Dragon's Egg Read online

  Chapter 3: Experience

  Henry stood there, frozen, shell-shocked.

  “I have to go,” he blurted out. He started to back out of the room.

  “Wait,” Mr. Teedle said. “Why —?”

  “I have to go, too.” Rose scrambled away from the case, terror lancing through her mind like jagged rips of lightning. “I’ll be back — be back — thanks, Mr. Teedle.”

  She turned and fled after Henry, racing down the stairs from the fourth floor. She nearly bumped into another patron ascending in her haste.

  “Wait!” Mr. Teedle shouted after her. “What did you see?”

  Rose leapt down the last few stairs and raced for the exit. In blind terror, she ducked under the arm of someone opening the door to the museum and raced down the street. Tears stung at her eyes. So desperate — terrified — so lonely —

  Central Park was across the street. Rose slowed while cars drove past, her heart hammering. Those weren’t her memories. Those weren’t her feelings. Those weren’t her loneliness, her desperation.

  But it was her terror.

  Her arms were shaking, she realized numbly. She must look dreadful right now. What must people be thinking?

  Maybe she should have stopped to tell Mr. Teedle what the dragon had said. Maybe she should have explained.

  But she couldn’t face going back. Not in the face of such desperate need. She waited for a gap in traffic, and then crossed the street into Central Park, her mind numb as she took in the late summer’s afternoon.

  Two women passed her pushing prams. They chattered to each another as a small child trailed after one of them. It was impossible to tell what gender the small child was, as the child was wearing a sailor suit with an overlong blouse, and she couldn’t tell if there were shorts or skirt underneath. Most likely a boy, as the sailor suit was pink. But you never knew.

  A woman sat on the grass nearby, watching two small boys wrestle with a huge dog. A third boy ran over, waving a shredded scrap of cloth, and the dog lunged for it, snapping excitedly. The boys screamed with laughter.

  Rose glanced out over the Lake, where a couple drifted by on a boat. The woman wore a ruffled blue dress and held a flower-shaped paper parasol over her head, the black feather at the top of her hat tickling it. The man was wearing a green belted suit and a hat with a ribbon around it. At first Rose thought they were alone, and then she noticed the man was clutching a small baby in the crook of his arm.

  There are so many parents around, Rose thought, swallowing. She’d never noticed it before, but children were everywhere. She walked slowly down the path, feeling a breeze whip the skirt around her ankles. All out here with their children.

  Would a dragon child even be allowed in Central Park? No one knew when they first started to breathe fire. Perhaps a dragon child would be dangerous.

  No, no, no. She couldn’t even fathom having a human child yet. She wanted to study dragons, not raise one.

  She started to pass by a man sitting under a tree, twisting his hat in his hands, and did a double-take as she recognized his clothing.

  “Mr. Wainscott,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked up. “Miss Palmer,” he said. His voice was strained. “Did you get the same message I did?”

  “He wants . . .” Rose’s voice faltered. She swallowed, gathered her skirt, and sat down in the shade beside him. “He wants me to be his parent.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say the word mother. Somehow, that seemed much more personal. More alien. More not-what-she’d-intended-for-her-life-path-at-all. Sure, there were some women who had children at eighteen, but she had never wanted to be one of them. She wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment. How could the dragon ask such a thing?

  “He wants me to be his father,” Henry said.

  “I can’t do it,” Rose blurted out. “It’s an outrageous demand.”

  “Children aren’t known for being undemanding,” Henry said. “Just ask my brother. He has six-year-old twins.”

  “I can’t do it,” Rose said. “I won’t do it!”

  Henry was silent as he picked at the grass.

  “At least we know for sure that he’s intelligent,” he said. “He thinks we’re the equivalent of his parents.”

  “We don’t know for sure that’s what it means,” Rose said, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  It might not be objectively sound, but the dragon had felt intelligent. Frighteningly intelligent. She didn’t know of any human baby who could think so clearly. Though perhaps that was simply because she had never had the opportunity to compare: human babies lacked the ability to communicate telepathically.

  “I had a professor last semester who brought up the question,” Henry said. “He said they couldn’t have been because there was no evidence of any written language.”

