“It’s just that he’s worried about Smokehill too,” Martha said in an undertone, as we were cleaning out one of the raccoon cages at the orphanage the next day. I blinked at her. I hadn’t realized she’d gotten over being afraid of him in the last two years. I wanted to say that what Eric worried about was Eric but I was two years older too and I finally knew what Dad had been talking about when he’d told me that we were lucky to have him. Although why it was like he had to make up for all the good stuff and hard work he did by being sheer torture to be around is one of those mysteries of life.
“He got worse right after the poacher got killed,” Martha went on. Well, I knew that, but at the time I was too Lois-possessed to recognize any subtleties about worseness, beyond the part about him cleaning odorata’s cage more often because I wasn’t available. And since then while I still put my away-from-Lois hours in as evenly around the Institute as I could I really dreaded the time within hoarse-bellow range of Eric, which I hadn’t before, and lately, when I’d started taking three or even four hours away from Lois, one and a half in the morning and maybe two and a half in the afternoon, depending on how mellow she seemed to be feeling about it, that meant I had to show up at the zoo every day and I felt like Eric was leaving worse marks on me than Lois ever did.
“And he’s got worse again lately,” she added. “I’m quite worried about him really.” She looked over her shoulder—toward the noise of Eric’s voice roaring about something or other—with a tiny frown and she looked all grown-up and wise.
“Only you—or your mother—would waste time worrying about Eric,” I said, probably rather bitterly.
Martha was silent for a minute while we lifted the raccoons back into their nice clean cage and gave them a few peanuts to make them think the process was worthwhile. Raccoons are pretty easy if you’re nice to them. It doesn’t have to be a hugely complicated niceness with raccoons. When I’d first had Lois some of the orphans didn’t like me for a while; I suppose I must have smelled like the enemy although I can’t really see a dragon bothering with little stuff like chipmunks and sparrows. It was the raccoons that were willing to overlook my kinky new smell first and then in one of those weird ripple effect things everybody else decided that I was still okay too, as much as any human (any human bearing food) was okay and I’d never had any trouble since and occasionally something seemed to like me better. I’d had my first hands-on experience with a Yukon wolf cub about ten months before. (Because of Julie when San Diego’s nursing bitch died they sent her one surviving cub to Eric.) It still hadn’t started biting me—I don’t mean puppy bites, I mean biting—weeks after everybody else was wearing heavy gloves and boots, including Eric. Curiosity probably killed the raccoon about the same time it killed the cat though.
Finally Martha said, “I know he picks on you. But he has to pick on someone and you’re—you’re really the most Smokehilly of all of us, you know? You’ve got that same okay-maybe-there’s-a-world-out-there-but-I’m-not-interested thing that he does. You were like that before—before.” Even out of earshot of anyone else, away from Lois you didn’t say her name. “Even your dad and my mom have more of a clue.”
I looked at her and felt my look turning into a glare. The idea that I was even more clueless than my dad wasn’t going over too well either. “Are you trying to tell me that Eric hates me because I’m like him?”
Martha laughed. (She wasn’t afraid of me at all.) “No. I think he picks on you because you’re what he’d’ve liked to have been. Do you know he grew up in the city? Washington, DC. Twelve stories up. He started out with goldfish and turtles because they were small and cheap and they didn’t make a lot of noise, and he could get them past his parents, who were some kind of lawyers for the government.” Which only goes to prove that Martha can get anyone to tell her their life story. “And you know I think he’s horrible to the investigators deliberately. Let them waste their time on him.”
It kind of made me thoughtful, especially since Martha had the same idea about Eric and the investigators as I’d had. I might’ve come up with the idea out of perversity as much as anything, but Martha was coming at it straight on and still thought so. So on the last day—I’d be leaving before dawn the next morning, the better to smuggle Lois past anyone who might be looking blearily out their kitchen window waiting for the kettle to boil—I actually tracked him down in his office. I admit I wavered on the threshold, before he’d seen me.
