Hear Me Roar

by Rhonda Parrish

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “I know.” He carefully reaches across and takes my hand, the one with the IV taped to the back. “You can call me or text me when you want. I’ll get back here when I can.”

  “But did you kill the dragon?” I ask urgently, quietly.

  “I did,” he says in a tight, fuzzy voice. “And it almost killed you.”

  “But you killed it,” I say, and I’m asleep again without wanting to be.

  And when I wake up again, he’s gone, just like that. His stuff out of the house. My motorcycle is gone too, but he leaves his car, signed over to me.

  I heal throughout the summer, slow and angry in front of a window AC, watching everything on Netflix. I’ve got road rash up my left side, arm, leg, and a puncture through my wrist that must’ve been from a claw and broke a bunch of the little bones so I can’t hold a controller, type on a keyboard. My leg isn’t broken but the tendons are all wrenched around, so trips to the bathroom are a big event.

  The fencing team visits me once when I’m still in the hospital, but that’s it. And without Dad anymore I realize I didn’t really have friends that weren’t school friends. I’ve never hung out with anybody, or gone to movies, or parties. I’ve trained. I’ve tried to research, learn more about dragons and their history, but finding anything in the school library is impossible. What’s online is mostly on tinfoil hat websites that are mostly about chemtrails and surveillance. All I know is what Dad and the club members told me and now I’m alone.

  Well, alone with Mom, who knows nothing about the only thing I’m interested in doing. Who loves me but doesn’t really know how to connect with me, other than to sit on the other couch and watch what I’m watching. Other than to talk to me about what we should have for lunch, or dinner.

  Mom never talks about Dad. If she was so unhappy, I don’t know why she hung on for so long. She could’ve left ages ago, and it might’ve made a lot of things easier. Eventually, I heal up, get off the couch and get a job at the convenience store near the house, to get into the world, start acting like a grown up. Sometimes I can feel a dragon, and it almost drives me crazy. I have no sword, no way to kill it even if I did go to it. And I’m not bad off enough to want to go and let one kill me, finish the job.

  I try to ignore the feeling, the smell of them, the itch between my shoulder blades. I try to ignore it when I see the sky change with their presence. I try to ignore them, and after awhile, I drink to ignore them, going to bonfires at the beach with my coworkers, finally making acquaintances if not friends. And after awhile, I don’t feel them anymore, or maybe they don’t come around there anymore, or are drawn off by somebody else. I have no way to know.

  Dad rarely answers my texts. When I call, he’s distracted, doesn’t talk much, doesn’t answer my questions. Changes the subject if I ask him to come get me. Sometimes he texts me pictures, nothing supernatural, nothing dragon-y, no swords. Just camera phone pictures from Dad on a road trip that never ends. His tattoos, or somebody’s tattoos, the Corn Palace, a pretty sunset. A line of parked motorcycles. New boots.

  I sell Dad’s car and get a motorcycle again and me and Mom have a big fight about it. I think I want her to kick me out. She doesn’t kick me out. We cry and then we have dinner together and we sort of talk but still don’t know what to talk about. She’s really trying, though, and so do I. I don’t work for a convenience store anymore, I work at a bar, and she worries about me but doesn’t kick me out. She argues on the phone with Dad sometimes.

  I pay rent that Mom doesn’t ask for, and I stay out all night, and I pray a lot. At first it’s the normal everyday kind, praying for a green light, praying for a cop to not pull me over, praying for my period to come. That last one is what doesn’t happen. And I’m paralyzed for a couple of days; I don’t know what to do, or who to talk to. I’m ashamed to admit, I don’t really know who the father is, either. One of two guys.

  I make an appointment with Planned Parenthood to have a pregnancy test, just to be really sure, and to discuss my options. I can’t be a mom right now. But I don’t know if I can go with the alternative either.

  I sit in the waiting room filling out the clipboard they give me. There’s a TV on a cart, like it’s movie day in high school, and the volume is just a little too loud. Some morning show with some celebrity chef making macaroni and cheese. A stack of plastic toys in the corner, but no kids here, just me and two other women, all not looking at each other.

