Chapter 5: First One Back

I ran, with Dorrit pounding down the stairs behind me.

The dragon had come down in the market square.

It had landed in the middle of the drying lines and the stall awnings, and it was tangled in all of it.

It thrashed and roared and set a cart on fire.

A woman was screaming a name at it from a doorway.

Two men ran at it with spears.

"Don't!" I shouted. "Get back! Get the children inside!"

They didn't listen to me.

Wystan's voice came over my head.

"Do what she says!"

They listened to him.

I pushed through the crowd to the edge of the square.

The dragon swung its head toward me.

Its eyes were white and rolling.

I put my hands to my mouth and sang.

The pot song, the same tune I'd sung at her bars all afternoon.

The head stopped swinging.

Then it lunged, and its jaws snapped shut an arm's length from my face.

"She doesn't know you yet," Dorrit panted behind me.

"She knows me a little."

"A little's not going to keep your head on!"

The screaming woman ran out of the doorway.

She screamed her daughter's name at me.

I caught it and put it over the pot song, again and again.

The dragon's head dropped.

Then it reared back up again and dragged half the awning across the square.

A rope whipped past me.

I caught it.

The awning rope ran straight to the iron collar round her neck.

If I held it, I could stay near her head.

I wrapped it round both fists and dug my heels into the cobbles.

She pulled.

The rope ran through my hands and took the skin off both palms.

I didn't let go.

I kept singing.

The fire on the cart burned down.

The clan stood round the square, silent, watching.

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