As he closed his eyes, a mental touch from the wolf soothed him. She had found a soft place under a spruce tree to spend the night. Without words, she filled his mind with remembrances of a wolf cub lying in the warm spring sunlight with three brother and sister pups after an exhausting afternoon of playing chase and follow-me.
The memory filled him with love and caring. Somehow, it also said that the wolf now considered him as she did the other wolf pups. More than pack. Family.
Shell fell asleep.
In the morning, he found sunlight streaming in the small window, Quester was gone, and as he opened the door of the hut, everyone else was busy performing their morning chores. He stepped outside and stretched, allowing his mind to wake gently. The wolf was back under the same spruce, tearing apart a small rabbit.
Quester was nowhere to be seen, but Myron sipped from a mug on a bench positioned to face the morning sun. Three children played nearby, and Myron spoke to one who played too rough. A young girl of ten or eleven caught his eye and pointed to a pot suspended over a fire. Small bowls were stacked upside down besides carved wooden spoons.
“For me?”
She nodded and raced off, her legs churning and long hair flying behind. Shell filled a bowl with a stew like that his mother made, but with fewer vegetables and more meat. The first taste told him it also contained unknown spices and some of them were hot.
“Better grab a biscuit,” Myron said.
“Good stew,” Shell said, taking a second taste.
Myron said, “Sit with me and tell me about this wolf of yours.”
“She’s under a spruce tree behind us, eating a rabbit.”
“You know this, how?”
“She touched my mind when I woke and told me.”
“The wolf knows our language?”
Shell paused. It was a good question, one he had to think about. “No, not exactly. She put the image of a spruce tree in my mind, I guess. More than an image, because I could smell it, too. And the rabbit, I could see a rabbit, but not through her eyes. Just a picture of a rabbit half-eaten, like looking at a scene from a distance.”
“Could you smell the rabbit too? The blood?”
Thinking back, Shell nodded. “I think so. No, I guess not.”
Myron turned to him. “But you don’t know?”
“This whole thing only happened a day ago. I don’t know what’s real or in my head, or how any of it works. I feel like there are two of us inside my head.”
“The messengers will carry word of your experience to all the families, and they will ask if it has ever happened before with anything other than a dragon. Maybe that will provide you with some answers.”
Shell finished eating his stew in silence and then used the biscuit to cut the sting of the spices. He wished for a glass of cold, winter milk, but waited for Myron to tell him more. When the old man said nothing, Shell asked, “Is what I described the same as it is to bond with a dragon?”
Myron had his face turned upward to the weak morning sun to catch the warmth. He said, “I have only known one who bonded. Raymer. He was not too talkative about it, and I don’t think he wanted to bond in the first place. But what he told me was an entirely different thing.”
“He touched the mind of the dragon.”
“Yes, but not the same as you, I believe. Raymer and the dragon bonded fully, their minds combined, melded together. Raymer could enter the mind of the dragon, see and hear what it did, and he could make the dragon do his bidding. If the task was simple to understand, or instructions given in small steps.”
Shell shook his head. “He couldn’t make the dragon do what it didn’t want. That’s what I heard.”
“Not the total truth. Dragons are not very smart, and Raymer could outsmart it. Still, can. For instance, the dragon might not want to fly today. Raymer could tell it, that if it didn’t, a rat would bite its tail. Then the dragon would take off.”
“Can the dragon enter Raymer’s mind and see what he sees?” Shell leaned forward to hear the answer better.
“Raymer said it could do that but did not like to. He said the information confuses the dragon, so it stays out of his head most of the time. There are times when it does look through Raymer’s eyes, especially if Raymer is in danger.”
“I don’t know if the wolf can enter my mind, but this morning she found me like saying good morning from far away. I did not search for her. But she came to me.”
Myron turned to look at him from the corner of his eye. “Quester is not happy with you, but he will figure out that none of this is your doing and he will come around. He came to speak with me early.”
“He’s angry because I didn’t tell him all I knew, but I didn’t know he was Dragon Clan so told him nothing.”
“We discussed that. I think he understands, but he was offended and can’t help that.”
Shell had been holding back a question he wanted to be answered, and after a quick glance around, said, “Where’s Camilla?”
“Ah, you too? I think you are the number five young man to come in search of her this year, but she has gone to Breslau, or at least in that direction.”
“Oh,” Shell said, frustrated that four others, like his mother, warned him about, had already been here.
Myron cleared his throat and continued, “She rebuffed the first four, then left to provide what help she might to the cause.”
“I see.”
Myron allowed a slight smile as he turned his face to the sun again. “On the positive side, she only left two days ago. Traveling west carefully and slowly to avoid capture by the King’s men. A determined young man protected by a wolf traveling in front of him could move far faster, and he’d catch up in a few days and perhaps make her travels safer.”
Shell was on his feet.
Myron said, “Whoa, we have a council meeting to finish this morning. If Quester agreed to remain with us for a few more days, I would take it as a personal favor if you depart soon, and try to catch up with my grand-daughter. Offer her your protection.”
“I can do that.”
Myron smiled again. “You can only if you do not phrase it that way. She is an independent sort of young lady, and if you offer to protect her, she might slit your throat.”
“Really?”
“No, but I will tell you this as one member of our family to another. You will have a difficult time if you do not treat her as an equal.”
Shell went in search of Quester with Myron’s advice hanging in the air. He found Quester facing a boy of ten, each of them holding a practice staff. The whack-whack-whack of the two staffs striking against each other bounced off the granite walls of the canyon. Quester moved stiffly and awkwardly, holding his staff too low to protect his upper body, and his defense was sluggish. The boy gleefully danced around him, striking the staffs together in a regular patterned beat as he demonstrated how to use a staff properly.
“Couldn’t find a sword?” Shell asked as he approached.
“Swords are for soldiers and losers,” Quester said with a grin, trying to advance on the boy, finding that whatever he tried was met with a lost effort. “This kid is killing me.”
The boy smiled wider, hardly straining to attack, yet providing all Quester could manage. Quester finally stepped back. “I need a break. Take over, will you?”
The intent obvious, Shell accepted the staff, and although lighter and shorter than his, he nodded to the boy. After a few tentative strikes to determine Shell’s skill, the boy attacked in earnest. He was fast and quick, which are not the same thing, but his blows lacked power. Shell parried everything the boy had without advancing at all. Sweat beaded the boy’s forehead as he intensified his attack.