Slither Read online

  My position in this fragile ecosystem isn’t secure. It’s an odd paradox. The dragons need slaves like Muuth and I. We cook and clean, affording them a certain luxury. Yet I’ll forever be haunted by the lullaby of my first nights here, the screams of others like me who didn’t please their masters quickly enough. Child slaves howling in the night.

  Gingerly pushing myself off the ground, I half turn to a sitting position and give my friend a long, thoughtful look.

  “What are you thinking, child?” he asks.

  Deep wrinkles on his withered face remind me of the bark of an ancient elm tree. Muuth taught me how to survive both in this world and in the world outside. He taught me how to read, taught me arithmetic, and how to please the dragons. I love him dearly for all he’s done for me. So I can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt when I say, “Adom asked me to go with him.”

  His eyes dim and Muuth picks up a stick from the ground and draws a deep line in the sand. There is a heaviness between us for a moment while he digests the news. “Well?”

  I swallow, hard. “Do you think I’ll pass it up?” I sniff. “Maybe I won’t come back.”

  His face grows thoughtful. “I hope you don’t, lass.” Then he drops the stick, rubs his face, and makes a small sighing sound. “We’d best stop dawdling. You’ll be asking for another taste of fire-breath if the food’s not ready by suppertime.” He pats my head.

  “Maybe I could poison them tonight?” I suggest, as he hoists me up.

  Muuth strokes the pockmarks on his leathery skin, dimpled bits of extra flesh that remind me of the fungus growing along an old tree trunk. “There’s only one poison that can kill a dragon. You’re lucky if you never hear it mentioned again.”

  I flash him my best conspiratorial look. “Don’t keep it from me.”

  “Sun’s acid.” His gray gum houses few teeth, a spotted tongue peeking between the spaces. He cackles and points to his one bad orb. “At first, you can’t even see it with a naked eye.”

  “Compared to a well-dressed one?” I joke.

  He points to his collection of mysterious odds and ends. “Girl, before you and before this god awful place, I had a life. I had a wife, a daughter, and my inventions. The dragons lived among us, infiltrating us, and there were more like him who...” he spat, and continued. “Then one day I saw it, sun’s acid.” He looks far away, like he had opened his mind and peered directly into the past. “And I don’t like to think about what came after. The acid fell, a cloud of black that came from the sun and blotted out the whole valley. The soldiers turned to stone. Most of the dragons on that battlefield perished.”

  This is a story I’ve never heard before. “Can you make it?”

  “No, I can’t make it.” His voice comes out snappy and annoyed. “It comes from the sun.”

  Why does he look so cross? “But you said you couldn’t see it with just your eye. How did you find out about it? Was it in your laboratory?”

  His forehead crinkles. “I was in my laboratory, tinkering with one of my devices.” His eyes stray to the telescope. “I saw the black dots on the sun. Didn’t know what it was then. Not three days later, the acid fell.”

  “And it summoned the stone soldiers?”

  “Now you’re just hurting my head,” Muuth groans. “I’m a scientist, El. Not a magician.”

  I recall my studies. “But the history textbooks say a witch summoned the stone soldiers, and that they battled the dragons and killed them all. Maybe she summoned the sun’s acid?”

  “Don’t believe everything you read in those books,” Muuth grumbles.

  Sun’s acid, I repeat to myself. It’d be nice to be able to forecast the end of a few dragons.

  Adjusting the front of my tunic, I follow him to the cave where we keep the animals. Inside, great masses of emaciated sheep, cows, and pigs pack the area, secured by wooden fences and ropes wrapped with thorny vines to keep the animals inside. We check each stall to make sure there is plenty of water and food for the creatures. Muuth cleans the stalls and feeds the animals each morning, so there isn’t much work to do now.

  We open the gates and allow twenty grungy sheep to waddle out of the encampment. Muuth opens another gate so two of the cows wander out with affected dignity. Then six wiry pigs join our motley, macabre crew. We lead the creatures, eager for freedom, to a space in the cave meant for butchering and hanging the meat. There is ice from the top of a mountain lake packed along the walls, and a stream of water not far from here for washing up after the deed is done.

