Dragon's Hope Read online

  Dragon’s Hope

  by Emily Martha Sorensen

  Copyright © 2016 Emily Martha Sorensen

  Cover art by Eva Urbaníková

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Hall

  Chapter 2: Here

  Chapter 3: Hurry

  Chapter 4: Hungry

  Chapter 5: Health

  Chapter 6: Handle

  Chapter 7: Haggard

  Chapter 8: Haze

  Chapter 9: Her

  Chapter 10: Henry

  Chapter 11: Hello

  Chapter 1: Hall

  She wasn’t really clear on why she was here, in the Hall of Saurischian Dragons, rather than getting ready for the day that was supposed to be the most important of her life. After all, she had a very full schedule today. Her roommates would be incredulous if they discovered where she’d snuck off to.

  But something had drawn Rose back to the museum.

  The crowd oozed past Rose as she watched the eleven Deinonychus antirrhopus dragon eggs that now remained in the display case. They lay there silently. Still.

  “You’re not dead,” Rose murmured under her breath. “If Virgil wasn’t, if another dragon out in Utah wasn’t, you’re all living, too. So wake up.”

  A cluster of children passed her, following a harassed-looking nanny. “Would you two stop poking each other?” the woman complained, separating a boy and girl who were jabbing fingers into each others’ ears. “And you —!”

  The milling mob of children passed in front of her, momentarily blocking the display case. As her view cleared, Rose held her breath, wondering if another egg had woken. But no. The mob was past. The nanny was gone.

  Rose let out a long sigh.

  She wasn’t sure why it seemed so important to her that the other eggs awakened. She certainly was not looking to adopt a second child; she barely knew what she and Henry would do with the first one. Why was it that it mattered to her, then?

  Rose stood there, lost in thought, troubled by the fervency of her desire. What was it? What was the reason?

  The eggs did nothing. The crowd kept passing in front of her, sometimes jostling her, sometimes blocking her view, but always the eggs remained the same, still and in deep hibernation. Hibernation, because surely they must still be alive.

  Why? Why did it matter so much?

  Of course there was the obvious answer. As a prospective paleontologist, she had every reason to be fascinated by the prospect of living dragons. The fact that one had chosen her to be his mother bore no weight: she could not treat her son as a research subject. She, in fact, dared not. Another person’s dragon child, however, she could treat with scientific objectivity. She would dearly like to have such an opportunity.

  Then, too, there was the fact that Virgil was currently the only living dragon in this part of the country. Were he to be the only member of his species within his lifetime, it would be difficult to play with other children safely, or to feel like he had any place in the world other than as a relic, a living fossil of an ancient and long-dead age.

  No child deserved to feel that way.

  A raucous little boy burst out laughing as he ran toward the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton displayed prominently behind her. “Its wings are tiny!” he shouted. “Its arms are even smaller! It looks so dumb! Ha ha ha!”

  Rose closed her eyes. Mockery of a skeleton was one thing. But would her son have to deal with similar thoughtlessness from other human children his age?

  Please hatch, Rose thought, blinking back tears. Not for my son’s sake. I’m more selfish than that. I don’t want to be the only mother to a dragon in New York City. I don’t want to be the only one going through this.

  Oh, there was Henry, of course. But Henry’s cheerful optimism and unflagging enthusiasm seemed to belie any real understanding of the challenges they were going to have to face. When Rose attempted to speak to him of all her worries, he simply turned a deaf ear, or else changed the subject to something more positive.

  Perhaps he did it because he saw no value in borrowing trouble that might never surface. Perhaps he preferred to focus on the prospect of fatherhood, in which he seemed to take unending delight. That was valid. But to Rose, who felt far more terror than joy at the prospect of parenthood, it was also isolating.

  If another dragon hatched, she thought, there would be another woman in the city who would understand how I feel. Perhaps it wouldn’t even matter who she was.

  All the professors and paleontologists and zoologists who had quietly and confidentially assembled to study the dragon were men. Rose wanted their respect, not their dismissal, so she dared not speak to any of them about feelings. One day, after all, she hoped to be among them, and to act like an emotional woman in front of them would only sabotage this.

  Please hatch, Rose thought to the eggs, knowing that they could understand her meaning without her speaking aloud. Please wake up. Please choose parents. I don’t want to be alone in this.

  The eggs did nothing. Well, perhaps she couldn’t really blame them. They were fetuses. They couldn’t be expected to understand an adult’s concerns, even if any of them were on the verge of waking.

  Rose swallowed her emotions, as she had grown used to doing, and tried to leave. Then she turned back and spoke aloud.

  “If not for me, then for yourselves,” she said. “Perhaps you do not understand this. Perhaps it is ridiculous to even say it to you. But I will say it, nonetheless. You are not mere refugees from the past. You are the future of Deinonychus antirrhopus, a future that can only exist if your species becomes viable. The more individuals who hatch, the better that chance.”

  The eggs did nothing. Rose spoke again, this time forcefully.

