They crawled off the train together the next morning and headed straight towards the main street for some food. Littleshy had done a lot of thinking whilst they were in transit and had decided that the best way to hide was in plain sight. If anyone asked, the thing on her shoulder was a lizard, from the tropical jungles to the far south. She had bought it from a pet vendor half dead when she was a child, nursed it back to life, and it had stuck with her ever since.
Who would ever believe it was a dragon? The idea was so far beyond belief that most people wouldn't even consider it, and she was more than a hundred miles now from the site of the theft.
"I still need to give you a name," she said, as they walked through the streets, and on her shoulder, the dragon trilled a small whistle. "Mm, I can't call you Whistle though, you gotta have a proper name, a people name."
She thought about this as she paid her last few pennies to a butcher, coming away with a large chunk of pork, the creature on her shoulder dancing and drooling with anticipation.
"Guess you're hungry huh," she laughed, as they sat down in the back of an alleyway. "Here, have at it"
She tossed the meat into the air, and the dragon swept off her shoulder and into a glide, attempting to catch it before it landed. Sadly, it weighed more than they did, and they were very quickly dragged back to earth. Watching them eat, Littleshy laughed as they worried and tore at it like a puppy.
They still had a couple of hours until they were supposed to be down at the docks for the hand-off, and once the meat had been sufficiently told off, she spent a half-hour scrubbing the coal dust off the both of them in the public wash troughs. Under the layer of soot, the dragon's scales were a dark blue, the colour of an evening sky, and she admired them in the light, much to the dragon's preening delight.
Sitting on the edge of a public park, letting her hair dry in the sun, she tried to talk to them.
"Listen"
"Chirp?"
Littleshy pointed at their scales, and then at the grass, "Can you do magic, little guy, can you look more… Lizard like?"
They chirped at her, and then attempted to nibble on the grass. She picked them up and put them back in her lap. "Not like that, here, look"
She rubbed the grass against her arm, leaving a green stain behind, and then rubbed the grass against their scales. "Like this."
-
They were due at the docks in half an hour. Her attempts to communicate had gone nowhere, but there was a very scrubby patch of grass in the local park now, and her previously clean arms were now an off shade of green. She had at least managed to convince them to fold their wings back, which made them look almost like a normal lizard.
Almost, apart from the whole blue thing.
As she walked towards the hand-off, she wondered why she was trying so hard, another half hour and she was home free, with enough money in her pockets that she could afford to get off the streets.
She had dreams of an apartment with big windows, and her own loom, the evening sun would stream in and she could weave anything she wanted. Her mother had shown her to operate the loom when she was small, using it to bring in supplemental cash, and she had good memories of sitting by her feet, carding out the wool. But the market for homespun cloth was mostly gone now. The mills were driving down the prices of fabric every day, and what had once been enough to live on was now barely enough to buy lamp oil at the end of the week.
Littleshy sighed, her mother had been dead for a year now, and the wound was old, but that was how she'd ended up here. It wasn't all bad though, she thought, petting the animal on her shoulder, these past couple of weeks had been quite the adventure!
Walking through a narrow passageway between two deep brown walls, so old and tall that they seemed to lean together at the top, she came out onto the seafront for the first time and had to stop to stare.
She had never seen the sea before, and although she'd been primed by the stories of her peers, the shouts of the workers and the smell of salt and ammonia on the wind, the sight of it was something else.
A huge expanse of grey-blue, the waves rippling silver in the wind, and a whole line of magnificent ships, bigger than anything she had ever seen before, each one unique. Was that what a fully grown dragon would be like?
The two of them walked along for a few minutes, admiring the ships. Most of them were in the foreign style, great huge plants tricked into holding passengers and cargo with magic and expertise, but beached along the edge of the quay were smaller ones in the local style. From what she knew, those weren't fit for the open sea, but they did well enough travelling up and down the coast, where they could be pulled up into caves or onto beaches during storms.
On her shoulder, the little dragon danced, and she had to hold them back from flying towards one of the ships. "You like the smell of magic, huh?" she laughed, "Well, you're gonna be on one of them ships in a minute, so you'll get to eat your fill!"
