He woke tired, stiff, cold, and scared. The sun had not risen, but he shivered and moved closer to the mother dragon. It didn’t help. The tiny dragon had more heat than the larger one. Seth placed a hand on the side of the dragon and couldn’t feel her breathing.
Seth moved to her snout and touched her nostrils. The dragon was dead.
“That’s just great!” he cried, looking up into the darkness and picturing the face of Sunset, his white hair, and wrinkled skin. “You did this. You brought me here to live in a nest with a rotting dragon.”
Sunset didn’t answer. Not even a sly chuckle. Seth stamped his feet for warmth, and the action woke and brought the small dragon racing to his side, its mouth again wide open as it begged for food. When he didn’t provide any, the dragon rubbed against his leg and cooed.
He climbed to the edge of the nest again and looked down into the darkness. The drop was too much and the rock too smooth for handholds. Staying in the nest meant being there when animals discovered the dead dragon, maybe even other dragons. But birds for sure. They might even attack him.
He had to find a way down. Only a rope would do. His eyes drifted back to the mother dragon as he recalled his plans for tanning leather. An image of Sunset teaching him to weave a sleeping mat and braiding strips of grass for strength formed.
Seth’s hand touched the broken iron blade at his waist. Dull, rusty, and snapped in half, he could sharpen it on the rocks of the cliff and use it to cut. Maybe.
He almost dived to the side of the dead dragon and ran the blade along her skin. The blade tore more than cut, but it was enough to tell him the plan would work. Seth went to the edge of the nest against the rock wall and found a small outcrop. He gently slid one edge of the blade along it, feeling the drag as the rough places on the blade moved over the rock. He repeated the motion a dozen times and touched the edge with his thumb. Sharper, but not enough. He turned the blade over and started on the other side.
The next cut on the skin of the dragon went straight and clean. He made a cut from the top of her neck to her tail, then another close beside it. The knife needed a few more scrapes on the rock to keep the edge sharp. He cut the narrow strip and used the knife to cut away the underside as he gently pulled it away from the body. Finished, he held a piece of animal hide as long as the animal. Looking at her head and allowing his eyes to follow down to her tail, he could slice dozens of similar long strips.
Wrapping the slimy, bloody piece he held around each palm, he pulled, gently at first, then harder. It held. Seth wrapped one end around his foot and used two hands to lift. It finally snapped, but he was satisfied. A single strand wouldn’t hold his weight, but three of them woven together would.
Then he considered cutting wider strips and tying them end to end to make a rope instead of all the work to braid one, but the rope only had to tear in one place, and he would fall. Weaving thinner ones together meant if one strand broke, the other two might hold him.
He doubled a thin strip and could not break it. “Sunset, your weaving lesson may have given me a way to escape. At least, you give me hope.”
He sharpened the blade again, bringing it to an edge his father would reject, but better than before. He wrapped coils of the strip he’d cut around the end to protect his hand and went to work. The little dragon moaned and cried for food. Seth shrugged to himself and cut a slice of the dead dragon and tossed it to the little one. It disappeared instantly.
Guiltily, he cut several more, trying to hide his actions. When full, the tiny dragon curled up and slept. Seth believed he could see it smile before he went back to work. By mid-morning when the air started to warm he was covered in blood and whatever else he cut. Flies appeared and swarmed until the parts of the dragon where he’d removed the skin turned black with them. His every move sent them flying in masses until they found places to land, many of them landing on his arms, legs, back, and head. He breathed in so many that instead of spitting them out he swallowed.
Insects coated the pile of thin strips he’d cut, but he knew of nothing he could do to rid them. If he spent time chasing away flies he wouldn’t get more strips cut. The pile grew to knee high.
But as the pile grew, the day grew warmer, and the stench from the dead animal increased. Vultures landed first. Then meat-eating seabirds of several kinds. A large bird, he hadn’t seen before, jumped down to his pile of strips and gobbled part of one. Seth leaped down from the dragon and entered a tug of war for his strip of leather. The bird won as it leaped from the nest and flew off with the skin trailing.
The meat didn’t last long unless smoked or salted. From the slightly greenish hue of the surface of the meat, it already started turning. The strips he cut would do the same, but he didn’t know how long it would take. What he did know was that if they rotted and weakened, he would have a fall he wouldn’t survive. If more birds arrived, which he expected, keeping them from his pile of strips would be impossible.
“This better be enough,” he shouted to Sunset, who he believed watched from somewhere in the clouds. For good measure, he shook a fist skyward before sitting.
The strips had tangled as he tossed them into the pile, but they remained soft, slippery, and came free quickly. Tossing the ends of three over the side of the nest, he knotted the other end and wove the three strips. In less time than he expected, he finished. He let it hang over the side to dry. It wouldn’t be so slippery while he started another.
His attention focused on his work. Grabbing his knife to cut more, he paused. Hundreds of birds were on the dragon, many with pointed beaks that ripped and tore at the skin to reach the meat below. The dragon had torn holes in her body from the size of his finger to his head. Long single strips were no longer possible. In cutting more strips he’d have to fight the insects, birds, and what few strips he recovered would likely be short, and possibly weak from their gorging.
As if it heard him thinking about food, the tiny dragon raced to his side and rubbed his knee with its body. The head tossed back and mouth open. Seth went to the rear leg and cleared a space of insects to cut several chunks. The meat was softer, rotting, and the skin felt also felt softer, more pliable. It was also rotting. He fed the dragon while thinking of his options.
The sun was setting, but remaining in the nest another cold night wouldn’t help. He needed water and food for himself. He didn’t know if he would survive another cold night, but if he did, he would be weaker and maybe unable to climb down.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The decision was not so much made by Seth as made for him. He had ten lengths of braided rope drying. He looped one end over a branch larger around than his leg and tied it well. Looking over the side to pull the other end up, he found it barely hung down as far as his body might reach.
Disappointed, he pulled the end up and tied it to another. He repeated the process until all were tied and hanging over the side. In the twilight, he couldn’t see the end. Earlier, it had looked like the rope would reach the bottom and he expected to feel it when it did, or maybe see it. Instead, it was in shadow and getting dark.
Sunset had once said that there is a time for planning and a time for doing. It was not the saying that impressed Seth. It was that he had learned so many things from Sunset in a matter of a few days.
He threw a leg over the side and wrapped the rope around it, hooking his foot in a loop to hold it in place. He’d tried sliding down a rope once before, and the burns to his hands took weeks to heal. He shifted his hips to ease over the side, but struck an object. He looked back in the nest and found the little dragon rubbing against his leg, again.