  “I do not know what mechanism you’ve used to hibernate. Whatever it is, it is extraordinary, to have preserved you so long and so well. It defies our current understanding or capacity for explanation. But one thing is clear: as long as you were all asleep, it was in your best interests to remain that way together. But now that even one has wakened, it is in your best interests to follow, so that you may be of compatible ages. Perhaps you are too young to consider your own offspring, but nature is not so merciful that you can ignore it. You must hatch now, if you want your species to have the best chance to survive.”

  The eggs did nothing. She had not really expected them to. Important as her words were, it was too much to expect not-even-infants to understand them.

  Rose sighed heavily and turned away from the display case. A little girl with a sticky face was sucking on her fingers and watching her, and a whole family was staring at her oddly. Embarrassed, realizing she probably should not have said so much aloud before any announcement had been made, Rose walked briskly away towards the stairs.

  She had spent far too long at the American Museum of Natural History today already. Her roommates would wonder where she had been.

  Ducking through the crowd, not stopping to walk through the Hall of Ornithischian Dragons despite the fact that it had been weeks since she’d been there, Rose headed down the stairs, out the entrance, and into the street. Breathing in the odoriferous air, she settled into the walk through Central Park to reach her apartment.

  It was a lovely Saturday morning, half-past ten, and there were families and nannies all over the park.

  Will this be Henry and me in a few weeks? Rose wondered. Or will we be too much celebrities once our son hatches and the newspapers are given the story?

  They hadn’t even told their families about the dragon yet. She and Henry had discussed it at length, and he had said he didn’t think his brother could keep a secret, while she had expressed concern about her nosy sisters and their love of gossip.

  It wouldn’t be long before they
knew now, though.

  Rose checked her wristwatch, and then picked up her skirts to walk more quickly. She had definitely stayed at the museum much longer than she should have.

  She didn’t want to be late to her wedding.

  Chapter 2: Here

  “Where were you?” Henry demanded as she bustled past him into her parents’ house, closely followed by her roommates, who had griped most of the trip that she hadn’t left them any time to do her hair up nicely.

  “Delayed,” Rose said perfunctorily. She didn’t want to explain where she had been, lest it exasperate him. There wasn’t time to speak with him privately about dragons, anyway. “I lost track of time. I’m here now.”

  “Rose!” her mother shouted, rushing in from the living room. “Where have you been? We’ve only half an hour before the minister arrives!”

  “And my sister-in-law isn’t getting along very well with your father,” Henry added.

  Rose felt weary.

  “We tried to get here in time, but she didn’t come back until half past ten,” Natalie said in her usual bossy tone. “She said she’d been off on a walk. I think she was trying to run away.”

  “Natalie!” Penelope hissed, scandalized.

  Henry caught Rose’s eye, glancing over at her roommates as if to ask whether there were any truth to this. She shook her head in irritation. He looked relieved.

  “Upstairs!” Rose’s mother ordered, making shooing motions. “We need to get you ready!”

  Rose gladly obeyed, mounting the stairs with haste. Her mother followed swiftly at her heels.

  The dress was laid out on her bed, waiting for her. Rose suppressed a sigh. It wasn’t really one she would have chosen for herself. It was lovely, with a scoop neckline and an elegant train, but it didn’t feel like her. It was too soft, too gentle, too womanly. Her mother had worn it twenty-two years ago, and it had suited her mother perfectly. Had Rose chosen her own, she would have gone with something much more simple and plain.

  But practicality was practicality. There had been no time to have her own dress made, nor would there have been the money. Rose’s father had chosen to show his intense dislike of the groom by tightening his purse-strings.

  Fair enough. It was sufficient that he had consented at all. At first, he had seemed likely to refuse outright, but then Rose’s mother had taken him aside and spoken with him, and he had come back with a surly expression and an agreement that a wedding could be held in their home, but there would be no money paid for non-necessities.

  Rose didn’t know what her mother had said, but she had a nasty feeling that her parents, and most likely all of her and Henry’s relations, were assuming she was pregnant. What other conclusion could they come to, when the two of them had announced the engagement so suddenly and insisted that the wedding be only two weeks away?

  In fact, that conclusion wasn’t far from the truth. There was a child on the way, a child that made their marriage the most sensible thing.

  Still, they had done nothing untoward, and it rankled to think that anyone might think otherwise, even if such assumptions could be corrected later.

  Still, it rankled to think that such assumptions might be spreading, even if they could be corrected later. Rose strongly suspected that her roommates had spread rumors about her to all their acquaintances.

  “You look lovely,” Rose’s mother said, buttoning the dress up the back. There were dozens of tiny buttons.

  Rose held her tongue and did not complain, though the dress was slightly too tight at the waist and squeezed her ribcage. “Thank you, Mama,” she said politely.

  “We’d best do something with your hair, too,” her mother said, fingers moving busily.

  Rose stood still, watching her reflection in the mirror as her mother bustled about. Poor Mama, she thought. It must be such a disappointment to her that this is all the wedding she’ll get from me. I suppose Sara and Louise will have to make up for it in lavishness, when their turns come in a few years.

