Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls

by Jane Lindskold

  “Baloo,” I say, pointing to her, then to Professor Isabella. “Akela.”

  “That’s right, dear.” Professor Isabella laughs. “Your teacher bear and your old, grey wolf. I wonder if Head Wolf…”

  She stops as Abalone glowers at her. There is a sick silence. Then Abalone speaks, her words clipped and as cold as if to a stranger.

  “Only the foolish turned against Mowgli.”

  “I’m sorry, Abalone. I forget myself.”

  “Don’t.”

  Although Abalone and Professor Isabella would have been happiest keeping me inside the apartment full-time, they rapidly learn that this is impossible. Recordings, visual and audio alike, do not hold my attention unless someone else watches with me. I cannot read or write and sewing occupies me only so long.

  Professor Isabella reads to me, but when she becomes weary and her attention wanders so does mine. Abalone gives me lessons, but after a certain point I am unable to concentrate on the little icons, no matter what pictures or sounds she programs as my reward.

  I assign myself the task of keeping the apartment clean, but these chores rarely take more than two hours. In the end, Betwixt and Between watch out the window with me or I talk to the old stone walls of the building. They are somewhat more responsive than the wall in the police station, but often I must ask many questions to get a response. The furniture is impossible.

  I find that talking to the walls or to Betwixt and Between for too long worries Professor Isabella. Soon, ashamed at myself, I feign emotionally charged conversations in order to get her to take me outside.

  Abalone always disguises me. She has ruled out dyeing my hair, preferring the variety of her wig collection. My eyes are hidden by contact lenses or sunglasses, my features by cosmetics. Professor Isabella also has a few disguises and chuckles about playing “dress up” at her age.

  The computer door guard doesn’t care how we look as long as finger and retina prints match what is filed.

  Meanwhile, Abalone is tracking down Ivy Green Institute. Often she is frustrated by dead end after dead end.

  We persevere in this fashion for some time. Tracing the Brighton Rock candy campaign, we note that venders in the now ominous cream and jade are being posted at museums. Professor Isabella decides that we should avoid these even in disguise and takes me to concerts, plays, and zoos.

  How well I follow concerts varies widely. Often I end up listening to the Hall rather than the music. Plays delight me, however, especially old friends like Shakespeare and Shaw, whose words, like the Bible’s, I think of as my own.

  Zoos are a problem. I have not been much around animals. They were forbidden in the Home and the pets of the Free People tended to stay near their handlers. However, my timidity is not an excuse; Professor Isabella is determined to educate me about animals in more than theory.

  We go and look at the caged creatures and I finally see wolves, bears, panthers, and owls in the fur. Professor Isabella must explain that there are no dragons like Betwixt and Between in zoos, but she shows me lizards and snakes. My dragons amuse themselves by making snide comments at the expense of their unicameral kinfolk.

  These visits continue until I lose some of my fear. Then she takes me to the Petting Zoo, where there are animals to touch. Visit after visit, I refuse to do more than quickly pat a silken nose or hastily feed food pellets to an eager goat or llama.

  Finally, however, I consent to make friends with the guinea pigs, starting by feeding one or another from the far side of a carrot or string bean and proudly progressing to the day I actually hold a stout black-and-white boar with whorls like flowers in his fur.

  We come home to tell Abalone, full of triumph.

  “Sarah actually held a guinea pig today,” Professor Isabella announces almost before we are in the door.

  “If thine enemy hunger, feed him,” I offer, thinking how less sharp the teeth looked when chewing on a carrot.

  “You held a guinea pig and fed it?” Abalone asks.

  I nod happily.

  “Great,” Abalone is clearly impressed. “Not bad at all. Oh, by the way, I located Ivy Green Institute today, even cracked some of the files.”

  “Not bad.” Professor Isabella smiles and winks at me.

  I smile, but I am not certain that I am ready to learn more. What I have discovered has hardly made me happy. Still, even as I am trying to shape the protest, Abalone is beginning to pull files up from her tappety-tap’s memory.

