Dillinard and the Calamity

The Forest of Avenvi was Dillinard’s least favorite place to forage in late autumn. Its canopy was sparse, and its bushes and shrubs were already naked. He felt vulnerable with so little coverage, and he suspected she did, too. A quilt of browning red and yellow leaves blanketed the forest floor, and the dampness of the morning mist made scavenging for mushrooms difficult. But he needed at least a bag’s worth to prove the trip was worth the effort. He had raved too much last winter about Avenvi’s variety of mushrooms and suspected such praise was the only reason Kundra had brought him to hunt for more, though she would never admitted to doing something for his sake. Dillinard couldn’t eat the food she brought him from the villages she raided, as it was either too burnt - or too human - for his tastes. Rather than hear him whine in hunger or see him whither away in starvation, Kundra would take him to secluded sections of forests she deemed hers and let him scavenge what he could. He liked to feel grateful, but that morning all he felt was apprehension.

The forest had strange bouts of quietness. The birdsong would cease mid-note, and the beetles buzzing emphatically in their hidden nests would suddenly fall silent. Usually Dillinard would attribute such silence to Kundra’s presence, but his dragon mistress walked nearly fifty yards behind him in a cloak of shimmering blue, monitoring him in a human shell rather than her true form. Something else was keeping the creatures of Avenvi on alert, and Dillinard tied the strings of his hood closer around his face, taking it as a bad sign.

While harvesting oyster mushrooms at the base of a tree on his hands and knees, Dillinard glimpsed a murder of crows flying overhead. He followed them with his eyes and saw one land on a tree branch near Kundra. It cawed at her once then flew off, leading her gaze westward.

“Boy,” she said. Her voice cut across the wet ground like a dry blade, and Dillinard dutifully scurried to his feet. Kundra walked west, maneuvering around dark gray boulders and stepping over fallen branches with the slow reptilian grace of her true form. He ran to close the distance between them, but she raised a scaly blue hand with sharp silver nails, signaling him to stay back. The crow that had called to her perched on a rotted stump a few paces ahead. The forest was quiet again as Kundra circled the stump. She stopped when it stood between her and Dillinard, her ash gray eyes staring at something he couldn’t see.

“What is it?” Dillinard asked. He recognized the crow as Unandis and wistfully hoped the bird had brought them to a choice mushroom for him. Dillinard often got on well with his mistress’ spies.

Unandis cawed, and Kundra’s thin lips curved in a smile as if she’d heard Dillinard’s hope. “This is more for me than it is for you, boy.” She looked north. “There’s a village nearby. Yenetyl, it’s called. Was called. I razed it after its men found my northern caves and gifted me my scar.” Kundra’s hand lightly grazed her cloaked midriff. Hidden beneath was a ghastly mark on her underbelly she earned some three hundred years ago as a young dragon. When I foolishly believed mankind was decent, she would tell him ruefully. Fortunately age brings most creatures wisdom.

“I avoid Yenetyl these days, and its people make a point to avoid me. And yet...here we are.”

With caution, Dillinard approached her side. An orange blanket was heaped at the base of the stump like an offering before a gravemarker. Unandis cawed and flew off, and Dillinard himself almost squawked to see a round little face framed by the pale cloth. “Oh.”

“'Oh' indeed, boy.”

“It’s a child. How did it get all the way out here?” He started to crouch down, but Kundra smacked his hand with what felt like a whip. Her slender blue tail swished behind her as it retracted into her cloak. He sucked the sting from the back of his hand.

“Unandis says they’re still burning their dead.” Kundra landed a weighted look on Dillinard, and his insides clenched. People only burned bodies in times of plague or war, and there was no current war that Dillinard knew about.

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed,” she whispered, soft as smoke on the wind.

“Will you leave it then?” he asked just as she started to turn.

“Would you see me poisoned by plague meat?”

He fought a smile. When she'd found him on the outskirts of his own village some ten years ago, he convinced her not to eat him by warning her he might be infected, as his parents and siblings had been. Rather than leave him alone, she took him to her eastern caves, tossed him in its pit and paid him three visits to see if he had died or developed plague sores. By the time she realized she could eat him, he had persuaded her not to, offering to give his life in service rather than in nourishment. He believed he could save this child with similar wit. Similar tricks.

