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‘I don’t think so,’ Reyn breathed. ‘But lie still. Don’t move.

’ The boy remained plastered against his side.

Reyn slowly put an arm over Selden to reassure him.

He kept his own eyes fixed on the dragon.

Her tail uncoiled, slicing a path over the surface of the engulfing mud.

She suddenly threw back her head and trumpeted.

It rang in Reyn’s ears as much as his mind.

Triumph and defiance were in that cry. It crashed against the confines of the chamber.

She reared back on her hind legs, balancing herself against the thick portion of her serpentine tail.

He saw her crouch, and clutched Selden more tightly.

Wings half spread, she sprang suddenly towards the crack in the ceiling.

Her head crashed against the remnants of the dome, and she fell back.

But her forepaws had clutched and scrabbled briefly against the overhead crack.

As she dropped, a ragged section of earth and roots came with her.

The wind of her battering wings and the fall of earth buffeted Reyn and Selden.

Her sprawling displacement of the mud made their island tilt towards her.

Reyn clutched frantically at the smooth surface as it threatened to spill them into the mud under her great churning feet.

She gathered herself for another try. Reyn clutched Selden and tried to stay on top of the debris.

She sprang again. This time her head went through the hole overhead.

Her clutching forelegs seized the edge of the opening.

Her huge body dangled momentarily. Her hind legs kicked and her tail lashed past them, missing them but not by much.

Her wings bunched against the ceiling and held her back as she tried to crawl out.

With a rending sound, more of the ceiling overhead gave way.

She came down in an avalanche of ceiling bits and dirt.

A slide of earth collapsed in with her, including an entire tree that came to rest drunkenly against the opening.

The dragon landed heavily on her side in the muck.

Selden struggled against Reyn’s grip on him. ‘If we can get to that tree, we can climb out!’ he cried. He pointed at the leaning trunk and limbs that bridged a path to the surface.

‘Not while she’s thrashing around. We’ll be trampled into the mud.’

‘If we stay here, she’ll trample us anyway,’ Selden shouted. ‘We have to try!’

‘Stay down!’ Reyn ordered him, and enforced it with his weight. The boy whimpered under his chest as the crystal tilted more sharply.

She sprang again. She clawed the tree out of her way, and gained the edge of the enlarged hole.

All light was blocked as she clung there, kicking and scrabbling.

Reyn felt the swift brush of her tail tip.

It tore the coarse fabric of his trousers and scoured the skin from his calf in passing.

He roared with pain, but kept his grip on Selden.

Clumps of earth, straggles of root and pieces of ceiling rained down around them as the wedged dragon fought to emerge from her tomb.

Some light broke through to them. It outlined her struggling body above them.

The tail swept again, and this time it slapped them both solidly.

Reyn and Selden were flung from their crystal island into the mire.

They splatted in the thin layer of water and then felt the swift suck of the mud.

‘Spread your weight!’ Reyn ordered the boy.

He splayed his limbs out over the mire, hoping to float upon it a little longer.

‘She’s going to fall and crush us,’ Selden wailed. He clutched at Reyn and instinctively tried to climb on top of him. Reyn stiff-armed the boy away. ‘Lay wide on the top, and pray!’ he shouted.

More of the dome was coming down. Debris was mixed with the earth.

Small trees and some coarse ferns and grasses crashed down.

‘She’s going to make it!’ Reyn roared as she hitched her rib cage up over the edge.

He heard her triumphant trumpet. The soar of joy in his heart surprised him.

There was a final shower of earth and debris.

Then sunlight flooded the ruined chamber.

Her long tail lashed its way up and vanished.

He heard her roar again, and felt the wind of her frantically beating wings.

He did not see her rise with his eyes, but he felt it in his heart.

Stillness flowed back with her passing. She was gone.

Tears streamed down his face. He stared up at the small window of blue summer sky. She might be the last of her kind, but at least she would fly before she died.

‘Reyn. Reyn!’ There was annoyance in Selden’s voice.

He turned his face toward the sound and then blinked his eyes to adjust them.

The boy had pulled himself out onto a large chunk of grassy earth that had landed upright on the muck.

He stood up and pointed at a dangling network of roots that hung down from the ceiling.

‘I think we can pile up enough stuff for me to grab hold of those roots. I could climb out and go for help.’ His eyes darted around the room hopefully.

In addition to more hunks of crystal, there were pieces of old timber and parts of trees now upon the muck.

Careless of mud and water, Reyn rolled over on his back and considered it. The roots were not thick, but the boy didn’t weigh much. ‘I think you’re right,’ he conceded. ‘Maybe we’ll come out of this alive after all.’ He rolled back to his belly and began to flounder his way over to the boy.

As he grasped at the coarse grass and hauled himself out of the mud and onto solid ground, Selden asked him, ‘Do you think maybe Malta got out, too?’

‘She might have,’ Reyn said. He thought he lied, but as he spoke, a sudden lift in his heart told him he not only hoped, he believed it possible.

With the flight of the dragon, all things seemed possible.

As if in echo of his thought, he heard the far-away echoing of the dragon’s trumpeting cry.

He glimpsed a flash of a brighter blue against the sky.

‘If my mother or brother sees or hears her, they’ll know where she came from. They’ll search and send help to us. We’re going to live.’

Selden met the older man’s eyes. ‘Until then, let’s try to get ourselves out,’ he proposed. ‘After all we’ve been through, I don’t want to be rescued by someone else. I want to do it myself.’

Reyn grinned and nodded.

Tintaglia banked over the wide Rain Wild River valley.

She tasted the summer air, rich with all the smells of life.

She was free, free. She beat her wings strongly, flapping them harder than she must, for the simple joy of experiencing her own strength.

She rose through the blue summer day, soaring up to where the air was thin and chill.

The river became a sparkling silver thread in the green tapestry below her.

She had in her memory the experiences of all her forebears to draw upon, but she savoured for the first time her own flight.

She was free now, free to create her own memory and life.

She circled lazily down, considering all that lay before her.

She had a task before her, the task that she alone remained to perform. She must find the young ones, and protect and guide them in their migration up the river. She hoped that some remained alive to be guided. If not, she would truly be the last of her kind.

She tried to dismiss the humans from her mind.

They were not Elderlings who knew the ways of her kind and accorded dragons proper respect.

They were humans. One could not owe anything to such beings.

They were creatures of a few breaths, frantic to eat and breed before their brief span of days was done.

What could one of her kind owe to something that died and rotted swifter than a tree did?

Could one be in debt to a butterfly or a blade of grass?

She touched them briefly with her mind, a final time.

They had not long to live. The female struggled like a beetle in a puddle, floating and flailing against moving water.

Reyn Khuprus was where she had left him, mired in mud and squirming like a worm.

He struggled in the self-same chamber where she had languished for so many years.

The brevity of their lives suddenly touched her.

In the momentary twinkling of their existence, each of them had tried to aid her.

Each had taken time from their mate quest to try to free her.

Poor little bugs. It was a small cost to her, these few moments out of the vast store of years to come.

She turned a lazy loop in the sweet summer air.

Then with strong, steady beats of her wings, she drove herself back towards the buried city.

‘I’m coming!’ she called to them both. ‘Don’t fear. I’ll save you.’