Chapter 11

She hadn’t made it more than two steps before the dragon reared back. At the same time, Marelon jumped in between the two of them, hackles raised. But the dragon made no move to attack, simply staying slightly out of arm's reach.

“Marelon, it’s okay,” she whispered to the cat, who was still emitting a low growl and crouching defensively before the much larger dragon. “Marelon, hey. It’s all right. It’s all right, kitty.” She crept forward toward him and leaned down, placing a hand on the cat’s back. With a look back at her, the cat relaxed infinitesimally. She stepped slowly and carefully past Marelon, one step.

The dragon didn’t move away. She inched closer and closer, and the dragon’s muscles tensed slightly. But either because the dragon sensed she had good intentions or because the dragon knew a simple swipe of his tail could send her flying into the wall to her death, the dragon didn’t move away.

After a few tense moments of edging toward the dragon, Gwendolyn stopped inches away.

“Hey there, girl. Or boy?” She mused to herself. The dragon blinked slowly. “How does one identify a dragon…”

“Let’s go with boy for now, okay boy?” She raised her hand slowly. “You need a name, don’t you?” When the dragon didn’t flinch from her hand, she moved it slowly toward him. “Yarrahm?” The dragon was watching her hand carefully but didn’t flinch as she brought it gently to his cheek. “That was the name of the dog who used to hang around the apothecary, he wasn’t afraid of anything either,” she told him. She patted the dragon’s cheek, which was at least the size of her whole palm. His eyes flicked closed lazily for a second, as if he enjoyed the touch. Looking him over, she confirmed he wasn’t a wyvern.

“You’re definitely a dragon, aren’t you? Four legs, long snout. Way too big to be a wyvern. Way too small to be fully grown though, huh? I feel like you could carry me but only just.”

She had never seen a dragon, only read about them in books and seen a handful of drawings of them. Almost no one had ever seen one, except in Ardelen, where dragons lived with the chosen members of the Royal Family. Even there, they didn’t come out all the time, so most people only saw them from afar. Not every member of the Royal Family had a dragon, only blood relatives of the King that he favored. Though Gwendolyn knew that traditionally the Kings had only given dragons to their favored male heirs, even in The Floating Valley the rumors had circulated that the current King had given dragons to some of his daughters. Of course, they were only rumors. Given the rumor three years ago that the King had contracted the Red Valley Plague and was dying, which proved to be entirely false, Gwendolyn didn’t know how much to credit the rumor.

“So, how did you end up in The Floating Valley?” she mused. Yarrahm, as she had named him, shifted and she pulled her hand away respectfully. But he shuffled forward, extending his long neck toward her, until she reached out to pat him once again. Then, to her surprise, he turned his body so that her hand slid along the smooth red scales of his torso toward his wing.

“Do you want me to try to pull the arrows out of your wing?” Gwendolyn asked, furrowing her brow. “I don’t exactly know anything about dragon healing. And I don’t have any herbs or anything to…” she thought back to the herb garden she had passed close to the town on the shores of the lake.

“I can do it if I get to that herb garden without anyone seeing me,” she whispered, patting Yarrahm as she looked at Marelon. The cat, apparently having decided the dragon was a friend, was now sniffing at the massive front left claw, which was larger than he was. “It’s still raining pretty hard,” she added to herself, glancing at the opening in the cavern ceiling where rain was still pouring steadily in, “so I doubt anyone will be out there. I’ll have to move fast.”

She turned back to the dragon. “I can take the arrows out of your wing, if that’s what you want. But I need to get herbs first. I am worried that if I pull out the arrows without them, you’ll bleed out or get an infection. If that kind of thing even happens to dragons. It can happen to wyverns, though. You’ll need to wait here. Is that okay?” Yarrahm turned his baleful red eyes on her. Now, standing so close to him, she could see he was in pain. “Can you stay here?” Gwendolyn asked again, not knowing why or whether the dragon could understand her.

But she took a step backward, still looking the dragon in the eye, and she could swear she saw an intelligent glimmer in his eyes as he lay down, folding his large feet beneath him. He seemed to know what she was saying, and he lay his large head down on the ground, his long neck curled slightly so he could watch the entrance she had come in through.

She nodded at him once and turned. Clicking her tongue at Marelon, she rushed up the tunnel toward the cavern entrance. As she ran along, she realized the tunnel was just large enough to accommodate Yarrahm, and she wondered if he had chosen that on purpose the way a cat would hide under a porch.

