Content warning: death
“… And so to this day we listen to the wind, waiting to hear this story come back to us. When it does, we may find our lowland kin and be one people once more.
I give you this story with my breath, so that my life may touch yours.
I send you this story on the wind, so that it may fly where I cannot.”
Grandmother Agate exhaled, bathing the nestlings with warm steam. They dutifully bowed their heads and breathed in deep, thanking her for the story, before immediately clambering up on her scaley sides to demand more.
One nestling, who was almost certain they’d like to be called Rutile, piped up. “So do we stop telling the story now? Since they talked back to us?”
Grandmother Agate chuffed. “No, little one. The story was for the wind, so we could search for the lowland dragons – but the story is also for us. So we may remember the sea where we began, and give thanks to the elders—”
“And the fledgling!” another high voice interrupted.
“And the clever fledgling, that’s right. The elders and the clever fledgling whose wisdom led us here. Now, little ones, I have many stories, so we could have another… but I thought you all wanted to swim today?” A cheer went up. Grandmother Agate swept her mighty tail, herding the rowdy nestlings into a rough clump, and together the group proceeded to the deep, cool cavern lake in the center of the mountain.
***
“Onyx! Psst! Onyx! You hear anything good?”
“Not in the sliver of a sun-path since you asked last, Rutile. And I won’t, if you keep talking!”
“Aww, you used my name.”
“That is your name for sure, right? You can always change it next year if you don’t like it.”
“Yeah! For this year, anyway!”
“Good job, bud.”
***
Onyx shuffled his wings awkwardly, looking downwind at the older dragons who made up the rest of the envoys. As the Listener to hear the call from the lowlands, he had been invited to attend this momentous occasion, but he couldn’t help but feel like an interloper in a group of this caliber. The head Listener, the head Fisher, and Grandmother Agate (as their oldest History Keeper) were wrapping up the exchange of hatchlings, solemnly handing over a moss-lined bassinet in exchange for the lowlanders’ basket lined in goat furs. That done, they walked back upwind.
“Here, Onyx. Would you like to carry them?” Grandmother Agate’s stately gray head turned to him, holding out the basket from two large claws.
“Are you sure? They’re so little.” Onyx peered inside, wondering at the tiny hatchling. They couldn’t be more than a few days old, their eyes still closed and their wings still curled and folded. Their coloring was unlike that of any dragon in the mountains, a ruddy brown interspersed with irregular light and dark patches to blend into the leaf litter of the lowland forests. Onyx held out his own claws to compare, the variegated grays and blacks contrasting in their cooler shades.
Grandmother Agate gently set the basket down in front of him and pushed it closer. “They should start getting to know their new siblings. It seems fitting to start with you,” she said. “After all, you’re the reason they’re here.”
“Grandmother, that was just luck! If it wasn’t me on duty, it would’ve been someone else,” Onyx protested, but took up the basket handle in his jaws regardless. Fighting Grandmother Agate was like trying to fly downwards on a thermal updraft: warm but unyielding.
“Take pride in your keen ears, pebble. Another Listener could have missed it, the story was so faint.” Grandmother blew a small gout of steam over him affectionately, ruffling his head spines. “Now get ready to go. It’s a long flight home, and we want to start before the winds shift.”
***
“Won’t they miss their family? I miss Hopper.”
“I miss them, too. But Hopper and Little Red are too young to really know the difference. And when they’re old enough, Hopper can come visit.”
“But why did they have to go?”
“This is how we become one people again, even as we live in two places. Sending stories on the wind, adopting hatchlings into our creches – we learn from one another and start to live together.”
“Whoa. So Little Red is pretty important.”
“We hope they and Hopper are the start of something big, yes. But for now, I think Little Red would like a snack.”
***
Crechemaster Epidote tried not to worry, as a general rule. Younglings were always more resilient than adults expected, and the more anxious ones tended to feed off of their caregivers’ fears. But, well. After this many seasons in the creche, Epidote understood mountain younglings. The mischiefs, the sniffles, the scrapes and bumps: all were variations on a familiar tune. The creche’s newest addition, on the other hand, was already causing them new problems.