“I wouldn’t see you poisoned, but neither would I see you cursed.”

The brow of Kundra’s human face lifted in amusement. “Cursed?”

“I don’t know much of Yenetyl, but a human child left in the woods is only abandoned for reasons related to death. They’re either dying, condemned to die, or Death Itself.”

Kundra’s slender, blue lips frowned. “Your games used to be better, Dillinard.”

Her use of his name encouraged him. “You know better than most the grievances of evading Death, Mistress. The men of Yenetyl nearly killed you, but you escaped Death then and have been cursed by It with annoying humans like me ever since.”

“Such annoyances are easily rectified, boy.” Steam slipped from her nostrils, and her silvery eyes pulsed with blue flame for but a second. Her lips curved into a smile, erasing her threat of roasting him as quickly as she hinted at it.

“Make amends with Death, the master of us all, by seeing to this child.”

“Seeing to it how? Eating it and dying of infection? Returning it to its village and inviting those people to attack me? Funny how these amends of which you speak lead to my demise.”

“No!” Dillinard laughed. “The babe’s face is sore-less, so its not dying of plague. And its village left it here. It’s clearly been abandoned but you found it, so it can’t be condemned to die anymore, meaning it can only be Death Itself.”

Kundra was frowning again, tolerating him at best. He sighed and looked at the sleeping child. “Do Death a favor, Mistress. Let us see the child from these woods. We could take it elsewhere, a different village--”

Kundra’s tail whipped at him again, catching him by the neck and yanking him to the ground. The wet leaves barely cushioned his fall as her dragon form stood over him, dwarfing him. Her long neck rose and fell until her snout hovered above his face. Her sharp white teeth glowed blue with the firelight tickling the back of her throat.

“Ungrateful boy,” she whispered, quieter than the wind, quieter than the grave. He felt her voice on the inside of his skull and winced. “Again you speak of ‘different villages.’ Am I to take you to your mother’s family after all, to be ruined like the rest of your kind?”

For the hundredth time, Dillinard wished he hadn’t told Kundra of his mother’s family, of his destination that day she found him fleeing his home. He wasn’t wholly alone in the world, not yet. Somewhere lived an aunt and uncle, a cousin or two. At least he hoped they still lived and that their village survived. He had no way of knowing.

Dillinard brought his hand to the side of his face, willing it steady as he bore his palm to her. “Mistress, look.” He waved his hand, urging her to see it. “I have a scar, too, remember? A blood oath to serve until my dying day. We can take that child to any village and even if it’s miraculously the one of my kin, I’ll still leave with you because you saved me. Not them. I haven’t forgotten. I’ll never forget.”

Kundra’s lips closed over her teeth. Her neck recoiled, and her large talons became sharp-clawed human hands again as she stood up straight. Black and silver hair covered her shoulders as she lifted the hood of her blue cloak.

“Please, Mistress. Let’s avoid further curses and see Death away from this forest.” He looked at the bundled child that was now awake and regarding them with large, green eyes. Kundra did not see the child. She looked only at him, her face terrible. It made his stomach clench again, but not in fear. It twisted in something like guilt.

“That child is not Death,” she said. “But betray me, boy, and I will see that you know It.”

~~

Kundra left him to finish his foraging, but in her absence Dillinard set to examining the child, lest he be a liar. He lifted his tattered scarf over his nose and pulled the orange blanket from the child’s head. He was greeted by a mess of black hair. It was a girl. Her clothes were little more than a burlap sack, and her pale arms were barely thicker than the fallen twigs around them, but she could walk and stick out her tongue and tug on his ratty hair after he touched hers. He had teasingly linked her to death but she seemed full of spirit, and he couldn’t fathom why anyone would abandon her.

Some would rather leave their loves in the woods than witness their demise, his mother said once. They’d watched their neighbor venture into the forest with his children only to return alone. By that point, half the families in their village had sent someone away in the plague cart. It wasn’t right, but which was a kinder fate? No wonder Kundra called humans hopeless.

