Voices of Dragons

Back home, she left the climbing gear in the car. She didn’t want anyone asking about it.

Her mom was at the dining room table. Her laptop, papers, books—work—were spread all over it, and she was talking on her cell phone.

“Yes, of course I’ve seen the photos. They’re supposed to be classified, but I think everyone and their goddamn dog has seen them. CNN’ll probably have them next.” A pause. “No, I can’t explain them. If I could, I would. Clearly.” Another pause. She seemed to be arguing with someone. “I’m home because I’m sick of talking to the press. Look, in this day and age you can’t hide something like this. That jet crossed the border, and everyone knows it.”

She hung up without saying good-bye.

“Mom?”

“Oh, Kay, thank God.” Her mother looked exhausted. She ran a hand through her hair, which was loose, limp, in need of washing. “Are you okay? Deputy Kalbach saw your Jeep way north. Were you hiking? What were you doing? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I went hiking. I’m fine. I saw the jet.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Kay sighed a little because her mother seemed more concerned with the jet crossing than with what her daughter had been doing.

“Everybody saw the jet,” she said. “The last one may have been an accident, but this one was a blatant border violation. The air force should know better; they ought to know better.”

“Then why’d they do it?”

She smiled a thin, ironic smile. “I have some ideas, but they’re not politically correct and I’m not allowed to say them to the media.”

“That jet—it’s new, isn’t it? I haven’t seen anything like it before.”

“That’s right. I think since the dragons didn’t react to the crash last month, they’re testing the border. They’ve got this fancy new plane, and they think maybe the dragons won’t do anything about it. But I can’t say that, because that means, or at least it suggests…never mind.” She shook her head, shrugging the subject away.

“That maybe the first crash wasn’t an accident,” Kay said softly. It made sense. Of course the press would figure it out. The military and government could deny it all they wanted. The pundits would still talk, and people would still make assumptions.

“Don’t go repeating that to anyone with a camera,” Mom said. “The official line they’re trying to feed people is ‘A navigation error caused the pilot to drift temporarily off course.’”

There was nothing drifting about that jet. Kay had been there; she’d seen it up close. But she couldn’t tell her mother that.

Kay sat at the table and looked over the mass of paperwork. When her mom didn’t send her away—Kay assumed this was all classified—she looked more closely. Emails showed on the laptop screen. The folders looked like case files, some of them old. Records of military patrols from the last sixty years. And photos, eight-by-ten, black-and-white printouts. Kind of blurry, as if they were taken from a distance at high speed. As if they were taken by a jet’s surveillance camera.

They showed a silvery-gray dragon and a tiny human perched on its back. Blurry, unidentifiable. Kay felt herself flush, skin burning to her ears. She shook the feeling away and tried to keep her heart from racing. Tried to act surprised.

“What’s this?” She showed the picture to her mother.

Her mom took the picture away from her, put it with the others, and gathered them into a folder. “That’s even bigger news than the jet. Looks like someone’s been having a little fun across the border. Don’t tell anyone you saw these, okay?”

“Oh my gosh,” Kay said, and hoped it sounded convincing. “Who?”

“If I knew that, I’d send the FBI, the National Guard, and your father to arrest his ass. Unfortunately, we don’t have any way of identifying him. I don’t suppose you saw anything while you were out?”

Him. So they thought it was a guy. Kay almost sighed with relief. Instead, she had to lie fast. “No, I didn’t see anything.”

Brow furrowed, her mother studied the folder. “I just want to know how someone walks across the border and talks a dragon into letting him ride around on its back. Or maybe it was the dragon’s idea.”

“Maybe it was both,” Kay said, and flinched when her mother looked sharply at her. Blushing, she continued, hoping it sounded like i

After a pause, Mom said, her tone sardonic, “I suppose that would explain it.” She set the folder aside.

Kay felt as if she’d escaped a trap. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Until we figure out who it is, there’s not a whole lot we can do. Except keep better watch on the border. Obviously.”

Kay realized her mother probably had not had the best day ever. “I can cook di

The look of relief and gratitude on her mom’s face startled her. Making di

“That’d be great,” she said. “God, I don’t even know if we have anything to cook, I haven’t been to the store in weeks.”

“There’s always pasta.”

Her mother smiled. Then her phone rang again. She took a deep breath and answered it. Kay could tell from the tension in her mom’s voice that she was barely keeping her temper in check.

“Yes, sir. No, we don’t have any more leads on who the trespasser is. Yes, I’ve considered that the suspect isn’t crossing the border, but is living over there. Well, sir, how do you propose investigating that possibility without violating the border?” Her voice had become shrill, and she took a breath before continuing. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Making di

Then what would happen? Kay couldn’t imagine. And that was why, in the end, she kept quiet.

13

The next day at dawn, three dragons perched on a cliff ledge less than a mile from the border. The sentinels stood upright, wings tucked close, faces turned toward human lands, barely moving. One of them would shift a hind claw or stretch its neck for a moment. One was a deep ocean blue, shimmering to black and gray as the light shifted. One was green, the color of a cartoon dragon, like you’d expect a dragon to be, except the green turned lighter and lighter, almost becoming a creamy yellow on its legs and belly. The third was mottled brown, camouflaged like a lizard. CNN kept a box in the upper right corner of its broadcast showing the scene, just in case they did something. News crews returned and took over Silver River. Network commentators couldn’t say enough.

Kay kept watching the dragons, noticing how they were different from Artegal—this one a little stouter, this one’s tail a little shorter, this one larger. She wondered at how many different colors there were. In Dracopolis, the dragons had been drawn in at least a dozen colors, every pigment the artist had. Did a dragon inherit its color from its parents? Was it random? What did a dragon’s color say about it, if anything?

Jon called her early. “I’m not going to school. Mom and Dad want me to stay home. Just in case.”

“Just in case of what?” Kay said.

“I don’t know.” He sounded frustrated, not actually excited about getting a day off school. “It’s like they think it’s the end of the world or something.”

Maybe it was. But the dragons were just sitting there, watching. “Maybe the dragons just want to remind us they’re out there.”

“What do your parents say?”

“Mom’s pretty stressed out. She left really early. She started getting calls as soon as the dragons showed up.”

“I’m sorry I won’t be there. I really wanted to see you.”

In case it was the end of the world, she thought. So they could be together. But surely things couldn’t be that bad.