Dragonfell

Chapter 1

If I stand at the very edge of the high fell that overlooks my village, and the wind is bright and cold, and I lean forward just a bit . . .

And just a bit more so that the wind is holding me up . . .

It feels like flying.

And then my foot slips and I almost am flying. Falling, I mean. I totter for a second on the edge, and with a whirl of my arms I catch my balance. That was close. I would’ve fallen a long way, that’s for certain sure, before I hit the ground.

The day is fine and bright, the blue sky scudding with clouds, the grass on the hills holding on to a last smudge of green before winter. The chilly wind blows right through me, but I’m not cold.

I am never cold.

I have very keen eyes for things that are far away, and from up here on the Dragonfell I can see my village, a little cluster of cottages and smoky chimneys clinging to the steep slopes of the fell. Over it all the morning light flows as sweet and golden as honey.

Clouds race overhead, casting the village in shadow, and then the sun flashes out again. It’s followed by a gust of wind that rushes past, and just for a moment I want to leap in the air and rush after it.

A long time ago, they say, a dragon had its lair up here on the high fells. Stepping back from the edge of the cliff, I crouch and poke around in the packed dirt, and pry up a corner of a smashed teacup about the size of my big toe. I spit on it and rub some of the dirt away with my finger. It shines in the sunlight, and I can see a tiny blue flower like a star painted on it. Standing, I put it into my pocket. The whole top of the fell is littered with shards like this. The dragon who lived up here hoarded fine teacups and sugar pots and teapots and cream pitchers, all painted with blue flowers. The broken pieces are the only thing left of the dragon, that and some old gnawed sheep bones.

What was it like for the dragon, living up here with its teacup hoard and the wind and the cold? Maybe it sat up here just like I do, looking over the high, rolling fells and the village.

Yesterday Tam Baker’s-Son told me that his da told him not to talk to me anymore. Not to be unneighborly, he said, just to keep his distance.

It’s a bitter thought, knowing my friend isn’t my friend anymore. Tam’s da said what he did because of the wild fire-red hair that I have, and my dark eyes, and because I spend too much time up here on the Dragonfell. Tam once said that he didn’t know how I could see out of my eyes because they were so full of shadows. And my face is sharp, Tam says, and too fierce. Still, I’ve lived here all my life, and you’d think people would’ve gotten used to me by now.

Lately there’s an edge on the way people look at me, as if the things that make me different also make me dangerous or bad. It worries my da, and his worry adds to my restlessness until there’s nothing I can do but go rambling on the high, windy fells, talking to a dragon that isn’t here anymore, and coming home after dark, feeling half wild and as hungry as a wolf.

From up here on the fell I can see our cottage at the edge of the village, where Da is working at his loom, weaving fine cloth. Below it, the road leads down into the valley, and to the city of Skarth, which is a darkness and a smudge of smoke on the horizon.

Something is moving way down the road.

A squint and a blink, and I bring it into focus. A man and a woman, it looks like. Climbing toward the village. Strangers.

We don’t often get strangers coming to our village. I don’t like the looks of them.

I step back from the rocky edge and head down the worn path that winds from the top of the Dragonfell, through the sheep pastures, along the stream that rushes by the village, on the steep road that goes through the village itself, and running now, I reach our cottage. Like all the village cottages it’s whitewash over old stone, thatched with reeds, and it has a stone wall around a yard with a low shed in it for our goats and chickens.

As I come panting up to our front gate, I see my da standing in the doorway talking to the strangers. He’s leaning heavily on his crutch. My da’s a tall, strong man, but he’s got a withered leg, burned in a fire a long time ago, and he can’t get around very well.

The man he’s talking to is ordinary. He has a round hat and a bushy black mustache and he has arms so long they practically hang down to his knees. The woman, though—she is like nobody I’ve ever seen before. She has shaved-short grizzled hair and she’s tall—even taller than my da—and she’s wearing rough clothes and boots with steel caps on the toes. Her eyes are hidden behind a pair of smoked-lens spectacles. That’s not the strangest thing about her, though. The strangeness is the pins. She has row upon row of straight pins stuck in the lapels of her coat. Safety pins of all sizes dangle and jingle from the edges of her sleeves. She has a row of pins stuck through each one of her ears, and two pins in her left eyebrow, and one little brass pin in her nostril.

