Dragon Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

wobbled under her. She leaned on the dirt, her eyes shut, her mind blank. Bent her knee, slid it blindly up onto the ridge, and pulled herself up. The dirt had fallen away here. Tilted inward. She leaned her back against the crevice, her hands numb.
    It was hard to move again. She had dirt in her eyes. Stretching her arm up, she groped for a handhold, a root, anything. Her hand reached over the edge of the cliff into air and grass.
    She clutched a handful of grass. The sun was going down. Behind her, the dragon gave up a despairing cry. She lurched upward, over the top of the cliff.
    Her eyes that for hours had seen only rock a few inches from her nose now stretched their gaze across a broad meadow, an oak tree, a pond of water. She had escaped. She did not turn back even to look at him. She crawled up over the rim of the cliff into the grass and lay still and slept. All night, in her sleep, she heard him roaring.
    *   *   *
    She had nothing to eat, but the spring had come; the meadow was full of mushrooms, and the trees of birds’ nests and eggs. She walked a whole day inland, picking a way down a long ridge, and finally came to a path. She followed that much of the night, through a brilliant waxing moon, going steeply downhill, and toward dawn came on a heap of stones: a road marker.
    Yet she saw no one else. The narrow, stony path tracked across an inland valley clogged with brambles and thickets of willow, and when the path climbed up high onto the next ridge she looked back and saw only mountains. She walked on, eating whatever she could find—roots, nuts, even flowers and grubs and crickets.
    On the third day the little path climbed up to the high road, winding along the crest of a hill from north to south. She sat down under a spreading oak by the side of the great road, and after another day she saw some travelers coming toward her.
    This was an ox-drawn cart, with two women riding in it, a man walking beside the ox, three boys with sticks herding along four or five sheep. Tirza sat up, eager. After days without words she wanted to talk again. When she told them who she was, they would take her home and she would reward them with stories. She began forming the stories in her mind, beginning with the dragon.
    Turn by turn of the wheels they drew nearer, and when she could see their faces she stood up, waved her arms, and called out, “Help me—please help me!”
    The cart stopped, all the people bunching together. A woman cried, “What is she?” The man with his staff stepped forward and called, “What do you want?”
    She went toward them, her arms out to them. “I am a Princess of Castle Ocean, lost and alone. Take me home and you will be well rewarded.”
    In the frightened cluster of people one of the women screamed. The boys stooped to gather rocks. Even the ox recoiled from Tirza. The man called, “Get away! Get away!” and shook his staff at her.
    Alarmed, she stopped, her arms falling to her sides. “No. You don’t understand.” In her own ears now she heard her voice as they heard it, no words, only growls and whistles and shrieks. A rock struck her on the arm.
    â€œGet away! Witch! Demon! Get away!”
    With a scream she turned and ran. Another rock flew by her head. Tears dribbled down her face; she had lost; she had lost; it was all gone. Their screeching voices behind her sounded fainter, farther. When she could hear them no more, she flung herself down in the wild grass and wept.

 
    2
    The sea came out of the west from beyond the world’s edge, and broke at last against the tip of the continent at Cape of the Winds, and there on those jagged black rocks, with the sea on three sides, stood Castle Ocean. Its five towers, its ramparts braced up with tree trunks where the sea had eaten away the base, its balconies and terraces and pinnacles, rose up like forms of the natural rock, as if it had been there since the world