MIMIC

When I rattled down the ladder and into our kitchen, my younger brother, Peng, greeted me with his usual complaint: “When do I get to take the herd?” He must have thought if he got me early, I might not be awake enough to give him my usual answer.

“No, Peng.” I slung my pack onto the table and tucked the wrapped food set on the counter into it for later in the day. “I don’t know why you keep asking, when my answer is always the same. You do good work with the cows.”

Ma shook her head as she handed me a breakfast bowl of rice mixed with dried pork. I think she was getting tired of this argument between Peng and me.

“There’s plenty of folk to work the cows,” whined Peng. “You had your first flock when you were younger than me. Grandpa will take you for his apprentice any day, he says so all the time.”

I shoveled rice into my mouth. I didn’t want to say that I would cling to the freedom of the hillsides and my flock of sheep as long as I could. Study with Grandpa would mean hours indoors, away from the sun, the winds, and the wild creatures. It would mean stuffy rooms and dusty books with only stuffed animals and dusty skeletons to look at.

“Your grandfather says there are other shamans without magic,” Ma said. “They use talismans and amulets made by those with power, or they borrow from their neighbors who have power.”

I glared at her, but Ma only shrugged. She was one of Grandpa’s helpers, a healer with no magic. She was happy with that.

“Unless the chief herdsman says different,” I told Peng, washing out my bowl and setting it to dry, “that flock is mine.” I slung my pack over my shoulder. Ma handed my staff and water bottle to me and kissed my cheek. As I left our house, I heard her tell Peng, “Your turn, my son. The cows are waiting.”

The early larks greeted me as I stopped to fill my bottle at the stream that ran by Grandpa’s house. I stopped to pour some of my fresh water into the wide drinking dish before the Shrine of the Compact. I visited the shrine daily. Its roof was made with feathers that the valley birds let fall, gathered by our people and placed here. Every day the roof was different. Today it seemed that someone had found a molting cardinal: bright red feathers graced the roof.

The shrine was also proof that, long ago, there had been plenty of magic in our village. In those days we were able to shape an agreement with all the birds who lived here. We would care for them and they for us, through all of time. There hadn’t been such big magics done in this valley in ages, but we had this, at least, to remind us that one great magic still worked here every day.

I turned away from the shrine and walked to Grandpa’s workshop. He was awake and poking up his fire. I didn’t speak to him in case he was thinking of a new medicine or surgery, but went straight to the shelf where he kept the big jar of ointment for wounds. I was running out.

When I finished refilling my jar, I turned to find Grandpa scowling at me. I sighed: first Peng, now him.

“It’s too nice to argue,” I said before he spoke. “The birds are awake and calling. Thank you for the ointment!” I kissed his cheek and ran outside.

“Butterfly!” he called after me. “What will you do when the snows come?”

I didn’t shout back. It would have been rude. Besides, he knew what I did when the snows came. I spun wool and went outside as often as I could. The sheep still needed attention, and they didn’t fuss at me about doing something with my life. I was living my life!

I whistled Brighteyes and Chipper from the barn where the herding dogs spent their summer nights. My two came, tails wagging, still licking their breakfast from their chops. Together we went to our sheepfold and opened the gate. The sheep, lazy things, just stared at us. The dogs ran in to get them moving. “The birds are already awake, sleepyheads!” I told the sheep. Some of them gave rude, blatting answers as they filed past me.

Hundreds of songs, not just those of the larks, rose from the trees that surrounded our village and fields. The daytime flocks were waking up, getting ready for their part of the contract: hunting the flying insects that plagued our workers as the day turned warm. The crows took to the skies first, a great black cloud of them. Half soared over my head, making a great racket as they went searching for food on the plain. Half flew the other way, bound for the woods and fields on the far side of the river that cut our valley in two. Only when they were gone and I could hear the prettier songs again did I take out my flute to play my reply to the songbirds.

On we went, sheep, dogs, and me. Brighteyes barked as she trotted beside the sheep. She thought the music was for her. Chipper ignored us as he guarded the flock on the other side. He was young and very serious about herding.

We followed a stream up along the flank of Taka Hill. Taka was my favorite place to graze the sheep, and we hadn’t been up there in a week. It was broad and tall, with plenty of wide dips filled with grass. On the east side it ended in a cliff. From there, I could look out over the Great Plain, beyond the hills that marked our valley’s eastern flank.

The early ground mists had burned off. The sun turned the plains grasses to gold and gave long shadows to the herds of buffalo and antelope that grazed there. They were safe from our hunters for now. Winter was a good three months off, time enough for the little animals to grow strong on summer greens. The only thing the wild herds had to fear, or us, for that matter, was the terrible summer storms. One of them flashed lightning in the distance, at the very edge of my vision. I don’t know what it was that made me shiver—those rapid spears of fire out on the immense plain, or the single gray finger of a tornado that reached from clouds to ground.

Only when the tornado vanished and the storm was gone from my view did I turn to view my own, smaller world. I loved our valley. Unlike the longer valleys to the north and south, strung like beads along the foothills of the Heavenly Fire Mountains, our valley held only our village, fields, and orchards. The Birdsong River and its companion road split it in two along its length. A second road divided the valley in half across the middle, bringing us travelers from the cities on the far side of the plain and from the mountains in the west. From the hill where I stood I had a king’s view of it all.

The rest of the village was awake. Out came the other shepherds and their flocks, and the goatherds. The goatherds went into the hills on the western side of the river, closer to the mountains. Other shepherds waved as they passed us on the way into the hills south of the pass and the road at my feet. The cowherds moved out on the heels of the smaller animals. They led our cattle through the pass onto the edge of the Great Plain. With men and dogs on guard, the cows would graze as their wild cousins did. Small flocks of birds followed the herds to feed on bugs and warn against enemies. None of the other villages in neighboring valleys had such a useful arrangement. They said we were stupid to feed the birds in addition to what they took as they hunted.

With my sheep settled across the hill, away from the cliff, I took out my spindle and my bag of wool. Spinning thread, I walked around the edges of the herd. The sheep were in a good mood. Even the lambs were well behaved after a few chasing games.

Noontime came with its hard, hot sun. Brighteyes, Chipper, and I moved the sheep to cooler grazing under the trees by the stream. I piped a hello to the birds there, who sang their own greetings in reply. I opened our lunch. First, because they looked so sad, I fed the dogs chopped-meat patties that Ma had fixed for them.

“I didn’t fall for the drooping ears, though,” I said as I put their food on the ground. “I give you this because it’s time to eat, not because you made me feel sorry for you.” Brighteyes wagged her tail and barked, then gobbled her lunch. Chipper simply ate. Pa said he didn’t know what would happen when Chipper got too old to run with the sheep. The way he ate, without a herd to keep him busy, Chip might turn into a ball with a tail.

As the dogs fed, I ate my own lunch. Then I broke up some cakes and tossed the crumbs out on the ground in front of me.

