by S. W. Clarke
“I’m sorry for getting so angry that day.”
I patted his back. “Me too, Perce. But don’t you forget: anger is a natural emotion, and sometimes we’ve got to let it out through words or fire.”
As he finished his meal, I lifted my eyes to the blue sky. Tomorrow, he and I would meet the first full-grown dragon of our lives.
One could only hope she was a good dragon.
Chapter 13
The next morning, the flight from the barn into New Orleans took twelve minutes.
I clocked it.
“Hey Perce”—I leaned close to his neck as we took off—“you want to stretch your wings today?”
He snorted as we crested the tree line above the outskirts of New Orleans, the great expanse of city coming into view. “You’ll fall off if I go all out.”
“Not if you keep it level.” I gripped his spine tight. “And I stay low.”
His wings flapped hard as he picked up speed, an echoing crack over the canopy. “Really? You’ll let me?”
“I’ll let you. Show me what you can do.”
GoneGods, did he show me. A second after I gave him the go-ahead, Percy flapped his wings so hard I lost my hearing for a moment, and a tremendous wind funneled over me in the second afterward.
My ears rang. The air sang. We were moving.
I flattened myself to his back, gripping his spine with both hands. I lowered my face, felt the whip-sting of my braid slapping against my neck and cheek. I didn’t know how fast we were going, except that when I opened my eyes I caught a glimpse of a perpendicular highway for a flash, and then it was gone.
Beyond, the trees swept by like water.
Sometimes people asked me what it was like to ride a dragon. After our shows, kids and adults alike would pepper me with questions about him. That was the most common one, though: What’s it like to ride him?
Truth was, you never quite got used to it.
And by that, I mean the human brain has a remarkable capacity for normalizing just about everything. Win the lottery and you’ll have acclimated to your millions in a few months’ time. Buy that pretty sports car, and by the time summer slips into fall you’ll think nothing of the purr of that engine.
But riding a dragon?
The human brain wasn’t made to normalize such a thing.
A dragon is a predator, through and through; those wings, those talons, that fire in the belly—all of it promises an easy death.
They activate every one of our cautionary instincts. I could climb onto Percy’s back a thousand times and my heart would always tumble over itself, my neck heated with adrenaline. Just like it had the first time. Just like it had this morning.
When he finally slowed enough for me to sit up a little, I let out a low whistle. “Well, Percy, you’ve officially broken the speed limit in Louisiana. And then some.”
He laughed. “How many states does that leave?”
“Are we still not including Hawaii and Alaska?”
“No, Tara,” he huffed.
“Sixteen states.”
He considered this. “And I’m going to break the speed limit in every one of them someday.”
I patted his back. “You certainly are, my little delinquent.”
Twenty-five minutes later we landed on a side street in the Central Business District, and I slid off his back, began undoing the duffels with our gear.
“Where is she?” Percy asked, neck craning as though his egg mother would be crouched somewhere on this residential street. “I thought you said she’d be here.”
I laughed, hauled one of the bags over my shoulder. “She is. We’re meeting her after the show, Perce. Let’s go.”
Truth was, I didn’t quite know where we would find her. When I’d called Ferris that morning, he had only said he would arrange it. That he’d tell her where we were doing our show, and that she would make her appearance when she was ready.
When I asked him what “ready” meant, he gave me a verbal shrug. “Eh. She’s a dragon as ancient as time, Tara. She doesn’t think in hours.”
So we’d just have to do our thing.
Percy and I walked side by side into downtown, the sun sliding over his scales like golden water. When we arrived at the street corner I’d booked, we’d already amassed a small gaggle of children who had dragged their parents along behind us.
I dropped the gear, unzipped the duffel. “All right, Perce,” I said to him as he stretched out his neck. “No pressure.”
“Don’t worry, Tara.” He extended his wings, and the nearby children gasped. “I’ve got this.”
He wasn’t kidding.
From the moment I unhooked Thelma, flicked her cracker atop the asphalt, Percy was on his game. He was bright-eyed, quick, responsive to every cue.
We leapt. We flew. We made kids shriek with delight.
Today, I climbed onto his back and we ascended in a perfect arc, rising high over the crowd and swinging back around, blowing their hair in small tornadoes over their heads. I sliced the apple off a man’s head into two perfect halves.
When we landed together, facing the crowd, they broke into such raucous applause I couldn’t get a word in for the next minute.
We didn’t just pull it off. We were phenomenal.
I climbed off his back, breathing hard. “Thank you, New Orleans. You’re the best group of folks we’ve had all year.”
Percy was feeling particularly friendly. Heck, he even let a few kids come up and start petting him like a puppy. When he bore his fangs and hissed, they went laugh-shrieking back to their parents.
Meanwhile, bills and coins rained into the tip jar.
As I took a swig of water and wiped myself down, I felt a scaly head under my hand. Percy’s golden eyes gazed up at me; he had on the dragon equivalent of a smile.
“We did good,” he said.
I nodded down at him. “We did good.”
A roar pierced the sky, and a shadow blotted the sunlight, the air cooling as it did. The crowd fell into silence as our faces lifted and a thud sounded atop one of the nearby buildings.