  “That was Edward Cope’s argument,” Rose snorted. “As if there haven’t been human societies with no written languages! I much prefer Mary Anning’s hypothesis. She said that dragons might have used scorched stones as a method of recording information, since the structure of their throats and jaws suggests that they had multiple glands for controlling the temperature of their fire and the chemicals that produced it. In the same way that some animals used scent to communicate, dragons may have been so sensitive to temperature differentials that they could use them as a form of language —”

  She stopped, seeing Henry watch her with a smile on his face.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’re very smart, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “I’m very interested in the subject,” Rose said, a little embarrassed.

  Henry grinned. “I guess we know the answer to whether they had a written language now, too.”

  “We do?” Rose asked quizzically.

  “Sure. This means that dragons didn’t need a written language to record information permanently. They just passed down memories directly.”

  “No, no, no.” Rose waved her hand. “That would be no more than a sophisticated oral tradition, which means it would still be colored by interpretation every generation. That doesn’t mean there was no written language. We’ll have to see if the dragon has any memories from ancestors that would be relevant to other questions about dragon society, or whether all that was communicated to him were memories of hatching. It would be amazing to interview him —”

  “Miss Palmer,” Henry interrupted. “You’re very smart, but you’re being very dense.”

  “What?” Rose faltered. k'12

  Henry sighed heavily. “This is a baby, remember? His primary concerns will be food, drink, and loving parents. He’s not going to be receptive to being interviewed, especially by someone who apparently plans to reject his request.”

  Oh. Rose swallowed. She’d almost forgotten that, in the heat of her excitement.

  “What should I do, then?” she asked in a small voice. “I don’t — I don’t want to be a parent right now. You can’t ask that of me. That’s too much to ask.”

  “I’m not asking it,” Henry said. “He did.”

  “I still can’t do it,” Rose said. “I just — I just can’t.”

  “Don’t justify yourself to me,” Henry said. “He’s the one you owe an answer to.”

  Rose wrapped her arms around her knees. A breeze picked up and tried to snatch her hat off, but she grabbed it in time. She began to twist it around in her hands, as Henry had been doing earlier.

  “If this had only happened a few years later,” she said, “I might have been in a better position to say yes.”

  “Children aren’t known for their spectacular timing, either,” Henry said dryly. “Ask my sister-in-law how many times she got woken up at three am to change horrendous diapers of two screaming babies.”

  “Are you going to accept?” Rose asked, looking up at him.

  Henry pondered for a moment. He ran his fingers through the grass. “Yes,” he said at last. “I think I am.”

  “How?
” Rose asked in amazement. “How can you be prepared to do that?”

  “I like children,” Henry said. “I’ve always wanted to have them. This isn’t quite the way I had anticipated it happening, and it’s not ideal, but . . . he chose me. He rejected hundreds of dragon parents, but he chose me. That’s quite appealing.”

  Rose squeezed her hat tightly. Her thumbnails dug into the brim. To her that didn’t seem appealing at all. It seemed terrifying. What would it be like to fail, under all that pressure? What would it cost to succeed?

  Chapter 4: Essence

  “The dragon must be waiting for an answer,” Henry said, standing up. “He’s likely frantic by now. I would be, if I were in his position. I’d better go.”

  Rose watched him walk off, his stride sure and purposeful, and it seemed incomprehensible to her. How could he be so sure of his choice after barely half an hour? Was he the sort who made decisions quickly?

  She wasn’t. She didn’t enjoy adapting to new situations. And this one was too overwhelming for words.

  You owe the dragon an answer, Rose told herself, trying to breathe slowly and think rationally. Think about it. What are you going to say?

  Rose picked at the brim of her hat while she thought.

  There were all kinds of good reasons why she couldn’t do what he was asking. If she listed them one by one, maybe he would understand.

  First: she was too young to be a mother. Not in an absolute sense, certainly, because there were many married women with small children her age. But she didn’t feel mature enough or wise enough now. Maybe she never would. Parenthood had always been an abstract, something to consider in the future, not a priority to anticipate this year.

  Second: she had her future to consider. It would be hard enough to be taken seriously right now, given her gender. If she had a child in tow, it would make her even less attractive a prospect for hiring.

