The Ice Dragon

In a farming village set against the backdrop of a prolonged war, a young girl named Adara grows up marked by winter. She is a winter child, born during the worst freeze anyone can remember. People say the cold killed her mother, Beth, during the long labor, and that the chill entered Adara in the womb. Her skin was pale blue and icy at birth, and she has never warmed since. Adara is serious, quiet, and beautiful in a distant way. She seldom plays with other children, rarely smiles, and has never been seen to cry.

Her father, John, a gruff farmer, shows easy affection toward her older siblings, Geoff and Teri, but hugs Adara only in winter, sobbing as he holds her. Uncle Hal, John's younger brother and a dragonrider in the king's service, visits each summer on his way to battlegrounds in the north. In this world, dragons are real, fire-breathing creatures used in warfare, though they cannot tolerate the cold and must fly south in winter. Hal tries to coax a smile from Adara but seldom succeeds; she dislikes him because his presence means winter is far away. At age four, Adara overhears John and Hal talking at night. Hal urges John not to blame Adara for Beth's death. John admits he loved Adara best of all but calls her cold, saying she has never loved him back and that whenever he touches her, he feels the chill and remembers Beth died for her.

Adara's true life unfolds in winter. The cold never bothers her. Each year she builds a secret snow castle in a far corner of the fields, shaping towers and battlements with her bare hands. When ice lizards, tiny fragile blue creatures, emerge at the first frost, Adara can hold them safely because her hands are cool enough not to harm them. Other children accidentally kill the creatures with their warmth. Adara scatters food scraps near her castle, attracting ice lizards, small furry animals, and winter birds.

What Adara loves most is the ice dragon. One was seen the night she was born, and it has returned every winter since. The ice dragon is crystalline white and half again the size of the green war dragons Hal flies. Its wings are translucent blue, its teeth are triple rows of icicles, and instead of breathing fire, it breathes cold, freezing everything in its path. At age four, the ice dragon lands near Adara in the snow-covered fields. It looks at her for ten heartbeats and flies away. Later that winter she touches it, removing her glove to stroke its icy skin. Her cool hands do not harm it.

The winter of her fifth birthday, Adara climbs onto the ice dragon's neck and they fly together for the first time. Without harness or whip, she clings to its cold flesh as they soar over the farm, the crossroads inn, and the forest, letting out a rare, bright laugh. The dragon returns her at dusk. Her father finds her, weeps with relief, and then beats her. She flies the ice dragon every winter after, venturing farther each year. The winters grow longer, the thaws come later, and patches of land where the ice dragon rested never fully thaw.

The war worsens. Hal warns that the enemy advances every summer with twice as many dragonriders. Before Adara's seventh birthday, his wing of dragons has visibly shrunk. He urges John to sell the farm and flee south, but John refuses; the land is where he was born, where their parents and Beth are buried. They part in anger. Adara privately resolves to stay no matter what, because if she moves, the ice dragon will not know where to find her.

That year the king's line breaks in a major battle. For weeks, retreating columns of soldiers flow south, followed by trains of wounded. An officer advises the locals to flee. Some do, but John stays, though he begins to drink and keeps glancing at the sky. At last the king's dragonriders come, only four remaining. Hal arrives on his dragon Brimstone, sick and injured, barely able to fly. He demands John leave. John refuses, but when Teri says she is scared, he asks Hal to take the children. Brimstone is too wounded to carry extra weight, so Hal agrees to take only Adara, the smallest. Adara refuses, slips out the door, and runs, losing herself in the wheat fields and the woods. Her family searches with lanterns and torches, but she hides high in an oak tree and falls asleep.

At dawn, three enemy dragons appear in the sky, dark and sooty with glowing ember eyes, their riders in black and orange. Hal rises on Brimstone to meet them. The enemy riders attack from three sides, and on a signal all three dragons breathe fire at once. Hal and Brimstone are engulfed in flames and fall burning into the wheat field. The enemy dragons land, and the riders approach the farmhouse.

Frightened and only seven, Adara runs to the coldest place she knows: deep caves beneath the river bluffs. Day turns to night. The cave grows colder and colder, frost covering the walls, and she realizes the cold is coming from outside. The ice dragon is waiting. It has frozen part of the river and turned the tall grass white and brittle; it looks smaller than she has ever seen it, diminished by the summer heat. Adara climbs onto it and begs it to take her to the land of always-winter. They soar above the forest and turn north. Then she hears her father screaming, faint and far away. Hot tears run down her cheeks and burn pockmarks into the frost on the dragon's back. She whispers for the dragon to turn back. The ice dragon turns.

Back at the farm, the three enemy dragons are feasting on charred livestock. The ice dragon attacks, breathing cold that freezes and shatters the black dragon's wing, killing it and its rider. The blood-colored dragon flies too close; the ice dragon's breath freezes its rider instantly, and the dragon dies moments later. The last enemy rider, in full armor on the rust-colored dragon, attacks from behind and engulfs the ice dragon's wing in fire. The wing melts in an instant. The ice dragon crashes to earth, and the impact throws Adara free into the soft ground, bruised but whole. Broken and dying, the ice dragon raises its head and lets out a melancholy cry like the north wind around the towers of an empty castle. It breathes cold one final time, a long blue-white stream full of snow and stillness. The last dragonrider flies into it and is killed.

Adara runs to the farmhouse, crying for the first time in her life. She finds Teri, and together they free Geoff and untie their father. When John opens his eyes and sees Adara, he smiles. She hugs him and cries for him. By night he says he can travel, and they creep away in the darkness, heading south.

Later, safe in the south, there are endless questions. No one believes Adara's story except Geoff, who outgrows his belief as he gets older. When the family left the farm that night, there was no ice dragon, only the corpses of three enemy war dragons, three dead riders, and a small, quiet pond of very cold water that had never been there before.

John works for another farmer for three years and tells Adara he is sad about losing Hal and his land but that having his daughter back makes it all right. The winter has gone from Adara; she smiles, laughs, and weeps like other children. Three years later, the king's army routs the enemy, and the northern provinces are reclaimed. Teri has married and stays in the south. Geoff and Adara return with their father to the farm. When the first frost comes, the ice lizards emerge as they always have. Adara watches them with a smile, remembering the way things were. But she does not try to touch them. They are cold and fragile little things, and the warmth of her hands would hurt them now.