  “Sarah. There’s a birth date here and a description.” She drums the table. “This next is what gets me—no parents are listed but there is a brother, Dylan, and a sister, Eleanora.”

  Dylan. Pale of hair. Eyes almost without color. Dylan. Brother.

  I shudder. Betwixt and Between call for me from my bag. I grasp toward them, but the room is spinning, the floor coming to meet my head. My hands are too slow to catch me.

  When I awake, I am on a sofa in the living room. Betwixt and Between are propped near me. Four ruby eyes are bright with tears.

  I reach and brush away the tears. Funny how in all the time Betwixt and Between have been with me, I never learned until now that dragons purr.

  I am scratching the dragons under their chins when Abalone comes in, a beer in one hand, her tappety-tap in the other. Seeing me awake, she crows with delight and slides to her knees by the sofa.

  “How y’doing, Sarah? Feel better?”

  “I was thirsty and you gave me drink,” I hint.

  Grinning, she hands me the beer can. It is almost full and I must sit up so as not to dribble on myself. Refreshed and feeling clearer-headed, I hand her back the can.

  “Enough?”

  “Drink deeply, but never too deep,” I remind her.

  “The Law—the Jungle—seems so far away,” she muses. “Not real. Dozens of kids living strung up and strung out in a big tin can. Weird. I kind of miss it.”

  “Sarah’s awake?” Professor Isabella comes from her room, a book in one hand. “I’m delighted. I suspect all the new things today have been enough to unsettle her.”

  “I’m not sure,” Abalone says, sucking on her beer. “She took to the Jungle easy enough and you’ve been teaching her gently enough. No, she seemed to flip when I mentioned Dylan.”

  “Yes,” Professor Isabella nods. “We’ve both been suspicious that our girl knows more than she can tell us. You may be triggering some painful memories.”

  “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,” I add, “I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, and with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.”

  “Still,” Abalone says, “whenever you’re ready, Sarah, I think we need to review the rest of what I’ve found.”

  She picks up one of the “Brighton Rock” cards and turns it in her hands before speaking again.

  “We know someone wants Sarah and, frankly, I don’t understand all the psychobabble in her records. I can research, but it seems a waste of time with you two here.”

  Professor Isabella touches my forehead, softly, lightly. She pushes back my hair.

  “There is no fever, Sarah. Are you strong enough to go on?”

  “I am a brother to dragons, a companion to owls,” I state defiantly, and my dragons thrum approvingly.

  “Okay, then.” Abalone flips open the tappety-tap and Professor Isabella sits by my feet on the sofa.

  Betwixt and Between are reassuringly strong, but I remember their tears. I will learn, but I will not go away from them as Dylan did.

  Abalone looks at me and I nod.

  “Here we go then.” She strokes my past up from her memory. “Like I said before you decided to crash your hard drive, Sarah, these records list a brother, Dylan, and a sister, Eleanora. When I get a feel for the Institute’s system, I’ll try and learn more about what’s with them.”

  “Wait,” Professor Isabella asks. “You said the Institute’s system. I’d assumed that it was defunct—no more.”


  “Me, too,” Abalone says, “but I think ‘gone underground’ would be a more accurate description. The Ivy Green Institute is still out there and I suspect that it wants Sarah back.”

  I shudder, flashes of memory surfacing. Rolling hills, manicured lawns, all seen only through windows. I am small, but if I pull over a stool, I can see. Sometimes Dylan watches with me, his dragon close at hand.

  “She’s getting white again.” I hear Professor Isabella’s voice as from a distance. “Give me that!”

  I taste cocoa so hot that it burns and the burning forces away the memories. Taking the mug, I smile as confidently as I can. A few more sips and Abalone continues.

  “The coding here is screwy, but I’ve finally resolved it into a chart or graph. Thing is, I can’t quite figure out what is being measured here.”

