Real Dragons

by Rebecca Shelley

  "Weldon's a good artist," Jonas said. "Can I see?"

  Tom handed Jonas the paper. "He has imaginary friends. Except sometimes he thinks they're real. He believes what he draws really happens. Tom looked down at the picture of Old Baxter and the dragoness trying to lift a watch.

  "Is that Baxter?" Jonas slid the pile of papers over and leafed through them.

  Tom watched the story drawings tell the tale of the dragoness with Baxter and his treasures.

  Jonas's brow furrowed in a deep frown. His sharp eyes looked straight at Tom. "How does Weldon know about Baxter's ring? He doesn't wear it anymore. Weldon couldn't have seen it, but it's here . . . in exact detail, including the Vietnam Memorial depicted on the side."

  Tom shrugged. "It's like magic. I don't know how he does it. His mom thinks he's crazy and won't let him draw anymore. Even Alice started thinking he was nuts, and she's an artist."

  Jonas smoothed the papers on the table and set them aside. "Maybe Baxter was wearing it. Maybe." Jonas continued to frown for a moment then his face softened. He pushed his rolled shirt sleeves up higher and lifted his feet onto the table, tipping his chair back on two legs. "You wanted to talk?"

  Tom shook his head. "I don't have anything to say. I can't remember who I am. I just flat can't remember."

  "Nothing? Or nothing you want to talk about?" Jonas's face stayed neutral, and he looked over at Tom's hands as if aware that his gaze could be disconcerting.

  Tom swallowed. He'd said he wanted to talk to Jonas, he'd said he wanted to find out about his past. He felt like he should want to find out. Of course he should. Who wouldn't want to know their own name? But it was like standing on the outside of a door in his mind, reaching for the handle, terrified, sweating, his ears ringing, knowing a horrible monster waited on the other side to devour him.

  "Tom, look at me," Jonas said.

  Tom met Jonas's gaze and found his eyes gentle and kind. "Take a deep breath then let it out slowly."

  Tom did as he was told, mentally backing away from the door. As long as he looked at Jonas, he wouldn't have to look into the past.

  "Good." Jonas ran his hand through his spiky hair and took a deep breath himself. "Now, it's clear something terrible has happened to you. But you don't have to deal with that right now. Think of your life as a DVD. You don't need to watch the movie in order. You can go to the menu and find the scene you want. Not the scene that scares you, but one that feels good and happy. Okay?"

  Tom tried to find a good memory in his mind. All he saw was silver and the barrel of a gun. He wrung his hands. "There isn't anything else. Just . . . silver and a gun. And I feel like I've done something very wrong. Weldon and I walked by the Stevens Tower, and it scared me. Bad. It felt like I'd been there before, but not in a good way. In a bad way, like a prison or something."

  "The tower scares you?" Jonas asked in a soft voice.

  "Yes."

  "It is silver."

  Tom shivered. "I guess so."

  "All right. Let's move to a different scene. I'll help. You are fair-skinned with blue eyes and brown hair. You've got a mid-western accent. Educated middle-class grammar. Which means you probably didn't grow up around here. Your parents might have recently moved to the city, or you ran away and came here on your own. So let's leave the tower behind. Leave this city behind. See if you can picture somewhere else. Suburb perhaps. Nice houses? Neat green lawns? A park with grass and a play area?"

  Tom closed his eyes and tried to picture a park with green grass. It came to him—a big lawn, a mound with green Astroturf on it, stands holding bouquets of flowers. He turned away from the flowers and saw a silver coffin, suspended over an open grave.

  He gasped.

  A man's voice spoke to him. "You can't stay here forever. Come on. I haven't got all day." The man grabbed his arm. Tom pulled away hurt and angry.

  The sudden jerk flung him out of his chair and landed him on the floor of the Safe Home. Jonas jumped to his feet. "Tom, are you all right?"

  Tom got up and brushed himself off, wishing he had an MP3 player like Victor and could tune out the whole world, retreat into the music and never come back. He wrapped his arms around himself and sat back down on the chair.

  "You remembered something. Do you want to tell me?" Jonas asked, coming to stand beside Tom.

  Tom shook his head. "No more. I don't want to remember."

