The Pygmy Dragon Read Free Page B

She had not even walked the jungle ways, crossing the great vines between the Islands.
    What could she do? Wait, with the patience of a rajal. Jungle animals knew how to wait.
    The big person passed her to another. “We’ll put her with the Oraials.”
    “Biggest and smallest?” he said.
    “They live together in the jungle, don’t they?”
    Swinging in the net like a captive flying vervet monkey, Pip stared around her with renewed interest as the two big people threaded their way through the busy marketplace. So this man thought he could keep her in his hut, did he? He was as fat as a wild pig and even more stupid. She would escape after nightfall.

Chapter 3: Zoo
     
    T he men LOCKED the rajal in a barred cage opposite. The feline, which hulked to the height of a big person’s shoulder, paced back and forth, his yellow eyes slit and wrathful. But his cage was nothing like Pip’s. She stared at the freshly painted walls in dismay, outlined against the cloudless afternoon sky like cream-coloured lips upraised in an everlasting cry. The walls were seamless, many times her height. Unclimbable. Pip despaired. Everything smelled new. In three places, huge, curved crysglass windows allowed her a view of the outside world. This was big person work. A team of women swept and cleaned outside one of the windows. The chief of this village certainly liked to keep his hut neat. Only a great chief would have so many servants.
    But this place was like no hut she had ever seen.
    Her new home held two prekki-fruit trees. Two! Her heart howled at the wide-open sky. Where was her jungle, the comforting undergrowth, the leaves and vines hemming her in above and all around? Before she knew it, Pip found herself hugging the tree, panting hard. She saw a thick rope swing hanging from a sturdy branch, and nearby, several logs had been fastened together to form what was clearly a climbing frame. The thick rope looped over from the tree to the top of the frame, just like the jungle vines of her home reached from Island to Island, looping above the poisonous Cloudlands.
    Did they think she was a monkey? A chattering monkey?
    Fury burned away the self-pity that had begun to steal her courage. Then she gasped. The chief had mentioned Oraials. Suddenly, the looming walls made sense. Terrifying sense. She was about to have a huge wild Ape for company. Every Pygmy knew how dangerous Oraials could be, especially mothers with babies. A wise Pygmy gave Apes plenty of room.
    Pip turned her mind to food. That was not hard. Her stomach was a tiny knot next to her backbone. The tree had fruit, but one taste made her spit. Unripe. She could fill her stomach, but she would pay for it in cramps and pain. Pip picked one of the hand-sized, purple fruit and gnawed it as she looked about uneasily. In one place, a door was recessed into the wall. It had metal bars too narrow for her to slip between. She trotted over to peer through the bars. All she saw was a stone room. At the far end was another door, identical to the first. No Oraial could fit through those doors, Pip reassured herself.
    Instead, they lowered the Apes from a Dragonship.
    Pip crouched beside the tree to watch the mother and her baby being lowered from the oval Dragonship hovering overhead. It was a strange beast, a huge brown balloon with ropes supporting a cabin dangling beneath it. Some sinister big person magic made it stay up in the air. Outwardly, Pip showed no fear. Inwardly, she was shaking like a trailing vine caught in a spring storm.
    The Apes lolled about. Sleeping? The men untied them and fled, taking their ropes with them.
    She waited until the Dragonship was long gone. The Apes did not stir.
    Pip strode restlessly around the perimeter of her new territory, daring to touch the great wall with her fingertips. The crysglass was amazing–as transparent as a spring of water, and as hard as granite. She stared through at the coal-black rajal, prowling just like her. The feline lidded his