The queens and the brown edged under the falling shape and the bronzes made a stairway beneath them. The green was caught by the queens and the brown, then passed from one pair of bronzes to the next until finally the limp pair were reverently lowered to the soft sand.
Xhinna and Seban were off of Tazith’s back and rushing across the sands to the limp green and her rider before anyone else could move.
“Mirressa! Mirressa!” Xhinna shouted. Oh, don’t be dead! she cried to herself. Please don’t be dead! She pulled her belt knife and started to hack at the straps that tied the motionless form onto her green’s neck.
“She’s not breathing!” Seban shouted. How could he know that? Xhinna wondered dimly even as she pulled the green rider off her mount—and then she realized: Seban was talking about green Valcanth.
Lorana! Fiona! Help Valcanth! Xhinna cried, knowing that Tazith would relay her plea without urging.
“I’m here!” a small voice piped up. It was Jirana, racing up to join them.
What could one little—Xhinna cut the thought off as she saw the cold, pale, blue skin of Mirressa. “No!”
She pulled Mirressa down and laid her on the ground.
“No time, now, Xhinna, you’ve got to breathe for her,” someone else ordered. Taria. And suddenly she was beside her. “You know what to do.” Taria turned over her shoulder to shout, “Someone get a board, something we can put under her!”
“I’m here.”
Xhinna hardly heard Bekka’s voice. She was already leaning forward, opening Mirressa’s mouth, and ensuring that she hadn’t swallowed her tongue. She leaned down and gave Mirressa two quick breaths as she’d been taught, then turned aside, gasping in breath for the both of them and listening to the air coming out of Mirressa’s still body.
“Stand aside, we’ve got the board!” a strong male voice cried. Recognizing M’gel, Xhinna stood and moved back. A crowd had gathered. She turned to see Lorana and Jirana standing by Valcanth’s head, their eyes closed, their bodies taut, expressions strained.
Tazith! Xhinna called. Valcanth must breathe! She reached out to the rest of her wing. Help Valcanth breathe!
She moved over to Lorana and stood behind her and Jirana. For one startled moment, she noticed that the two were breathing in unison and then she closed her eyes, reached out, and joined in. She felt others come join her, bound in by the will of their dragons, even as she felt Taria position herself with Mirressa.
And slowly, the cold, still shape of the dragon changed. A twitch, a judder, and then—
“She’s breathing!” Jirana’s cry was marked by sobs and a heaving chest. “She’s breathing!”
“They’re both breathing!” Taria exclaimed.
Xhinna opened her eyes just in time to see Lorana rushing toward the green’s head. Valcanth’s eyelids were fluttering.
You’re fine, Lorana assured the dragon. Mirressa is fine. You’ll both do fine.
Xhinna’s attention returned to the small form in front of her: Jirana, shoulders shaking miserably, bawling quietly to herself. Xhinna moved around to kneel before the small queen rider.
Quietly she said, “You knew, didn’t you?” She gestured toward Mirressa. “You knew that was going to happen.”
Jirana’s brown eyes opened and met Xhinna’s dark blue ones. Xhinna pulled the girl tight against her. “It’s over,” she said soothingly, “you did it, it’s over.”
“You can’t tell anyone,” Jirana whispered into Xhinna’s hair. “It’s the Sight.”
Xhinna stiffened as she heard the words. Jirana added, “It’s not over. It’s going to get worse.”
Xhinna pulled back and, with all the tenderness of a big sister, kissed Jirana’s tears away before hugging her once more and whispering back, “Thank you for trusting me.”
Jirana sniffed and slowly got herself back under control. With one final grateful nod, she pulled away from Xhinna, saying, “I’m all right now.”
Xhinna gave her a half-smile and stood up. “Of course you are.”
“Okay, now explain it again,” Lorana said calmly to Mirressa after they’d fortified the green rider with warm klah and food.
“I was cold,” Mirressa said. “And Valcanth was cold, too, and then—all of a sudden—I was toasty warm, all dreamy and nice. And we were falling, but it didn’t matter because we were so warm—”
“Did your cheeks tingle?” Lorana asked.
Mirressa’s brows puckered and her hands rose involuntarily to her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”
“That’s the danger,” Bekka said, turning to face the rest of the gathered wings. “The danger is that this creeps up unnoticed and then—” She gestured to Mirressa.
“So the moment you feel the slightest bit strange,” Lorana said, pointing a finger to the ground, “come back down.”
“But—” Avarra started in protest.
“No matter what, come down,” Lorana told her. “We can’t afford to lose you.”
“But what if coming down means missing Thread?” Avarra blurted.
“We can always send up replacements,” Xhinna said. “We lose less time sending up a replacement early than trying to catch a falling dragon.”
“Shards, that’s too true!” Jepara murmured from where she sat next to Mirressa. Mirressa looked up at her and made a face, but Jepara, to Xhinna’s surprise, merely shushed the green rider and stroked her hair while, on the other side of her, Meeya patted the green rider’s shoulder.
“We should have seen it,” Devon said with a frown. “We should have noticed—”
“We were all coming back,” Xhinna said. “We only noticed when we started to count heads.”
“Something you do instinctively,” Lorana said, casting an approving look at her.
“I should have seen it,” Danirry said in a very small voice. “I’m sorry, Mirressa, I should have noticed—”
“You were a dragonlength away, how could you?” Mirressa replied. “No, I should have realized—”
“The thing is, this will be different for everyone,” Bekka said, cutting across the growing recriminations. She turned to Lorana and Xhinna. “What we really need to do is set it up so that everyone gets a chance to know what it feels like for them.”
“You want to risk every one of us?” Avarra cried in surprise. She was backed by a tumult of agreeing murmurs.
“It’s the only way to know for certain,” Bekka retorted firmly. She gestured toward Mirressa. “Unless you want to hope we’ll catch you when we’re not even looking.”
Jerilli protested, “How can we hope to take watch when—”
“I think we’ll do what Bekka says,” Xhinna said.
“If only we could do it without all the risk,” Avarra said. “If only we could find out while still here on the ground.”
“You can,” Jirana piped up. “Just hold your breath.”
“What?” several riders cried.
“No offense, little rider,” Avarra said, careful to remain respectful of a queen rider, “but—”
“She’s right,” Bekka said. She held up a hand. “Oh, it won’t be quite the same, but it would give you an idea, a starting point as it were.”
“I wish we’d thought of it sooner,” Lorana said. Then she shrugged. “They do say that the burnt hand learns best about fire.”
She turned to Xhinna, passing the job on to her.
Xhinna smiled at her in acknowledgment, took a deep breath, and then said, “Here’s what we’ll do: We’ll break into our pairs and each will hold their breath until they can’t, while the other will count the time. We’ll mark it and switch off.” She turned to Mirressa. “You and Danirry will sit this out, I’ll have you two recording—”