They can be left alone, as long as they have an orange tree to live under and enough food. They can't stay cooped up in a house or apartment, they feel disoriented. If you don't have a spot in your garden to make into their "home", Outbacks will suffer and get sick (and if you bring them to me to make them better and I find out, I'll report you for abuse).
Speaking of totem plants, it's thanks to the Australis that we discovered the "dragon-plant" relationship. When they arrived on the market there were already five species of dragon, all domestic. Given our human habit of keeping animals IN the house and fruit trees OUTSIDE the house, there hadn't been any occasions to see a relationship between dragon and plant (and if there had been any, nobody had noticed).
The situation changed thanks to Outbacks. Being semi-domestic dragons, many owners preferred keeping them outside, in large aviaries. It so happened that on several occasions, if they were able to escape their aviaries (especially the first, which didn't take into consideration the 'backs' ability to dig and were more preoccupied with preventing them from flying away: practically strainers in the shape of a house), the dragons would then be found in burrows dug under orange trees.
This happened especially in the area called "The Orange Belt", in the San Joaquin Valley in California, renowned for its orange production, and in some areas of Florida. Outbacks seemed to prefer the Navel variety of trees (everyone agrees they're the best type of oranges. They have good taste).
Then there was the case of the little Rachel Douglas, who lost her little dragon Teddy and found him along with another three in the nearby field, in a burrow under an orange tree (her relatives, if I remember correctly, lived on a farm. The little girl was in heaven, the parents not so much). The news ended up on all the newspapers, and the 'backs' strange behavior attracted the attention of scientists and breeders.
When the relationship between dragons and trees started being studied I was still in high school and it seemed like a mystery to everyone. Not even the researchers that had created Outbacks themselves (Manuel Cyrus and his colleagues) could explain the phenomenon.
A few years later - I was already in college - people were still trying to understand what this relationship consisted of, how it developed and why. Even today, what we know is that every species of dragon is tied to only one species of plant, and this never changes over time. According to LeBon, it's because part of dragons' genetic code comes from space. Maybe it's true, dragons are aliens, and lived on a big planet where every specimen grew along with its tree-house until they became as big as our T-Rex dinosaurs, or perhaps even bigger.
How and why this bond exists remains a mystery, and I think it will stay such until some scientist reveals the secrets of these fascinating animals.
The Brother
I ARRANGED FOR LEBON AND MY PARENTS to manage the store, then I got in the car and took off that same afternoon. I didn't want to leave Whiskey in the hands of those bastards for a minute longer.
The place Henry Woods had told me about, the illegal fight hideout, was in Shelley, a small town just outside Idaho Falls. When the farm had failed the owner, a certain Bronson, had turned it into a pub, which people called The Snake, because the property was in a bight of the Snake River (and apparently is also a cool name for a sketchy bar).
When I finally found it, it was already late at night. Above the pub's door, the S of "Snake" in the neon sign flickered with a dull green. The place was a big wooden shack whose walls hadn't been painted in decades, dark and stinking of sweat and alcohol fumes.
I found Bronson at the bar with his son. The resemblance between the dive and its owner was incredible, as it often happens. Even Bronson seemed in need of a good new coat of paint. His greasy hair pulled back in a short ponytail, his prickly beard and his pockmarked face, he towered over the customers who were a bit tipsy from the top of his near six and a half feet of height.
I didn't have any chance of getting him to tell me how the game worked, and I knew it, but trying wouldn't cost me anything.
"Woods sent me", I told him in a low voice when he came to serve me. "I'm a Breeder".
Bronson only needed one glance to get rid of me.
"I don't know any Woods. Beat it, kid".
He went back to the middle of the bar and sent his son to serve me.
Okay, I tried it the nice way.
I got a beer and went back to my van to wait.
Henry Woods had told me that on Sundays, from midnight to two a.m., the bar closed down, and the neon sign was turned off. Bronson's son opened a hatch in the back of the pantry, and the fights took place in the basement where grain was once stored.
