“Hinte!” I yelled out.


    The human! It’d saved me. Teeth sunk into my side — a fourth shadow. It ripped through the white suit and slashed my scales. I buckled. Head smashed into the ground.


    ouch. The other circled around to lunge at her neck again. But that was all I glimpsed.


    Force it closed. I reached???—


    bit me! Its teeth cracked the glass and pierced the scutes. I grabbed its lower jaw.


    No!


    swung the shadow. Land in the lake, please! But as I let go, the third thing came. It lunged at a foreleg. Old glass bore the brunt.


    wouldn’t. I dodged away, and it only clawed my face — but it clawed again and again. Blood dripping down my face, I couldn’t submerge the shadow. I gave up.


    Rockwraiths will fly away after you stop moving. Hinte’s voice, the distant wiver who hadn’t seen me stand up to humans.


    feel them staring at me, waiting.


    think! They had caught Hinte by surprise, injured her even more. She was over there, alone. I had to help her.


    It awakens sleeping things, sleeping out the gray season.


    flee. Fly up into the sky and glide back to Gwymr/Frina. Hinte needed my help, but would I even make a difference? Maybe it was better if at least one of us lived. She could understand that, right?


    I would not let you die.


    think…


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    I had a plan, I just needed to find Hinte. She’d been fleeing last you saw, and I’d… gone in the opposite direction. Aching legs slipped me into a high walk. I slinked over the gnarled ground as fast as I dared. The new speed ripped pain in my forelegs, but it didn’t matter.


    pop that was only loud because it was so quiet all around and???—


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    I had lost my crabs. I had lost the crab blood. My face and legs were red and wet. But, just maybe, there was a victory of my own: I had survived. And Hinte? The stars had to have spared her. They had to.


    We lived.”


    screamed. The pain fired up through my legs and side, winging from my mouth as a pained groan. Hinte stared at me, hidden gaze meeting mine, lines of her face softening further.


    Again. I will not fly for a half-cycle, at least.”


    do?” I asked. I had to learn more about alchemy if I was to impress Hinte without the Sieve. No shame in just asking, right?


    die Wundervernarbung.” Why did her voice sound so songly? Her uttering that polysyllabic monster sounded almost an excited lilt, if that could ever describe Hinte’s voice.


    Die Wundervernarbung. It means???—”


    means. Wonderful scarring or something like that???—??I speak Drachenzunge, Hinte. You just can’t expect me to pronounce all of those big fat words you all have.” I had finished with the one wing, so I moved around to the other. “Tell me about the pink stuff, please.”


    Die Wundervernarbung” — (it was definitely a lilt) — “was a miracle, plain and simple.”


    Hinte suffered for it. It wasn’t fair!


    lucky. But after cycles on the farm, moiling on the technique, with no results, the Dozentin, the students, the farmer, had all grown weary. The farmer did not understand the complexity and hard work that goes into alchemical research, and the students didn’t understand how long one must go with seemingly no results.


    that close to getting forest-dweller alchemy secrets for free!


    * * *