Claude Rose

↟𖠰˚☀︎ᨒ↟𖠰 ↟𖠰˚☀︎ᨒ↟𖠰

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The forest sang with the song of early summer. Sunlight filtered through the lush green canopy that hung high over Kalyna’s head, dappling the forest floor. Happy to abandon her usual furs for the next few months, she relished in the pockets of golden warmth. Her hand curled tight around the smooth wood of her bow, pleased to have also discarded her gloves for the season, for they had always hindered her aim.  

Ahead, her son’s sand-blond hair caught the light as he surveyed the woods teeming with life. The young man never strayed more than a few paces behind the woman leading the hunt: his grandmother, Oroteya, broad-shouldered and keen-eyed despite her age. As he walked, he mirrored her intentional, soundless steps.

Twigs snapped and rained down around Kalyna. She knew the cause before looking up into the gnarled branches overhead.  

“Vesna,” she said. “Come down, girl.”

The foliage rustled with her young daughter’s descent. The child had bits of tree bark stuck in her fingernails when she reached the ground. “Sorry, Ama,” she whispered without looking an inch apologetic. A few stray leaves were caught in the wild dark curls of her hair that she inherited from Kalyna.

“Light feet, remember?” Kalyna said.  “Like this.” She took Vesna’s small hand in her own, modeling steps that fell quietly.  

Vesna copied her mother’s stride with the gait of a newborn fawn, whispering to herself, “Light feet, light feet…”

“Remind me why you brought her again,” muttered the pale-haired son up ahead.

“This is how she learns, Damir,” Kalyna replied. Vesna was too occupied with her own stride to pay any mind to her teenage brother’s comment. “She’s six. You were no different at her age.” 

Damir rolled his eyes. To his mother’s relief, he spared her any further expression of displeasure.

Among a clan of hunters young and old, Novitska children knew the woods as they knew their parents and siblings. Kalyna had ventured into the forest with her bow and arrows and an infant Damir swaddled to her back more than once. She had done the same with little Vesna, just as Oroteya had done with her, and a hundred mothers had done before her.

Oroteya muttered something to Damir then, allowing him to lead the rest of the way to the elk herd. Kalyna smiled seeing her son’s eyes brighten, how he straightened his spine to puff out his chest a little.

The afternoon sun had only passed a marginal distance across the sky when the young man signaled stop. The hunters stood just short of where the trees thinned into a narrow clearing.  Through the thick undergrowth lining the perimeter, Kalyna glimpsed bulky dark brown shapes, some crowned with great branching antlers. She laid a hand on Damir’s shoulder and squeezed, a wordless expression of pride. Her other hand kept a firm hold on Vesna’s to keep her from wandering.

She shared a look with Oroteya before the matriarch slipped away to the north side of the clearing with her own bow and arrows, her gray-streaked braid vanishing into the greenery. Damir slunk off to the south, a spear in hand. Kalyna paused, waiting for the wind. The breeze hit the front of her face, stirring the flyway strands of hair that the twin braids down her back could not hold. As long as the wind did not change course, her scent would be hidden from the elk.

She surveyed the surrounding trees then, noting their low-hanging branches.  “Up,” she whispered to Vesna, letting go of her tiny hand.

Despite her youth and frequent inattentiveness, her daughter knew the routine at this stage of the hunt. Climb out of range of any arrows, keep quiet, and wait for the signal to descend. The moss blanketing much of the tree’s bark absorbed any sounds Vesna’s shoes might have made as she scrambled up and along one thick branch.

Kalyna made a conscious effort to pull her focus away from her child and to the elk.  Careful to avoid brushing against the foliage around her, she withdrew an arrow from the quiver at her hip and nocked it.

The herd grazed along the shore of a river, a winding ribbon of frothing blue that cut through the clearing. On the southern edge, it dropped off a rocky slope. Stalking through the undergrowth, Kalyna found a gap in the flora just large enough to let an arrow fly through without obstruction.

An elk strolled within range. The huntress drew the bowstring taut to her cheek with slow, even breaths.

Then an airy gasp from above cut through the air, so quiet she almost missed it.  

Vesna?

Trees creaked overhead and a winged, verdant green beast descended into the clearing.

Reverence tinged with fear gripped Kalyna.  

Dragon.

A reptilian shriek came from the opposite side of the clearing and a second dragon burst into view. The two collided as the first dragon snagged one frenzied elk in its talons. Dirt and grass exploded into the air when they hit the ground, wrestling in a tangle of wings, claws, and lashing barbed tails.

