by C. J. Hill
“Well, they’re such a tight-knit group already, and I understand that. They’re comfortable with each other, and I’m new, and …” And Lilly and Alyssa were petty. “I think it would be better if I moved to a different cabin.” As far away from cabin 26 as she could be, only she didn’t add that part, either.
His eyebrows drew together in concern. “Perhaps you got off on the wrong foot with the advanced campers, and if that’s the case, I apologize for them. They’re a wonderful group of kids—and you haven’t even met Bess and Rosa yet.” He laid his hand on her shoulder. “Give it a chance. Lilly and Alyssa are coming to invite you to have dinner with them. I’m sure they’re waiting right outside.” He patted her shoulder. “We’ll talk about this again in a day or two.”
A day or two? She didn’t even want to put up with Lilly and Alyssa for dinner. Only it seemed unreasonable to say so. Tori managed a weak smile, mumbled, “Okay,” and walked out of the room.
Lilly and Alyssa were nowhere in sight, which shouldn’t have surprised her. Dr. B didn’t understand teenage girls as well as he thought he did.
Tori caught up with a group of kids from her class and walked toward the cafeteria with them. She was about to go through the cafeteria doors when Lilly and Alyssa strolled up to her. Instead of appearing friendly, the two girls seemed mildly put out. “Hey, we’re here to get you for dinner,” Lilly said.
“Thanks,” Tori said, “but I’m going to eat with the people from my class.”
Lilly and Alyssa blinked at her, apparently unwilling to believe she’d turned them down. “You’re supposed to eat with the advanced campers,” Alyssa said.
“Oh. Well, I’m not really an advanced camper, so I’m going to eat with the regular campers instead.”
Lilly scowled. “Suit yourself, but Dr. B won’t like it. You’re part of Jesse’s team.” Then she spun on her heel, and both she and Alyssa stalked off, their blonde hair swishing angrily. They headed toward a cart, which made Tori wonder if they ate meals back at their secret camp. She didn’t watch to find out.
Dinner consisted of hamburgers and fries, although the food had been given cutesy names. The potato wedges were now “dragon’s teeth,” which in Tori’s mind made them less appetizing. She had to keep reassuring herself that they were fried potatoes and that putting them in her mouth wouldn’t break her teeth into little shards.
Tori ate absentmindedly, letting the conversation flow past her like she was a boulder in a stream of words. That’s what it always felt like when she was in a large crowd. The voices sounded like multiple sound tracks lying on top of one another, and she either had to concentrate and block out all but one conversation, or she relaxed and let them all wash around her.
Then she heard her name. Not called. Just spoken. Someone was talking about her. She glanced in that direction and saw Jesse, Dirk, Lilly, and Alyssa standing against the far wall by the door. They were staring at her and stopped talking when she looked up.
She forced a smile, which only Dirk returned. Even indoors his surfer-boy blond hair had gorgeous highlights. Probably all natural. He didn’t look like the type that would set foot in a salon.
Tori wondered if the group had come here to reinvite her to eat dinner with them. She returned her attention to the people around her, but she tuned them out and strained to hear a few more words of the advanced campers’ conversation. She shouldn’t have been able to hear any of it. They stood too far away. And yet when they spoke again, she heard them.
Jesse said, “So much for your theory that Tori is a spy.”
Dirk’s voice held none of the friendliness his smile had. “Just because she’s really here and not snooping around doesn’t mean she’s legit.”
“I don’t trust her,” Lilly said. “Where has she been for the last five years?”
“She might have reasons,” Jesse said.
“If the authorities wanted to snoop around,” Dirk put in, “she’s the type they’d send. We already know she has connections with the government. And she stunk at archery. You said so yourself.”
Jesse’s voice stayed even. “Dr. B trusts her. So does Bane.”
Lilly let out a scoffing grunt. “Dr. B is an optimist, and Bane is a horse. Don’t tell me you’re going to trust a horse’s judgment.”
Jesse nearly conceded the point, but not quite. “The horse is impartial.”
“And yet it’s still a horse,” Lilly said.
“Dr. B is just desperate,” Alyssa added. “He’s trying to make up for the fact that we’ve lost Leo and Danielle.”
“We haven’t lost them yet.” The pain in Jesse’s voice made Tori look up, as though his expression would explain everything. It didn’t, and the group stopped talking again.
Tori forced her gaze back to the table and the people around her, not really seeing them as she tried to process what she’d heard. Why were they worried about anyone snooping around? What was there to find? And why the reference to her archery score—which hadn’t stunk, but had been impressive—well, impressive until Jesse had shot a bull’s-eye without facing the target.
“She heard us,” Alyssa said.
“She couldn’t have,” Jesse said.
“Unless she’s wired,” Dirk said.
“Or we are,” Lilly said. “Wouldn’t we need to be the ones who are bugged for her to hear us?”
Then none of them said anything else.
When Tori looked over again, they had gone. Probably out checking their shoes and clothing to make sure no one had snuck electronic listening devices on them.
