Voices of Dragons

The valley fell away below them. Wings stretched to their fullest, Artegal started a wide, lazy circle across the width of it. A carpet of evergreens lay below, climbing both sides of the U-shaped valley. Swaths of snow were visible on bare rock outcroppings. High overhead, the sun painted the whole scene gold and silver. Except for the wind whipping around her head, all was silent. Artegal didn’t make a sound, except for a faint rippling in his wings, like sails.

At this height, nothing mattered. Not school, not dating, not arguments with Tam, not laws about the border that weren’t fair. Her smile grew wide.

Artegal stretched out like an arrow, streamlined, cutting effortlessly through the air. He changed direction, tilting his wings, and she held on, adjusting her weight to keep her balance. He could see her if he lifted his head and turned slightly, but that broke his aerodynamic shape, so he didn’t do it often. They’d have to work out a way to communicate. He could feel her, so maybe they could work out a system of signals. As it was, she hoped he could see her smile and know that everything was okay.

He turned the valley into a track, flapping a swooping oval up one side and down the other, tipped almost on his side as he passed along the hills. The force of his flight pulled Kay down, but her harness held her, and as Artegal increased speed, she stayed anchored to him.

He huffed—she felt the sudden expansion of his lungs—and she took that as a sign he was about to do something. She gripped the ropes and anchored herself by lying flatter against his scaled back.

Then, he swung around. Instead of the gentle, lazy tilting of wings and gliding in a wide arc, he lurched, and dived. Wings swept back now, he turned a sharp angle and plummeted, racing faster and faster to the ground. He spun until Kay thought he was out of control, and she shut her eyes to keep vertigo from overwhelming her. Surely they’d hit the trees soon, they were going so fast. She opened her eyes, just a slit, in time to see his wings reach out at the last moment, fill with air, and swing his body upward again. If she hadn’t already been lying flat, she would have slammed into him and lost her lunch. They were definitely going to have to work out some kind of communication.

She laughed, screaming.

This was what maintained the balance of power between the dragons and human aircraft over the last sixty years. Human forces may have had bombs and missiles, but their planes could never maneuver like this, turn on a dime in midair, brake and hover without stalling out. The dragons needed so little effort to outfly artificial human wings.

Artegal climbed and dived again. Kay was a little more ready for it this time. The dragon’s body was definitely better designed than the human body for this sort of thing. She gasped for air every time he made a sudden turn.

But when he caught an updraft and simply glided—a ship of the air sailing in the breeze as if he’d been born there—she felt as if she herself were flying.

An explosion echoed, too sharp and vicious to be thunder. Kay flinched and felt Artegal’s back muscles shiver with the same surprise. He turned, swooping around and gaining altitude to look. She sat up to try to see over his shoulder.

Past the ridge, over the forest north of the border, a black smudge drifted at the end of a trail of dark smoke. Something had caught fire and fallen out of the sky. A short distance away from what must have been a plane crash, a white parachute drifted down, a pilot dangling at the end.

For a moment, both dragon and pilot seemed to hover in midair, the pilot slowly falling, twisting back and forth at the end of his lines, looking straight across at the dragon with the girl on his back. He couldn’t possibly miss them.

Artegal folded his wings and plunged straight down, into the trees.

Amazingly enough, the dragon found space in the forest and came to a rough landing, slamming into the ground, taking the impact on his hind legs and chest. Kay swung over his shoulder and jerked against the harness.

Air force jets had patrolled along the border her whole life, but nothing like this had ever happened. She couldn’t tell: Had the plane been across the border when it crashed? Was the pilot going to land across the border, in Dragon? What would happen then? This wasn’t exactly secret, not like her and Artegal.

“Did he see us?” she called to Artegal. The pilot had seen them, she was sure of it, and he would take the news back to the military, the police—she was going to get in so much trouble.

“He will land on this side of the border,” Artegal said. “The elders will know of this. They will find him.”

Black smoke from the plane crash formed a tower. Everyone would see it.

“What’ll they do to him? What if he’s hurt? What if—”

“We are ambassadors. We’ll find him first.”

When he launched again, she was ready for him, gripping the ropes, watching earnestly. The tower of smoke formed a beacon, which they aimed toward. Growing more confident and feeling secure, Kay looked around, above them and over her shoulder, for aircraft. She assumed the military would send rescue helicopters or maybe even other jets. She didn’t see any, but that didn’t mean anything. They were flying too low for her to see the main road across the river.

But everyone must have been looking this way. Someone was going to see them. This was going to end it all for them, but they couldn’t turn back. If the pilot was hurt, they had to help.

Artegal began circling. She didn’t feel it at first, it was so subtle. His right wing dipped slightly, and the sun changed angle. She could look across his right side and see the forest spread out below them, the sky wheeling above them. His wing dipped again and the circle tightened. She recognized a search pattern. He was skimming over the large swath of trees where they’d seen the parachute come down, circling until he found the spot. She knew she wouldn’t be much help searching, not compared to his hunter’s vision. But she tried, and on the third loop around she saw a spot of white among green branches.

“Artegal, there!” she called, but didn’t know if he heard her, since her voice was probably lost in the wind. She slapped his shoulder to get his attention. He was already dipping his wing and banking in that direction.

He approached the white spot—the nylon of a parachute—and chose his landing site. She was getting better at this, and so expected the lurch to the ground when it came and was able to brace. This time, the whole landing procedure almost felt elegant.

Once on the ground, Artegal moved forward, striding by using his wingtips to balance, weaving through the spaces between trees. When he stopped and settled back, Kay held the ropes so she wouldn’t fall. She felt the dragon’s lungs breathe under her.

“Oh, shit,” she heard a man say.

Artegal’s neck curled into an S, and he cocked his head. This let Kay see over his shoulder, where she saw a man in an olive green jumpsuit ru

Before Kay could react or think of an alternative, Artegal followed, stretching forward and low to the ground—as low as he could—and balancing on his forelimbs. He took large strides, covering ground quickly. Kay lost sight of the fleeing pilot until Artegal shifted his path and hesitated.

The pilot was still fleeing, looking over his shoulder, stumbling through underbrush and around branches, and heading into a dense section of forest where the dragon couldn’t follow. Artegal huffed and changed his path to skirt around and intercept him. In that moment, when he must have seen the dragon wasn’t following, the pilot hesitated and looked right at Kay, braced in her harness on the dragon’s back. He was maybe in his thirties and had dark, close-cropped hair and a ta