Sacred as the beasts were to her clan, Kalyna knew better than to remain a close spectator to a battle between dragons.  She called out for Vesna over the din of territorial roars, trying to spot the girl among the trees before a massive green wing came crashing through her shield of undergrowth, sending her flying off her feet. Her skull narrowly missed the thick trunk of a tree.

She lurched upright with a ragged noise as soon as the sky stopped spinning.  Though her lungs heaved, struggling to regain her breath, Kalyna called for Vesna again.  With a flare of panic, she swore she heard a scream somewhere in the chaos.

A flash of familiar blond hair in her peripheral caught her attention next. Damir raced into the clearing. 

The huntress’s heart plummeted past her feet like a heavy stone dropped in a lake. “Damir!” she shouted, equal parts furious and petrified.  

By now, the elk herd had escaped the skirmishing dragons, save for the one punctured by dragon claws and one other that lay sprawled in the grass with a spear between its ribs.

“Damir, leave it!” Kalyna implored, bolting into the clearing.  “Leave it!”

There was no way for him to hear her.  The ground shook with the rage of two dragons.  The slim shadow of a third glided over the grass. Damir dove when one of the beast’s tails whipped over his head, dodging the venomous barbs spiked along it. Where dragons among the trees were concerned, their venom was a fate worse than fire. 

Kalyna called Damir’s name again, so loud it strained her throat.

The young man was too occupied with pulling the elk carcass over his shoulders to notice the barbed tail lashing toward him again. It struck him hard in the chest, sending him toppling across the ground and down the rocky slope by the river.

Kalyna screamed. She launched herself down the slope after her son, hands scrabbling against jagged stone in her frantic descent. The resulting cuts opening across her palms were far from her mind with Damir lying motionless below. Though her mind raced and her face was wet with tears, she refused to let her voice break when she reached him. “Damir? Damir!”

Relief crashed into her like water burst from a dam when her son groaned and tried to sit up. By some miracle, no barbs had punctured his clothes. “Ma…?” he rasped, bleary-eyed and leaning on shaky elbows.

“Don’t move,” she said upon noticing the iridescent sheen of venom smeared across the leather vest he wore over his shirt. “Are you bleeding anywhere?” She felt foolish as soon as the words left her mouth. If even a drop of venom had entered Damir’s bloodstream, he would not be moving nor speaking.

He answered, “My head…I think.” He stopped himself from touching the back of his skull. “But my leg is definitely broken.” Gritting his teeth, he indicated the appendage twisted awkwardly out in front of him. The leather knee and thigh guards strapped to his legs also shone with venom.  

Kalyna steeled herself against the guilt that dragged through her. “Let’s get these off you, quickly.”

“Wait, Ma, your hands,” Damir protested, his gaze falling to her bleeding palms.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said as she pulled a long knife from its sheath at her hip, slicing the threads and buttons that closed his vest over his torso. Once that was done, she used the blade to push the garment off of Damir’s shoulders, allowing him to wriggle free. She did the same to the padding over his knees and thighs, cutting through the straps that held them in place and tossing them aside with the knife.

Oroteya’s hoarse voice rang out then. “Kalyna!  Damir!” she exclaimed, making her way down the slope. “Oh, thank the–” She stopped midsentence as she reached the bottom, her expression falling. “Where is Vesna?”

“She’s not with you?” Kalyna asked, panic surging as she whirled to face her mother.  She noticed that the commotion of battling dragons was gone.

Oroteya shook her head, dread settling deep in her features.

Kalyna sprung to her feet. “Help him into the river, wash off any excess venom,” she told Oroteya. Were her youngest child not missing, she would never have barked orders at the matriarch. “I’m going to find her.”

Oroteya said, “The dragons may have–”

“Do not finish that sentence, Ma.”  

Kalyna wasted no time climbing back up the rocks, returning to the ravaged clearing. I lost my daughter, she thought. I can’t believe I lost my daughter. Fear, shame, and guilt threatened to paralyze her as dragon venom would, but she would not stop until Vesna was found.  

Miraculously, she found her bow lying in the grass. In the chaos of the moments before, she had not realized she had dropped it. She swiped it up as she ran by, a few more arrows left in her quiver.

“Vesna!” the woman bellowed, sprinting into the trees and searching the canopy for any flash of wild black curls and light brown skin. “Vesna, where are you?”

Her panic reached its crest when a high-pitched, girlish squeal pierced the air.

“Vesna!” Kalyna gasped. Following her daughter’s scream, she notched an arrow to her bowstring. Vesna’s cry rang out again. The sound was met with a reptilian grumble.  

