Excerpts from
The Shamer's Daughter
By Lene Kaaberbøl
“Draco
Draco,” whispered Nico. “Here we come.” He unlocked the final gate.
“Why do you say that?”
“What?”
“That ... that dracodraco th ' ing.”
“Oh that's their proper name. In Latin.”
I stared at the worm pile under the vault. 1
didn't care what they were called ‑ in
Latin or
otherwise. “How nice. Now I can be polite to them while they're eating me.”
I swear he smiled, the idiot. How could he
smile now?
“Think of them as overgrown lizards,” he said,
pushing open the gate.
I wanted most of all to rush across the Pit,
running as fast as I could. But Nico had told me not to. The stones were damp
and slippery with frost, and r‑ubble and old timbers were just waiting to
trip you up. If one of us twisted an ankle or something and was no longer able
to walk, the dragons would make an easy meal of us. So we walked. 1 stayed very
close to Nico and his spear and kept my eyes glued to the dragons, and so 1
nearly tripped myself up after all, stumbling over a rotting beam sticking out
of the rubble. Nico grabbed my elbow and kept me from falling. My heart was
pounding so loudly that 1 thought the sound would rouse the dragons. They
weren't totally still, over there in the huddle. At first the clutch was so
tightly tangled that it was hard to tell where one dragon left off and another
began. But gradually one monster started to emerged from the tangle.
“Nico!!” I whispered frantically.
“I've seen it,” he said, clutching his spear
more tightly. “Keep walking.” That was all very well for him to say. My legs
felt stiff and strange, actually my whole body felt strange, rushing and
pounding and buzzing with fear. If that dragon took one more step... And it
did. One step, two steps, a slow, writhing waddle, its head lowered, no more
than a foot or so off the ground... onwards it came, and as it slipped from the
shadows and into the moonlight, the scales glittered like mother‑of‑pearl
and the long, long body curved like a winding river; glittery and huge. I could
see its jaws and the split tongue that kept flickering out, then in, then out
again, as if it were tasting the air.
“Move!” Nico hissed, and I only then realised
that 1 had come to a complete halt. The only thing I wanted to do was run, run,
run and never stop, and yet here I was, feet stuck to the ground as if they had
weights on them.
Almost the worst of it was the slowness. I
couldn't help myself ‑ I just had to stare at it, watching it flow
forward inch by inch like a wave of thick mud. 1 could see its pale yellow eyes
clearly now. Slowly it raised its head, swaying from side to side. Slowly it opened its jaws, bluish purple and
full of needle‑sharp fangs...
If not for Nico, I might have stood there
gazing at the eyes and jaws and teeth of the dragon until it finally ate me.
But he grabbed my arm and forced me onward, even though my legs seemed not to
want to follow.
“Don't look at it so,” he said. “Watch the gate
instead. Make sure we stay on course ‑ I'll keep an eye on the beast.”
I forced my eyes away from the dragon and
looked towards the gate instead. And that was when I knew we were going to die.
Translated by Lene Kaaberbøl
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