When she reached the little chamber, she had put her stuff down in, she turned to Marelon, who meowed plaintively at her, glancing frantically between her and the rain outside. The fire she had built was still crackling, but without her attending it, it had simmered down a bit.

“Stay here, Marelon,” she instructed. As she did so, she pulled on her still damp clothes from earlier. “No use drenching two outfits,” she whispered to herself, even as she shuddered pulling on the heavy, damp fabrics that pulled at her skin.

Marelon growled slightly. She just laughed, scratching affectionately at her companion’s ears. “I’ll be right back,” she assured him in a low voice.

Before the cat could protest further, she hoisted her rucksack onto her back and darted out into the rain once more, grateful that Gastaf had secured her a bag treated with boar’s fat, making it waterproof. This time, she moved at a brisk jog, slower and more cautious than when she had been attempting to beat the rain. She moved between the trees toward the road, keeping her eyes wide through the downpour for movement.

Approaching where she had seen the garden, she slowed to a walk before ducking behind some bushes. She could just see the road in the distance through a gap in the trees ahead of her, and the garden would have to be slightly to her left.

She peered through the bushes, straining to see through the rain and the leaves. She was just able to detect movement, and she couldn’t tell if it was the wind, an animal, or a person. She chanced a quick dash toward a tree that was a little closer to the garden, keeping so low that she practically rolled into the cover behind the trunk of the tree.

She had just peered out toward the garden when she saw, to her surprise, that the movement she had detected was a small child, holding a basket and weaving in between the rows of herbs. Just then, she heard the child speak.

“Mother, why can’t we wait until the storm has passed?”

“Your father is sick, Paitar. We don’t know when the storm will stop and your father needs the tea from these herbs for his cough,” answered a voice, and Gwendolyn noticed for the first time a crouching woman wearing a dirty wool cloak with the hood pulled over his head.”

Gwendolyn waited for a few moments, but she was becoming concerned about when they would leave the garden. The mother seemed to be doing some gardening and maintenance as she pruned the leaves off some herbs, seemingly oblivious to the rain as her child played in the mud.

After several minutes had passed, the child spoke up again. “I’m hungry, can I eat anything here?”

“No, Paitar, if you eat anything here, we can’t sell it, and if we can’t sell the herbs, we can’t afford food.”

“Can we buy some bread on the way home? It’s been a long time since we’ve stopped at the baker’s.”

“I’m sorry my love, we can’t afford bread today.”

“But that’s what you say every day, mother,” the child whined. From his voice, Gwendolyn didn’t think she could be much older than her youngest brother. Her heart broke as she imagined Bartin gathering herbs in the rain, hoping for a bit of bread.

Before she could consider the risks of what she was about to do, she stood and emerged from behind the tree trunk. She approached the mother and child cautiously, walking loudly to avoid startling them.

“Pardon me,” she called. The woman straightened up immediately, and the child rushed to hide behind his mother. From their wary eyes and defensive positions, Gwendolyn suspected they had had trouble with passersby more than once before. She quickly raised her palms up toward the sky to demonstrate she had no weapon in her hands. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I have a companion who was injured by a wild boar. We were hunting off beyond the cliffs, that way,” she pointed intentionally further north than the cave she had found was, hoping to obfuscate her exact position. “I’ve been wandering for quite some time, hoping to find herbs I could use to create a poultice for his wounds.”

Though the mother showed no sign of lowering her defenses, she peered up at Gwendolyn with slightly less suspicious eyes. Gwendolyn took it as permission to proceed.

“I can offer you money, if you have healing herbs here?” She finished off with her voice tapering, nervous about what she had done. If anything went wrong, and she was found out, she may never get another chance to escape.

“How much?” The woman finally said, a gleam in her eye.

“Name your price,” replied Gwendolyn.

“Four silver,” said the woman, in a voice that implied she thought this was the beginning of a bargaining session. But Gwendolyn simply reached into the side pocket of her rucksack and retrieved her money pouch, then she shook out four pieces of silver.

“I grew up wondering where my next meal was going to come from too,” she said as she placed the money carefully on the ground between them. “I’m not looking to cheat you. I hope this helps.”

