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Thirteen

 

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

Shakespeare, King Lear

 

Her name was Shaughnessy Taylor. She was twenty-four years old and, like me, she'd been in school the day of the Change. She'd been in her first year of college, though, majoring in marine biology. She'd lived with a man the first two years after the Change. He'd become bored with her and one morning she woke up in the dorm room that served as their home to find him gone, no note.

She'd read Don Quixote before. "But go ahead," she said when Ariel asked me to continue the story. "I loved it." I read aloud and thought about other things than Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. In the first place, I wondered what to think of Shaughnessy. Strangely, she intimidated me. Though only four years older, she made me feel immature, inexperienced. She hadn't done anything to cause those feelings; it was mostly generated by self-doubt. The fact that she couldn't touch Ariel both elated and depressed me. I felt sorry she couldn't and special because she couldn't; I felt embarrassed because I could and because she knew it.

She'd read fantasy books ever since she learned how to read. "In high school," she told me, "I started collecting fantasy animals. Especially dragons and unicorns." She played Dungeons & Dragons. Avidly. She'd seen Star Wars nine times.

Most of this I learned after darkness fell. I'd stopped reading when the light began to dim, but we still had a couple hours more walking to do. I was pushing to make up for lost time, despite what it was doing to my feet. Ariel never complained about walking and George had turned out to be pretty tough when you got right down to it. Shaughnessy just started talking about herself to all of us when I put the book away. I'd expected her to complain about the walking but she never breathed a word—not even to ask why we were in such an all-fired hurry to reach New York. I got the impression she didn't care; she was content just to be with us. Or rather, with Ariel.

We made camp a little after eight. Shaughnessy didn't have a sleeping bag. Mine was a down-filled bag with a nylon cover that zipped around three sides to open into a wide pad. The night was warm and, barring rain, I would probably sleep on top of the bag rather than in it. I could have opened it out and shared half with Shaughnessy, but I wasn't going to.

I boiled water and made instant coffee, black and sugarless. Shaughnessy had a cup also. George declined, saying he couldn't abide the stuff. I dug out my two collapsible metal cups and gave one to Shaughnessy. I usually tried to take it easy on coffee consumption; being a diuretic, it increased the frequency of urination and caused dehydration. I tried to hold it down to no more than a cup a day, but usually drank it just before bedtime—the worst time to. My urine had begun to turn bright orange days ago, but not from dehydration. Our thirty miles a day walking, at current elevation, was enough to cause my body to begin breaking down its own muscle protein. I'd had to calm George down because the same thing was happening to him. He'd thought something was wrong and blood was in his urine.

Supper was a feast of freeze-dried steaks (bless George!) and vegetables. After eating I lay back, shifting around to find a comfortable place. My head was propped against a large rock, and smaller ones dug in through the fabric of my sleeping bag at awkward angles. I stared into the crackling, flickering fire and did my best to think about nothing at all.

I'd piled rocks in a semicircle to help serve as a windbreak for the fire, and I'd found a couple of thick, green branches and put them over the ashes of the already burned ones. They'd keep the fire banked and smoldering through the night.

After a while, when it seemed as if everyone else had fallen asleep—George had offered Shaughnessy his sleeping bag; she declined politely and elected to sleep on the ground a few yards from the fire, though I'm sure George's intentions were pure—I picked Fred up from beside me and polished the blade with a rag and a little 3-in-One oil. Reflections of the fire ran molten gold down the length of the blade as I turned it in my hands. The crickets sang a hallelujah chorus, with a frog supplying intermittent bass. The fire's sound was made for hot chocolate and quilts.

I'd taken off my boots when we'd set up camp and had carefully toweled my feet dry. They were healing, gradually. Still, salt from perspiration made the blisters sting during the day, and I had to keep them dry to prevent the sores from festering. Infection was the last thing I needed.

