It took Menolly a while to find out where the slate was: propped up conspicuously on the mantel in her father’s Records room. Menolly was positive that the message had something to do with her, with the songs that Petiron had said he’d sent to the Masterharper. The notion so obsessed her that she got bold enough to ask her mother why Yanus didn’t open the message.
“Open a sealed message from the Masterharper to a man dead?” Mavi stared at her daughter in shocked incredulity. “Your father would do no such thing. Harpers’ letters are for Harpers.”
**I only remembered that Petiron had sent a slate to the Masterharper. I thought it might be about a replacement coming. I mean…”
*Tfl be glad when the new Harper does come, m’girl. You’ve been getting above yourself with this Teaching.”
Hie next tew days were full of apprehension for Menofly: she conceived the idea that her mother would make Yanus replace her as Teacher. That was, of course, impossible for the same reasons that had forced Yanus to make her the teacher in the first place. But it was a fact that Mavi found all the smelliest, most boring or tedious jobs for Menolly once her teaching duty was done. And Yanus took it into his head to appear in the little Hall more frequently.
Then the weather settled down into a clear spell and the entire Sea Hold was kept at a run with fish. The
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children were excused from the Teaching to gather seaweeds blown up by the high tides and all the Hold women set to boiling the weed for the thick juice in the stalks: juice that kept back many sicknesses and bone ailments. Or so the old aunties said. But they’d find good out of any bad and the worst of any blessing. And the worst of the seaweed was its smell, thought Menolly, who had to stir the huge kettles.
Threadfalls came and added some excitement: the fear in being Holdbound while the dragons swept the skies with their fiery breath, charring Thread to impotence. (Menolly wanted to see that grand sight one day, instead of just singing about it, or knowing it was taking place outside the thick stone walls and heavy metal shutters of the Hold’s windows.) Afterward she joined the flamethrower crews that checked for any possible Thread that might have escaped dragon flame. Not that there was much for Thread to eat on the windswept bare marshes and bogs around Half-Circle Sea Hold. The barren rock palisades that made Half-Circle bore no greenery at all, winter or summer, but it was wise to check the marshes and beaches. Thread could burrow into the seagrass stalks, or slide down the marshberry and seabeachplum bushes, burrow into the roots, multiply and eat anything green and growing until the coast was as bare as rock.
Flame-crewing was cold work, but it was a distinct pleasure for Menolly to be out of the Hold, in the rough air. Her team got as far as the Dragon Stones to the south. Petiron had told her that those stones, standing offshore in the treacherous waters, had once been part of the palisade, probably hollowed with caves like all this stretch of cliff.
The crowning treat for Menolly was when the Weyrleader, Flar, himself, on bronze Mnementh, circled in for a chat with Yanus. Of course, Menolly wasn’t near enough to hear what the two men said, but she was close enough to smeH the firestone reek of the giant bronze dragon. Close enough to see his beautiful eyes
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catching all colors in the pale wintry sunlight: to see his muscles knot and smooth under the soft hide. Menolly stood, as was properly respectful, with the other flamethrower crews. But once, when the dragon turned his head in a lazy fashion to peer in her direction, his eyes whirled slowly with their changing colors and she was certain that Mnementh looked at her. She didn’t dare breathe, he was so beautifull
Then, suddenly, the magic moment was over. Flar gave a graceful leap to the dragon’s shoulder, caught the fighting straps and pulled himself into place on the neck ridges. Air whooshed around Menolly and the others as the great bronze opened his fragile-looking wings. The next moment, he seemed to be in the air, catching the updraft, beating steadily higher. Abruptly the dragon winked from view. MenoHy was not the only one to sigh deeply. To see a dragonrider in the sky was always an occurrence: to be on the same ground with a dragon and his rider, to witness his graceful take-off and exit between was a marvel.