Chasing Wings Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Author page

  Also by Hanna Dare

  CHASING WINGS

  by Hanna Dare

  Copyright © 2021 Hanna Dare

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expression written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-1-7752438-5-4

  Cover Design by Natasha Snow

  Proofreading by D.J. Jamison

  Hannadare.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tris had been afraid of heights his whole life — right up until he flew with a dragon.

  After that? Well, he was done for. He’d been only thirteen at the time, but he’d been pretty certain about how his life would go. He was a shepherd in a valley called Shadow’s Vale, tucked away in a sleepy part of an unremarkable kingdom. Tris had minded his family’s sheep from the time he was old enough to walk, and he knew one day he would take over from his parents and run the farm. His life was bound to the seasons and the sheep. There was lambing and the movement of the sheep from the low meadows to the high ones as the weather warmed. The shearing, the culling, the securing of the flock for the winters that locked the valley and its small village away from the rest of the world with snow. Tris didn’t think much about life beyond herding, but he supposed that someday he’d get married to a girl from the valley and have children of his own so the cycle could start up again with another generation.

  He never questioned that path. It was just the way of things and Tris never thought to want anything more. His imagination was as contained as the valley itself.

  Then one night, a dragon picked Tris up in his claws and the world opened up before him.

  Tris sighed as he took in the first view of the valley. He was happy to be home, of course, and he could appreciate the springtime green of the tender grass and the new leaves freshly unfurled on the trees, but coming back meant admitting another failure. It had happened more times than he wanted to admit — Tris would set out, full of big boasts about seeing the world, making his fortune, and, more secretly, finding a dragon — only to stumble back months later, footsore and short on coin. The only adventures were in trying to avoid cutpurses and grifters who saw Tris as an easy mark, and the only dragons were in stories.

  He was starting to fear that there were no more dragons in the world, except the one he’d already met, and that his quest was more of a childish obsession. Tris sighed again, hiked his rucksack higher up his shoulder, and started down the road toward home.

  As he walked, Tris noted the changes in his months away. There were two cottages being built, not far off the main road, and in the village, he could spot a new roof on the blacksmith’s shop. The inn looked busy, as always, and Tris had to get off the road to make way for the large wagon carrying barrels of the inn’s renowned ale for delivery to the next valley over. He skirted well around the inn, though — he didn’t want to go there yet.

  Tris raised his eyes to the mountains ringing the valley, noting the placements of different flocks of sheep on the lower meadows. One thing that never changed — not since he was thirteen years old, at least — was the broken crag of rock hanging partway out over the valley. Once that landmark, called the Lookout, had cast a long shadow over the valley for several months in the winter. Now it was more of a stub, shadowing nothing more than the abandoned keep that clung to the sloped side of the mountain beneath it. But it was important. That cracked and blackened rock was a reminder that something amazing had happened in the valley. Once a dragon had lit up the night sky with fire and burned the Lookout away. For Tris, the sight was a touchstone and he stared at it for a long moment to settle himself. Dragons were real and he wasn’t mad to want to see one again, he told himself. At least not completely mad.

  His family’s farmhouse was past the village, a bit higher up the mountain and surrounded by trees that Tris had played hide and seek among as a child. He tapped the fence posts as he approached, counting his way home. The stone cottage awaited, still cosy despite the rooms added onto the back in the last few years. The heavy wooden door was closed against the spring chill in the air and Tris felt his heart swell, even as a bit of dread twisted his stomach. Any moment now, that door would open and his mother would call—

  “Tris!”

  His mother rounded a corner of the barn, chickens trailing after her in a hopeful cluster, looking for any speck of food that might fall from the woven basket on her arm. Her broad red cheeks crinkled up as she smiled at him, and Tris could see that glad as she was to see him, she was a bit uncertain too, like she wasn’t sure what this strange child of hers was going to do next. But he put that all aside to rush into her arms.

  “Ma,” Tris said, a bit hoarsely both from emotion and also because he hadn’t spoken to another person in two days. “It’s good to see you.”

  Tris sat across the wide wooden table from his parents, a thick piece of bread slathered with blackberry jam in front of him. There was plenty of new furniture in the house these days, but that table, scarred and stained from three generations of use, remained.

  His father drew on a small clay pipe and frowned at Tris. There was a little more gray in his brown beard and his stout body had grown a bit wider over the winter, but the puzzlement with which he regarded his son was unchanged and had been for the last ten years.

  “So you’ve been spending the last few months cleaning out a stable?” he asked Tris.

  “I was working for a very important man,” Tris insisted. “A scholar. He’s traveled all over. He has houses in the kingdom, Ens, and even Ur Osten.”

  He was also supposed to be an expert on dragons and Tris had marveled appropriately at the dragon bones in his collection and listened to his stories. But that’s all they were — stories. He’d never even seen a live dragon and didn’t believe that Tris had.

  His father’s frown deepened. “What’s Ur Osten?”