With a bowl of fish mash and an anticipatory wince, Epidote gently woke Little Red. On cue, the hatchling began to wail, and Epidote had to catch a claw before it could scratch at a raw patch of skin. Little Red was not taking well to dry mountain air: within days, scales had started to peel, and then to slough off in clumps exposing angry, irritated skin beneath. Now if Little Red wasn’t sleeping, they were crying, the poor thing.
Epidote managed to coax half a bowl of fish into the hatchling before they fell back into a fretful sleep, then scooped them up with a sigh. They proceeded to a bathing pool off of the central lake and dunked Little Red in up to the neck. Immersed in the cool water, Little Red settled and fell into true slumber, floating between Epidote’s protective claws. Daily baths loosened the flaking scales and somewhat soothed them, but so far nothing had yielded real improvements.
The healers’ current theory was that it was an issue of acclimatization, that Little Red simply needed to grow new scales that were more suited to the mountains. Epidote dearly hoped that that would prove true.
***
“The hatchling won’t last past sunrise. Worse, it might be catching.”
“What—!”
“Keep it quiet, we aren’t sure and we don’t want to cause a panic. But Epidote came to Healer Sard with a tiredness they couldn’t shake. And today their scales began to shed.”
“If we cannot figure out what this is, and how it may be spreading…”
“I know.”
***
Onyx stared blankly into the pyre smoke. Three bodies burned on one pile, a great disrespect in any other circumstance. But as the days of the outbreak had turned to weeks, the deaths had accumulated faster than they could build the pyres. As Onyx watched, the delicate bones of a wing crumbled to ash. He couldn’t tell whose it was.
When the heat of the flames dwindled from unbearable to merely unpleasant, he turned away. It was time for his shift Listening to the Cave of Echoes. The Cave held every story the mountain dragons had ever told and every song they had ever sung, from creche lullabies to their most sacred legends. History Keepers like Grandmother Agate would spend hours there, gathering ancient echoes and repeating them so they would not fade.
They’d burned Grandmother Agate five days ago.
Onyx shook himself all over, as if grief were something he could fling from his scales like rain. The heavy feeling in his heart remained, but at least the movement woke his mind somewhat. He wound through a maze of inner passageways to reach the yawning, jagged mouth of the Cave and tapped Listener Citrine’s shoulder, relieving her of her post. The Listeners were taking turns to search for echoes of plagues, hoping the tales of the past could offer some insight.
Onyx scraped a hollow in the mud and settled in. He found the quiet place in his mind where the world faded away; all that remained was the whispering of the Cave.
***
…the spirits of the sea grew jealous… the skies filled with smoke and the wind with ash.…
…a fledgling had an idea: “Elders, I listen to the wind, and it says…”
…scales fell like rain. For years, it was said, no one dared to touch the water.
Onyx’s eyes snapped open.
***
“It’s the water! Get out of the water! Get— you can’t—” Onyx collapsed at the edge of the lake, choking down sobs.
“Onyx! Breathe. What’s in the water?” A calm, concerned voice. Onyx looked up, bleary-eyed. Healer Sard had been washing her claws; she shook them dry as she approached.
“There was a story. In the Cave. A shed-scale plague that spreads through water,” he managed, sides still heaving.
Sard’s face began to share the panic that Onyx could already feel giving way to despair. “Then it may already be too late.”
***
“…I send you this story on the wind, so that it may fly where I cannot. Beware the mountain caves, beware their water. To touch it is danger, to submerge is death.
We beg of our lowland kin: remain away, so that some of our people may survive.
I give you this story with my breath, so that our lives may touch yours. I send you this story on the wind…”
***
The plague depicted here draws inspiration from real fungal diseases in animals, most prominently chytridiomycosis, or chytrid fungus. Chytrid has been linked to mass deaths and extinctions in amphibians worldwide, especially frogs, and spreads through spores in water. It is especially virulent at the lower temperatures found at high elevations. You can help prevent the spread of chytrid by preventing the movement of amphibians between locations: never release captive-bred animals into the wild and do not remove amphibians from the wild. Clean boots, clothing, and equipment before entering aquatic environments to avoid carrying spores. Learn more at cwhl.vet.cornell.edu/disease/chytridiomycosis.