The dragons lay drowsing in the sun, their tails flicking idly at the enormous clouds of flies which gathered round them, their heads pillowed on their forelegs. Mrs. Erasmus was speaking into Kefentse’s ear; mid-sentence, he reared abruptly up and began to make questions of her, demandingly; she flinched back, and only shook her head, refusing. At last he left off, and cast his eyes southward, sitting up on his haunches like a coat of arms: a dragon sejant erect, gules; then slowly he settled himself back down; he spoke to her once more, and pointedly shut his eyes.
“Well, I don’t suppose we need ask what he thinks of letting you go,” Chenery said, when she had crept around to them.
“No,” she said, speaking low to keep from rousing the dragons up again, “and matters are only worse: I spoke of my daughters, and now Kefentse wants nothing more than to go back for them also.”
Laurence was ashamed to feel an eager leap of hope, at a situation which naturally could cause her only the greatest anxiety; but such an attempt would at least reveal to the rest of the formation the identity of their captors. “And I assure you, ma’am,” he said, “that any such demand would be received with the utmost scorn: I am confident that our fellow officers and General Grey will consider your children their own charge.”
“Captain, you do not understand,” she said. “I think he would be ready to attack all the colony to get at them. He thinks there may be more of their stolen kindred there, too, among the slaves.”
“I am sure I wish them much luck, if they like to try it,” Chenery said. “Pray don’t be worried for the girls: even if these fellows have another few beauties like this grandfather of yours at home, it would take a little more than that to crack a nut like the castle. There are twenty-four-pounders there; not to speak of pepper guns, and a full formation. I don’t suppose he would like to come back with us, instead; to England, I mean?” he added, with a flash of cheerful optimism. “If he has taken to you so strong, you ought to be able to persuade him.”
But it was very soon clear that Kefentse, whatever else he meant by calling himself her great-grandfather, certainly considered himself in the light of her elder; even though she thought now, that she vaguely recalled his hatching. “Not well, but I am almost sure of it,” she said. “I was very young, but there were many days of feasting, and presents; and I remember him often in the village, after,” which Laurence supposed answered for her lack of fear of dragons; she had been taken as a girl of some nine-years’ age, old enough to have lost the instinctive terror.
Remembering her only as a child, Kefentse, far from being inclined to obey, had instead concluded from her efforts to secure their freedom that she was their dupe, either frightened or tricked into lying for their sake, and he was grown all the angrier for it. “I beg you do not risk any further attempts at persuasion,” Laurence said. “We must be grateful for his protection of you; I would have you make no more fruitless attempts, which might cause him to reconsider his sentiments.”
“He would do nothing to hurt me,” she said, a strange certainty; perhaps the restoration of some childhood confidence.
Having breakfasted on roasted hippo, they flew on some hours more and landed again only a little while before dark, beside what seemed to be a small farming village. The clearing where they descended was full of children at play, who shrieked with delight at their arrival, and ran eagerly around the dragons, chattering away at them without the slightest evidence of fear; although they peered very nervously at the prisoners. A broad spreading mimosa tree stood at the far end of the clearing, giving pleasant shade, and beneath it stood an odd little shed with no front, raised several feet from the ground and housing within it a dragon egg of substantial size. Around it a circle of women sat with mortar and pestle, pounding grain; they put aside their tools and patted the dragon egg, as if speaking to it, and rose to greet the visitors as they leapt down from the smaller dragons’ backs, and to stare with curiosity.
Several men came in from the village, to clasp arms with the handlers and greet the dragons. An elaborately carved elephant’s tooth hung from a tree, the narrow end cut open to make a horn, and one of the villagers took this down and blew on it, several long hollow ringing blasts. Shortly another dragon landed in the clearing, a middle-weight of perhaps ten tons, a delicate dusty shade of green with yellow markings and sprays of red spots upon his breast and shoulders, and two sets of long foreteeth which protruded over his jaw above and below. The children were even less shy of this newcomer, clustering close about his forelegs, even climbing upon his tail and pulling on his wings, a treatment which he bore with perfect patience while he talked with the visiting dragons.
The four of them settled around the enshrined dragon egg, in company with their handlers and the men of the village; and one older woman also sat with them, her dress marking her apart: a skirt of animal-skins and strings of long beads like reed-joints, and many heaped necklaces of animal claws and colored beads also. The rest of the women brought a large steaming pot of porridge, the grain boiled up in milk rather than broth, for their dinner; with fresh greens cooked with garlic, and dried meat preserved in salt: a little tough, but flavorful, vinegary and spiced.
Bowls were brought for the prisoners, and their hands were untied to allow them to eat for themselves for once, their captors less wary with so large a company around them; and in the celebratory bustle, Mrs. Erasmus was able to slip away from Kefentse to join them once again: he had been given pride of place beside the dragon egg, and presented a large cow to eat; and they seemed to hold the evening’s entertainment until he had finished. At least when the remnants of the carcass on which he feasted had been carried away, and fresh dirt scattered over the ground before him to soak up the blood, only then did the old woman stand up, the one oddly dressed, and coming to stand before the dragon egg began to sing and clap.
The audience took up the rhythm, with clapping and with drums, and their voices joined with her on the refrains; each verse was different, without rhyme or pattern that Laurence could see. “She is saying, she is telling the egg,” Mrs. Erasmus said, staring at the ground, unseeing; intent upon following the words. “She is telling him of his life. She is saying, he was a founder of the village; he brought them to a good safe country, past the desert, where the kidnappers do not come. He was a great hunter, and killed the lion with his own hands, when it would have raided among the cattle; they miss his wisdom, in the council, and he must hurry up and come back to them: it is his duty—”
Laurence stared, entirely baffled. The old priestess had finished her own verses, and began to lead one after another some of the men of the village to stand in front of the egg and recite, with a little prompting assistance from her. “They say they are his sons,” Mrs. Erasmus said, “telling him they long to hear his voice again; that is his grandson, born since his death,” when one of them carried an infant in swaddling to the egg, to pat its small hand against the shell. “It is only some heathen superstition, of course,” Mrs. Erasmus added, but uneasily.
The dragons joined their own voices to the ceremony: the local beast addressing the egg as his old friend, whose return was eagerly awaited; the smaller dragons of the distant border spoke of the general pleasures of the hunt, of taking wing, of seeing their descendants prosper. Kefentse was silent, until the priestess chided him, and coaxed; then at last in his deep voice he gave warning rather than encouragement, and spoke of grief at failing in his duty: of coming back to the deserted village, the smoke of dying fires, all the houses empty; his children lying in the dust, still and not answering his calls, and the hyena slinking through the herds. “He searched, and searched, until he came to the shore, and at the ocean he knew—he knew he would not find us,” Mrs. Erasmus said, and Kefentse put his head down and moaned, very low; abruptly she rose and crossed the clearing to him, and put her hands upon his lowered muzzle.