“No!” Kalyna shrieked, every nerve alight with fire. She burst through the wall of tall ferns separating her from her petrified and possibly mangled daughter.

But that was not what she found waiting on the other side.

The huntress gawked at the scene before her, stopping herself before she could let the arrow fly. Where she expected blood and horror, there was Vesna, whole, squealing not in terror but with the infectious joy she was known for. Her small hands reached for the canopy overhead, or rather for the slender green dragon bounding through the trees and raining leaves down around her.

“Vesna,” Kalyna panted, relieved only for a heartbeat before fear lanced through her again. She pulled the bowstring taut once more, aiming for the dragon. Blasphemous as it was to harm one, she could not allow it to hurt both of her children. “Get away from there, girl.”

The child did not share her mother’s fear. “Ama!” she exclaimed, pointing at the dragon’s slim form weaving through the branches above. “Ama, look!”

“I see the dragon, dear,” Kalyna replied, struggling to maintain gentleness through her rising anxiety. She strode toward her daughter but kept her aim on the beast. “Step away from it.  It’s not safe.”

The dragon turned its yellow eyes on her then, its lip curling with a growl. Slithering through the branches to hang lower, it stretched its long neck toward Kalyna, studying her, forked tongue darting out between its fangs.

“No, Ama, she’s my friend,” Vesna said, pulling on her mother’s sleeve. Her assurance did nothing to help Kalyna’s thundering heart, nor did her pulling cause her aim to falter. “Sula won’t hurt me, she saved me.”

The dragon’s low hiss suggested otherwise. “It is not your friend, Vesna,” Kalyna snapped, stepping forward to shield her daughter. “I don’t care what name you’ve given it. It hurt your brother; I won’t let it hurt you too.”  

The dragon hissed again. The huntress snarled back at it, “Stay away from my daughter.”

“No, Ama!” Vesna pleaded, yanking on her arm again. “Don’t hurt Sula!”

Curse this child’s misplaced kindness and overactive imagination! she thought.

The dragon gnashed its teeth and Kalyna loosed the arrow aimed for its right eye, ignoring Vesna’s wail in protest. The beast arced its neck to the side, letting the arrow zip past one of its spiraled horns. Its pupils shrank to the width of a hairpin and its jaws opened to release an ear-splitting screech.

“Run, Vesna!” Kalyna shouted, already nocking another arrow.

The little girl instead threw herself against her mother, grunting in effort as her tiny hands grasped for the bow, trying to pry it free from Kalyna’s grip. Stunned, Kalyna staggered, attempting to shake her daughter off of her. As angry as she was bewildered, she cried, “What has gotten into you, child?”

“I said don’t hurt her!” Vesna snapped, ferocious as a six-year-old could manage. Seizing the wood of her mother’s bow with an iron grip, the force of her writhing sending them both toppling to the ground. “You’re scaring Sula! Stop it!”

“I’m trying to protect you!” Kalyna said. Her heart lurched when the dragon landed on nimble claws mere paces away from them.

Vesna argued, “She won’t hurt me!”

Incredulous and frenzied with adrenaline, Kalyna cried, “How do you know?”

“Because she told me!”

“The dragon can’t tell you anything, not unless you’re–” Kalyna’s sentence fell off, the shock of her daughter’s words dulling her agitation.

“But she did, Ama. She told it to me herself.” Vesna turned to the dragon, who stopped its circling around them to hold the girl’s gaze with rapt attention. “She doesn’t believe me,” she whined to the beast. “Tell her, Sula.”

Kalyna paled. No, her mind whispered. No, she couldn’t have…she’s too young.

The dragon paused, ears twitching beneath its horns as its eyes darted from mother to child. Kalyna noticed its pupils dilate when its gaze fell on Vesna, all traces of its earlier hostility melting away.  

“Oh…she can’t hear you?” Vesna said, her lips forming a disappointed pout when she looked back at Kalyna. “That’s sad.”

“I don’t understand,” Kalyna said, keeping a firm grip on her bow, her other hand hovering at her hip, ready to grab an arrow at any moment. “Is she…” She swallowed hard, the words catching in her throat. “You can understand her, Ves?”

“Yes, Ama, I told you,” she said. “Sula’s my friend.”

“And you…you did not name her?”

“No. I already told you, she told me her name.”

Despite herself, Kalyna’s lip quivered. “When?”

