Infinite

18 RINGING

YESTERDAY THE DRAGONS had come in the morning. If I wanted to attract their attention, I needed to time everything perfectly.

Preferably after they’d found something to eat.

I tightened my backpack straps and tucked my flute case into my coat. A pile of rubble made a sort of stair; I scrambled up the steep incline, careful of slick spots and snow. When I reached a gap with too many loose rocks, I stretched for a low-hanging branch and climbed a spruce tree until I reached another decent section of the wall.

It took forever, and sylph kept stopping me so they could dry my way, but at last I reached the top of the wall.

Snow made the sky misty gray, but from up here, I could see everything. Trees encroached on the prison, pushing through piles of weather-smoothed stone broken off the wall. I stood above them, the pines and spruces and maples, for a moment feeling like the tallest person in the world.

There was the cliff I’d found yesterday. It seemed awfully far away now, though it was probably only an hour’s walk. I’d had to take the long way around, coming down the mountain in the dark.

Sam and the others would be waking soon, if they weren’t already. I tried not to imagine their reaction to my letter.

Cold wind streaked across the wall, but sylph huddled around me, warming the air and absorbing the force of the wind to keep it from hitting so hard. The wall was plenty wide, but I couldn’t risk falling. There were a few holes here and there; this wall—and the tower inside—didn’t have Janan keeping it intact. The stone was ice cold and crumbling, with no heartbeat inside.

When I had a clear view of the frost-crusted forest, I drew my flute from its case and blew hot air into the mouthpiece to warm the metal. I wanted to remove the case and my backpack, since they were heavy and awkward, but I couldn’t risk losing them. It seemed like if I put them down, they’d be gone. The sylph weren’t corporeal; they were useless for carrying things.

I hadn’t heard dragon thunder yet, but the gray clouds spat snow. A dragon could be hiding up there, easily.

My heart thudded against my ribs. What if they didn’t come? What if they did?

“I don’t know, Cris.” My voice shook as I lifted my flute. “This is seeming too big again.”

Cris hummed comfortingly, and shadows touched my hands, my cheeks.

Sylph formed a horseshoe around me, leaving everything ahead of me visible. I needed to be able to see and listen.

Wing beats cracked in the east, and I shivered.

Clouds rippled with serpentine bodies pushing closer. I breathed hot air into my flute, keeping the metal warm, getting my lungs used to the effort. I wouldn’t have time to warm up like normal. Not unless dragons were impressed by scales and rhythm exercises.

I knelt and held as still as I could, waiting as the dragon thunder grew closer. Talons scraped the bottoms of clouds, shredding the vapor into ribbons. Immense wings scooped air, swirling snow in flurries across the sky.

A trio of dragons swept toward the forest, silent as they slithered over white treetops. Only the wind of their passing and the occasional clap of their wings gave auditory evidence of their presence.

From my perch, surrounded by sylph whose chief desire was to protect me, I could almost appreciate the beauty of these dragons. Sam once told me that the first time they’d seen dragons, everyone had stopped what they were doing and looked up. They’d been entranced.

Until the attack came.

I waited, heart pounding in my ears. What if they hated music? What if that was why they always attacked Sam?

Part of me wished he were here, because even though we’d been fighting, the way I missed him was an ache in my soul.

But most of me was glad I’d come alone, because I needed to prove to everyone—myself included—that I was right and I could do this on my own, and because I couldn’t put Sam in this kind of danger. I almost had. It had nearly broken him.

“I can do this,” I whispered as a dragon swooped into the forest. Trees splintered as it surged through, a streak of gold in snow-covered evergreens. The dragon came up with what looked like a small bear, and then swallowed it whole. The other two dragons dove into the same area, each emerging with another bear. They didn’t even have a chance to roar before the dragons tossed them up and caught them, as though playing or showing off.

Was that it? Was that all they would eat? Dragons were huge. Surely they needed more. But they began moving eastward again, toward other hunting ground or home, I couldn’t be sure. I needed to start now.

As I stood, sylph coiled around me, so hot that sweat trickled down my spine.

“I can do this.” My breath wafted over the flute mouthpiece, making small hissing sounds. Sylph fluttered and began a deep, resonant hum. A chord, as though they were my accompaniment.

A high-pitched, terrified giggle escaped me. Then I set my mouth, pulled in a breath, and began to play.