  They were soon heading downstairs, and the next hour passed in a surreal blur. It was a ceremony just like any she had attended for cousins or her mother’s acquaintances, only this time it was her standing before the minister, speaking the traditional words, and accepting the kiss from the young man who, in other circumstances, might have been a favorite beau, but instead was little more than a stranger. As family members rose from their chairs to share congratulations, Rose felt a curious sense of unreality.

  This is it, then, she thought. It’s official.

  She wondered how Virgil was doing. When they had left him last night, he had been complaining about feeling tight within the egg, which meant he must be close to hatching. How much longer would they have? One week? Two?

  Rose’s mind raced as she thought about the preparations they had made. Every person had had different theories about what a Deinonychus antirrhopus infant might eat, or what might be the closest equivalent in their era. There were now four leading theories, and one of Rose’s prevailing worries was that none of them would be adequate.

  Of course all of them had asked Virgil, but his responses had been confusing and less than optimally helpful. It seemed clear he didn’t understand what they were asking, and perhaps he didn’t even have enough relevant memories from his parents to share in the first place. And of course, all of the prey species his parents had devoured were now extinct.

  Mr. Teedle had immediately sent a telegram to the Dragon National Monument to inquire what they had fed their dragon hatchling, upon reading the news that one had hatched there, but there had not yet been a reply.

  Rose rather suspected that he had failed to communicate any sense of urgency, and thus it had been buried in a pile of other inquiries from curious scientists and eager journalists.

  Thus it was that there were now stockpiles of rats, frogs, insects, pigeons, and chickens filling an icebox that had been lugged into the laboratory where Virgil was currently settled. Every day, one of the professors brought a new bag of ice to keep the potentially-needed ingredients fresh.

  Rose quailed at the thought of all the effort that was being put into the preparations to keep their son alive. Quite honestly, she would have preferred to leave him to the care of the dozen capable specialists for several more weeks. But no: the deal was that as soon as they were married, they were to take the egg home so that the empty laboratory, so that it could be used for scheduled classes again.

  Presumably this meant that the whole icebox would be moved to their apartment, and that the researchers would continue visiting their home on the same constant schedule that they currently maintained in the laboratory they were borrowing.

  And she was less than thrilled that the apartment Henry had rented for them was within an easy walking distance of City College, but over an hour’s walk from Hunter College. He hadn’t even asked her opinion before he’d taken it.

  I’ll have a long walk to school on Monday, Rose thought, feeling sick. Her roommates had already found another student at their college to replace her, and one of her professors had made an offhanded comment that implied he thought she would drop out of school before the semester was finished. It was as if nobody thought her education mattered.

  “Congratulations,” Henry’s grandfather told Rose stiffly, shaking her hand. He seemed like a very formal gentleman.

  “Thank you,” Rose said politely, snapping back to the moment. This was her first introduction to most of Henry’s family members. She should really make an effort to pay attention to them.

  Then she looked over at Henry, and realized with a start that Mr. Teedle was standing next to him.

  What? Rose thought, startled. Did we invite him?

  She barely had time to wonder before the man opened his mouth and blurted out words that were both quick and rather too loud.

  “The egg is hatching! You need to come right away!”

  Chapter 3: Hurry

  Outside the door, a cab was waiting. They rushed out to
meet it, heedless of their family and neighbors shouting out and murmuring after them.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Rose’s father thundered, with an air of extreme offense.

  Rose didn’t stop to answer. It would only provoke an argument, which would delay their exit longer. She was not going to miss the hatching.

  “Henry?” an elegant woman with an arrangement of curls protested. She had been introduced as his mother. “Henry!”

  He made no move to stop, either. The two of them scrambled up into the cab, Mr. Teedle following after them. Scrunched in between the two men, Rose wound her train around her arm in hopes that it would not get caught in the enormous wheels on the way.

  “Where are you going?” Rose’s mother shouted as the the cabbie flicked his reins and the horses began moving forward. “Rose! What egg?”

  The cab jostled around them as they drove down the city streets. There was a tense silence as they waited to arrive.

  “I take it you haven’t told your families?” Mr. Teedle asked.

  “My mother is a gossip,” Henry said briefly.

  “So are my sisters,” Rose added.

  Mr. Teedle nodded silently.

  “I think we should tell them before any announcements in the papers, mind you,” Henry put in.

  “Oh, well, obviously,” Mr. Teedle agreed.

  Rose wound the train around her arm more tightly, wondering when that would be. When she thought of telling her parents, of introducing them to the egg . . . no, soon to be the hatchling . . . her mind rebelled to even imagine it. How would her father react to the news that there were dragons alive? What about her mother and sisters?

  She had only just made Henry’s family’s acquaintance. They lived just far enough out of the city to make traveling inconvenient, so she had only met them today.

  They would be even more of a mystery.

  When they reached the City College campus, Mr. Teedle directed the driver down the streets until they reached the appropriate building. Mr. Teedle was quite to dismount. He offered Rose his arm to help her get down, and then went to pay the cabbie as Henry hopped out. Henry made no move to wait. He strode straight up the stairs towards the entrance.