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“What was that you were singing before?”
“A song of Silverhigh, the ancient. They made such beautiful songs. I can only sing them when I’m alone.”
“Why?”
“You sound just like Auron! Mother said it was a wicked place full of foolish dragons.”
“But they made beautiful songs. Sing.”
She went on, and he found himself relaxing, joint by joint, claw by claw, lulled by the music. Then he was asleep.
He woke in glorious warmth. Jizara lay wrapped right around him, nose-tip to tail-point. But then she had an extraordinarily long neck.
A golden eye opened. She yawned. “You’re rather small. Almost like a new hatchling of my own,” she said. “You fell asleep, so I came over to your side.” She looked away. “Oh, Mother is stirring. I’d better get back. She gets angry when we wander while she sleeps.”
“When will you sing to me again?” he asked.
She retreated from the intensity of his words, jumping across the trickle. “I don’t know. A day? Another day after that?”
Why couldn’t she be more precise? Day had no real meaning in the Lower World. “I’ll wait for you.”
“And I’ll sing for you, brother. A-la, now.”
Her voice calling him brother settled in his head like a mother dragon on an egg perch.
He lurked about the base of the egg shelf too much, waiting for her to return, growing even hungrier. They met twice more, but one hardly counted, for Auron woke and the Copper had to run as soon as he saw him stretching his neck. After each meeting he hugged the moments to himself, played them in his mind so it seemed they’d never parted. They had played a game as they talked, trying to mirror their tail-tips, and he would go to his pool and play against himself, pretending the vague reflection was his sister.
Sister. Brother. Such lovely words to a lonely little dragon.
But the fourth time he saw her, she looked down into the water between them and wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’m not to sing to you anymore,” she said.
He was shocked into speechlessness. Everything appeared as usual at the other end of the egg shelf, Mother apparently asleep—
“You’re nameless. Outcast.”
He found his voice. “Zara, you are all I have.”
“She says that if I truly care for you, I’ll do this and you’ll go up out of the cave on your own and find more food and grow strong. Don’t you see how weak you are? You look positively hag-ridden. You’ve no chance at metals. Your scales are thin as an eyelid!”
A glubbing sound came out when he tried to reply.
“Mother says Auron is growing. He may kill you in an attempt to drive you out of the cave.”
“I hate being alone! I’d rather die.”
“Mother has a message for you.”
“She does?”
“She told me that you can overcome this. You’ve got a gift, in a way, a chance to establish your own line. A whole new family of dragons, all tracing their songs back to you! Not even Auron has that. Go, and maybe one day we’ll meet again in the Upper World.”
Chapter 4
He lingered in the cave, however, keeping to the edges, avoiding the others. Once or twice he ventured up the passage Father used on his hunting trips, but they smelled of old dragonblood, and he found broken pieces of scale.
He was tempted to try eating it for the metals it contained, but the smell disgusted him and he wondered what the sharp edges would do to his insides.
