Dreamcatcher | ONC 2020 Honourable Mention | ✔

Chapter Nine

Rav's hands trembled as he braced himself on the ship's railing. The rope ladder tumbled away below. The island hung regally in the sky like an airship itself. Maybe the captain planned to send the samples he collected to a museum, which could pressure the government into setting up a protected area. Or one for research. Even researchers would have a hard time landing on the island, so it would remain untouched.

Rav swung himself over the railing and descended the ladder. His backpack clinked against his shoulder, filled with empty food tins and folded paper bags. Maybe if he focused on plants this time, he would not have to deplete the insect population any more.

His path around the hill from two days ago was still visible. The bubble-roots had bruised even under his lightest steps, and he had not been walking lightly on his return trip. He tread more carefully this time. A chill, wet breeze washed the island. It smelled like a cloud forest, somehow both fresh and decaying.

The dragonette surged from her hideout when Rav crouched before it with a handful of bugs. She wrapped around his neck and nuzzled his hair. Rav glanced over his shoulder. Rolling billows of cloud kissed his trail, and the captain and crew had planned to buckle down today for more repairs. With not enough spare parts to go around, they were disassembling both of Dramcatcher's propellers and rebuilding each with half the blades. Nobody but Rav seemed to trust the island enough to venture out onto it, for which Rav was grateful.

That said, he did not want to take chances. Rav gathered up his bag and shifted the dragonette on his shoulders. Her claws were sharp. He pulled off his bag again and opened it for her to slither inside. Her head poked out again like a tiny, animate periscope. With a smile and a final check behind him, Rav pulled the bag over his shoulder and headed for the island's cloudward side.

Soon, visibility swayed between zero and a couple of meters. Rav picked his steps with care. He had only a faint idea where the edge of the island was, and even less surety about his footing. Years of practice walking the decks of water-ships paid off, at least.

They were halfway around the island when the dragonette began to chirp softly. She pulled her head down. It did not look like the reaction to a predator, though her attachment to him meant her predator-identification skills were already questionable. Rav scanned the fog. There was nothing ahead but a cloak of grey that made patches of the island appear and fade like they took turns existing. He began to walk again, quiet like a cat, paying close attention to the dragonette's chirps.

The cloudward side of the island was host to a completely different ecosystem. A moss-like carpet blanketed exposed root-bubbles, between which plants with leaves like fountains caught water in conical reservoirs. A fern nearby spread tendrils as fine as hair to the endless, cold mist. Droplets beaded on it like jewels. Rav forced his reluctant hand to pluck a sprig. The dragonette shrank to the bottom of his bag as he pulled out a tin. He uncapped it and dropped the sprig in with a bit of water, then gave it back. She eyed him reproachfully.

The plant he had plucked from was already withering. Rav swallowed guilt the size of a driftwood stump and hurried away. Too fast. His foot caught something slick and hard and he was pitched headfirst into the bubble-roots. Rav scrabbled in panic. His hand closed on another hard thing, and he gripped it like a life raft until his throat-bound heart let him breathe again. He opened his eyes.

Jutting from the plants under his hand was a bone. Rav had never let go of anything so fast. Slime-smeared and panting, he lay face to face with the rib that curved from the bubble-roots, lodged deep. It was much too big to be human.

Carefully, Rav set down his bag. The dragonette remained silent now as he pushed himself to his feet again. Now he could see it. Green with algae, a spine as thick as Sanjay's arm lay coiled on the hill. Plants twined through the individual vertebrae and nearly buried the two delicate, almost hand-like claws tucked under looping ribs where the chest had been.

The spine kept going, around and around in a spiral beneath wing bones each as long as Rav was tall. The skull of the dragon rested as if sleeping. It had the same horns as the dragonette. Rav stepped carefully between the ribs and crouched beside the algae-green jumble the Skydragon had wrapped itself around. Leathery husks gaped empty. Bits of silver-tinted eggwhite still clung to the shells' smooth insides, less than a month old.

How many had there been? Rav counted the eggshells. There were five: an average clutch. Where were the other babies? Young dragons stuck together like pitch glue until they were at least a year old, but he had never seen the dragonette with a sibling. He had never found their tracks, either.

And what had happened to the mom? Rav scanned the bones until a darker object caught his attention. He brushed back the grass that shadowed it. It was a barbed harpoon head, rusting now on a short, broken piece of shaft. Those harpoons were supposed to be banned.

The wood of the shaft had been degrading for as long as the bones, and those had been here no more than a year. Angry tears pricked Rav's eyes. He was not going to let the captain find this either. He wanted to bury the grave of the mother this dragonette had never met, but there was nothing to bury it under, and handling the bones would damage their moss and algae camouflage. Careful not to step on anything that would leave a print, Rav picked his way back to his bag.

The dragonette was as he had left her, immobile and silent. Rav pulled out tins and bags and gathered plants he had broken when he fell. He found a cricket and offered it to the dragonette. She didn't take it. She didn't move until he was far from the skeleton again. Then she wriggled from the bag and wrapped around his neck again. This time, no amount of coaxing could make her let go.

Rav stroked her head. "Are you going to survive when I'm gone?" he whispered. He was already worried she might have imprinted on him. If he could care for her long-term, it would raise her chances of survival, but he didn't have the means to look after a baby dragon. Especially not one from a species that had been poached to supposed extinction a decade ago.

But to leave her here felt like leaving her to die. Was there anyone else who could intervene? Rav's heart skipped a beat. The biological station. Its scientists worked full-time in the Khaalee Navachandr; a Skydragon might not be the strangest thing they had seen. And if the captain was right and they had indeed harassed the empire into establishing a protected area on the sea-islands here, they would keep the dragonette safe, too.

He had to smuggle her to the ship and get her to their destination without the captain finding her. Rav took a deep breath. He could bring her back in his bag right before the ship left, and hide her in his room. She was quiet, and if he caught bugs beforehand, he could keep her fed during the journey. Nobody needed to know.