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‘One of the stone-dwarves,’ he began again, ‘claims that in the old days all dragons gave their riders one of their scales so that they would sense when they were in danger. A dragon rider had only to close his hand around the scale, and his dragon felt what he was feeling: joy, fear…’
‘… and as a result the dragons went around with great big gaps in their scales!’ growled Sorrel.
By this time she was fonder of Ben than she would admit to herself, but her first concern was always for Firedrake. After all, she had spent half her life with him before the boy came on the scene. Without anyone ever talking about giving scales away or similar stupid notions. And without all that never-ending flying from one end of the earth to the other. Brownies hate change. In Sorrel’s experience, however, there was nothing that human beings liked better. What made it all more of a nuisance was that her dragon had picked a human being as his best friend. Best friend after her, of course.
‘Sorrel’s right,’ said Ben (yes, he really was one of the good humans). ‘Getting rid of a scale really doesn’t sound great.’
But Firedrake was already plucking it off his breast.
‘It’ll grow back,’ he said, as Ben stared anxiously at the dark place left in his scaly coat.
‘Suppose it doesn’t?’ snapped Sorrel.
Behind them, Hothbrodd was blowing the horn that he had designed to look like the Vikings’ signal horns. It was a strange sound in the mountains of western India.
‘Coming!’ called Ben, as Firedrake let the scale drop into his hand.
It was almost as cool and round as a coin – and it reminded Ben of another scale: Nettlebrand’s golden scale, which had helped him to defeat the enemy of all dragons.
He closed his fingers around Firedrake’s gift. It might help with the longing he felt for his friend – who knew?
‘Can you sense anything?’ he asked the dragon.
‘The sorrow of saying goodbye,’ replied Firedrake. ‘But we neither of us need a scale to know about each other, do we? Use it any time you need help. Promise me! Now, Hothbrodd is really getting impatient!’
The troll was standing in front of his aircraft, waving to Ben with both arms.
Ben tucked the dragon’s scale into his jacket pocket, and put his arms around Firedrake’s neck one last time.
‘I wish I could give you something in return,’ he said in a husky voice. ‘But humans don’t have any scales, unfortunately.’
Then he turned around and ran towards Hothbrodd.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Trouble in MÍMAMEIÐR
It’s hard being left behind. […]
It’s hard to be the one who stays.
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
Guinevere was not the kind of girl who had always dreamed of riding a horse of her own. If your friends include grasselves and impets, and you’re used to nursing mermaids injured by ships’ propellers back to health in the bathtub, horses are not necessarily the most exciting living creatures in your world. Of course, Guinevere had met many fabulous members of the horse family. At the age of eight, she had ridden her first kelpie, and when she was ten she had saved three elf-horses from a swarm of wild wasps. Sea-foam horses, wind-mares, cloud-stallions – Guinevere knew them all. But none of those beings who galloped on hooves had ever enchanted her more than elves, impets or hedgehog-men. Until Ànemos came to MÍMAMEIÐR.
The task that Firedrake and Barnabas had given the Pegasus took his mind off his sorrows a little. He was to be found regularly on the banks of the fjord, settling quarrels between fossegrims and nymphs, or mustard-midgets and beavers. He met foxes, weasels and wolves on the borders of MÍMAMEIÐR, and asked them to go in search of some other hunting ground; he flew above caves, huts and houses at twilight with the mist-ravens to deter predatory birds who might have snatched an impet for a snack; and by scraping his hooves behind the stables he made water spring up from the earth that healed not only wounds, but weariness and homesickness. The new brook was soon attracting fabulous creatures both large and small. But the miracle-working water could do nothing to dispel the sadness that surrounded the Pegasus himself like a dark cloud.
Everyone in MÍMAMEIÐR knew that Ànemos almost never went into the stable where swans and geese were keeping his orphaned eggs warm. It was almost as if the Pegasus were trying to forget that they existed at all. Why set your heart on something that’s as good as lost already – was that the way he was thinking? Guinevere asked herself that question when she saw Ànemos, with his head sadly bent, standing in the meadows behind the stable where the shining shells of his unborn children lay.
The feathered inhabitants of MÍMAMEIÐR stood in line to warm the nest. On Undset’s instructions, Guinevere took the temperature of the eggs every hour, and she could soon report that (much to the annoyance of the swans) wild geese kept the nest warm best. She drew up a calendar with the days still to go until the eggs had to grow – and regretted it as soon as she hung the calendar on the stable door. Guinevere had left space to record every observation she made of the eggs. Unfortunately that showed, only too clearly, how little time there was left. Seven dates were still empty. Seven white squares filled only with the desperate hope that Ben and her father would be back in time with the feather of a griffin, and that feather would make not just gold or stone but also Pegasus eggs grow.
Guinevere had just been feeding the two geese sitting on the nest at present when Vita took her aside, and asked if she had seen Ànemos eating.
Guinevere could only shake her head. ‘The mist-ravens have tried making friends with him,’ she said. ‘But he keeps himself to himself, even when he’s flying on their rounds with them. He hardly says anything, and he isn’t eating or sleeping. I’m really worried.’
‘With good reason, I’m afraid,’ said her mother.
Guinevere had seldom seen Vita so depressed before. The death of the Pegasus mare had grieved her deeply; she shared the suffering of Ànemos, and hated herself for being able to offer him so little help.