As I come up, the man is saying something, and Da braces himself in the doorway as if he’s expecting a blow. These bristle-pin, steel-toed, long-armed strangers are a threat, and they’re more than he can manage.

But me—I can manage them.

At the gate, I bounce on my toes, feeling brimful of energy, as if I’m not made of muscle and bones, but of sparks barely contained inside me. When I look at the strangers, it’s like they’re at the other end of a long tube—they seem tiny, as if I could take a single bound and have them at my feet, howling with terror. At the same time, I feel something in my chest, right beside my heart. I’ve only felt it twice before. It’s an odd kind of click, like when you scrape a tinder against a flint and a bit of flame leaps up. It makes me feel shaky and hollow, and it makes me feel bold, too. As the spark inside me flares, I open the gate and go into the yard.

It would be a shame, the pin woman is saying to Da, if a fine weaving loom like yours was to get burned.

My da frowns. He doesn’t like fire.

But with that kind of thing in your village . . . , the woman continues, her voice rough. She shrugs. Tell him, Stubb.

The long-armed man strokes his mustache. Ah, I’ll tell you what, Weaver. Bad, burning trouble is what it means.

My da opens his mouth to say something, and then he sees me at the gate. He straightens and speaks past the two strangers. Go inside, Rafi, he orders.

He’s trying to protect me. No, Da. I’m not leaving him to deal with these two and their talk about burning.

The strangers turn.

Seeing me, Stubb elbows the pin woman in the ribs and says out of the side of his mouth, Look, Gringolet. Is that . . . ?

Shut up, she says sharply. Then she steps closer and studies me carefully over the rims of her spectacles. Gringolet’s eyes are cold, an ashy gray like a fire gone out. She hides them away again behind the smoked lenses and turns to my da. This isn’t your boy, is it, Weaver?

Da’s face is set like stone. Yes, he is.

He’s an odd one, the pin woman says slowly. I can feel her ashy eyes looking me up and down again. "Quite a young spark, isn’t he?"

He’s the one Mister Flitch— Stubb begins.

"Shut up, Gringolet interrupts, and I don’t see her move, but Stubb flinches and snaps his mouth closed. I catch a glimpse of a long, sharp pin in Gringolet’s fingers, and then it disappears up her sleeve. She reaches up and pulls at one of the pins dangling from her earlobe. Trouble, she says, turning to Da again. Trouble’s coming for this village."

Burning trouble, Stubb puts in.

That is definitely a threat. In response, my fingertips tingle, and shadows gather at the edge of my vision. Nobody threatens my da. Nobody. You can take your talk about burning Da’s weaving loom, I tell them, and go away.

Stubb gives a bark of scornful laughter. "It’s not us burning any looms, boy-o. We aren’t threat’ning, we’re warning."

Sounded like a threat to me, I say in a fierce voice, and I feel the spark inside me burst into flame.

My da’s eyes go wide. Oh no, he whispers.

And then the strangers start to scream.

Chapter 2

"But what did you do to them, Rafi?" Tam Baker’s-Son asks.

I glance aside at my da, who shakes his head, but won’t look at me.

It happened too fast, I say. I can still feel sparks fizzling in the tips of my fingers and in my toes, making me jumpy, and I take a deep breath to steady myself. I don’t know what I did.

Tell it, orders Old Shar Up-Hill as she climbs onto a stone block so she can see all the villagers who have gathered in her yard. Old Shar is short and skinny and wrinkled, and she has a flock of fifty sheep that give the softest wool. She lives in the center of the village, and whenever two people have a dispute or if something needs to be decided, they take it up to Old Shar’s.

Here’s what I saw, says our nearest neighbor, Lah Finethread. She’s known for spinning fine, strong thread, and for weaving her straight blond hair into complicated knots and braids, and she’s known for knowing everyone else’s business. I was coming out to feed my hens, and I saw two strangers at Jos By-the-Water’s front door. Lah turns her head so that the sun glints on her golden hair. She’s enjoying the attention. "They knocked and Jos stepped out, and they seemed to be talking. And then—" She pauses and looks around to be sure everyone’s listening.

