“What would have happened if they saw me?” I asked, staring in the direction the strangers had gone. I spoke in Akhian, as had become my habit; I was more focused on learning Ruzt’s language than teaching her any of my own, but the odds of her understanding a stray word or two were higher if I spoke that tongue.
She made no reply, and I doubt my meaning came through. In a sense, I am glad I did not get an answer then, for I would not have been prepared for the consequences.
That night I approached Kahhe and asked, by means of mime, whether I could examine her wings.
Ever since I woke up and discovered that Draconeans were not only real but alive (or at least since I had collected my wits in the aftermath of that discovery), I had wondered about their wings. Their ancient kin might have inhabited places like Akhia and Keonga, but these three dwelt in an exceedingly cold climate. A thin structure like a wing loses heat rapidly, because the blood vessels are unavoidably close to the surface. How did they deal with this problem?
I had noted that my rescuers had a habit of crouching close to the fire with their wings partially spread, as if cupping the heat to themselves. They most often did this immediately after returning from the outside, in the manner of a human warming their hands at the flame, and that made sense to me; but they also did it before departing, and I wanted to know why.
So I pointed to Kahhe’s wings and said in her language, “What?” By now this was well established as my way of asking for vocabulary, and so she answered me, “Kappu.” I repeated this process with my eyes and received the word ika in return. Then, employing my new acquisitions and some accompanying mime, along with their word for “please,” I inquired whether I could examine her wings. Kahhe seemed puzzled by my interest, but let me approach, and did not flinch away when I touched her.
In the course of my career I have handled any number of dragon wings. Many of them, however, have been on carcasses, and most of the remaining number belonged to very small breeds of dragon, such as the honeyseeker. My only experience with a larger wing on a living creature was when I had to assist Tom in doctoring a drake in Akhia, and in that instance she was drugged to her ruff.
Kahhe’s wing was entirely different, not for any reason of anatomy, but simply because it belonged to a living, wakeful, self-aware creature. The muscles that controlled it shifted under my hands, Kahhe not quite willing to relax entirely into my grip. I felt the warmth of it—we had been inside for some time—and her pulse when I used my fingertips to locate the main alar artery.
A pulse which vanished a moment later. I think Kahhe believed I wanted to pinch off the blood flow, and was trying to assist me; and so she did, but not in the way she intended.
Her action told me what I would not otherwise have known: that Draconeans can voluntarily control the blood flow to their wings. When in strong sunlight or near a fire, they open those vessels and draw in as much heat as they can, but when they go into the cold, they reduce the flow to their wings, the better to preserve that heat.
They cannot do this forever, of course, as it greatly restricts the mobility of that limb; and the longer the wings remain dormant, the longer it takes them to return to full function. (It is for this reason that spreading the wings is a dominance challenge, at least in winter; to leave them exposed is a test of endurance.) Judging by the way she moved in the aftermath of the strangers’ visit, Kahhe had strained a muscle swooping in to hide me, likely on account of the cold and lack of blood flow. But it is a very clever adaptation—a kind of localized anatomical hibernation.
The notion of hibernation should have occured to me much sooner. (No doubt the more scientifically inclined of my readers have thought of it already, and wondered that I have not addressed it before now.) In my defense I can only say that I had spent my entire tenure in that village either unconscious, in hysterics, or reeling from the flood of new information; and as a consequence, I had the attention span of a gnat: no sooner did I begin pondering one aspect of the puzzle than some equally interesting angle distracted me.
But as soon as I thought of it, I was certain that the rest of the village’s inhabitants had not gone to winter quarters—or rather, that “winter quarters” for them consisted of hibernation. It is a common biological response to cold weather, for it allows the organism to survive on a much reduced diet when food is scarce; I had seen its more unusual summer cousin, aestivation, among the desert drakes of Akhia.
The Draconeans could not all go into hibernation, for they would wake to find their yak herds annihilated by the harsh winter. (Wild yaks may survive without undue trouble, but their domesticated kin have more difficulty.) My three fought their instincts, staying awake through the frozen months to ensure their kindred’s livestock would be waiting when spring came. They ate tremendous quantities of food—a fact I had noted but, having nothing to compare it against, had assumed was their ordinary diet—and chewed a certain leaf in much the same fashion as human men chew tobacco. Initially I abstained from trying the leaf myself, knowing that what was edible to them might not be so to me; but Ruzt pressed some upon me when I had an abscessed tooth, and although the taste was unpleasantly astringent, it helped to numb my mouth while she drained the abscess. After that I chewed it somewhat regularly, for I found it improved my health and mitigated the effects of the high altitude.
Not long after I examined Kahhe’s wing, I tried to ask about hibernation. Our communication was not anything like fluent enough yet to cover such a topic, and so once again I had to ask in mime, pointing at empty houses and then feigning sleep. At first I thought my meaning still too muddled, for Ruzt only cocked her head and then walked away. As this persisted, however, I became certain that she understood me perfectly well, and was using incomprehension as her shield against my questions. I did not press.
You must not think that I had suddenly mislaid my curiosity. My list of mysteries to solve was a kilometer long; but language was still a tremendous barrier, and moreover I was eternally cognizant of the fact that the line between “prisoner” and “guest” might be exceedingly thin. That my three hostesses were friendly to me, I was certain—well, certain in two cases; Zam still gave me a wide berth whenever she could, and watched me with a gimlet eye. But Kahhe’s swift action to hide me when the neighbours came calling made it obvious that I could not expect so hospitable a reaction from their kin.
And whether I was correct about hibernation or not, I knew beyond a doubt that eventually the other inhabitants of Imsali would return. When that day arrived, I needed to be out of the Sanctuary and back to my own people, which I could only do with the help of my three caretakers… or I needed that trio to be my shield against whatever might come next.
My communications with Ruzt and the others improved dramatically when I realized that I was thinking too much like my husband.
This was ironic because I had been trying not to think about him at all. I was frequently unsuccessful; over the past five years I had grown accustomed to having Suhail at my side, and his absence felt like a missing limb. As I have said, though, I often lost myself to despair in those days, for it was easy to imagine that I would never escape the Sanctuary (how ironic that name would then be!), and therefore would never see him again. I could banish my demons with unyielding determination to prevail… but this only worked for a time, and drained me tremendously. It was better to lose myself in the challenges I faced, addressing what lay immediately before me, rather than allowing my thoughts to stray too far ahead.