Catch Me, Dragon!

Sable

The bark was rough against my fingers as I gripped the branch, my toes curling into the trunk as I pulled myself up. I stood, the wind streaming through my hair, whipping the strands around my face. I peered through the fluttering leaves at the familiar landscape, the endless sea of trees, a mosaic of green and brown.

I pulled myself up onto a higher branch, my fingers and toes easily finding the cracks in the bark. Then I stood and ran swiftly along the branch, reaching the end and flinging myself into the air, catching the next branch effortlessly. I swung my body, and landed on another wide branch in a crouch, immediately taking off again.

I could hear the sound of the squirrels in the trees around me, and the scratching of small animals on the forest floor below. I breathed deep through my nose. Pine sap. Damp earth. And there, beneath it all, the sugary sharpness of ripe berries. The ironwood was close.

I swung down through a curtain of hanging moss, dropped three body-lengths, and caught a crooked branch with my toes. The old tree rose before me like a mountain, its bark silver grey and ridged deep as wrinkles. The morning sun hit the eastern face, warming the wood. That was where they would be. Perfect. Ready.

I climbed slower now, patient. The shadow-berries grew only here, only when the heat coaxed them to purple-black sweetness. Sun-stored strength. Three days ago they had been hard and bitter. Today they would give.

A chattering whistle split the air above me.

I clicked my tongue twice against the roof of my mouth, here, safe, and whistled low through my teeth.

Two shapes spiraled down through the leaves. Emerald and copper, scales catching the dappled light. The emerald one landed on a branch across from me, head cocked, crest of tiny horns bristling with curiosity. The copper circled, wings beating quick and silent, before perching higher up, tail coiled around the wood.

I clicked again, softer this time. Food. Share.

The emerald dracling trilled, a rising note that meant show, show, show.

I reached into my pouch and pulled out the last of yesterday's pine nuts. Tossed it. The copper one snatched it from the air, showing off, and the emerald one made an angry chirp that sounded almost like a curse. I laughed, rough and quiet. The sound felt strange in my throat. I didn't use it much.

I climbed higher toward the berry clusters. The draclings followed, flitting from branch to branch, arguing with each other in whistles and clicks. My alarm system. My shadows. They had found me when I was small and crying, had led me to water, had screamed warnings when thistle-cats stalked too close. We did not need words. We understood each other without them.

The berries hung heavy, black-purple as bruises. I picked carefully, filling my pouch, leaving enough for the birds and the tree. Balance. You never took it all. The forest gave, but it watched. It remembered if you were greedy.

The copper dracling suddenly went rigid, its crest snapping flat against its skull.

My hand froze, half reaching for another berry. Every muscle went rigid, breath shallowing to nothing. The emerald one made a sound, sharp, high, piercing as breaking glass. Kree-ik, kree-ik.

I knew that call. Intruder. Ground. Wrong. Not predator, not the red tooth warning I'd grown up fearing. Different kind of danger. The draclings knew hunter from prey, knew when creatures walked wrong through the forest.

I didn't think. I moved.

Silent as a whisper, I dropped to my stomach and slithered along the branch like a snake, pressing my spine against the rough trunk until I became just another shadow among the branches. The berries in my pouch pressed against my hip, forgotten.

The draclings vanished, up, away, vanishing into the high canopy where they would watch and wait.

I breathed through my mouth, tasting ironwood and old moss, and listened.

Heavy boots. Clumsy, cracking twigs beneath weight that didn't care about silence. Laughter, rough edged and arrogant. Men sounds. The forest hushed around them, birds stilling, insects pausing, as if the whole wood was flinching from their noise.

I scanned the forest floor below, waiting for them to emerge from the trees.

Three figures stumbled into the clearing. They looked like they'd been walking for days, clothes ripped and filthy, hair mussed and sporting twigs, moving without care for what they crushed. Twigs snapped under their boots like small bones breaking.

"Are you sure there's something here?" the first one asked, voice rough as rusted metal.

"Course," the second replied, laughing. The third said nothing, just looked around with eyes that made my stomach twist.

They carried themselves with that lazy entitlement of men who enjoyed hurting smaller things. They kicked at the ferns in their path, swatting at insects, speaking in their rough, loud voices. They were an infection in the quiet of the woods. Loud. Wasteful. Utterly out of place.

I pressed my face harder against the trunk, heart hammering against the bark. I didn't know what they hunted, but I knew men like this. They didn't walk this deep into the wild unless they were up to no good.

"What do you think, a deer made this?" The words hit my chest like a stone.

I knew that waterskin. Tan leather, triple stitched with sinew from the doe I'd taken last autumn, stoppered with a cork carved from the black bark tree. My mark was on it, three scratches, claw marks, hidden in the seam. My cache. They had found my cache. They had touched my things.

Not just trespassing. Not just loud. Hunting then.

Hunting me.

The cold started in my fingertips, spreading up my arms until my teeth ached with it. My forest. My home. My den. And they thought they could root through it like pigs after truffles, take what was mine, and then, and then, the way the third one looked at the trees, calculating, measuring. Tracking.

I would not be a ghost in my own woods.

A hornet's nest hung three branches over, papery and grey as a dead man's skull. I had marked it weeks ago, noted the hum that meant anger breeding inside. I moved along my highway of branches, feet finding holds worn smooth by years of travel, until I crouched above it.

The papery birch bent beneath my fingers, brittle and dry. I didn't break the whole branch. Just bent it. Let it sag. The nest fell gracefully like a promise, slow, turning, the papery sides catching the light.

It hit near the leader's boots with a sound like a heart breaking.

For one breath, nothing.

Then: the scream of the hive.

