Free The Pygmy Dragon by Marc Secchia

her head. “Oh … the one that jumps?”
    “Chain lightning, ay. Good, Pip.” He patted her on the shoulder. “But I sense my pupil has a question. Out with it, before it burns your tongue.”
    “Dragons are good, right, Master Balthion?”
    Balthion showed his surprise with a testy snort. “Ay? As all Humans are good? So slave traders and zookeepers, and War-Hammers, for that matter, are all good? Pip, this Island-World can be a bad, unfair place, and you know that better than most. Don’t you go thinking Dragons are any better than Humans. They say that some Dragons long for a return to the good old days when Humans were slaves and Dragons ruled the Island-World from the frozen Isles of the North to the deep South, past the Rift to Herimor and beyond. There are feral Dragons–those who have lost all reason and exist only as the wildest of predators, intent on destruction–and evil Dragons with evil Dragon Riders, who prey on the unwary and the defenceless.”
    Pip chewed on her lip. “But, how can a Dragon become feral?”
    Balthion nodded. “Good question. From the loss of a beloved Rider, some say, or old age, or when the rage of battle overcomes their good sense. Riders or other Dragons can restore a feral Dragon to their right mind. But it is a dangerous undertaking.”
    “Master, I thought the Dragons were defeated in the Second Great Dragonwar?”
    “Ah.” Balthion’s expression turned solemn. “So they were, Pip, some sixty-three summers ago. But this generation of Dragons has forgotten that war and why it was fought. They wonder why some puny Humans should rule the Islands, rather than the mighty Dragon-kind. Dragons are dangerous, Pip. Too many people think they are just like us. Dragons are mighty, untameable beasts of fire and magic. That will never change.”
    Pip pondered Balthion’s words long after he left, until the evening grew old and the cloudless night sky filled with stars–unusually, for one of the five moons was always present in the sky, except for three nights of the year. She slept restlessly, her dreams filled with chaotic images and baffling portents.
    With the state of high alert of Sylakia Island’s troops, Pip noticed a drop in the number of visitors to the zoo. Fine. She could do without the stares. So it was, when the stranger approached her cage, that Pip hardly noticed him. The back of her neck prickled. Pip resisted. Let whoever it was just stare. Seven summers of roving eyeballs had armoured her skin. Now the backs of her knees itched. She scratched the skin with a hiss of annoyance, but immediately returned to lining up pieces of bamboo for her latest project, a pan-flute. After reading about pan-flutes in a history of the Southern Islands near the Rift, she had decided to make one for herself.
    Turn around.
    The whisper in her mind practically nailed her feet to the ground. What? Pretending a calm she did not feel, Pip tilted her head to scan the crysglass windows.
    Her eyes leaped to a blue-eyed stranger. He stood right up against the glass. He was as old as the trees of her jungle, a shaggy, white-haired man of yellowish skin and nondescript clothes–but his eyes! From beneath the brim of a floppy, torn farmer’s hat, they pierced right through her heart as if twin beams of starlight blazed from his eye-sockets.
    His lips did not move, but again, a voice formed in her mind. Are you the one?
    Before she could stop herself, Pip snapped, Get out of my head, you creep.
    Ah.
    That was all he said. One syllable, and Pip knew she had been discovered–only, she had no idea what it meant or what had been discovered. The blue eyes lidded over whatever secrets they concealed. The old man shuffled off, making surprising speed despite using two canes to support his unwilling knees.
    Pip glowered at his back, panting, her fists painfully knotted.
    “Pip not happy,” said Hunagu, moving over to lay his paw across her shoulders. He was careful not to crush her to her knees,