The birds here were friends. Most had been brought to me by the fieldworkers and herders. All had been in danger once. They’d had broken wings or legs, or their nests had fallen from trees. Grandpa had taught me what to do for them. Now I tended injured birds on my own. I always kept back some of my food for those who had returned to the sky. They would visit me wherever I took my sheep, happy for a free meal, as I was happy for the company.

While everyone pecked at crumbs, I sat back and played my flute. The birds lit all around me, peeping and singing along.

Suddenly they shrieked and fled into the shelter of the trees. Brighteyes and Chipper snarled, staring at the sky. I leaped to my feet. It was the golden eagle who hunted our hills. It had prey in its claws and was flying toward us, on its way home.

I had a score to settle with that eagle. He must have come from a nest outside our valley, because he ignored the compact between our village and the birds. He had taken a lamb in the early spring. It was time for him to learn I was no one to meddle with. I set a rock in my sling and let fly. The eagle screamed at me and flew higher. I loaded the sling a second time and spun it through the air, choosing my moment. I didn’t really want to kill the great thief. He was trying to live, like me. I just wanted him to stay away from my sheep! I loosed my stone.

The eagle shrieked as my rock drove through his tail feathers, knocking two of them free. They spun on their drop to the earth.

“Ha!” I yelled, and set another stone in the sling. “Take that, sheep-stealer!” I let fly again.

The eagle veered away, losing a wing feather. Better, I had alarmed him so badly that he dropped his catch. I ran to get it, in case it was still alive.

Luckily, the prey fell straight into some brush. I heard it squawk and thrash as I searched the branches for it. I pried its claws away from the tough stems, talking softly. It calmed as I worked, and stopped struggling. Finally I drew back from the bushes, scratched and bloody, and got a real look at the eagle’s prize.

If it was a bird, it was the ugliest bird I had ever seen. An ailment, maybe, had stripped away its feathers, leaving only brownish pink skin stretched tight over its ribs. Two long flaps of skin over a couple of long, slender bones joined its sides and arms, like a bat’s wings, but it wasn’t furry like a bat. Its forepaws were little more than hooks on the long arm bone. Its hind paws were like a lizard’s, with toes that ended in hooked claws, but lizards had no wings, and bats did not have beaded skin. I ran my finger along the thing’s back. It was as long as my forearm, not counting its tail, and there were small bumps along its spine. Could it be a dragon? They were bigger in the stories, bigger than barns. Could it be a baby dragon? Surely this baby was too small to one day grow large enough to carry a bull away.

It panted in my hands, eyes closed, as I examined it. One forearm was broken. A flap of skin on its right arm hung open, the wound bleeding. I guessed the eagle’s talons had made that and the long cut in its left side.

“You tried to fight, didn’t you?” I asked. I cradled it in my arms gently, pressing the bloody wounds to halt the bleeding. It still did not struggle, as if it knew I meant it no harm. “You are very brave,” I said as I carried it to my pack. “Now, I’m sorry to say I must hurt you a little to make you feel better. I have to sew you up so you won’t bleed anymore.” I sat cross-legged by my pack and opened it one-handed, the other hand still pressed to the worst cut in the lizard’s side. I opened my medicine kit, setting out all I would need, including the cloth I used as a worktable in the fields. I did everything slowly to keep from frightening my patient. When I placed it on the cloth, it stayed still, panting softly. I wished all the animals I had cared for had been like this one—they had fought unless they were too sick to struggle.

“You are so good,” I told it. “Brighteyes, isn’t this a good fellow?” Looking around, I saw that Brighteyes had left. She and Chipper were minding the sheep. They were used to watching the flock as I doctored.

After wetting a square of cloth with water from my bottle, I touched the damp cloth to the cut in the lizard’s side. It let out a sharp peep and opened its eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I did warn you it might hurt. I have to clean all the blood away.” Then I got a good look into its eyes. They were bright copper, the shade of fresh-worked metal, with long black pupils. Those were not bat eyes. I wondered if they gave off heat, and scolded myself for so foolish an idea. It blinked, and I blinked, too. Now its eyes lost their hold on me.

The lizard shrilled and bumped my hand with its nose. It seemed to be telling me to go ahead.

Gently I cleaned its wounds, where the bleeding had stopped. It was wonderfully well behaved, though I must be hurting it. As I stitched the cuts, it began to trill in a high, sweet voice. I stopped, but the lizard only looked at me and continued to sing. I resumed my work as it did, splinting the broken bone in the wing once the open wounds were stitched. I learned to be careful of those finger-hooks: they were sharp. My last step was to put Grandpa’s healing ointment on the stitches.

Only when I was done did the lizard’s song end. I wiped my forehead on my arm and looked up, to see that the trees around us were filled with birds. The sheep and the dogs had gathered near us on the ground. The creature looked around and gave one final, drawn-out whistle. Finally it stretched out on the cloth and went to sleep.

The birds took off when they realized the newcomer was done with its song. I covered it with a clean, dry cloth and walked down to the stream with the dogs. Now that I’d cared for its wounds, the question of what it was returned to baffle me. I knew our valley’s lizards. This creature was like none of them. I had seen pet lizards brought by travelers to sell to mountain and city dwellers, lizards with frills around their necks, or chins covered with spikes, or strange-colored scales. None of those lizards did more than hiss, let alone sing. None were so ugly as this creature, with its pink-brown skin and lumpy head and spine.

As I washed my hands and arms in the stream, I thanked the gods for sparing its life. Then I checked the flock, making sure no sheep had wandered off. After confirming that everyone was present, I left the dogs to mind the herd and returned to my belongings. A crow I had healed once—I knew him from his white-splotched tail—stood over the lizard, his black wings spread to shelter the wounded creature from the sun. When I came near, the crow squawked and flapped away. I stopped for a moment, breathless with wonder. How had the crow known to do that? And why had he done it for this stranger?

The lizard raised its head and looked at me, those copper eyes bright even in the afternoon sun. It opened its mouth and cawed, exactly as the crow had done.

I laughed and crouched beside it. “That’s so clever! Are you a mimic?” I asked. The creature cocked its head, opened its mouth a second time, and barked just like Brighteyes did. I sat back on my heels, startled. It seemed far more normal for a lizard to copy a bird’s sound than a dog’s. Here was another puzzle to add to that of a crow sheltering a strange creature. “Then shall I call you Mimic?”

The lizard trilled a lark’s musical song. I lifted it free of its resting place. “Mimic you shall be, whatever you are. And will you mind if I say you are a he? You seem like a boy to me, getting into trouble and falling out of it.”

He was patient as I inspected him. The stitches looked good. His bleeding had stopped. The ointment I had placed on his hurts was still there. “You are very good,” I told him. “You didn’t lick it off. The sheep always try that.”

Mimic smacked his jaws.

“Are you hungry?” I had meat patties left for the dogs. I took one out and broke it in half. When I offered a piece to Mimic, a forked blue tongue flicked from his mouth, picked up several bits of meat, and vanished into his mouth again.

Three more trips for his tongue, and the half-patty was gone. Mimic looked at me and squawked. I hurried to feed him the second half. Once he was done, I poured water from my bottle into one cupped hand. When he had drunk his fill, he went back to sleep.