The woman looks at the money on the ground, suddenly unsure. Gwendolyn knew that if her husband truly couldn’t work due to illness, the family probably didn’t make four silver in an entire year.

She moved suddenly, snatching the money from the ground and examining it.

“What do you need?” The woman asked, apparently convinced that the money was real. “Goldenseal, if you have it. Thyme. Feverfew.”

The woman was nodding, brow furrowed in concentration as she rooted through the basket her son held. She didn’t seem so concerned that Gwendolyn would attack her now, but Gwendolyn’s anxiety rose with every second, as she glanced around through the pouring rain and summer mist.

“I have clove,” the woman offered. “It’s a rare herb, grown mostly in Parcee. Impossible to get until recently, because of the war. I was fortunate enough to get some seeds from a traveling merchant about a year and a half back,” she holds out a strange, spiky plant. “I don’t have much. Brew it over an open flame, use the water to make a poultice.”

“Thank you,” Gwendolyn said, “do you do this for a living?”

“Medicine?” The woman asked, seeming shocked that Gwendolyn would think so, “no. I’m an apprentice to an apothecary. My husband fell ill a few years ago, it was the only job I could get.”

“Here,” said Gwendolyn, holding out about a hundred bronze pieces. “Thank you.”

“I’ve already overcharged you, ma’am,” the woman said with her head bowed.

“Just take it. And take care of the little boy,” she added. She pulled the herbs from the woman’s hands, tucking the money into her palm before she could protest again.

Gwendolyn turned, cradling the herbs, and took off into the rain again. She was careful, despite how well things went with the woman, to run too far north for a while, doubling back on her tracks.

Marelon was still sitting outside the cave when she got back, peering intensely into the rain. He stood when he saw her and trotted back inside, seeming almost eager to get back to Yarrahm. She placed the herbs carefully in a pocket of the cloak, still heaped with firewood, and then she began to drag the cloak down the little tunnel.

Marelon stayed in front of her as she made her way back down the passage, still in her soaked clothing. When she emerged into the larger part of the cavern, she saw Yarrahm still laying, having shifted only slightly. Marelon bounded up to the dragon, now appearing completely at ease.

“Meow,” he called softly from the dragon’s claw.

Yarrahm raised his head slightly, sniffing at Marelon, then resting his head onto the claw so that his massive nose, with its nostrils the size of Marelon’s head, was just touching Marelon’s tiny, button pink nose.

“I’m back,” said Gwendolyn breathlessly. She dropped her rucksack to the floor, which was no worse for the wear despite being very wet on the outside.

Glancing around, Gwendolyn saw some damp mosses growing in corners. She knew very little about medicine, truthfully, but she had often accompanied her siblings or animals to the local apothecary when her parents were too busy fighting or drinking to do so. She could only hope that the very little she did know would help, not hurt.

She found a dry spot on the floor of the cave, far away from the hole in the ceiling, still trickling in water and creating little rivulets on the floor.

Starting a fire, she realized she had no pot or pan, no cup with which to boil water. She glanced around and found a rock, flat on two sides, thick, and circular, about the size of a large bowl. Grabbing a smaller, pointed rock, she began to try, though it seemed utterly futile, to chip away at the rock, hoping to create an indentation which could be used in lieu of a pan. After several minutes of fruitless pounding, which only resulted in the tiniest chip from the large stone, she looked up worriedly at the dragon.

When she made eye contact with him, he stood. She was startled, but tried not to flinch, as he lumbered toward her, his massive tail barely missing the fire. Stopping just near her, he extended his head toward the rock, so she placed it onto the ground in front of him.

He sniffed it for several moments, then he looked up at her. Suddenly, he grasped the rock in his large jaws, carrying it off to the other side of the cavern, moving so quickly Gwendolyn has barely processed it before he had dropped it against the opposite wall, reared up, and suddenly, with a deep growl-like noise, breathed fire on it.

Gwendolyn yelped, but a second later, the dragon had stopped, bringing a massive foot down onto the rock, then picking it back up in his fangs.

Like a dog playing fetch, he brought the rock back to Gwendolyn and to her utter amazement she saw a perfect, albeit somewhat shallow, depression had formed in the rock.

“Amazing,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

Yarrahm went back to his corner and sat back down, and perhaps Gwendolyn was imagining it as she prepared to boil the herbs, but she thought he even looked pleased with himself.