Free A Sending of Dragons by Jane Yolen

sobs of someone unused to tears. At last he got hold of himself and sat up. “Sorry,” he said, snuffling. “I know it’s not her. But who—or what—is it?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Akki said, putting her arms around him with a fierceness that astonished them both. “But I’ve got a feeling we’re going to find out soon.”
    Akki took a deep breath, then urged Jakkin to do the same. In and out, in and out, they timed their respirations until they were both calm. And then they felt it, a great trembling presence nearby: breathy, hulking, and frightened.
    â€œ
Man?
” The dark sending was knife sharp, though still within the basic tunnel shape, still gray. Then, tremulously, the sharper image melted away into a river of softer grays. “
Not-man?
”
    Jakkin stood and shed the soaking pack, then he walked slowly toward the creature with the sure step of a dragon trainer. All the while he thought cool and careful landscapes full of meadows and mountains, rivers and trees, gray-green, blue-gray. He put his hand out and rubbed down the dragon’s enormous leg until the creature put its head to his hand and sniffed it carefully. It nudged his hand and he felt along the nose and over the bony ridge of the forehead till he came to its ears. He began to scratch around its earflaps.
    Akki edged forward and tickled under the dragon’s chin. She began to sing in a clear sweet voice:
    Â 
Little flame mouths

Cool your tongues,

Dreaming starts soon

Furnace lungs
. . .
    Â 
    And soon the tunnel was filled with a gentle thrumming and the dove gray sendings of the cave dragon.

The Snatchlings

9
    T HE DRAGON’S THOUGHTS were confusing. They seemed to hop from one splash of gray to the next. Its mouthings were unformed as well, most of the time nothing more than the pipings of a new hatchling, as though it was almost mute.
    â€œCan you get any sense of her?” Akki asked.
    â€œIf you’ve found out
it
is a
her,
then you’re doing better than I am,” Jakkin said.
    â€œI can
feel
the difference, idiot!”
    â€œBy her head?”
    Akki sighed. “All this time with dragons and you don’t know a worm-eaten thing. Female dragons have a special ridge under the tongue. You can just barely feel it when
they’re not gravid, but it’s there. It grows bigger to help with the egg breaking if a hatchling’s birth bump can’t do the job. Then it gets smaller again, after the hatching.”
    â€œI got all of that but
gravid.”
    â€œIt means pregnant, Jakkin. Full of eggs.
Honestly!
I sometimes wonder about you.”
    Jakkin grunted. “You have a lot of head knowledge, Akki. But most of what I know comes from here.” He tapped himself on the chest and his sending was a diagram of a human with the pulsing red point in the center of the body.
    â€œThat’s the stomach, worm waste. Your heart is higher and on the left side.” She laughed.
    â€œI know that,” Jakkin said quickly. But a moment later he joined in her laughter.
    Sensing the lightened mood, the dragon gave a remarkable imitation of a chuckle, deep-throated and near a thrum. For an instant her mind seemed to clear and Jakkin caught a glimpse in her sending of a landscape so alien to him, he wondered if it was real. It was a dark hole in which hot fiery liquids bubbled, and nearly naked creatures, in
stooped parody of human beings, bent over the boiling pit. Then the scene was gone, replaced by the same jumble of grays.
    â€œ
Man? Not-man?
” the dragon asked again.
    â€œOf course man,” Akki said.
    The dragon leaped up, knocking Jakkin over with its tail as it stood and began to tremble.
    â€œOh, fewmets,” Akki cried. “Jakkin, do something.”
    Jakkin scrambled to his feet and put both hands on the dragon’s back. The only other time he had seen a dragon tremble that much had been in the pit when a