The air turned to golden black smoke, the hornets boiling out in a fury of wings and stingers. The men shrieked, high and girlish, flailing arms that only angered the swarm more. One tried to run and tripped over his own feet. Another swatted at his face and caught three stings for his trouble.

I didn't drop. I fell, like a hawk going after prey, controlling the descent at the last heartbeat, knees bent, impact rolling through the soles of my feet and up my spine. The earth was soft with rot smell and old leaves. I crouched in it, feeling the damp soak into my knees, and when I rose, my lips were already pulled back from my teeth.

They froze. Even the one still batting at hornets went still, staring at the thing that had landed among them.

The leader recovered first, wiping a swelling welt on his jaw. His eyes traveled down my bare arms, my matted hair, the sharp stone knife I'd drawn without thinking. He smiled, showing too many teeth.

"Well, well," he said. "Look what the forest spat out. Lost, little girl?"

"That mine." The voice came from deep in my chest, rust and rock and years of silence. I pointed at the waterskin dangling from his belt. "You no touch. You leave."

The second man laughed, breathless, still dancing away from a persistent hornet. "Forest belongs to no one. We'll take what we want." He stepped forward, hand reaching. "Including..."

I didn't wait for the end of the sentence.

The leaf pile was knee deep and dry as old bone. I kicked, hard, a cloud of brown and gold exploding into his face. He coughed, and staggered, eyes squeezed shut. I was already moving, low, under the swing of the third man's fist, he'd recovered faster than I'd thought, my nails catching his forearm and dragging deep. Blood welled, black in the forest light. He howled.

The branch was oak, dead fall, heavy as a man's thigh. I snatched it up, rough bark biting my palms, weight settling into my shoulder, and swung for the second man's knee. Not a martial arts move. No pivot, no grace. Just meat and wood at speed.

Crack.

Not clean. Wet. The sound of a green branch snapping, but heavier. He dropped, screaming, the sound going high and thin as a rabbit in a snare.

The leader had me before I could dance back. His hand was a vice on my upper arm, fingers digging into muscle. He jerked me close, his breath hot and rotten with old meat.

"Thought you got us, didn't you, little hellcat?" he growled.

I didn't pull away. That was what he expected, what he was braced for. I let every muscle go slack, a dead weight dropping from his grip. Surprise opened his eyes, his jaw dropping, and I snapped my head back, hard as I could, feeling the crack of my skull against his face more than hearing it.

Cartilage gave. He roared, releasing me, both hands flying to his nose. Blood poured down his chin, bright and shocking against his dirty skin.

I whirled, branch raised, snarl tearing from my throat, a sound I'd learned from thistle cats, from draclings warning off rivals, from the forest itself when it was angry.

He looked at his man on the ground, clutching his ruined knee, whimpering. He looked at the third, bleeding from four deep scratches, pale and shaking.

Then he looked at me. And I saw it finally, the crack in his confidence. The fear, raw and animal, staring out of his eyes. The realization that he was not the predator here. That the forest had not spat out a lost little girl.

It had bared its teeth.

He scrambled backward, tripping over his own boots, landing hard on his ass. Didn't stay down though. Scrambled up, running, hauling his wounded with him, crashing through the undergrowth like the hunted thing he was. The sound of their flight faded until only the hornets remained, confused angry, slowly settling.

I stood in the clearing, chest heaving, the branch heavy in my hands. My pulse thundered in my ears. The forest was quiet again, watching.

The copper dracling landed on a low branch, head cocked, crest half raised. It chirped, three notes, rising. Hurt? Safe now?

I clicked my tongue twice, soft, then whistled low and long. Safe. Tired. Hunters gone.

It bobbed its head, accepting, but didn't come closer. That was odd. They usually wanted to share the spoils, wanted scratches behind the crest. I filed it away, and started repacking my cache.

The men had made a mess. They'd scattered my dried berries like garbage, left boot prints in my sleeping moss. I reclaimed what I could, fingers moving mechanically.

That's when it started.

Not a sound. The opposite of sound. The forest's background hum, the insect buzz, the bird calls, the whisper of leaves, snapped shut like a jaw closing. One moment, life. The next, a silence so complete I could hear my own heartbeat.

The hair on my arms rose. Not from cold.

I froze, a strip of venison half stuffed into my pouch. Slowly, vertebra by vertebra, I lifted my head.

The canopy swayed, but without wind. The leaves hung still, wrong, like they were holding their breath. Scan the ridge. Scan the sky. Nothing. Blue between the branches, empty air.

But the feeling grew. Ancient. Heavy. Hungry. The air before a lightning strike, the moment when the sky turns green and you know something is coming but not what. Pressure against my eardrums. Pressure against my thoughts, like something massive was pushing at the edges of my mind, testing.

I stood, slow, the rush of victory evaporating into cold fear.

A shadow fell over the clearing.

Not gradual. Sudden. The sun guttered like a snuffed candle, the world dropping into twilight. I looked up, and my vision filled with....

Wings. Scales, obsidian shadow. A body vast as a mountain ridge, blocking the sky.

The copper dracling on the branch let out a single, terrified shriek, not the alarm call, not the warning whistle, but the scream of something small confronted with its god. It dove for the thickest cover, vanishing into leaf and shadow.

I stopped breathing.

The shadow passed. Light returned, trembling and weak. I stayed frozen, my neck craned back, my mouth open, every instinct screaming run, run, run, but my legs locked in place.

For the first time in my life, I understood what prey felt like. True prey. Not the game I hunted. Not the challenge of the thistle cat. This was the rabbit in the hawk's shadow. The mouse in the owl's silence.

Terror didn't flood through me. It crystallized. My fingers felt miles from my body. My heartbeat pounded in my throat, my ears, my fingertips. I couldn't look away from the empty sky where the thing had been.

Something had seen me.

Something had found me.

And it was not done with me yet.