  I shiver, but it isn’t the cold that unsettles me. Animals bleat and squeal. Muuth unhooks the tarnished cleavers from the wall. He hands one to me. We make fast work of it, expertly slitting throats and skinning the animals. Muuth has a special invention that speeds the work, pulling the meat from the bones and sinew by turning a crank with a wooden wheel.

  I’m good at this. Muuth and I function smoothly, like the clock Muuth put together using dozens of carved wooden pieces made to fit exactly. Everywhere I look, there is blood in frosty piles, magnified by ice blocks. I can smell it in the air. My fingers and arms are coated in it. And yet, it doesn’t frighten or faze me. The dragons made me a butcher, like them, and like them I don’t even think twice about it when I kill. It has become almost second nature to me.

  Ona used to watch us work. As a child, I always vomited afterward, and he used to rumble with glee as he heard me retch. Someday, I’ll take the cleavers and cut through Ona’s neck flesh, and then show him the same courtesy he shows me as he gags on his own black blood.

  ~ * ~

  Hours later, in another cave with an open view of the forest, I stir stew over a cauldron while Muuth pours more water into the bubbling broth. It’s a sign of prestige in the herd to consume meaty stews and roasted chops. The others envy the herd leaders for the luxury of having food brought to them. The rest hunt on their own, capable of finding meals to scorch. The island has a host of wildlife: fish, birds, and beasts in the forest. We have wild cattle and horses that graze on the other side of the mountain. Occasionally, the dragons will leave the island to hunt, but it is only under Adom’s direction. They avoid cities and places where wealthy Tranars live. No one listens to simple farmers and peasants, so they can plunder with discretion on those lands. And if they’re seen, one blast of fire takes care of the witnesses.

  The gong rings. Dinnertime. I wipe condensation from my brow.

  Muuth steers the wagon to me. Seven horses pull it. He helps me hoist one of the cauldrons off the ground. We carry it to the wagon. Ten more cauldrons follow, each one heavier than the last. This routine, at least, has made me strong.

  I hop onto the front of the wagon while Muuth steers the horses to the central cave. Dragons eat, sleep, reproduce, and give birth there. They use it as their conference hall, the only place large enough to support all eighty-five of them. The open roof of the mountain provides ample sunlight and a convenient exit. As the wagon creaks into the cave, horse hooves clicking against the stone path, dragons watch us with green and gold eyes.

  Muuth pulls back on the horses’ reins, and the wagon slows to a stop. Sharp talons scratch against the ground. Other dragons breathe more heavily, sucking in the scent of the food with massive nostrils. Ignoring the sounds, I spring off the wagon and move to the back. Muuth rolls out of the driver’s seat and shuffles to my aide. We maneuver the first cauldron, careful to touch only the wooden handles and to cover our hands with the gloves Muuth made for us.

  We serve Adom first. He glares at me silently in his dragon form, flecks of violet glowing in his eyes. I hope his cauldron is the one I spat in.

  “Over here,” Ona rasps in dragon tongue. He points his claw down. Speckled brown, yellow, and red, Ona’s scales seem to match his impetuous and unpredictable personality. I can’t find a pattern in his scaly form, almost as if he’d found a vat of colored paints and splashed
them on his body with no regard for aesthetics. He has a lean tusk that protrudes from one side of his mouth, but nothing on the other. His tail is deformed at the end, twisted into a stump the size of the trunk of an elm tree.

  Muuth and I struggle to roll the cauldron to him. I recall what Adom said earlier. Ona wants to kill me. I take careful pains not to spill his food. His clipped ear twitches.

  After Ona, we lay cauldrons by the four breeding dragon females. They’re the fattest of the herd, and I can tell them apart by their varying shades of gray. They are unremarkable except for their considerable girth. They can barely fly, and almost never leave the mountain.

