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  SLITHER

  Melody Steiner

  Slither

  Copyright © 2017 Melody Steiner

  All rights reserved. Reproduction or utilization of this work in any form, by any means now known or hereinafter invented, including, but not limited to, xerography, photocopying and recording, and in any known storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without permission from the copyright holder.

  ISBN 13 e 978-1-988256-60-3

  www.dragonmoonpress.com

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to my daughters, my mother, and my sisters. Strong individuals, each, who daily teach me what it means to be a woman. Also to Ryan Steiner, who (fortunately) didn’t have to imprison me on a dragon island to get and keep my attention.

  A special thank you to my writing and critiquing friends, Sonja Hutchinson and Erin Fitzgerald, for your thoughts and feedback on the book.

  ONE

  Rat

  Muuth swears there are still peckerheads living in Trana who believe the dragons disappeared after the stone soldiers came alive and conquered them. They see the distant, silvery forms slash the azure sky and say, “Look at those birds!” They find molten patches of scorched farmland and, frowning, think to themselves, The sun is merciless, and the straw caught flame. They see the tiny speck of our emerald island from their ships across the crystal sea, study archaic maps, and decide the red skull icon means the water is poisonous or the plants have teeth and will bite. They will never see the dragons, even if the fat beasts squat on their beloved ships.

  I can’t afford such a delusion. For me, dragons are as real as the prison they’ve locked me in: an icy black mountain in the center of the wild, malevolent Onyx Island. My home isn’t remarkable, even by the grand standard of dragons. Brown rags hang over the entrance and provide coveted privacy. The room boasts little more than a brass chamber pot in a corner, a hole dug in the ground for hot embers, a clay bowl, an ivory comb, and a doll.

  Twelve years ago, the worst of them snatched me in his steel talons and hid me away like a useless bit of gold. I was only nine winters old. My parents, murdered that day, called me Elanor. I was Elanor Landis, the daughter of a farmer who lived on the outskirts of Foghum City. Now, at twenty-one years of age, I’m “Rat,” slave to the dragons.

  From my perch on the side of the great mountain, I can see the ship. It floats like gossamer on the seafoam horizon. However, the sight doesn’t quicken my blood the way it used to. I pause and study the billowing sails on my way back to my room. The ship won’t dock here, even if I send a smoke signal. If I want an end to my imprisonment to the dragons, I will have to do it myself. The ships do not carry heroes. I am my only savior.

  On quiet days like today, I spend free moments tucked in my room, scratching chalk impressions on the wall. Adom is the only dragon who could fit into my hovel, and he doesn’t bother me here. Still, I keep a strip of gray linen over the drawings. If anyone ever looked closely at them, they’d see violent plans unfolding, growing more organized by the day. Better safe than a scorch mark on the floor.

  Light from a wax candle sputters, and a bent, spidery body creeps into view. “Fine day for killing dragons.” Muuth rubs a bony hand over a hairless, pointed head.

  I let the curtain drop over my drawings and transfer powder from my hands onto my sleeves. Muuth knows my secret thoughts and plots—he’s the only one I trust. “Have you eaten yet, old man, or do you want me to cut up a nectarine from my stash?”

  “Does earwax count?”

  My mouth curves, and I am at once amused and a little concerned. I’ve caught him eating earwax once, so it isn’t out of the realm of possibility. “I’ll go get that nectarine.” After I give him the fruit, help him settle on the straw pallet and ask, “What’s the vile one up to?”

  Muuth cranes his neck to meet my gaze. His joints pop, the sound echoes along the sides of my cold little home. “Adom is leaving, judging by the way the females fawn over him. I suppose he’s headed for Trana again. He’s developed a fondness for it, I think.”

  I suck in stale air. He always chooses Trana. Not Eppax. Not Corva. He makes mysterious trips every dozen nights, sometimes more, and returns with spoils from the raid. “If it was my country, I’d wake the stone soldiers to slay him.”

  “That’s not how…” The old codger taps his knobby chin and sighs. “Ah. Never mind. With Adom gone, chances of escape are better.”