  A nurse calls me in the back and hands me a cup to pee in. I’ve never had to do this before, that I remember, and I read the instructions on the little wrapped wipe she gives me too. I do my best, and am then ushered to an exam room to wait, where there are three magazines in the rack that are five years old, and posters about birth control. It’s not like I didn’t use anything. I made sure I had condoms with me. Just in that percentage that failed, I guess, because the nurse comes back in a little while and tells me it’s positive.

  “We have a counselor who can talk do you about your options,” she says carefully, looking at my face. “You’ll have to schedule an appointment, though.”

  “I’ll make the appointment to talk, yeah,” I say. “I have a lot to think about.” Which guy is the father? Does it even matter? I fucked somebody from the bar, that doesn’t mean I want to spend my life with them, marry them, parent a child with them. I always thought a lot more consideration went into such a thing. Nothing ever goes the way I think it’s supposed to.

  “Okay, just stop at the desk there when you walk out. We’ll help you figure out what you need.” I wonder if she’s a mom. She doesn’t look old enough, but I’m only a good judge of age if I’m trying to figure out whether somebody’s twenty-one.

  I get a weird feeling, though, the same tension like a dragon’s nearby and I walk straight outside. I call Dad on the sidewalk in front of the clinic and his phone rings and rings until it hits voicemail. I hang up, a knot in my stomach. Nervousness or the baby? It’s only been six weeks probably, what’s it even called right now? A zygote? Not an embryo yet. Then I call Mom. “Are you home? I need to talk to you.”

  “I’ll be home in about an hour,” she says. Wanting to be happy, apprehensive instead.

  “I’ll see you then,” I say, hang up. I drop my phone in my jacket pocket, get on my bike. For the first time in awhile, I wish I was still wearing Dad’s old jacket, the one that used to have his club patches on it. The sky doesn’t look like there’s a dragon around, and the air doesn’t smell like it, just the salt of the ocean, the green of somebody nearby cutting their grass. I pull my helmet on and ride home, looking for signs, reasons to feel the way I feel.

  I beat Mom home and I pace around the house, looking again for anything Dad might’ve left me, any sign. There’s a bible on the bookshelf, next to an old dictionary, some paperbacks. I pull it off the shelf, open it and put my finger down on the page. “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” John 8:32. I wasn’t sure what further truth I needed, and what free meant. That’s what I get for trying to tell fortunes with the Bible.

  Mom walks in the door right as my phone rings. I pull it out, expecting Dad, but the screen says Big John, and that knot in my stomach turns into a cannonball. Big John has never called me. I’ve barely said hello when he’s saying “Hey, kiddo. There’s been an accident.”

  “Is he okay?” I ask, Mom staring at my face, still holding her keys and purse, but I know he isn’t. If he’s okay, Big John wouldn’t have called.

  “I’m sorry,” Big John says.

  “Are you…going to bury him?” I ask. My lips feel kind of numb, and the world around me very distant.

  “We’re not doing anything until you get here, Sandy. We’ll pay for your ticket, whatever you need.”

  “Okay,” I say. He says more, and I do too, and I guess we come up with a plan.

  They were out in the Southwest somew
here, Arizona. I can be there as soon as tomorrow. The bar is just going to have to deal. I don’t start to cry until I hang up, and Mom tries to catch me up in a hug as I drop the phone clattering to the floor, stumble to the bathroom on liquid legs. My stomach bottoms out, then everything comes up, and I manage to flap the toilet lid and seat up in time, tears streaming down my face, my throat burning.

  Mom holds my hair and rubs my back as I throw up, cough, choke, throw up some more, and finally there isn’t anything left, just the terrible, husked-out acidic feeling. “There was an accident,” I finally say, and she nods. I can’t stop wondering. Was it a dragon? Was it something worse? Was it just the motorcycle? Big John will tell me once I’m there. Either the rest of the club got the thing already, or they didn’t.

  “I’ll see about your flight,” she says. “Was it Big John?” I nod, and that old look is on her face, her lips a thin line, and I wonder how much she knows. Dad always just said she wouldn’t understand. “I’ll call him back. You get cleaned up.”

