Voices of Dragons

Two weeks later, she and Artegal flew again. Kay felt she was starting to get good. Or at least better. She didn’t scramble every time he swooped or dived. He started to be able to do corkscrews and loops without her yelping and wrapping the ropes around her hands in a death grip. She learned to let the force of movement keep her steady. By balancing and steadying herself instead of gripping as hard as she could, the flights were much easier on her hands. She stopped getting blisters.

Part of it was Artegal simply loved flying, and so was willing to be very patient with her, was willing to fly and circle as she grew more confident and secure. He said that not all dragons loved to fly. Some of the older ones stopped being able to. They tended to stay underground, guarding hordes, raising the young. Kay realized that the human military could never be sure of the number of dragons by counting the ones that flew. They based their estimates of dragon population on this. She wondered how far off those estimates were.

The Dracopolis manuscript described a system of communication used by dragons and their human riders. Kay had worked out some of it, a few phrases, including a section admonishing the reader that riding dragons was not like riding horses and you couldn’t use bits or bridles. That seemed clear to Kay. Why would you need a bridle when you could just talk? Who could even contemplate putting a bridle on a head that large, and how did you talk a dragon into putting a bit in its gigantic mouth without it eating you? But in the air, dragons couldn’t always hear, so in ancient times riders would use a rope with knots tied in it and stretched across the dragon’s back. By pressing the knots into the scales, a rider could get the dragon’s attention and communicate simple ideas: Look left, turn right, I’m in trouble. Kay made up a rope like this for her and Artegal—it had three knots, one for left, one for right, and one in the middle to get his attention. They tested it and found their own code to use.

In mid March, they made their third flight after the jet crash. Life had gotten back to normal, everyone breathing sighs of relief because it seemed the dragons understood what had happened and didn’t hold it against the humans. It made everyone feel better because it meant that maybe the dragons weren’t so alien after all, and maybe the humans didn’t have to be afraid so much.

Kay could have told them that.

But the jets came again.

Kay and Artegal were in their valley, circling, enjoying the first day in weeks that was warm enough to melt snow. Flying, Kay felt so much closer to the sun, so much warmer. They’d had a lazy practice, and Artegal dipped lower, preparing to land.

Far overhead, far distant, a mechanical roar echoed. She could feel Artegal snort more than she could hear him, a vibration deep in his lungs. A questioning sound, confused. But Kay recognized the noise—the roar of a jet engine. She looked up, sca

Artegal climbed, swooping upward in a wide loop, craning his neck, looking for the intruder along with Kay. She grew worried—the engine sounded loud. Probably just a trick of the air. No plane would cross the border into Dragon air space, especially after the crash. They needed to hide, just in case.

“Artegal, we should get out of here!” she cupped her hand and yelled. She pressed the left and right knots in the rope across his shoulders, which meant, We need to land. He cocked his head; she couldn’t tell if he’d heard her.

Then, the plane sped overhead. A narrow triangle, sharp nose, angled wings, engines in back—a jet fighter shaped like an arrowhead. It didn’t make a sound; the roar followed a moment later, which meant it was traveling very, very fast—faster than its own sound.

Artegal roared. Kay had never heard him make a sound like that. It surged through his whole body; the vibrations rattled her teeth. His lungs worked like bellows under her, and the sound echoed through the valley, like thunder, like a mountain falling. The appearance of the plane had startled him. It may even have scared him. She could only tuck her head in and hold on as he dived, flattening his wings to streamline his body and increase his speed.

He pulled up as he reached the treetops and skimmed along the tops of them, up the side of the hill, over and out of the valley. He kept going, beating his wings hard to speed up. Level now, somewhat stable, Kay had a chance to see where the plane had gone. The plane was on the wrong side of the border, and this time it looked to be on purpose. But that was crazy.

The jet had looped around and was following them.

It had seen her. That was the only reason why it had turned. The pilot had seen her and Artegal together and had to investigate. The dragon was growling with every breath; he’d seen the jet following them. They both knew he couldn’t outrun it.

But she didn’t expect Artegal to slow down.

The whole sky seemed to be filled with the mechanical roar of the jet. It echoed and thundered like Artegal’s roar had, but felt different. It had no breath of living air behind it.

The dragon’s flight had become almost lazy. He barely moved his wings, and the trees passing below them slowed to a crawl. Kay wanted to scream at him—why wasn’t he doing something? Why wasn’t he doing more? But his strategy became clear when the jet roared past and raced far beyond them.

Artegal wheeled, changing direction and flapping back the way they’d come, back to the valley where maybe they could hide before the jet had time to loop back around and find them.

But the jet did a flip in midair. Artegal stopped and hovered. The plane overshot them—then it pivoted, starting another long loop and simply flipping until it faced backward and shot ahead, barely losing momentum. Kay had been watching jets patrol her whole life, and she’d never seen one do that. They weren’t supposed to be able to do that. The dragons had always been more maneuverable.

Artegal panicked. He twisted in midair, wings flapping, shifting, until he launched in yet another direction. Then he flew, straight and fast, not wavering—away from the border, to what he thought of as home and safety. He roared again, and for the first time Kay saw the beast of legend, the dragon that had haunted human tales for thousands of years. No wonder people had been surprised that dragons could speak. A dragon flying over a medieval village, roaring like this, maybe breathing fire, wouldn’t notice people scattering like ants before him. She was just a piece of fluff clinging to his scaled hide, helpless. The direction that meant safety to Artegal meant a greater danger to her.

The jet, for whatever reason, did not follow them any farther into dragon territory. Again, it did its strange midair flip to match Artegal’s direction, but after following a mile or two, it looped back and rocketed away, south and across the border to human territory.

Kay was relieved. But she couldn’t get Artegal to slow down, to consider landing. He wouldn’t look at her no matter how hard she leaned on the knots in the ropes.

He just kept going, as if terrified of the monster that had chased him.

She huddled on his back and tried to figure out what to do. Really, though, she wouldn’t be able to stop him no matter what he did. She was so small and weak.

Maybe this was why people had started killing dragons. People didn’t like being helpless, and some people weren’t very good at being friends. So people and dragons fought. Now, both sides were too scared to even look at each other. Artegal seemed like he was going to fly all the way to the distant mountains before stopping. If that happened, she was pretty much screwed.