Dragon's Fire Read online

  Dragon’s Fire

  by Emily Martha Sorensen

  Copyright © 2017 Emily Martha Sorensen

  Cover art by Eva Urbaníková

  Dedication:

  To Liz,

  who has done a lot of urgent, last-minute beta-reads for me, even when it was personally inconvenient.

  Thank you for that.

  Thank you also for that whole “being a great sister” thing. That makes it really nice to be around you.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Forward

  Chapter 2: Fame

  Chapter 3: Fault

  Chapter 4: Food

  Chapter 5: Flood

  Chapter 6: Feelings

  Chapter 7: First

  Chapter 8: Friends

  Chapter 9: Fortitude

  Chapter 10: Future

  Chapter 11: Family

  Chapter 1: Forward

  The zoo was filled with people and an air of festivity. It was the third day of the New Year, the crowd was brimming with excitement for the future, and a tiny blue dragon infant was sharing one of her mother’s memories.

  She was a beautiful, vain dragon, vibrantly blue, stretching out her long neck to show off her horns to the prospective mate she wished to have notice her. The purple male ignored her, so she snorted fire in exasperation. Must he be clueless? She had been hoping to be coy.

  She raised her wings in a sharp flapping motion. That caught the male’s attention for a moment, so she kept on beating them steadily, as if to launch off the ground.

  Of course she knew that she could no longer fly. She was too heavy. Flight was something only the smallest dragons kept to adulthood. In fact, loss of flight was usually seen as a sign of maturity and readiness to procreate.

  Still, as with most dragons who reached adulthood, she could still glide. She climbed atop the pile of boulders she had prepared, waiting until she was sure the male was watching. Spreading her wings widely, she launched herself downwards, floated for a moment as the air caught her momentum, and then floated with easy grace to the ground.

  Yes. Now she had his attention. She flapped her wings and moved close enough to catch it as he let escape a flash of memory of how beautiful she’d been on her glide down.

  She fluttered her wings and waited for the admiration to continue. She coyly kept her memories to herself as she admired the vibrant red-purple of his scales, different enough from her own color to show that he was not closely related, and therefore eligible.

  Oh, come now! He was walking away! Well, fine then! She would be much more aggressive!

  Rose drew in a deep breath as she came back to herself. The window into the courtship behaviors of another species was fascinating, and it was no wonder that the crowd seemed so enthralled, pushing closer and shouting for more.

  Still, Rose thought. Still . . .

  Violet was very pleased that they liked her mother’s memory! Violet would share one of her father’s!

  No, Rose thought. You’re more than just a repository of your ancestors’ experiences. You’re a very small child. You should be . . .

  A new memory washed over her.

  His second child was poking at the new egg. The purple boy wanted to know when the egg would hatch.

  Not yet, he indicated to the curious boy. And poking the egg with one’s claws was not a good thing. The little baby would be inside the egg for another season. Until then . . .

  Tears sprang to Rose’s eyes as the memory faded, and she pushed backwards to get away. She pushed through the crowd until she was reasonably sure the small blue dragon could not pick up her thoughts, and then she leaned against the bars of a cage with her head in her hands.

  All dead. They’re all dead. Every one of those people in her memories is dead.

  It was obvious, and yet nobody here seemed to realize the implications. Dragons had gone extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago, all save the few Deinonychus antirrhopus eggs that had miraculously been recovered recently.

  Rose composed herself with difficulty, breathing in deeply. Her son was the other dragon in New York City, and she must not let herself think too much about that tragedy. The last thing she or Henry or Virgil needed was for the three-month-old baby to remember just how much he had lost, and how much he could never regain.

  Focus on the future, Rose reminded herself, opening her eyes. Their species was lost, as was their entire civilization, and yet now they both have a second chance. There are now two dragons in New York City, one in Washington D.C., and four in Vernal. Soon there might be Deinonychus antirrhopus all over the country.

  A smile rose on her lips at the reminder, and Rose pulled away from the empty cage. It almost did not even bother her that it was empty because it had been reserved in case a third dragon hatched in their city.

  She pushed through the crowd, burying her disappointment that the crowd had been too thick to have a private conversation with her son’s friend, and exited the zoo into Central Park. She strode through the partially-frozen slush across the walkways, pondering the amusing courtship of Violet’s parents.

  Will Virgil one day court Violet that way? Rose wondered. Will he be clueless, and she forward? Of course, he might choose another girl altogether, given that there is already one female in Washington D.C. and another in Vernal . . .

  “Absurd, you know,” a woman was saying to a companion by her side, both of them walking briskly past Rose. “How could anyone call that thing the same as human? It’s an insult, that’s what it is.”

  Rose bristled, and she quickened her pace without conscious thought to keep up with the women. Angry as it made her, she wanted to know what people were saying about her son’s species. She wanted to know what attitudes she would have to overcome to get her son the acceptance he would need.

  The other woman bobbed her head in agreement. She wore an admiring look that implied little capacity for thoughts of her own.

