In The Lair of the Draca (Book 2)

In the Lair of the Draca (Book 2) Chapter 73: Mate

"Beat her! Slap her! Bash her in the head!" Deema, filled with righteous fury and indignation, was pacing the area in front of Ziuta's Dragon Lodge back and forth in mortification.

"Shan't," replied Ziuta softly, carrying a myriad of dishes, ladles, baskets, and dragon-hide clothing out of the lodge and dumping them into the grass. After sending Dijaq away the previous evening, Ziuta had spent most of the Night in a tiny ball on the floor, weeping quietly and covering her ears against the bone-chilling wails of the Draca. Sensing their charge's broken heart and devastated psyche, each Draca had paced round and round the lodge, lifting their snouts to the Twin Moons and keening their distress: Ai-ai! Ai-ai! Ai-ai! For when Ziuta was unhappy, her protectors suffered as much from disconsolate melancholy as did their Red-Haired Star-Child.

Deema, however, was Moon-bent on reciprocation. Her wedge-like jaws foamed, and a continuous growl erupted from her throat. As she continued to pace with nail-like claws unsheathed, she reminded Ziuta of one of Hallow's Wood's timber wolves, snarling and bristling at a rival whose smell she had detected too close to her precious pups. Disha sat beside the creek bank on her haunches, panting heavily, while Duscha had taken her familiar perch in the bolberry tree near the clear-running stream that was Haven's Creek, looking for all intents and purposes like a gargantuan serpent, silently testing the air for prey. This morning, her nostrils were flared, which meant that someone-- or something-- had caught her attention.

"It is no use, Deema," beseeched Ziuta, heading back inside of the lodge and filling her arms with more laundry. The pile outside of the Dragon's Lodge was beginning to grow. "I cannot force a man to love me, or even persuade him if his heart lies with another. I saw the way he gripped Zee's wrists and kissed her in the throes of their-- passion." She said the last word as though she had tasted something rancid. "Ah-mah was right. I should have learned from her instead of giving my heart away so freely...for what good is a man but to cause pain to the women who love him?"

Deema ceased her pacing and stopped in front of Ziuta, lowering her great head so that the Star-Child could stroke it and pat the area just beneath her chin.

"Zee was a seductress, plain and simple," said Deema crisply. "It is seldom that an Evening folk maiden has  beauty anything like hers: what man might not give in to the throes of nature when faced with eyes so lovely? Perhaps you could find it in your heart to forgive Dijaq. When you do, I will remember my place as your protector, fly into Looks Thrice, and carry Zee away from her lodge so that I can break both her legs. Ha!"

"The fault is not with Zee," insisted Ziuta, pursing her beautiful lips into a tight, unopened berry-blossom. Remembering the previous evening, when she had given Dee a sad smile and sent him on his way, in spite of the begging, pleading, and prostrating he'd done to try and change her mind, she said: "A grandfather complains that he has more grand-daughters than grandsons to care for him. A father steps out on his wife and beds other women, or strikes her-- this I learned from my flesh-and-blood father-- and a baby brother makes one's life miserable by pulling one's hair and reporting her activities to the village elder." Ziuta, having cleared out most of the belongings from her comfortable little lodge, plopped herself onto the fresh, green grass and sighed forlornly. "Even a son exists only to break his mother's heart," she continued. "A woman carries him for five months, births him in a fountain of blood, wipes his dirty bottom, and cleans the snot from his nose while he grows, follows his father around to learn to do man-things, and peeks underneath the older women's skirts. Eventually he finds a new woman and leaves his mother-- and the entire cycle starts all over again. Oh, Deema, how could I have been so ridiculous and foolish?" Ziuta buried her face in her hands.

"Hush!" Disha hissed, who had just lapped up some of the creek water. "There it is again; that ugly, awful, metallic taste. He is close this time-- and nothing in our Power will be able to keep him away, Ziuta!" To Duscha, she pleaded desperately: "Can the three of us band together to fight him?"