  Weldon walked the city streets back toward the silver tower. Even at a distance it sparkled above other buildings. But Weldon forced his gaze down from the tower so he could keep a wary eye on people in the streets around him. He felt jumpy, like a secret agent afraid of being followed. Afraid of being seen. On a mission with dangerous men after him. He watched for the three muggers, the limousine, the chauffeur. He kept his hand in his pocket, wrapped around the diamond wristband and thought about Barthelme and the little diamond dragon that refused to fly. She'd wrapped herself around Barthelme's wrist and wouldn't let go.

  Weldon wondered what would happen to her after he got the wristband back to Wallace Stevens. She would miss Barthelme and be confused by having a new owner. The other two baby dragons were probably desperately lonely locked up in whatever safe they'd been put in. Maybe Stevens had them back already, imprisoned in that safe up on the top floors. Poor little babies. They wouldn't understand why the Realm Above had to be so different than the Realm Below.

  Weldon stopped before crossing the last street to the tower. The day had slipped past, and the sun hung in the west, reflecting in firelight-yellow from the building's silver windows. The street smelled like sweat, hot car tires, and busy people. He could taste the urgency of the evening rush on his tongue and hear it in the honking horns and crunch of footsteps.

  He held the diamond wristband so tight it pricked him like the clasp that had drawn Barthelme's blood and given the diamond dragon life.

  As Weldon waited for the light, he noticed a man with an eagle shaved into the hair on the side of his head, lurking not far from the Tower entrance. Weldon looked away, hoping not to be noticed. His heart did a back flip. They'd guessed he would come here and were waiting. The mugger with the golden earring leaned against the building on the other side of the entrance, giving the pair the look of gargoyles. The one with the earring looked up, locked eyes with Weldon, and started forward.

  Weldon turned and ran, watching in front of him for the third attacker. They'd trapped him that way before. He couldn't let them do it again. He saw no sign of the other man. Perhaps he'd stayed back at Weldon's neighborhood in case the boys went home.

  Weldon ran, breathing hard. The muggers had to get across the street. That gave him a slim head start. But what to do with it? He couldn't run straight back to Safe Home and endanger Tom. He dare not try to hide in an alley. They might catch him and no one would see them kill him.

  He could drop the wristband for them and hope it would be enough to make them leave him alone. But he doubted it would be. The chauffeur had been insistent that they kill anyone who could identify them.

  They gonna kill me, Weldon thought. He dodged between pedestrians, running flat out, never stopping, pushing his way through where people blocked his path, looking at the buildings, searching for some safe place.

  A bloody death.

  He had the cursed wristband. Cursed. If Barthelme hadn't used his blood to tame the dragons, he'd be home right now in his own house, dreaming about going to the Realm Above but never really doing it. The Bloody Jewels.

  Weldon dodged into an apartment store, hoping his pursuers hadn't seen him. He didn't dare waste time looking behind him to see how close they were. He made for the men's clothing department and pushed into the middle of a round rack of suit pants. Then ducked down.

  He heard the sharp tap of footsteps rush past, pause for a moment and then double back. He remained frozen in place, his heart beating so loud he was sure the muggers could hear it. An urge to peek out between the pants to see where they'd gone came over him. He refused
to move. Not a muscle. Not a rustle of clothing. No sign. No trace.

  Another heavy set of footsteps joined the first. No sales lady's feet those.

  "I don't see him."

  "I'm sure he came in here."

  "Probably doubled back out the door behind us. Let's go."

  The footsteps moved away. Weldon stayed put. The diamond wristband made a hard lump in his pocket.

  Tom sat at the table and watched Jonas make stir fry for dinner. The vegetables sizzled in the pan, and Jonas whistled to himself as he stirred them. A big pot of rice simmered in the rice cooker on the counter. The comforting smells of cooking helped ease Tom's shock at seeing that coffin.

  The harder Tom tried not to think about it though, the more his mind stayed centered on the scene in the graveyard. "It was my mother," he blurted out finally.

  Jonas turned away from the stove to look at him, his wooden spoon gone still. He didn't say anything, just waited for Tom to explain.

  "I saw my mother in a coffin. She's dead. Cancer I think." He knew it was true, but the rest of his memories refused to come back to him. Or maybe he wouldn't let them. "She loved stir fry."