There, four stories up, perched the largest creature I’d seen in my short life. Four times as big as Percy, the hide dark as coal, glinting white under the sun.
No, not a hide. Hides didn’t glint.
Scales. Black scales.
↔
Above us, the figure loomed with unnerving stillness. Until, as the mouth slowly opened, a piercing shriek poured from its maw over downtown. The wings swept wide, webbed and stretching from one end of the block to the other.
Maybe that was my imagination. But I’ll say this: that was a tremendous wingspan.
Everyone with hands had clapped them to their ears, and now I squinted against the gale force of those wings. Most of the audience ran, the parents following their terrified kids.
Percy’s head lifted on his neck, staring up. Beside me, his whole body trembled with thrill and fear.
His egg mother had arrived.
In one arc, she pushed herself into the air and swooped down toward the street. She landed atop the tip jar, the glass shattering like a melon beneath her taloned foot.
And with all the majesty of a full-grown dragon, her head lifted high, a set of imperious golden eyes staring down at the two of us on the sidewalk. I could see why Ferris had remarked on the resemblance; he had inherited those eyes from her. Even from here, I could feel the heat when she exhaled through those nostrils.
Percy came close to me, pressing against my leg; I set one hand on his neck, our old signal of reassurance.
Ferris had told me this dragon was called a matriarch, and now I understood why. She had a regal way about her, and not just in the way she held herself—it was baked into those black scales, into those golden eyes.
Her head lowered toward Percy, who did his very best not to backtrack. He remained by my side as the matriarch’s face came closer, white teeth glinting at the corners of her mouth.
For my par
t, I should have been terrified. The GoneGods knew my heart could have powered a locomotive right then, and yet my fear was intermixed with a potent, feral protectiveness.
If that matriarch so much as lit a cigarette near Percy, I wouldn’t hesitate to rip her scales from her pretty body—one by one.
Well, I’d try, at least.
I’d known I would protect him from the moment she appeared in the sky. From the moment Percy had leaned against my leg.
But she didn’t so much as blow a line of smoke. She only took a long, deep whiff of Percy, her inhale so potent my braid tried to make an escape into her nose.
“Hm,” she said after a moment, her voice sonorous as though she spoke in a glass sphere. “You are my kin.”
I could practically feel Percy’s spirits rise with his head. “I am?”
The golden eyes shifted from him to me. She evaluated me for a moment in which I could see myself reflected in her pupil, my mouth set in a grim line. Maybe she sensed my willingness to de-scale her.
The GoneGods knew I was as angry as I’d ever been. Not only that she’d come to take my dragon, but that Percy wanted to go with her.
Her pupils flicked back to Percy; she huffed steaming air over the both of us. “But no kin of mine would kowtow to a human like this.”
If I’d had a furry hide, it would have bristled. “It’s a partnership.”
I could have sworn she rolled her eyes. “I observed your parlor tricks in their entirety.” The glass beneath her foot crunched as she shifted forward a degree. “You have trained him to respond to your beck and call.”
Percy leaned harder against my leg, his scales pressing painfully into my pants. “Tara took care of me. She hatched me.”
“Hm.” The matriarch swung her head, fixed me with her other eye. I did my level best not to step back. “How could you possibly produce enough heat to hatch him?”
It was only my circus training that kept my head upright, chest out. Inside, I was quivering as hard as a struck drum. I one-shoulder shrugged. “Ever heard of a furnace?”
This time her sweltering huff was laced with faint amusement. I’d take that over incineration for giving her lip. “You might be the first human in a thousand years to hatch a dragon. And for that, I thank you.”
What was I supposed to say to that? “Well, uh. You’re welcome. But I didn’t do it for you.”
“No, I imagine not.” One foot-long black talon tapped the asphalt with unnerving precision. Tap-tap-tap. Then, “But you hatched him nonetheless, and so I shall offer you one favor.”
“Listen, you don’t need to do me any favors …”
“Tara,” Percy hissed by my side. “It’s a great and rare honor in dragon culture. If you reject her, she’ll be greatly offended. Greatly.”
I grimaced. Probably should have read more about dragon culture before meeting an old-as-time matriarch.
And right now, that talon was tapping harder and faster than ever.
I shifted my grimace into my best smile. “A favor. I’m honored.”
“Hm.” After a beat of study, the matriarch returned her attention to Percy. “What are you called, young one?”
“Percival,” he said with soft awe.
“A human name. You shall be bestowed a proper name in time.” Her head rose. “I am Yaroz, Keeper of the Flame and the matriarch of all living dragons. Come with me, and let me show you what it means to be a dragon.”
My heart clenched. I had suspected this would be the outcome, but I hadn’t realized how much I’d dreaded it until it became my reality.
Yaroz had already swept around, her massive tail swinging uncomfortably close above my head as she took two, three steps across the street and then, wings extending, swooped up to the roof of the building she’d observed us from.
Percy started forward at once, all his eagerness in the stretch of his neck and the scrabbling of his talons across the road. And then, with a sudden pause, he remembered me.
His head came around, golden eyes gazing back at me with a mixture of emotions perhaps more complex than he’d ever felt. “I’ll come back tonight,” he whispered.