Near the end of the line was the one she was looking for. No more and no less magnificent than all of the others, it was still a huge structure, bobbing gently on the water. The leaves that made up the sails were a bright blue, and the bits which were grown, rather than made of wood, were a beautiful green, vibrant and healthy.
Walking along the edge and staring down, she was surprised at how far below the sea was, and how high the ships rode.
She could see her contact standing on the dock, and she waved as she approached.
They didn't seem impressed, eyes widening and their arms flapping like a bird as they spotted her. "What are you doing!" he hissed, going to grab her shoulder and then changing his mind "what if somebody sees it!"
Littleshy shrugged, "more people would remember a struggling sack than they do a kid and her pet."
The man she was here to deal with was a full adult, and he towered over her in a way she found quite intimidating, but that was most people if she was being honest. She wasn't tall. "Just follow me" he glared, and beckoned her abroad the ship, stomping up the gangplank as if it had personally wronged him somehow.
Nobody paid much attention to them as they crossed the planks of the ship. On her shoulder, the dragon chirped and stared around, but they kept their wings folded away, and she reckoned the sailors had seen stranger pets on their travels.
At the end of the deck, the man fumbled in his pockets for a key and then unlocked the thick wooden door, the only structure on the upper deck that she could see. "Bring it in here, quietly!"
Littleshy shrugged and followed him through, the door falling shut behind them both on well-greased hinges.
Inside was a brightly lit room with big windows at one end, and she thought that it must be the room of somebody important. It was all decked out in rich woods and soft colours, and she liked it a lot. It had a sort of foreign charm to it, like nowhere she had been before. There were chests and cabinets and a bed built into the walls, and in the centre was a large table, too high to kneel at but good for standing.
Her contact ignored her gawking, reaching into a deep chest near the back of the room and pulling out a contraption of golden wires. A shake, and it seemed to arrange itself into the shape of a small birdcage.
"Have you had issues with it on the way here?" he asked, fiddling with the cage, "has it eaten at all?"
Littleshy shook her head, suddenly a little perturbed, reaching up and laying one hand unconsciously on the dragon. "They've been fine, I got them some pork on the way over…"
The man nodded and pointed absentmindedly to another chest in a corner, "That's good, that's good, your payment is in the chest over there, it's the linen bag with bronze thread. Your payment is all in notes, you may take it and leave."
She hesitated for a moment, biting her lip and looking at the cage, "You're not gonna put them in there, are you?"
He glanced at her, and then back at whatever he was doing, a moment later the thing seemed to break apart in his hands. "They'll be fine, it's only for a couple of weeks, come on, place it over here."
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
He had placed the bottom of the cage, a large gold disk, down on the floor of the room, and he gestured at her impatiently.
Littleshy looked at the disk, and then at the chest in the corner. There was enough money in there that she wouldn't have to live on the streets anymore. It was her ticket out. She would be free.
At the same time… She lifted the dragon off her shoulder with both hands and held them out in front of her like a cat. Their green eyes stared at her trustingly, the dark blue scales glinting in the light coming in through the window.
With a sigh, she shook her head and placed the little thing back on her shoulder. They made a questioning chirp, and she petted them, staring down at the cage base. "You can't put them in there. They'll break out, or go mad."
The man shook his head, "This thing is made from a mixture of gold and copper. It's resistant to all the magic's we've tried on it, and the animal is only a few days old, it shouldn't be nearly strong enough to break out before we get to…" he trailed off, not wanting to state the destination, and gave her something that might have been a comforting smile, but it came across as if he was working purely off a description given to him by a child.
"Can you just, not keep them in a cage?" she queried hesitantly, "they're not an animal, not really, I'm sure if you just-"
His smile morphed to a frown in an instant, and he sighed heavily through his nose. "You're only here to hand it off, kid, you're not its trainer, you're not its mother. Just put it on the disc, take your money and go."
She shook her head, and took a step back towards the door, as he carried on, striding towards her now.
"You're lucky you're even being paid, a less reputable operation would have just thrown you overboard, or sent you away with a smacked arse and no dragon."
His accent was all off, and he seemed to grow taller as he spoke.