  "Ah," Jonas said, accepting Tom's revelation. He went back to stirring.

  Tom watched him, grateful that Jonas hadn't gone all mushy and said how sorry he was. Jonas's stoicism allowed Tom to maintain his composure. "What about you?" Tom asked. "What are you doing here? With a face like yours you could be an actor or something."

  Jonas's back was too Tom as he stirred the vegetables a little more vigorously than before. "I could. I've been in two Broadway shows, actually. Bit parts. But . . . ."

  He set the wooden spoon down and checked the rice then continued talking in a steady but softer voice. "My parents kicked me out of the house when I was fourteen. I'd been doing drugs and had stolen a lot of money from them. I survived the streets alone for almost a year before the authorities caught up with me and put me in foster care."

  Tom blinked in surprise and leaned his elbows on the table. Jonas's calm grown-up face showed no signs of his messed-up childhood, except maybe his eyes.

  "I danced around foster care for years. Never stayed anywhere for long. Ran away more times than I can count." Jonas started stirring again, faster and faster. "Found myself in a youth shelter one day when I was seventeen. Rock bottom. Given up on life. There I met Mr. and Mrs. Arnold." The stirring slowed into firm methodical strokes of the spoon, turning the vegetables while they simmered in the pan.

  "They treated me like a man instead of a child. Helped me get on my feet. Found me a job. Helped me into an apartment. Convinced me to go back to school. I worked hard then, because I wanted to make them proud of me. Graduated. Went on to college. Got a BA and planned to go through medical school when Mr. Arnold died."

  Jonas took a deep breath. Tom watched him, waiting for the rest of the story. Sonia wandered into the kitchen and stole a chunk of beef out of the stir fry, narrowly escaping a whap on the hand from Jonas's spoon.

  She laughed, grabbed another for good measure and scampered out. Jonas scowled after her for half a second then shrugged, turned the pan off, and started pulling plates out of the cupboard.

  Tom still waited for the rest of the story. Jonas didn't seem inclined to go on, so Tom said, "What happened then?"

  "What? Oh." Jonas leaned against the counter and took a breath. "I came back here to help Mrs. Arnold. But she was in poor health and had to go live with her daughter. Safe Home would have closed then. No one else stepped in to keep it open except me. I'd wanted to go to medical school to become a psychologist but . . . ." He faced Tom, his eyes at their most piercing. "This place is home to me. I couldn't bear to let it go. There were still too many kids just like me out on the streets with nowhere safe except this house."

  Jonas lifted a stack of plates and handed them to Tom. "Set the table, why don't you?"

  Tom distributed the plates around the table. The heavy plates clacked against the wooden surface one at a time. "Weldon's been gone a long time," he said. The realization scared him. Weldon should have been back already. Something must have gone wrong.

  "Where'd he go?" Jonas asked while setting out the glasses. "Looking for drugs?"

  "No," Tom said, backing away from the table. "Nothing like that."

  "Come on, Tom. Don't freak out on me. I already told you where I come from. I know how life is. Whatever's going on, you can trust me. I've been there." He dumped the rice from the cooker into a bowl, added a pad of butter to the top and set it on the table.

  Tom picked up Weldon's pictures and set them on the counter out of the way. He imagined Weldon captured by the muggers, beat up in the very least if not already dead. "I took something. He went to return it. It's a ways from here, but not too far. He should be back by now."

  "You think whoever is after you found him?" Jonas frowned and rubbed his hands on his jeans. "Maybe we should call the police."

  "I don't think that's a good idea," Tom said.

  Jonas grimaced. "I know it's easy to think that the police are the bad guys. But most of the time they can help."

  A loud knock on the front door stalled Tom's response. Jonas swept out of the kitchen.

  Tom slumped down at the table. He heard the door open and Jonas say, "Baxter?"

  "Hi Jonas," came Baxter's rough voice.

  "I told you before you can't stay here," Jonas said in his soft, kind voice. "Only people under twenty-one. Tell you what. I'll buy you a full breakfast in the morning if you meet me at our regular café."