  Next we dole out cauldrons to three other males. Two of them, Neller and Greego, have wings that also function as fins. They often skulk in the water around the island and emerge for meals in the mountain as it suits them. Neller is a sea green with a lovely comb on the top of his head that looks like kelp. Greego is sandy white, and the scales on his broadside glisten like diamonds. They both can travel deep to the bottom of the ocean floor, and sometimes they do not emerge for days or even weeks. Muuth tells me that even sailors from Trana recognize the existence of sea monsters, and their maps contain dire warnings about which parts of the ocean to avoid in order to keep from meeting a horrible, watery, serpentine fate.

  Canna and Nerama, the youngest of the dragon leaders, come after the first eight. Canna isn’t a breeder yet, but she soon will be.

  The dragons ignore us while they slurp their meal. They converse in the clucking dragon tongue I’ve come to comprehend. It isn’t a fluid sound, but scratchy and guttural.

  Dragons of lesser status occasionally meander into the central cave to sniff the cauldrons of the dragon leaders. The rest of the herd can come and go through the central cave as they please, but they are not welcome to partake of the food or participate in the conversation.

  “You could slit their bellies when they collapse from overeating,” suggests Muuth while we sit in the shadow of the hulking beasts and wait for them to finish their food.

  I struggle to maintain a straight face. “Only if you roll over their claws with the wagon.”

  He scratches a bald spot. “I’ve got the cleavers.”

  Our dark jokes give us fragments of levity in an otherwise pallid life, but there’s real longing behind the banter. Freedom. I haven’t tasted it since I was nine. Only glimpses here and there, when running from the mountain. When was Muuth’s last free moment?

  Then Silva’s words catch my ear. “I think they’re talking about me.”

  Muuth shrugs. “She’s complaining you haven’t cleaned the younglings’ cave.” I’m used to Muuth translating for me even though I can understand most of what they say by now.

  My back burns, sensitive from this morning’s treatment.

  As if he can read my thoughts, Adom speaks up in lilting dragon tongue.

  Muuth leans in. “If he catches you neglecting the younglings again, he’ll kill you.”

  Adom said earlier that he wants me to survive. That he plans to take me away from Onyx Island tomorrow. Then again, Adom always tells half-truths. My stomach sinks. He’ll kill me, someday. Even though he dangles Trana in front of me, I’ll never let my guard down.

  Let him try. He’ll fail, and I’ll kill him, instead. I won’t suffer my parents’ fate.

  TWO

  The gong jolts me awake. Bounding out of a bed of dry, crackly leaves, I scramble for last minute artifacts to fill a partially packed, moth-eaten bag. I pick up a lopsided candle, a small bit of frayed rope, and an ivory comb I stole from Adom several years back. I also pack the leather water skin Muuth made for my name day.

  With the satchel ready, I dart through the caves. Interminable blackness hardly inhibits my flight. I round several corners and hop a couple of dangerous pitfalls, and yet my calloused feet know the path so well I run it by memory. My heels thud against the ground.

  Adom waits for me in his private quarters, wearing only a black robe tied securely with a velvet waistband. “Leave the satchel,” he orders, tapping his foot in increased agitation. He glances over his shoulder as if he expects to find someone there at any moment.

  I rock back and dig my heels into the ground. “I need it.”

  He pulls the leather bag from my hands. “What’s in it?”

  “Why do you want to know?” My cheeks warm when he pulls out Fifi.

  “What is this?” He holds Fifi out with his thumb and index finger, eyes glittering. He stares, this time with an open expression of disapproval, like he questions my state of mind.

  “My doll,” I whisper. My body braces for a fight. I cradled Fifi in trembling arms the day my parents died. The day he took them. She’s not a very pretty doll, missing half her hair, one eye permanently closed, and with a crack between her brows where I dropped her once.

  A perplexed crease deepens on his forehead. He scowls at the porcelain moppet with such fierce confusion I worry he’ll drop it. My stomach sinks. He doesn’t remember.

  “Why do you have a doll?”

  “It’s all I have left.” Even though I will myself not to reveal emotion, my voice cracks as I speak. I hate showing weakness, especially to Adom.