I was afraid to go to sleep. The dreams had begun to stay with me after I awoke and I feared to sleep again for dreaming. That sounded suspiciously like a line from Hamlet but was true nonetheless. I used to like to sleep; it was a time for recuperation, a time of pleasant but unsuspected images running rampant inside my head. Lately, though, those images had become cohesive, persistent ones, growing more detailed each time. Nothing bad ever happened to me in them—actually, I guess the opposite was true, depending on your point of view—but they bothered me. To occupy my mind and time I dragged my backpack around to my side of the rock, untied it, and began unpacking it to take stock. The inventory was scantier than I'd have liked, but I'd make it. I fished two tubes of epoxy from the pile of unpacked things and repaired the hole where the arrow had pierced. While it dried I inspected the pack. A little worse for the wear, but holding up, though it wouldn't be too long before I'd have to find a new one. It was olive-drab nylon, patched in a few places with silver-gray duct tape. New backpacks were hard to find, so rather than let it give up the ghost on several occasions, I had repaired it, re-waterproofed it, taped it, and sewn it. It was the same one I'd left home with in South Florida, six or so years ago. My parents had given it to me as a Christmas present when I was thirteen. I'd read On the Beach and Alas, Babylon and become convinced the world was about to blow itself up in a nuclear holocaust at any second, and I needed to be ready in case it happened. I think my parents gave it to me to shut me up.

I wasn't being very realistic about nuclear war: we lived about fifteen miles from Homestead Air Force Base, a key coastal defense station, and though the blast probably wouldn't kill us, the firestorms or the fallout almost certainly would.

My parents never understood my morbid fascination with the concept of the end of the world. Because we lived away from the city, I sometimes walked down the street to the canal (the one at which I later saw the manticore), and it was easy, with no cars coming and no city noises, to pretend something had wiped everybody out. Everybody but me. I think I wanted it that way. I thought up endless scenarios: the typical and clichéd ones of nuclear annihilation, others involving humankind wiped out by mutant viruses, bacteriological warfare, invading aliens, or disappearance in some great exodus I'd somehow missed out on.

But I'd never figured on anything like the Change. And when it happened it turned out to be nothing like what I'd wanted all along. It wasn't some grand and glorious heroic struggle, One Man's Fight for Survival. It was work, and it hurt—emotionally and physically. I never found out what happened to some people I cared for very much. The end of the world turned out to be something I preferred to fantasize about rather than experience. In that wandering time before I met Ariel there was one thought that often ran through my head: I'd always wanted to be alone like this, but I'd never realized it would be so lonely.

I sighed and threw a pebble into the fire. It was outlined ephemerally in black against the orange and landed with the sound of a heavy raindrop on wood chips.

Better repack that shit, I thought, and set to it. I think I was up till two in the morning putting that damned pack back together. When it was done I tied it securely against possible rain and inevitable morning dew and returned it to its place on the other side of the rock. I checked the fire to be sure it was well banked and controlled. It had died down to a smoldering devil's pit that gave off an occasional flicker. It would be all right until morning, but to be sure I added wood shavings from a young branch, then set the stripped branch on top. I thought about going to bed and realized I wasn't tired.

I grabbed the bag George had given me and sat by the fire. I took off my shirt, spread it out on the ground, and dumped the bag's contents onto it. I picked up a strand of fake pearls and began pulling them off. Half of them were either too large or too small; I threw them away. The others I set aside on the shirt. Beads sorted, I grabbed wirecutters and umbrella wire and began snipping off four- and five-inch lengths, cutting at an angle until I had three dozen lengths of steel wire and about as many hard plastic beads. I picked up a wire and held an end into the flame until it was cherry red. I touched it to a bead, using the hole where the string had been as a guide to be sure the wire was centered. It melted its way to the center of the bead; I set it aside and started another. When I was finished I had three dozen blowgun darts, which I put into a pouch that had originally been a carrying case for a pocket camera. I'd fitted a half-inch block of Styrofoam into the bottom and pushed the tips of the darts in. The case was held shut by Velcro, and the darts stood upright, embedded in the foam.

