Voices of Dragons

  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, penning him in.

  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 planning to carry her back to Dragon and keep her hostage all along. Everyone would know where she was because they’d flown over Silver River. They’d advertised the fact that he was kidnapping her. She was an idiot. She should have stayed home. This whole time, she should have stayed home. She never should have gone back to meet Artegal that second time. The dragons were soaring toward them now, gaining altitude, getting above Artegal so they could force him to the ground. And Artegal wasn’t doing anything.

  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.

  The speed and cold tried to flay the skin from her face. She wanted to look, to watch the ground come up, to see what the other dragons did. But she had to bury her face in her sleeve and cling to the ropes while she tugged against the clip on the harness, seemingly weightless.

  When Artegal spun, she tried to brace and ride with it as they’d practiced. But this was different, flailing, out of control—his wings stuck out, flapping loudly, caught against the air instead of using it. Kay jerked against the harness. And Artegal fell.

  It shouldn’t have been possible—he was made for flying, built for the sky. But he tumbled until, with a massive grunt and shudder through his whole body, he spread his wings, which filled with air. His body jerked, swung, yanked to a stop. Kay crashed into his back. Then she saw what had happened.

  Jets rocketed overhead—Kay didn’t hear them because they were moving too fast, leaving the roaring sound of their engines behind them. They went right overhead, maybe only a few hundred feet above them. Probably more, but it felt close, close enough to knock Artegal out of the air with their passage.

  Artegal climbed again. As far as she could tell, he was trying to regain his bearings. She could almost feel his heart beating through his back, and she wished she could see his face, to tell if he was worried, scared, angry, or something else.

  Now that the jets had passed on, she could hear them, a mechanical scream that didn’t sound at all like the dragons calling to one anther. Two of them, flying side by side, the new, super-agile jets. The Dragonslayers. They arced around, tracing a vast circle around the area.

  The other three dragons turned to pursue the jets. The jets broke apart, made sharp turns, and moved to face them. Artegal hovered, watching. He seemed poised between wanting to join in the fight and wanting to flee.

  The three dragons engaged the jets.

  If they’d been conventional jets, the dragons would have flown circles around them. But when the dragons spun and twisted, their long tails coiling and snapping behind them, wings dipping and flapping, these jets turned with them, pivoting on their specially designed engines. Two of the dragons worked together to keep one of the jets between them—for a moment, they looked as if they were trying to trap it, to grab it in their claws as they’d snatch at their prey. The jets and bodies of the dragons were almost the same size, but with their long necks and tails, the dragons were bigger and could envelop the aircraft. The jet’s afterburners flared, and it rocketed ahead, out of reach.

  At the same time, the other jet spun toward them, dodging out of the way of the third dragon, harassing it. It fired. Guns or missiles or something. Kay only saw something flare like a spark from the jet’s underbelly, and trails of white smoke flew away from it. But nothing happened. Whatever it was, it didn’t hit anything.

  It was a real dogfight, like in an old war movie. They looked like crows fighting over a scrap of food. Kay couldn’t follow the actions, couldn’t guess what each player would do next. Artegal groaned. Kay felt it through his back, a rumble like thunder.

  The first jet broke away from the two pursuers, and again the other jet fired. The dragons dodged—nothing would hit them. The second jet was intent on helping the other, on firing at the two dragons, which were leading it away, drawing it on—giving the third dragon, the scarlet one, a chance to act.

  The red dragon pounced. That was what it looked like. It leaped up in the air, gaining extra altitude, somehow flying even higher than it had, as if launching from a solid base. Then it fell over the apex of its arc. But it didn’t spread its wings, it didn’t try to halt its descent, it didn’t catch its fall. At the last moment, when it was right on top of the aircraft, it reached out with its hind legs and landed hard, claws digging into steel, scrabbling for purchase around wings, engines, canopy, rivets, and seams, whatever it could catch.

  The jet fell. The dragon’s weight slammed into it, and the pilot lost control. The plane flipped sideways and plummeted. Engines flamed to life as the pilot tried to regain control. Kay tried to imagine what he was saying over the radio. She wondered if it was Captain Conner.

  Spinning now, the two tangled together, the dragon’s tail coiled around the craft’s body like a snake, his fanged jaws closed over the canopy. The jet straightened, wobbled—then the dragon lurched, stuck out a wing, tipping the plane off balance again, and they went back to tumbling.

  If he had let go, if he had let the aircraft escape, they both could have survived. Maybe he couldn’t let go. Maybe he was locked in, stuck, trapped—too dizzy to think. Or maybe he just wouldn’t.