  His mother shrugged helplessly.

  “It’s a country,” Tris said. “You know. It borders on this kingdom. East of here.”

  “Oh.” His father sounded like he was losing interest. “East. So for this fine gentleman, you were…”

  “There was some stable cleaning,” Tris admitted. “But it was practically a management position.”

  “Plenty of shit to shovel at home,” his father muttered.

  “So what happened to this position?” his mother asked.

  Tris squirmed on the hard wooden chair. He had grown impatient when he realized that the scholar’s traveling days were behind him and that Tris wasn’t going to learn from him the most important thing about dragons — where to find one.

  “I guess I missed you,” he said, turning big eyes up to his parents. It was a ploy that had always worked when he was younger.

  They both sighed a little before smiling back at him.

  “We’re glad to have you back, son.” His mother went over to the hearth to swing the large kettle over the fire. “And we’re certainly hoping you’ll stay put this time. Just remember a rolling stone gathers no moss.”

  Tris wasn’t sure why he’d care about a mossy rock, but he nodded dutifully.

  His father leaned back in his chair. “I suppose you’ll be seeing your sister next?” he asked with
a hint of reverence that was reserved for Lily, the not-disappointing one in the family.

  If his parents were confused by how Tris had turned out, they were absolutely stunned by Lily.

  Overnight, she had gone from a humble barmaid to owning the valley’s only inn. Her ambitions didn’t stop there. She’d expanded the inn’s ale production and soon began selling it to surrounding towns, eventually as far as the kingdom’s capital. Lily grew the inn too and made many improvements, turning it from a place that folks went to simply because there was nowhere else to go to the true center of the village.

  Her success might have caused resentment among the villagers, because Shadow’s Vale wasn’t a place where ambition was regarded with anything other than suspicion — especially ambition coming from a young unmarried woman — but Lily made sure to share her wealth around. She paid to widen the valley’s main road and refurbished the village square. The inn hosted feast days and funerals free of charge, and Lily was known as a generous employer, though no one ever got anything over on her. Nowadays, folk spoke of her as if she were some gracious, highborn lady instead of the farmer’s daughter with big ideas. And their parents, rather than nagging her constantly as they used to, considered Lily’s wisdom to be unquestionable.

  Tris and Lily had no secrets between them — or at least he’d never successfully been able to keep one from her — so he was the only person who knew the source of her good fortune was a gift from a dragon.

  Lily’s friend, Philip, had been the dragon’s… Well, when Tris was younger, Lily described them as ‘good friends,’ but then he got older and saw a bit more of the world and realized that they were a lot more than that. The dragon could change into a man named Ejoler, one who had sat in the inn and walked around the village without anyone knowing what he truly was. Tris supposed that as a man, Ejoler had got up to the things with Philip that men did together. Tris had tried it once himself — with a man, not a dragon who looked like a man — and found it all very enjoyable, just as good as the couple times he’d been with girls.

  In any case, Philip and Ejoler had rescued young Tris when he’d gotten stuck high up in the mountains overnight and, before they’d left the valley for good, they’d given Lily the gold she’d used to buy the inn and change her life. That’s how Tris knew that dragons weren’t the monsters they’d been made out to be. All the stories were about horrible beasts that tore men limb from limb, swallowed children whole, and burned up homes. Maybe some of the stories were true — he was pretty sure Ejoler had eaten a few of their sheep during his time in the valley — but Tris supposed that dragons were like people, some good and some bad, and that, like with regular folk, you should start with assuming good until proven otherwise. That’s what he hoped to explain if he ever saw Ejoler again or found another dragon to talk to.

  Tris came back from his thoughts to realize that his parents had moved past being glad to see him to expressing their disappointment with him once again. It happened faster after every trip.

  “How old are you now?” his mother was asking.

  “You know how old I am; you were there when I was born.”

  “Twenty-four!” she supplied. “Twenty-four and what do you have to show for it? No wife. No family. Leaving your father and me to tend the sheep—”

  “There are hired hands to look after the sheep—”

  “But there shouldn’t be. It’s supposed to be your responsibility. A responsibility you’re shirking.”

  Tris looked at his father, but there was no help there, just a slow puffing of his pipe.

  “I’m just trying to see a bit of the world before I settle down,” Tris offered weakly. “What’s wrong with that?”

  His mother began explaining in detail exactly what was wrong with it, his father interjecting every so often to say, “There’s nothing out in the world that you can’t find right here in the valley.” Something that even leaving aside dragons Tris knew to be completely untrue.

  Finally he stood up, smiling as best he could. “I think I will be going to see Lily now.”