Then what happened, Lah? asks John Smithy in his deep voice.

Everyone leans forward, keen to hear Lah’s answer. "Then a cloud crossed the sun and all went dark, she says. Rafi came storming across the yard, surrounded by shadows and sparks—and then he smote the strangers with a bolt of flame."

Smote? I exclaim, and I almost feel like laughing, even though it isn’t funny. It didn’t happen that way at all.

I’m telling you what I saw! our neighbor Lah protests.

Go on, Old Shar orders.

"And the-e-en, Lah says slowly, drawing everyone’s attention back to herself. Then I felt a scorching blast of wind, and I saw the thatch on Jos By-the-Water’s cottage burst into flame! Then, while the two strangers were screaming and running away, I saw Rafi there— She points at me—reach up with his bare hands and pull down the burning thatch."

I saw Rafi do that once, too, puts in Tam Baker’s-Son unexpectedly. Everyone turns to stare at him, and he flushes. Not too long ago I was coming up to Jos’s cottage and looked in at the door, he says quickly. I saw Rafi reach right into the fire and touch the coals. I didn’t say anything about it then, because I thought I’d seen it wrong.

Without scorching his fingers? Old Shar asks.

Tam shrugs and casts me a half-apologetic look. It didn’t seem to. It’s why I guessed I must’ve seen it wrong.

Rafi, show your hands, Old Shar orders.

I hold out my hands and the villagers edge closer to look. The cuffs of my shirt are charred black from the fire, and my fingers are smudged with smoke, but my hands are unscarred, unburned.

I work at the forge all day, and I know what flames should do, John the blacksmith says. He holds up his hand to show the scars from burns that cross his dark skin, and then he points at my hands. That’s wrong, it is.

When I glance at him, he flinches back as if he’s just touched molten-hot metal. All I did, I explain, was put out a fire that would have burned our cottage down.

But there was that other time, Jemmy says. He looks around at the villagers. Remember? They all nod.

That other time was two years ago in the early spring, and rain had been falling for ten days without stopping, until icy waterfalls were streaming down the sides of the high fells. In the middle of a sleety downpour, a sheep and her twin lambs went missing. Half the village was out looking, but I was the one who found them.

Here’s the thing about sheep. They are stupid. The mother sheep—the ewe—had led her two newborn lambs into a little cave in the hillside, and they’d gotten stuck there when a waterfall started pouring down in front of it. When I found them, the lambs were up to their bellies in icy water, and all three of them were just about frozen. So I got in there with them, and that’s when I felt my spark flare up.

When the villagers found us, the cave was warm and dry and steam was rising off the lambs’ wool.

Everybody started looking at me differently after that.

They liked that I had saved the ewe and her lambs. They just didn’t like how I’d done it.

The second time I felt the spark, I was up on the Dragonfell as the sun was setting, when four wolves came from the highest fells and got in among the sheep. I raced down, and as I chased them away my spark burst into flame.

Old Shar was there—it was her sheep the wolves were after—and she saw me, and she gave me a talking-to.

Things are hard, Rafi, she said as we stood there on the hillside with the nighttime shadows gathering around us. The factory mills in Skarth run day and night, making cotton cloth that is far cheaper than the fine woolen cloth that we make here. If people don’t buy our cloth, the village will die.

I wasn’t sure what that had to do with the wolves in the sheep.

Listen, Old Shar said impatiently. You’re different from the rest of us, Rafi, and not just in your looks and your restlessness. Now there’s this spark in you, these flames. In good times that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but right now the entire village is frightened of how the world is changing. And when people are afraid, they lash out at whoever they can see to blame. She nodded at me. That’s you. You must try, Rafi, not to be so different.

I did try. But the spark is in me. I can’t put it out.

All the villagers, people I’ve known since I was a tiny baby, are staring at me, and muttering, and a few of them even look a little afraid of me.

All right, all right, Old Shar says sharply, and bangs her shepherd’s crook twice on the stone block. I will deal with Rafi. The rest of you, go home.

Grumbling, the