Dragonsong recap

Menolly, youngest child of the Sea Holder at the isolated Half-Circle Sea Hold, is a gifted musician and songwriter taught in secret by the hold's old harper. When he dies, her family forbids her to play, insisting that no girl can be a harper, and a badly treated gash across her palm seems to end the question permanently. Forbidden her music and with nothing left at the hold, she runs away. Sheltering in a cliff cave from Threadfall, she is present when a clutch of fire-lizard eggs she had rescued from the tide hatches, and she Impresses nine of the little creatures, something no one on Pern had known was possible. She lives wild on the coast, feeding them and exercising her scarred hand back into use, until she is caught in the open during a Fall and rescued by a dragonrider who takes her to Benden Weyr. There her fire lizards make her remarkable rather than shameful, and the Masterharper of Pern, who has been hunting for the author of two songs sent to him from her hold, identifies her and takes her into his craft as an apprentice.

Pern is a world whose people live in stone holds and cliff caves because of Thread, a spore that falls from a neighbouring planet during a fifty-Turn Pass and devours anything living it touches. Ground crews burn what reaches the earth, but the real defence is dragons: telepathic, bonded for life to a single rider from the moment of hatching, flying out of mountain Weyrs to flame Thread from the sky. Between the Weyrs and the holds sit the crafts, each with its own hall and its own Master. The Harper Craft reaches furthest: harpers are posted to every hold, and besides music they carry the teaching ballads that hold Pern's history, law and survival lore, so a harper is teacher, lawman and news-carrier at once, and the Masterharper's word travels everywhere. Pern is some Turns into a Pass, and the dragonriders' standing has been restored by it. This story takes place well away from the Weyrs and their politics, at a small fishing hold on the northern coast, where none of that matters as much as the tides do.

Half-Circle Sea Hold is a remote fishing hold run by Menolly's father, Yanus, on the principle that everything and everyone must earn their keep. Menolly, his youngest, has been taught music by the hold's old harper, Petiron, and is better at it than anyone there realizes: she plays every instrument in the hall and, more dangerously, makes up her own songs. Petiron has quietly sent two of them to the Masterharper without telling anyone whose they are. When Petiron dies, the hold is left without a harper until the Harper Hall can send a replacement, and Menolly is set to teaching the children their ballads in the meantime, on strict condition that she teach only what is written and add nothing of her own. Her parents' view, stated plainly, is that a girl cannot be a harper, and that her tunings are an embarrassment to be stamped out before the new harper arrives.

Menolly is caught playing her own music for the hold's children and punished for it. Set to gutting the catch, she slices her left hand open, and the wound is stitched and bound in a way that leaves the palm scarred and tight; she is told, and comes to believe, that she will never play properly again. The new harper, Elgion, arrives from the Harper Hall to find the hold's children better drilled than any he expected and nobody willing to say who taught them. Menolly is kept away from him, told to say nothing about her music, and given work that keeps her out of the hall. Out gathering along the shore, she comes across a fire lizard, a small wild cousin of the dragons that most of Pern regards as a legend, and finds the clutch of eggs it has laid in the sand where the tide will reach them. She carries the eggs up into a cave in the cliff, above the water line.

With her hand ruined, her music forbidden and her family already arranging the rest of her life, Menolly leaves Half-Circle rather than accept it. She is still out on the coast when Threadfall comes, and shelters in the cliff cave where she put the fire-lizard eggs, running the last stretch ahead of the leading edge of the Fall. She survives, but by then the hold has counted her lost and stopped looking, and she decides not to go back at all. Her plan reaches no further than the cave, a store of salvaged food and firestone, and the eggs warming in the sand at the back of it.

The eggs hatch while Menolly is in the cave with them. Newly hatched fire lizards will eat until they burst or fly off and starve, and she keeps them alive by feeding them from her own supplies as fast as she can cut. Nine of them bond to her in the process, among them a gold queen she names Beauty, and she becomes the first person on Pern to Impress fire lizards deliberately, though she does not know that is what she has done. She lives wild on the coast for some time, hunting and gathering to feed a clutch that never stops being hungry, sleeping rough and moving with the Fall timetable. The constant work of catching, cutting and climbing does what nobody at Half-Circle attempted: it stretches the scar on her hand loose again, and she finds she can use it. She also makes a pipe and starts making songs again, since there is no one left to forbid it.

At Half-Circle, Elgion pieces together that the hold's ballads were taught by someone who has gone, and he and Menolly's brother Alemi begin to suspect what the hold has thrown away, particularly once fire lizards are sighted along the coast. Menolly, out too far from her cave, is caught in the open with a Fall coming down and runs for shelter she cannot reach. A dragonrider on sweep sees her, picks her up, and carries her and her fire lizards away to Benden Weyr, where the healers treat her injuries and Manora, the headwoman of the lower caverns, takes charge of her. The Weyr's reaction to nine fire lizards attending one girl is not the disapproval she expects but intense interest, and the Weyrwoman Lessa wants to know exactly how it was done.

Menolly recovers at Benden Weyr, where she is fed, healed and, for the first time, valued: her fire lizards are the most interesting thing to happen at the Weyr in Turns, and she is set to explaining how to Impress them. She keeps quiet about her music, expecting the same reaction she got at home, and about who she is, expecting to be sent back. Then the Masterharper of Pern arrives at Benden. He has spent Turns trying to trace the composer of two songs sent to him from Half-Circle by the dead harper Petiron, and he identifies Menolly as their author in short order. He takes her into the Harper Craft as his own apprentice and away to the Harper Hall, with Beauty and the rest of her clutch, over any claim her family might make. The girl who was told a girl could not be a harper leaves for the Hall as one.

Menolly, taken to Benden Weyr after being caught in the open during Threadfall, recovers there with her nine fire lizards, and the Weyr proves to be the first place that finds her useful rather than embarrassing: her hand loosens with work and healing, and her ability with the creatures is exactly what the Weyr wants explained. The Masterharper of Pern, who has been searching since the old harper Petiron's death for the composer of two songs sent to him from Half-Circle, comes to Benden and identifies the songwriter as Menolly. He takes her into the Harper Craft on the spot as his apprentice. Half-Circle Sea Hold, which had assumed her dead, loses any claim on her, and her family's judgement that a girl cannot be a harper is overturned by the Masterharper himself. She leaves for the Harper Hall with Beauty and the rest of her clutch, no longer hiding what she can do. What remains open is whether a Hall full of boys and craftmasters will actually make room for her, and what Pern will make of a girl who has proved that fire lizards can be Impressed by anyone who reaches them at hatching.