Dragonsong - Chapter Seven

[kalinara]

So last time, we saw that every single member of Half Circle Hold with the exception of Alemi and Elgion are horrible people who don't care if Menolly dies, and I ranted a lot. This time should be a little better, because we're rejoining Menolly in the fun part of the story.



So we already start out with some survival type stuff. Yay! I'm not being sarcastic, I actually love that kind of stuff. As a kid, anything outdoors survival really appealed to me. That's kind of hilarious given that I'm the LEAST outdoorsy person you'll ever meet.

Anyway, we're told that it took Menolly to find four days to find the right sort of rocks that she can use to spark a fire. On the plus side, she was able to use that time to dry some seaweed and dead bushes for fuel, and build a useful hearth with a natural chimney in the side of the hearth. It doesn't really say what Menolly was doing before that for warmth at night. Perhaps it isn't the cold season yet. We do learn that she's made some bedding by gathering marsh grasses and picking out the seam of her carry sack. Her fire lizards cuddle with her and help keep her comfortable.

Once she has the fire going, she's VERY comfortable. We're told that she found some young "klahbark" trees, and can get a very harsh brew going that wakes her up. She also went to the clay deposits that Half-Circle uses to make some cups, plates, and containers for storage. Interesting that she has yet to encounter anyone from Half-Circle doing this, but to be fair, I don't actually know how long it takes to get clay or how often they'd need it.

She apparently found a dish like porous rock, that she could fill the holes in and boil water. She gets fish from the sea to eat (how? We're not told). She's doing pretty well, though she misses bread.

I don't think that can work long term, but it's only been a few days.

She's also working on being parent/bondmate to a bunch of flying cats. She shows them where to hunt for rockmites and other things. Between seeing to their needs and seeing to her own, she's got a new appreciation for what she can do and she's starting to wonder about what her Hold takes for granted.

For example: apparently everyone assumed that to be caught without shelter during Threadfall is death. This is an interesting assumption to me. On one hand, it seems a bit extreme for people who, until recently, had never believed Thread would happen again. But then, to be fair, that probably makes it scarier. And they don't have the practical experience of parents or grandparents to help. Four hundred years is a fucking long time.

Menolly notes that no one seems to have "correlated the fact that the dragonriders cleared most of the Thread from the skies before it fell-that was the whole point of having dragons-with the idea that as a result there was very little Thread to fall on the unsheltered."

I mean, she's not wrong, but I still feel like it's a bad idea to stand there and hope that the dragonriders don't get careless and miss a spot. That's why flamethrower crews exist: to get the thread that gets through later.

Menolly notes that if she'd been alone she probably would have gone back to the hold. But she's not, she has her friends, and they love her music. She even manages to fashion five reed pipes together and play a counter tune. They've even started crooning along. She notes that the lizards might understand less than a child of three, but they responded to any of the dragon songs as if they knew she was singing about their family members. Aw.

Menolly basically has realized that lizards and dragons are related and treating the lizards like one treats a dragon seems to work well. I'm not quite sure how she knows how to treat a dragon, but maybe that's in the songs. She's learning to understand them.

There's little contact with the other lizards, though apparently the parents sometimes come and hover. I find this fascinating. I wish the books had gone a little more into how Ramoth and Mnementh see their offspring. I'd never gotten an impression that the parental bond was that strong. But then again, Ramoth did seem defensive of Ruth. And Prideth had no interest in going after her mother's mate.

Menolly's tried to feed some of the other siblings, but they won't take it if she sticks around. Probably for the best, she's got nine after all.

A new concern is lesions: as they grow, lizard skin cracks and that could be deadly if they go between. Menolly knows that fish can be a source of oil, but she doesn't have a boat to get the deep sea ones, so she looks for some dead ones along shore. She eventually does find a source, and it's gross but effective.

Menolly keeps exploring with the lizards, being careful not to go too far from the cave before night fall. So we get some of that, and it's cute. Eventually, she finds a distressed wherry (a type of bird), which had been caught in sinking sand. Menolly kills it, and gets both meat and fat which she can use for grease for the lizards.

More interesting though is that when the bird starts to sink into the sands, the lizards actually help Menolly get it out. (They get to eat the entrails while Menolly dresses it. Also pretty gross. And I do like that Menolly herself is a bit nauseated by this. She's not superhuman and as any cat owner knows: while tiny predators are cute, sometimes they're disgusting. She worries for a moment about raw meat making them vicious, but dragons seem fine with it so she figures the lizards will be too.

So Menolly continues to observe her fire lizards and think about what she sees. I remember initially being a little annoyed when I first read this book that Menolly suddenly becomes the expert with fire lizards, even though other characters technically had theirs longer. But it occurs to me that Brekke and Mirrim, unlike Menolly, have some very time consuming duties. Menolly does have to see to her and the lizards' survival, but she gets to do this in their natural habitat, with plenty of opportunity to study her own lizards alongside unImpressed ones.

Honestly, I find Menolly so much more interesting as a naturalist than a Harper.

When Menolly gets back to the cave, she wraps a piece of meat in seaweed to heat by the fire, and goes to sleep. It doesn't say how she preserves the rest of it. But she does spend the next days rendering fat and wishing for a decent cooking pot.

Meanwhile, her fire lizards are starting to develop personalities: the queen is very bossy, yet attentive to Menolly and her mother. The bronzes have different hunting styles. The blue gets picked on by the greens. The browns are insignificant (literally, one mimics everyone else and is named Mimic, the other has no notable trait at all and is Brownie.)

This is a minor quibble, but I kind of think nine is a bit much for this kind of thing. I know that Menolly, as a main character, needs a trait that makes her stand out (besides being a music prodigy) and having more fire lizards than most works well for that. But I feel like the point could still have been made with five. Or six. It's very rare that the personalities of any of the lizards except Beauty, the little queen, actually effect the plot. The only thing differentiating the bronzes are hunting style, the browns literally are named for being indistinct, and the greens are numbered.

But that's a very mild complaint and let's be honest, a swarm of nine lizards is pretty impressive.

So yeah, nothing really HAPPENS in this chapter, but it's fun and enjoyable. I like seeing Menolly in her element, making do. I like watching her observe the lizards and make conclusions. I like her figuring out how to see to her needs. And if I nitpick a little about stuff like where she stores the extra meat, it's only because I'm genuinely curious.

I hope we see more of this and less of our one dimensional adversaries.