by Patrick Ness
“It’s not Sarah,” Darlene said. “It looks like her. It’s not.”
“Oh, Jason, thank God,” Sarah said.
“She knows my name!” Jason kept his arms at his sides but was letting himself be hugged, possibly out of sheer surprise.
“She knows a lot of things,” Darlene said.
Sarah pulled away from him. She saw how she’d got blood, his own blood, all over the front of his shirt. “I mean,” she said, wiping her eyes again, “I know it’s not you but . . . It’s just so good to see you.”
Jason looked over at Darlene in bewilderment.
“It’s not her,” Darlene said, again firmly, but not, Sarah thought, angrily. There might be some middle ground here.
“Who are those two?” Hisao said, nodding at Malcolm and Kazimir. “And why is he in the altogether?”
“That I couldn’t rightly tell you,” Darlene said.
“Did you see it?” Hisao asked.
“See what?” Darlene asked, as if daring him to say the word.
“We saw something,” Hisao said, frowning. “Looked like it came from your place so we jumped in the truck to make sure you were all right.”
“That also has yet to be seen,” Darlene said.
“God,” Jason said, staring at Sarah now, “she looks exactly like her.”
“It’s not . . .” Darlene made an irritated huffing sound. “Oh, for pete’s sake, we can’t all just be standing here out in the cold. Whyn’t you all come inside and we can . . . see what’s what?”
Sarah looked surprised, as did Malcolm and Kazimir. “Not him,” Sarah said, pointing at Malcolm. “Not him at all.”
“You don’t get to choose who I invite into my farmhouse, girl,” Darlene said, “but Hisao?”
“Yes?”
“You bring your shotgun?”
Hisao looked serious as a blizzard when he said, “Yes, ma’am, I did.”
Hisao sat in a kitchen chair—ones Sarah didn’t recognize—with the shotgun across his lap. He stared heavily at Kazimir, now dressed in some of Sarah’s father’s old clothes, removed from a dusty trunk. He had tied a bandanna dashingly around his lost eye. Likewise, Sarah had been given what could only have been her own clothes from before she died. It wasn’t even the fourth weirdest thing to happen today.
Darlene, having refused all offers of help, was making hot chocolate, a drink Sarah remembered from childhood. “Let’s start from first principles,” Darlene said, taking down six mugs. “Like the good reverend always says. This girl—”
“You can call me Sarah, if you want,” Sarah said.
Darlene let out a rueful laugh. “Oh, no. No, I don’t think so.”
“But it is her, isn’t it?” Jason spoke up, still staring at Sarah. “How could it be anyone else?”
“Because Sarah died ten months ago, Jason Inagawa,” Darlene said, raising her voice into an almost-snap.
“You keep quiet in all this, Jason,” Hisao said, in a voice Sarah also recognized. Jason’s father never brooked much nonsense.
“May I ask what the date is, please?” Kazimir suddenly said.
Darlene looked surprised. “February the eighth.”
He nodded. “The same day. Just a few hours different, given that it was light when we arrived.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Sarah asked.
He shrugged. “We might have been off by years. Centuries. Consider it good fortune.”
“First principles,” Darlene said again, louder this time. She set down a mug of chocolate for Hisao, leaving the others to get their own, which they duly did. Kazimir sniffed his so loudly everyone stopped to look.
“Fascinating,” was all he said, and took a drink.
“We all saw something,” Darlene said. “That’s our first principle. So what was it?”
“A dragon,” Kazimir said. “A Canadian red, the largest of all dragons, but large even for that race.”
There was a silence, but he just carried on with his chocolate, as if he’d never had anything so peculiar in his life. Which maybe he hadn’t.
“Who are you again?” Darlene asked.
“I am Kazimir,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“That a Russian name?” Hisao said.
“Yes,” Kazimir said, “my name is Russian.”
“Are you?”
Kazimir took a breath. “Not exactly.”
