A Shade of Dragon 3(30)

I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “There must be sacrifice in a real fight. What are we willing to relinquish, Mother?” I stepped forward and braced her shoulders in my hands. Her face came up from her palms, two wet tracks down either cheek. “What are we willing to let go of?” I whispered.

“Nothing,” she replied.

My jaw clenched. “Then your only option is to wait for the wind and the tide to change of their own choice. But I am willing to sacrifice a dream of perfection for the reality of happiness that I know with her.”

Mother frowned up at me. “With her?” she asked.

I winced. “I… We found out that Penelope is infertile.”

Mother touched my cheek tenderly. “Oh, son,” she said, her voice low and warm with compassion. “We always hoped that you would fall deeply enough in love one day to marry—but Erisard and I were unsure it would ever happen. Your standards were so high, your dreams so lofty; you hardly seemed to notice the lack of eligible females until much later in life. Although it is, of course, part of a dynasty to propagate an heir… You are happy with her, and what dynasty are we now? Don’t live for a kingdom you can’t even enter. What sense does that—” Mother blinked hard as she spoke. “What purpose is a perfection you cannot touch, a dream? We may lose… some things… but happiness… happiness, we must take back. We can start simple. Forget the grandeur of the castle. Start simple. Just the land. The land itself. That’s all we need. Somewhere to start. Somewhere to build.”

“Everyone!” I hollered to all the dragons on the beach. Those who were currently in our settlement roused from their activities at the sound of my voice. “Gather around! We are taking up a collection of ideas. Nothing is too big or too small!”

For the next few hours, we gathered close and conversed. Many ideas needed to be dismissed. Conventional warfare was not an option for us. We could not manage a battle on foot with the same ease as the ice dragons; we would only decimate our own population. “But you flew in the snow,” Einhen reminded me. “Some of us are large enough, strong enough, to manage. And I—I can read the skies. Tonight, I will consult them again, and may determine the temperamental patterns of Everwinter’s sky.”

“Do not use that name!” Mother commanded. “It is not Everwinter. They are The Hearthlands! Forever!”

I put my arm around her shoulder, but reminded her, “As long as the people of that palace call the island Everwinter… that is its name. If we want to change that—we mustn’t pretend anything. We must take it back and change its name ourselves.”

Mother pursed her lips.

“And we can all walk in the cold… for a while,” Charis added, drawing the discussion back toward a plan.

“That’s right,” I said.

We went on to consider weaponry. Much of our store had been depleted when the shelter was ransacked.

“What good is the wind to a fire dragon?” an older dragon demanded to know.

“We do always have our fire,” I said, expelling one single flame into the air before me. But, as the gods would have it, the warm breeze off the sea carried the flame away, landing the little twinkle of light amid some dry reeds which had been used to buffer a lean-to on our camp. I jolted with alarm as the spark caught, and the fire spread quickly—too quickly for the saltwater to be of any aid—to consume the simple shack and leave one of our number homeless… again. Of course, we were homeless at the moment, too, so what did these trifling buildings matter?

“Still, let’s put it out,” Mother said, glumly approaching with a large pot of ocean water. “If it spreads, we’ll lose the entire camp.”

And, just like that, another spark was ignited. But this little twinkle of light was not on the wind. It was in my mind.

“Of course,” I breathed. “Our fire. And the city itself.”

No one understood what the enigmatic phrases, side by side, could have meant. “What are you talking about?” Mother asked.

“We cannot move in the cold, but fire can move in the cold. Fire can burn in the cold, as long as it doesn’t get wet. We would need to time it right. But, Einhen, you said you would consult the skies tonight?”

“I grabbed up my equipment when we fled the shelter,” Einhen agreed. “It hasn’t been unpacked yet, but yes, of course. I’ve been meaning to return to the stars for more answers. It just… seemed so hopeless for a while.”

“You will be able to see the patterns of the clouds,” I said. “You could ascertain the window of a storm. They come and go, don’t they? The snowfall is not constant.”