Four notes. One, two, three climbing lower. Four jumped above, long and high and bittersweet. The first notes I’d ever played on a piano. The notes that began my waltz.

As one, the dragons veered off their course, turning back. Thunder cracked as they flapped their wings, but they made no other sound, gave no indication how they’d communicated.

Instincts urged me to run, hide. My backpack weighed me down, making my shoulders ache as I tried to hold my flute up at a right angle; Sam always made fun of the way I let my flute sag, reminding me I’d get a better sound if I held it up.

I moved away from playing the waltz, choosing something simpler instead: my minuet. It was the first thing I’d ever composed, a haunting little melody of my fears.

Music poured from my flute like silver silk, and the shadows around me caught on quickly, adjusting their voices to become the bass and countermelody. They lifted my flute’s sound high above the treetops, carrying it eastward. My shadow orchestra. They listened to me, watched how I moved and where I sped and slowed, adjusting their songs to mine.

Thunder cracked again as the dragons grew nearer. Their wings seemed to dominate the sky, blocking the mountains and forest as they glided toward me. Their eyes were huge and bright and blue, and suddenly I felt very, very small. Like prey. Soon they would be upon me, able to gulp me down like one of those bears, or that deer yesterday.

When the minuet came to an end, I didn’t stop playing. I repeated it, and the sylph continued their songs, though now they stretched out around me, wide and tall and just as terrifying as they’d been the night of my eighteenth birthday. As we spiraled through the music again, the sylph’s voices grew louder, more intense.

Heavy wind pushed from the dragon wings. One of the sylph cut in front of me, absorbing most of the chill and rush, though my face ached with sudden cold and my flute’s sound seemed sucked back into it for a breath.

The lead dragon opened its jaws wide, revealing four long fangs and a row of teeth, still wet with blood and matted brown fur. The stink of raw meat rolled across the wall, nearly choking me as I gasped for another breath to finish my minuet.

As I hit the last note again, the lead dragon reached me, its mouth wide open—

The sylph raised themselves in front of me, a wall of shadows burning phoenix-hot. Heat blasted my face, dry and ashy, and the dragon snatched itself away from me at the last second. It had been so close I could have touched its face. Only the stubborn need to appear strong kept me from staggering backward, away from the dragon and sylph.

Dragons roared in frustration, so loud and close my ears ached.

They wheeled around and snapped several more times, but the sylph continued to thwart them. Dark flames writhed around me, singing, blocking the worst of the wind from smothering me. They darted out to burn the dragons any time they approached too close.

“Dragons!” I shouted. “Can you understand me?”

I felt very foolish standing there, flute clutched to my chest, backpack weighing me down. My head throbbed with the rush of wind and noise, and blood and adrenaline racing through me. My whole body shook with fear and cold, but I held my ground.

One of the dragons spit a gob of acid. I started to run, but a sylph stretched up and the green fluid fizzled away, burning up like snow.

“Dragons!” I called again, trying desperately to ignore the volleys of acid they spit at me, and a sudden sharp ringing in my ears, from both the noise and the pressure headache building up. “Hey, acid breath!”

One of the sylph twitched like laughter as it burned away another glob of acid.

“Your scales are dull and your wings look like a moth-eaten blanket!”

The shrill ring in my ears stabbed so hard I almost doubled over, but I forced myself upright. All the research I’d ever seen on dragons indicated they respected power. If I fell over, I’d look weak. Like prey. I had to prove I wasn’t.

“Your tails are stubby and your teeth are half-rotted. I’ve seen tadpoles scarier than you!”

Dragons swarmed around me, snapping and spitting, roaring as sylph foiled every attack.

I scooped up a fist-sized rock and hurled it at the nearest dragon as hard as I could. It dropped into the trees. “See this rock?” I threw another one, which followed a similar path. “This rock flies better than you!”

My aim was off. Way off. The ringing in my head made me sway, made my vision snap and sparkle around the edges. I staggered as I reached for another rock to lob at them, and now that I thought about it, if I was trying to make friends with the dragons, maybe I shouldn’t throw rocks. I didn’t like it when people threw rocks at me.

The roar and whine of dragons and sylph collided in my ears. My head felt filled with smoke, and the noxious fumes of burning acid poured inside me like poison.

My flute dripped from my fingers, just a silver smear in my vision. I stumbled as the cacophony of sylph and dragons faded, leaving only the shrill ring in my thoughts.

Lightning flared in my head, and the ringing coalesced into a voice.