I nodded, swallowed. “I’ll be at the barn.”
“All right. And if you aren’t, I know your scent from fifty miles away.”
I managed a grin. “Leather and alfalfa, right?” He’d always teased me about that.
“Yeah.” He remained staring at me a second longer. And then, with surprising grace, he started forward, wings extending as he leapt into the air and ascended to the roof of the building beside his egg mother.
I couldn’t see them properly after that; my eyes were too glassy, and so they became a big black blur with a smaller blue blur next to it. I wiped at my eyes, found they had already taken off.
Their tails were the last thing I spotted as they disappeared over the roof. And then, last of all, the sound of their wings flapping through the sky. Then, nothing.
I stood there amidst our props for a good five minutes, staring at the last spot I’d seen them. This was the first time in almost five years I’d been alone. Not just temporarily alone, but deeply and completely.
I didn’t know if Percy would come to the barn tonight. My sense was that he might not. And that was a different kind of alone than I could remember in a long, long while.
It was in that state I finally raised my smartwatch to my face and told Siri whose number to dial. He was the only sort-of friend I had in Louisiana.
“Tara?” Ferris answered after a few rings.
“He’s gone with her,” I said without preamble. I had dropped my stage voice; my words were hoarse. “Percy’s gone with her.”
A pause. A sigh. Then, “Are you still downtown?”
“Yeah.”
“Send me your location. I’ll be there in an hour.”
Chapter 14
Almost exactly an hour later, a van pulled up on the street beside me. It had been painted blue and green with red flowers and had The Mystery Machine painted on the side. The engine puttered like it ran on diesel, and I could hear gears cranking as it came to a stop.
I remained seated on the bench with my duffel as the window rolled down, and Ferris slung his elbow out. With his other hand, he flipped up a pair of shaded lenses to reveal un-shaded lenses. “Need a ride?”
I stood, hauling my duffel, and approached the van. Cast my eyes down the length of it and back to Ferris. “Is this the Scooby Doo mobile?”
He shrugged. “Not the original—that one was a bit expensive to outright buy. So I remade it.”
I nodded slowly. “Ah.” I came around the front, climbed into the passenger seat. Inside, Ferris had constructed gears to reach the pedals. “Is this thing road-safe?”
“Don’t even start with that, Tara. Close the door already, would you?”
I did. And with an expert gear-shift and a roar, we were off. Even with strange contraptions attached to the pedals, Ferris was probably a better driver than me.
Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of a coffee shop. I glanced at the signage. “Why this place?”
Ferris swept a hand out. “They’ve got ample parking. And I want coffee.”
I climbed out of the van and stood alongside it, staring into the sky until Ferris brought out two coffees.
He handed one to me, gestured me around the back of the van. “Come on. Let’s talk.”
I followed him. “Talk where?”
He climbed onto the tail, opened up one of the doors. “In my workshop.”
I hopped up after him, paused at the entry to the workshop. Glanced out behind me, then back inside. “This place defies the laws of space.”
From inside, Ferris took a seat on his stool and sipped. “What are you talking about?”
I gestured around at the expansive interior. Every wall was lined with gadgets, various pieces of machinery I couldn’t name, a cork board with tools hung up. “The inside’s bigger than it can logically be.”
; His eyes followed my hand. “It is what it is, Tara. Now close the door before the kids get curious. Every time a kid sees the inside of this place, I’ve got to spend the next two hours showing them how I make mechanical pigs fly.”
I pulled the door shut behind me. “You can do that?”
He laughed, slapped his workbench. “Don’t even start. I could do that when I was a wee gnomeling.”
I took two crouched steps forward, picked up what looked like a back scratcher. “What’s this?”
“It’s for dragons. Put it down.”
I turned it upright. “What’s it do?”
He came up, flustered, and took it from me. “It’s incredibly important for reptile hygiene.”
“You mean to say that isn’t a back scratcher? Cause it sure looks like one. It even has claws for getting to the hard-to-reach places.”
Ferris groaned, set it gingerly down. “Fine, it’s a back scratcher. Now will you please sit and stop touching things?”
I did sit at the stool on the opposite side of his workbench. Crossed my legs, took a sip of brew as I cast my eyes over the place once more. I felt like I’d entered Willy Wonka’s secret room of inventions.
And even that wasn’t enough to keep the gloom away.
“Your shoulders,” Ferris said. “They’re hunched.”
I didn’t un-hunch them. “So?”
“They’re never hunched. Not once since I met you.”
I sighed, set my cup down. Turned fully to Ferris. “Why do I feel like this?”
Ferris scratched his chin, surveying me. “Because of loss, less or never.”
“You’re sounding a lot like Tony Robbins.”
“So be it. But that’s your problem.”
“And what is ‘loss, less or never?’ ”
“Just as it implies. We’re burdened most by the loss of something important, less of it or never getting it at all.”
I circled my cup, stared down at it. “I’m not sure which one I’m feeling right now.”
“That’s because you don’t know which one you’re supposed to feel as yet. The situation with the matriarch is still in flux.” He reached behind him, picked up something shiny. “Know what this is?”