“I absolutely HATE the whole human race,” she moaned, flopping back on her bed. “Especially the bratty, foul-mouthed, undisciplined, juvenile delinquent kind.”
I put aside my book and raised one eyebrow disdainfully. I’d practiced this look in front of the mirror because it irked Corny more than mere words. “Last week you said human children were the sweetest things on Earth.”
“That was before I got hit in the head with an oar, slimed with Cheez Whiz, and served a worm sandwich. My magical trigger-finger was really itching, believe me. Thank Minerva above, this session is almost over.”
As she sat on the edge of her bed and rubbed the knot on her forehead, her gaze fell on the electrical cord I had foolishly left snaking out of the chest. “What in the heck is that?”
“Nothing!”
I jumped, but Corny was faster. She opened the chest and unwrapped the egg before I could stop her.
“What are you…?” With effort, she hoisted the egg with both hands. “Up to?” The next instant, she screamed in pain and dropped it. “Hot! Burning!”
The egg hit the floor with a sickening crunch. I stared in horror as a network of cracks radiated over the surface.
“You’ve killed it, Corny!”
Cornelia’s mouth opened, but she didn’t say anything. Her stare fixed on the shiny black claw ripping through the cracks. “What is that thing, Apple?”
“I…I…” I was too awestruck to hazard a guess. Emerging was a funny-looking thing indeed. It unfolded and slowly inflated like a green parade balloon. The head popped out, then the arms and legs—then the wings.
“A big bird?” I whispered.
Cornelia gasped and reached for her wand.
The little green creature started flapping. Cautiously at first, then faster and faster. Papers, magazines, and books flew everywhere. The shelf with my collection of snow globes tipped over. A stream of fire and black smoke spewed from the wondrous thing’s mouth.
“It’s a dragon!” Cornelia and I shouted in unison.
I lunged to the window and shut it just in time. The baby thudded headfirst into the glass, squeaked, tumbled, and then soared to the ceiling, leaving a trail of black soot in the air.
A tingling began in my stomach, filled my chest, and erupted into what was probably a goofy grin on my face. I’d always, always longed for a pet. In some magical cultures, before witches became wizards, it was a requirement, and a dragon was the best!
“Wipe that smile off your face,” Corny said. “You can’t keep it.”
“I found him. I hatched him. I’m pretty sure that makes me his mama. Why can’t I keep him?”
The uncoordinated dragon sneezed and set Cornelia’s bed on fire.
“That’s why you can’t!” Corny waved Artemis. “Fire, out!” she shouted, and then turned to the dragon. “Tranquilize!”
The beastie dropped from the air and lay comatose on the floor. Like all babies, he looked shiny, clean, and new. The scales on his back were a bright watery green and his belly a rosy pink.
“Oh, he’s so cute.” I ran a finger over his ridged backbone. The baby hissed in his sleep. “He looks more like a watermelon than a ferocious dragon. In fact, I think I’ll call him Watermelon.”
“Puh-lease,” Corny said, inspecting the damage to her bed. “Think, Apple, for once. Mother and Father will never let you raise a dragon. He’s too precious for any one wizard to own. Besides, he stinks. And what do you expect to do with him when he’s grown? Dragons double in size four times in the first year alone. By the time they are six months old, they can eat elephants whole.”
“Oh, you are such a know-it-all, party pooper killjoy!” I sank cross-legged to the floor and rested my chin in my hand. “I’ll figure something out.”
“Sure you will. NOT. Hmmph.” Corny snapped herself a new bed, quite a bit grander than the old one. She left the room abruptly and it wasn’t long before I heard the rumble of her motor scooter. Off to the coffee shop in town to hang with her friends, no doubt. Thank goodness Mother was still at an art show or Corny would have snitched immediately.
I gazed at the slumbering dragon. Determined to prove myself a responsible caregiver, I conjured a transparent cage around him (thank you, Tutor Grey). I made a nest of goose down for the baby’s comfort, then thought a bit and sprayed the feathers with fire retardant. Altogether it was an exercise that stretched the limits of my itsy-bitsy new abilities, and I had to lie down and rest for a while.