I shifted him onto my pack, then carried both into deeper shade. While he slept, I worked up a harness so I might carry him home, fashioning it from splints of bamboo and cloth ties. Toward sunset he began to stir. Gently I tucked him into the harness and strapped him to my pack. The ties held him in place but did not touch his splinted wing or rub his stitched wounds.

Securing him, I felt heat rising under his skin. I had expected a fever, but it still made me nervous. What treatment could work for this unknown animal? I needed to take him to Grandpa. For a moment I hesitated. My grandfather did not care for lizards as I did. In fact, he’d ordered me not to bring them to him anymore.

I shook my head. Grandpa would relent, once he saw how odd Mimic was. How could he resist those beautiful copper eyes?

“I can’t believe you’re not panicking,” I said to Mimic as I tested the harness cords yet another time. I tucked bits of wool under them, so they wouldn’t chafe. “Any other creature would thrash like mad. Now, be nice and don’t try to open your good wing, all right?”

Our eyes met. For a moment I had the idea that Mimic wanted to say he would be good and keep as still as possible. I giggled at the folly of the idea and carefully lifted my pack to my shoulders. With the dogs on either side of us, I whistled for the sheep and walked down to the trail. It was time for the part of the compact I loved best.

I explained it to Mimic, since he was a newcomer. “Long ago, the shaman who led my ancestors to settle here made a compact with the birds of the valley,” I explained. “If they agreed to guard our fields, fruit trees, and gardens from insects, each day when everyone headed home for supper, the seed-eating birds could help themselves to grain, and the others could have the insects. In the winter, any birds who stayed here instead of flying south were welcome to grain from our own stores.” Mimic cawed like a crow in my ear. “Well, crows eat scraps,” I told him. “Isn’t it wonderful? When more birds come, they guard us as we work, so we hardly get any itchy bites. And they help the other animals with fleas and ticks. Nobody told them, they just figured it out, and did it.” Mimic made a chuckling sound that got me to chuckle. “There are other villages all along these foothills. Their people laugh at us. They make their children drive the birds away from the fields. They don’t believe our crops are bigger than theirs, that we lose very little to insects. That that makes up for what the birds take.”

I heard the voice of the big gong at the heart of the village. That was the signal for the fieldworkers to go home. Already the cattlemen were coming through the pass, on their way to the barns. “Now watch,” I told Mimic as the last workers and cowmen passed down the road into the village. “This is the good part.”

Hundreds of birds rose in flocks from the valley’s many trees. They settled in the fruit trees, the grain, and the gardens for their share of seed and insects. Once they were full, they would return to their home trees. And they sang, their many songs mingling into one beauty. The village cats came and sat in the road as they always did, to watch. As far as anyone knew, the truce between cats and birds at the day’s end was also part of the great magical pact.

Once the home trees were empty, the crows returned from the plains and foothills, making their noise. They sounded like a village meeting, only much louder. I wondered if they exchanged news about the things they saw, and traded gossip, the way the grown-ups did at our meetings.

Usually I waited to bring the flock in until everyone went quiet and twilight came on. Tonight, worried about the heat coming from Mimic, I called in the dogs and the sheep and took them down the trail. The birds in the path and the cats in the road moved out of our way to let us pass.

Once the sheep were in their fold and the dogs fed, I took Mimic to Grandpa. The lizard was starting to worry me. Here it was nigh on full dark, and Mimic was hot and restless. Lizards were day folk. They turned cold and sleepy at night. His fever was rising fast, and I knew nothing about lizard fevers.

Grandpa was napping when I barged into his workroom with Mimic. He jumped when I slammed the door. “Howshi bless the fields, haven’t I begged you people not to do that!” he cried. Then he saw it was me, and he smiled. “Ri, don’t do that to your old grandfather. I don’t like to be cross with my tiger lily. What have you got on your back?”

With grumbling and moaning he pried himself from his chair and came over to help me remove my pack. When he saw what I carried, he went still. “I told you last time, Ri, no more lizards. They’re vermin. This one’s a big vermin.”

I turned around and faced Grandpa, angry that he was being so cruel. “He’s hurt, and he’s getting sick. You can’t turn him away! Look at him! He’s a lizard with wings!”

“Then he’s deformed and ought to be left to die peacefully,” Grandpa said flatly.

“Might he be a dragon?” I asked. “You know, a little one that guards rocks? A baby?”

But Grandpa was already shaking his head. “No dragon I have ever seen could match your lizard. They are colorful, and their head horns and antennae are long and slender. Their scales shine, like they have been painted with lacquer. This thing is big for a lizard, but dragon babies would have to be larger still. And it is dying.”

“No,” I whispered.

Grandpa heard me anyway. “Take it out and put it on the compost heap to wait for death. Or break its neck if you want to be truly merciful.”

I set my pack on the long work counter, glaring at Grandpa. “You doctor Tuerh, even though you fight all the time and you think he cheats on weights at the mill.”

“Tuerh is a human being. That’s my calling—good or bad, I treat all humans. I make exceptions for our animals, who work hard, even the birds.” Grandpa was glaring at me, his thick eyebrows half-hiding his eyes. “What are lizards good for? It’s just a waste of work! Be sensible, Ri. You’d doctor rats if I let you.”

I didn’t tell Grandpa I did help the occasional rat, in secret.

“Look at this ugly thing,” Grandpa went on. “It probably steals eggs from the nest—maybe even whole chickens. I mean it this time, I won’t help.”

I grabbed his tunic with both of my hands. “Please, Grandpa,” I begged. “An eagle was going to kill him. He hasn’t been stealing eggs. He’s all skin and bone. You should hear him sing! Please?”

Everyone always said I was Grandpa’s favorite. I took advantage of it, hanging on to his tunic until he sighed.

“One last time, girl,” he told me. “If I can even help at all.” His hands were knobby and stiff with bone disease, but their touch was feather-light when he lifted Mimic and his harness away from the pack. He set Mimic on the counter as I lit two more lamps to help him see. I undid the knots that held my lizard to the harness.

“Ugly creature,” Grandpa muttered. He bent over Mimic, squinting as he traced the long ribs of Mimic’s splinted wing. “Not like a bird’s wing, but a bat’s. Each rib is a finger, each claw the nail. But this thing is too heavy. It’ll never fly on these.”

Mimic looked up and tweetled like a mountain thrush. His eyes were glassy.

“Interesting,” Grandpa said. “Lizards don’t whistle, or have wings.” He raised Mimic to have a better view of the stitches I had made. “You’ve sewn it up well, my dear. But this lizard, it’s too warm for this cool night. And see here. What do you make of these lumps on its head and back?”

I shook my head. I had assumed they were all part of Mimic.

Grandpa sighed. “I do not say this because I want to get rid of it.” His eyes were grave. “It’s dying already. The last time I saw a creature with so many lumps on his head—a squirrel, it was—the lumps grew until the squirrel could not raise his head. He died. This thing’s fever is part of his last sickness.”

“No,” I said, digging in for another fight. “He got hurt when the eagle dropped him. Creatures always run a fever when they’ve been hurt a lot. The lumps don’t mean anything.” I’d expected Grandpa to say all manner of strange things, but not that Mimic and I were beaten before we’d begun.

