The Dragon Seller: A Tale of Love and Dragons

by F. G. Ferrario

  When we left the Garden we went straight to the office to get the documents I had prepared the day before. It was necessary to sign a "mountain of paperwork" for the transfer, all digital documents, of course. Insurance, health certificates for each dragon, stamps from one federal office or another, birth and provenance certificates for the eggs. It's absurd, but it's easier to sell a dragon than loan it to a public institution.

  I printed two copies of each document and we agreed to meet the following day, when she would come to get the three dragons. As I was walking with her into the store again, Roger started screaming, at the end of the hallway.

  We looked around, without understanding. My assistant came out of the stable close to the infirmary, running and hitting his head with his hands.

  "There's a dragon! A dragon!" he was screaming.

  He stopped in front of us and took me by the shoulders. His hair was smoking and his eyes were wide.

  "A fucking dragon!" he repeated.

  "Roger, calm down. In case you haven't noticed", I opened my arms toward the shelves with specialized magazines and supplements, "this is a dragon store".

  "No, I mean a real dragon!"

  "What are you talking about?" I asked him.

  But Roger wasn't listening to me anymore. He ran toward the door and went out into the street. For a few seconds Raleigh and I watched him cross the street, his hands on his head.

  "That was your assistant?"

  "That was my assistant...ex-assistant, I would say, judging by how fast he's running away. Excuse me just a moment".

  I went down the hallway and started for the small stable. What the hell had happened? Why had Roger run away like that? If he had made some kind of mess, cousin or not, I would send him away with a boot up his ass.

  I heard Honey neighing and stomping her hooves on the ground from afar, so I quickened my step.

  I hope a raccoon didn't get in, I thought as I went past the infirmary.

  I take my guest animals' safety very seriously. With the Drought, a lot of wild animals migrate north to look for shelter, but I had had to shoo away a raccoon only once since I had opened my store. I was almost there when there was a loud flutter of wings followed by a thump.

  "What's going on here?"

  The stable was empty, no sign of raccoons. There was a bite of carrot on the ground, close to Honey's spot. The horse was fine, but the Acrobatica's door was open

  Damn it, Roger!

  I smacked my hand on my forehead. I had been so occupied planning the Outback transfer that I had forgotten to tell him about Draco.

  Had he let him out?

  I got closer to the cage, checking around the stable to see if he had gotten out. The dragon was cuddled up on one of the safety nets, with his eyes closed and his tail curled around his body. He was sleeping, or pretending to. I sighed with relief, and in that moment he opened an eyes, you know, how cats often do, just to see if you're still there. The eye moved onto me, squared me down and closed right away.

  "What the heck?"

  I asked myself what had really happened to poor Roger.

  Did he open the cage and Draco attacked him?

  Was it possible? With me, the little dragon had never showed signs of aggressiveness, but this was normal, from his point of view I was the "Parent". I picked up the bite of carrot and gave it to Honey. Up until then, I had never considered the fact the Draco could be aggressive.

  If his species is like Mustangs, there will be trouble.

  Raleigh's voice at the doorsill snapped me out of my thoughts.

  "Jack? Um...is everything okay? Sorry, I followed you".

  "Come on in, no worries".

  I gave Honey a scratch and motioned for Raleigh to come in.

  "Seeing how Roger ran away, I thought a raccoon had-"

  "Oh, how cute!" she exclaimed walking past me. "He's so small! Is he a baby dragon?"

  I turned toward the Acrobatica. Upon Raleigh's arrival, that smart little Draco had woken up suddenly and was now putting on his show: he was jumping from ring to ring, flapping on the perch and he was giving her sweet looks. It was impossible that he had learned to maneuver around the toys in a single morning, but there he was, in front of my eyes, playing with the rings like he was in Cirque du Soleil.

  "He's a little wonder", Raleigh murmured with tenderness.

  She went up to the Acrobatica and put a hand on the glass.

  At that moment I should have closed the cage door and brought the client back to the store, but my vanity as a breeder was stronger.

  "Do you want to pet him?" I asked her.