  I note the patchy spots on his beard. He’s at least a hundred winters now. And yet, despite a deteriorating body and mind, Muuth can hoist great brass vats of dragon food and not flinch. He can push a boulder for a mile up a mountain. But he can’t live forever.

  “If I escaped, where would I go?” I ask.

  His wrinkled face splits into a pained smile. “Back to Trana, of course.”

  Sometimes I stand at the edge of the mountain: my wild, nut-colored hair tossing in all directions while I overlook the island. Ocean breezes, salty and sour, float to the mountain. When the sun lands just right across the tossing tide, I catch a hint of that familiar spicy smell: autumn leaves crackling over an open flame. Trana.

  “Maybe I can knock sense into King Siles?” I say, daring to allow a speck of excitement sneak into my voice. “March right into the palace and demand an audience?”

  Muuth’s smile slips away. His bloodshot eyes dilate, pupils widening. He cocks his misshapen head to one side and holds a crooked finger to my gasping mouth. A moment passes, then two. He breathes. “I heard one of them passing through the windpipe cave.” He waggles his head. “You should be quieter, El. They might’ve heard you.”

  My heart warms a little at his use of my nickname. Muuth won’t call me Rat like the dragons do, but he doesn’t call me Elanor, either. That was the name of my past. To Muuth, I’m simply “El.”

  “So what if they heard?” I ask. “I’m tired of cozying up to them.”

  The moment Muuth and I settle in for a cup of fresh-brewed peppermint tea, the walls vibrate and the sound of an immense metal gong throbs in the air around us. Muuth and I both cover our ears. The sound rattles my teeth and wobbles my bones before it subsides. When I was ten, Adom told me that if the gong ever rang, I must come immediately. He used to sound it daily, but the noise has come more infrequently because of all his trips.

  At last I lower my arms.

  “Does he want me deaf? Fool dragon.”

  “What?” Muuth still hasn’t removed his hands from his ears.

  “I have to go,” I shout.

  He nods, sheet-white.

  Years before, I clung to cave walls until they became so familiar by touch I could judge distance by number of footsteps and the unique wall imprints at my fingertips. Over time, my eyes adjusted to the darkness out of necessity. My bare toes patter against the cold, uneven ground, following the familiar route to Adom’s private chambers. None of the other dragons have the privilege of a private room, or a gong with which to call their favorite servant. But Adom is a changeling and according to whatever arcane logic guides the dragons it also entitles him to a certain degree of privacy.

  He’s a deceiver, I think as I pass through the mountain core, who lures humans to doom.

  ~ * ~

  An elegant statue now stands in one corner where before were only spider webs: a nude woman holding an elegant pitcher. Three glistening broadswords stretch out across his long table, their hilts tinged with blood and ash. Where does he find such things? They aren’t items he can have scrounged from a peasant’s house. Farmers don’t own such spoils.

  It frightens me to survey the vast bounty littering Adom’s room, a constant reminder of his sinister
activities. He stores his collection in a cave no other dragons can access, as if he mistrusts even his own kind. A dragon’s greed, as Muuth says, is his crowning glory.

  I glance at my reflection in an antique mirror, pleased to present myself to the changeling Adom in such state. Scratched face, dirty arms, and ratty ankle-length mud-colored braid stare back at me. My clothes are tattered and shabby. Sometimes, Adom finds me women’s clothing to wear. I almost never accept his generous offers.

  The moving reflection behind mine catches my attention. Adom’s straight hair falls loose around a pale, pointed face. Like black shadows. He watches me with unnatural, unblinking violet eyes, from a wooden chair. My heart pounds. Slowly, I pivot.

  Only Adom’s eyes betray amusement. Everything else about him is poised and perfect. Like a stone soldier, every hair is in place, his cream tunic falls just right, not even the wind could ever ruffle him. “Squeamish today, Rat?”

  My resistance fills the silence. I’m not the first human he brought here. Once in a while, frightened children turn up. None of them survive past morning. They all disappear during the night. I don’t dare ask Adom what happens to them.