She inwardly laughed at the thought. It served them right for being so paranoid. But why were they? And if they were hiding something, was the camp staff involved, too? She thought of the people she’d met, letting each one drift through her memory. What was going on at this camp that made the advanced campers worry about spies? Drugs, maybe? Steroids?
Then another thought came to her mind. Dirk wore a red shirt and blue jeans. The thing she’d seen in the woods had been a blur of red and blue.
Had it been him? If it had been, how had he moved upward so fast?
She wasn’t sure about anything except one thing. The sooner she transferred to the main camp, the better.
CHAPTER 8
After dinner, the campers had free time. Tori played volleyball with the kids at her table, then went to the camp library to write a paper for her dragon mythology class. Dr. B had assigned an essay and given them the choice of three topics: similarities found in dragon lore; dragon habits and abilities; or methods of defeat. She’d already read all the books on the reading list except for a book Dr. B had written. She decided to skim it to see what his philosophies were so she’d know how to slant—or defend—her viewpoints.
The library was a small cabin that housed several bookshelves, a few soft chairs, and a row of computers and printers. It didn’t take Tori long to find Dr. B’s book: A Comprehensive Overview of Dragons and Their Ecology. It was a thin hardback with a cover that looked boring enough to scare off the most avid dragon fan. She sat down with it anyway. He’d written an introduction about researching oral histories and medieval records. As Tori scanned the list of sources, she was impressed. She’d finally found a person who knew more about dragons than she did.
The book was divided into sections: similarities found in dragon lore; dragon habits and abilities; and methods of defeat. The same three topics they could choose for their papers. It was almost as if he wanted the class to skip the recommended reading list and just study his book.
She turned to dragon habits and abilities. That would make for an easy paper.
Although the size of dragon eggs and their natural nesting places remain unknown, it is clear that dragons lay their eggs in twos: One male and one female, thus ensuring the survival of the species.
Had she ever read that before? She couldn’t remember, but it seemed right.
Dragons have no natural predators, so unlike other animals, they don’t reprod
uce in large numbers. The female lays only one or two clutches of eggs in her lifetime and does not lay eggs until she is in her thirties, near the middle of her lifespan. The gestation period of the eggs is between fifteen and twenty years, thus assuring that her children will not compete with her for resources—or at least not for long. Various accounts and lack of fossil records indicate that dragons didn’t usually die of old age, but were killed by younger, stronger dragons, perhaps even their own offspring. The victors not only got territorial rights, but also had a feast that could sustain them for some time.
Tori lowered the book to her lap. Dragons ate their parents? Creepy.
The key to dragons’ long-term survival is their ability to choose their eggs’ gestation period. If the mother is under stress from lack of food or other threats, she lays eggs which hibernate. These eggs won’t hatch for one hundred and fifty years.
What? Tori knew she’d never read this before, and she gripped the book tighter. Where had Dr. B gotten that information from? She flipped through the pages, searching for footnotes, but didn’t see any. She turned to the back, looking for an index. Nothing there, either.
It shouldn’t bother her. Her heart shouldn’t be pounding like this. It was a book about mythical creatures. Authors could say anything about them, because they didn’t exist.
But her heart rate didn’t slow down. Her mind was already doing the calculations. If dragons had gestation periods of one hundred and fifty years, then they could still exist. Back in the nineteenth century, the world still had enough wild places that a dragon might not be discovered.
She turned back to the book. The next sentence didn’t make her feel better.
This theory of dragons corroborates with several unexplained sightings of flying creatures in southwest America in the 1800s, often called Thunderbirds by the Native Americans.
Tori’s throat went dry. She’d noticed something about Dr. B’s writing. He didn’t talk about dragons in the past tense. The descriptions were written in the present tense, as though he expected a dragon to hatch any day now.
She tried to shake off the alarm spreading up her back. It was all hype. Most kids at camp probably got a kick out of a book that made you think you could see a dragon flying overhead when you walked out of the room.
She put the book down. Why had she thought coming to this camp was a good idea? It didn’t make her feel understood. She wasn’t really going to learn anything to help her defeat dragons or her stupid obsession with them. This camp would only give her nightmares.
Still, she picked up the book again.
Newly hatched dragons are the size of grown lions. Driven by hunger, they’re capable of hunting and killing prey much larger than they are. For the first year, they eat voraciously, thus doubling their size in quick succession until their bodies alone are the size of busses. With wings, legs, neck, and tail added, some estimate that a mature dragon would weigh between twenty and forty tons, depending on whether dragons, like birds and some dinosaurs, have hollow bones. Once dragons near their maximum size, their appetites taper off, and like their reptilian cousins the snakes, they go weeks between eating and sustain themselves on smaller portions. Their diet includes large mammals, including humans.
Humans. Tori’s stomach turned. This wasn’t new information. All the old stories said dragons killed people. But seeing it written in present tense made it more gruesome.
Maybe she should write her report on methods of defeat. That was bound to make her feel better. After all, if knights could kill dragons using weapons from the Middle Ages, what did she have to worry about?
She flipped to that section.
Dragons are built as formidable killing machines. In addition to their claws and fire-breathing ability, their size, strength, thick armorlike skin, flight, speed, and maneuverability make them almost unstoppable. It is doubtful that weapons from the modern day would be successful in destroying a dragon.