  Raleigh looked at me with heart shaped eyes. I never understood what kind of chemical reaction happens to the majority of girls when they see a baby of any species, but this is what happens to their eyes. They clasp their hands in front of their chest and their eyes start to sparkle.

  "Can I really? What's his name?"

  "Um, Draco...something", I murmured.

  "Draco something?" asked Raleigh, not impressed at all. "That's a really original name. You gave it to him, right?"

  "What's wrong with it? And it's temporary anyway. I was waiting until he grew a bit to find one."

  I put my right hand into the cage and stretched it out in front of Draco, who was still attached to the perch with all four paws. I still hadn't discovered what his Command Language was, but evidently there was no need. Draco understood what I wanted right away. He jumped up onto my arm and folded his wings.

  "Here he is", I said taking him out of the Acrobatica.

  The dragon was now calm and relaxed. He stayed still on my arm, letting himself be petted by Raleigh's fingers. He licked her thumb and rubbed himself on the back of her hand gurgling with pleasure when she pet him under his throat.

  "I had never seen a dragon with scales this color. What species is it?"

  "Ardbeg" I answered on the spot. It was the first thing that came to my mind. "Well, I mean...the scientific name is "Draco Occidentalis Gaelicus". It's a new species, you don't know about it".

  "In fact, I don't, never heard of it. And you keep him separate from the others because he's too small?". Raleigh scratched Draco on his forehead."Poor dragon, you can't wait to grow, right? How old are you, three months?"

  I almost started laughing. Months? My dear, he's not even twenty days old! But I kept my composure. I certainly couldn't tell Raleigh about LeBon, the train and all the rest.

  "Three...well, two and a half", I answered. "A friend from New York gave him to me. Just think, he had put it in a whiskey bottle, to surprise me".

  I wasn't lying to her, right? In a certain sense, it was what had happened.

  Raleigh raised her eyebrows and looked at me.

  "So that's what you should call him".

  "What, how?" I asked without understanding.

  "His scales are amber colored, and you found him in a whiskey bottle, so...Whiskey. "The most noble of liquors", as my grandfather would always say. See? He likes it too!"

  By pure chance, I'm sure, at that moment Draco decided to flap his wings and roar one of his Waaa!, and the pact was sealed. From then on Raleigh started calling him Whiskey, and as a result even I adopted that name after a while.

  With the dragon on my arm I gave Raleigh a tour of the stable, and introduced her to Honey. We chatted for a bit, while she gave the horse a carrot.

  Since we weren't paying attention to him anymore, Whiskey became restless. He tightened his claws on my arm and moved his neck toward his cage. It was clear he wanted to go back to playing on the perch and rings, so I put him back in the Acrobatica and accompanied Raleigh toward the exit. Before leaving her, I suggested having lunch together, but she excused herself saying she already had an appointment. We made arrangements to see each other the next day, when she would be back to get the Outbacks with her colleagues, and then we said goodbye.

  Oddly enough, I wasn't as happy as I had expected. I mean, sure, with the excuse of the experiment I would be i
n close contact with Raleigh for a long time, months perhaps, but the story with Roger had disturbed me.

  Once in a while, I would forget that Whiskey was a million dollar dragon, and there were people willing to kill to have him. But what was his secret? Was it because of his strange metabolism, or did it maybe have something to do with what happened to my assistant?

  If LeBon had been there with me, I could have asked him those questions. But the damned Frenchie had been missing for weeks, and perhaps Roger had gone too.

  The Magical Pitahaya

  "These past few days there was another fire attack, this time in Utah, close to Bountyfull. The firemen fought for three days, before putting out the flames. An amusement park and the surrounding woods are reduced to ashes. Many, in Ada county, are sure it's a dragon. Deputy Sheriff Ertz thinks it's a female Mustang. In your opinion, is this possible?

  - Antone Davis: I don't think so, no. Mustangs are territorial dragons, whereas this being, if it's really a dragon, moves from one city to the next, as if it were following a path.

  - But it's also true that Mustangs are the result of an experiment at the Pentagon. Uncle Sam created them to go into battle along with the soldiers, isn't that right?

