Strachana - Judy Colella (books for 20 year olds TXT) 📗

“You seem to have made my daughter very happy!” She wasn’t referring so much to the girl’s impending motherhood as to the glow of sheer delight in her silver eyes.

“And she has made me the happiest dragon alive.” He put an arm around the girl, kissed the top of her head, and added, “Except, perhaps, Neri.”

“Come inside and make yourselves comfortable – I want to hear everything, but we really should wait until Neri gets home from hunting.” Zela practically skipped as she led them back to the cave. She’d never said anything about it, but she had been worrying almost non-stop since Vorel had left. So many things could have happened, especially since her daughter wasn’t a full-blooded dragon. She was far more vulnerable than her consort, but then – perhaps she should have trusted I’gra-Nar’s love for Vorel more, and known he would keep her safe. But they were back! What could possibly be better? And soon – grandchildren!

This last situation became the main topic of conversation after Neri returned and the night’s meal was ended. Neither Zela nor her husband had any knowledge of the way offspring were born when one parent was a dragon and the other dragonkin. Her own children had been born in the normal human way, of course, but with Vorel’s mixed blood, her progeny would be more dragon than human. When Zela asked about this, I’gra-Nar answered for them both.

“We spoke with a female who had some mixed blood in her family. Usually, dragonkin marry within their own kind, and they experience human childbirth. Only once before has a union such as ours been successful in reproducing, and - ” He bit his lip, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Zela, but it – it didn’t end well for the mother. The child survived, though.”

“What?” The woman’s eyes widened in fear. “Vorel, no!”

“It’s all right, mother. They now believe they understand what went wrong, and we won’t…I won’t make the same mistake.”

“What mistake was that?” asked Neri, his scowl a contradiction to his calm tone of voice.

“She tried to have the child in human form,” the girl continued. “Sadly, she couldn’t handle delivering three…oh, dear. Anyway, I’ll shift to dragon-form when my time comes, and that should eliminate any problems. As you know, Father, there is no pain or even danger for a female dragon when she lays her eggs.”

“You won’t have a regular infant-child?” Zela, feeling marginally better, was confused now.

“Yes, but not in the regular manner. And…it looks like I’ll be having more than one. After all, the average clutch for a dragon is five or six.”

“But you aren’t a dragon, Vorel.”

“Yes, mother, but my consort is, and I am in part. After being examined by a well-trained dragon-physician, it was determined that I’m having anywhere from two to four.”

“When?”

“Very soon, J’nah. That’s why we came back. I want to be home when I have my children.”

And she had four. A few weeks before delivering them, she shifted and remained in that state. Apparently, no one, including all the wisest dragons among them, knew what would happen; what happened, then, was nothing short of amazing.

As a dragon, Vorel laid four pearly-white eggs in the huge nest I’gra-Nar had constructed for her. Two months later, after keeping them warm with her body the entire time, the sound of frantic tapping was heard from within the shells. Instinctively, the girl knew that what was struggling to get out would never succeed without help. With one claw she carefully tapped against each one until cracks appeared. She continued tapping until they broke open. Immediately, four tiny, piercing cries rang out.

I’gra-Nar, Neri, Zela and J’nah peered into the nest and wonder of wonders! There, wailing and kicking inside their shells, were four human-looking newborns.

Vorel immediately shifted and picked them up one at a time, holding each aloft as her mother dried the squirming infant. Then, wrapping each in a clean sheet of satin, she placed them two on each side, next to Vorel who had laid down, tears in her lovely eyes. “Oh, how beautiful you all are!” she whispered, hugging them to her.

Two girls and two boys had been born, all of them healthy. Vorel herself, though exhausted from long months of care and the emotional waves of joy that had engulfed her upon seeing them, couldn’t rest. She happily offered them her milk, two at a time, until the squalling stopped and the babies drifted into the profound sleep of innocence.

I’gra-Nar tucked himself in beside his new family, one arm around his love’s shoulders so she could rest her head on his chest. At that moment, there was not a happier family anywhere in the world.

 

 

********

 

Kavin loved being godfather to the four beautiful hybrid children. All of them had grown more quickly than regular human infants, but otherwise it appeared – at first – like they were going to look human only. But on their fifth birthdays, everything changed in a way that would affect more than the children themselves. The morning the quartet awoke to the beginning of their fifth year of life, they climbed out of bed, yawned, stretched, and flapped their magnificent wings.

Wings that hadn’t been there before and that no one had even suspected would one day sprout from their shoulder blades.

Kavin had arrived at the cave the night before, bearing gifts wrapped and tucked into the saddlebags of his chestnut mare. Over time, he had risen in the ranks among his fellow scribes. This was partly because Welan had retired three years after Kavin arrived. The old scribe felt confident that the younger man could take over the work he’d done for Gravnel with no problem. He’d been right to a degree, but suspected there was something else behind Kavin’s unhesitating acceptance of the job. Something that had little to do with his confidence in the work, or his enjoyment of it.

