“Let’s hope this works,” he said, tickling the Behemoth’s mouth. He saw the quizzical look on her face. “I’m trying to get it to stick its tongue out.”
She merely nodded and watched as he gently touched and tickled. Finally, seemingly convinced that he meant no harm, the Behemoth’s tongue slid out of a tiny slit of a mouth. A creature this big had a mouth that small? Chalk up another one to unrealistic expectations.
Miles put the cracker on the creature’s tongue and tickled again. The Behemoth seemed to consume it warily, drawing the cracker into its mouth and pausing for a long moment before letting out a tiny shudder. Drusilla hoped it was a shudder of relief. It wasn’t.
The Behemoth regurgitated the cracker, uneaten.
“Not good,” Miles said. “It must have the flu. Or some virus worse than a common cold.”
“Can you take care of it?” she asked.
“I can, I think. But at this point, the treatment gets pretty radical. You might not want to watch. It could get ugly.”
She smiled. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
“Don’t say you weren’t warned.” He drew a breath. “I’m going to have to give it an artificial brain for a little while, until I can find the infection in its real brain. And it’s nauseous, so the timing is critical. I have to get it to eat a very particular kind of cracker, then knock it out before it can spit it back up. When it wakes up, it’ll swallow it. I hope.”
“And the cracker has the artificial brain?”
“Exactly.”
“And if it doesn’t swallow it when it wakes up?”
His face paled at the mere thought. “Let’s just say I hope you’ll remember me, Princess. But first things first. Let’s find that cracker. It should be in a box marked Boot. ”
She paused, looking at him with a cocked brow. “You keep artificial brains in a box marked ‘shoes’?”
“Not shoes. Boot. A very big difference.”
“Yeah. One has a high top.”
He frowned at her, but she could see the twinkle in his eyes. “Boot. Look for Boot.”
“This doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“It doesn’t have to. It’s a tamer’s code word.”
“Oh.” She was beginning to think Behemoth tamers were a little…odd. Odder than most folk, which probably wasn’t saying much, now that she thought about it.
Considering that the Behemoth’s cave was neater than a guard barracks before a royal inspection, finding the boot crackers should have been easy. But many of the boxes seem to have been labeled by a drunken chicken during a rainstorm. She could go blind trying to decipher the smeary scrawls. Miles, on the other hand, found the scrawls suspiciously transparent.
“You wrote these?” she asked.
He flushed the tiniest bit. “Penmanship was never my forte.”
“I guess not.”
Now that she knew whom to ask for decoding help, however, the search went faster. Finally she found a hand-labeled box that looked vaguely like it might be the one. She held it out to him. “This says boo, or something like that. I’m guessing that’s ‘Boot’?”
His eyes brightened as he took the box. “You’re learning to read my writing. That’s scary.”
She chuckled. “Don’t let it go to your head. My father may be the king, but there’s a reason he has scribes to do his writing for him. His signature looks like the death throes of an ink-covered beetle.”
He nodded, but she could tell he wasn’t really listening. He’d already opened the box and was digging through the crackers. “Ah, here it is. The freshest boot-flavored cracker.”
“I can’t believe that creature eats boots.”
“Behemoths have strange tastes,” he said. “Now comes the tricky part. See that fluorescent scale over there?”
“Which one?”
“The green one.”
“Which green one?”
He walked over and pointed. “That green one.”
She couldn’t resist the opportunity and leaned up to kiss him. “Gotcha.”
“Princesses.” He shook his head. “Okay, that’s the one. Push on that scale when I tell you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Puh-leeze.”
He carried the cracker back over to the Behemoth’s mouth and began tickling its lips again. After a bit of coaxing, the beast tentatively offered its tongue. He put the cracker on its tongue and tickled it into the mouth.
“Now.”
Hoping the beast didn’t do something terrible to Miles, Drusilla pressed the scale into its boxy body with the very tip of her finger. In an instant, the beast shuddered and went deadly still. The fluorescence of its scales faded to black.
“Oh, no,” she said, a sinking feeling in her stomach. “I messed up. I’m sorry. I killed it.”
“No.” His voice was reassuring. “It’s just in a deep sleep for a moment.”
“You mean…?”
“Yes, Princess. You just tamed a Behemoth. Now let’s see if we can wake it up. Push that scale again.”
“Are you sure?”