He was crouched over his computer (very unhealthy posture: someone should tell him: not me) where he was surrounded by piles of papers even scarier-looking than my dad’s—this was partly because the window was always open in there (any time the temperature was above freezing) and not only wind and rain came through but also Eric’s crow and this summer’s crow offspring. A lot of crows croaking and creaking together actually sound a lot like Eric (in a good mood). But it was only Eric (muttering to himself) this afternoon.
I stepped firmly over the doorsill and as Eric whirled around in his chair with a scowl no mere teenage boy could hope to compete with, I said, “I just wanted to say thanks for everything you’ve taught me about—about animals. And stuff. It’s going to be really useful when I’m out at Westcamp.”
He’d stood up when he recognized who it was, which didn’t help his mood any because in the last year I’d got seriously taller than he was, and with him glaring at me I forgot the rest of what I was going to say. So I stuck my hand out instead. This was not planned. There is no way I would have planned such a great opportunity for Eric to make a jerk out of me, when he refused to shake it. But he did. Shake it, I mean. It felt like a perfectly normal hand too. A little more callused than some, maybe—like a Ranger’s hand. And then I turned and fled. Trying not to look like I was fleeing, of course, but I was. But Eric must have been as spooked as I was because he didn’t shout anything after me.
So I got back to Billy and Grace’s house—my house for the last almost two years—actually feeling kind of good, like I’d achieved something. I was in a bad way.
I was already as much packed up as I was going to be before tomorrow morning and adding the toothbrush and so on so I didn’t have anything much to do—except play with Lois, of course. There was always playing with Lois. I’d often wished she slept more, like dogs do, and we’d never found a way to pen her up effectively. As she’d got bigger and friskier we’d tried. But she had a habit of simply walking through anything she didn’t think should be there, and I didn’t want her to hurt herself. Or to get any ideas about like house walls. In her mutant armadillo way she was pretty tough and strong. When she’d first been doing her I Am Master of All I Survey thing she’d managed to get herself stuck between two rungs of one of the kitchen chairs and she’d cracked the chair frame before I got her out—and she’d still been pretty little then. Although some of how the chair frame had got cracked was because she’d rushed screaming to Mom, and Mom took some collateral damage while as you might say fighting for the off switch.
But I was glad of the distraction that afternoon because while there is no way I’d’ve admitted it I was feeling kind of strange about this trip. It could have been only the grindingly ongoing thing of Lois as this increasing problem—plus I’d never done anything like this study I was supposed to be doing—because I really was going to try to do it, as well as hide Lois where no one could find her—plus I’d never been away from the Institute that long either—plus I had no idea how long that was going to be. The longest I’d ever been away was when I’d found Lois, and that wasn’t exactly a reassuring memory. Did I just say “it could have been only”?
But it wasn’t going to be that big a deal really (I told myself). It wasn’t like I was ever going to be alone. There’d be a Ranger with me all the time, although only one—whoever they could spare—who knew about Lois. It wouldn’t be Billy very often. He actually had national profile these days, did Billy. Martha and Eleanor told me that he was one of Smokehill’s best counteroffensives against the
Searles. A lot of people are still willing to get all soggy over any Native American with a cause, and Billy really looks the part. He didn’t do a lot of talking (of course) but he’d stand there and look solemn and chiseled while Dad or someone did the moving-mouth thing.
Which meant we kept having camera people at Smokehill, and didn’t they hate what our fence did to their equipment. At least this dampened their enthusiasm for trying to wheedle themselves into filming more of Smokehill, not that they would have succeeded. Sometimes they had the interviews at Wilsonville’s weeny TV station instead. Wilsonville’s weeny TV station, which looked like somebody’s garage, possibly because it was somebody’s garage, didn’t know what hit it. The only live interviews they were used to getting were things like with the eight-year-old who got a kitten for her birthday but the kitten was so freaked by the party that it went straight up a tree and the fire brigade had to get it down. (They interviewed both the kid and the fireman.)
