She came out of nowhere. One moment, I was monitoring the trees for signs that the fire was moving closer — the smoke from further up the mountain bearing hard upon the camp we’d made — the next moment, the mist cleared and I was staring into the gray eyes of an angel.
She was running straight for the camp. I called out, and Poppa immediately came running with a large saddle blanket, wrapping her into the folds I knew must have reeked from days soaking up horse sweat and the humid funk that never left these swampy valleys. He hushed me as he tucked her hair into the impromptu hood. Gigi came running from the second wagon, a large belt in her hands, wrapping it around the woman who sputtered from exertion and possibly the overwhelming smell of horse flesh.
“Have you seen any others in the woods?” she whispered as she placed the knot in the belt far too wide for this tiny waist.
“No, there’s no other movement. I think they’re all worried more about the fire.” I scanned the mountain our clearing made visible. “Is she from the abbey? Are you from the abbey?” I suddenly realized that, though my grandparents were treating her like a child, this woman was at least a few years older than I was. She should be able to answer my questions herself.
She only stared into the distance, however. A slight hum seemed to be coming from her lips now that she had caught her breath.
“Hush, don’t bother the poor dear,” Gigi shooed me away from her, telling me to go grab the water tin and the kindle bucket. The bucket was lighter than expected, and I could hear the tell-tale swish of horse and human hair we saved for when the wood was too wet, tied up in kindle-knots. I groaned, knowing we’d be surrounded by a smell worse than the nearby forest burning.
Poppa grabbed the bucket without thanks, gave me a quick look, and commanded, “Keep an eye out for others.”
The blanket hood came down, and the woman’s hair gleamed in the smokey air, taking my breath away, which was for the best, as I would have cried out when they chopped that glorious red mane from her scalp. She reached out for the tiny beaded braids falling into the tin, tiny clinks reporting back the eight or nine clusters. “No. These, I need these.”
“Okay, dear, okay, but the hair needs to go. We’ll get you a nice leather chord for the beadings. Will that do, sweetheart? But right now, the hair needs to go.” I hadn’t heard Gigi sound so sad and protective for years. The time I fell off Marmalade and twisted my ankle, we weren’t sure if it was broken or just sore, and I milked that love and attention for all my ten-year-old self could. Got a whack after the twelfth day went by and they found me scuttling around the second wagon without a limp. I jealously watch these ministrations, even if it meant cutting all my hair off again.
I held out my coin pouch, empty after our last trip to Portsmouth. “Ma’am, you can place them in here.”
If I had been hoping she’d turn those eyes upon me again, I was disappointed as Pop picked each of the beads out and placed them gently into the red leather in my hand. He counted each as it hit the pads of my hand. “Thanks, Jhani, that’s a help.” Each bead was handmade but beautiful. Various colors with a bright spot in each, aside from four that were a black so deep and dark they made the surrounding night seem daylight. I looked forward to seeing them closer in brighter light. I imagined rolling them in my palms and had a brief flash of power.
The bucket was searched a bit more thoroughly, as the woman did not say anything more, whether we had gotten them all—44 had landed in my pouch—and then silently pulled the different types of hair from within, double checking for more beads before tossing it at the embers of our fire. Gigi’s grey strands and my own mousey locks mingled with the spun red gold that seemed brighter than the fire it would create.
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Unfortunately, I had been right in remembering the horrors of the smell; it had been years since we had lost the ember of an earlier campsite. The girl, as I was beginning to think she might be despite her woman’s features, was led in her silk slippers to the second wagon. Gigi returned a moment later and threw the slippers onto the fire. She silently started cutting strips from the dress she had pulled from the girl.
“Oh, we could have gotten more than a bit for that. It was lovely.” The embroidery had not escaped my talentless eyes. “At the very least, leave the skirt, and we can make it into a hanging!” The delicate snowflakes falling within vines of blue roses on the light silk looked so beautiful I wanted to save a bit for myself, framed above my dock in the second wagon.
“Husha, Pokey!” Gigi rasped at me, “I don’t have time to answer your questions now. That silk won’t burn; I’m hoping the char will make it look more like some grossness we decided to eat with the leather scraps. This silk is a bit too much for us to hide in our wagon. All know the Valley folk don’t sell their best stuff and would never sell anything as large as this dress. Husha now and grab me the tureen. Grab y’self and your Pop some of what’s inside first. No one will want what this will be in an hour.”
The soup hadn’t been much, leftover rice and the dried fish with tiny eyes we hadn’t been able to sell over the last week. There was hardier fare, but it was always best to save it for the return trip. It still hurt my stomach to watch it go to ruin.
I took the long way around the wagons to Poppa, hoping the door to the second wagon would be open so I could get a better look at our guest. It was shut tight, and I wondered where we’d sleep tonight. I found him staring at the mountain, the flames gradually lowering, having traveled no further than they had been when I had left them. Living all your time in a forest of dragons would make anyone an expert in dousing flames.
“Do you think the dragon will come out after her? Will it find us?” I hadn’t thought about the ramifications of helping this girl until this moment. Everything had happened so fast. I stretched out his bowl of soup.
“What’s that now?” Pop looked as if he had been woken from a long sleep. I repeated my questions, trying to sound less like a scared child. “The eternal dragon? You should know better than that, Jhani. We never called you Pokey for your wits.” He dug into his pocket for his spoon and pulled out a rock coated in red paint.
“There are no dragons in these valleys. There certainly isn’t an eternal dragon. Immortality is a myth they made up to keep all but a few away from these places.” He said it as if I should have realized it by now. As if the whole world were in on this joke and I was ridiculous for not having heard it before.
“Well, then, why do so many still stay away?”
“Well, people are stupid. And they’re rather lazy. It’s a whole lot easier to believe there’s a dragon and stay away from this place than it is to travel all the way out here and find out what’s going on.”
He rolled the rock over in his hand. “You think you could paint one of those spirally circle things on this one and we could sell it as a paperweight?”
I stared at the rock. From the time I could hold a thin paintbrush in my hand I had been decorating stones my grandparents handed me. All this time, I thought they had been painting them bright colors to entertain a child, then later, just because we could usually sell them for an extra bit of cash when times got tight. Looking at it now, I realized I had never asked where they got the paint they used. There was only ever the black and white paint for painting the sides of the wagon or making up new signs, though since we’d gotten chalkboards, even that had been less. The blue and green stones — and now this red one were always in shade we had never carried. And always appeared after a trip near the Valley.
“What does it mean?” I asked, quickly figuring out that the stone must have alerted him to the girl who was now sleeping in our wagons.
“The world is changing. That people don’t put up with the status quo forever. That it might be time for the rest of the world to learn the truth of immortality.” He straightened as the loudest roar I’d ever heard echoed across the clearing, bouncing off the nearby mountains and out over the lake.
I found it hard to believe anyone would question the existence of the eternal after hearing that, but I knew my Poppa would never speak anything as truth he did not fully understand to be so. I shivered and hoped we would be moving on soon.
Whether an immortal dragon existed or not, something powerful was needed to make that sound. And it was angry.