  As he rises in one fluid motion and covers the distance between us in two steps, I back into the corner of the cave, where silver tapestries and paintings adorn the tiled walls, images of faraway places and people I’ve never seen, now long gone. If Adom has their crafts, they probably met with a bloody, undeserved demise.

  He lifts a band of leather. Never breaking the gaze, he ties his hair back, revealing the sharp arch of his eyebrows and powerful, broad shoulders. “How are your lessons with Muuth? Do you like the Tranar textbooks I found for you to read?”

  I nod curtly, because the books are the one privilege I don’t want to lose. Three winters ago, Adom suddenly announced that Muuth could teach me Tranar history if I wanted him to. I’d already learned my letters and mathematics, thanks to Muuth, but of course I jumped at the chance to study more about my homeland. Muuth said he thought Adom felt sorry for me, being so wild and ignorant about my own background. But I think it’s more to torture me, to remind me of all the places I’ll never go to, and the people I’ll never know.

  “Do you have any questions for me about the material? Anything you want to know?” His lips quirk to the right. “I’ve been there, remember.”

  There’s the taunt. His generosity has a sort of perversity to it. He may think it is kind of him to leave me with wardrobes full of clothes, textbooks, even paintings. But I remember what he did to my parents. I’m keenly aware that I’m his prisoner. I turn my head and refuse to answer.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.” That wry curve of his lips indicates mockery. “Come with me. Unless you don’t think you’re ready to face your past?”

  I snort and roll my eyes. I won’t let him bait me only to see my hopes crushed again.

  “I’m not teasing this time.”

  His steady gaze fills me with uncertainty. I often wonder if Adom’s eyes possess hypnotic powers. Those eyes make me weak, make me want to trust him even when I know he can rip me in half. “Why?” Adom never let me go with him before. Not that I want to under his conditions—witnessing a scorching doesn’t appeal to me.

  He smiles. “Ah. So nice to hear your voice again.”

  My pulse returns to a normal rhythm. He’s just trying to get a reaction out of me. He isn’t really offering to take me back to Trana. Or is he?

  He takes a step closer to the desk and picks up a quill, dips the end in a glass container of ink, and scribbles something I can’t see onto a piece of parchment. “Ona wants to eliminate you.” He doesn’t look at me. “You’re not as young as you used to be, and you cause more trouble these days. You know how they feel about humans. I’m worried Ona will kill you while I’m away.”

  Ona? The dotty old dragon with the clipped ear hasn’t said two words to me in years. Why would he want to kill me now? “You? Worried about me? How kind you are.” I can’t resist a little dig. “If only all Tranars were so lucky.”

  A frown deepens on Adom’s face. Every time I mention his murderous proclivities, he looks this way. “On this journey I have no plans of...” he waves a dismissive hand, “that sort. If that is your concern.”

  That sort? As if the fiery destruction of a country is as light as a walk in the forest. My fingers tingle standing so close to those shiny new broadswords. How satisfying would it be to thrust one into his midsection? How good would it feel to see the look of surprise?

  “What are your plans?” I try, but he shakes his head. Sullenly, I say, “I don’t trust you.”

  The frown slips away. His eyes, ever flickering, glow like diamonds. “Good. Then you’ll have a fighting chance in Trana.” Nodding at an inner thought that seems to please him, he leans in. “I want you to see your home.”

  Somehow, I manage not to pull away. “Why not Muuth?”

  He considers a thought for a moment, “And I don’t want to find you dead when I return. Aren’t those satisfactory reasons? Think of it as an opportunity to show me what Muuth is teaching you. I’m keen to test your knowledge.”

  Tell me why you really want me with you.

  Out loud, I ask, “Do I have a choice?”

  His eyes, fixated on my hair, seem to grow softer. “If you wish to remain here and die then, yes, you have a choice. Do as I ask, however, and you will live.”

  Why the cryptic responses? And why in the world should I do as he says if I don’t trust him? Didn’t he just applaud my distrust? Now he expects loyalty?

  Adom’s face becomes a granite slab. When he speaks, his voice affects the bored edginess of an aristocrat. “Silva’s also angry with you,” he says with indifference. “You’re neglecting the younglings.”

