Voices of Dragons

8

Kay started doodling dragon wings in the margins of her notes in class. Then, drawing in harnesses around the wings, in different patterns, thinking of different ways to arrange the ropes. Then she’d scribble it all out, glancing around nervously, hoping no one saw what she was doing and got suspicious. At night, she dreamed of falling and of stopping abruptly, pulled up short by the ropes and harness, then soaring. She lost sleep, thinking of and waiting for the next time she and Artegal would go flying.

It came two weeks later.

They experimented to find the best way of fitting the ropes into a harness. He crouched low so she could reach the knots and make adjustments. Kay added a knot in front so she could adjust the lines from both sides, and not just at his back, and that seemed to help. She learned to make the knots lay flat so they didn’t irritate Artegal’s skin. His scales looked hard, and they seemed like armor—they could act like armor, too, the dragon said. At least in the old stories, against weapons like swords and arrows. But the skin underneath was sensitive and would chafe and itch if pressed wrong, like an awkward wrinkle in a piece of clothing.

Never mind what the military wanted to know about the dragons. The biologists would kill for a chance like this.

Finally, they had a harness that looked a little more solid and functional than the first one. She couldn’t believe they’d managed to get away with it at all last time. Not only had the flimsy set of ropes she’d rigged up as a harness worked, hadn’t fallen apart and sent her plummeting—but she and Artegal hadn’t been discovered flying. So, why not try it again?

She cracked open a pack of hand warmers and put them in her gloves, hoping they would keep her from getting stiff with cold like last time. Her own climbing harness was on and secure. Once again, Artegal crouched and flattened his wing to let her climb up his side.

Settling on his back felt familiar. His back was broad enough for her to lie flat on, but not so large that she couldn’t see over his shoulders to the world around them.

She snapped in, told him she was secure, and braced as he lurched into motion, walking to the launch point. This time, she was ready for it. When he bunched his muscles, so did she, bracing. This time, she didn’t slip or lose her breath when he launched straight up, leaping into the air.

The valley fell away below them. Wings stretched to their fullest, Artegal started a wide, lazy circle across the width of it. A carpet of evergreens lay below, climbing both sides of the U-shaped valley. Swaths of snow were visible on bare rock outcroppings. High overhead, the sun painted the whole scene gold and silver. Except for the wind whipping around her head, all was silent. Artegal didn’t make a sound, except for a faint rippling in his wings, like sails.

At this height, nothing mattered. Not school, not dating, not arguments with Tam, not laws about the border that weren’t fair. Her smile grew wide.

Artegal stretched out like an arrow, streamlined, cutting effortlessly through the air. He changed direction, tilting his wings, and she held on, adjusting her weight to keep her balance. He could see her if he lifted his head and turned slightly, but that broke his aerodynamic shape, so he didn’t do it often. They’d have to work out a way to communicate. He could feel her, so maybe they could work out a system of signals. As it was, she hoped he could see her smile and know that everything was okay.

He turned the valley into a track, flapping a swooping oval up one side and down the other, tipped almost on his side as he passed along the hills. The force of his flight pulled Kay down, but her harness held her, and as Artegal increased speed, she stayed anchored to him.

He huffed—she felt the sudden expansion of his lungs—and she took that as a sign he was about to do something. She gripped the ropes and anchored herself by lying flatter against his scaled back.

Then, he swung around. Instead of the gentle, lazy tilting of wings and gliding in a wide arc, he lurched, and dived. Wings swept back now, he turned a sharp angle and plummeted, racing faster and faster to the ground. He spun until Kay thought he was out of control, and she shut her eyes to keep vertigo from overwhelming her. Surely they’d hit the trees soon, they were going so fast. She opened her eyes, just a slit, in time to see his wings reach out at the last moment, fill with air, and swing his body upward again. If she hadn’t already been lying flat, she would have slammed into him and lost her lunch. They were definitely going to have to work out some kind of communication.

She laughed, screaming.

This was what maintained the balance of power between the dragons and human aircraft over the last sixty years. Human forces may have had bombs and missiles, but their planes could never maneuver like this, turn on a dime in midair, brake and hover without stalling out. The dragons needed so little effort to outfly artificial human wings.

Artegal climbed and dived again. Kay was a little more ready for it this time. The dragon’s body was definitely better designed than the human body for this sort of thing. She gasped for air every time he made a sudden turn.

But when he caught an updraft and simply glided—a ship of the air sailing in the breeze as if he’d been born there—she felt as if she herself were flying.

An explosion echoed, too sharp and vicious to be thunder. Kay flinched and felt Artegal’s back muscles shiver with the same surprise. He turned, swooping around and gaining altitude to look. She sat up to try to see over his shoulder.

Past the ridge, over the forest north of the border, a black smudge drifted at the end of a trail of dark smoke. Something had caught fire and fallen out of the sky. A short distance away from what must have been a plane crash, a white parachute drifted down, a pilot dangling at the end.

For a moment, both dragon and pilot seemed to hover in midair, the pilot slowly falling, twisting back and forth at the end of his lines, looking straight across at the dragon with the girl on his back. He couldn’t possibly miss them.

Artegal folded his wings and plunged straight down, into the trees.

Amazingly enough, the dragon found space in the forest and came to a rough landing, slamming into the ground, taking the impact on his hind legs and chest. Kay swung over his shoulder and jerked against the harness.