Grandpa went to his collection of small skulls and picked one out that I’d never seen before. It had been hidden at the back of the shelf. When he handed it to me, I flinched. I wouldn’t have known it was a squirrel’s skull, so distorted was it with bony knobs.

“If you are kind, you will let it die without more suffering,” Grandpa said.

Mimic turned to me and peeped. I had the idea that he was saying Grandpa was wrong. Grandpa was never wrong, but I didn’t want to listen this time. “Do you know what kind of lizard he is?” I asked. “Maybe if we had the right food?”

Grandpa carefully ran his fingers over Mimic’s beaded skin. “I’ve never seen the like of it before.”

Mimic waved his good wing, catching its claws in my sleeve. I unhooked him, only to have him snag my sleeve again. I knew this time that he did it on purpose.

“He wants to live, Grandpa. Don’t give up,” I begged. “Maybe the bumps will come off. Maybe the eagle dropped him on his head—”

Grandpa rested a hand on my shoulder. “Ri, your heart is too big.” He held his free hand a couple of inches over Mimic. “I can feel it burning up without touching him. We must free it of its pain.”

“He ate,” I said, trying to put it like a healer, not a child. “Most of two fishes, and a meat patty. He kept them down, and all the water I could give him.” But Grandpa was shaking his head.

Mimic looked at me. He was depending on me.

I remembered something Grandfather had done twice that I had witnessed. “A cold bath,” I said, excited. “Twice when people have been really feverish you put them in the river and kept them there. You said it was a risk, but their fevers broke.”

“Ri, this is a lizard.” Grandfather took my hands. “Humans carry heat with them. Lizards don’t. The river will kill him. I only dared try such a cure with young people who were otherwise healthy.”

I pulled out of his grip. “I’ll keep Mimic with me tonight,” I said, getting one of Grandfather’s flat baskets. I thought Mimic would like it better than my harness for the short walk home. “He’s stronger than you think. You’ll see.” I set a few rags in the basket to make it softer and carefully put my lizard inside.

“Very well,” Grandpa said gruffly. “This is a thing you must learn on your own. If Mimic lives until morning—which I doubt—maybe you will see fit to do the merciful thing then.”

I shouldered my pack, picked up Mimic’s basket, and went home.

Mother only rolled up her eyes when she saw what I carried. She was used to my habit of bringing home sick or injured creatures. “Clean up, and put that in your room. It is not eating with us,” she ordered me.

I took Mimic up the ladder one-handed. Once inside my little room, I replaced the rags in the basket with wool and set the nest beside a bowl of water. When I returned after supper with a dish of minced chicken, I found him half out of his bed. He lay over the rim of the basket, supporting himself on his good wing.

I knelt. “Didn’t I tell you to stay put?” I asked. I slid my hands under him.

Mimic was burning hot. His eyes were glassy and he’d drunk all of his water. Carefully I set him back inside the basket. “Now stay there,” I told him. “Let the basket hold up your splinted wing, so you don’t have to. And relax!”

I filled his water bowl. He drank, but he refused the chicken and the cold meat patty I stole when no one was looking. I even let Peng try to feed him, but Mimic refused to eat. When Peng gave up in disgust and stomped back to his attic room, Mimic went to sleep, his bumpy head propped against my hand.

I left the food next to the basket, filled the water bowl again, then changed to my nightshirt. I was asleep the moment I pulled up the covers. Healing was hard, and harder still when it looked as if my patient would not live.

A sound in the night woke me. I waited, blinking, not sure what it was, until it was repeated. It was a dry, rasping noise. Pa had sounded louder but much the same when he’d been so sick last winter.

It was Mimic. He was hotter than ever and his water bowl was empty again. I lit my lamp and refilled the bowl, using my flask. When I tried to get Mimic to drink, though, the water ran out of his mouth. He opened his eyes just a little before he closed them again. His skin was dry. Bits were flaking away like fish scales.

I stared at him, kneeling beside his basket, and thinking, Don’t die. I don’t want you to die.

Then I got angry. Really angry. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t Mimic’s fault the stupid eagle grabbed him, any more than it was his fault that I made the eagle drop him. It wasn’t Mimic’s fault that we didn’t know what he was. But it would be my fault if I didn’t try everything I knew.

I didn’t even realize that I’d gotten up and was pulling on my tunic and pants while the last ideas were going through my head. I only grasped what I was about when I blew out my lamp, cradled Mimic in one arm, and climbed down the ladder.

Ma had banked the fire for the night only a little while before. It was easy to get a spill and light a downstairs lamp from the coals. I quietly left the house with the lamp and Mimic.

This time I followed the path that went around the back and through the vegetable gardens. It was a little longer than the path to the river near Grandpa’s, but Grandpa didn’t sleep well. Sometimes he worked spells late at night. I didn’t want to have another argument with him.

“I know this may just kill you out of hand,” I told Mimic in a whisper. “If it does, I hope you will forgive me in the Heaven of Healing when we meet after I die. But this is the only trick I have left. You will die if I don’t try it.” I couldn’t even look down to see if he had opened his eyes. My lamp wasn’t bright and the trail was twisty as we entered the trees.

We came out onto the long shelf of the tumbling river. The women washed clothes here during the day. There were plenty of stones on the river’s edge, big ones the laundresses used to dry out wet things. Some of those rocks created pockets of water. One of those small pools would do for Mimic, I thought. It would keep him from being swept away by the hard currents midstream. I had a particular pool in mind. It might be not so deep that Mimic would drown, particularly if I held him.

We would not freeze, exactly—it was summer, after all—but neither would we be comfortable, if we lived. If Mimic lived.

I started praying to every god I thought might be even a little helpful as I set my lamp on the tallest stone by one of the small pools. Then I lay flat on the long rock close to the rippling surface and explored underwater with a free hand. It was a little deeper than I remembered; I would not be able to let go of Mimic. I had feared that. He would drown if he thrashed, maybe even break his already broken wing again. I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to keep my hands in the icy water, but Mimic was more important.

I apologized to the fish I’d scared out of the pool and took a deep breath. “It’s your last chance to tell me you’re on the mend before I give you a horrible shock, Mimic,” I whispered, cradling him on his back in my hands. He didn’t move. I couldn’t even hear if he wheezed, the river was so loud.

Once more I lay on my belly. This time I lowered my poor friend into the pool until only his muzzle stuck out.

Mimic gasped. His back arched, then went straight again. I would have thought he had died in that moment, but for the press and sink of his ribs against my palms. It continued, when I knew an ordinary lizard would be dead.

Whenever the backs of my hands went numb, I would lift one from the water and tuck it beneath me until it warmed, being entirely careful to hold Mimic without squeezing him with the other hand. Strangely, scarily, my palms were warm. Very warm. Mimic’s cursed fever kept them warm. This was too new. I wanted to ask Grandpa if he had ever heard of a fever so great, but I wouldn’t. I was angry with him for giving up on my friend.