Fleck, altogether too serious about himself, his work, and everything else in life, had decided he didn’t like Lord Gravnel’s cruelty, and left to find a place in one of the monasteries. This, too, had helped pave the way for Kavin, since his fellow-apprentice had become diligent and capable, perhaps more so than Kavin in some ways.

Winter was newly behind them when Kavin came up through the hills to celebrate his godchildren’s birthdays that year, but the ground was still hard enough to make his horse’s hooves ring. He’d always liked that sound, but after the events of the following day, it would forever remind him of the moment he realized life could no longer continue as it had. Not for that family, and as their dearest friend and ally, not for him.

The appearance of wings had been shocking, but not the only change the children would experience that day. Once the novelty wore off and everyone had calmed down, Neri had suggested that the children try making the wings disappear. They four had shrugged, closed their eyes, and an instant later, were wingless.

An hour later, one of the boys got a strange look on his face, and said, “Grandfather, my eyes feel…funny.”

Instantly alarmed, Neri had nevertheless managed to sound nonchalant. “In what way?”

The boy blinked a few times, looking down, and then exclaimed, “Oh! How strange!” When he looked up again, his formerly-human eyes had changed to the vertical-slitted, bluish silver eyes of a full-blooded silver dragon. “Why does everything look so…sharp?”

Zela, who had been observing all of this in silence, placed a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Well, it seems you have the ability to make your eyes look like your father’s and grandfather’s. Go look into the pool.”

The child’s siblings, after studying his face for a moment, began blinking furiously, and suddenly they had rushed to the pool and stared at its reflective surface. Then they’d made the wings reappear and began to laugh and clap their hands with delight.

During the next few days, the four experimented with flight. Sometimes the results were amusing, like when poor Vorel was trying to cook lunch and had to keep swatting her dive-bombing offspring out of the way. At other times, their efforts caused a great deal of concern since they didn’t always get it right when they tried to land.

While all of this was going on, Kavin had acknowledged that this new breed of hybrid could bring danger if they were ever discovered. He also realized that the family was growing at a rate that would eventually make hiding them impossible. J’nah had become consort to a hybrid several months earlier; her mother,  full-blooded silver, had brought her from Aussir-Gix Verthicha at the urging of her human husband. The girl, had fallen immediately for the tall, handsome youth, and was pregnant with their first child. This one, they’d been informed, would be born in the normal human way. As for Vorel and I’gra-Na, they were already planning on having more themselves.

Kavin suspected J’nah and his mate would end up having a lot more than one, assuming the girl stayed healthy. He’d been correct. In the end, J’nah fathered eight children, Vorel had three more clutches of four each (an unusual number of offspring, he was told, for pure-bloods but perhaps not so strange for a hybrid). With thirty draconic beings, then, even a cave the size of Neri’s eventually became too small.

The other problem, and perhaps the most important, was that with so many of them, it had become impossible to keep their existence a secret. Lord Gravnel had died long before Vorel’s first set of quadruplets were old enough to seek mates, but his son despised all things draconic with as deep a passion as his father. In other ways more reasonable than his father, however, the younger nobleman stopped the offerings of virgins a the Dragonstake. Aware that the girls were not being taken by their local dragon, but rather by his own father, he felt it was foolish to continue an unnecessary practice despised by the people. But then a different situation arose.

Travelers whose routes had taken them through the mountainous areas had seen Neri’s family in varying numbers. Astonished by the appearance of humans with functional dragon wings, dragons the size of large house-cats cavorting with human-looking children, and even several full-sized, gigantic silver dragons sitting peacefully in a meadow seemingly in conversation with humans, the travelers reported these things in the town. They were soon called upon to repeat their news at the palace, and before long, troops were dispatched to investigate.

Kavin, fortunately, knew what was going on and had plenty of time to warn his friends. Welan, suffering from a bad ague, passed away a few days before the search order was given, so on the pretext of attending his former mentor’s funeral, Kavin and the handful of others who had joined a growing circle of dragon-friends in the town, went up the mountain with Welan’s body to see him buried there. It was well-known that the old scribe loved the mountains, although only those closest to him knew the whole reason. It had been deemed reasonable, then, that he had asked to be buried there, so no one questioned the funeral procession into the foothills.

This, of course, gave Kavin the opportunity to let Neri and his family know they had to either hide or leave. At first, they used Zela’s tapestry curtain, onto which they had sewn a vast number of vines and branches, to cover the cave’s mouth, making it appear like nothing more than a natural, vine-covered mountain wall. They would hide inside until the danger was past. Dragon Hunters had been hired at some point during the ensuing months, and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before one of them figured out the camouflage.

In the end, the only choice Neri’s family had was to move away. To keep their now vast number from causing immediate detection, they had separated.  The ones with more draconic blood than human had gone into the