  The answer seems to shock him to silence. He swallows and stares at the doll’s cracked face, dirty clothes, and bald head. He can crush her in one swift motion with his fingers, and she’d be nothing more than fine, white powder gathering at his boot-clad feet. Sick with the fear of losing my most prized possession, my heart thuds heavily with dread.

  He roughly pushes Fifi back into the satchel and thrusts the worn bag at me. “Take it with you, then. But don’t let anyone see it. It could threaten our mission.”

  How could a chipped bit of porcelain in a worn rag dress endanger a dragon? I’m numb at his inexplicable mercy, but not too euphoric that I fail to take in what he just revealed. A mission?

  “Come with me,” Adom instructs, his voice gruff. He reaches for the piece of parchment with the writing he penned last night. He folds it, melts wax, and seals the back of the paper. He blows on it until it dries, and then he tucks it into his waistband and marches out of the cave.

  I follow in strained silence. There is a part of me that does not believe he’ll really do this, take me with him to Trana. He said he thought it would be good for me. If that’s really the reason, why hasn’t he taken me before? He says Ona wants to kill me. But this isn’t the first time I’ve fallen out of his favor. What’s changed? Why does Adom want me to go with him now?

  He mentioned a mission. Maybe he thinks I’ll be useful. I’m not blind—I watched him write a letter even though I haven’t had a chance to read it. What kind of purpose can a girl like me serve on a mission Adom wants to undertake? Whatever it is, it can’t be a good.

  I stub a toe on a rock that shouldn’t be there. Clunk. Pain lances through my leg and settles in the spot between my eyes. Lightning makes circles across my vision.

  Adom swirls in the blink of an eye and catches me before I fall.

  For two seconds I am in his arms and every nerve in my body zings with shock and awareness and the unsettling feeling that I am not just any woman to him, not just a slave, and not just a Rat. I can’t breathe beyond our close proximity, and he seems equally as startled.

  “Get off me, Snake.”

  He pulls away and resumes his trek without a word. My ankle throbs, but if I expect him to ask if I am injured, I’ll be waiting for the rest of my life. Adom clears his throat. The sound tosses me back into the real world where he is a creature of the earth, and I am El. Why did he bother to sully his hands catching a clumsy slave?

  As soon as the question comes, the breathlessness disintegrates. He’s a monster, I’m his prisoner, he killed my parents, and someday I’ll kill him. The world is simple, and I need only worry about placing one foot in front of the other. I breat
he and push through the pain.

  We approach the central cave. A few lazy beasts curl around each other, sleeping soundly. Snores rock the cavern. It vibrates my bones. The cave floor glistens with molted scales, hard as diamonds and every bit as precious. Dragons don’t shed skin, like snakes and other reptiles. When they scratch, the scales pop off like dandelion heads. Muuth told me once that the scales are considered rare gems in Trana. People think they come from the ground, and yet they call these “rock formations” dragon scales. They whittle them, and purify them, and string them up in fancy necklaces or set them in rings.

  “Stand back,” Adom commands.

  He doesn’t raise his voice. Dragons scatter at his order. I pivot slightly so I only see him out of the corner of my eye. He disrobes and hands me the garment. I stuff it carelessly into my satchel. Then he crouches. His body swells, turning green and blue and gray. His neck stretches to grotesque proportions while his lower back flares up to accommodate the crushing weight of a hideous monster the size of a redwood tree. Harsh ridges burst from his spine in dramatic accents of blacks and grays. His skin becomes thick like limestone and scaly. Spidery wings sprout from his cracking back. His face distorts, elongates, and forms a narrow snout. A flowing mane of inky black hair pours over his shoulders, wild and full, like a river spilling over his neck.

  Reptilian haunches explode from human arm and leg muscles. Teeth gleam in the smoky light. It all reminds me of the first time we met, when I thought he was one of us: a naked, lone human wandering the scorched fields in search of survivors. Like me. What a fool.

  In the seconds it takes him to change, my hands move almost without permission, and I grab hold of three nearby dragon scales piled on a stalagmite. They are the size of seashells, but polished and heavy, like marble, and perfectly symmetrical. I shove them into the satchel.