Once I had feeling in the hand under me, I would hold Mimic in that, and warm the other. When my eyelids grew heavy, I lifted him from the water to see if I dreamed the warmth on my palms. He was still hot. I ignored the tears that rolled down my cheeks and placed him in the cold pool again.

To keep myself awake, I sang to him. I sang every song I knew. I brought him up twice more so I might drink from the pool, then returned him, because he was still deep in his fever. At last I tried to whistle birdsongs for him. I startled an owl into a reply. A second owl answered that one. I was trying to do the song of a lark when a lark did sing out, her voice loud and perfect.

Only it was still night. Our larks were asleep. I brought Mimic up. He looked at me and sang like a lark once more. His skin was cool when I pressed my cheek against him. For a moment I could only weep.

The next day Ma praised Mimic’s improvement, though if she had known about our late-night trip to the river, she might have smacked my head. Instead she let me feed the lizard bits of fish soaked in broth. Then I bound him gently on the harness and took him with me on my day’s work. We had to take the sheep to the pastures on the western side of the river because I had slept late. The other shepherds had gotten to the eastern hillside grazing before us, which meant we got the long walk across the bridge and past the marsh. I could have sworn I heard whispered complaints under the sheep’s normal calls, but that had to be my imagination. No one who could talk was near us.

That afternoon the whispers continued, now speaking of rain. I knew it was silly to heed unreal chatter, but I put Mimic back on his harness and whistled for Brighteyes and Chipper to round up the herd. The day was near its close anyway and we had to consider the walk home. As we crossed the bridge into the village, I saw the first clouds swarming up over the eastern hills.

Heavy winds blew ahead of the storm. I raced home once I had settled dogs and sheep for the night. I seemed to have left the whispers with them. Inside our house the only voices I heard were those of my family, along with Mimic’s occasional cheep or whistle. My parents admired Mimic’s changed health all over again while Peng fed him some of my leftover meal. I had meant to show him to Grandpa after supper, but I was too worn out. Mimic and I went to bed early.

We went down the ladder in the morning, Mimic in his harness on my back, to find Grandpa eating breakfast with Ma. Pa had already left for his carpentry shop, while Peng was still getting dressed.

Grandpa glared at me from under his thick white brows. “I hear it lived.”

“He,” I said, gently placing Mimic’s harness on my bench. “Mimic is a he.”

“It could be a cloud fish from the moon for all you know,” Grandpa said. He got up and came around to undo Mimic’s ties while Ma handed over my lunch and I tucked it into my pack. Although Grandpa’s voice was hard, he was careful when he handled Mimic, and eye-popping shocked to feel Mimic’s skin cool under his hands. My friend looked into Grandpa’s eyes and gave the sweet, insistent tweeting of a warbler. Grandpa winced. Ma turned away, hiding her face. Mimic couldn’t have known that my dead grandma’s favorite bird was the warbler. Neither would he know that Grandma used to call warblers to her with their own song. Hearing that sound stabbed us all in the heart.

Grandpa put Mimic down, still gently, and left the house. I ate my breakfast without a word. Ma wiped her eyes on her sleeve and gave Mimic some bites of a ham that she was cutting up for soup.

Peng came thumping down the ladder. “What’s going on?” he asked as I finished loading my pack. “Why is everyone so quiet?”

“Because you weren’t here,” I said. I pinched his nose and settled Mimic on his harness again.

Over the next four weeks Mimic improved in many ways. Though his bad wing was still in a splint and his good wing was bound to keep him from trying to fly, he startled me with short races. If either of the dogs—sometimes even the sheep, or a few of the lizards in the rocks—started to run, Mimic would be up and running with them. He could go very fast upright on his long hind feet if the distance was not a great one. He beat the sheep and the lizards by getting in front of them and blocking the way. The birds, including the crow who still sheltered Mimic from the sun as he slept, flew over to watch the races. They would set up a lot of noise, as if they were cheering. Brighteyes and Chipper would always win, given a decent start, because they could run longer distances. Then the birds would sing to Mimic, as if they consoled him.

“You’ll do better when you can fly,” I’d tell Mimic when he had to stop, panting as lizards did in the heat. No matter how many times I said it, Mimic sulked anyway. He liked to win.

Every day I took his good wing out of its binding so he might exercise it. All of the birds I had ever cared for would try to fly the moment they could move the healthy wing. That was why I bound it once he was well enough to walk around, as easy on his hind feet as if he always walked that way. Mimic never did try to fly with the whole wing, though. He would open it slowly all the way and close it, over and over, until I bound it to his side again. Not once did he flap it. Even so, I kept it bound unless he was exercising. I wouldn’t put it past Mimic to try to trick me and escape, as a bird might if it could think so far ahead.

Grandpa had said Mimic was too heavy to fly, but Grandpa had also said he would never survive a cold bath. Why did the gods give my friend wings unless he could use them? It was hard to wait for the day when I was certain Mimic’s broken wing was healed, so he might surprise Grandpa yet again.

By that time I was straining to hear the whispers that had begun after the night at the river, but when I thought I did hear them, I could not be sure that they were not simply a jumble of the valley’s normal sounds. I had always listened as much as I watched. Any slight change in the winds, the sigh of trees and grasses, the rush of streams and rivers, the noise of sheep, birds, dogs, and village, might mean some change for good or bad. Everyone with a herd to guard paid attention to the world around them, though I’d heard my parents and other people say I was better at it than most. Peng and my friends only complained they could never sneak up on me.

The problem, when I worked to hear all the noise around me, was that too often things combined to make something that could sound like words. How was I to tell the difference between that and what I thought might be “berries here!” or “storm comes”?

It was a month of bad storms, for certain. One day Mimic and I saw three distant tornadoes touch angry fingers down on the Great Plain as the herds of buffalo and antelope wheeled and ran. That very night a tornado struck the valley west of us. The messenger who brought the news said it was like a child god had taken a big stick and drawn a line straight through the edge of his village, vanishing after it killed. Two families were never seen again, and another family lost their father and three children. All of us were called to the temple to pray for them and to thank the gods that we were spared.

There was a week when storms came every day, making everyone miserable. I tried to leave Mimic at home to save him from the wind and water, but he ran after us, so I let him come. He followed as I checked my poor sheep for foot rot. He stayed in the fold with me after dark and sang to the sheep while I treated them, for which I was grateful. I thought I heard whispers in the rustling of the sheep, the thump of their hooves, their grunts as I worked, and Mimic’s song. But like as not I’d been so tired I had nodded off for a moment. Surely I had dreamed that the sheep thanked the ugly lizard for his songs while their human helped their feet. I shook off my drowsiness and concentrated on paring.

I begged extra fish from Ma for Mimic’s supper that first night he sang, explaining how Mimic helped in the fold. She and Pa came the next night to witness it for themselves. After that I didn’t have to beg extra food for him anymore. If my parents heard whispers, though, they said nothing about it.

The day came—a sunny one—when it was time to take the splint from Mimic’s broken wing. As if they knew, the sheep, the birds, the dogs, and the lizards who took part in Mimic’s races came to watch. I set him upon a rock with shaking hands and removed the ties and splints for good. Every other time I had done this, my patient had flown or run without so much as a squeak of farewell.