  I take a hot shower, just standing there, watching the water swirl around the drain. Thinking of times I’d done this with dragon’s blood sluicing off me, almost black and still carrying its own heat. After, I rub the steam off of the mirror and peer into my eyes. Experimentally, I lay my hands on my belly the way you always see pregnant women do. “You’re going to grow up knowing what we do in this family,” I say softly. It’s far too early to feel a response but somehow, I know it hears. And it’ll hear when I tell Mom the truth, and face whatever that ends up meaning between us. I don’t know how else to reconcile everything that’s happened. I don’t know how else to move forward. Especially without Dad.

  But I will. We will. And Big John better have a sword for me.

  Jennifer R. Donohue grew up at the Jersey Shore and now lives in central New York with her husband and their Doberman. She currently works at her local public library, where she also facilitates a writing workshop. Her work has appeared in Escape Pod, Syntax & Salt, DreamForge, Truancy and elsewhere.

  GWEN C. KATZ

  BLACKTOOTH 500

  The air is filled with screams and trills as two hundred dragons strain against their harnesses. Beaked jaws snap in frustration. Scythed claws scrape the ground. Two big males break free of their traces and attack each other, putting down their heads to rake each other’s bellies with their horns until their drivers manage to tear them apart.

  It’s punishingly hot and the sunlight reflects off the black volcanic rock in waves of shimmering heat. Yet thousands have gathered to watch the start of the Blacktooth 500.

  Amid the chaos, I examine our team’s harnesses while Amelia looks the dragons over and coos gently to calm them. They nuzzle her arms. At fifteen, Amelia already has a way with the beasts. If only she had more discipline, she would be the finest up-and-coming driver in the league.

  And I’m not just saying that because she’s my daughter.

  I check our cart’s brakes and each of its six wheels. It’s blue with “Angel Peaks Rookery” blazoned on the side in big yellow letters. I give the name one last polish. I want it everyone to be able to read it as we blaze across the finish line.

  All the best racing teams in the country are here. Ray Freedman, my old rival, is hitching up his team next to me. He beat me on our last sprint, and he won’t let me forget it. Across the valley I spot Sanjay Singh with his famous team of hexapods. Quiet and methodical, he’s never failed to complete a race.

  And there’s Arianna Cross. Last year’s champion. She stands perched on her deep red cart, her smile a slash across her face. The other teams give her wide berth. Rumors about her dirty tricks and brutal training methods follow her everywhere and she’s been investigated twice for animal cruelty. But she wins races.

  The nervousness prickling in my stomach makes me feel like a rookie. I’ve driven many races, but this is Amelia’s first. What if there’s an accident? What if there’s an eruption? What if a dragon gets hurt? What if Amelia gets hurt?

  I glance at Amelia to see how she’s holding up. But, minutes away from the start, I find her sitting with her back against the cart, holding a backpack against her chest and apparently not thinking about the race at all.

  “Go put that backpack in the truck. It’s time to get in position,” I tell her.

  “Oh, um, I was going to bring this with me,” says Amelia.

  “Don’t be silly,” I say. “It’ll throw off your balance, and there’s no room in the cart.”

  She tightens her grip on the backpack and glares at me.

  I want to tell her to stop being ridiculous and put down the backpack this instant if she wants to race, but there isn’t time for an argument.

  “All right, you can keep it in the cart,” I tell her. “But you can’t wear it during the race. I don’t want it snagging on something.”

  She carefully tucks the backpack into the corner of the cart. Then she takes Goldface by the harness and we lead the team to the starting line. Her mind still seems to be elsewhere. I look at her, wondering what she’s thinking about. We used to understand each other so well.

  I hold out the reins to Amelia. “Would you like to drive the start?”

  Her eyes widen. “Really?”

  “Why not?” I say, as though giving her complete control of the team is no big deal. “It’s your race as well as mine.”

  She takes the reins and grins.

  Ray Freedman queues up his team of guirs next to us. He smirks at our team. “Weavers? That’s adorable.”

