Eclipse Three

Mesopotamian Fire by Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple

Alright, it isn't much of a dragon. I never said it was. More a lizard kind of thing. But if you lay down on your side and squint at it, you can see it's a dragon, as long as you're careful not to get too close.

Yeah-that's too close. Don't say I didn't warn you. That flame may be tiny but, like a match tip, it can really burn. I've got an ointment right here. Johnson's 470. I've tried others, but they all barely touch the pain. You should have seen what happened when I used the stuff in my kit. What a flare. Oh right. I do go on sometimes. Here it is. Just rub it in quickly. You'll hardly feel a thing by this afternoon.

You know, if I believed Jonathan Swift about the Lilliputians, I'd say that this is a dragon who could have terrorized them. Or the little people who stayed on the island in Mistress Masham's Repose. They'd surely have run screaming from it. Or it could have been the harrower of the Borrowers. Yeah-say that ten times fast. But those were in books, for God's sake. Not real. Not even faction. My girlfriend, Dana, the sometimes editor, who used to go to this college, did you ever meet her? Dana Woodbridge. Though of course being an English lit major, she probably never took a science course. Oh the point? Sure. I was getting to that. You know, Emily Dickinson wrote "Success in circuit lies." Dana likes to quote that when we have our long discussions. Well, about faction, Dana told me that it's truth crossed with fiction. You know-made-up memoirs and that sort of thing. It's hot now she says.

Well, not as hot as dragon's breath, whatever the size. And mustache hairs, when they singe, smell godawful. As you've just found out.

I suppose I could have stamped on it when I first saw it. The dragon, not the mustache hairs I mean. Hard to stamp on them without hurting someone. Hahahahahaha. Oh, sorry. That's my sense of humor. Dana doesn't think I'm good at it either. But I'm working on it. But if I'd stamped on it at once… the dragon, not… Right you got that. I'll move on.

Well, if I had, I'd have gotten rid of the problem in a second. I mean, it wasn't a lizard and couldn't scurry away. It could fly a bit, but I think that whole flying dragon stuff was made up by people who didn't know a thing about flight muscles, and lift and birds having hollow bones. By a bit I mean it had the floating ability of a hot-air balloon, except with nothing to use as ballast or to throw overboard when it wanted to descend. It just stopped holding its hot breath, blew it out, and down it came.

Yeah, well, I wouldn't believe me either. And not because I have a reputation as a jokester. That was in high school. College, I'm all serious student. Geology major, anthropology minor. It's how I came upon the little dragon, on a geology field trip to the Mideast last summer.

Be specific? Right. I was in Egypt. But not the Egypt you think of now, all web cafes and big German cars. What? You don't think of big German cars? You haven't been to Cairo lately then. Well, not the Egypt you think of either. The Great Pyramids have been dug up so many times they're more gaping hole than grave marker now. No, I was in real ancient Egypt, exploring caves that were old before the first stone was placed at Giza.

I was deep underground, spelunking alone through a narrow tunnel. I love that word. Spelunking. Spelunking. Spelunking… oh, sorry. I didn't mind the tight fit, though the rest of the crew thought I was crazy to go off on my own. But you know me, sir, always the loner. Except with Dana of course, though being a loner is different than being alone. Dana showed me that. Oh right, that has nothing to do with what I'm trying to tell you, but she got that from one of the romance novels she was editing and it really struck me. She quotes me stuff all the time, broadens me a lot. Did I mention that she does freelance…?

Right. The tunnel.

The tunnel had just opened up into a sizeable chamber when the battery in my headlamp died. Let me tell you, you don't know darkness until you've experienced underground darkness. Your eyes don't adjust. Your mind either. You spend more than a few minutes in darkness that total, you're liable to turn into a gibbering idiot. Well, yes, but I had a touch of that before. Hahahaha. Oh sorry, sense of humor. None. I'll tell Dana. I bet she'll find that one funny.

That's why I always carry a spare battery for my light. But before I could get the battery changed-I'd practiced the maneuver in the spelunking class at the Y a dozen times or more because Thorough is my middle name. Well, actually it's Hyatt, but you get the picture. No, not those Hyatts, otherwise I would probably have majored in restaurant management and never found the little dragon. Oh, the point? Right. Sometimes I do wander a bit. I saw the tiny gout of flame that your mustache has so recently become acquainted with. It was plenty obvious in the blackness, but I can't say for sure if I would have noticed it if my light hadn't gone out at that exact moment. I find that's often the way with Great Discoveries.

Yes, this is my first and only Great Discovery, so perhaps I am being premature in saying that. But I bet if you ask other Great Discoverers about their Great Discoveries, they'd say they were just in the right place at the right time. As opposed to the right place but the wrong time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time. I wonder if there's a right time to be in the wrong place?

No matter. I scooped him up and headed for the surface. A number of specimen bags got burned before I figured out that if you wrapped him up tight and covered his head he'd go right to sleep. Must be some bat or bird DNA in him somewhere. They do that don't they? Anyway, that's a study for some other grad student, biology probably, or anthropology-though that's the study of man so maybe not. Either way, I'll want my name on the paper, too. You've taught me well, sir.

And lucky for me, despite how metallic those scales look, they aren't metal at all and so didn't set off the metal detector at the airport. His bones, being hollow, didn't ring any bells either. Must have looked like a painting or something to the x-ray machine. I was all ready for the questions, ready to be taken aside at customs, too, declaring the dragon a museum delivery. Had the papers and all. It's not so hard to fake those, you know. I got mine from a little man who was as brown and wrinkled as a walnut and I found him in Khan el-Khalili in Cairo, that's the big market. Oh right, you'd know that one well.

Well, his name was Achmed. The man, not the market of course. No last names. We were careful about that. I told him to call me Joe. Still, we'd better just keep that between us, sir. Don't want to get Achmed in trouble. But I needed those papers. I didn't know whether the Egyptian government would consider him their property under the Antiquities Act. The dragon, I mean, not Achmed. I certainly considered him mine. The dragon that is. And I was bringing him home. You know, that's why Dana is the editor and not me. I prefer fiery dragons to pesky pronouns. No ointment for those. Hahahaha.

And of course I had to take the big chance bringing the dragon back. I mean-if I told my tale without this key bit of sulfurous proof, I knew no one would believe me. Especially not you, Dr. Puccini. And I'm real sorry about your mustache, but I did warn you. Really I did. You just had to get down so close to him. I didn't realize you were that nearsighted or I would have brought along a magnifying glass. Though a magnificent glass would have been more to the point. Yes, another joke. Well, maybe a little funny?

Now, to the business of my paper. You see, I can get down to the point when I have to. "The Mesopotamian Dragon: Fictions and Facts, A Transatlantic Case Study" and the D you gave me. You wrote in that green pen with the archaic flourishes: "We deal in truth in this class, or as near as we can come to it, Mr. Darnton, and not creatures out of myth."

I expect you understand your myth-stake now, sir. Hahahahaha. But seriously, my grade?