BOOK I · CHAPTER ONE · YH
The First Breath
The child moved before Elara was ready to look at him.
Something small scraped against her dress. She felt it through the damp cloth, a tug near her knee, and tried to lift herself on one elbow. Pain tightened low in her belly. Her arm gave way.
For a while she could only lie there and breathe.
The opening in the rock had become a patch of white. Snow blew across it, thinning whenever the wind changed, then thickening until she could no longer see the ground outside. She listened for the baby. There should have been a cry, something she would know how to answer.
Instead came a soft, uneven snuffling.
She reached for the strip of linen she had brought to wrap him in. One end had fallen into a crack in the rock. She pulled it free and shook it with a clumsy snap, as if a clean cloth were still the thing that would put everything in order. She had hemmed it by the window. There was a crooked corner where she had worked after the light failed, too impatient to wait until morning.
She spread that corner over her palm. The snuffling came again, nearer this time.
She lowered her eyes.
At first she saw the colour: pale pink against the grey of her skirt. Then a narrow head lifted, and the folds along its back opened a little. Light showed through them. They were wings.
Elara stopped breathing.
The creature pulled one foot free of the cloth. Its claws caught in a seam. It tugged, slipped, and tried again, making the same thin noise. Each attempt brought it a little closer to her.
She drew her leg away.
The movement hurt. She gasped, and the little head jerked towards the sound.
“No.”
Her voice was so faint she barely heard it herself.
She looked past him at the rock, then at the white opening. She had come into this place carrying a child. She could remember the weight of him beneath her ribs. Even now her body seemed to remember it, though the weight was gone.
Perhaps she had fainted. Perhaps there was something she had not seen.
She searched the folds of her dress with a shaking hand. The movement brought her fingers close to his face. He turned towards them at once.
Elara snatched them back.
His wings trembled. They seemed too large for him, thin and awkward, the edges still folded over themselves. One lay against her skirt; the other dragged along the stone. She could see the effort of his breathing beneath the tiny scales at his throat.
He was looking at her.
She had imagined looking back. Not this face, not these eyes, but the moment itself: someone small and helpless meeting her gaze, waiting for her to do whatever mothers were supposed to know how to do.
She pressed her hand over her mouth.
The creature made a sound again. He had freed his claw and managed another uncertain step. His head bumped her knee. He remained there, leaning against her, as though the journey had exhausted him.
Elara could not make herself touch him.
She could not stop watching his chest, either. When his breath caught, hers caught with it. She waited until the next one came.
There was a place on his breast where the scales were so fine she could see the skin move underneath. She fixed her eyes on it. Up, down. When she looked at the wings she wanted to crawl away; when she looked at that little patch, she wanted him to take another breath. She could not make those wants agree.
Beyond the opening, the wind lifted loose snow from the ground. She turned towards that brightness, measuring the distance without meaning to. A few steps. She would have to stand first.
Her palm found the rock behind her.
The little head followed the movement.
There was no one else in the cave. She looked again, because the thought that someone might be there, someone who could tell her what had happened, was harder to surrender than she expected. Only the rock, her scattered clothing and the child.
Her child. The words recoiled from what lay against her leg.
She pulled her shawl towards her. One corner had been trapped beneath her hip. Freeing it took an effort that left her sweating in the cold. She worked without looking down, folding the cloth across her shoulders, tucking one end beneath the other. A familiar task. Her hands knew how to do it.
The snuffling stopped.
In the sudden quiet she heard something else, a faint scrape. The little creature was trying to climb over the fold she had pulled away from him. One foreleg reached up; the other could not find purchase. He tipped onto his side.
Her hand moved before she decided to move it.
It stopped an inch above him.
He righted himself. A wing folded underneath his body, and for several breaths he struggled to pull it out. She watched, her hand suspended, until he had done it. Then she drew her fingers into the shawl.
“I don’t know what you are,” she whispered.
He answered with the same small sound.
She had heard stories. Everyone had. The kind told near a fire when the door was barred and whatever lived beyond it belonged safely to the dark. In those stories a person always knew what a creature wanted. Hunger, treasure, the destruction of a village. There was a name for it and a way to kill it.
Nothing had prepared her for one that could not manage the hem of a dress.
Elara braced a foot against the stone. She pushed herself upright in stages, stopping when the cave swung around her. The shawl slipped; she caught it. When she could see clearly again, the small head was raised towards her face.
He had not moved away.
That frightened her more than if he had hissed or struck. There was an expectation in his attention. Whatever she had brought into the world had brought a need with it, and she was the only living thing it knew.
She slid her skirt from beneath him.
He followed the cloth until his feet met bare rock. The movement set his wings fluttering. She stepped back, and the sound he made changed.
It was not loud. It did not have to be.
“Stop.”
She did not know whether she was speaking to him or to the feeling rising inside her. She turned towards the entrance and put a hand to the wall. Stone bit into her palm. She welcomed it. She could understand the sharpness of stone.
Outside, the cold took her breath so thoroughly that for a moment she heard nothing at all.
The slope fell away towards the valley. Her footprints were still visible in the snow, though their edges had softened. She put her foot into one and steadied herself. Then the next.
Behind her, from inside the rock, came the thin, persistent cry.
Elara tightened the shawl across her chest and took another step.