Voices of Dragons

Her gloved hand couldn’t work the carabiner on the harness, so she took the glove off with her teeth. Her hand started shaking in the freezing air. Or maybe she was just that scared.

This will be worth it, she told herself. Writhing, she maneuvered up the rope to the loop in the middle of Artegal’s back, clinging so tightly, her hands were going numb.

Then, finally, she snapped on to the loop of rope.

“I’m hooked in!” she yelled.

Artegal roared. Then he corkscrewed. Kay screeched with fright. And, if she was honest, excitement.

The land, snow-patched spring meadows and stretches of forest, rolled under her, then buildings from the town appeared. Artegal dipped, swooping close enough that she could see cars on the road, see them screeching to a halt, and see tiny people climbing out and looking up. The news vans, where were the news vans?

Outside the temporary FBBE headquarters, where they’d been parked all week. She found the knots in the rope of the harness and pressed the left-hand one into Artegal’s shoulder. He veered in that direction. She wished she could explain to him exactly what they were looking for. Satellite dishes on top of vans. People with cameras and microphones.

If they circled long enough, though, someone would call in the cameras.

Unless Artegal banked, she couldn’t see what they were flying over. She could, however, see what else was flying. Craning her head, she spotted two or three military helicopters. Rapid popping noises, like stuttering fireworks, rattled the air.

Machine guns. They were firing.

Artegal veered sharply, and for a heart-stopping moment Kay thought he’d been shot. She looked around for blood. But there’d been no flinch of pain; the dragon was simply altering his flight path to make himself less of a target. He rose, dived, and spun, and Kay started to feel a little airsick. She clamped her eyes shut, but that made it worse, so she concentrated on keeping her gaze on the ropes across the dragon’s back.

He kept ahead of them—that was what had always maintained the balance, that dragons were as fast as anything flown by humans. But they kept firing. Artegal dropped in altitude, and dropped again. They weren’t shooting at him, she realized. They were trying to force him to land.

In response, he dived sharply and twisted, and she gasped, clinging even harder to the ropes. She was sure she was locked in, but that didn’t stop the panic. He was weaving, turning, swooping in circles, barely high enough to clear buildings, and he’d left the helicopters far behind. When he leveled off, he was skimming the ground. She looked across and saw trees at their level.

If this didn’t work, nothing would.

Kneeling on his back, Kay let the harness take her weight. She raised her arms, stretching them straight up. The wind punched into her, and she laughed.

They would be seen. No doubt about it. A role model for the community, her father had said. The sheriff’s daughter—the hero’s daughter, the captions on the photos had read. Kay didn’t know how real any of that was. She certainly didn’t feel like a role model. But her father had been right, and people would pay particular attention to this, and treat it as more than a stunt, because of who she was.

Looking up, she saw news helicopters along with the military helicopters, and Kay wondered what kind of conversation was going on between their radios. The air was getting crowded. But she waved at them, hoping they could see her smile.

Artegal must have also felt they were getting hemmed in, because his wings started pumping again, and he climbed, ignoring gunfire and pursuing helicopters. She was so worried about him getting shot, she stopped worrying about falling.

This was only the first part of it. They’d been seen by the human side. Now, they needed to be seen by the dragons. He headed north and west, to the border, to the narrow valleys where they had practiced flying. Kay huddled on Artegal’s back, wrapped in her coat for warmth, as he rocketed deeper into dragon territory.

This flight wasn’t as exhilarating as the others had been. Before, they’d been playing. This flight had purpose. It was serious, more serious than anything she’d ever done. More serious even than her father’s funeral, which had, in some ways, seemed like watching a movie about someone else. But this—she felt her blood rushing in her ears.

She wanted to know she was going to be okay when this was all over. Artegal was taking her to see dragons. She wondered if this was what it felt like to go to war.

She wondered if she ought to be waving a white flag of truce.

The mountains grew closer. Artegal pointed toward them like an arrow. All the times she had looked north, watching the dragons, specks soaring in the distance, she never thought she’d be this close. Now, she wondered if she had secretly wanted to go to them all this time, like climbing a rock face that was off limits, an exotic spot on her map. She wanted to see, just for a moment.

When Artegal veered, she looked over, around the sail of his wing, and saw them. Dragons, three of them, like castles in the sky, growing larger as they approached.

It was far too late to change her mind, to turn back, and she grew afraid. She didn’t want to do this; she didn’t want to be here. She huddled on Artegal’s back, but there was no way the blue and red ropes and her black parka would blend in with his scales.

A roar echoed toward them, then modulated, changing pitch, tone, rhythm. Artegal roared back in a clipped way she’d never heard before, different from his full-lunged shouts. Speech. This was how dragons talked to one another.

He climbed and spun so that his back faced them. This was what they’d come here to do, just like showing off for the news cameras. She had to do her part now.

She crouched to her knees, braced against the harness, and waved, making sure the dragons could see her.

Two of the dragons were different shades of green; one was brilliant red, like a ruby. They split apart, arcing around Artegal, coming from both sides, and flanked him, pe

They could force him down in a way the helicopters couldn’t. They could match his speed, his maneuverability. They were bigger than he was. Artegal was a young dragon, after all. If they caught him, what would they do with her?

Take me home, Kay wanted to yell, but the wind would carry her words away.

Then she thought, maybe Branigan was right. He was a spy, and he’d been pla

But that was a ruse. A moment later, he dropped a wing.

His whole body tipped sideways and fell, low enough that his wing cut into the treetops. Then he raced up, wings pumping hard. The pressure of the harness dug into her, and ropes dug into the scales of his shoulders, and she was almost floating, hanging against the harness.

He flew higher than they ever had, and she started to wonder how high he could go, and if it would be too high for her, because the air was thin even here, and she was having trouble drawing breath. But he wasn’t flying straight up. He was making an arc. A high, narrow arc. At the apex of it, he seemed to hang for a moment, hovering, motionless, his wings swept back, his nose pointed down. The other dragons were far below them.

He dived. As they dropped, his speed increased. He fell like a bomb to the silver ribbon of water that was the border, and while the other dragons might reach him, they couldn’t stop something going so fast.