Occasionally Menolly offered food to one of the others, but they’d never take it if she remained near. Nor would any of the older fire lizards, including the queen. Menolly concluded that that was as well, otherwise she’d have to spend every single waking moment feeding lazy fire lizards. The nine she’d Impressed were quite enough to keep sated.

When she saw the first skin lesion on the little queen, Menolly wondered where she would find oil. They’d all need it. Cracks in the skin would be deadly for the young fire lizards if they had to go between. And with natural enemies around, like wherries and eager boys from nearby Holds, between was a needed refuge.

The closest source of oil swam in the sea. But she’d no boat to catch the deep-sea oily fishes, so she searched the coast for dead fish and found a packtail washed up during the night She slit the carcass, carefully, always working the knife blade away from her, and squeezed the oil from the skin into a cup. Not the most pleasant of jobs; and by the time she’d finished, she had a bare cupful of unpleasantly fishy yellow oil. Yet it did work. The queen might not smell very pleasant, but the oil did coat the crack. For good measure, she smeared all her friends.

The stench in the cavern that night was almost more than she could endure, and she fell asleep trying to think of alternatives. By morning the possibilities had narrowed down to one: sweetening the fish oil with certain marsh grasses. She couldn’t get the pure sweet oil they used in the Hold because that was traded from Nerat; it was pressed from the flesh of a hot-climate fruit that grew abundantly in the rain forests there. The oily seed pod that grew from a sea bush would not be available until fall; and while she could get some oil from black marshberries, it would take immense quantities, which she’d prefer to eat.

With her fire lizards as winged escort, she made her way south and inland, towards country little penetrated by the Sea Holders as being too far, these days, from shelter.

Menolly set out as soon as the sun was up and varied her pace between a striding walk and an easy jog. She decided to go on as far as she could until the sun was mid-heaven; she couldn’t risk being too far from her cave when night fell.

The fire lizards were excited, darting about until she scolded them for wasting their energy. They took enough feeding without all that flying and all they could count on in this flat marsh area were berries and a few early sour plums. They took turns clinging to her shoulders and hair then, until the little brown pulled at her once too often, and she shooed them all off.