“What was it that we saw?” Darlene said, more loudly, and stopped Kazimir before he could speak. “And don’t say dragon.”
“Yeah, because I’ve got a first principle,” said Hisao. “There’s no such things as dragons.”
“There are plenty in Japanese culture,” Jason said.
“You’re talking about myths, and you know it.”
“That is obviously erroneous, based on recent evidence,” Kazimir said.
“It sure looked like a dragon,” Jason muttered.
“I said, hush, boy,” Hisao said.
“And this girl looks like Sarah, but she clearly isn’t her,” Darlene said.
“It was the Mitera Thea,” Malcolm whispered, barely looking up.
“What was that?” Darlene demanded, and Malcolm watched all eyes turn to him.
“The Mitera Thea?” he said again, surprised. Kazimir shot him a look. “Though if you don’t have dragons, I guess you wouldn’t have her either.”
“We don’t understand that, son,” the woman who was clearly the girl’s mother said. They looked so much alike, only a fool wouldn’t see it. In all his thoughts bent on assassinating her, in all that time he would have cut her down without a moment’s hesitation, Malcolm had never once considered that the girl, of course, would have a mother.
He felt all bound up in words. Kazimir had told him to keep quiet about Kazimir being a dragon and about his suspicions of the Mitera Thea, but maybe he shouldn’t even say her title. Maybe he shouldn’t say anything at all. Malcolm felt as if all his purpose was gone, all of it. Because it was, wasn’t it? If it had all been a lie, and it seemed it had, then the Mountie he had killed had been for nothing. And the agent Mother had shot in the motel room. And a whole war started because of . . . what?
Nelson had been right to be horrified—
“Nelson,” he said out loud, remembering again what the girl had said. Nelson, in the other world, standing alone in the road, surrounded by bodies. “My God, I’ve killed him, too.”
The grown man gripped his shotgun. “You killed someone?”
Malcolm looked at the girl. “It was going to be her. It was going to be you.”
“I know,” she said, crisply. “And Jason got shot—”
“What?” Jason said.
“And my father. For what? What were you hoping to accomplish?”
“I did accomplish it,” Malcolm said, feeling a grief so deep it made him dizzy.
“You started a war. If bombs aren’t falling already, they will be soon.”
“She’ll do the same here,” Malcolm said. “She’ll do it all again.”
“By herself?” the girl asked.
“You really have no idea how much damage a single dragon can do,” Kazimir said.
“Is this some kind of code you’re all using?” Hisao said. “What did we really see?”
“Something code-named dragon and Michael Thayer,” Jason said.
“Not code names,” Kazimir said. “Well, Mitera Thea might be somewhat of one, but it is more a title, like guru or saint.”
“What are you talking about?” the man said. “I’m beginning to lose my patience—”
“It’s my house, Hisao,” the woman said. “I’ll be the one who gets to lose her patience.”
“Okay, so you obviously have Russia here, right?” the girl said.
“Of course we do,” said the man.
“Well, in our world, they launched a satellite.”
There was another silence at this, but not, Malcolm thought, about the satellite.
; “Your world?” said the man.
“Another universe,” the girl said, clearly not expecting to be believed. “I wouldn’t have believed it either before this morning, yet here I sit, in the kitchen of my mother who died two years ago when she insists that I’m the one who’s dead.” The girl glanced at the woman. “Though she never said how.”
“Cancer,” the boy who’d driven up in the truck said. “In your stomach.”
The girl looked stunned. Sarah, Malcolm corrected himself. He knew her name now. He should use it.
“You’re trying to say you’re from another world?” the man said.
“You saw a huge red dragon fly across this farm,” Sarah snapped. “Surely another world isn’t that hard to add on.”
“I don’t know what I saw,” the man said.
“It was a dragon,” said his son.
“It was not a dragon,” the man insisted.
“Yes, it was, Hisao,” the woman said, sounding exhausted. “And I think you know it, too.”