I examined Mimic’s healed wing before I let him go. His claws were perfect. Broken bone and ripped skin alike had healed well, though Mimic would always have a scar where the rip had been. Silently, trying not to cry, I took the bindings from his good wing and stood back.

Mimic shook both wings. Then he stretched them out a couple of times, to the limit of their reach. He gave them a few good flaps. Once that was done, he folded them against his sides and squawked at me.

“Go ahead,” I told him. “Fly. You know you want to.”

He leaped onto my shoulder instead. Gripping my tunic sleeve with his hind claws, he used his foreclaws to climb bat-like over my upper back, until he could drape himself along my shoulders, a lizardy scarf for me to wear. At last he sighed and belched breakfast smells into my face.

Was Grandpa right? Was Mimic too heavy to fly? But why did he have wings, in that case?

I tried something that had seemed to work with baby birds I had reared. First I had to lean over the rock again and get Mimic to climb down from my shoulders. Then I held him carefully, under his belly and without getting in the way of his wings. Slowly I raised and lowered him in the air. (It was not as easy with a creature as big as Mimic.) It was the birds’ instinct to flap their wings as soon as they felt themselves fall. It was Mimic’s instinct, too. He flapped briskly, but unlike the birds’, his body didn’t lift in my hold. He stayed in my hands, plump and solid.

I set him on the top of a tall rock and asked him to fly. Over the days that followed, I tried the branches of trees, other rocks, the edge of Taka Hill bluff, my bedroom window, and the bridge over the river. I asked him to do it from the trail overlooking the grain fields, so he could join the birds that night. He might flap his wings. He might stretch them. He would hop to the ground or my bed. He climbed down the trees, headfirst, his wing-claws working like a bat’s and his hind feet keeping him from falling bottom-over-top. He croaked at me as if he wanted to know why we tried to do this every day.

He did not fly.

We were on Taka Hill once on a stormy day when, desperate, I tossed him into the wind. He glided to the ground with his wings outstretched, ran over to me, and bit my ankle. It only bled a little. I did take it as his way of saying he’d had enough. That same day he called me to the bluff overlooking the plain with a shriek. A tornado had touched down not so far away that I could admire it in comfort. It was close enough that I saw land and a couple of bison fly up around its deadly tip. If it hadn’t been moving away from us, I would have grabbed Mimic and screamed for the dogs and sheep to run. We got a brief drubbing with hail as it was.

Only those of us in the eastern hills ever saw the storm or felt the hail that day—us and the cattlemen at the plain’s edge. They were forced into the barns that our people had built on the plain ages ago. No one else in our valley even knew that the storm had passed so close.

At last we had sun and heat for a couple of weeks. The fields dried. Our farmers predicted that we would have a fine crop, the gods willing.

We were only days from the grain harvest the morning when Mimic and I woke to a heavy gray sky. It was going to rain again. If I’d had my way, I’d have stayed home, but sheep have to eat. The knowledge that I was going to be soaked again put me off my own feed. I skipped my breakfast, giving Mimic his and filling my pack.

“Be sensible,” Ma told Peng and me. “Come in if you think it’s bad.” She looked worried.

I touched my forehead to her hand in love and laughed when she had to dust flour marks from my skin. Then Mimic and I trotted off to the fold. Mimic was restless. Normally he preferred to ride atop my pack on our way to the pastures. That day he went afoot, at least until the sheep were on the path up Taka Hill. Then he climbed onto the back of our bellwether. He was the most patient of the sheep when Mimic wanted to ride. He only looked at me as if to ask, What can a fellow do?

On top of the hill, the wind was gusting from the south, hard enough to make me wonder if coming here had been my best idea. The birds who flew up to join us fought the gusts all the way. They finally steered into the trees down by the stream. They did not try to reach the bluff, not when the wind knocked them back every time. I left the herd by the stream as well. There were dips and hollows in the ground where they could graze out of the wind.

No herds were out on the plain. My view was limited: rain fell in the distance, and gray clouds filled the sky above me. Lightning struck a few miles east. Even the air was different. It had turned a strange yellow color. I did not like it. Mimic was acting odd. He stood upright beside me, his eyes fixed on the cloud that had harbored lightning. When I shifted my leg to press against his side, I found that he was trembling slightly. We both flinched at the next flare of lightning. This one ripped like a river along the clouds, vanishing in the north.

When I heard the approach of our cows on the road below, I looked down. I was curious to see if the chief herdsman would take them on the plain today. Men, dogs, horses, and cattle bunched up where the road entered the pass through the hills. Everyone was looking at the dark skies.

The chief herdsman, my uncle Tao, walked ahead to the top of the pass to see how things were. Lightning jumped from the clouds above the plain, striking the earth in three places. This time I could hear the distant growl of thunder. The storm was an hour’s horseback ride away, moving faster than any horse.

When Tao came back to the herd, he was shaking his head. He motioned for everyone to go back the way they had come. They would cross our river to the pastures beyond. The cows and their guardians would be safer there than on the plain.

Uncle, the last to go, looked up and saw me high above. He made the same turn-around motion to me. I gave him a big wave to tell him I had seen. Just as I did so, a gust struck me hard in the back, almost knocking me off my feet. Mimic bawled like a calf, clinging to my pants to keep me from falling.

I turned to look at the plain. The rain was closing in. I could see the fire of lightning, but not the bottoms of the clouds. The air was turning from yellow to green, a very bad sign. I had only been caught on the edges of four such storms in my lifetime—all had been killers. It was time to get everyone home to safety.

I put my fingers to my mouth and blew the whistle that told my dogs to gather the sheep and take them home, now! I caught Mimic up in my arms and half-ran, half-stumbled as the rising winds pushed me. We reached the stream. Chipper was there, barking furiously to get the sheep together. They were baaing with fear, their own good sense telling them that the weather had taken a turn for the worse.

I shoved in among the restless sheep to put Mimic on the bellwether’s back. “You’ll be fine with him,” I told Mimic when he squalled his objection. Already I could see that one of the ewes, her lamb, and my dog Brighteyes were missing. The wind picked up, blowing away my whistled signal to Chipper to take the herd down. I was about to try it again when a much louder echo of my whistle cut through the wind’s roar. Mimic looked at me as if to say, I’m helping even if you want to get rid of me, before he gave my whistle, loud, a second time. Chipper drove the flock down the trail while I went in search of the missing ones.

Hail came—hurtful knobs of ice as big as pigeon eggs—just when I found Brighteyes and my missing sheep. Lamb and ewe had slid into a small gorge when the earthen lip crumbled under them. Brighteyes had gone after them. She was trying to tow the lamb out, but the silly thing thought the dog was trying to eat her. It fought Brighteyes, throwing her off balance. Sheep and dog alike were yelping their pain as the hail struck them. I wanted to join them in their cries, or better yet, hide until the hail was over, but that would not get any of us to shelter in a hurry.

