The Pygmy Dragon Read Free Page A

bobbing on the breezes. Her nostrils flared at the tang of unfamiliar spices drifting into the stuffy cargo hold. Pip sensed they had landed. So did the animals. They stirred, and groaned or chirped or chattered weakly.
    Nothing smelled or sounded the same.
    Without warning, a team of labourers swarmed into the cargo hold. There was much shouting and cursing, especially from a one-armed big person who seemed louder than the rest and acted angry about everything. Hands swung her cage through the air. Pip landed with a bruising thump in the back of a cart. They piled monkey cages haphazardly around her. She kicked at several pairs of furry hands trying to sneak the remaining quarter of her tinker banana from her. Pip ate the last bite, but discovered that she had lost her water gourd. Stupid!
    The cart lurched away. Pip could see only snatches of the bright sky, far wider than she had ever seen it from beneath the jungle canopy, and three moons clustering together as if to comfort each other–the Yellow, Blue and Jade moons. Strange big person huts, the biggest huts she had ever seen, marched past the sides of the cart. They built huts from stone? A babble of strange languages assaulted her ears. The cart lurched to a halt in a squalling, bawling, chaotic marketplace.
    Impressions and noises hammered against her mind. Big people came to stare into the back of the cart, coins clinked greedily into the merchant’s paws, monkeys screeched at their new owners, parakeets sang to delighted children and fingers jabbed Pip’s sides. She snarled and bit one of them.
    The merchant crashed the butt of his stick into her ribs. “None of that.”
    Pip did not need to know Island Standard to grasp his meaning. She sank back, murdering him in her mind.
    Shortly, a hulking big person who was missing most of his teeth unlocked her cage. Pip sprang for her freedom, but clearly, the man had been expecting this. Whipping out a cudgel, he knocked her half-senseless. The ground swapped places with the sky. Next she knew, cold metal bit her wrist. She was shackled to a post.
    A haze of madness rose before her eyes as she fought the chains. Pip screamed like an animal. She jerked and frothed and writhed. The big person began to laugh, but then he swore unhappily as she ripped the post clean off its moorings. Pip was more surprised than he was. She froze, staring at the sturdy post in astonishment. She had broken that? But that moment’s hesitation was too long. A net fell over her head and shoulders. Her feet swung off the ground.
    “Netted me a Pygmy,” said a deep voice. “Shut yer yapping, yer mongrel.”
    Rough fingers unlocked the chain.
    The big person cuffed her a few times, viciously. Pain roared through her broken arm. Pip subsided. Let him think she was cowed. Cradling her arm to her stomach, she stared between the ropes at her captor. He wore big person clothes–clunky leather coverings on his feet and a sweeping cloak across his broad shoulders. He dangled her aloft in one hand. Amid a thicket of facial hair, bits of gold flashed between his teeth. Before, she had only seen that much hair on an Ape. She wondered how many lice lived in his beard.
    He whacked her again for good measure. “What you asking for a Pygmy?”
    “For your zoo?” said a voice behind her. That was the voice which had been wheedling all day long. Pip understood only a few of the words, but she knew what the man was doing–he was buying and selling animals, including her. What was a zoo? This big person’s hut?
    The men spoke back and forth over her head for several moments. They pretended to grow irate with each other, but soon laughed together. They clasped forearms. Gold flashed in the bright sunlight.
    At least the twin suns had not changed, Pip thought, unlike the rest of her world. This big person could take a flying leap into the Cloudlands. Just let him buy a Pygmy warrior. A warrior all of eight summers old, a little voice in her head told her.