  Professor Isabella leans forward and looks. “There should be a key for those colors. Did you check for hypertext files?”

  “Too obvious.” Abalone swats herself and searches; in a few moments she has superimposed a block of orange on the pale blue screen. My head swims when I try to read the text, so I lean back and listen.

  “The black line indicates something called ‘magical thinking’ the red line is empathy; the purple is memory: lavender for short-term, violet for long-term,” Abalone reads, shaping her mouth around unfamiliar jargon.

  “What was that chart titled, Abalone?”

  Abalone flips off the hypertext. “‘Brain Scan Mapping.’ Weird. I didn’t know the brain could be mapped.”

  “Well, it’s not completely, but my guess is that a place like Ivy Green Institute would be very skilled at such things. Look through your pirated files, my girl, and see if you find anything further on these terms.”

  Abalone taps a few codes in what I recognize now as a search sequence. Finally, she shakes her head.

  “There is nothing I can find quickly, but there’s a lot of garbage in here, programming I’m not set to read. Let me have a day to clean things up.”

  “Fine. I’ll do some research. I know what empathy and memory are, but this magical thinking bears further investigation.”

  I prop myself up on the sofa. “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

  “Or take a long nap,” Professor Isabella says, pushing me back and drawing the covers over me and my dragons.

  By the next evening, Professor Isabella has finished her research and Abalone has brought the Ivy Green files into a readable form. I have spent the day nervously house-cleaning and every surface glistens. The air is heavy with the scent of polish.

  “Who wants to start?” Abalone asks, propping her computer on her knees and leaning comfortably against a wall.

  “Let me,” Professor Isabella requests. “I’ve been reading since yesterday and have come up with some rather interesting information.”

  “About this magical thinking?”

  “Yes.”

  Drumming the floor with my heels, I suggest, “Make haste, the better foot before.”

  “Briefly, then,” Professor Isabella says, “magical thinking is a concept referring to the irrational tendency of people to associate the qualities of the animate with the inanimate. In earlier days, this took the form of imagining that spirits dwelt in items or places. The practice is common. The Japanese Shinto is centered around spirits or ‘kami,’ for example. The ancient Greeks imagined natural spirits—naiads, sylphs, dryads, which inhabited water, air, and trees.”

  She pauses to check her notes. “The temptation to lecture further is overwhelming, but let me move closer to my point. Even though people no longer formally acknowledge their belief in spirits for the inanimate, the practice remains. Athletes are particularly conspicuous for their belief that a certain ‘lucky’ item—shoe, shirt, bat—affects their play. Children insist that a certain treasured toy is ‘real’—not a thing of cloth or plastic. Even otherwise balanced, rational individuals will attribute traits of life to an unliving object.”

  I nod. This makes perfect sense to me—so much so that I wonder at the need for a lengthy explanation. Abalone looks skeptical.

  “You mean, like superstition?”

  “Yes, but more.” Professor Isabella raises a finger. “Imagine if you can someone, an actual person if possible, whom you truly hate.”

  The expression that flickers across Abalone’s face is so ugly and intense that there is no doubt that she has fastened on someone quite specific.

  “Now think of someone you like and trust—Head Wolf, for example.”

  Abalone nods.

  Professor Isabella smiles. “Now imagine I have two identical shirts here and I tell you that one was worn by Head Wolf and one by the other person. Which would you choose to wear?”

  “Why, Head Wolf’s!”

  “Even if I told you that both shirts had been laundered several times since being worn?”

  Abalone grins. “Yep, even if.”

  “And if I gave you the wrong shirt by accident and you learned that you were wearing this other shirt?”

  Abalone shakes as if to rid herself of an uncomfortable feeling.

  “I wouldn’t like it very much—I’d feel sick.”

  “Magical thinking.” Professor Isabella gestures, palms outward. “No reason to it, just a human quirk. Or is it?”

  “Go on,” Abalone prompts. “How does this tie into Sarah?”

  “I suspect that she…Well, pull your files, dear. I don’t just want to toss out guesses.”