He changed his direction all of a sudden and walked over to the chest in the corner. Once there, he pulled the previously described bag out and thrust it towards her, holding it out at arm's length.
"Take your money," he growled, his eyes like stone, "put the animal down, and go."
She shook her head, backing away from the bag and towards the door, one hand holding the dragon down against her shoulder.
The man sighed, narrowing his eyes, "look, you have no skin in this game. Just-"
She reached the door and used her free hand to reach behind her for the handle.
He dropped the bag onto the floor with a thud and reached for the dragon. Littleshy ducked as the hand came towards her, scuttling across the floor and towards the windows at the back of the room. She attempted to push over the table in the middle as she passed, but it was firmly bolted to the floor and didn't budge at her push.
She scooted under it as the man stomped towards her. At some point, he had picked up the lid of the golden cage, and was now wielding it like a cloche.
The dragon's claws dug into her shoulder as she moved, and she was thankful for the thick, almost sackcloth of her shirt. As she dove from under the table, out of the way of the descending cage and back towards the door, they let out a loud screech, and something in the air changed.
Under her feet and palms, the planks seemed to soften, and the fabric on her shoulders loosened all of a sudden, the claws digging in deep into her skin, like those of a frightened cat.
She ran across the room almost on all fours, scrabbling for the door handle as the boards bent and warped beneath her, and on her shoulder, the dragon kept screeching.
The handle crumbled away in her hand, and she staggered through the doorway, as a crash and a cry sounded out behind her. She ducked under several pairs of arms as she ran across the decks of the ship. "Stop screaming!" she shouted at the dragon on her shoulder, putting her hand over their snout, her clothes falling to pieces around her, "stop!"
A moment later and halfway down the gangplank she realised they had stopped, and it was just her ears that were ringing now. Her hair felt strange and fuzzy and there was a loud ringing screeching noise in her ears that wasn't normally there.
A final dodge of a confused pair of arms, and she was onto the docks, and off the ship. A moment later she was into the alleyways and forgotten places of the docks, doing what she did best.
Running.
-
She caught her breath huddled in the back of a half-empty warehouse, the dragon under one arm, and the other hand inspecting the remains of her shirt. The floor in here was dirt, which she was thankful for, as she could still feel the magic washing off them, although not as heavily as it had been on the ship.
"You gotta pull back" she groaned, falling to the floor behind a stack of slowly decaying barrels. This place didn't look like it had seen much action for a while, and even the air was still.
"Look!" she panted, and making sure the dragon was looking at her gestured towards her fraying shirt. "Stop!"
It took a good ten minutes of pointing and teaching the concept of "no" before they finally got it, and Littleshy sighed in relief as the hum of magic faded from the air around them both. It had been fairly localised, by the end, so nothing in the warehouse had been damaged, but her clothes were in tatters and she was dreading how she would get new ones.
The poor thing's eyes were drooping with exhaustion, and she felt much the same. As she stared down at the shivering creature through half-lidded eyes, she swore they were thinner than they had been a few hours prior.
Damn, she would have to find them food as well. This day was going great.
She wished she'd had the wherewithal to grab the bag of money as she passed, but she had been panicking, and if she had, she was quite sure he would have pursued them both for theft.
That said, he might do that anyway. Littleshy bit her lip and looked down at the sleeping dragon in her lap. What on earth was she going to do now.
-
It had been three, or was it four days, since her initial run, and before that, there had been a week of sleepless anticipation and planning. She was only meant to be one link in the chain, but now she seemed to be a broken one.
It had been a long journey to this warehouse, with little food and disturbed sleep, and she wished she could stop, get some food and sleep in a real bed.
She again wished she had thought to grab the money as she'd fled, but now here she was, with an expensive pet to feed and very little left in her pockets.
Sitting on the roof of the warehouse, a dragon asleep around her shoulders and the sun setting over the harbour in front of her, Littleshy sighed, running her hands through her damaged hair. She couldn't stay here. The ship that had been chartered to take the dragon had been a no-go, so now her plans had to change. She wouldn't be defeated by this.
Whatever happened, she had always found a way to survive, and that wouldn't change now. Best get some sleep first though.
