Suddenly the air about the rock was busy with dragonets. Sean grasped Sorka’s arm, as much in surprise as to command her to silence. Openmouthed in astonishment, Sorka could not have uttered a sound; she was too delighted with the assembly to do more than stare. Blue, brown, and bronze dragonets hovered in the air, blending their voices with that of the little gold.

“There must be hundreds of the dragonets, Sean.” The way they were wheeling and darting about, the air seemed overladen with them.

“Only twelve lizards,” Sean replied, impervious. “No, sixteen.”

“Dragonets,” Sorka said firmly.

Sean ignored her interruption. “I wonder why.”

“Look!” She pointed to a new flight of dragonets that appeared suddenly, trailing large branches of dripping seaweeds. More arrived, each with something wiggling in its mouth, the burden deposited on the seaweeds that made an uneven circle about the nest. “Like a dam,” Sorka murmured wonderingly. More avians, or perhaps the same ones on a return trip, brought trundle-bugs and sandworms, which flopped or burrowed in the weeds.

Then, as they saw the first of the eggs crack and a little wet head poke through, Sorka and Sean clung to each other in order to contain their excitement. Pausing in their harvesting, the airborne creatures warbled an intricate pattern of sound.

“See, it is welcome!” Sean knew that he had been right all along.

“No! Protection!” Sorka pointed to the blunt snouts of two huge mottled snakes at the far side of the underbrush.

The intruders were spotted by the flyers, and half a dozen dove at the protruding heads. Four of the dragonets sustained the attack right into the vegetation, and there was considerable agitation of branches until the attackers emerged, chittering loudly. In that brief interval, four more eggs had cracked open. The adult avians were a living chain of supply as the first arrival shed its shell and staggered about, keening woefully. Its dam herded it, with wing motion and encouraging chirps, toward a nearby dragonet that was holding a flopping fishling for the hatchling to devour.

A bolder snake, emerging from the sand where it had hidden itself, attempted a rush up the rock face toward another hatchling. It braced its middle limbs as it raised its head, its turtlelike mouth agape, to grab its prey. Instantly the snake was attacked by the airborne dragonets. With a good sense of preservation, the hatchling lurched over the damlike ramparts of seaweed, toward the bush under which Sorka and Sean hid.

“Go away,” Sean muttered between clenched teeth. He waved his hand at the keening juvenile, shooing it away from them. He had no wish to be attacked by its adult kin.

“It’s starving, Sean,” Sorka said, fumbling for the packet of sandwiches. “Can’t you feel the hunger in it?”