The dragon rumbled again but gave her wings a shudder and then unfolded them. The skin clung together like a parasol stored too long in the damp, and it smelled unpleasant. Her scales looked unhealthy, the feathery edges showing white, like layers of leaves going to mold.
“This is not good,” Thymara exclaimed in dismay. “Don’t you ever wash them? Or shake them out and exercise them? Your skin needs sunlight. And a good scrubbing.”
“They’re not so bad,” the dragon hissed.
“No. They’re damp in the folds and smelly. At least leave them unfolded to air while I go get something to help your claws.” Heedless of Sintara’s dignity, Thymara seized the tip of one of the dragon’s finger-ribs and pulled the wing out straight. The dragon tried to close her wing but Thymara held on stubbornly. It was entirely too easy for her to hold the wing open. The dragon’s muscles should have been stronger. She tried to think of the right word for it. Atrophy. Sintara’s wing muscles were atrophying from disuse. “Sintara, if you don’t listen to me and take care of your wings, soon you won’t be able to move them at all.”
“Don’t even think such a thing!” the dragon hissed at her. She gave a violent flap and Thymara lost her grip and fell to her knees in the mud. She looked up at the dragon as Sintara began indignantly to fold her wings again.
“Wait. Wait, what’s that? Sintara, open your wing again. Let me look under it. That looked like a rasp snake under there!”
The dragon halted. “What’s a rasp snake?”
“They live in the canopy. They’re skinny as twigs but long. They’re really fast when they strike, and they have a tooth, like an egg tooth, on their snouts. They bite and hold on, and dig their heads in. And then they just hang there and feed. I’ve seen monkeys with so many on them that they look like they have a hundred tails. Usually the animal gets an infection around the head and dies from that. They’re nasty. Unfold your wing. Let me look.”
It hung from high under the wing, a long nasty snakelike body. When Thymara braved herself to touch it, the dangling thing suddenly lashed about angrily and Sintara gave a startled chirp of pain. “What is it? Get it off me!” the dragon exclaimed and thrust her head under her wing and seized the parasite.
“Stop! Don’t bite it, don’t pull on it. If you rip it off you, the head will tear free and stay inside and make a terrible infection. Let go, Sintara. Let go of it and let me deal with it!”
Sintara’s eyes glittered, copper disks whirling, but she obeyed. “Get it off me.” The dragon spoke in a tight, furious voice, and Thymara was jolted to feel, beneath Sintara’s anger, her fear. An instant later, Sintara added in a low hiss. “Hurry. I can feel it moving. It’s trying to dig deeper into me. To hide inside my body.”
“Sa save us all!” Thymara exclaimed. Her gorge rose in revulsion, and she tried to recall how her father had said one got rid of a little rasp snake. “Not fire, no. They dig deeper if you put fire to them. There was something else.” She searched her memory desperately, and then had it. “Whisky. I have to go see if Captain Leftrin has whisky. Don’t move.”
“Hurry,” Sintara pleaded.
Thymara ran toward the barge, then caught sight of the captain and Alise strolling together. She changed her course and raced toward them, shouting, “Captain Leftrin! Captain Leftrin, I need your help!”
At her cries, both the captain and Alise turned and hurried toward her. She was out of breath by the time they reached each other, and to Leftrin’s worried, “What’s wrong, girl?” she could only reply, “Rasp snake. On Sintara. Biggest I’ve ever seen. Going into her chest, under her wing.”
“Those damned things!” he exclaimed, and Thymara could only feel gratitude that she didn’t have to explain it.
She caught a gasping breath. “My father used liquor to make them back out.”
“Yes, well, tereben oil works better. Trust me on that. Had to get one out of my own leg once. Come on, girl. I’ve got some on board. Alise! If one dragon has a rasp snake, chances are the others do, too. Tell the keepers to check their animals. And that brown one, the one that’s down? Check her, too. Look on her underbelly. They’ll go for a soft place for an easy bite and then dig in.”
Alise felt a surge of purpose as Leftrin turned away from her and headed back toward the barge. She hastened down the beach, going from keeper to keeper, giving the warning. Greft almost immediately found one dangling from Kalo’s belly, concealed by one of his hind legs. There were three fastened to Sestican;she’d thought for a moment that his keeper, Lecter, was going to faint when he discovered three short ends of snakes poking out from his dragon’s nether regions. She spoke to him sharply to jolt him from his panic, directing him to take his dragon over to where Sintara was and to wait for Leftrin there. The boy seemed shocked that she could speak so severely. He gave a gulp, recovered himself, and obeyed her.
