Yes, thought Menolly, she walks as if she’s asleep. Then Menolly saw Manora and a man she didn’t recognize standing by the entrance, as if they had done all they could in bringing Brekke to the Hatching Ground.
Suddenly Brekke straightened her shoulders with a
shake of her head. She walked slowly but steadily across the sands to join the five girls who waited by the golden egg. One girl turned and gestured for her to take the space that would complete the semicircle.
The humming ceased so abruptly that a little ripple of reaction ran through those assembled. In the expectant silence, the faint crack of a shell was clear, and the pop and shatter of others.
First one dragonet, then another, awkward, ugly, glistening creatures, flopped and rolled from their casings, squawking and creeling, their wedge-shaped heads too big for the thin, sinuous short necks.
Menolly noticed how very still the boys were standing, as stunned as she’d been in that very little cave with those tiny fire lizards crawling from their shells, voracious with hunger.
Now the difference became apparent; the fire lizards had expected no help at their hatching, their instinct was to get food into their churningly empty stomachs as fast as possible. But the dragons looked expectantly about them. One staggered beyond the first boy who sidestepped its awkward progress. It fell, nose first at the feet of a tall, black-haired boy. The boy knelt, helped the dragonet balance on his shaky feet, looked into the rainbow eyes.
Emotion like a fist squeezed Menolly’s heart. Yes, she’d her fire lizards, but to Impress a dragon … Startled, she wondered where Beauty, Rocky, Diver and the others were. She missed them acutely, wanted Beauty’s affectionate nuzzling, even the choke-tight twist of the little queen’s tail about her neck.
The crack of the golden egg was a summons for all attention to be centered on it. The egg split right down the center, and its inmate, protesting her abrupt birth, fell to the sand on her back. Three of the girls moved to assist it. They got the little queen to her four legs and then stepped back. Menolly held her breath as they all turned towards Brekke. She was unaware of anything. Whatever strength had sustained her to walk
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across the sands had now left her. Her shoulders sagged pathetically, her head listed to one side as if too heavy to hold upright. The queen dragonet turned her head towards Brekke, the glistening eyes enormous in the outsize skull. Brekke shook her head as if aware of the scrutiny. The dragonet lurched forward one step.
Menolly saw a bronze blur out of the comer of her right eye and for an unnerving moment thought it must be Diver. But it couldn’t be, because the little bronze just hung above the dragonet’s head, screaming defiantly. He was so close to her head that she reared back with a startled shriek and bit at the air, instinctively spreading her wings forward as protection for her vulnerable eyes.
Dragons bugled warnings from their perches at the top of the Hatching Ground, and Ramoth spread her wings, rising to her haunches as if to strike at the invader. One of the girls interposed her body between the queen and her small attacker.
“BerdI Don’t!” Brekke, too, moved, her arm extended towards the irate bronze.
The dragonet queen creeled and hid her face in the girl’s skirt. The two women faced each other for a moment, tense, worried. TTien the other stretched her hand out to Brekke, and Menolly could see her smile. The gesture lasted only a moment because the young queen butted imperiously, and the girl knelt, her arms reassuringly encircling the dragonefs shoulders.
At the same instant, Brekke turned, no longer a somnolent figure, immersed in grief. She walked back to the entrance of the Cavern, the little bronze fire lizard whirring around her head, making noises that went from scolding to entreaty, just like Beauty when Menolly was doing something that had upset her.
Menolly didn’t realize that she was weeping until tears dropped onto her arms. She glanced hastily to see if the miners had noticed, but they were concentrating on the main clutch. From their comments it seemed that a boy had been found on Search in one of their