Seeing no sores, Dillinard pulled down her bottom lip and saw a health row of baby teeth. She couldn’t have seen more than three winters. “Right then,” he said. “Do you talk?”

The girl only stared, and he wondered what language they spoke in Yenetyl. He was certain they were somewhere around his own people, but he wouldn’t be surprised to learn they were leagues away. Kundra’s domain stretched from snow-topped mountains in the north to sandy dunes along the southern sea.

He touched his hand to his own grungy shirt and said, “Dill. Her…” He pointed in the direction Kundra had walked. “Kundra. Dragon. Arr...” He bared his teeth and raised two fingers like talons in a poor impersonation of his mistress. The girl responded with a blink. He sighed and scooped her into his arms, then he half-heartedly continued his foraging.

When the sun nearly reached the top of the sky and his bag was three-quarters full, Kundra returned to him and said there was a village a short distance away.

“We will leave your child there, and Death may do as It pleases.”

By that point, Dillinard had torn the blanket and fashioned it into a hooded robe for the girl. Kundra stared at the child for a moment, the shape of her human eyes quizzical.

“What is that?” Kundra pointed a curled silver nail at the girl’s chest. Beneath her burlap dress, Dillinard had discovered a necklace - nothing more than a black cord threaded through a chiseled piece of animal bone.

“Family trinket, I suppose. Why? Want it for your hoard?”

Kundra moved her eyes to him, unamused. Unandis cawed again, and Kundra said, “The way is clear. We take the to sky.”

She slid into her true form like water slipping over the edge of a cliff. The girl gasped a little, leaning against Dillinard’s leg. Kundra moved her long neck down to see directly into the child’s face. Before he could stop her, the girl reached out and stuck a tiny hand in one of Kundra’s nostril. His mistress snorted and shook her head free, blinking and sneezing a burst of blue fire. She bared her teeth in reflex but still when the girl began to applaud. She shook her small fists and jumped about, puckering her lips as she puffed out pretend fire. Dillinard stared at her, horrified.

“Does it mock me?” Kundra asked, her voice as tight as a bow string. The girl began to hiss at the dragon, clapping and jumping.

“I don’t think she’s mocking you, Mistress. I think she wants you to do it again.”

“The next fire I spit will be to roast her.”

The girl stopped jumping and stepped back to Dillinard’s side. She held his leg and stuck her thumb in her mouth, her green eyes hard as she evidently understood Kundra’s threat.

The dragon sneered, “Death remains a menace,” and lowered her torso. Biting back a smile, Dillinard picked up the girl and climbed onto Kundra’s back. He gripped Kundra's neck, and the girl clutched him rather than his mistress. He usually had a better hold on her scales, but with the girl between them, he relied on the muscles in his legs.

“Hold tight,” he told the girl. In the next breath, the naked branches swiped at his face as Kundra swept up through the trees. Her silver wings expanded above the canopy, their blue boning glittering in the sun. She climbed higher and the girl screamed, but it wasn’t in terror like Dillinard had done his first flight. The girl screamed and wiggled in absolute. He yelled at her to keep steady, and Kundra, likely thinking he dared to command her, soared higher, breaking above the thin clouds and making the girl scream louder. The screams turned to giggles, and Dillinard could only imagine how Kundra would respond to the girl’s reaction once they landed.

Kundra eventually dipped beneath the cloud cover and revealed yellow farmlands. Half were barren and half were ready for harvest. A cluster of cottages appeared next, and as they flew closer Dillinard felt dread. A large pile sat smoldering in what looked like the center of the village. Kundra flew past it then circled back, landing behind the outermost cottages. She immediately took to human form but looked at Dillinard. Understanding, he held out his hand. She took it and changed shape again, the whole of her becoming no larger than his finger-span as her lizard form stretched out in his palm then scurried up his sleeve. She settled at his neck, shielded by his hood. He took the girl’s hand and they started into the village.

Like the Avenvi forest, it was too quiet. The only sound to break the silence came from Unandis. He cawed, finally having caught up to them.