After a short nap, I was ready to start hunting for the perfect baby dragon food. I surfed the Whiz (the wizarding web) and read everything I could find about dragons. Not surprisingly, I discovered they were a very rare species, believed to be extinct. There hadn’t been a dragon sighting since 1310, when a sailor spotted one soaring in the South Pacific skies. Corny was right, as usual.
I thought fast. My antenna for trouble went up. Mom and Dad, wizards in good standing in the Magical World, might not be as easy to convince as I hoped. They wouldn’t even let me adopt the lame cabbit—a very rare and devastatingly cute cross between a cat and a rabbit—I found in the forest. I’d have to be very careful how I proposed the subject of keeping a baby dragon.
First things first. Baby dragons needed to be fed.
My online search fizzled. Modern wizards were too modern, I supposed, to bother posting anything as archaic as the care and feeding of dragons.
Sneezing like a dust bunny, I poked through shelves of musty books in my father’s library without much luck until I found an entry in an ancient copy of Magicis Creaturas Coques Libro. The preferred diet for ancient baby dracones (being Latin for dragons) was mother’s milk—the dragon kind. That being out of the question, what else could an infant digest? I thumbed through the next pages until I found a single recipe.
Combine equal parts of pureed rambutan, green carambola, and Malay Roseapple, with generous portions of Wagyu milk and a strand of hair from the head of its master.
Strike me down! That stuff didn’t even sound edible. But, what could I do? Watermelon had to eat something. I wished Corny had hung around—she was the experimental cook in the family.
Fortunately, Dad was in his garage workshop—deaf, dumb, and blind to the world beyond his DO NOT DISTURB sign, and Mom wasn’t expected home until dinner.
“Wanda,” I whispered, extending her with a flick of the wrist and a series of snaps. “You’ve always been ready to help the helpless. Find these ingredients for my helpless dragon. Please.” I rubbed her against my cheek. “I lo-o-ve you.” She made that little whisking sound that meant she was thinking about it.
Before I recited the menu, I hoisted Mom’s largest enchantment kettle onto the stove and plunked our new blender on the counter beside it. With my eyes closed, I tapped the rim of the blender with the wand.
“Ready? Okay, here goes. One cup each of rambutan, green carambola, and Malay Roseapple, please.”
Other than Wanda’s twitching, nothing happened at first. Then, bit by bit, the blender filled with red, green and yellow fruit. It looked something like a fruit smoothie, so I relaxed and pressed Puree. The mixture turned into greenish-brown soup, which looked much less appetizing. I poured it into the kettle to heat, scraping every last drop.
Next, I tapped the kettle with Wanda. “Fill the pot with Wagyu milk.” I had a vague notion that a Wagyu was something like an exotic cow.
The last ingredient, a hair from my head, was easy. I yanked it from my scalp and held it over the bubbling pot, but hesitated. Dropping a hair into the first meal of a newborn was an ancient witching way of bonding and controlling a familiar. Should I do it, or not? My desire to be prudent (meaning—to stay out of trouble) was strong, but my longing for the baby dragon was stronger.
I dropped the hair, stirred the concoction, and lugged the hefty kettle upstairs.
Watermelon awoke in a fury. He squawked nonstop and stubbornly bashed himself against the invisible walls of his cage. I opened an invisible slot in the ca
ge to push the whole kettle through. The dragon dipped his snout into the slop and inhaled the gruel in one swallow. His stomach bulged and his saber-like tongue flicked. Then he curled into a corner and closed his eyes.
Satisfied, I retrieved the kettle and tiptoed out of the room. One challenge down. Now, to convince Mother and Father to let me keep him.
“Momsy, Popsy,” Cornelia said, turning her head from one to the other at the dinner table. “I need my own room.”
To my surprise, my sister hadn’t breathed a word about the dragon—would this be the moment? I cleared my throat loudly and glared at her. I figured it was better to tell our parents myself—when the time was right. And I was in no hurry.
Magdella and Grizzwald looked up and waited.
“Apple and I need our own spaces,” Corny went on, reasonably enough. “I’m practically an adult, and Apple needs a lot of room for her, ah, shall we say, pet.”