Air force jets had patrolled along the border her whole life, but nothing like this had ever happened. She couldn’t tell: Had the plane been across the border when it crashed? Was the pilot going to land across the border, in Dragon? What would happen then? This wasn’t exactly secret, not like her and Artegal.

“Did he see us?” she called to Artegal. The pilot had seen them, she was sure of it, and he would take the news back to the military, the police—she was going to get in so much trouble.

“He will land on this side of the border,” Artegal said. “The elders will know of this. They will find him.”

Black smoke from the plane crash formed a tower. Everyone would see it.

“What’ll they do to him? What if he’s hurt? What if—”

“We are ambassadors. We’ll find him first.”

When he launched again, she was ready for him, gripping the ropes, watching earnestly. The tower of smoke formed a beacon, which they aimed toward. Growing more confident and feeling secure, Kay looked around, above them and over her shoulder, for aircraft. She assumed the military would send rescue helicopters or maybe even other jets. She didn’t see any, but that didn’t mean anything. They were flying too low for her to see the main road across the river.

But everyone must have been looking this way. Someone was going to see them. This was going to end it all for them, but they couldn’t turn back. If the pilot was hurt, they had to help.

Artegal began circling. She didn’t feel it at first, it was so subtle. His right wing dipped slightly, and the sun changed angle. She could look across his right side and see the forest spread out below them, the sky wheeling above them. His wing dipped again and the circle tightened. She recognized a search pattern. He was skimming over the large swath of trees where they’d seen the parachute come down, circling until he found the spot. She knew she wouldn’t be much help searching, not compared to his hunter’s vision. But she tried, and on the third loop around she saw a spot of white among green branches.

“Artegal, there!” she called, but didn’t know if he heard her, since her voice was probably lost in the wind. She slapped his shoulder to get his attention. He was already dipping his wing and banking in that direction.

He approached the white spot—the nylon of a parachute—and chose his landing site. She was getting better at this, and so expected the lurch to the ground when it came and was able to brace. This time, the whole landing procedure almost felt elegant.

Once on the ground, Artegal moved forward, striding by using his wingtips to balance, weaving through the spaces between trees. When he stopped and settled back, Kay held the ropes so she wouldn’t fall. She felt the dragon’s lungs breathe under her.

“Oh, shit,” she heard a man say.

Artegal’s neck curled into an S, and he cocked his head. This let Kay see over his shoulder, where she saw a man in an olive green jumpsuit running away. Behind him, he’d left his parachute and helmet.

Before Kay could react or think of an alternative, Artegal followed, stretching forward and low to the ground—as low as he could—and balancing on his forelimbs. He took large strides, covering ground quickly. Kay lost sight of the fleeing pilot until Artegal shifted his path and hesitated.

The pilot was still fleeing, looking over his shoulder, stumbling through underbrush and around branches, and heading into a dense section of forest where the dragon couldn’t follow. Artegal huffed and changed his path to skirt around and intercept him. In that moment, when he must have seen the dragon wasn’t following, the pilot hesitated and looked right at Kay, braced in her harness on the dragon’s back. He was maybe in his thirties and had dark, close-cropped hair and a tanned, rugged face. She may have seen amazement in his gaze as they looked at each other. Then Artegal moved on, and the pilot went back to running south, toward the border.

That was it. He’d seen her, and he’d tell the air force. Somehow, they’d figure out who she was, and she’d end up in jail.

“Artegal, stop. Wait a minute.” She thumped him on the shoulder.

Artegal sat back and tilted his head toward her. “Not hurt,” he said, almost wryly.

“But he’s seen us. He’ll tell everyone about us,” Kay said.

“We should catch him. Talk. Convince him not to.”

Talking was his solution to everything.

“No,” she said. “Let him go. We need to get out of here before more planes get here.”

“And dragons will come as well,” he said.

She didn’t even want to think about what would happen if other dragons found them.

He didn’t fly this time. People on both sides of the border were looking this way and would see them, even close to the treetops. She could already hear engines of aircraft approaching. Artegal was awkward on foot, but still faster than she would have been, as he strode through the trees, balancing on his wingtips. She stayed clipped onto his harness, because it was still a long way down.

When they reached their morning’s meeting spot, she slid to the ground, almost reluctantly because she didn’t know what was going to happen. She released the ropes and carefully coiled them, as if they would get to do this again. The crisis would blow over, she told herself. Nothing bad would come of the crash. Patiently, Artegal watched her. They’d barely spoken.

Finally, she stood, gear over her shoulder, ready to leave. “When can we meet next?” she asked.

“Don’t know. We should take care.”

“Maybe lay low for a couple of weeks,” she said. “Wait to see if anything happens.”

“Three weeks from today. At the highest sun—noon,” he said. “We meet at the old spot and assess.”

“Assuming we haven’t been thrown in jail.”

He grumbled. It sounded like a distant tree falling. She could almost feel it through her feet, through the ground. He said, “I’d never know. You’d just not be there.”

“Maybe he won’t tell anyone.”

His responding growl sounded doubtful.

“It’ll be fine,” she said, resolved, for both their benefits. “This’ll all blow over. Just watch.”

“Take care, Kay,” he said.

She tried to smile. “You too.”

They both turned and set off through the trees, in opposite directions.