He simply smiled. She pressed on the scale again. The Behemoth let out a series of belches, buzzes and grunts. Miles’s eyes were fixed on its mouth. The cracker stayed down. After a minute or two, its scales began to twinkle happily.
“Is it all better?” she asked.
“Not yet. It’s using the artificial brain now. But that means I can fix its real brain.”
With practiced ease, he stroked and massaged the Behemoth’s scales. It responded with satisfied blinks and grunts, obviously trusting him. After a few minutes he stepped back. “Nasty bug. But I think we caught it before there was any permanent damage.”
“You’re sure?”
He touched her hand. “Princess, with a Behemoth, you’re never sure until it works. We’ll know after we put it to sleep and wake it again.”
He pressed a scale, and the Behemoth obediently, almost cheerfully, stuck out its tongue. The boot-flavored cracker was still there.
“It didn’t eat?” she asked.
“Oh, it did. It’s Behemoth magic.”
“Ah.”
This, of course, made perfect sense. Behemoths truly were strange creatures. Miles put the cracker back in the box, let the Behemoth withdraw its tongue and nodded to her.
“Press that green scale again.”
“Which one?” she asked with a mischievous wink.
“You just want another kiss.”
“You’re right.”
He came to her and their lips met, softly at first, grazing, almost tickling, until she opened her mouth the tiniest bit and let the tip of her tongue touch his. He let out a low groan.
She pressed the scale and sent the Behemoth into sleep again, then woke it with another press. All the while, her lips and tongue never left his lips. The Behemoth let out a happy sigh.
He s
miled. “You sure know how to push the right buttons.”
She suddenly felt giddy. “Call me the Behemoth-Tamer Tamer. Now let’s find that key.”
9
Drusilla felt like a fool. Her shift was over. She was supposed to meet her father in half an hour. Then they were going to breakfast together, followed by the driving range to hit some golf balls. Then, if all went well, she could paint a bit before hitting the bed. And in fourteen hours, she would be waking, getting ready to come back here again. On any normal morning, she would be leading the pack in the dash for the parking lot. Instead, she was standing in a corridor on the eighth floor, getting ready to tap on Miles’s door.
This was stupid. This was not the Miles of her fantasy world. This Miles was real. And she was about to let this Miles screw up her world.
She rationalized that she was simply fulfilling a promise to read over his work. But it had been a promise made in passing, and she doubted he would remember it, much less care whether she kept it. On the other hand, as an artist, it was exactly the sort of promise she would have wanted someone to keep. So she would keep it. Even if it did screw up her world.
She tapped at the door.
“Hey,” he said, glancing up from his keyboard, then down at his watch, then up again. He let out a sigh. “My relief is late, as always.”
She nodded. “You asked if I wanted to read your work. I said I would.”
A dozen emotions flickered through his eyes in an instant, most of them damnably inscrutable. Had he forgotten? Had she just made an utter fool of herself?
“Yes, I remember.”
The pause grew pregnant. She shifted her weight from her left foot to her right, to avoid the still painful blister. He seemed to see the faint grimace in her eyes.
He rose from his chair. “I’m sorry. Your blister must be sore. Please, have a seat.”
“Thank you.”
She settled into the chair and looked around. His office was neater than her cubicle, although the modular bookshelves on the walls were crammed with software manuals, three-ring binders, gem cases with CD-ROMs, all of which bore obscure labels. Even more impressive were rows upon rows of large tape spools. This was, she found herself thinking, the mother of all computers.
Behind a glass partition, in a brightly lighted room, lay the mainframe computer, a double row of waist-high gunmetal-gray boxes. Miles kept the lights off in his office, apparently content to work by the spillover from the computer room.
She shifted her feet beneath his desk and bumped a green nylon bag. He leaned over to retrieve it. She closed her eyes for a moment and allowed herself to enjoy the brush of his shoulder against her hip.
“My cycling clothes,” he offered in explanation, scrambling back to a safe distance. “I’ll toss them over here, out of your way.”
“Your writing?” she asked.
“Right.” He turned and pulled a half-inch-thick stack of paper from a shelf. “I…printed it out for you. Easier on the eyes than staring at a screen. Especially when you’ve been doing that for eight hours already.”
So he had remembered.
“It’s rough,” he said. “A lot of it is still first draft. And of course I need to flesh it out more for a full novel. I guess it’s more a very long synopsis.”
Anxiety was apparent in his voice, and even more so in his eyes. He held the stack of pages as if it were a freshly decorated wedding cake.