And I’d miss Dad and Martha and Grace and everybody else. Partly because I know what wilderness really is I had the sense to be in awe of it. And to know that living at the Institute is nothing like living in the park. And then there was Lois. (All trains of thought lead to Lois.) What would she think of living in the park? To the extent that there was ANY long-term plan about all this, because even I knew I couldn’t just spend the rest of my life marooned at Westcamp with Lois (…could I?), the plan was that the dragon study I was supposed to be starting was going to get so interesting (were we going to have to make up readings? That was a really depressing thought. That really is the worst thing in the world to a scientist—being accused of making stuff up, of falsifying data—worse even than being a Bad Scientist or a bank robber) that we’d decide to make it permanent. Which would mean somebody could always be out here keeping it running.
Ultimately this was supposedly going to mean that we got Lois used to having some other human stooge than me, so I got to cycle back to the Institute again and see everyone, while Jo or Whiteoak or somebody kept Lois company for a while. Martha was old enough, she could hike out with some change of the guard some time and come see me. Us. The idea of leaving Lois behind was way scary—being away from her for like weeks, which is what it would take. I’d—we’d—got her from ninety-second showers by herself to four-hour stretches a day by herself…and dragons do grow up…it ought to be possible. The idea wasn’t entirely new, you know? It was just an extension of what we were already doing. But…
But it wasn’t that, or maybe that was the beginning of what it really was. Which was that everything was changing. Whatever happened now—even if some big-deal fairy waved her magic wand and suddenly Lois was okay and we didn’t have to hide her any more—this was the end of something. And the beginning of something too, but I knew what it used to be, and I had no idea what it was going to be. It might be worse.
While I was whizzing around this stupid little circle of useless thought and only half paying attention to Lois, who seemed to be trying to teach me to balance a stick on the end of my nose (very evolutionarily important in dragons I’m sure), Martha turned up. Occasionally she—very occasionally Eleanor—managed to sneak over to see Lois. I kind of suspect that Billy and Grace knew about this, but they weren’t making any trouble for us about knowing it officially, so it had gone on happening.
Martha didn’t have much to say, but she wasn’t a big chatter, and besides, if she was going to mess with my head like she did about Eric, I was glad she didn’t do it any more often. I wanted to tell her about talking to Eric that afternoon, but I was too embarrassed. So I just stood there leaning against the kitchen door and having idiotically nostalgic thoughts about the claw marks on the sill, and watching her petting Lois—with gloves on. It had turned out Lois liked this, despite my attempts to be rational and assume she wouldn’t because her skin was too thick (a Warning against Rationality) and would roll over and offer her tummy almost like a dog, although since her tummy is even hotter than the rest of her, the gloves are really necessary, and the spinal plates prevent her from really rolling onto her back either. I had been a little bit jealous of this at first. It was the first time anyone but me had ever figured anything out about Lois, I mean anything interesting, not like Grace putting vegetables into baby Lois’ broth.
There was a funny noise and I realized Martha was crying. I started to say, “Oh, shi—” but I stopped, because I really do try not to say shi—, unless Eleanor is driving me nuts, even when Dad isn’t around to make a scene about it. I went over to them and patted her on the shoulder and she stood up and turned around and put her arms around me and sobbed into my shirt. Two years ago this would have horrified me so much I probably would have said “oh, shi—” while I shook her off and jumped back about a mile, but that was before Lois, and a salty wet spot and maybe a little snot down my shirt is nothing to me now. And nor is—er—someone leaning on me, you know? But I was still pretty embarrassed. For one thing she was almost fifteen and had breasts. The only breasts I was used to being hugged up against were Grace’s. Grace was a good hugger. And this was Martha. Martha had always been special (breasts or no breasts).
But mainly I was just surprised. It was that extra empathy, or whatever it was, that Martha had. The kind that could get someone like Eric to tell her about his childhood. (That he’d had a childhood was revelation enough.) Her record keeping orphans alive was better than mine. I was never much good with the ones that wanted to give up, I just got really upset and frustrated. Martha could sometimes like make the ones who didn’t want to live want to live after all. It was the same empathy that made her try petting Lois with gloves.