“What pet?” my mother asked.
“Who has a pet?” said my father.
Corny sucked her lip and raised an all-knowing eyebrow at me. “Well, Apple might get one. In the near future.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” said my father, frowning. “What’s the big hurry to change rooms?”
Magdella spread a dab of crocodile paté on a cracker—a delicacy she’d brought home from India. “I do understand why you want your own room, Cornelia, but where would we put you? The library, the schoolroom, and the magical storeroom are definitely out, as are my art studio and the solarium. That leaves only the basement—and I’m against that. Of course, there is the attic—”
“I’ll take it,” Corny muttered, chewing a curry-flavored dumpling.
“Well…?” Magdella cocked an inquiring gaze at her husband. “The attic does have a nice new roof. What do you think, Grizzie?”
“Why not?” Grizzwald wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood to leave, probably anxious to get back to his secret invention.
“Wait, don’t go yet,” I cried. “I have something to say.”
Everyone leaned forward, stunned. I never made proclamations.
“I have a… There is…something…I need to tell you about…”
Interruption came with the crashing sound of breaking glass. “Did you hear that?” Mother asked. “What do you think it was?” Everyone flew to the window.
“I’d better check the greenhouse. It might be a deer. Or a limb from a tree,” Dad said.
“But I have something important to say!” I cried.
The next instant, the air reverberated with the sound of simultaneous fire alarms.
“It’s coming from the woods!” Mom pushed past me. “Good going, Grizzie dear. Your Forest Fire Alert system works!”
Dad had already rushed out the door. I heard him holler for his magical fire hose as he ran. Mom, Corny, and I hustled onto the porch.
“There!” Corny pointed at a blossoming plume of smoke in a birch copse. Mom took off at a run.
My stomach flipped cartwheels. I burped curry as I rushed upstairs and flung open my bedroom door. Watermelon was gone.
What a mess! It looked like the clever little beast had used his hot black breath to smoke up the interior of the invisible cage, exposing the edges of the food slot with smoke residue. He’d crashed right through at the weakest spot. After that, an Ordinary window wasn’t going to keep him from escaping. The entire thing, frame and all, lay smashed on the ground outside.
I smacked my head with the heel of my hand. I’m SO stupid. I flew downstairs and out the door to find my pet before my father did.
In the yard, Cornelia nudged the window frame with her toe. “Tsk, tsk.”
I ignored her and kept running.
The dragon was discovered cowering in the upper branches of a sugar pine. It took all four of us, manning magical lassos around each of his front and back legs, to lower the squirming creature.
“Remember, he’s just a baby,” I pleaded as we hauled him home and tied him with ropes and charms in the side yard. “Can’t he stay in my room? In a bigger, better cage?”
“NO!” the family shouted.
Dad zapped a muzzle around the dragon’s snout. “This baby’s wingspan is nearly four feet wide.” He spoke with a mixture of distress and awe. “The wingspan of a full-grown Dragonius Gigantis can reach thirty-six feet across. Our house is no place for a dragon.”
Magdella looked at me sternly. “What were you thinking? You should have notified us immediately when you suspected the egg might have a life. An expert should have been consulted at once! These things are delicate. He may be the last dragon on Earth.”
“Delicate?” Corny snorted. “The baby”—her fingers made quotation marks in the air—“left fifty yards of scorched earth in his wake. We’re lucky he didn’t roast a human along the way.”
Watermelon hissed and flailed at the other Bramblewoods, but he allowed me (his dragon master) to approach. Magdella plucked at the back of my shirt, but my father held up his hand. “Let her try,” he advised.
I very gently stroked the dragon’s horny spine. “Don’t worry, Watermelon. We’ll work this out.”
The dragon calmed. “Oooo-oooo,” he gurgled, curling into his original egg shape. “Oooooo.” Obviously exhausted, he stuck a clawed thumb into his muzzle and sucked on it. “Enough of this,” his droopy eyes seemed to say, and he fell asleep.
Magdella took advantage of the lull to pull me to safety.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked with trepidation. I really meant, what are you going to do to him? My knees trembled.