  - Davis: That's right. But they're generally not aggressive, that's why the Marines never used them. And I'll tell you something else: we checked the breeders' registers. Only one person in this part of the state has a license to raise this type of dragon, and he hasn't lost any of them.

  - This only means that the Greenbelt Monster isn't a Mustang. But it could be another species of dragon.

  - Davis: I really hope not.

  - Why?

  - Davis: Because of the dimensions. I've been raising dragons for fifteen years now. I know everything about their habits and their physiology. The largest adult specimen is no bigger than three and a half feet. If this being really is a dragon, it belongs to a species I've never seen. An enormous species".

  Lee McDonald for "IdahoStatesman.com" - The Monster strikes again

  THE DAY AFTER SIGNING THE CONTRACT with Raleigh, my assistant didn't come to work. My cousin Francine called me from Kuna to tell me Roger had come home really upset, and that he wouldn't be back at the store, not as long as I kept "that monster". I told her that Roger used drugs heavily and there were no "monsters" at Wild Dragons, and she knew that well.

  It wasn't enough to convince her.

  She thought one of the Mustangs had tried to eat him. Eat him! Everybody knows dragons are vegetarians, but certain preconceptions are hard to get over.

  In any case, I spent a lot of time filling out forms online to look for a new assistant, until Raleigh arrived at eleven in the morning with the university's van.

  This time she wasn't alone. There was a young man with her, a guy who didn't even have the courtesy of getting out of the van. I had to shake his hand through the window.

  "Stephen Langley", he said without even looking at me.

  He had blue eyes, short blonde hair and a chin that was so regular it looked like it had been made with a ruler.

  There are people we like from the moment we meet them and others that we detest, you've surely been through the same thing.

  So, Stephen Langley belonged to the second category: he and I hated each other from the start. He worked at the university as well. He was the descendant of a rich family in Utah, one of those families where the grandfather, father and son all have the same name for generations, so they have to give themselves a number to be recognized, because otherwise during Christmas dinners it would be a mess. The Langleys had graduated in law for decades at Harvard, a sort of tradition, until the Drought had made botany an elite affair. Stephen Langley was the classic daddy's boy, he was rich, handsome, and he didn't smell like a dragon as I did. And even worse...he was Raleigh's boyfriend.

  Horrible, right?

  "Don't pay attention to Steve, he's a bit nervous", she told me. "He has to go to lunch with big shots today. Friends of his father".

  The romantic fantasy of a love affair with Raleigh had popped like a soap bubble, leaving my heart in pieces. For a few moments I walked along the hallway without knowing where I was going. Fortunately, I snapped out of it right away.

  What did you expect, Jack?, I asked myself. That a girl like Raleigh would be all alone waiting for you to come along? I should have imagined as much, really.

  Whyalla, Darwin and Canberra were waiting for us in their transportation boxes, next to the pond. Awake, even though it was morning, they were looking around, peeking out of the boxes. Next to them there were two big bags of dirt I had taken from their burrow. In just a few minutes, I helped Raleigh load the boxes onto the van and we signed the last papers. According to the agreement I had signed with the Department of Botany they would pay me 300 dollars, each month, for an initial period of three months. I could go see my 'backs whenever I wanted, and I had the final say on any issue that could influence their health. In a certain sense it was a deal, considering the fact that if I were lucky I could sell an Outback for five hundred dollars at the most.

  We loaded the two bags of dirt last, one each. They were pretty heavy, and Raleigh got to the truck all red in the face, bent over to the right with the bag on one shoulder. Stephen "spoiled descendant" Langley didn't even try getting out of the van to help her. And as soon as she sat down in the passenger seat, he left without waiting for me.

  Man, that guy is a real asshole, I thought. How did he become her boyfriend?