A jet of flame in the distance caught my eye as I was pushing darts into the case. It was level with the horizon and just a touch above it, but it looked closer than that. It was a small streak of orange across the night sky, like a meteor, but with none of the sparkler-like shedding of a meteor. I fought the urge to blink and it flared again, a bright, even orange-red. No meteor; it was a tongue of flame. With the second flare came a distant sound, something like the sound you hear on a beach at night, the sound of a big wave beginning to build. A deep roar. I shut my eyes, seeing afterimages. Son of a bitch, I thought. A dragon. I looked at the sleeping figure on the other side of Ariel. Poor George—it wouldn't be long now.

I kept a lookout for another fifteen minutes but saw nothing else. Presently I went to bed.

 

* * *

 

Next day Shaughnessy and I debated whether or not we missed technology—she taking the affirmative, I the negative. Shaughnessy believed that we had lost our humanity along with civilization; my position was that, except for a change in hardware, things were still pretty much the same. Ariel kept interjecting smart-assed comments.

Shaughnessy and I argued—pardon me, debated—the entire afternoon, and never our twain did meet.

 

* * *

 

Two days later: our eleventh night on the road. We had skirted around Greensboro. I wanted to avoid cities; something bad happened every time we went into one. Cities were where people were, and I didn't want to be where people were. People either posed threats, demanded to come along, or presented the possibility that news would reach New York that we—Ariel in particular—were on the way. Gossip traveled faster than we could.

Shaughnessy's feet had begun to hurt. I taped her instep just behind the toes where it was irritated and likely to blister. I lanced a blister on her right heel, taped that, and gave her a pair of my socks. I told her to tie her shoes so they were loose at the toes and tight farther up; this would keep blood circulating freely in her foot but would prevent the shoe from rubbing as she walked. My own feet were still healing fairly well.

At a store just outside Greensboro George exchanged red silk shirt and blue slacks for plain white T-shirt and jeans. Shaughnessy got another pair of tennis shoes. We were still on I-85, headed almost due east. We'd continue in that direction until we reached Durham, where the road turned northeast and remained more or less parallel to the coast. Not a lot had happened the past two days. Shaughnessy and I argued about damn near any subject either of us brought up, with Ariel chiming in occasionally. George grew increasingly restless but, as usual, said little. He would pace after we set up camp, and now and then his hand reached for the security of his sword's handle. I continued practicing with Fred each evening.

We had to settle for a lousy campsite that night; apparently somebody had been careless with a campfire, or maybe dropped a cigarette, and the woods had burned for miles. Not knowing how much farther we'd have to travel to find unburned ground, I decided to make camp where we were. Getting a fire going was difficult but I managed it after several false starts, and we used the remainder of our water to cook our freeze-dried dinner. I hoped to find more on the way to Durham tomorrow, possibly in Durham if we hadn't found any by then.

We adjusted to the bitter stench of burned wood, but it was always there in the background, and Shaughnessy complained it gave her a headache. There was also something else, some underlying aroma I couldn't identify: heavy, musky.

We all ate heartily and went to bed tired. Ariel annoyed me by sleeping on the charred ground; I knew it would neither bother her while she slept nor leave any traces of itself on her when she got up.

Simple consideration got the best of me and I unfolded my sleeping bag completely and let Shaughnessy sleep on one side. She thanked me and we went to bed back to back. It took me an hour to get to sleep; I was afraid to dream again with Shaughnessy behind me. I could feel her body heat across the six inches that separated us. After a while my uncomfortable-ness slipped into dim confusion and I was asleep. I think I dreamed again, but only vague stirrings this time, nebulous as ink in water. A vaguely familiar sound woke me in the middle of the night. I kept my eyes closed. There was sweat on my body, hot where I touched the down-filled bag, cool along my left arm and ribcage. I heard the sound again, and the reason it seemed familiar floated to the surface: my grandparents had had a furnace, a big one that grumbled loudly about having to warm their ancient, drafty, and creaky house. I was half asleep and the thought swam in my mind like a tadpole. I opened my eyes. An orange glow stretched shadows of the rocks and trees away from me. I rolled over, noticing that Shaughnessy had pressed against me for warmth, and looked into the sky. "Holy shit!"

Shaughnessy jerked away, saying "What?" in a sleepy voice.

"George! Ariel! Get up, goddamn, get up!"

