Voices of Dragons

The funeral was at the end of the week. He was buried in the city cemetery outside town, a modern stretch of lawn with flat marble blocks for headstones. Crowds seemed to fill the place—the whole town was there, an honor guard of people in sheriff’s department uniforms, along with state highway patrol and people from the air force base. There were news vans and swarms of reporters. Just another news item. Hero and victim of dragons Sheriff Jack Wyatt, laid to rest.

A pair of jets wailed overhead. They patrolled constantly now. The sky still smelled like smoke. A haze had settled in the air.

Kay and her mother clung to each other and stared at the casket and the mountain of flowers around it. She hardly listened as the governor read a graveside eulogy. Tireless public servant. Devoted husband and father. She felt everyone looking at them. She wanted to go home.

She had decided to believe that Jack Wyatt had gone on a trip. He was just away. He wasn’t in that box. She’d pretend he was, to go along with what everyone else thought. But as far as she was concerned, he was simply parked somewhere waiting to set his radar gun on her and pull her over for speeding. She could live with that.

Afterward, fortunately, no one expected her to say anything. All she had to do was stand there and look sufficiently sad while people told her how sorry they were. An amazing array of people. The governor and his wife. The vice president of the United States. There’d be plenty of pictures for the newspapers. The deputies guarded them viciously, and when Mom turned to Deputy Kalbach and Deputy Olsen with a pleading look in her eyes, they formed a barrier around Kay and her mom, hustled them to a waiting car, and took them home, to microwaved lasagna and a too-quiet house.

They thought—or Kay hoped—that they were finished with the constant press of visitors and condolences. But the next morning, a knock came at the front door. They were sitting on the sofa and glanced up. Kay had never seen her mother look so tired as she hauled herself to her feet, then to the front door. She cracked it open, and Kay craned around to see who it was.

An unfamiliar voice said, “Ma’am, I’m very sorry to bother you, but I was hoping I could speak to your daughter.”

Kay scrambled to her feet and went to join her mother in staring at the man outside their door. The current deputy on duty—Michaels—stood a little behind him, shrugging as if to ask whether he’d been right in letting the man through.

The newcomer wore a blue air force uniform and a round hat with a brim in front instead of the olive green jumpsuit this time, but she still recognized him as the pilot who had bailed out over the border. The one who had seen her riding Artegal. All she could do was stare.

Mom glanced at Kay, who didn’t know what to say. All she could think was that her secret was done, finished. It was all over now.

The pilot gave her a thin smile, but spoke to her mother. “Ma’am, I’m Captain Will Co

Why had he come? Why didn’t he have the whole military there demanding that she tell everything she knew? He was being too nice; she didn’t trust him.

Mom glanced at Kay, clearly confused. “Why?”

Captain Co

Kay’s mother opened the door a little wider. “I think I can make some coffee—I’m sorry, it’s been a rough few days.”

“I understand. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.” He took off his hat as he stepped inside.

While Mom was in the kitchen, Captain Co

“It really is you,” he said wonderingly. “I thought I recognized you in the picture from the funeral yesterday. But I wasn’t sure.”

She tried to ask him, pleading with her gaze, Why are you here, what are you doing, why are you finally blowing my cover? In reply, he seemed to be saying, We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Who was he kidding? There was no easy way. There was nothing easy about this. According to him—the way everyone would see it—she was friends with an enemy, an enemy that had killed her father, and she’d kept it secret all this time.

“Why didn’t you say anything earlier? Why didn’t you tell anyone about me?” she asked.

He shrugged and gave a wry look over his shoulder, out the window to the sheriff’s deputies and news vans. “I’m not sure. I almost didn’t believe it when I saw you. Thought I must have been going crazy, and why report a delusion? Then again, maybe I admired your guts. That’s test pilot guts, flying with that thing. Maybe I didn’t want to get you in trouble, one pilot to another.”

“His name is Artegal,” she said. She’d never been able to tell anyone before. He nodded, conceding the point.

He’d kept her secret. Not that it mattered now, when there was probably going to be a war. Dragons burned towns, and then people went after them with swords. Or vice versa. That was the way it had always been.

“The thing is, Miss Wyatt, the situation has changed.”

“So you’re going to tell them now. Now that you know who I am,” she said. She sounded angry, on the verge of tears. She focused on keeping control of herself.

“Right now, you’re the only person who has any real contact with them. I wanted to make sure you understood that, if you hadn’t already figured it out.”

“Why does it even matter? It’s not going to change anything.”

“Don’t be so sure, unless you want this to blow up into an all-out war.”

“No, but—”

“I was under the impression the military wants an all-out war,” Mom said, standing by the kitchen with two mugs of coffee in her hand. “That you crashed your plane across the border on purpose to see what the dragons would do. That people like Branigan wanted to go to war this whole time. ‘Like poking a wasp nest’ is what Jack said. And now you want to talk? And what does Kay have to do with this?”

When he didn’t answer, when he didn’t deny it, Kay grew frightened. Her gut turned cold, which shocked her because she thought she was numb. Mom stood there, the coffee mugs trembling slightly in her hands, a lost, accusing shadow in her eyes.

Co

Mom’s voice was quiet, but harsh, filled with bitterness.

“I have a feeling Branigan’s going to get a little more out of his war than he bargained for.”

“I think you’re right.” He turned to Kay. “Planes have nicknames. The B-17 was the Flying Fortress. The P-51 Mustang. The B-26 Marauder. This new one, the F-22. You know what the guys are calling it?”

She shook her head.

“The Dragonslayer,” he said.

If the military had been preparing for a war, what could she do to change anything? Maybe it was inevitable. The two sides had been stalemated for decades. It was just her father’s stupid luck to be the first person to get caught in the middle of it. Kay couldn’t do anything to stop it. Telling someone sooner about her and Artegal wouldn’t have stopped it. Talking to Artegal now wouldn’t bring her father back. She didn’t want to do anything.

“What’s going to happen?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry to bother you all. I’ll go,” the pilot said. He pulled a business card from a front jacket pocket and handed it to Kay. “Let me know when you’re ready to talk. I think you can help.”