I yanked the rope from my pack, secured it around the nearest tree, and used it to walk down the crumbling dirt side of the little gorge. First I brought the lamb up. It had gained weight since the last time I’d had to carry it over my shoulders. I dumped it at the base of the tree. “Don’t you dare stray,” I ordered, and went back for its mother.

I heard barking. I turned, wondering what had possessed Chipper to leave the herd and come back. Of course, it was Mimic. He stopped in front of the lamb, barking at it just as Chipper would have done to make it stay put.

“Thank you,” I said, and went for Brighteyes. She only needed me to bring her halfway up; she scrambled over the rest of the gorge’s wall.

The ewe waited patiently as I put on my leather gloves. I hoisted her over my shoulders with a grunt, thanking the gods that she was young and not one of the heavier ewes. I’d had to work for a couple of years to be able to lift a grown sheep. Only then was I trusted with a herd, just for times like this. At least the hail was done. I would have good-sized bruises when the day was over.

Step by step I pulled us up the side of the earthen gorge. We were nearly to the top when a crack of thunder sounded almost in my ear, deafening me. Stupidly, I took one hand off the rope to drag the ewe into place and slipped down. She jerked, her weight dragging me backward. I flailed until I got both hands on the rope again. Slowly, grinding my teeth, I bent until she was balanced again and began to climb. I was a third of the way from the top when someone began to pull us up. It was easier to climb with that help. When I threw the ewe and myself over the edge, there was Mimic with his teeth buried in the rope.

The ewe scrambled to her feet and ran to shove her lamb in the direction of home. Brighteyes went with them. She knew where the others were.

I went to Mimic. “How did you do that?” I asked, feeling as if the world had turned sideways. “You pulled us up—how did you do it?” I had the strangest idea that he was a little bigger, which had to be a dream brought on by too many knobs of hail striking my head. “You did that—and what about your teeth?” I whispered. My hands trembled. Mimic could not have done that, but he was the only one who could have done so. “What if you broke them? I would never forgive myself!” I knelt and drew his lips back. Patient as ever, he let me do it. His teeth were fine. Perfect, in fact. Like the rest of him, they seemed to be larger. “Maybe it’s growth,” I said, talking mostly to myself. “Sheep grow, why not you? No doubt you’ve been a little bigger each day, and I just never realized it until just now.” But he still wasn’t big enough to haul us out like that, unless there was some magic to him. I reminded myself that he could be no dragon: no antennae, no glorious colors, no scales, no great size, since even their little ones must be large.

Mimic only squeaked and rubbed his head against my hands. “I love you so much,” I told him. The air was emerald green.

A roar like a thousand bears struck the valley. A fresh thunderclap deafened me. Rain lashed us, stinging every bare inch of my skin. My hearing returned, only to be overwhelmed by that roar. I forgot Mimic’s new strength. We both ran until we could see the road and the pass. Mimic got there first. The rain that had pelted us must have stopped, because I saw everything so clearly.

The sky above the pass churned. Less than half a mile from where I stood, on the far side of the road, the clouds formed a shape like a top that pointed down in a slight curve.

That curve grew longer and longer as Mimic and I watched. I was terrified that if I tried to scramble over the dips and lumps to dash straight down the hill, or if I backtracked to the trail for its easier way down, the short-lived monster in that stem of cloud would attack me from behind. In my fear I even forgot to pray.

The tornado touched down in a cluster of pines that was older than my village. For ages they had crowned the hills on the western side of the pass. The tornado ripped a gaping wound in them, throwing tall trees into the air like a child in a tantrum. Now the tornado grew thicker, its winds screaming. Like a turtle, I pulled my shoulders up toward my head—I still held Mimic—trying to block some of that dreadful noise. I didn’t realize I was screaming, too. The monster was moving north, down the hillside toward our fields.

Then I saw a thing that made me weep with wonder and grief. It was the birds. The birds in the trees—the ones who had joined the herd and me, and the others who lived in our valley, thousands of birds—they all took wing. I thought they fled the death that bore down on them, but I was wrong. They had come to fulfill the pact. They flew at the tornado, using their own magic to get as close as they could without being sucked in. When the winds thrust them back, the birds reached out with their claws and seized lengths of the furious air. Turning, their wings digging at the sky, they tried to drag the tornado up, back into the clouds.

The crows came next, their beaks open. They must have been screaming, but I could not hear. Other birds came with them, big and small, bright-colored and dark. They flew over my head from the plain, and from the direction of the river and the village. They, too, seized pieces of the tornado and fought to pull it back into the storm that had birthed it. The tornado’s stem wobbled and shook, needing those pieces of itself as thousands of birds dragged them away. The tornado’s roar sounded like curses to me. Lightning shot from the clouds—four, five, six bolts of it—murdering birds in its path as the thunder made my ears ring. More dropped from the sky, dead of exhaustion and wounds. The birds who still lived kept their hold on the monster.

A surge of clouds passed from the thunderheads down, through the stem of the funnel. Thunder crashed again. Suddenly the tornado was bigger, stronger. It flung off the birds, hurling them to the ground or into the trees.

Mimic began to thrash in my grip. I clung to him, terrified. Then he bit my arm hard. I dropped him. In all that noise a whisper said in my head, I’m sorry.

I sat down. I did it because Mimic jumped into the air, flapping his wings. With each beat, his wings got bigger. Bigger, and stronger. His body stretched and lengthened. His pink and brown skin cracked and peeled to reveal new skin, scaled and beaded in every color of red that could be imagined. The lumps on his spine and head swelled and burst. They revealed flame-shaped scales on his back, and horns and tendrils above his eyes. He opened his mouth. Light, not sound, came from his throat in a burst that lit up everything I could see. Inside that light, Mimic flew at the fat trunk of the tornado and seized it in his claws.

The birds rallied to help. Those who could returned to the air to grab any pieces of the tornado that escaped Mimic. They surrounded the great crimson dragon in a cloud of feathers and claws. All of them, dragon and birds, hauled the shrieking tornado back up into the clouds. Lightning wrapped around Mimic just before he vanished in those soft gray mounds. Its jagged spears rippled along his new crimson hide.

Then Mimic was gone from my view. So were the birds. I bowed my head on my knees and wept.

Suddenly a great roar made me scream in pain. I covered my ears and looked up. The part of the storm over our valley had blown apart at the center. The remaining clouds tumbled toward the mountains, in a great hurry to leave the place of their defeat.

As the storm fled, a large, mixed flock of birds flew or glided slowly to the earth. Many of them came to me, borne on the wings or in the claws of other birds. They had not survived their battle with the tornado unscarred. Looking at them, I could see I had a lot of work to do, right away.

I was not left to do it alone for very long. Our healers came up from the village to help.

Ma and Grandpa reached me first. I was splinting the wings of Mimic’s friend, the crow who had always sheltered him from the sun. At least it was used to me and did not struggle as I worked.

“Ri, you’re hurt,” Ma said. “The bleeding’s stopped, but—that looks like a bite.” She poured water on the wound in my arm and then tugged away the sleeve that had dried over it. She was so gentle that I was able to keep fixing splints to the crow. I did my best not to flinch.