George jumped up quickly as another tongue of flame jetted into the sky. Ariel bolted up also. "Oh, shit," she breathed. George made inarticulate sounds and seemed to be trying very hard to swallow. Shaughnessy had popped up after Ariel and George. She asked me what the hell was going on. In answer I pointed behind her and up. She turned around and said, "Oh, my goodness."

It floated above us, flapping its wings lazily. Occasionally it buoyed on the wind; I saw what Ariel had meant about the gasbag. It vaguely resembled a leather Zeppelin being fucked by a sea serpent, but this is in no way intended to make the thing sound comical. Quite the contrary, it looked as if it could easily eat all of us in two, maybe three swallows. As we watched, the dragon rolled its huge head in a lazy circle on its long neck, opened its mouth, and belched out a healthy flame-thrower's dose. It was too high for the flame to reach us, but I felt the heat. Its breath stank like the afterburn from a bad Mexican dinner.

I forgot Ariel's admonition to George and looked into its eyes . . . .

There was an animated Disney film, The Jungle Book, based on the Kipling story. It had a python with a funny name, though I can't remember what it was. It had those eyes . . . . You looked into them and the pupils dilated into multicolored bands. The dragon's eyes caught the firelight, drank it up until it spread into a pale yellow glow. The pupils were twin motes punched into the centers of the eyes. Ariel's voice came from a long way off. "It's the fire. I should have known."

"Known what?" Shaughnessy sounded as if she were underwater.

"The campfire. Dragons use their fire-breathing as a mating call." She paused. "The ground all around here—this is a mating ground."

My head turned to follow the dragon's every motion, eyes glued to its own strange and fascinating eyes. Toward the bottom of my peripheral vision I saw the tail curl, roll, and straighten like a deadly banner, scaled, ridged, arrowhead-tipped. I didn't move my eyes to look; I couldn't. Those beautiful and frightening eyes . . . .

"It thinks the campfire is another dragon," Ariel continued, "and it's come to mate. They can't mate in the air; they have to land and—Pete!" Her sharp voice jerked my head toward her automatically, breaking the spell. "Don't look into its eyes!"

George carefully averted his gaze from the huge beast and bent down to his sleeping bag. He picked up his broadsword and drew the blade.

Sixty feet above our heads the dragon had begun to circle. The breeze from its wings ruffled Ariel's mane. It rumbled as its bulk glided over us.

"Maybe we should put out the fire," Shaughnessy suggested.

"Good idea," said Ariel.

Having no water to quench the campfire, I grabbed a burned-out log and pressed it over sections of the campfire until the twigs, wood chips, and logs were only smoking. Dying embers glowed dull orange.

I grabbed the crossbow from Ariel's pack. "Just in case, I said.

"You'll probably just make it mad," she said.

The dragon sent out another jet of flame, then another, this one smaller, tentative. Ariel watched it; the eyes didn't seem to bother her. "It can't keep that up and stay in the air," she said. "It's using up hydrogen like crazy. I think it's wondering what happened to the dragon it thought was here. With any luck it'll forget about it and go away."

"If it came here to get laid," said Shaughnessy, "it won't forget about it that easily."

"I wouldn't know."

Shaughnessy gave her a sidelong look, one eyebrow raised. "How do unicorns mate, I wonder?"

Ariel looked away from the circling dragon. "None of your goddamned business."

"I think it's leaving," I said. Ariel and Shaughnessy were glaring at each other.

The dragon stopped flapping in a circle and angled itself upward. With slow wingbeats it pulled itself skyward. By the time I looked away it was a dark blotch against the night sky. "Well," I said, "so much for dragon-slaying adventures. How disappointing." I lowered the crossbow.

George sheathed his sword. "I'm never gonna be able to go back home."

Shaughnessy looked at him in amusement, looked to the blue-black sky where the dragon had vanished, then back to George. "Sorry you're let down, George, but personally I'm sorta pleased with the outcome, you know?"