  "It ain't like that Jonas. That's not why I come here just now. You see I remembered something. Something important I got to tell you." Heavy footsteps made their way across the living room, and Old Baxter appeared at the kitchen door with Jonas right behind.

  "All right. You can have dinner with us. But then you need to go," Jonas said.

  Baxter sniffed the air and stared at the waiting food on the table. "It smells good, but it ain't why I come." He took a step into the kitchen and stared so hard at Tom it made his skin itch.

  "He's why I come. I remembered something, like I said."

  "What did you remember," Jonas said, taking another plate out of the cupboard and setting it on the table.

  "Well, I didn't remember anything at first," Baxter said, sliding onto a chair. "Nothing at all until I took my old pearl back to my camp. Then I was looking at this and it all come back to me."

  A cold shiver went up Tom's spine. Baxter wore a ring just like Weldon had drawn. The old man pulled a handful of things out of his pocket and set them on the table. There was the black marble, a bit of fishing line with a hook, and a sparkling watch. Baxter lifted the watch up to show Jonas.

  "Take a look at this. It's a Rolex."

  "Fake." Jonas said, getting out silverware and a glass to add to Baxter's place.

  Tom stared at the watch, and the cold fear he'd felt at the Stevens Tower came back to him. His chest tightened, and he struggled to breathe.

  "No. I looked it up on the computer at the library," Baxter said, fingering the watch and staring at it in admiration. "It's a Rolex Oyster made from 18 karat white gold, worth twenty-five thousand dollars."

  "No it's not." Jonas snatched the watch from Baxter's hands. He took a close look at it, rubbing the face with his fingers. He swore. "It is real. It can't be. How did you get it, Baxter?"

  "Now, that's what I come for," Baxter said, nodding so his scraggly gray beard brushed his plate. He pointed at Tom. "That boy there gave it to me."

  Tom froze. His hands went cold.

  "I didn't recognize him at first, because he's . . . well not looking so good now. But his eyes I remember."

  Stop, Tom wanted to say. Stop, stop. More memories, and Baxter had his hand on the door ready to pull it open and let the monster out.

  "About two weeks ago," Baxter kept talking, "he come stomping down the street. Looked steaming mad. Then he sees me. I figured I was in for trouble. When people get mad,
they always take it out on old Baxter." Baxter glanced over at Tom for a second.

  Tom shook his head, but Baxter went on talking. "But this boy is different I guess. He came right over, squatted down in front of me, and looked me straight in the eye. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the Stevens Tower for a moment and then back to me. 'I wish you were my father,' he said. Then he dumped that watch in my cup and took off. That's how it happened. Just like that."

  Baxter scooped a mountain of rice on his plate and reached for the stir fry.

  Tom shook his head again. He clutched the edges of his chair in a white-knuckle grip and squeezed his eyes closed. He refused to look at the monster behind the door.

  "Anyway," Baxter said, his voice muffled with food. "I figured I'd better return it. The boy looks like he got in plenty too much trouble for giving away such an expensive gift."

  "Gift?" Jonas asked.

  Tom shuddered.

  "Look on the back," Baxter said.

  "To Donald Stevens from Dad," Jonas read.

  Tom jumped up, knocking his chair over. "It's Don. Don, I tell you. Never call me Donald!" He was sweating and shaking, his mind swirling with images and names, memories in a hopeless tangle all tied up in a knot with his hurt and anger.

  "Don," Jonas said, setting the watch down on the table. "Did your father do that to you?" He pointed to Don's battered face.

  Don shook his head. "No. He never, wouldn't, couldn't possibly care enough about me to hit me."

  "Maybe I better give your dad a call." Jonas reached for the phone. "That okay with you?"

  Don backed against the wall. He wanted Jonas to call him Tom again. He wanted to be a nobody. Nameless. Lost on the street. Anyone but Donald Stevens.

  Baxter took the last bite and stood up. "Thanks for dinner," he said to Jonas. "You got your watch back now, boy. Hope things get better for you."

  "I don't want it," Don said. "I won't take it. You keep it." Don grabbed the watch and threw it at Baxter.

  Baxter caught it in his gnarled hands. "I can't just take this without giving you something in return. I'll give you these." He pushed the fishing line and black marble across the table toward Don.