  I don’t bother to tell him I stopped cleaning their cave a week ago. I’m certain he already knows. “Maybe Silva should spend more time with them herself.” Why mask my feelings now when I know exactly what will come next? He’ll punish me by making me climb the hazardous part of the mountain to find roots at the top. Or I’ll have to run barefoot in the piranha pit. Or he’ll order the young dragons to chase me through the ever-changing forest for sport.

  “Where does this negativity come from?” he asks. “You were such a happy child once. You even used to like me a little. What happened?”

  “I realized my life wasn’t worth faking niceties to the man who murdered my parents.” My panic subsides and cold resignation sets in. “What are you playing at?” I say through a sigh.

  “Forgive me,” he says. “But when I say the word, you really should scream.”

  That’s all the warning I need. If Adom wants me to scream, he wants the others to think he’s hurting me. He wants to send fear shuddering down their monstrous, twisted spines, to dry their mouths and shrivel the pits of their cavernous stomachs. He wants to show them that he is the king, the master of this mountain, the master of me.

  Adom averts his gaze. “Scream.”

  In the seconds it takes him to morph from human to dragon, his chest expanding, scales popping out of his skin like boils, I’m already at the door. I scream, just as he asks me to.

  The full blast of flame doesn’t hit me, but it’s enough heat to sting my lower back. Good thing I tied my hair this morning—he misses singeing it off by a few inches. The monstrous roar he releases bursts a decanter on the table. The mirror cracks. But the fire inside me has nothing to do with Adom’s monster, and everything to do with my own. Only mine burns for revenge.

  ~ * ~

  I lay on a pallet in Muuth’s spacious cave, his own “laboratory.” Unlike my sparsely furnished room, homey effects litter every spare inch of his cave. “Damn that dragon.”

  “At least he didn’t really hurt you,” says Muuth. Then he lowers his eyes.

  “Are you siding with him?” I ask, propping myself up by an
elbow.

  “No.” Muuth coughs. “Never. He’s still your captor and a fire breathing beast.”

  Then he focuses his attention on connecting two wheels in a wooden box using a nail and a mallet. In spite of his dementia, Muuth can whittle clever gadgets to provide us with hours of entertainment. Once, he created pipes and stuffed them with leaves to smoke. He made a lantern of four stone slabs fastened to the cave wall. In the corner is a chair made from tree branches, a burlap sack, and sheep’s wool. Seashells; daggers made of wood and stone; and small, colorful glass beads all sit cozily on a shelf affixed to the wall. He even built a loft in a high crevice using flat planks of driftwood, where he keeps useful things he discovers on the beach. Netting. Glass. Things that wash ashore from distant shipwrecks.

  None of his weapons or inventions could kill a dragon, though. Muuth has already tried everything, and all he gained from his efforts was a gauged out eye and a burn across the back.

  Along the adjacent wall, a repurposed tree trunk displays Muuth’s most prized things, things he couldn’t have found along the beach, the things he must have had with him when he first arrived here as an unfortunate explorer. A wooden sphere with lines and numbers and a map of lands carved into it, on a spinning axel and surrounded by metal rings. Several beakers of colorful liquid that sometimes bubbled and burped and changed colors inexplicably. A large, oak, conical tube about eight feet in length mounted to a platform with wheels. While he sometimes took the latter outside and peered through an eyehole at the night sky, he never let me handle the device. He calls it a telescope.

  I wince. “Why doesn’t he ever pick on you?”

  “I’m so old he’s afraid I’ll die.” He wheezes with laughter. Then his smile sags. “And they can’t afford to kill me. Not yet, at least.”

  Ona wants to kill me. Silva burns with rage because she thinks I’m neglecting the younglings. If Adom hadn’t roughed me up, Ona might think he’d grown soft. And a soft dragon is akin to mold on a cave wall to the dragon herd. Worse than useless. A nuisance. According to Muuth, before Adom overtook the others in a battle of strength, Ona was the herd leader. It’s Adom’s ability to inspire fear in the rest that keep them all in line.