At one a.m. the last client left. The sign went off and Bronson came out of the bar with his son. He closed all the doors and reached his pick-up. When he saw me half hiding behind the hood he jumped, but he snapped out of it right away.
"You again! What the fuck do you want now?"
He brought a hand to his belt, where he kept an old gun, a 44 special with a worn butt. "Get the fuck out of here, you piece of shit".
I placed the transportation box on his pick-up's hood and opened the door. A long hiss came from inside the box. Two flaming red eyes stared at Bronson's. The man froze like a mouse in front of a cobra.
"You know what it is, right?"
Bronson licked his lips and nodded.
"And you know what she'll do, if you try to do something stupid, like piss her off?"
Bronson nodded again. The hand that was grazing the gun fell lifeless next to his side.
"Good. Now let's talk".
And Bronson talked.
When I had left, that afternoon, I had followed the impulse of the moment. I had left poor Jean to manage the store, while I searched for Tajihara's men and Whiskey by myself. The problem is I don't know anything about investigations and chasing someone. During the trip from Boise to Shelley I asked myself what I would do, once I got to Bronson's place. What should I ask? To whom? Dragon fights are illegal in all States, and it's not like people can't wait to confess a crime to the first guy who walks by. How could I know if the information they would give me was reliable, or if it was bullshit they gave me to get rid of me?
What I discovered that night became a constant feature during my trip. Almost nobody wanted to speak with me... in the beginning. But as soon as I directed my attention toward my companion (and her exceptional virtues), like magic everyone started singing as if we were at the Paris Opera.
There, in front of his pick-up, Bronson told me everything he knew. He spilled all the beans. If I had stayed there a while longer, he would have confessed about when at twelve years old he masturbated in front of a poster of Madonna in his sister's room.
Yes, the guys weren't from around there, he told me. And the boss was a tall man with a shaved head. They had already been in Blackfoot, before coming to the Snake. No, he didn't know where they were headed, but - according to him - they were going to Utah, because in Bountyfull there was one of the most famous illegal gambling houses.
The idea itself of putting one animal up against the other to see them fight to the death is repulsive, and cries for vengeance from God. I would have like to stay and give Bronson and his clients a taste of good old Mustang justice, but I didn't have time. I already had a month's worth of disadvantage, and I was alone. I couldn't fix all the wrongdoings that took place in the Greenbelt. However, I told Bronson he was finished with fights. If I heard otherwise I would call the police. But before that, I would be back to visit him with my friend.
That night I slept in a motel and the next day I passed the southern border, headed toward the dry and sweltering state of Utah.
The city of Bountyfull was a just a few hours away. In reality, the place Bronson had told me about wasn't actually in Bountyfull, but close by, in an amusement park called "Laguna's". The Drought had almost put it out of business, ten years before. The area with the water slides and swimming pools was closed, but the rides, the three Ferris wh
eels and the roller coasters still worked. The fights took place under a small plastic coated tent, separated from the rest of the park by a fence made of abandoned containers.
The son of a bitch who organized them, I found out, was named Bob Foley. Foley wasn't like Bronson. He was the park's director, and always went around with three men covering his shoulders, at least one of which was armed with a gun.
He was a tough nut, but even nuts can be broken.
The fight night (every Tuesday, after closing time) I stopped him along with his men as he was going to the tent. One of the men had a transportation box with a dragon in it. On the side was the word "Fireball" in flaming red and yellow letters. Apparently, even Foley had his "champion".
"Gentlemen, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I have some questions to ask".
Seeing me appear from behind a corner, Foley frowned. The henchman carrying the gun took it out and pointed it at me.
"And who the hell are you?" Foley asked me.
He was wearing an unbuttoned white shirt, showing a thick gold chain. There was some gold on his tan hands as well. Big rings with the letters of his last name on them. Pure trash.
"My name isn't important", I said. Then I pointed to the grass behind them, just outside the container enclosure. "What matters are the seventy yards behind you".
