Page 1 of The Dragon Sacrifice

1

As her mother washed the dead body splayed out on their kitchen table, Seela helped her and dreamed of living another life.

It wasn’t that she hated being a healer’s assistant. On the contrary, her mother was patient and calm with a booming laugh that could shake sadness from any room, even from those who’d lost loved ones moments before on their battered wood-plank table. And it wasn’t like people died like this all the time—one of their neighbors going stiff and hard on the surface where they broke their bread most mornings. Naked, fleshy, and vulnerable.

Most lived and were so grateful to Seela’s mother, plying her with trinkets they’d made or little flowers from the valley. She was skilled at the healing, Seela’s mother. So, skilled, in fact, that some of the village women had spread a rumor that her mother was a witch, one who slaughtered goats during the harvest moon and drank their blood. But anyone who knew her mother couldn’t believe it, and the lie died as soon as it arose. Especially when her mother saved one of those rumor spreaders from certain death after delivering her breech baby. Both mother and child lived, and everyone rejoiced.

But her mother’s skill could not help poor Mr. Whelp.

Mr. Whelp was the village bartender and a known hard drinker, who had pickled his liver until it gave out on him. Sickly and stinking of a rot that only comes from within, he’d fallen, hit his head, and hadn’t woken up. Her mother applied all the poultices in her power, chewed up herbs and worked them between his colorless lips, but none of her usual tricks worked. Mr. Whelp had stopped breathing a few minutes ago. Now it was up to them to dress him and prepare his body for burial.

This was not Seela’s favorite part.

“Help me, pumpkin,” her mother said, swiping a lock of salt-and-pepper hair out of her hazel eyes. She lifted Mr. Whelp’s considerable arm off the tabletop, then took a sponge to it.

Seela internally grimaced and started to help, taking the sponge from her tired mother’s hand and setting about the task of washing and dressing poor old Mr. Whelp.

“You’re exhausted,” Seela said, shooing her mother away. “Let me do this. Go lay down.” Her mother shook her head, so Seela pointed to the chair by the hearth. “At least sit, for Lords’ sake.”

She ran the sponge down Mr. Whelp’s hairy chest toward his bloated belly. A sheet had been splayed across his man parts, and for that, Seela was grateful. She focused on his face and hair instead. Nothing scary there. She used the sponge to smooth back his black hair. His mistress would be here to collect him soon. They needed to make him presentable. Or as presentable as one could make a dead body.

Seela continued, working the sponge over his flesh before dousing it into the bucket of cold water from the well. Her mother set about humming old Ciriulan mourning songs, lighting candles to help send the spirit to the afterlife. Her soft, melodic voice filled their small house with warmth and sorrow, light and dark. Seela shivered. Then she started to dress Mr. Whelp’s quickly stiffening frame as best she could, keeping her eyes averted.

“Nervous about Selection?” her mother asked, slipping her eyes over to Seela before darting back to her work of organizing her herbs. Little earthen jars littered the shelves beside the hearth and filled two wooden cabinets along the wall.

Seela fastened the buttons on Mr. Whelp’s shirt, barely getting them to close over his sizable stomach. “Not nervous. It happens every year.”

“Mmm hmm,” her mother said in an even tone. “Even though you’re of age now for selection?”

Seela dismissed it as a ridiculous idea, even though her stomach was knotting the more they spoke about it. “What are the odds I’ll be selected? One in one thousand?”

“Probably more than a thousand girls of age in the eleven valleys. And they only pick one,” her mother said, setting the pots that held her precious herbs back in order. They made little scraping sounds as the bottoms clinked together. A noise Seela found soothing and familiar. “Very unlikely you’ll be picked.”

Seela swallowed. “Very unlikely. I haven’t been picked yet.” She wished her mother hadn’t brought Selection up. Her stomach flipped like river otters were tumbling inside.

Apparently sensing this, her mother wrapped her arms around her daughter and drew her in for a hug. Her mother smelled of marigold and sage. “Don’t fret, dove. You’ll be safe. After Selection, you’ll drink mead and dance and flirt with the young men there. Maybe even meet the man of your dreams.” Her mother waggled her eyebrows, swishing her skirts.

“You’re being ridiculous, and you know it.” Seela spun away from her mother’s embrace, then helped her sort more pots back into the cabinet. Their house was small—one bedroom they shared, a kitchen, and a little sitting area used mostly for patients and their families. The latrine was outdoors, and cold in the brisk winters where temperatures dropped to thirty degrees like it was this morning. It would be a chilly festival tonight if it didn’t warm up.

“What time is Mr. Whelp’s mistress coming by to collect him?” Seela asked, straightening her muslin dress and bundling her tangled black hair into a bun. She was a sweaty mess despite the chill.

“She’ll be here in a half an hour or so. You don’t need to stick around. I know how you feel about the weeping.”

“It’s not that. It’s just I never know what to say.” She felt like a rat for leaving her mother to console Mr. Whelp’s mistress like that, but Seela had never been good at consoling people. Her own father had died when she was seven. Every time someone cried for a loved one, she felt the spike of pain in her chest directly through her heart.

“You okay, dove?” her mother asked.

She blinked away the memory of her father, forcing on a smile. “Of course. Can I go to market? Get you anything?”

Her mother dug in her apron pocket, palming a coin and tossing it to Seela. “A bit of goat if you can manage it. And fennel. Dried or fresh, it doesn’t matter.”

Seela nodded, slipping the coin in her boot. It was daylight and she was unlikely to get mugged, but she took precautions anyway. Her father’s steel knife made the other boot stiff and immovable.

After pulling on her cloak, Seela whirled out of the house. The fresh air of the forest flooded her lungs, and she reveled in the feeling of being outside.

The sky above was a brilliant blue, rimmed with trees as green as emeralds. The Deep Forest stood around them, centuries’ tall trees marking time as their branches reached to the heavens. The trees around her house were so old the branches were fifty feet off the ground, unreachable unless a lumberman was able to fell one of the giants, and that was a feat most were unable or unwilling to do. These trees had magic souls, the villagers whispered. Cut one down and folly on the culprit and their families.

Seela had loved the trees, had ringed around them with her father as he chased and she squealed. They gave shade in the summer, shelter in the winter. Their roots created a dense ecosystem in the soil beneath that allowed her mother to grow all sorts of important herbs in her garden, threaded into the sunny spots on the forest floor.

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