Voices of Dragons

Her father had joked that at least they could prosecute them for resisting arrest, if nothing else. Kay had thought they were weird and maybe a little crazy. They obviously didn’t come from a place where you could sometimes see dragons flying on the northern horizon and where they practiced dragon-raid drills more than once a year.

People like that would be insanely jealous of Kay and her conversations with Artegal.

But more, her parents would be mortified if they knew what she’d been doing. If her parents found out, they’d report it. They would have to. She knew that. She just hadn’t realized how that would feel. They’d never look at her the same way again. They’d never trust her again. She couldn’t ever get caught—and there was no way the pilot would keep his mouth shut.

She waited too long to answer. Nothing was going to sound reasonable now. “Really, Dad, I was just hiking. I didn’t know there was a roadblock or I would have called. I’m sorry.”

They’d had enough arguments to recognize the standoff. She wasn’t going to say anything else, and nothing he said would change that.

“You know the plane crashed on the other side of the border? In Dragon?” he said finally.

The tower of smoke was close enough to the river; from a different angle it may have looked like it hadn’t invaded Dragon. She let him think the hesitation was shocked silence.

“What’s going to happen? Do you think there’ll be a fight?”

Her father leaned on the car, looked north, and shook his head. “We’re doing everything we can to prevent that. We have to assume they’re doing to the same on their side.” She pressed her lips and nodded. He sounded sure, and that was encouraging. “Now, Kay, I want you to get home. And call your mother.”

“Okay, I will.” She didn’t have to fake sounding nervous and scared. Her stomach was knotted.

“I love you,” he said, pursing his lips in a thin smile.

“I love you, too.” She watched him return to his SUV in her rearview mirror. He didn’t drive away until she did.

She spent the rest of the way home sitting at the edge of her seat, gripping the steering wheel hard.

As soon as she got home, she called Jon.

“Kay,” he answered. “Oh my God, are you okay? Where are you? Do you know what’s happening? Do your folks have any idea?”

She knew way more about the situation than she wanted to. Trouble was, she couldn’t tell anyone. “I just talked to my dad. He didn’t say much. Everyone’s worked up.”

“Where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you.” He sounded tense, like he’d been really worried about her.

She winced, guilty. “I’m sorry. I had my phone off.”

“At a time like this? FOX News is talking invasion, Kay.”

She sat on the couch in the living room and rubbed her hair. She was exhausted and was starting to feel the aches and bruises where she’d been knocked around on Artegal’s back. Even with gloves, she had blisters on both hands. She needed a shower.

“Who’s invading?” she said tiredly. “Them or us?”

Jon was silent for a long moment. She was about to apologize again because she knew she was sounding irrational. Then he said, “The plane crash was an accident, wasn’t it?”

That made her straighten. “What do you mean?”

“It was a malfunction. The plane crashed; the pilot bailed out. It just happened to be on the wrong side of the border. The air force didn’t do it on purpose, did they?”

For a moment, just a moment, it made sense. If you wanted to start a fight, you’d provoke the other side somehow. Just to see what they’d do. But she was tired and not thinking clearly, so she shook her head. “Is that what the conspiracy websites are saying?” She tried to make it sound like a joke.

“I guess that’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“But no one knows what the dragons are going to do,” he said.

“No.” She wondered what Artegal was telling his people right now, if anything. If he were having to lie like she was. “The police have the highway closed down. They’re worried.”

“Can I come over?”

It would take him a little longer, but he could get here via back roads. She almost said no. The more time she spent around people, the more likely she would be to finally let it all out and tell someone about Artegal, especially with all this going on. Anything she said would be talking around the dragon. Her secret was starting to eat at her.

At the same time, the idea of hugging Jon as hard as she could made her feel warm, made her finally start to relax. “Yeah, okay. My parents are out working. It’ll be good to have company.”

“Okay. I’ll be right over.” He clicked off.

She’d have to hurry if she wanted to take that shower.

As soon as she hung up, her phone beeped another missed call from her mother. Kay didn’t want to talk to her, afraid of what she would ask about the crash and how much Kay would have to lie about it, but the calls would keep coming until they co

“Kay, are you home now? Please tell me you’re home.”

Mom and Dad had probably been conferring back and forth about what she was really doing. She couldn’t change her story.

“I’m home, Mom.” Her mother sighed with obvious relief. Before her mother could ask more questions that she’d have to dodge, Kay launched in with her own. “Is everything okay? Do you know what’s happening?”

“Oh, it’s a mad house here.” She must have been at the FBBE main office. Kay could hear voices, telephones, and activity in the background. “I think every newspaper and TV station in the country has been calling us for a statement. We don’t have enough people to take care of the PR and assess the situation at the same time. They’ve got me handling the press, and I can’t keep up with it.”

“What is the situation?”

Her mother sighed again, and Kay imagined her—brown hair with its scattering of gray strands coming loose from its ponytail, suit jacket looking rumpled, face lined with stress as she dashed around the office from one phone, desk, or computer to another.

“Waiting, unfortunately. We can’t do much until we see what they’re going to do. The biggest problem is we have no way to get in touch with the dragons to try to prevent a misunderstanding.”

Kay could say, But Mom, Artegal will talk to them. They’ll know what happened because of him. But then she’d have to explain Artegal, and she couldn’t do that. She was hoping the pilot wouldn’t tell anyone—or maybe no one would believe him. Maybe they’d think he hit his head on the way down or something.

Mom said, “Kay, I’m probably going to be here all night. Can you get yourself di

“Yeah, Mom. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.” Now that she wasn’t flying around on the back of a dragon….

“Stay inside. I’ll call you if anything else happens. Or Dad will, but he’s going to be working all night, too.”

“Okay.”

“I love you.”

Again, like she had with her father, Kay said, “I love you, too.”

If nothing else, all that love told her how worried her parents were.

Jon arrived ten minutes after she finished her shower. She baked a frozen pizza for di

Her mother was interviewed at one point. She looked harried, no makeup, her hair quickly pulled back. Even on TV, Kay could see the shadows under her eyes. The caption under her image read, ALICE WYATT, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR THE FBBE IN SILVER RIVER. She gave the camera a thin-lipped frown and said, “Other than some increased flight activity, we haven’t detected anything suspicious on the dragon side of the border, but we’re going to continue to monitor the situation closely.”