The man did not relent, but he didn’t contradict her either. He merely frowned and kept his own counsel.
“So what I’m hearing,” the woman said, now looking at Malcolm, “is that you brought it here.”
“Not exactly,” Kazimir started.
“Yes,” Malcolm said. “That’s true. And I have to stop her.” He looked back at the girl. At Sarah. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’re sorry?” she said, not sounding pleased.
“I’m sorry for coming to kill you.”
“Oh, well, that makes it all right then.”
“I . . . was misled, but that’s an explanation, not an excuse. I’m sorry. To you. And everyone.”
“I don’t accept,” she said. “Your apology is wasted breath. People died. More are going to.” Her voice was breaking again now. “What does ‘I’m sorry’ mean?”
“It means nothing,” Malcolm said, “until I can make it right.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“I’ll stop her. Then I’ll find a way to help Nelson.”
“Who in Sam Hill is Nelson?” Darlene said.
“Who is Sam Hill?” Kazimir asked.
“And then,” Malcolm continued, directly to Sarah, “if you wish it, you can come back with me. That’s how I’ll make it right.”
“You don’t know if you can do any of that.”
“I was taught,” Malcolm said, calmly, evenly, “that I can do anything I set my will toward. Unfortunately, it’s proven quite true.”
He wanted her to see the sincerity of his promise. Believers could deceive in the carrying out of sacred duties—he had done so many times, riding the Believer reputation for honesty—but they believed in the fundamental truth of promises. Dragons held them sacred and scorned men who didn’t. He would keep his promise. He didn’t know how just yet, but that didn’t bother him. He would find a way. At the same time, he silently reaffirmed his earlier promise to Nelson.
He made one further promise, probably the hardest to accomplish, but he would. He would.
The man stood, still holding the gun. “Well, I didn’t see any dragon,” he said, “and I won’t sit here listening to any more of this nonsense. Darlene, if you feel safe enough to stay with these people, I’ll take my leave, but I strongly suggest you let me escort them from your home.”
Whatever the woman was going to say was interrupted by a knock on the door so hard and loud every single one of them jumped. An impatient second knock came as the woman went to the door.
A man in a police uniform stood there when she opened it. Malcolm wasn’t sure who he was but hated him in an instant.
“Sheriff Kelby,” the woman said, sounding both angry and frightened.
Sarah looked horrified. “Sheriff Kelby?”
“Well, now,” the man in the uniform said, too loud, too false-friendly. “This is a regular camp meeting, isn’t it?” He looked around, taking in the room, pausing on Malcolm and Kazimir and then his eyes widening at Sarah, who had gone quite ashen. His face turned sour. Or rather, more sour.
“Want to tell me what’s going on here, Darlene?” he demanded.
Sarah made to answer, but the woman spoke over her. “My niece. I don’t have to explain what happens in the privacy of my own home, Sheriff.”
“Wouldn’t be too sure about that, Darlene,” the man sneered. “Not when I see ol’ Hisao there with a shotgun ready to go.” The man pronounced the name differently than anyone else had, making it ugly.
“What do you want, Sheriff?” the woman said, clearly nervous but also clearly resentful of this man’s presence.
The sheriff didn’t like this at all. “What I want, Darlene, is for someone to explain to me why the hell I keep getting reports of some sort of animal flying outta your farm and up into the mountains.”
“We don’t know what it is either, Kelby,” the man said, still holding his shotgun. “That’s what we’re here discussing.”
“I’d also like to know right now, Darlene,” the sheriff said, purposely ignoring the man with the shotgun, “who these strangers are.” He started to remove an ugly-looking billy club from his belt. “And I will get answers,” he said, “believe you me.”
Eighteen
SHE WAS HUNGRY, though the word barely seemed adequate. In addition to the literal heat blazing away in her belly and a number of eggs that were rapidly—alarmingly rapidly—nearing maturity, she also had a very empty stomach.