  “Really,” the first woman went on, waving an arm clad in a thick fur coat. Her hat was the peak of fashion, and her shining boots were either brand new or immaculately kept. “It should be obvious, shouldn’t it, just by the fact that the zoo is the proper place to keep those things, that they are no more than animals?”

  Rose’s blood boiled.

  “Very obvious,” the second woman agreed.

  “In fact, the very shape makes that clear,” the first woman went on.

  “Quite clear,” the second woman nodded.

  “Therefore, as for the parallels your husband attempted to draw between this and our own movement,” the first woman sniffed, “you can see that they are quite unsubstantiated. We are people who deserve equal rights, whereas those are —”

  “Excuse me,” Rose broke in, unable to bear it any longer. She should, perhaps, have held her peace, but the arrogant woman had offended her last sensibility. “I beg your pardon for intruding, but you are quite wrong.”

  The finely-dressed woman turned around, giving Rose an arch look. A fur stole that perfectly matched her coat slid off her shoulder, and she pushed it back into place.

  “I beg your pardon?” she asked sarcastically.

  Rose’s heart thundered in her chest. She was aware of the rudeness of eavesdropping, and she should no doubt have let them pass without keeping pace, but now that she had heard the woman’s words, she could not let them stand.

  “Deinonychus antirrhopus dragons have long been suspected of intelligence, and now that suspicion has been replaced with certainty,” Rose said in a level voice. “Intellectually, they are our equals. Perhaps more than equals, for they have abilities our species has never gained.”

  The second woman looked very offended.

  “Did you vote?” the woman in the fur
coat demanded.

  Rose blinked, taken aback. “I . . . beg your pardon?”

  “Did you vote?” the fur-coated woman asked insistently.

  What has that to do with anything? Rose wondered.

  She vaguely recalled a great deal of commotion last year over the Nineteenth Amendment passing, but she had never paid that much attention to politics, and Virgil had awoken shortly after that. When the election had come in November, she had been far too busy to place any importance on whether the next president would be James Cox or Warren Harding.

  Even if she had been eligible, she would not have bothered. Thankfully, she had a better answer than that.

  “I was not twenty-one in November. I was not eligible.” Rose brushed a strand of hair behind her ear in a businesslike manner. “But I do not see what that has to do with the subject at hand.”

  “Have you not read the papers?” the second woman asked angrily. “Have you not read the article today that mocked the whole cause of women’s suffrage by comparing it with —”

  She stopped abruptly, her hand flying to her mouth.

  The woman with the fur coat sniffed and tossed her head. “If you have never fought for a cause, you cannot possibly conceive the insult implied by such an inappropriate —”

  “Bessie,” the second woman whispered, tugging the arm of the fur-coated woman with great urgency. “Bessie. Bessie. She was in the papers!”

  Chapter 2: Fame

  With misgiving, Rose watched the fur-coated woman’s face shift from disdain to recognition.

  “You’re one of the so-called ‘parents,’” the fur-coated woman said with great interest. “I saw it in the papers. Your husband is a student of archeology.”

  “It’s paleontology, and I’m the one who’s studying it,” Rose said heatedly. The papers frequently misreported that fact, and this tended to so enrage her that Henry had informed her that he would be much obliged if she would stop reading the papers.

  “So you have a pet dragon,” the second woman said.

  “I have a son who is a dragon,” Rose snapped.

  “What’s the difference?” the second woman asked.

  Rose stared at her incredulously.

  “Are you saying,” the fur-coated woman asked with an odd gleam in her eye, “that a human infant is exactly the same as one of those . . . things?”

  Rose recognized the gleam. She saw it often in her father’s eyes when he was trying to pick a fight. She knew that it would do little good to contradict someone with that facial expression, but she could not stop herself from rising to the bait. Her son’s honor was at stake.

  “Not exactly the same, no. But he’s equivalent.”

  “In what way?” the fur-coated woman asked sharply.

  “He’s every bit as intelligent,” Rose said. “He chose us as his parents. And the meaning was clear: parents, nothing less. He was not even aware that we weren’t dragons until he hatched.”

  In fact, Virgil still got mixed up over that sometimes. Just this morning, Virgil had asked her to play smack-each-other’s-tail with him. She had had to remind him, for what felt like the thousandth time, that she did not have a tail.

  “But the shape is far too different,” the fur-coated woman said. “No one would accept a thing like that as a child.”

  “Henry did,” Rose said. “I did. Our parents all consider him their grandson, and our neighbors accept him, as well. Once you know him, it’s impossible to not know he’s a person.”

  The fur-coated woman surveyed her for a long moment. “Very well,” she said. “Then I’ll have one, too.”

  Rose stared at her. “Excuse me?”

  The woman reached up to adjust her hat, pulling out a long pin and sticking it back into her hair. “I’ll have one, too. Francis has been saying he wants a child, and this will save me the bother of bearing one. Plus, the uniqueness will no doubt attract attention, and get us invited to the best parties.”

  Rose stared at her in horror. “That’s an appalling reason to adopt a child! Not to mention that no dragon would ever choose you, with an attitude like that!”