“This village is called Ponnast,” Kundra said at his ear. She leaned against his neck, her claws gently gripping his shoulder as they walked the empty street. “Long ago, its founder beseeched me for protection. Their offerings fill much of my eastern hoard. But where most creatures grow wise, people grow foolish.”

“So now you see fit to gift them Death?” The girl carried no plague from what he could tell, but superstitious folk would surely think her a bad omen. He suspected Kundra did.

“She might find the people of Ponnast lacking,” Kundra said. The girl looked up at them, and he felt Kundra return her gaze. “Raise you scarf, boy.”

He did as commanded just as they reached the center of the village. The girl stopped a few paces behind, and Dillinard considered the smoldering pile that stood to greet them. It was nearly the size of a small shop, charred and smoking. Unandis cawed again, and Kundra’s forked tongue tickled Dillinard’s face. “Turn back,” she hissed. “Now!”

But Dillinard had already seen too much of the pile. He could make out the blackened bones of all sizes, the skulls, the frames of beds and buckets that had likely been infected with sick. His own village had burned everything the infected ever touched to purge away the plague. It’s why he had to run away from it.

He vaguely felt Kundra slithering down his arm, saw her suddenly at his side in her true form, her large head pushing him towards the girl. Kundra’s eyes were huge as they took him in, and the worry in them - he was certain it was worry - pulled him from his past.

“Take Death and go,” she whispered hotly. “To the fields! Now! Make yourself of use and harvest what you find, lest you wish to starve! Go!”

Dillinard swung the girl into his arms and ran. Kundra snapped another command, and within a blink Unandis was sweeping down ahead of him. The crow’s glossy black feathers guided them toward the fields they’d seen, but then Dillinard heard an infernal screech and nearly turned around. Unandis cawed at him to keep on, but Dillinard ignored the bird. He set the girl down and ran at a house’s roof ladder. He scurried up the rungs as Kundra released another screeching roar, then he saw the pile in the village’s center engulfed in blue flame.

Kundra the Calamity battled another dragon once, when Dillinard was about ten years or so. Rya of the Red Waste. She was the only dragon he ever saw Kundra fight, as she was the only one foolish enough to challenge Kundra, or so his mistress said. Dillinard remembered being so scared that Kundra might die. Rya was larger, younger, brazen, and spouted red flames that had turned marshlands into lava pits. Before the battle, Kundra smiled at his tears and said, “Silly boy. Don’t you know blue is the hottest part of any flame?” Then she burned through Rya’s bright red scales with a conflagration of blues as fair as a summer sky and as dark as the ocean depths. Other dragons later called Kundra’s handling of Rya excessive, but his mistress dismissed their criticisms, saying, “If she did not want the full of my wrath, she shouldn’t have frightened my boy.”

That was the same wrath she unleashed upon the bone pile in Ponnast, her flames reducing it to black dust that blew away on the next wind.

~~

No villagers had been spared Ponnast’s the burn pile, which meant someone else had lit it. No dragon would dare raze a village in Kundra’s territory, let alone attack one.

“That was the king’s work,” Kundra said after landing at the mouth of her western caves. She sat in her human form, her clawed hand resting meaningful on her right thigh. Dillinard knew she’d made enemies of individual villages, but her real villain was the kingdom that occupied half her domain and sent agents to hunt her throughout the centuries. Dillinard set the girl down and crouched before Kundra’s rock. They were in a forest miles from Avenvi, but the quietness had followed them.

Dillinard said, “It’s best to lay low if the king’s men are on the move.”

Kundra turned her silver eyes on him, the blue tint of her skin gleaming a soft lavender in the evening light. She had taken him to forage for his winter stores but hadn’t done much of her own hunting yet. There were only two men in the cave’s pit to get her through the dark season, but if she timed her sleeps right, their charred remains might suffice. Unandis could provide the rest and hopefully provide a little extra for Dillinard, too, now that he had the girl to feed.

“It isn’t prudent to see her to another village,” Kundra acknowledged, “but if she’s too much a burden for you, I will remove her.”

“Now now, Mistress. It’s bad luck to dismiss Death so casually.”

“I mean it, boy. I’ll not wake to find you starved. I have fear enough I’ll wake to find you a man, or run off.”