She knew what dragons ate: almost anything. For creatures of such incredible majesty, they weren’t too fussy about what they took down their gullets. Up in the Canadian Wastes, she’d seen them eat live moose, trees, even once a standing stone. She considered that such petty concerns must be below such exalted beings, but now she was wondering if they were just so hungry all the time that they stopped caring. The Canadian Wastes hadn’t always been wastes, after all.
She had eaten enough snow to no longer be thirsty—dragons needed excessive water for obvious reasons—but her unfamiliar mouth was salivating at the thought of, well, almost anything. She sniffed. There were deer out there, and elk. Nothing especially close by, but she was on the top of a mountain. Closer were the muskier scents of mountain goats, not exactly appealing, but she found herself not minding the choice as much as she might have thought.
She took off again, still feeling the thrill of being able to leave the ground, even at this unlikely size and weight. She flew above the clouds once more, twisting and turning, testing out her wings, neither of which ached any longer. The broken foreleg was still sore, but she was mending at a mind-boggling rate, which might explain the hunger.
She headed back down through the clouds, her nose guiding her to the cliffs and caves the mountain goats used. Her eyes were sharper, too, she realized. From three thousand feet away—over half a mile—she could see a mountain goat on a rock, blinking against the wind, its white fur bluffing and huffing. Did they have predators? There were bears here, she thought, and mountain lions, if western Washington was anything like western Canada.
But a mountain goat would never be on the lookout for an eagle.
It was a big male, its horns a pretty prize if a hunter found them, and it didn’t look up until the very last second. One frightened bleat and it was in her jaws, her teeth cutting all the way through its body, her mouth filling with its blood as she swooped back into the air, swallowing it whole.
Well, now. That was interesting.
It was more than the taste, for it had only been on her tongue briefly, though the blood still lingered, and it had been still alive, just, when she swallowed, but it hit her stomach like a rush, obliterated in the furnace that was her body.
Oh, yes. More.
She could smell other mountain goats, but wherever they had been, they had fled from this new peril in the skies. No matter. There was a whole forest below.
She went hunting.
The deer were easy. Like the mountain goats, they had no r
eason to expect a threat from the air, and she picked up a doe in her mouth with laughable ease as it scavenged grass at the edge of the forest. The rest of the herd immediately bolted for the trees, but she merely flew above them, scouted where an opening might be, and dashed down to snatch up a young buck and another doe as they ran this way and that.
My goodness, she felt fine.
She rested in a field, though rested wasn’t the right word. There was so much energy coursing through her that she found it impossible to stay still. She veritably romped through the snow, digging deep divots with her three legs, still holding her left foreleg up.
But then, why? She stretched it out in front of her. It felt good. It felt more than good. The energy that buzzed through her buzzed down it as well. She placed it on the ground, slowly settling her weight onto it.
It held. Without pain. It was already healed. In only a few hours, it was already healed.
Dragons were even more magnificent than she had ever suspected. She dug through the frozen ground with it, gripping a clump of sod in her claw and throwing it to the side. It flew a hundred feet easily.
She raised her long neck, blew out a stream of fire just for the hell of it and roared so loud it echoed down the canyons of the mountain. She lifted her body up into the sky again against the flow of snowflakes. The winds were tougher here, whipping down the glacier, but she navigated them easily, making the elements accommodate her rather than the other way around.
She found the lodge unexpectedly. She had smelled humans in the area, isolated, distant, and there was a small town a few miles further down the mountainside where a couple hundred humans made the most unexpected stench in her nostrils. But the lodge was just suddenly there, in a steep field among some trees.
She landed in front of it.
She smelled the man inside.
The wind had been blowing away from it, was the only explanation she could find, because his smell was there now, filling her nose like a living perfume. Then it changed, became charged with a tang, a metallic base note. Fear. That’s what it was, she realized. He had seen her, peeking out one of the rudimentary windows on either side of the front door.