But it was so funny!
“Again!” she squealed.
“If I do it again you have to clean them,” the dragon said.
The girl nodded in agreement. They looked clean anyway.
Down the slope, anxiety worked on some of the watching faces, but the girl had eyes only for the great silver creature.
“If you want to be helpful, come over here,” the dragoneer said.
The girl wanted to be helpful. Very much. Forgetting her bucket and her warning about being poky, she ventured over, sliding under the wing, noticing that it was thin enough so you could make out the shape of the sun on the other side, until she stood next to the dragoneer.
The dragon had a tear taller than the girl in one of the wide, sail-like expanses of wing-skin. The dragon had helpfully angled its wing so she could work.
“Wh-What are you d-doing?” the girl asked, though it was obvious that the dragoneer was setting about to sew the rend back up.
“Fixing some shoddy stitching,” the dragoneer said. “What’s your name, girl?”
“I-Ileth,” the girl said.
She worked the dragon’s leathery wing with needle and thread. “Ileth. Fine name. She was a queen in a far-off land, did you know that? Well, Ileth, my dragon, Agrath—”
“Your dragon, Agrath,” the dragon said, shaking his head at the sky. “How come you’re never ‘my human, Annis,’ hmmmm?”
“The noble Agrath—”
“That’s better,” purred the dragon.
“—has an injury that opened up again. Those grooms, what are they about? Here, Ileth, let me show you.” She stitched back and forth quickly. “I do it two directions, like bootlaces, crossed over. Stronger that way.”
Ileth was fascinated by the translucent skin of the wing, more so than learning that she shared a name with a long-ago queen. The dragon’s skin was here, and she could touch it. You could just see blue veins running all through it. She tested it, seeing if she could feel a lump where the vein ran. She couldn’t.
“D-Does it hurt him?” Ileth asked. Meaning the stitching, not her touch.
“No, not at all.”
“Tosh,” the dragon said. “I just endure, or we’ll never get anywhere.”
The dragoneer worked at a speed Ileth wouldn’t have thought possible with such a large needle. “This is why we also have women dragoneers. It’s not just about holding a crossbow steady. We women are careful. We are quick. And . . . we . . . are . . . thorough. Done.”
A neat line of stitching ran up the dragon’s wing. Just like bootlaces.
“You’re . . . not any-anyone’s m-m-mummy?” Ileth asked.
The dragoneer lifted a corner of her mouth.
“Not as such. You see, Ileth, I couldn’t be a mummy.”
“I’m s-sorry,” Ileth said. She wasn’t entirely sure how it all worked, but she knew some women didn’t get to have babies and you felt sorry for them. Others, like her mother, died in the process and the babies ended up in places like the Lodge.
“It wasn’t for me, you see?” she said, sitting on her haunches close to the girl, putting the big needle away in a special slot on the leather shoulder pad of her upper arm. Ileth could have spent a whole afternoon just studying the stitching and design of the armor. “I believe in the old wisdom. I think we each have an animating spirit putting life and purpose in us. Some people are earth,” she said, picking up a handful of dirt piled up against the wall of the well. She made a fist around it and let it trickle into the fresh Freesand breeze. “They are strong, and once they find something they love, they protect it like a wall and shelter it like a brick house. They make excellent mothers. Others have a fire in them. A fire to light the way for others, show them the right. Fire to scare the wolves away or warm a room. They make wonderful mothers too. There are those infused by water, who bring peace and refreshment with their touch; they are a river that carries good things to people and sustain us and smooth our journey. Maybe they’re the best mothers of all.”
The dragon inspected his wing repair as she spoke. The dragoneer concentrated on Ileth.
“But I’ve always been of the air, my little queen. I need light. I need to wander, always headed for a new horizon. Most can’t bear my storms, when they come. I’m only really at home when I’m up there.”
“No doubt you’re at ease in the air,” Agrath said, itching behind his ear with a rear claw. “I’m doing all the work.”
She splashed a handful of water from Ileth’s bucket at him. “Irreverent cur! I’m just reciting your kind’s old legends. Anyway, the clouds . . . they aren’t such a good place for a mother.”
She brushed hair out of Ileth’s eyes. “What do you suppose you are, Ileth? What is lighting up those bright eyes?”
“I-I . . . d-don’t kn-know.”
“Do you have a stutter, dear?”
Ileth nodded gravely. Now the pitying look would come. The suggestions. The odd trick that cured their cousin when he was nine. Don’t worry, dear, you’ll find a place.
The dragoneer smiled. “Well, that’s interesting. I’ll bet that means you have all the spirits in you, just like a dragon. They’re always fighting to get out and show the world who they are.”
No one had ever spoken about her stutter like that. Her eyes went wet.
Ileth’s lip trembled. She fell toward the dragoneer, hugged her. She smelled like old leather and lamp oil, and a hint of the sea. She’d probably bathed in salt water recently.
“Aren’t you sweet,” the dragoneer said, patting her head.
“Can I go with you?”
“No, moppet. I am on a commission. But how’s this,” she said, taking her by the hand and leading her to the dragon.
“Annis, I’m not a barnyard pony,” the dragon said. But he didn’t move to avoid the girl.
“You love it, you old incendiary.”
She looked down at Ileth. “If you can climb onto the saddle, you can sit on him.”
Could she! Ileth jumped and scrambled up like a cat chased into a tree, using straps, buckles, and cases as purchase. She arranged herself in the saddle. She’d been on a saddled horse and knew her way about, even if they had to hitch up the stirrups. There were reins threaded through the dragon’s pitcherlike ears, which were made of the same sort of skin as the wings, it seemed. But she didn’t pick them up. She didn’t want to pull incorrectly and hurt the dragon.
She was higher than any horse could get her.