  I took my car and reached them at the campus parking lot. Langley had already gone back to the laboratory and only Raleigh was there. We loaded the bags of dirt and the dragons onto a mechanical forklift, and Raleigh set its path on the navigation screen. Buzzing, the forklift started off and we followed it into the building where professor Abrams and his assistants would be conducting the experiment. When I was a kid, college structures were placed inside a circular park. But because of the Drought, the federal government had enhanced all botany departments in the country. Using new funds, the Council had eliminated three parking lots in the south east area of the park, and had replaced them with new laboratories and greenhouses for the scientists. The structure where Raleigh brought the dragons to was called "Pandora 1", and it was a dome of 820 feet in diameter, divided into dozens of slices like an orange. The terrain where they would house Whyalla, Darwin and Canberra occupied one slice, while the laboratory where Raleigh and her colleagues would monitor the results was in the slice next to it.

  Walking down the circular hallway that ran along the outer part of the Pandora greenhouse, I wandered around the various laboratories. Pandora was a sort of fair for vegetable monstrosities. Raleigh told me they called it "Horticulture Extension Program". In plain words: they created giant veggies.

  In one of the laboratories they were sectioning a potato as big as a motorcycle. With the right pan and enough oil, you could make french fries as long as swords. In another two, scientists were spraying dioxide and calcium on the leaves of a pumpkin that must have weighed at least two tons - it was as big as my van, all wrinkled and orange; in the next one, peas you could have played golf with were growing on steel poles. The idea of creating giant vegetables wasn't a new one. The English had already started this trend, spreading it to the rest of the world, but what was only a "particular" hobby at the beginning of the century, had become a big deal with the Drought. The universities raced to think of the best nutrient mixes and experiment with varieties of azospirillum.

  Whole microbiology laboratories were dedicated to tests on new growth hormones and experimental ingredients that came from NASA. Those poor carrots and those poor peas took more steroids than a race horse(9).

  "This way, Jack".

  Raleigh took me away from a slice where they were growing a giant tomato, a red monster that could have covered all of New Jersey's pizzas for a week. At the entrance to her section she had me go through the security check, twice (in the greenhouses and laboratories security
is stifling. These vegetables are more protected than a nuclear silo), and we crossed the north-west section, where her laboratory was. After about twenty yards, the forklift stopped with a hiss of brakes next to a transparent door. We had arrived.

  Before freeing the dragons, I went into the slice and I looked around. The environment was a small garden, on just one level. Short and thin grass covered a layer of soft dirt. The walls were made of transparent graphene, about thirty feet high, and in the widest part the botanists had planted a single, large orange tree. All around the tree were other plants I didn't recognize. I imagine they were sample plants. Following my instructions, Raleigh and her colleagues had also dug a small burrow under the trunk.

  "Good, let's get the dirt", I said.

  I helped Raleigh put some of the dirt I had brought from my Garden into the new burrow, hoping it would help my three dragons settle in better. Then, we brought the three 'backs one by one to the burrow and we left them close to the entrance, without forcing them to go in. During the ride they had gone back into the morning sleepiness phase, and now, in the big dome's light, they kept on blinking their eyes, bothered and a bit confused. For a while they hesitated in front of the burrow, smelling the dirt. I threw some treats into the burrow, to make them want to go in. In the end Canberra, the most curious of the three, dragged herself into the hole and the other two followed her.

  While we were checking on them, a tall guy with a thick beard and disheveled curly hair came running in. Judging by his white coat I could tell he was a scientist too (yes, I have an investigator's intuition, I admit it).

  "Have they arrived?" he asked all sweaty.

  "You just missed them, Ben", answered Raleigh walking up to him. "They just went into the burrow".

  "Ah, man", Ben snapped his fingers. "I'll have to wait until tomorrow, Elen is on shift tonight".

  "Ben, this is Jack Ports, the dragons' owner", Raleigh introduced us. "Jack, this is Ben Dameshek. We're working on the project together".

  We shook hands. Ben was older than Raleigh by three years. He had graduated from the university of Arizona in microbiology and now he was working with professor Abrams. He immediately asked me a bunch of questions on the Outbacks and their habits. Ben loved dragons, you could tell right away. Unfortunately in Phoenix, where he had grown up, the State had outlawed the sale and possession of dragons because of the hot climate and the Drought, so he had never seen one in real life.