Whatever reply he would have made was drowned out by a roar I felt in my bones. A new star blazed in the sky, falling to earth like a fastball pitched by Zeus. The ground lit up in Halloween colors. I snapped the crossbow up, finger fumbling for the trigger. I had little time and I needed to put a bolt straight down its throat and hope it didn't burn to ash before it got there. If I missed, it meant a certain groundfight, because the thing wouldn't have enough gas left to get aloft. And I didn't want to have to battle those claws—each one was as long as I am tall. I squinted up at the orange light. The heat on my face increased. Aim toward the center of the flame. Squeeze . . . . The bolt flew, its hiss fading into the dragon's roar. The earthquake bellow ceased, and so did the stream of flame. The dragon kept coming. We all ran in four different directions. It landed atop the smoldering remains of the campfire with a whump that jarred my teeth. My knees buckled and I tripped.

Its head reared stupidly and it tried to raise itself. Not ten feet in front of the automobile-sized mouth was George, sword in hand. He stepped forward, then stopped cold. His swordpoint lowered slowly. He was looking into the dragon's eyes.

It tried to burn him. The head reared back on the serpentine neck, struck forward, and hissed. All that came out was the weak sound of escaping hydrogen. Embedded just in front of the tree-trunk-sized right foreleg was the rear half of the crossbow bolt. The beast brought the leg back to try to raise itself and the bolt snapped off. Smoke rose from the embers of the campfire beneath the furious thing.

My eyes widened. "George!" I screamed. "George, run, get out of there!"

He looked my way. My shout must have given him back his bearings: he looked back to the dragon's neck, avoiding the eyes, and brought the sword up in a two-handed grip. He stepped forward.

"No, no, George! Don't—"

It went off like a reptilian Hindenberg. I saw the light of the explosion and managed to twist my head away just as the blast picked me up gently and slammed me down ten feet away. Pieces of dragon went in all directions, slamming into burned trees, plopping onto the grass, pattering the charred ground after being hurled skyward. My right shoulder burned as I picked myself up. I ignored it. A searing on the lower right of my stomach made me look down. the I'M WITH STUPID shirt was eaten half away. I removed it hastily and rubbed off hydrochloric acid—dragon blood—with the back of the shirt. Fortunately only enough had splattered me to turn my skin pink and itchy. I got up in time to see the remains of the fireball as it burned itself out. A thick, slaughterhouse smell hung in the air.

Ariel and Shaughnessy emerged from behind a knot of burned trees. They were arguing and didn't notice me.

"Don't you ever try to touch me again—do you understand me?"

"I'm trying to tell you," replied Shaughnessy defensively, "I didn't mean to. I saw the explosion and grabbed you. It was a reflex."

"You don't know what it feels like."

"I can guess. It hurt me, too."

"Poor baby. Let me tell you something, child." Her eyes were haughty. "You don't deserve to touch me."

Shaughnessy planted her feet and raised her voice half an octave. "You know, ever since I joined you, you've acted like I wasn't worthy of your presence because you're pure as angel's piss—"

"Nobody asked you to come along. You invited yourself."

"Okay, fine. But in the midst of elevating yourself to such pure and lofty heights, you've proven to me you're just as human and fallible as the rest of us, because I think you're jealous."

"What could I possibly be—"

"Where's George?" I interrupted.

They turned to face me. "I . . . don't know," said Shaughnessy.

"Yes, I can see you're both busy with more important things, right? He could be hurt."

"I'll go look for him." Other than a small patch on the right side of her head where she'd been burned, she seemed all right. She turned and stepped over two pounds of cooked dragon meat.

I looked at Ariel with raised eyebrows. "Well?"

"You think she's right."

"I don't know. I don't know if she's right. But since she joined us you have been acting different."

"Different how? Jealous?"

"No. More like . . . threatened. I think you're still preoccupied with your avenues of possibility. It's not like you to stand there arguing with someone while somebody else might need help."

"Mmm." She looked thoughtful, as if she had an opinion of her own she was weighing against mine. "So why are we standing here?"

We looked for George. Scarcely a minute had gone by when Shaughnessy called out. She'd found him behind a boulder, thrown thirty feet from where he'd been in front of the dragon. His right wrist was sprained and he had a broken middle finger on the same hand, cuts, bruises, and a few burns where blood had spattered him. I dug out the first-aid kit and splinted his finger and swabbed his wounds.