  She’d understand.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Lily had been bustling around the inn while Tris followed, giving her an unvarnished version of his latest trip. She listened but never stopped moving, checking the linens in the rooms upstairs, sampling the new batch of ale with the thimble-sized cup she carried on a long chain with all her keys, and watching the progress of the cooks in the large kitchen. Finally, she bustled Tris into the main dining room and sat him down at his usual table. She ruffled his too-long hair and said that he looked half-starved. Even though he’d had bread and jam at home he happily accepted the bowl of stew and board of bread and sharp cheese that Lily set before him. Tris had always been sturdily built, though not tall, but the last few weeks it had felt like his skin was stretched too tight over his bones as he made his way home, very aware of his dwindling purse.

  He happily dug into the food as Lily finally stopped moving and dropped down on a chair opposite him, her plump cheeks flushed pink and her big brown eyes filled with worry as she looked at him.

  “So,” she said tucking the white spring flower Tris had brought her into her braided crown of brown hair, “I don’t see why you stayed at that place for so long if it was useless.”

  “It wasn’t useless,” Tris insisted around a mouthful of stew. “I learned lots about dragon history and geography and, well, horses.” Lily gave him a look and Tris sighed. “Also, I needed to earn enough money to get home.”

  “Tris! You could’ve written me—”

  “I know, I know, but I didn’t want to have to…again. I made it back all right.”

  Lily's expression suggested that describing his current state as “all right” was a stretch. Then her face changed as she glanced around the room. It was empty except for them and two barmaids wiping down tables on the other side of the large space.

  Tris swallowed hastily, not liking the serious look she had. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know if I should tell you this because it might upset you.”

  “Well, now you have to tell me. C’mon.”

  She lowered her voice and leaned toward him. “They were here. Philip and Ejoler.”

  “What?” He realized he had almost shouted. “Here here?”

  “Yes, in this very room.” Tris couldn’t stop himself from glancing around as though the two men might still be hidden in a corner. “It was around midwinter. I wasn’t here of course.” Lily hated the bleak winters in the valley and took off to her house in the capital at the first sign of snow. “But they came here, had supper, and left.”

  She hesitated again.

  “Lily.”

  “Then they came to find me in the capital. It was such a surprise after all these years. They stayed with me for a week or two.”

  This time he did shout. “They were at your house for two weeks and you didn’t tell me?”

  The barmaids glanced at each other and hurried from the room, no doubt thinking their boss and her brother were about to fight.

  “I didn’t know where you were, now did I?” Lily snapped back. “Ma and Papa only had a letter from you two months ago and that said you were coming back.” She folded her arms and glared.

  “I know,” Tris sighed. “It’s just… I’ve been looking for so long, Lil.” He straightened up a little. “So how are they?”

  She nodded sympathetically and then smiled. “They’re well. Better than I’d hoped. They have a little girl, Ejoler’s niece.”

  Tris found his voice rising again. “You saw a baby dragon?”

  Lily rolled her eyes. “I only saw her as a little girl. Meira. She’s sweet and very clever.”

  “But where were they headed? Did they say how long they were planning to be in the kingdom?”

  “They were going to see Philip’s relatives in Ens.“

  Tris nodded. Ens was the country to the south that lay along the edge of the Southern Sea. He’d been
once and found the food spicy and the people friendly — he wouldn’t mind traveling there again. He was already trying to figure out how long it would take him to get there—

  Lily seemed to read his mind. “But Tris, after that they were planning to keep going, across the sea and to the west. Some land I’d never heard of. Philip said they probably wouldn’t be back for a few years.”

  “Oh, of course.” It was foolish to think he could ever catch up with them anyway. After all, they could fly.

  “I did tell Philip what you were doing — looking for dragons.”

  Tris groaned. “Did he laugh?”

  “No! I mean, well, Ejoler rolled his eyes, but Philip understood. He wrote you a letter.”

  She reached into a pocket inside her apron and drew out a sealed piece of paper. Tris took it eagerly and then frowned. “This is your seal.”

  “They were at my house, weren’t they?”

  “And there’s no way you didn’t read it first and then re-seal it?”

  “So what if I did? I have to look out for you. You’re my little brother.” She got up and ruffled his hair again. “I’ll get you some ale while you read.”

  Tris wasn’t much of a reader, but he had no trouble making out Philip’s clear and steady handwriting.

  Dear Tris,

  I gather from Lily that meeting Ejoler had a profound effect on your life. I understand completely; meeting him changed my life in the best possible way. I wish that we had been able to see you on this visit. Ejoler would have been glad to answer any questions…

  There was an inkblot on the page at that point like perhaps Philip’s arm had been jostled, but the letter continued:

  Really, he would have been happy to talk to you, but our travel plans are taking us away from the kingdom for some time.

  I would like to offer help in your quest, but you must know that my father sought dragons for years without success. Ejoler tells me that dragons have largely left this region because of the hunters and the anger that exists between our peoples. It is very unlikely that you will ever find a dragon, Tris, and if you should, no matter how pure your intentions, that dragon will not be glad to see you. I don’t want to encourage you on a path that will at best lead to frustration and at worst your death. For one thing, Lily would kill me.