And another good thing—though not an omen—was that Menet-ka had begun to come out of his shell since the hatching was so near, to ask questions of Kiron without whispering or mumbling them.
He pulled on a wrap and kilt, ducked under the curtain of water pouring off his awning, went out into the corridor, and poked his head through the door to Menet-ka’s pen.
“So the youngsters will be born amid lightning, just like Avatre! That is a fine omen!” he said heartily.
Menet-ka just stared at him, as if he hadn’t any idea of what Kiron was talking about.
With a sigh, Kiron ducked through a second curtain of water and waded out into the sand to see Menet-ka hovering over the rocking egg, looking very much as if he was going to start pulling his hair out in handfuls next. It might be the middle of the night, but there was no problem seeing him or the egg; Menet-ka had surrounded the pit with lamps nestled into the sand.
“Besides being a good omen,” he added helpfully, when the other boy looked at him in doubt, “the one big problem with any kind of hatching egg is drying out in the middle of the process. And it certainly isn’t going to dry out in this weather!” He waved a hand at the water cascading down off the awning into the deep channels cut especially to drain it away from the hot sands. The sheeting rain glinted like fabric made from glass in the flickering lamplight. In fact, it looked almost as if he and Menet-ka and the egg were entirely enclosed in a room hedged in by water.
Why is it, I wonder, that babies of all sorts always choose to arrive in the middle of the night, in the middle of the worst weather possible?
This time, he had a hammer—something he had not had when Avatre hatched. He listened carefully to the egg, putting his ear down against the rocking shell, until he found the spot where the tapping was coming from inside.
“Here,” he said, handing the little stone hammer to Menet-ka, and tapping the spot with his index finger. “Use that here. Just tap, don’t hit. Remember what I told you, and how we practiced on ostrich eggs. You want to help him crack the shell; he’s trying to make an air hole.”
“But—!” Menet-ka wailed—but he took the hammer in a hand that shook like reeds in the wind, and he gave the shell a tap. Not too hard, and not too gently. Kiron was proud of him.
The tapping from inside stopped for a moment, then began again, with renewed vigor.
This was the problem with something as big as a dragon egg. In order to protect the dragonet growing inside, it had to be thick and hard. But when the time came for hatching, it was too thick and hard for the baby to break out unassisted. Dragon mothers helped their eggs to hatch, though no one had ever seen exactly how. They didn’t have beaks to hammer at the shell with, nor did they have hands that could hold a rock. But when Ari had spied on the nests of the wild ones, he had heard them working at the outside of the hatching eggs, so he had known that he would have to help Kashet when the time came.
Ari had in turn told the story any number of times to anyone who would listen. Foremost among the listeners had, of course, been his dragon boy—then called “Vetch,” now called by his proper name.
The moment when the egg actually cracked all the way through was marked by a sudden change in the tone of the hammer strike. “Stop!” Kiron said, holding up a hand, but Menet-ka had already stopped, and was watching the “soft” spot breathlessly.
A moment, and then the egg rocked violently, a little triangle of shell popped up, and the end of a snout poked out.
The lamplight was too dim to make out the color, but it was dark, so the dragonet was probably going to be dark, too. “Is he all right? Is he breathing?” Menet-ka asked, on fire with anxiety.
“He’s fine; he’s got his air hole now, he’ll take a rest for a little. Won’t you, my lad?” Kiron crooned. In the lamplight, the tiny nostrils flared and relaxed, flared and relaxed, as the dragonet took in his first lungfuls of air.
While the last of the night ebbed, and the sky gradually lightened to gray, Kiron directed Menet-ka in the hatching of his egg. Once the others were awake, they gathered around to watch, each of them knowing that when the time came, it would be he who hovered over the rocking egg with a hammer, listening intently to discover where the dragonet within was chipping now, and adding carefully measured hammer blows to the outside.
And at last, as Kiron had known it would, the egg rocked violently one last time, and broke into two uneven halves, and the new dragonet sprawled out of it and into the sand. Menet-ka gave a cry of joy, and Kiron plucked the hammer out of his hand as he flung himself at his new charge.
“Right,” he told the others, who were crowding closer for a look. “Out, all of you. This baby needs one mother, not nine, and he—” he took a look back over his shoulder and corrected himself, “—she won’t know who it is if you’re all shoving your faces at her. Don’t worry,” he added, as he herded them out before him. “You’ll get your chances soon enough. In fact—Gan, your egg isn’t that much younger than Menet-ka’s and I’d be surprised if yours didn’t start to hatch by tomorrow morning.”
That at least sent Gan scrambling back to his pen, and the rest of them realized that in the excitement they had all forgotten about breakfast.
The baby would be fine for a bit without food, and so would Menet-ka, even though the latter didn’t have a yolk sac to absorb. Kiron had his own leisurely breakfast, and went to check on Avatre, who was trying with all her might to find out what was going on in the next pen without shoving aside the awning and getting her head wet. He remembered how she had looked when she first hatched, like a heap of wet rubies and topaz. He had known then that she was going to be beautiful, and she was certainly fulfilling his every expectation.
She whined at Kiron as soon as she saw him. He grinned. “All right, my love. Come along, I’ll show you.” He put a hand on her shoulder—it was so ingrained in her never to leave the pen without him that he didn’t need to chain her—and led her to the pen next door. She didn’t like going through the dripping water—but then again, she wanted to see what was going next door so badly she put up with it.
Cautiously, she craned her head and neck around the door, and snorted with surprise at the sight of the baby. Menet-ka was oblivious; he had the dragonet’s head in his lap, and its wings spread out on either side of it atop the sand to dry, utterly absorbed in his new charge.
“So,” Kiron asked his own charge. “What do you think?”
He had been right; this baby was going to be one of the dark ones, an indigo-blue shading to purple on the extremities and in the wing webs. Avatre stretched her neck out a little farther, without going one step more into the pen, and snorted again, then turned her head to look at him.
“Oh, no!” he told her, smothering a laugh at the sight of her widened eyes. “That’s Menet-ka’s baby, not mine!”
She snorted a third time; then, evidently content and having seen enough, she pulled her head back and nuzzled his hair, relaxing all over. He patted her shoulder, and was momentarily nonplussed to realize just how much higher it seemed than the last time he’d patted it. Great good gods, she’s putting on another growth spurt! At this rate, she’ll be big enough to fly combat within a few moons! He didn’t recall the Tian wild-caught dragonets growing that fast. Perhaps tala did slow their growth.
But he put that thought aside, and led her back to her pen. “No fear, my love,” he told her, making a caress of his voice. “No one could ever take your place.”