Dragon's Winter by Elizabeth A. Lynn Page B

palm.
    “Fruit,” she said aloud. A large yellow peach appeared in her hand. She rubbed its fuzzy skin against her cheek; smelled it, touched her tongue to it. She bit into it. Sweet juice ran down her chin. She ate it, and dropped the ridged pit into a crack in the cobblestones.
    “Cloak.” The folds of a cloak settled on her shoulders. It was thick and warm, a soft dark red, lined with black fur. It seemed to draw the sunlight into her tired bones. She tucked her hands beneath it.
    When she looked up, two soldiers with badges on their vests stood watching her. “What?” she said to them.
    The older man, whose scabbard and sword belt were well-worn with the mark of battles, said respectfully, “My lady, I bear you greetings from the lord Erin diMako. He asks if you would come to the castle and speak to him. He sent us to escort you.”
    The castle: that was the grand white building on the hill, where the great horse banner waved in the sun, where the soldiers lived. She stroked the fur of her cloak. That was not a place for her; she was a beggar.
    Go with them , said the whisper in her mind. It had been years since she had been inside such a building. The street was her home: this district, this wall, this eave.
    “No,” she answered and wondered if they would yell at her, and draw their swords.
    But they only looked unhappy. The older man nodded. “As my lady wishes,” he said, in excellent imitation of a courtier, and did not move. She reached for her staff, and saw the young one flinch. His fear made her want to comfort him. She handed him a peach, twin to the one she had eaten. He handled it as though it were venomous.
    “Good,” she said to him simply. “Eat it.” He lifted the peach to his face, sniffed, and took a bite. She watched him eat it. He was not hungry, she knew, but he had eaten it to please her.
    How do I know that? she wondered. I would not have known it yesterday. She touched the soft lining of the cloak. Nor did I have this yesterday. Bare, horn-hard feet poked out from beneath the cloak’s bottom hem. The juxtaposition made her smile, and the curve of her lips felt strange. She touched her mouth. How long had it been since she had smiled, or spoken, or slept in a bed? She gazed wonderingly at the tough, weathered skin of her hands. She did not remember their aging.
    The rest of the day she roamed the city. The soldiers followed her. She walked across the bridges where the river cut through the city like a silver band. She went to the market, weaving through the bustle, staring at the piled goods, cloth and rope and kettles, and the horses in their stalls, and at the tall heaped baskets of apples and pears and sweet white corn, for the early harvest was in. She stopped at a stall hung with mirrors, and gazed at them. Her skin was darker than that of those around her: they were pale; she was bronze. She saw a toy in a peddler’s cart: a rude carved dragon, with painted leather wings and a stubby tail. She held it a long time before returning it to the peddler. Wherever she went she felt people watching her. Once a tall man in elegant clothes tried to speak to her. The soldiers shouldered quickly between them, and the older one spoke urgently to the tall man. The man had tears in his eyes.
    The pictures returned, small and far away, as if they retreated into the past she could barely remember. But others replaced them, bright, colorful, and clear: a black dragon with a scarlet crest soaring over the city, and a silver rain falling onto the roofs and burning, and steam boiling white from the river.
    At the end of the day, under the soft blue summer sky, she turned to the patient soldiers. “Now,” she said.
    They guided her to the castle, up white marble steps that gleamed red in the hazy sunset. They led her through shining hallways floored with polished wood that was slippery to her feet, and ushered her into a room in which a lordly man sat waiting.
    “My lord,” said the older