the sea drakes, gathered round on the surrounding bluffs. They have frilled crowns and spiny teeth, great lamplike eyes. They mantle their bald pinions and watch from a distance, crooning, hissing softly. They don’t dare approach: the light bars them. This, too, the zealot promised me.

And then, down, down from the cloud-dimmed sky – a great Dragon of silver and steel – descending. The belly opens, and light answers the star in my hands, and I close my eyes and cry out in terror or joy – goodbye, forever, to Lustra.