He laughed even though he knew she was serious, even though she’d said since his first winter with her that she’d burn every village in search of him until the continent was nothing but ash. “I won’t run off, Mistress. I’d never steal your blessing from you.”

“Blessing?” Her brow lifted in suspicion then peaked with clarity as he fetched the girl.

“For making amends with Death. Come spring, we’ll see she finds a proper home.”

~~

Winter was hard but not without amusements. For the first time in ten years, Dillinard had company beyond Unandis’ occasional visits. The girl, who would not share her true name and was therefore decidedly called ‘Death,’ trotted about the caverns with no fear. He lost her several times those first weeks, but she never seemed to think herself in danger. The caves were illuminated by oils Kundra lit with blue fire. They stayed lit until she willed them to burn out, which she never did during her longs sleeps so that Dillinard was never left in darkness. Dillinard slept in the cavern that housed Kundra’s western hoard. He often lost Death in the mountains of weapons, gemstones, and gold and silver trinkets, but she always pattered her way back to his cot to show him her latest find. She favored emeralds that matched her eyes, and called him, “Dill!” in a squeaky voice that reminded him of his sister from years ago. He loved and hated that, but mostly he loved it.

For food, he gave her milk made from various nuts and cooked mushrooms with herbs and sprouts. He’d grown accustomed to this wintry diet, but Death was dissatisfied. Thrice, she chased rats down a darkened tunnel, emerging only when she held a dead one’s neck in her fist. Once after she did this, she shouted, “Dragon!” and he understood the hint.

Kundra’s weeks-long sleeps were timed with the three full moons of winter. She ate Death’s rat offering during the first moon, the remnants of one prisoner during the second moon, and the last prisoner was devoured over the course of the third. Dillinard knew it wasn’t enough. She usually ate twice as much but his mistress said nothing, turning her attention instead to his food stores. He was happy to report he was doing quite well. Unandis’ murder left berries at the cave entrance every few days, and the girl was content to eat rats if he cooked them right.

“Rats can carry plague,” Kundra reminded during the second full moon. She sat in his lap in lizard form to reserve strength. He kept silent on the point that she had eaten a rat herself few weeks ago.

“Perhaps the plague avoids us. We thought Death might have it. We’re still alive.”

She chuckled on his thigh. “Death comes for us all, boy.”

Her sleeps were more fitfull that season. Kundra always began them as a lizard but more than once she bolted upright in human form, clutching her side where the Yenetyl villagers scarred her. Another time she coughed herself awake, choking on a nightmare of one of her caves flooding with dam water. Dillinard would race to her bed on the upper ledge of the hoard cavern, and soothe her with words his mother had used to soothe him. One night after Kundra’s fourth nightmare, Dillinard heard a strange ‘ch-ch-ch’ sound drifting through the cavern. To his surprise, he found Death curled comfortably around Kundra’s lizard shape, lightly stroking the scaly skin between her eyes and smoothing away her restlessness before she even startled awake.

Spring arrived with a thunderstorm. Dillinard sat in the shelter of the cave’s entrance, watching Death twirl in the rain with each flash of lightning and clap of thunder. Soon Kundra would wake and fly her off to some village that may or may not house Dillinard’s kin. Soon Death would continue on for a second chance with humanity, a chance he’d forfeited in childhood with a blood oath made to a mighty dragon. He wasn’t certain he envied Death’s future, but he did envy her freedom and already missed her company.

When the rain began to weaken, the crows arrived. They dropped berries at Death’s feet and she plucked them up with her teeth, her arms folded back like wings. Dillinard laughed and said, “You’re much like my sister,” though she was too focused to hear him.

Kundra heard though. The dragon suddenly beside him, likely having approached in lizard form. She stretched out now, her snout resting at his leg, her tail sweeping the cave floor. “It has been years since you’ve spoken of sister, boy.” Her forked tongue trilled between her teeth. “Why?”

Dillinard licked his lips, believing it was obvious. “Speaking of my family makes you cross. I don’t like angering you.”

“You still fear my temper after all this time? You’re no longer a child.”

