PleasantB

There are three things you learn when you grow up here. If you’re lost, follow the water; if you’re cold, make a bed; and if you’re frightened, hide.

These are rules for worst-case scenarios, and they don’t usually happen anymore, now that we’ve got dragons like Cruach and Maliberte and Kyankith around, to spot and deflect danger before it can fall on us. But the best way to avoid disaster, B always says, is to teach hatchlings to take care of themselves. So we learn: get yourself to a place where search parties can find you, keep yourself insulated and dry, and stay out of the way of things that might harm you.

I had hoped to interview B about the beginnings of the clan, after the stories she tells hatchlings about clearing the valley and digging the first dens but before the leadership of the clan was really structured, but the day held other plans. I arrived at the nesting ground to find Vayne shepherding a gaggle of littlings of mixed ages, while B, Goss, and Tau murmured together.

“One of the kids has wandered off,” Goss explained in an undertone. “Still want to spend the morning in the nesting grounds?”

I agreed, of course, and shadowed B as the little search party spread out and began sweeping the area. The open space under the hemlocks was easily checked, and then we moved into the undergrowth away from the base of the cliff. Everyone quieted down as we focused on checking under each fern, log, and shrub; I was also trying to watch B as she moved confidently along, often leaving me behind as she methodically glanced around herself.

“Do you think he’ll be by the river?” I asked.

“If he’s remembered his lessons.”

As it turned out, our missing littling was not by the river. B spotted him crouching in the crook of a branch halfway up a shaggy maple snag, and she stayed to speak calmingly to the terrified hatchling while I ran to get Tau, who lifted him down. The baby tundra cried a little until B shushed him, in between having a word with Goss. “Can you find Maliberte when he gets back from his patrol and get him to take that snag down?” she said. “It’s not so steady anymore, right, Tau?”

Tau reared up to put a big paw on the snag and made it wobble back and forth. Beard-shaped lichen and licorice ferns swayed from its branches, and the ground around it humped and dipped as the root ball shifted. I stepped back.

“It was good for hiding,” the littling snuffled from his place in B’s chest fur. She turned her attention to him and he explained, “I got scared.”

“And you found a very clever hiding place,” B told him, and hauled him up onto her shoulders for a ride back to the nesting ground proper. She talked to him about why old snags might not be safe until he was eagerly pointing out dead branches, practically leaping from her back to show her every dead twig. By the time we got back, his scare had become an adventure to relate to his siblings.

“B,” I said when the searchers had gone back to their usual jobs, and the hatchlings had fallen into a fluffy pile for a nap. “Why do you always babysit the hatchlings instead of doing something else?” Which isn’t entirely fair, because B does do other things, but she always refers to herself as head of the nesting grounds rather than anything else.

She glanced over at the sleeping babies, and then gave me a look and went a little way away, to a hollow beneath one of the hemlocks with a clear line of sight to the nests. We lay down together on the well-worn moss to talk.

“Clan leaders have to do something useful,” B told me. “You can’t let your leaders flap loose around the place, or else we get fussy and anxious.”

“Alright, but seriously.”

“I’m completely serious.” Goss would have been grinning, but B always looks like she’s gazing gently and compassionately into the innermost depths your soul. “I’ve met other clan leaders who acted like they were more important than everyone else, or like they had to be battle generals in all their dealings, and I decided that I didn’t want to be like that.”

I felt my ears perk up. “You’ve met other clan leaders?”

“Of course.”

I’ve never met other clan leaders. I’ve never met other clans. I’d known they existed, because Azurelle teaches us about the flights and the world, and besides without other clans we wouldn’t have dragons like Maliberte or Tephra, who came from the outside the Tangled Wood to live here, but that’s different.

“Where?” I asked.

“A few places,” she said. “I had to travel a bit before I found the valley.”

I remembered that I was supposed to be taking notes and scrambled for my notebook. The cloud cover shifted overhead as I scribbled, making the soft ambient light in the nesting grounds grow brighter momentarily.

“B,” I asked when I had caught up, “why don’t we talk to other clans?”

Wind stirred the treetops and the moving clouds made the valley darken again to its usual half-light. I looked up from my page after a few moments of silence. B was looking off towards the littlings, but not as if she was really watching them. Her nostrils were working as she breathed in the light breeze that was all that filtered down to us from the wind above.

“Sometimes,” she said before I could ask if she had heard me, “other dragons can present as much danger as any of the beastclans.”

She got up and went over to the nest full of hatchlings, plucking and rearranging the soft dried mosses that lined the old hollow stump. The littlings began to stir and give little noises of complaint as the founder of our clan shuffled gently around them.

B’s body language was that she didn’t want to talk about it, so I’ve decided just to put down our conversation the way it was. B was the first dragon here, and she’s faced a lot more of the local hazards than practically anyone else, so if she says hide, we’ll hide.