  Artegal screamed his own fierce jet-engine roar and plunged after them, wings flapping, reaching toward speed. But it was too late; he was too far behind. And he couldn’t have done anything. Jet and dragon together plunged into the treetops of the forest, and a moment later a fireball exploded, rolling, cutting a path of flames through the trees. The sound was a different kind of roar, a rush of fire. A moment after that, a wave of heat passed over them. A thick, black tower of smoke, like the one they’d followed to Captain Conner’s crash, rose high over the forest.

  Kay was crying. Her nose was running. She couldn’t think. She would never get that image out of her mind.

  The other jet climbed, circled, then sped south, back toward its base.

  Artegal lurched forward, flying fast, but without purpose or destination. He dipped, swooped, and finally fell into a pattern that made a wide circle around the place where the jet and dragon had crashed. She didn’t look down toward the fire burning below. She didn’t want to see what was there.

  The other two dragons, the green ones who were left, circled with Artegal. They called to one another across the distance with roars and whistles. Kay wished she knew what they were sa
ying. It may as well have been Latin. Were they older dragons? Could they remember a time when people and dragons worked together? If so, would they understand, or would seeing Artegal and Kay together only make them angry?

  She almost thought she could understand them—the roars became deeper, the whistles more insistent, angrier, maybe. The green dragons loomed above Artegal. She could imagine them plunging down on her in the same way the red one had landed on the plane.

  Artegal stretched his wings and wheeled away. South, back toward the border. He flapped his wings and stretched out, the way he flew when he wanted speed. Kay looked over her shoulder—the other dragons didn’t follow. They looped, soared, dived, and watched them fly away, but continued marking the spot where the red dragon had fallen.

  When they came within sight of the river, Artegal didn’t dive, but slowly descended until he skimmed the treetops, the tips of the pines brushing and waving at his passage. Sailing on outstretched wings, he landed, touching his feet to the ground, leaning forward on his wings, and settling his body to earth.

  They stayed there, still, a long time. Artegal rested, catching his breath, head hung low on a curved neck. She lay flat, trying to understand what had happened, trying to think of what to do next. It was easier simply to lie here.

  Finally, because it probably annoyed Artegal having her hanging off him, she braced her weight to put slack in the harness and unclipped herself. She slid down Artegal’s shoulder to the ground.

  He turned slightly, only changing the angle of his head, to look at her. His eyes were shining. His mouth was long, frowning. They gazed at each other for a long time. Kay didn’t know what to say. She was still crying, softly this time, tears falling, freezing on her cheek.

  “Now I’ve lost someone, too,” Artegal said.

  “Who—who was he?” she managed to stammer.

  “Brother’s mentor.”

  It wasn’t quite an uncle. She wondered what the relationship meant to a dragon, how important someone like that would be. She didn’t understand. How could she grieve with him if she didn’t understand? How could they even talk?

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  With a sigh, he tipped his nose to the ground. He’d never done that before. He’d brought his head low; he’d looked her in the eye at her level. But she’d never seen him rest his head, as if it were too heavy to hold up.

  She wondered if dragons cried.

  Hesitating, she touched his face, the narrow ridge of his snout that ran between his eyes. He blinked, left his eyes half closed, and nudged himself closer. Then she was hugging him, wrapping her arms around the narrow part of his neck, behind his head.

  “Was this our fault?” she said. “Did they fight because of us?”

  His breaths were sighs, like he was tired. “Would have happened. If not now, then later.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  He shuddered slightly—a shrug, almost. She stepped away so he could look at her more easily. “If we can, we should make something of this. Already too many sacrifices. This will make it worse. Before, it was two warriors shaking their claws at each other. Now, there will be armies. Not skirmishes, but battles.”

  She could see it, because the Dracopolis book had pictures of it: a swarm of dragons filling the sky, a tapestry of wings. Below them, a sea of human beings with siege engines. Now, when the humans had jets and bombs, how much worse would it be?

  How did you stop such a thing? Too many sacrifices, he’d said.

  Artegal looked up, studied the sky, as if he had heard something that she had not. “We should go. Quickly. They’ll find us. Catch us. Can’t let that happen.”

  It seemed inevitable at this point. Why fight it? She wanted to throw a tantrum. Stand up and just scream for them to stop it—why couldn’t they all just stop it?

  Maybe she ought to try it. What was there to lose? Herself and her mother. A friendship. She undid his harness, helped him pull it off his back, and began coiling it. She had a weird idea.

  “Artegal?”

  He’d been studying the sky again, but snorted and looked at her. They’d discussed the book. She’d brought translations to share, and he’d told her what he’d been able to translate. They’d studied the extra sheet of paper tucked in the back and tried to understand what it meant—a treasure map, Kay thought; a lost cave of dragons still in hiding, Artegal thought. In Greenland? she wondered. But they hadn’t talked about everything in the book, and so she asked.

