He’d always known they existed, and once in a while a wing would be seen flying in formation high overhead. He knew that Fort Weyr had been empty for several hundred turns, and that no one knew why. He knew, from Teaching Songs and Ballads, why there were dragons: that they kept Thread away – though he didn’t understand why Thread was so dangerous. People’s clothes were made of thread, and they wouldn’t wear something that was dangerous to them, would they? When he asked Kubisa about it, she said that Thread was a living organism, not spun and woven as was the undangerous thread that went into clothing. This bad Thread fell from the sky and hungrily ate anything living that it touched, from grass to runner and herd-beasts, and even people. Her listeners got very still at that, and no one even squirmed when she went on to explain how dragons kept Thread away from Halls and Holds. However, she ended on a bright and pleasant note: that bad Thread was not likely to bother them, and they might live their whole lives without seeing it fall from the skies.
“Then why’, the logical Robie asked, “do we keep singing about it?”
“In appreciation of those times when the dragons did keep the danger away,” she said, at her most reassuring.
Robinton asked his mother about Thread and got much the same answer, which really wasn’t sufficient to satisfy his curiosity. If the dragons were so important, and they were still flying the skies of
Pern, they were there to keep Thread away. They were keeping it away, but there weren’t as many as there used to be – not with five Weyrs empty. Would they be enough if Thread came?
Lexey had told him once – Lexey talked a lot to Rob because he would listen to him – that his mother kept telling him that if he didn’t behave better, they’d leave him out for Thread to get.
“You know so much, Rob. Would it?” Lexey asked plaintively, sufficiently scared of the threat that most times it achieved the object of making him more obedient – at least for a few days.
“I never heard of it being done to anyone, no matter how bad you
are. And “sides, there isn’t any Thread in the skies right now.” “But, if I was bad enough, would it come to get me?”
“Hasn’t yet, has it?” was Robinton’s logical reply. “You were awful bad yesterday, making a mess with the colours when you were told to clear them up.”
“Yes, I was.” Lexey grinned in retrospect, thoroughly pleased with himself. “But it was so fun.” He’d smeared every surface in the classroom while Kubisa was out on an errand. She’d made him clean it all up – which was almost as much fun for Lexey as doing it – but he’d had a real scolding from her and his mother for the state of his clothes. “Mother was real mad at me last night.” But that seemed to give him a satisfaction which Robie couldn’t understand.
He always tried very hard not to upset either his mother or his father – especially his father.
Lexey’s paint-smearing occurred the day before the dragons came, so they were at the forefront of Robie’s mind when they came circling down into the big Harper Hall courtyard. His parents were busy packing for their trip to Nerat, so he’d been told to go outside and play. He always missed his mother, but it would be nice to stay with Kubisa and her daughter Libby, where he could sing and play his pipe or his drum without worrying about annoying his father. It was his turn to hop-it without smudging the chalk lines on the flags and his attention was utterly focused on the movement of his feet – until Libby made him miss the longest hop by suddenly
pointing skywards in astonishment.
“Oh, look, Robie!” she cried.
“That’s not fair …”
His complaint died as he realized that the dragons soaring above were coming closer to the Harper Hall, rather than the Hold where
they usually landed. Half a wing of dragons – six of them. As they swept closer, backwinging, their hind legs stretched downwards to land in the Harper Hall rectangle, Robie, Libby and Lexey pressed themselves tightly against the wall to stay out of the way. As it was, two of the dragons had to land outside, since the four made the big quadrangle suddenly appear very small.