“We saw everything,” Grandpa said as Ma took care of me. “Tuerh created a vision pool in the well, in case we had to flee the village. We saw what our friends did for us.” He soothed the heron he was tending. “Where did the dragon come from, Ri? I have not seen one leave the mountains since I was a boy.”

“The green dragon,” Ma said as she put ointment on Mimic’s bite and bandaged my arm. “I thought it was a story you made up, Pa.”

“Never got a close look at it, only the underside,” Grandpa said, the heron calm enough now that he could stitch the wound in its back. “The shadow glided over me and I looked up. Bright, bright green it was, and—” Grandpa looked beyond me, his eyes gone wide. “Huge.”

Ma also stared that way. I turned around as the crow squawked its greetings to the newcomer. Mimic—now as long as three men laid flat, crowned with a pair of crescent-moon horns and six long, nimble antennae that never ceased their moving—clung to the hillside with his hind feet. They, too, had grown with the rest of him. His claws were the size of sickles and the color of red jade.

Forgive me, he said to me, touching Ma’s bandage with the edge of one scarlet wing. But you would not let go. I could not let the feathered cousins die.

“You’ve always been a dragon?” I asked.

The crow shrieked, asking Mimic, How long must I be this way? I know it will help, her tying my wings to sticks, but it’s boring, and you know my people hate to be bored—

Mimic reached for the crow with three of those very long, silvery antennae. Without thinking, I held the bird up.

Do not speak such things for Ri to hear, Mimic told the crow as he ran his new antennae over it. She knows what you say now.

My ties, made so carefully, dropped from the crow, along with the splints. It stood up in my hands and flapped its fresh-healed wings. I apologize, the crow said to me. Now I knew she was female. You have been very good to us. Better than some, who chase us away from their nasty herb gardens, not that we would touch those bad-smelling things. She flapped away, loosing a white blob of dung that struck Grandpa on his head.

As he yelled curses at the crow, I asked Mimic, “Did you mean for me to hear the speech of animals? Is it true, I started hearing real voices? I thought I might be crazy!”

It is a gift of the dragons, Mimic explained. He spoke not with his mouth, but with his mind. You drank the river water that cured my fever, and took some of my essence with it. I did not mean to make it worse by biting you, but you would not release me. I am sorry. You will learn how to hear what you wish to hear and close out the rest. It is very confusing at first.

I thought of being able to talk to the animals as I cared for them, and grinned. “I will learn,” I told him. “It will make things so much easier. And you can help me now.”

But Mimic was shaking his big head. The one copper eye that I could see was unhappy. I cannot stay, Ri, he told me. I speak now so all of you will hear me. Ma, Grandpa, and all of the healers who had come to help drew closer. I know I must leave. I am much too big. Where will I sleep? I am not a bird. I would eat far more than the village could spare. And I can feel the herd animals trembling. They can smell me. They are terrified of me, even the sheep who were my friends. I have made the choice to grow. That means my time with you is over. My people are calling me to the mountains.

“Why should you go to your people?” I asked, confused. “They haven’t done anything for you!”

“I’d like to know that myself,” Grandpa said. I could see that Mimic was making the other healers nervous. The birds who could walk were going to him, though, leaning against his hind feet. Mimic spread his immense wings to shelter them from the sun, as the crow had once sheltered him.

Dragons must be careful about breeding, Mimic told us. There cannot be too many of our kind. When she mates, a female dragon lays her eggs far from the dragons’ home. My mother placed her clutch on the other edge of the Great Plain. We are born knowing these things. As if we could see through the hill, we turned to look. I shook myself and fixed my eyes on this new Mimic. We are hatched looking in no way like dragons. Then we must prove ourselves worthy to be them. We must survive the journey across the plain. Few of us do. If it had not been for you, Ri, I would have perished. Mimic bowed his great, shiny head and touched his nose to my face. He smelled of dry summer winds and the air before a storm.

“You still haven’t explained how you went from lizard to dragon,” Grandpa said. “You didn’t grow that way. It was magic!”

It was the last step, Mimic replied. It must be a choice. Life as a small one can be happy. We must decide that it is time to grow up. Time to take on the life of the dragon. My choice was simple. I could be a dragon, or I could watch my friends die.

Mimic looked away toward the mountains. My only regret is that I could not save more, he said. And I wish that I did not have to go. But I will continue to grow, you see.

“You must go, indeed,” Grandpa said. I hid my face in my hands. For a minute I hated them both for saying it so openly, as if it were nothing.

Mimic touched his great head to mine again. I had to choose, Ri. I knew he spoke only inside my mind now. It was time. But it is not all bad. When you choose, you will come to visit me, yes? You will be able to find me, and I will know you are coming. Just as you will hear the voices of the little brethren and know where their pain is. You are part dragon now.

He backed away from all of us carefully, so none of the birds would be knocked over when he rose on his hind legs. Slowly he flapped his great wings once, twice, thrice. He leaped, scooping air under his wings. He shoved it back at us, making us stumble. Then he was airborne, climbing higher into the sky.

I said little for the rest of the day. I was too busy trying to sort all of the voices in my head as I patched, splinted, and sewed. I found if I stared at one bird, or one dog, as I did when I went to see how my herd and the dogs were faring, I could hear that creature’s voice clearly. The others faded some. I practiced with the mice in the walls in our house—Ma was wrong; we had some. Then, when it got quieter, I thought about what Mimic had said.

It wasn’t like talking with animals. Their thoughts were simpler. That much I had learned already, listening to the birds on the hill, the village’s cats and dogs, the sheep in the fold, and the mice. Mimic had spoken to us like an equal, to me like a friend. He had been giving me advice without making me feel stupid, as my parents and Grandpa did. He wanted me to understand that here, in my valley, I would always be a child if I only did a child’s work. Only the heads of the combined flocks were adults. Even they were sometimes treated as children, big children who knew a lot about the care and keeping of cows, sheep, and goats.

Before I went to bed, I talked to Peng. It took me a while to make my point, because he was already half-asleep. When he finally realized that I meant what I said, he almost strangled me with his hug. I slept well, dreaming of Mimic.

At breakfast Ma stared at me when I turned my shepherd kit over to Peng. He knew the signals for the dogs and the sheep, since he had gone out with me most of the spring for training. I finished my breakfast slowly after he left, grateful that Ma knew I would explain myself when I was ready. Once done, I walked down to Grandpa’s place.

He was grinding herbs when I came into his workshop. Seeing me, he asked, “A bit late today, aren’t you?”

“You never said what time I had to come here to learn,” I replied.

Grandpa set his work aside and gave me his attention. Like Ma, he seemed to understand that the events of the day before called for big changes in my life.

“I don’t know how good I’ll ever be with people,” I told Grandpa. “But I’ve got the dragon magic now. It helps me hear creatures. It may help me do other things. And I suppose it’s time for me to grow up, just as Mimic did.”

Did Grandpa know what I was thinking? He traveled out of the valley for new herbs, and sometimes he sent his pupils into the mountains to study. I thought of my friend, flapping his way up into the cloudy sky. I might have to walk to see him again, but at least I was taking my first step.