"How about you?" I asked Shaughnessy when I finished with George.

"I'm fine, thanks."

"Uh-huh." I made her bend her head forward while I swabbed her scalp. "It'll grow back," I told her, and returned the medkit to the pack. "How about you?" I asked Ariel.

"What are you going to do, give me a Band-Aid?" She laughed. "I don't have a scratch."

"Figures. So what do we do now?"

She tossed her horn. "I guess we make camp again. I doubt we'll have any more—" A jet of flame overhead.

"The explosion," said Shaughnessy. "It'll probably attract them from miles around."

"Lovely," I said. "Fucking lovely."

"I don't think they'll bother us if we don't light another fire," said Ariel.

"I can't tell you how happy that makes me."

"At least George got his dragon." She walked over to where George sat with his back against a rock and nudged him with a hoof. "Right, George?"

"I didn't have anything to do with it." He looked morose.

I re-tied the pack and examined the sleeping bag. A choice cut of dragon flambé had plopped onto one corner and the blood had eaten away most of the material beneath. I picked up the sleeping bag by the other end and pulled. The meat rolled off, feathers dropped out from the hole, and ashes and burned wood chips flaked from the bottom of the bag. I put it over one shoulder, pulled the roll of duct tape from a backpack pocket, and sat beside George. I started patching the eaten-away section.

George stared glumly at his sword. An orange tongue of flame licked the sky and danced in reflection along the blade. I looked up, frowning. "What's the matter?" I asked, looking back to George. "Mad because you didn't get to play hero?"

"Well . . . . I was supposed to kill a dragon and I didn't have anything to do with it. It just blew up all by itself."

I didn't tell him that it had blown up because I'd shot it in the gasbag and the leaking hydrogen had ignited on the remains of the campfire. It would have made him feel worse.

"Your father doesn't have to know that," I said, knowing as the words left my mouth that it was the wrong thing to tell him. He made no reply.

I tried again. "Look, nobody becomes a hero by setting out to do it. Circumstances make heroes. Some people just end up in the right place at the right time and they do something they think is perfectly natural for them to do, and suddenly they're heroes."

"I could have killed it," he said.

I nodded. "That's what counts, George. You did all you could do—I saw you in front of that thing with your sword out. Heroism isn't necessarily doing something. Sometimes it's the willingness to do it, when the occasion is right." Which, I added to myself, isn't often, thank God.

"Isn't it good to be a hero?"

"It's not good to go out of your way to be. It can get you killed—you came pretty close tonight, you know. Look, you've been paying attention to the Don Quixote, haven't you?" He nodded. "That's what usually ends up happening when you set out to be heroic—you get dumped on your ass. I've met people who've done heroic things—but never a real, live honest-to-goodness hero. Those only exist in comic books and hungry imaginations." I looked at the patch job on the sleeping bag. It would hold, at least until I could find another one.

I patted George on the shoulder and told him not to worry and to get some sleep, then I stood up. Before I turned away he said, "Pete?"

"Uh."

"Um, I was supposed to come back with—I mean, my dad told me to bring back a piece of the dragon I killed, to prove I done it."

I nodded and yawned. It stretched my voice out. "We'll look for a piece of tail for you tomorrow, when it's light." I smiled at my own joke, but he didn't get it. He thanked me soberly and said good night.

I walked to the other side of the boulder, looking for a meatless piece of ground big enough for my sleeping bag. Ariel stood before me, tail swishing. "You certainly get preachy when you get half a chance," she said.

I unfurled the bag. "What do you want I should do? He was feeling pretty bad, so I gave him a pep talk." I smoothed out the sleeping bag.

She nodded. "I feel sorry for him. He tries so hard."

"He'll be okay." I drew Fred to check for damage, but there was none, thank goodness.

"I know." She looked at me a long moment. "Sleep well." There was a sarcastic note in her voice. She glanced at Shaughnessy, who was thirty feet away, looking up at the shapes of dragons in the air, their bodies like distant ships seen from below the water.

Ariel walked a short distance away and lay down with her back to me. I looked at the sleeping bag at my feet and looked back to Shaughnessy. I walked past Ariel to her. "We'd better get some sleep," I said.