  “The Dracopolis book talks about virgin sacrifices. About how, in the old days, villages would give virgins to the dragons to make them stop attacking. Did that actually work?”

  He tilted his head—a sign of curiosity. “I think it did. It was a sign of what people were willing to give for peace.”

  She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Did the dragons actually eat the girls who were sacrificed?”

  “I think it depended on the dragon. Some were kept, like pets. At least that’s what our stories say.”

  This was grim. She could understand the knights coming after the dragons, willing to fight to stop such a thing. But she could also understand being desperate enough to sacrifice one person to save everyone, to stop a war.

  One last question, one that should have occurred to Kay a long time ago. It was the big overriding question of her life, at least according to Tam.

  “Why virgins?” she asked Artegal.

  He snorted a foggy breath. “I don’t know. That was the humans’ idea. We can’t tell the difference.”

  She clapped a hand over her mouth, but that didn’t stop the bubble of laughter. It was sharp, too loud in their quiet clearing. Artegal jerked, startled, raised his head, and stared.

  We can’t tell the difference. That made the whole question wonderful, didn’t it? It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if she was or not.

  She shook her head. “I can’t explain it. It’s just—you’re right. It’s not important. But here’s the thing, Artegal. I am one. And if we could, do you think it would work?”

  “A sacrifice?” he breathed.

  “I mean, you wouldn’t have to eat me. You wouldn’t, would you?”

  “Silly. No,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t even have to be a real sacrifice. We pretend that it is. We make a big show of it—” And then what? Go back to the way they were? The whole point of a sacrifice was to change everything, to make sure things didn’t stay the same.

  “The elders wouldn’t believe it. They trusted humans to keep the border. They were betrayed.”

  “That’s why we don’t leave it up to them. Not the elders, not the air force, not anybody. We do it ourselves.”

  He thought for a moment—still, unmoving. A great statue of a dragon. “We do this—then what? You can’t return home, for it to be true.”

  You can’t offer yourself as a sacrifice and expect to go back to school the next day. Was she willing to do that, to leave home? She’d never been sure about what she wanted to do with her life, except have adventures. Well, this was it.

  “East,” she said. “We go to the place on the secret map.”

  “May be nothing there.”

  “But I think there is,” she said.

  “Yes. Me too.”

  The rhythmic thumping of helicopters sounded nearby. The world intruded. Fallout from the battle was about to sweep over them.

  “We must go,” he said, ducking, his neck curving close.

  How were they going to plan this thing, if they really were? She wished he had a cell phone. She wished a cell phone existed that was big enough for him to use.

  “How will I talk to you?” she said, her heart pounding.

  “The other place, where we met to fly. Your people don’t know of it. Leave notes. I’ll look. Every morning, if I can.”

  “Okay, yes.”

  “This thing. We should try.” The ridges over his eyes were arced, giving him a fierce look. His eyes shone. It may have been her imagin
ation, but the colors of his scales seemed to shimmer, taking on blacks and reds.

  “We’ll think of something. Hey, I need to hide the harness somewhere. It almost got me in trouble this time. They’re watching me. They’ll take it from me if they catch me. Can you hide it? Would you be able to take it?” She pulled off her own climbing harness and clipped it to the ropes, to keep all the gear together.

  To answer, he stretched forward a hind foot and closed the claws around the coils of rope. They looked like a tangle of thread in his grip.

  “Kay,” he said. “Take care.”

  “You too.” She reached out her hand, and he nudged it with his nose. He turned and launched, and the trees around the clearing swayed and rustled at the sudden burst of wind his wings made.

  She went south, toward the river.

  21

  Kay was able to run faster and farther without carrying all the gear.

  She was now west of Silver River and a good ten miles from where her mother had parked. Ten miles from where she had left Jon behind with the army, wondering what had happened. They must have seen the smoke from the crash, if not the entire battle. Not to mention all the showing off beforehand.

  Digging in her backpack, she found her cell phone and gave it a try. She didn’t care if the military was listening in—she figured they’d find her sooner or later at this point. But she had to know if people were okay. She got reception, barely. She called Jon, but he didn’t answer. He’d probably been arrested, and it was her fault. But she’d warned him, she’d told him to stay away. But she wouldn’t blame him if he never spoke to her again. She left a message begging him to call back.

  She called her mother. The phone rang and rang—

  Her mother must have been talking as soon as she the saw the caller ID, before she even clicked talk.

  “Oh my God! Kay, where are you? Are you all right? Kay!” The voice was scratchy, coming in and out of range.

  “I’m okay, Mom. I’m fine. I’m heading south, I’m trying to figure out where I am.” She wasn’t sure she was getting through. She couldn’t hear a response. “Mom—”