“After she rescued me,” Vesna answered, closing the distance of a few paces between her and the dragon. The beast dipped its head–as large as Vesna’s whole body–and allowed her to collide with its snout and wrap her little arms around it. The girl continued, “When those big dragons came, I fell out of my hiding spot, but Sula caught me.” The dragon blinked slowly, rumbling deep in its throat as if to affirm the story. “She saved me, and then she asked if I wanted to play. She likes playing in the trees, just like me.”

Were she not already sitting on her knees, Kalyna might have fallen to them. This was no product of her daughter’s overactive imagination.

For a long moment, she watched Vesna interact with the summery-green beast. The deadly barbs of its tail lay flat and relaxed, curled up by its side. Its scales gleamed where it caught the sunlight, bright and healthy.

This dragon had not been one of the fighters before; it hadn’t the wounds or blood-stained claws to show for it. As her adrenaline began to subside, Kalyna noticed it was also smaller than the previous two.  

An adolescent? she wondered.

Then she recalled the shadow of a third dragon that had passed over her head in the clearing. Of course.

Her fear and fury began to slough away, gratitude creeping in to take their place. She let go of her bow.

“Kalyna!” Oroteya’s voice broke her from her trance. The older woman staggered through the ferns with Damir leaning heavily against her side. “I heard–” She stopped as soon as her eyes found Vesna playing with her dragon.  

Damir cursed under his breath. “Is she…?” he began, trailing off.

“She is,” murmured Kalyna. She turned her tearful gaze to Oroteya. “I thought she was too young to…”

The matriarch shook her head, her dark eyes never leaving her grandchild and her new companion. Sula wriggled in the grass on her back, wings flaring while Vesna giggled and dashed around her in a circle.

“A bond can be forged at any age,” Oroteya said.  “It’s the dragon who chooses the human.”

One tear slipped down Kalyna’s cheek. “I’m not ready to lose her,” she whispered.

“You will not,” said Oroteya, her free hand reaching down to stroke the back of Kalyna’s head. “Becoming dragonbound will not erase your daughter’s need for you. She has gained a new protector today; the best any of us could ask for.”

More tears fell, though not only in grief.

A long moment passed before Kalyna rose and padded over to the bonded pair, wiping her eyes. Surveying Sula cautiously, if only out of habit, she knelt down to her daughter’s level.  

“Vesna, my girl, come here,” she beckoned softly, voice made raspy by the heavy lump still stuck in her throat. She pulled the child tight to her chest, hoping she would not notice her glistening eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry for the way I acted. I was just…I was scared for you, dear.”

“It’s okay, Ama,” Vesna responded, curling her arms around her mother’s waist. “Sula was scared too.”

Kalyna kissed the top of her head, running tan fingers through her youngest’s wild curls.  “You can tell her, too, that I’m sorry.”

Vesna craned her neck to meet the dragon’s golden gaze. “My Ama says she’s sorry,” she told the beast.  

Sula grunted in reply, tail swishing behind her.  

Smiling, Vesna translated, “She says it’s okay.”

Over the top of her daughter’s head, Kalyna offered the dragon a small smile.

↟𖠰˚☀︎ᨒ↟𖠰 ↟𖠰˚☀︎ᨒ↟𖠰

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There’s something wrong with Arden. He hasn’t been himself since we left Talon Harbor. I’m worried, but honestly, I'm mostly frustrated.

I told him it was a bad idea for him to join the troop for the prince’s birthday expedition. Of all times he chooses to finally make something of himself, he thinks now is the time? He's already made a fool of himself several times. My brother has a hard time killing common deer for food, what in Valn’s name made him think he’d be suited for dragonslaying? Even as a tracker!

He said the most ridiculous thing to me today. He thinks Ta favors me. Out of all his most recent delusions, this one astounds me the most. Ta knows I’m a talented hunter, but he wasn’t considering me for this expedition any more than he was considering you, Arden. I am, and always have been, a daughter before anything else. Never mind my aim that his best archers have praised since I was a girl. As far as Ta is concerned, Maksim is his firstborn, and we, his twins--his actual children--will never measure up to that level of excellence. 

But if Zarya Antova can make a name for herself as the only woman in the troop that's not a healer, then so can I. I’m a Crestyk, after all. Ma has always said I take after Ta. I believe that works in my favor.

Imagine it: my first dragon slain and Prince Ivan is here to bear witness. Do you think his wife back on Isle Norr wears the scales of her trophies? I’d wager she’s never touched a bow and arrow in her life. A kitchen knife is the closest she will likely ever come to being a warrior.

Alright, I’m getting ahead of myself. But a girl can dream, can she not?

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Terms:

Ta: Shorthand for father, like "Dad" in English.