She laughed. “I can give you a list of people who don’t.”
“Then it’s a list of fools.”
She grinned at him again.
Together, they walked out of the greenhouse toward the dock. Overhead, the snow had stopped, and the sky was now a cloudless blue that made the fresh-fallen snow sparkle like diamonds. As they walked, she explained to the dragons where they were going and why, as well as what they hoped to find. She couldn’t be certain they understood her, but they didn’t disappear into the woods in search of all the sparkles they could find, so perhaps they did understand. Or maybe they just liked the ride.
A half mile from the greenhouse, after the last cottage but before the sorcerer’s tower, Yarrow veered off the road in between the pine trees. The snow had iced into a crust. Yarrow broke through it with each step, and Terlu followed behind, stretching her stride to fit into his footsteps. It was colder than the day before, and everything was coated in ice that sparkled piercingly bright in the sunlight. Unaffected by the cold, the dragons chirped happily from her shoulders and the top of her head. Birds called back at them, a medley of songs that sounded like an unpracticed orchestra.
Yarrow led them to the shore. “Careful.” He held out his hand so she could steady herself as she followed him down onto the beach.
The emerald dragon cooed in her ears.
The waves crashed onto the sand in foamy kisses, and she followed Yarrow along the shore to the entrance to the caves. It looked like a doorway into shadows, which she supposed that’s exactly what it was. There was no reason for the caves to be lit. She didn’t know why that should make them frightening. After all, she didn’t have any traumatic event from her childhood here, unlike Yarrow.
It’s just darkness,she told herself.And I’m not going into it alone. Neither is he.In case he needed to hear it out loud, she said, “You aren’t alone this time.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I am. It’s all dark and cave-like.”
He grinned. “Do you want to hold hands?”
“Always, but that’s unrelated.” She took his hand, and they walkedinto the shadows. He released her to light the lantern as the daylight diminished around them, and then he reached for her hand again, holding the lantern in his other hand. The dragons chirped as the lantern light spilled into the shadows. The red dragon flew from her head and circled the lantern.
“These caves are a maze,” Yarrow told the circling dragon, “and we’re looking for treasure in them. Do you want to help us? You can have all the honey you want.”
“We’re looking for shells.” Terlu picked up a stray shell from the bit of sand that had flowed into the cave. She’d explained this to them on the walk, but she repeated it now, hoping they understood. “Like this, but a lot of them and all different kinds. Bird shells, turtle shells, nutshells, and seashells.” She held out the honey butter again.
The red dragon grasped the pot in its tiny talons and then, with a squawk, flew into the darkness.
“Do we follow?” Yarrow asked.
She didn’t speak dragon. “I don’t know. Yes?”
He unwound the string and tied one end to a rock. “All right. Let’s do this.” They walked into the darkness. A few steps in, Terlu felt the dragon on her right shoulder lift off. It flew forward, its scales sparkling in the lantern light, and soon it disappeared.
They turned with the cave, and then the third dragon flew into the shadows.
Terlu missed the weight of them on her shoulders. She knew this was what she’d asked, but still… She squeezed Yarrow’s hand tighter. “You okay?”
“It’s different this time. Yes.”
“Good. I’ve never been in a cave before. And it seems that I’m not a fan of the dark, which isn’t something I realized until, well,now. After I was turned into a statue…” She stopped, swallowed, and then continued. “They put me in a closet for a while. Just left me there, while they made the pedestal in the North Reading Room. I was in with other storage items. Just a thing to be stored and forgotten. I thought I’d been forgotten. I think… I think I forgot myself for a while.” She hadn’t thought the cave would dredge up those memories. She’d prefer they stayed relegated to the back of her mind.
“I’m sorry you went through that.” His voice felt like an embrace.
She kept going. “When they brought me back out into the light, I woke up a little. I remember when they installed me in the North Reading Room. I remember…” Her voice shook. “I thanked them.Thankedthem. In my head. I couldn’t talk, of course. But I was grateful because of that little bit of kindness, because of the sunlight, because I wasn’t alone. I could watch people as they came to stare at me. I could listen as they told my story. Mangled it of course. Until I stopped listening. And eventually, they lost interest in me. I became a familiar decoration. They stopped seeing me as someone who had once been someone. I think… I think I can’t blame them, because Iwasa familiar decoration. For years.” Six years.
“Can I at least hate them for you? The ones who did it to you.”
“I did it to myself. I broke the law and was caught.”
“Your punishment exceeded the crime.”
“The judge didn’t think so.”
“I won’t let that happen to you again,” Yarrow said. The cave twisted, and they followed it, unspooling the thread behind them. She wondered where the dragons had flown. She couldn’t hear the flap of their wings or anything but the crunch of pebbles beneath her and Yarrow’s shoes.