-
Several weeks before a magical storm had passed over the land, and it had upset a lot of things, according to the butcher whose shop she spent the next day working in. Neither the normal clay-tiled roofs nor the new foreign-style earthen ones had fared well in it, and- he tossed another scrap of meat to the lizard- if she wanted to do some manual labour and knew how to put up shingles, there was good work in that right now.
Nothing was wasted though in his profession, sadly, so there would be no free ride from him. Scraps of meat went for animal feed, and even the bones were good for glue or fertiliser, but he could put something aside, for a day's work. In her opinion, it was worth it. The dragon was sated for the first time that she had seen, lying fat and happy in the corner of the shop, while she swept the sawdust from the floor. It had taken a bit of shouting at first to get them to stop eating it, but they had agreed eventually, which had impressed the butcher no end. "Never seen a lizard before that was actually trainable! Is he some sort of crocodile?"
She had shrugged and made the admission that she had no idea, she had purchased him from a pet vendor years before. The both of them had fallen on hard times recently, due to the storm, and had come down from the mountains to find themselves a better life, but, she gestured at her tattered clothes, they had gotten caught in the tail-end of it on the way.
She left the shop that evening with a new dress, a little too long, but the butcher's children had grown out of it, and a bag of scraps of cartilage and tendon for her "pet", the dragon which was draped around her neck like a very fat scarf.
She spent the next day with a work crew, replacing tiles on a large house near the edge of the city. So far all she'd seen of the place had been docks and train yards, the working areas, and she was surprised by how much greener everything was out in the richer areas of town.
The house was set in a patch of land big enough that she almost couldn't see any neighbours, except, of course, she was perched on the roof, handing across tiles to the woman who was fixing them in place.
"Well," she stated, this conversation had been going on for a while, "I wanna give them a person name, why not, y'know."
"Surely though," the woman reached for another tile, and Littleshy handed it over, "that takes away that name from an actual person, it's a name that can never be used again, for a pet that might live what, four, five years at most?"
"I'm planning on having them live longer than that!" she watched the woman work, handing over more tiles as needed, "cats can live up to twenty, why not lizards?"
"Ok," this interjection was from a man on the other side of the roof, and he popped his head briefly up over the parapet to look at them both, "so if you're dead set on a human-name, we just have to pick one which no human would fit, right?"
The man's name was "Light's the Sky on fire" and the woman was "The Sun Bleeds Red With Distant Radiance" which was a boss name. They were siblings, and they were known as Skylight and Sunbleed. Littleshy's full name was "Little form, hiding shy in the branches of the trees", and she suspected her mother had been describing a squirrel or something, but she had never had a real chance to ask. It was a long and loose name, unlike Skylight's and she wanted something long and complicated for the lizard.
They were likely to outlive her, if things went well. Supposedly the northern dragon was over a century old and still growing, so it should be something they could grow into over their many years of life.
She had stopped thinking of them as a dragon, because if she said it out loud by accident then there might be some explaining to do. Probably "I always thought it looked like a dragon, haha, so funny," and that would be that, but she didn't want to risk deeper questioning.
She would make enough coins off this work to pay for food for them for a couple of days, but there was an ache in her gut that told her they couldn't stay here. She was giving it time for the blue ship to leave, before she would try and get passage on a different ship.
Sailors were always in demand, how hard could it be? The only problem would be food for her friend, but she hadn't tested them with fish yet, maybe it would be ok.
-
The next day she helped finish the roof, and the day after she cleaned tables in a quiet pub, chatting to the barkeeper, her lizard asleep in a dog basket in the corner, curled up like a cat. There was no pub dog as far as she knew, and the basket looked clean and un-used, but maybe there had been in the past at some point.
She'd glanced over the newspapers after the morning rush, and had been listening to gossip, but there were no reports of a stolen dragon anywhere that she had seen or heard. One of the ship captains had been rumoured to have been arrested the day before for attempting to abduct children, and she wondered if that was her.
When she walked through the docks that evening, looking braver than she felt, the blue sailed ship was gone, and she sighed in relief.
Tomorrow she would ask around and attempt to get passage on a ship to the big continent. They would be safer there.