  Amelia bristles. She says, “I can’t wait to see your guirs flat on their butts.”

  “Amelia!” I say sharply, though I’ve wanted to say the same thing to Freedman many times.

  Freedman isn’t the only driver looking askance at our mismatched team. While most rookeries specialize on one or two types of dragon, Angel Peaks Rookery breeds all four of the major dragon lineages, and today we’re running them all.

  Closest to the cart are our two hexapods. Big, muscular dragons with six legs and no wings at all, hexapods are the slowest, but the strongest and most reliable, and a favorite on long races.

  Next come our pair of guirs. Guirs, two-legged dragons capable of fluttering short distances, are the most popular type of racing dragon thanks to their sprinting speed.

  Ahead of the guirs we’re running two weavers, Sylph and Spark. Weavers are long, lithe dragons with webbed back ridges. Most teams shun them in favor of faster breeds, but I stand by our choice. Weavers excel at navigating difficult terrain, and the Blacktooth 500 is exceptionally difficult. Sylph is a pearly white dragon with bright blue eyes. Spark is our smallest dragon, but she’s tough for her size and agile on the tricky parts of the course.

  In front of them all run our lead pair of drakes, Goldface and Thunder. Drakes are spiny quadrupeds with small vestigial wings. They were once prized for their intelligence and heat vision, but the trend now is to breed them for size and speed instead. Nowadays many drakes have lost their heat vision altogether. But not ours. Thunder is gray and stocky and never loses focus. Goldface, with her bright yellow mask, is sharp-eyed and clever.

  There was a fifth lineage once, the true fliers. When I was a child you could still spot their trainers releasing them into the sky on fine days. But they were small and couldn’t pull carts so few rookeries bothered to raise them, and fewer dragon fanciers kept them. They dwindled, and then disappeared. Every so often a rumor goes around that someone has found true fliers on some little farm in the tundra. But it always turns out to be baseless gossip.

  Ahead of us, a barren salt flat stretches as far as the eye can see. Mindless of the forbidding landscape, the dragons strain against their harnesses, held back only by their carts’ claw brakes.

  The race marshal fires his pistol with a resounding crack.

  Twenty drivers release the brakes.

  Forty lead dragons leap ahead and surge across the starting line.


  The crowd jumps to their feet, cheering us on.

  Cross’s team takes a quick lead, with Freedman right on her tail. The rest of the pack, our team among them, runs nearly neck to neck.

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” calls Amelia, flicking the whip over the dragons’ heads. Goldface and Thunder scream with delight, happy to be in motion. The cart’s wheels clatter over the cracked ground. Wind lashes our faces.

  The 500-mile racecourse follows the treacherous volcanic Blacktooth Range. The first leg of the journey passes through the salt flats that run beside the mountains. This is the easiest stretch. Every team will be running flat-out, trying to gain time to make up for anything that might slow them down later in the race.

  The second leg of the race covers the foothills and the plateau. Lava flows turn this part of the course into a treacherous maze, but they’re nothing compared to the threat posed by the ignipedes that make their dens in the crags.

  On the last leg, the teams have to traverse the mountains and then make it all the way back down to the finish line in the valley. It’s tempting to put on a burst of speed on the downhill, but the slopes are crisscrossed with crevices and drop-offs. Whole teams have been lost on the descent.

  But there’s no use worrying about any of that just yet. For now, we just have to keep pace and make it to the first checkpoint.

  Amelia’s face glows as she clutches the whip. Her exhilaration lifts my spirits. The world rushing past in a blur, the thunder of the dragons’ feet. I fell in love with this feeling when I first raced as a child. I want so badly to pass my love of dragons on to her, and yet for years I’ve worried that she doesn’t feel as I do.

  The pack spreads out and we begin to fall behind. Amelia’s forehead creases and she cracks the whip again. “Come on, Goldface! We can do better than that!”

  “Don’t push them too hard,” I warn her. “Here on the straightaway, we can’t beat the guir-heavy teams. But we’ll show our strength in the third leg.”