  “What Bessie wants, Bessie gets,” the fur-coated woman proclaimed, waving her hand. “I’m sure these childish creatures will be no different.”

  Rose’s mouth fell open at the sheer audacity. She was sure there could be no possible worse parent than this. Had this woman approached Virgil, he would have ignored her completely!

  A sudden thought struck, making her uneasy. What if not all the dragons will be so certain what they want? What if the certainty of someone else’s mind may be enough to persuade them to make a terrible decision?

  It was true that Violet was more pliable than Virgil. She did whatever the crowd asked her, most of the time.

  Surely persuasion does not become less effective just because one can communicate by thoughts rather than words, Rose thought. Lies might be ineffective, but somebody else’s terrible determination might be more persuasive that way than otherwise.

  She did not want a dragon child to wind up with this woman who would see them as a convenience, or as a trophy. But she could not think of a way to prevent it, save for hoping that all the future dragons would more closely resemble Virgil than Violet. And that, she could not bring herself to do. She hoped that all the dragons would have unique personalities.

  The second woman stared at her friend, appalled. “You would try to appease Francis with a pet? Really, Bessie!”

  “You heard her,” the fur-coated woman said, waving her hand toward Rose. “She said everyone considers them babies. Far less work for all the credit. Who wouldn’t want that?”

  “That is not what I said,” Rose snapped through clenched teeth. “There is nothing about Virgil that is less work than a human infant. In fact —”

  “Here is my card,” the fur-coated woman said grandly, reaching into her reticule to remove a small pink card that held a large name in script in the middle, with a small address in the left corner. She held it out to Rose. “Be a dear and call upon me when one comes available, will you?”

  Rose glanced down at the card, then flicked her gaze back up. She didn’t take it. “I don’t think you understand,” she said tightly. “Deinonychus dragons are people. They are every bit as much work as a child you gave birth to would be.”

  The fur-coated woman smiled comfortably. “That’s only true for poor families. When you have the means to hire a nursemaid, parenting is a breeze.”

  Rose stared at her in indignation.

  A snort came from the woman’s companion, who sounded rather like she wished to disagree. When Rose glanced over, she saw the second woman’s mouth trembling, attempting to hide an incredulous smile.

  Rose’s ire was slightly appeased. Perhaps the fur-coated woman’s friend would be able to talk some sense into her.

  “I will not argue this any further,” Rose said coldly. “I will only say that the desire to make one’s life easier is not a wish that will be fulfilled by adopting a child. Good day.”

  She walked off, her heels clicking against the sidewalk and splunshing through the piles of slush that were difficult to avoid. The chill of the weather did nothing to cool the broiling state of her temper, nor the fact that she blamed herself for it.

  Why did you imagine starting that discussion would be a good idea? Rose berated herself as she drove her hands into her pockets, seeking to warm them up from the chill of the air. What could you have possibly hoped to gain?

  She knew what she had been hoping to gain. She had been hoping to educate the ignorant, to clear up an insidious wrong belief, and to stand up for the rights of her son, whether or not those women’s opinions would have any bearing on his future.

  Yet instead, she had given one of those women an awful idea. A life of luxury might seem appealing, and Rose was envious of any family who would never have to waste time worrying about where graduate school tuition might come from, but a child who would be raised by somebody other than his p
arents, who would be put out for display . . . how would that be any different from the zoo?

  Not her, Rose thought fervently, ignoring the cold seeping through a hole in her shoe. Not that woman. Please.

  If someone like that became able to adopt a dragon, it would undermine everything Rose had gone through, everything she was currently going through, to raise Virgil as her own. It would encourage more trophy-seekers to attempt to force their will on fragile young minds. It would be bad for the one child, bad for others who hatched later, and bad for Deinonychus antirrhopus in general in New York City. Perhaps across the country.

  Virgil’s future must be secured. The future of his species must be secured.

  If only she knew how.

  Rose stepped through one too many slush puddles, and noticed at last how drenched her stockings had become.

  She lifted her skirt slightly, seeing that the hem was stiff with mud and water, and sighed.

  It was a miserable day for walking. She wished she could have taken the bus, but their meager budget was not in agreement with consistent indulgences like that.

  Chapter 3: Fault

  “Oh, look!” Henry cried a few weeks later, reading the morning paper as he cut his breakfast omelet with the side of his fork. “There are two more eggs awake at the museum! Two at once! I’m surprised that nobody called to tell us. I mean, it’s not directly our business, but it certainly is indirectly.”

  Rose froze in her position of frying eggs over the stove. They sizzled in the pan, the yolks starting to cook through instead of remaining runny.

  “Of course, perhaps they were too busy,” Henry mused.

  “Is that so?” she asked carefully. “Does it, um . . . does it say who the parents will be?”

  She had not told Henry about her encounter outside the zoo on the day she had been coming back home from Monday classes. Mostly this had been in hopes that if she never spoke of the encounter, it would never be relevant. But also, she had been ashamed of her own conduct in picking a fight.