The Dragon Who Wouldn't Land

How it begins

The dragon's flight path was so old that people used it to tell the time. At nine, his shadow crossed the school. At noon, it passed the orchard. At four, the village shut its market awnings before the wind from his wings arrived.

Julia Hale had carried messages through storms, between warring towers and once to a woman who insisted she lived inside a rainbow. None had required seven years of waiting for the recipient to stop moving.

She tied the undelivered letter to her wrist and launched her courier kite from the western ridge. The dragon banked above her, vast and copper-gray, one wing trailing slightly lower than the other.

'Oran!'

He looked down. His face held the exhausted concentration of someone carrying a cup filled to the brim.

'Not now.'

'That's what you said last spring.'

'It remains inconvenient.'

Julia caught the rising air beneath his wing. Her kite climbed until the village became a pattern of roofs and white roads. Up close, she could see repaired tears along his membranes, each one sealed with something like glass.

'You have a letter.'

'Leave it at my house.'

'Your house is a tourist office now.'

For a moment his wingbeat faltered. Far below, the valley trembled. A line of dust rose from the old quarry.

Julia tightened her harness. 'What happens if you land?'

Oran's answer came slowly. 'Something wakes.'

'What?'

'I was told not to ask.'

The letter grew warm against her wrist. Its seal bore the village council's mark from seven years earlier, before the quarry reopened, before the new road and the prosperous market. She had been paid to deliver it yesterday.

Julia looked from the old seal to the fresh dust below.

'Who told you?' she asked.

Oran took another painful wingbeat. This time, he did not tell her to go away.