“No one has ever re-Impressed a dragon,” said one woman wistfully. “D’you think Brekke will?”

“No one’s ever been given the chance before.”

“Is it a chance we should take?” asked someone else.

“We weren’t asked,” said Sanra, glaring at the last speaker. “It’s Lessa’s idea, but it wasn’t F’nor’s or Manora’s…”

“Something has to help her,” said the first woman. “It tears my heart to see her lying there, just lying, like the undead. I mind me of the way D’namal went. He sort of…well…faded completely away.”

“If you’ll finish that root quickly, we can put this kettle on,” said Sanra, briskly rising. “Will all of this be eaten?” asked Menolly of the woman beside her.

“Yes, indeed, and there’ll be some looking for more,” she said with a complacent smile. “Impression Days are good days. I’ve a fosterling and a blood son on the Hatching Ground today!” she added with understandable pride. “Sanra!” she turned her head to shout over her shoulder, “just one more largish kettle will take what’s left.”

Then white roots had to be sliced finely, covered with herbs and placed in clay pots to bake. The succulent odors of Menolly’s fish concoction aroused compliments from Felena, who was in charge of the various hearths and ovens. Then Menolly, who was told to keep off her poor feet, helped decorate the spiced cakes. She giggled with the rest when Sanra distributed pieces of one cake about, saying they had to be certain the bake had turned out well, didn’t they?

Menolly did not forget to turn the fire lizard eggs, or to feed her friends. Beauty stayed within sight of Menolly, but the others had been seen bathing in the lake and sunning themselves, scrupulously avoiding Ramoth, whose bugles punctuated the morning.

“She’s always like that on Impression Day,” T’gellan told Menolly as he grabbed a quick bite to eat at her table. “Say, will you get your fire lizards to hum along with you again this evening? I’ve been called a liar because I said you’d taught them to sing!”

“They might turn difficult and shy in front of a lot of people, you know.”

“Well, we’ll wait till things get quiet, and then we’ll give it a try, huh. Now, I’m to see you get to the Hatching. Midafternoon, I’d say, so be ready.”

As it happened, she wasn’t. She felt the thrumming before she heard it. She and everyone else in the cavern stopped working as one-by-one they became aware of the intensely exciting noise. Menolly gasped, because she recognized it as the same sort of sound the fire lizards had made when their eggs had hatched.

There was suddenly no time for her to return to her cubicle and change. T’gellan appeared at the cavern entrance, gesturing urgently to her. She made as much speed as her feet would permit because she could see Monarth waiting outside the entrance. T’gellan had already taken her hand when she exclaimed over the cooking stains and wet marks on her overshirt.

“I told you to be ready. I’ll put you in a corner, pet, not that anyone will notice stains today,” T’gellan reassured her.

A trifle resentful, Menolly noticed that he was dressed in new dark trousers, a handsomely overstitched tunic, a belt worked with metal and jewels, but she didn’t resist.

“I have to get you in place first, because I’m to collect some visitors,” T’gellan said, climbing nimbly into place in front of her on Monarth’s neck ridges. “F’lar’s filling the Hatching Ground with anyone who’ll ride a dragon between.”

Monarth was awing, slanting up from the Bowl floor to an immense opening, high up on the Weyr wall, which Menolly had not noticed before. Other dragons were angling towards it, too. Menolly gasped as they entered the mouth, with a dragon before them and one abaft, so close that she had momentary fears of collision. The dark core of the tunnel was lit at the far end, and abruptly they were in the gigantic Hatching Ground.

The whole north quadrant of the Weyr must be hollow, thought Menolly, awed. Then she saw the gleaming clutch of dragon eggs and gasped. Slightly to one side was a larger egg, and hovering over it was the zealous golden form of Ramoth, her eyes incredibly brilliant with the coming of Impression.

Monarth dropped with distressing abruptness, then backwinged to land neatly on a ledge.

“Here you are, Menolly. Best seat in the Ground. I’ll be back for you afterwards.”

Menolly was only too glad to sit still after that incredible ride. She was in the third tier, by the outer wall, so she had a perfect view of the Hatching Ground and the entrance through which people were beginning to file. They were all so elegantly dressed that she brushed vainly at the stains and crossed her arm over her chest. At least the clothes were new.

Other dragons were arriving from the upper entrance, depositing their passengers, often three and four at a time. She watched the now steady stream of visitors coming in from the ground entrance. It was amusing to watch the elegant, and sometimes overdressed, ladies having to pick up their heavy skirts and run in awkward little steps across the hot sands. The tiers filled rapidly, and the excited thrumming of the dragons increased in pitch so that Menolly found it difficult to sit quietly.

A sudden cry announced the rocking of some of the eggs. Late arrivals began to hurry across the sands, and the seats beyond Menolly were filled with a group of minecraftsmen, to judge from their red-brown tunic devices. She crossed her arms again and then uncrossed them because she had to lean forward to see around the minecraftsmen’s stocky bodies.

More eggs were rocking, all of them except the smallish gray egg that had somehow got shoved back against the inside wall.

Another rush of wings, and this time bronze dragons entered, depositing the girls who were candidates for the queen egg. Menolly tried to figure out which one was Brekke, but they all looked very aware and healthy. Hadn’t the weyrwomen remarked that morning how Brekke just lay like someone dead? The girls formed a loose but incomplete semicircle about the queen egg while Ramoth hissed softly behind it.

Young boys marched in now from the Bowl, their expressions purposeful, their shoulders straight in the white tunics as they approached the main clutch.

Menolly did not see Brekke’s entrance because she was trying to figure out which of the violently rocking eggs would hatch first. Then one of the miners exclaimed and pointed towards the entrance, to the slender figure, stumbling, halting, then moving onward, apparently insensitive to the hot sands underfoot.

“That would be the one. That would be Brekke,” he told his comrades. “Dragonrider said she’d be put to the egg.”

Yes, thought Menolly, she walks as if she’s asleep. Then Menolly saw Manora and a man she didn’t recognize standing by the entrance, as if they had done all they could in bringing Brekke to the Hatching Ground.

Suddenly Brekke straightened her shoulders with a shake of her head. She walked slowly but steadily across the sands to join the five girls who waited by the golden egg. One girl turned and gestured for her to take the space that would complete the semicircle.

The humming ceased so abruptly that a little ripple of reaction ran through those assembled. In the expectant silence, the faint crack of a shell was clear, and the pop and shatter of others.

First one dragonet, then another, awkward, ugly, glistening creatures, flopped and rolled from their casings, squawking and creeling, their wedge-shaped heads too big for the thin, sinuous short necks.

Menolly noticed how very still the boys were standing, as stunned as she’d been in that very little cave with those tiny fire lizards crawling from their shells, voracious with hunger.

Now the difference became apparent; the fire lizards had expected no help at their hatching, their instinct was to get food into their churningly empty stomachs as fast as possible. But the dragons looked expectantly about them. One staggered beyond the first boy who sidestepped its awkward progress. It fell, nose first at the feet of a tall, black-haired boy. The boy knelt, helped the dragonet balance on his shaky feet, looked into the rainbow eyes.