Foley and his three men looked at me as if I were crazy.
"Jones, get this fool out of my way. Let's go".
The four of them moved forward, but I stopped them.
"Uh-uh. I wouldn't do that".
"Buddy, you've really broken my balls".
The man that Foley had called Jones, a punk with leather boots and a series of tribal tattoos on both arms, came toward me while putting a set of brass knuckles on his right hand.
I ignored him. Instead, I pointed a finger at the minion with the gun.
"Dìdi, exarma!"
A roar echoed between the containers, and a dark shadow flew above us. Taken by surprise, the four morons sunk their heads between their shoulders. Foley widened his eyes.
"What...?"
A blue bolt of lighting landed on the minion with the gun. A moment later the weapon was gone, and so was the thumb, pointer and middle fingers of his right hand.
"Ahhhhhhh! My hand! It cut my hand!" yelled the man with bulging eyes.
He grabbed his severed hand with his left one, while his partners looked around frightened. The blue lightning bolt flapped her wings in the sky and landed on my shoulder, latching on to the kevlar padding.
"This, gentlemen, is Deirdre". The dragon, with her wings still open, hissed against the four men. "Deirdre is a pureblood Mustang. Good, I can see from your expressions that you've understood. The seventy yards behind you are the maximum range of a Mustang during a pursuit. If you're lucky, she'll turn around before ripping your eyes out and burning your head. So, are you feeling lucky?"
Foley and the other three looked behind themselves and turned back to look at me. Nobody moved. The owner of Laguna's put his hands in his pockets.
"All right. What the fuck do you want?"
Foley, evidently, wasn't used to running.
Half an hour later I left the amusement park and Bountyfull toward Saratoga Springs, along the shores of Lake Utah. That was where Foley thought Tajihara's men went. Foley and his henchmen, in the end, had run. They had fled like the wind, with Deirdre on their tails, but not without doing me the courtesy of leaving me their dragon, first.
They wanted to keep him, but my Mustang thought otherwise.
Fireball was a young Outback with brownish-red scales. My heart tightened when I saw him, cooped up in his box, full of scars on his snout. 'Backs are such a sweet and playful species... It was like seeing a labrador transformed into a fight monster.
This time I called the police with an anonymous tip-off and waited until they got to the park and arrested everyone. I could have given my name, but technically it was illegal to drive around with a Mustang in your car, even if inside a steel box. I therefore preferred to stay far from the police, for the moment.
On the backseat of the car, Deirdre and Fireball spent the rest of the evening smelling one another through the bars of their boxes. Several months, sometimes years, are needed to rehabilitate a dragon after it's gone through such abuses.
For Fireball, it started when he heard me speaking in his Command Language for the first time and I put half an orange between the bars.
IN SARATOGA SPRINGS I FOLLOWED Whiskey's tracks up to an ex-country club on the shores of the lake. I say ex because the "Talons Cove Country Club" had been closed for years. Time ago, it must have been a beautiful place - and expensive as well - with a breathtaking view, surrounded by the snowcapped mountain tops of Wasatch Range and just a few feet from Lake Utah. Now, instead, the lake had shrunk almost six hundred and fifty feet and there were no more signs of snow on the Wasatch.
The eighteen hole golf course was an expanse of underbrush. The same was for the gardens of the elegant villas around the club. Nobody lived in that part of the city anymore; a group of Vagabonds had occupied the club's buildings and organized fights almost every month. There, at Talons Cove, I lost Tajihara's men's traces. For three days Deirdre and I interrogated everyone in the game, but nobody had seen the bronze dragon or Raminskij and his partners.
Notwithstanding this, I didn't give up. I went down along Veteran Memorial highway to an abandoned town named Scipio, and continued on interstate 70 until I got to Grand Junction, in Colorado.
I wasted almost a week following tips, gossip in pubs, sayings regarding a mysterious dragon that was winning every fight "from Arizona to Montana". Little by little I realized I wasn't searching for a flesh and blood dragon anymore, but a legend.