My voice startled her and she spun, gasping. She put a hand lightly on my arm, placed the other against her chest, fingers spread. "I'm sorry. You scared me."

I glanced at her hand on my right biceps and leaned away just enough for her to lower it. "Sorry," I muttered. "Come on. We've got a lot of walking to do tomorrow."

"I don't know if my feet'll stand up to it." She smiled at the joke. I didn't smile back. We walked to the sleeping bag and she lay down on her side.

"Good night," I said.

She looked surprised. "Good night, Pete."

I went to Ariel and kicked a fist-sized piece of dragon out of the way. She raised her head to look over her back when I knelt beside her. I touched her neck lightly. "Lay back down. I need a pillow."

She lowered her head back to the ground silently and I lay my head on top of her neck. I lay on my back, staring at the starry sky. In some places the stars were blotted out: dragons. I turned onto my side because they made me uncomfortable.

I was exhausted. My sleep was dreamless, I think because of Ariel.

 

* * *

 

I shook George awake.

"Huh? What's going on?" He looked around wildly. "Another dragon?" He reached for his sword.

"Nope. Wake-up time."

He stood and, forgetting his broken finger, tried to crack his knuckles as he yawned and stretched. "Shit." His accent stretched it into two syllables. "'Scuse me," he said to Shaughnessy's amused face.

By daylight the ground was an awful mess. Pieces of dragon meat and internal organs were strewn haphazardly over an area the size of a football field. The stench of ruined meat mingled with the smell of burned wood, producing an odor I could do without smelling again. All of us—except Ariel, of course—were filthy, ragged, and stinking like a slaughterhouse.

"What time is it?" I asked. "Looks like the sun's been up awhile."

George looked at his wrist. "I forgot to wind my watch."

"Five till ten," said Ariel. "I decided we needed the extra sleep."

I nodded. Desperate as I was to catch up to Malachi, we'd have been dragging by midday if we'd got up at sunrise. "All right. We'd better get packed and get a move on."

"I can't come with you," announced George.

We looked at him. He fidgeted. "I mean, I've got to get back home. They're expecting me back, and I've gotta let my dad know about . . . this." He waved his broken-fingered hand at the mess.

I nodded. "We'll help you look for a piece to take back with you, George."

"I ain't sure there's enough left to take back. I mean, most of it just looks like steak."

"We'll find something," promised Ariel.

The four of us searched in separate directions, scouring the blackened ground for something worth taking back, something George could show his father to prove he'd slain a dragon. A bone, a claw . . . . No, too big. A scale from the tail, maybe, or the arrowhead tip. A section of leathery wing.

Naturally it was Ariel who found George's trophy. She called us over to the clump of burned-out trees she and Shaughnessy had run behind the night before. Embedded in a tree trunk was a tooth, its curved yellow-whiteness standing out against the black background. It was a foot long. I worked it loose and gave it to George. It was smooth, cool, and dry. The point was rounded. He stared at it.

"It's perfect, George," I said. "Nothing else around has a tooth like that. Your father will have to believe you."

He looked up at me with the tooth clutched in his hands.

 

* * *

 

We packed. George shouldered his Boy Scout pack with the tooth tucked safely away. I soberly shook his left hand; his right wrist was still swollen and the middle finger still splinted. You should see the other guy, I thought with amusement.

He shook hands with Shaughnessy and she pulled him in and gave him a hug. "You be careful," she told him.

"I will."

"Mind your wrist," I ordered. "You've got a week's traveling ahead of you even if you make good time. Here." I handed him the foil packet of beef jerky. "It'll keep you from having to hunt too much."

"Thanks, Pete." He turned to Ariel. He opened his mouth to say something—thanks, maybe—but she just blinked and nodded. He stepped forward and put his arms around her neck. Tears glistened in his eyes when he pulled away. I glanced at Shaughnessy but her expression was unreadable. Was she envious, I wondered?

We said goodbye again and walked away in opposite directions. I looked back once, and he saw me and waved.

His broadsword still dragged the ground when he walked.

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Framed