“Right now,” Mom said firmly, “we’re calling Aunt Rose at the SPAS.”
I shuddered, knowing what that meant. They called themselves the Society for the Preservation of Antiquated Species, but they were really nothing more than glorified creature-catchers for the Wizarding pound. The creatures went in and they never came out.
That night, I cooked another batch of formula and took my sooty blanket and pillow outside. Everything I owned smelled like brimstone, but I didn’t care.
I curled next to the softly snoring Watermelon and put a tentative arm across his back. I wasn’t afraid. The dragon was mine—and I was his. Mother love, I guessed. But I had to admit, being the owner of a baby dragon was an awesome undertaking. If I didn’t learn how to control and communicate with him, I might lose him forever.
A purple van arrived at our doorstep at the first light of dawn. The slam of its sliding door woke me from a restless sleep under Watermelon’s wing in the side yard. I yawned and crawled on my belly to the fence and pressed my face between the pickets to see who it could be.
A short, stocky, middle-aged woman with gray hair and a flannel shirt planted her sturdy work boots on the gravel drive and surveyed our weather-beaten house with a grimace.
Aunt Rose. Ruby Opal Sapphire Emerald Dugood, to be exact. The president of the SPAS.
I gulped.
Everybody in the Wizarding world called her Aunt, and in one way or another, if you went back far enough, she was everybody’s aunt. Rose squared her shoulders and marched up the front porch steps, growling over her shoulder. “Bring my potions kit, Bobblehead, and the large tranquilizer gun.”
To my surprise, a gangly, orange-haired string bean of a teenaged boy tumbled out of the van. He lugged a big black suitcase and a dangerous-looking dart gun.
Oh, tribulation.
A quick exit into the forest seemed like our best chance for the moment. I fastened my father’s magically enhanced rope around the dragon’s neck and dragged him, still sleepy-eyed, into the densest part of the woods. An unbearably long time passed as I crouched behind a giant manzanita bush, listening. Splayed on his back and snoring, the dragon slept beside me. His little feet clawed the air and it just about broke my heart to think of losing him.
“My Watermelon,” I sighed, loving every precious part of the marvelous baby. I had to convince my parents, Aunt Rose, the whole darn Wizarding Council, and
possibly even Cornelia to let me keep him. I screwed my eyes shut and told my brain, “Think of a camouflage spell!”
“Won’t do any good, witchy girl. Aunt Rose is a bloodhound when it comes to nosing out and collecting antiquated specimens, especially the dragon kind.”
I twisted to find the orange-haired boy standing behind me. He looked to be about Cornelia’s age. My shoulders squared and my hair stood on end. I was ready for a fight and more than ready to stand up for my rights.
The boy sat on his heels beside me and reached out a hand to stroke Watermelon. I slapped it away. “Nice little guy you’ve got here,” he said, rubbing his hand and ignoring the insult. “Nicest one I’ve seen.”
My ears perked. “There are others? I thought dragons were extinct.”
“They’re popping up all over the place. Little ones like yours—just hatched. Aunt Rose is going out of her mind trying to keep up. The SPAS is bewildered. They’re running around squawking like a bunch of headless chickens.”
I wondered—do headless chickens squawk? Then another thought came to me—if dragons weren’t rare anymore, that might work in my favor.
Watermelon, still lost in a dream, rolled over on his wing and bumped his chin on the ground. I stroked his back. “Tell me more about the other dragons.”
The boy leaned back in the dirt and rested on one elbow. He flashed a goofy smile. He was kind of skinny, and his nose was a little big for his face, but his eyes were bright blue and friendly. “It’s a phenomenon. There haven’t been any live dragon births for…” He counted on his fingers. “Close to seven hundred years. Then, a few months ago, they started turning up, one after another. This fella here makes number twenty-one. That’s roughly two dragon hatchings a week.”
My arms hugged my sooty knees. I began to see a picture bigger than the tiny puzzle piece called Watermelon. An image of feisty little dragons flying over a large metropolis, crisping Ordinaries at random, made me gulp. And what about the chaos when they got older and fiercer?
“Hmmm, I’m beginning to understand the analogy of headless chickens.”
Almost Magic Page 7