Drusilla tried to offer a reassuring smile. “May I read it? I promise not to say anything bad.”
He drew the pages back to himself. “No, don’t say that. If it sucks, just say so. I want your honest opinion.”
If most artists she’d known were any guide, that translated to, I want you to honestly tell me you love it. But maybe he was different.
“Of course,” she said, hoping her answer wasn’t too obviously ambiguous.
He handed her the pages. “I’ll go get another soda while you read. Do you want anything?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine, thanks. If I drink any more, I’ll float away.”
He nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll be back.”
He slid out of the room as if trying to avoid a rattlesnake. She remembered having the same feelings the first time she’d let a boyfriend see her paintings. It would be a long time before she made that mistake again. She resolved not to leave Miles with a similar memory, no matter what she thought of his writing.
As she began to read, she realized this was not the entire manuscript. She had jumped into an adventure in the middle, if not near the end. It took a few pages to get a handle on what was happening in the story. When she did, her heart caught in her throat.
The dragon’s golden-scaled lids drooped over moist, emerald eyes. “Thank you,” it whispered.
“You’re welcome.” He reached out to touch its face, the tiny scales silky-smooth under his touch. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.”
The dragon turned to look at the infant nuzzled beneath its wing. “You saved my baby.”
“But you…” he said.
“My fate was written in the Elder Stone a thousand years ago,” the dragon said, its voice barely a whisper. “You could not have changed that.”
Milan’s eyes stung. “No, I suppose not.”
Behind him, a low moan stirred the near darkness.
“Tend to her now,” the dragon said, its nose pressing him back. “I must rest.”
With a mighty effort, it drew itself nearly into a ball, its nostrils within an inch of the infant’s. The baby’s eyes opened slightly at the disturbance. Then it let out a plaintive sigh, as if understanding by instinct what it could not yet know. A tender, tiny, pink-golden paw reached up to its mother’s lips, and it drifted back into sleep.
“She’s dying,” the princess said.
“Yes,” Milan answered. “The wound was too deep. And with the stress of childbirth…”
Drusia held out a pale hand. “I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was,” she said. “If I had been stronger, I could have healed her.”
He looked at the wound on her chest. Just a few minutes ago, it had stretched from shoulder to breastbone. Now it was only a small cut above her left breast. She would recover. But it had been a near thing.
“Drusia, if you had taken her entire wound, you would have died.”
“And she would have lived,” the princess said, unable to meet his eyes. “Now my father’s kingdom is doomed. Doomed by my fear.”
He placed a hand beneath her chin and lifted her face until their eyes met. “You risked your life for her. That wasn’t fear. That was courage. As she said, her fate was written on the Elder Stone.”
“And my father’s fate?”
He shook his head. “That prophecy was not cast in the Elder Stone.”
“It was no less foretold,” the princess insisted. “’And she must give life to save life.’ I should have given my life to her.”
“No,” the dragon whispered, an emerald e
ye turned to her. “I was not the one.”
“Who is?” Drusia asked. “Must I do this all again, and again, and yet again, while my father falls into darkness?”
“You have given life, Princess.” The dragon nuzzled her infant. “She shall be called Drusilla, the light of she who gave life. You gave her life. I give her to you.”
The dragon drew a slow breath, its emerald eye fixed on Drusia. Then, a quiet smile on its lips, its flank settled for the last time.
“I guess we have a daughter,” Milan said, tears brimming in his eyes.
“We?”
He nodded, eyes lowered. “I have loved you from the moment we met, Drusia Morgantide. Let me bear this burden with you. Else I cannot bear her death alone.”
His heart beat once, twice, thundering with a fear like none he had ever known. Now it was her turn to lift his face.
“I love you, Milan.”
Drusilla laid the last page in her lap astounded by how closely his story paralleled her imaginings. Astounded by what she had discovered there. Her hands were shaking.
He was standing in the doorway. Apparently he had been for some time. She bit her lip, but the words seemed borne by an inner wind which would not be denied.
“I never knew.”
He gave the briefest anxious nod. “From the very first day you came to work here.”
“I never knew.”
“Now you do.”
He stepped closer to take the pages from her lap. Their fingers touched. Lingered. She shifted in the chair. This was…what? A dream come true? Did that really happen?
“How did…?” Her voice quivered. “How did we share a dream?”
“Maybe there’s a place where it wasn’t a dream at all, but a reality.”
“You knew.”