Dr. B didn’t explain why he doubted this, which annoyed Tori. She’d been happily thinking about combat helicopters.
So how did the medieval population deal with this threat? Some records indicate that people didn’t try to defeat dragons. Rulers simply found ways to appease dragons with cattle or other sacrifices. Often these sacrifices were young maidens, as medieval society didn’t place a high value on women. The fact that dragons ate humans accounts in part for the low population numbers during the Middle Ages.
Since dragons are solitary and territorial by nature, villagers were at least assured that they only had to feed one dragon. If another dragon tried to move in, the first would challenge it. Dragon fights must have been a fierce and spectacular sight for villagers to watch.
“Spectacular sight.” Great. Where was the part about killing them? She skimmed farther down the page.
Kings offered huge bounties for slain dragons. People had little success in this endeavor until the alchemists invented gold. Not the precious metal, but an elixir which would change people’s DNA, giving them the powers they needed to defeat the dragons. These powers included flight, the ability to douse fire, heal burns, and throw shields up.
With these skills in place, the dragon population dwindled. It was no doubt the work of these specially endowed knights which caused the few remaining dragons to choose a hibernation period for their eggs.
Tori stopped reading and flipped through the pages, scanning the headings. Where did it say how to make the elixir? That information had to be in the book. Dr. B wouldn’t go to the trouble of studying the elixir and then not tell people how to make it.
She didn’t see anything with a recipe or an ingredients list. No headings about the elixir. The frustration nearly made her rip out pages. She had to find it. She had to …
She put the book down in her lap and rubbed her forehead. It was only a story, a fairy tale. In all probability, one of the camp events would entail Dr. B making a big batch of root beer and calling it elixir. He’d have the entire camp drink it, and then proclaim them knights of the realm.
Tori let out a long sigh. Maybe that counselor with the jangly bracelets was right about her. Maybe she was transferring some deep-seated fear into the form of a dragon. This wasn’t healthy, what she was doing to herself.
Tori stood up and put the book firmly back on the shelf. She would write her paper on the similarities of dragon lore from different countries. She could type that one right now, and it wouldn’t get her worked up in the process.
She spent the next hour writing the paper, then drove a cart back to the advanced camp.
Cabin 27 was empty when Tori reached it. Which was fine. The day still had some sunlight left, so she changed into exercise clothes. She needed to unwind, and besides, if she ran now, she would have an excuse not to go with the advanced campers. A quick glance in the mirror satisfied her that in her Lycra shorts and slim-fitting shirt, she looked as toned and muscular as her cabinmates. Jesse couldn’t fault her in that regard, even if he did think her archery score stunk.
She stretched, then set off in a casual run toward the biggest building, the one neither Jesse or Dirk would talk about. No one was in the field or anywhere that she could see on the trails that led to the different buildings.
The end of Tori’s French braid slapped against her back as she ran. Bird calls sliced through the silence, sounding like shrill, ominous warnings. She drew closer to the large building. There weren’t any windows. That was suspicious, wasn’t it? As she came closer, she heard muffled noises from inside—shouting, but not shouts of fear or anger. Shouting like you heard during a football game. The advanced campers were probably inside doing some sort of activity.
She jogged over to the smallest building. It had large windows, but no glass. Some sort of thick mesh screen covered the openings. Perhaps that’s why the sound coming out of them was so clear.
At first she thought it was a laundry facility. The noise coming from the building sounded like tennis shoes in a dryer—a loud and steady tha
-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump. But after a few moments, she realized the sound was too regular. Tennis shoes in a dryer had some randomness to it. Things didn’t always fall in the exact same place.
She slowed her stride. It must be some sort of equipment, a water pump maybe, or a generator. On second thought, she’d heard generators, and they hummed. A water pump then.
Something else about the sound bothered her. It was familiar somehow, like she ought to recognize it, but she had never heard a water pump before. She reached the front of the building. Instead of one door, two stood side by side.
Slowly, she walked to the doors. They might be open, and if not, she could peer into one of the windows and see what was inside. The noise would bother her until she figured out what it was.
But as she put her hand on the doorknob, she recognized the sound. It was a heartbeat—a large reverberating heartbeat.
She dropped her hand from the doorknob, afraid that at any instant something would burst through those doors and pounce on her. It was a ridiculous idea, and yet she couldn’t shake it. Something in there was alive.
She took a step backward, ready to turn and sprint away. But she was no longer alone. A man had come up behind her. He stood so close that she plowed into him as she turned and ran. He grabbed hold of her arm to steady her, or maybe just to keep her from escaping.
It was only then that she realized it was Booker. He wore a gruff expression, although really, in the short time Tori had known him, his expression had always been gruff.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She stepped away from him, putting a hand to her chest to regain her breath. “You startled me,” she said, stalling while she composed herself. She was glad she wore running clothes. People expected joggers to be short on breath. “I was out for a run and thought I’d check out the laundry room.” She motioned toward the building and tried to keep her voice light, unconcerned. “Then I decided to wait until I had some laundry.” She watched his face to see if he bought the story.