And as such, he was everywhere.
He moved from mouth to mouth, from person to person, disorienting me. One day Whiskey was in Cheyenne, the next one in Flagstaff, but someone swore they saw him in Salt Lake, the night before.
On the morning of the eleventh day I left Grand Junction and went back to Utah. Of all the stories I had heard, the one that seemed most credible to me was that Tajihara's men had brought Whiskey all the way to Las Vegas.
That night I stopped in St. George, a small city on the state's southern border, and called LeBon with the laptop. Deirdre was sleeping cuddled up on the foot of the bed, while Fireball was in his box, on the table in the room. During those days the Outback had stayed calm, but I still didn't trust letting him out if the Mustang was around.
"Still no trace of Whiskey?" Jean asked me right away. Behind him, in the background, I could see the Garden's walls. Even though I had offered him my house, LeBon preferred staying at Wild Dragons. He "felt safer", he said.
"Too many traces, but none of them are believable", I answered. "Have you looked for that thing?"
"Yes, Jeq. Las Vegas seems like the perfect destination, actually. Online everyone is talking about a place where you can make lots of money betting on illegal fights. They call it the Round. I know a guy, in Vegas, he owes me a favor. He said he'll give me the place's address tomorrow".
"Okay", I said. "Keep me updated".
The more I thought about it, the more this story about fights didn't make sense.
Why, I asked myself, would a gangster like Tajihara go through so much to steal an egg, if his only aim was to have it fight in illegal arenas?
A Mustang would have given him much more. Even so I had no doubt. His henchmen were traveling around the country with my dragon. I only needed to figure out what their next fight would be.
"How are the blackouts going?", I asked Jean then.
"Three, just today. For you?"
"I don't know, I've always been moving around", I answered. "But I have the impression things are worse here. I avoid traveling after seven p.m. The streets are dark and most of the towns are abandoned. And our conspirers, how are they taking the absence of their Iron Lady?"
"Oh, Jeq", said Jean. "you wouldn't bel
ieve it. It's like watching the French Revolution and Civil War all together. The one with the chipped crest...what's her name?"
"Florence", I answered.
"Right, Florence. She's taken three males and spends all her time in one part of the cherry tree. Lutezia is furious. You can tell she's plotting something".
I started laughing. Since he had gotten back to the store, LeBon had started observing the Mustangs and was fascinated by them. He followed their stories as if they were in a soap opera, and once in a while he called me to fill me in on the latest news.
"Well, why are you laughing?"
"Nothing, nothing. Think of the mess when they see Deirdre come back".
"Speaking of which", said LeBon. "You haven't shown me your latest purchase yet".
"You're right".
I got up from the bed with the laptop in hand and brought it up to the box.
"Let's see if he's awake already", I said.
Fireball came close to the grate and smelled the air in the direction of the laptop. I looked at Deirdre. My dragon was sleeping happily on my bed, and she hadn't moved.
"Okay, I'll try opening the box, hang on a minute".
I put the laptop on the table and took off the steel locks, then I turned the box toward me so that the back was facing the bed. Fireball poked his head out of the box and yawned.
"Tiens", commented LeBon, "He's a really big Outback. How long is he?"
"I think he's about thirty inches. Thirty-three maybe", I said.
I petted Fireball under his throat and let him come out on the table, so he could stretch his legs and wings. Long scars ran down most of his chest.
He had one in the shape of an X under his right nostril. On both his wings there were several bite marks, some small, others way too big, almost as if they had him fight against a bear. And he was actually missing a piece of his right wing. Furthermore, those idiots of Foley and his men had painted his claws with silver paint, and drawn black flames along his limbs (I had tried washing them away with water, but it wasn't enough). Done up like that, Fireball looked like a really mean dragon, and in fact Jean said: "Man, Jeq, this is surely the most badass Outback I've ever seen".
The Dragon Seller: A Tale of Love and Dragons Page 15