“It’s not about fear. Why should I want to make you angry? You’ve only ever protected me, aside from that time you almost ate me in your pit.”

Kundra expelled a puff of smoke. “Come, silly boy. It’s time to see her where she needs to be.” She moved outside, and Death leapt onto her front leg in an attempted embrace. Unandis cawed, and Death scurried up to Kundra’s back like a squirrel climbing a tree. He moved to join her, but not before asking Kundra if it was wise to carry two so soon after the long sleeps.

“You’re not my keeper,” she snapped. “Get on.”

He blinked at her shortness then climbed on her back. He sheltered Death from the last raindrops as Kundra twisted into the sky like a blue corkscrew.

The air warmed as they journeyed south. The tops of the trees were knobbed with unbroken buds. In another week they’d be green and as lively as the village Kundra flew towards. Dillinard heard the people before he saw them, the rattling of their wagons, the calls of camaraderie, the giggles of children. It was almost eerie in its contrast to Ponnast.

Kundra took human form in the bordering woods. The warm air had left mist on the forest floor, and she walked to the treeline, her hood raised and her back to him. “Unandis says the plague was eradicated here years ago.”

“But we’ll give it Death again, eh?” He winked down at the girl. She swung her hand in his, and Kundra settled a weighted gaze on his face.

“She is a witch’s child.”

Dillinard stifled a laugh. “What?”

“Her necklace. It’s a rune of a northland tribe, the same group that aided me in my shapeshifting arts nearly two centuries ago.”

Unsure if she joked, Dillinard said again, softer, “What?”

“Unandis didn’t properly explain what he saw that day. Yenetyl burns its dead…and its witches.” Dillinard looked down at Death. She blinked up at him as Kundra said what he was beginning to think. “‘A child is only abandoned for reasons tied to Death,’ but this girl was not abandoned. She was saved, Dillinard. By her mother, then by you.”

There was a strange tremor in Kundra’s voice, and he saw the tremor had also touched her lips and her eyes. His breathing turned shallow. “What are you saying, Mistress?”

“That curse you teased about breaking or avoiding - The amends you wanted, they have been made. But not for me. For you.” She lifted a clawed finger towards the village. “Ieryni.”

Dillinard leaned into the nearest tree hearing the name, hearing his mother’s voice repeat it a dozen times. Your aunt, Dill. Go to your aunt’s in Ieryni. His blood felt cold as he tried to figure what exactly Kundra was doing, what awful trick she wished to play by bringing a girl nicknamed Death to the only place he might still have kin--

“The girl is for the northlands, Dillinard. You are for Ieryni.”

He slid down the tree’s slender trunk as he tried to reconcile that. Death reached for Kundra’s hand with blind accuracy, and he felt his insides constrict. “You’re absolving my oath?”

“No,” Kundra whispered, suddenly in front of him. One hand still held Death’s while the other rested on his tattered shirt. “A blood oath you made, and a blood oath you keep, even from afar. I was certain I’d eat you your 15th year, you know. Anything to stop you becoming like them. But you must be given the choice to live as they do, to harm like they do. How else can you prove your difference?” She brought her scaly hand to his face and cupped his cheek with her fire-warmed palm. “Do not betray us, Dillinard.”

Death put a small hand on his shoulder then tugged at Kundra’s arm. Dillinard tried to hold onto her, but his mistress shook herself free. “Don’t leave me, Kundra!” The fear of being alone battered any thrill of finding lost kin. “You’ve had me since I was seven! I don’t know their ways anymore! Please!”

“No boy of mine is to beg,” Kundra whispered, the edge in her voice staving off disobedience. She picked up the girl and walked into the trees, deeper into the thickening mist.

“Mistress, wait!” Dillinard called after them, desperate and trying to follow. “What if they’re dead?! What if you’re leaving me on my own?!”

“No boy of mine is ever on his own.” He turned but saw no one. Kundra’s voice was all around, in his head. He closed his eyes and saw her silver ones pulsing with blue fire. “I must bear Death away from this place. We have other appointments to keep.” Her heard Kundra’s laugh like smoke on the breeze. “Find your family alive or don’t, boy. Either way, you will be. Alive.”