  “Okay.” Abalone works for a moment. “There’s a series of these Brain Scan test charts. My guess from the dates is that they are the results of tests done at different times.”

  “Yes, that makes sense.”

  “Then there are these charts.” Abalone angles the screen so that we can see. “They’re comparing three sets of results. The colors stand for different people. Most often, Dylan, Sarah, and Eleanora. Sometimes other people.”

  “Hmm, other test subjects or possibly controls.” Professor Isabella drums the table. “Any write-ups on Sarah?”

  “Some, really jargon filled but, from what I get, the fact that she didn’t talk made it tough for them to guess what she had. They knew she had something, not how much. Dylan seems to be the big favorite; Eleanora scored way up there on memory, but lower in empathy and nearly null in magical thinking. After a point, she isn’t shown on as many charts, usually just an annual survey.”

  “Sarah’s files end when?”

  “About when she must have been transferred to the Home. I’ll do some more hunting to see if either of the others have later records.”

  “Very good. However, what you have found thus far confirms some of my guesses.” Professor Isabella steeples her gnarled fingers. “I believe that Sarah and her siblings were part of a project to cultivate magical thinking. Whether they were the result of breeding for the tendency or something else, I cannot guess at this point. What I can guess is that the experiment was most successful with Dylan. His charted abilities are higher than Sarah’s in magical thinking and empathy. Sarah’s memory is listed as better. Eleanora, although extraordinary in some ways, was apparently a washout from the experimenter’s point of view. What do you think so far?”

  I nod. This matches my awakening memories some, although Eleanora is but faintly remembered and those memories see her as near grown while I am quite small. I doubt that I saw her often.

  “I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory,” I comment, “to the ground of Result and Fact.”

  “Yeah,” Abalone agrees, “but what I don’t get is why anyone would want to create superstitious people.”

  “Ah,” Professor Isabella smiles. “Not superstitious—magical thinkers—people who so believe in or perhaps sense the living spirits in the inanimate world that what is dead matter to you and me might somehow be able to communicate with them.”

  “Sharp old bird, ain’t she,” Betwixt comments.

  “Sharper than most,” Between cuts
in. “Now, hush.”

  I scratch them both at the base of the necks and listen.

  “Whoosh!” Abalone shakes her head so that the locks dance like candle flames. “That’s a lot to believe: Sarah able to talk to ‘things.’ She can’t even talk to people.”

  “I’m not certain that Sarah can talk to things any more easily than she can to us. I’ve noticed that even when she’s muttering to herself she uses the same quote patterns as the rest of the time. What I am saying is that things may be able to talk to Sarah.”

  “What do you think, Sarah?” Abalone asks. “Has the professor hit on the truth?”

  I hesitate. The professor’s theories about Ivy Green and investigation into magical thinking are tantalizing. They fit many curious holes in my memory, holes that I am beginning to be suspicious about. I should remember more. I had been nearly an adolescent when I left there for the Home. And some memories—of Dylan especially—have been coming back so vividly.

  I shake myself out of conjecture and try to honestly answer Abalone’s question.

  “’Tis strange, but true; for truth is always strange—Stranger than fiction,” I finally say.

  “Oh, wow!” Abalone’s eyes get round. “If we could only be sure about this.”

  Professor Isabella smiles slyly. “I think we have proof already, Abalone. When I take Sarah to a museum, she often spends time muttering to a painting or sculpture. I started noticing that she was quoting things I had never read to her—but I dismissed this, thinking someone else must have taught her and she’s simply remembering. You, however, have had a more definitive experience.”

  “What?” Abalone is clearly puzzled.

  “What did Sarah say when you asked her how she got out of the secretary’s cell at the police station?”

  “She said something about the walls having ears,” Abalone says slowly. “Oh, flip-it! You mean…”

  “That’s right. What if for Sarah the walls don’t only have ears, but mouths as well? What if the wall told her how to get out?”