I did wonder, wistfully, if maybe Martha was worrying a little about me. And maybe even going to miss me. I mean, she had to like me, it was just her and me and Eleanor, like I keep saying. But there’s missing and missing.
“Sorry,” muttered Martha, letting go. I was relieved (except maybe about the breasts).
“We can talk on the two-way,” I said. “I’ll let you know how she gets on.”
Martha tried to smile. “We’ll have to make up a code.”
“We’ll need a lot of words. We’ll need a lot of words just for Lois.”
“We can pretend she’s a crow and her family, like Eric’s Zelda.” Martha looked thoughtful. “If her wings start growing you can tell me about your fledgling.” Lois had lately started flapping her wing-nubs when she got excited. If she was still doing this and her wings started growing properly I’d probably be talking about my scars.
“If she breathes any fire I’ll tell you about the lightning strike,” I said, hoping I wasn’t being too literal there either.
“If she’s being a pest you can tell me to say hi to Eleanor for you,” Martha said, and now she was smiling.
“What if I just want to say hi to Eleanor?”
“It’s the same thing. Lois is always a pest. Like Eleanor. We love her anyway.”
The next morning Billy and Jane and Lois and I set off for Westcamp. I didn’t really start to breathe easier till about the fourth night out. We weren’t going very fast because twenty-three-month-old dragons are not built for walking but they’re way too heavy to carry very far. You try carrying a big German Shepherd, even in a tailor-made backpack, for more than a mile or two, on top of all your gear. I still carried her a little, but that was more for comfort than covering ground. We had thought about making a litter for her, but she would have hated that; she’d been pretty much into everything since she first started climbing out of her sling, but she was in some kind of extreme toddler stage lately of wanting to poke her nose into EVERYTHING (fortunately if there were any skunks around they saw us before we saw them) although she was better natured about keeping up (so long as you never went much faster than an amble) and not having tantrums than most of the human toddlers I saw at the Institute tourist center.
But with about fifty miles between us and the gate, that fourth evening, I actually felt myself relaxing. It was
such a strange feeling at first I didn’t know what it was. I felt light-headed and sort of floppy or sloppy and my first thought was, “Oh no—I can’t get sick now”—and then it occurred to me that I was just unwinding for like the first time in almost two years. (Or maybe four years. Since Mom died.)
It was true I always felt a little easier about things, which is to say about Lois, when I was out in the park with her, on our little field trips with Billy or Kit or Whiteoak, although even then it took about a day to sink in. So on the fourth evening of our not little but Big No Going Back trip, when Lois indicated that her working day was at an end by galloping up to me (she had a very strange gallop, diagonal, with her unwieldy tail held awkwardly to one side, and while her little legs were nearly a blur she didn’t actually go very fast), cannoning into my feet, and starting to snore, I sat down, slipped my backpack off, and started trying to unknot my muscles, both from General Permanent Life at the Institute Maximum Stress and also not-familiar-enough walking-and-packing-through-the-park sheer physical weariness.
We were at the top of a little dell, with a stream at the bottom (there was always a stream at the bottom of dells in eastern Smokehill) going chucklechucklechucklehahahaha over the stones, the way running water does, and spruce and a few white birch raggedly climbing the slope among the rock and scree and scrub. I’d managed to slither into an almost chairlike series of small hummocks padded with dead leaves and pine needles (which were probably wet, but I didn’t have to know that till I got up again) and wasn’t sorry to be sitting still for a few minutes, guiltily aware that I should be helping gather firewood and set up camp, but if nobody called me…. I was half asleep myself when a bare browny-gray branch near the top of the nearest spruce spread its wings and turned into a great horned owl. I swear it came swooping down in our direction for no other reason than to get a closer look at Lois. That woke me up. But even awake (well: call it fuzzily half awake) I felt different. Lighter. Sillier. Tell me a bad joke and I’ll laugh. I just lay there enjoying the sensation (and feeling my backside getting soggy).
Dragon Haven Page 17