  A small voice in her head said, Although maybe you could use him as a way to get hired, given his species . . .

  No. Rose shook her head. She couldn’t think in those terms. She hated it when people saw her as a woman first, and a scientist second. To accept him because of his species would be atrocious hypocrisy, not to mention an atrocious reason to become a parent.

  Third, then: she was too biased. It would be hard for her to resist the fascination of his species to see the person within. She’d have to work hard at it. It would be better for him to have somebody who wasn’t interested in dragons.

  Fourth: she had no experience with babies. None of her acquaintances or friends had children, and her cousins were all younger than her. She had two younger sisters, but they were both close enough to her in age that she could barely remember what they had been like as small children.

  Fifth: she had no interest in babies.

  That might be a logical fallacy, her rational mind prodded. Didn’t you just declare it would be better for him to have somebody who wasn’t interested in dragons? By the same logic, someone who had no interest in babies would be better suited to raise them.

  Rose waved the thought off irritably. That was different. The dragon would have people treating him as nothing but a member of his species for his entire life. He needed somebody who would scarcely notice it.

  Sixth. Sixth . . .

  There had to be a sixth reason. There had to be a whole host of them.

  Ah, yes. Sixth: he had to see that it would be far better to have parents who were married to each other than two strangers who had never met in their lives.

  If she didn’t accept, Henry and the dragon could pick out some other woman at their own pace. Any woman would do. Any woman would be better at it than her.

  Seventh, Rose thought firmly, there are five million people in this city. It doesn’t have to be me. No matter how much like your birth mother I seem to you.

  Although that raised a question.

  Why did she remind him of his birth mother?

  Eighth, Rose thought hesitantly . . .

  It was no good. Now that she was wondering, she couldn’t concentrate on anything else. A familiar feeling of insatiable curiosity crawled up her spine and settled fixedly in her mind.

  She had to know the answer to that. She had to.

  Surely there couldn’t have been that much in common between them. There were so many objections, so many reasons she didn’t want a child right now. Not to mention that his mother had lived millions of years ago, in another civilization. The dragon had been sure his mother loved him, and Rose didn’t know how to love a child.

  Restlessly, Rose stood up. The only person who could answer that question was the dragon. She marched down the path back towards the museum, determined to find out. She entered the museum and walked up the stairs.

  When she reached the top of the stairs, she walked around the bend to the Hall of Saurischian Dragons, where she spied Henry standing by the display case, speaking in soothing tones, while Mr. Teedle hovered nervously behind him.

  “Miss Palmer!” Mr. Teedle said with some relief, running over to her. He ran his hand through his hair and wiped his sweaty brow. “Mr. Wainscott refuses to explain to me what’s going on, and the dragon has been throwing a fit. I think I have a decent idea what a Deinonychus antirrhopus dragon roar must have sounded like, because the egg has been projecting memories of it across the room since you left. I had to clear the hall because the patrons were complaining! He only stopped when Mr. Wainscott came back! What happened?”

  “I’ll explain to you later,” Rose said. “I need to go talk to the dragon egg n—”

  “William, don’t lick the wall, that’s disgusting!” a chubby woman shouted from the hallway to three children who were wandering around her. “George, stop making that noise. Leslie —”

  “Excuse me! I’m sorry!” Mr. Teedle said, hurrying over. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but this room is closed. Would you please make your way over to the Hall of Ornithischian Dragons instead?”

  “What? But we were just there,” the woman protested. “George wants to see the Tyrannosaurus rex.”

  “I want to be one when I grow up,” a fat-cheeked boy informed him, flapping his arms. “I want to fly like they did.”

  “Tyrannosaurus dragons didn’t fly; the wings were vestigial,” Mr. Teedle said. “If you’d like to see a flying dragon, we have a lovely Stegosaurus stenops on display in the Hall of Ornithischian Dragons —”

  “I wanna see the T-rex! I wanna see the T-rex!” the boy shouted, hopping up and down in rage.

  “We came all the way here because he had to see his favorite dragon,” the boy’s mother said huffily. “There’s no sign saying this hall is closed. Why can’t we just —”

  While the two were arguing, Rose slipped away to the display case with the Deinonychus antirrhopus eggs. Henry was still talking to them in quiet tones.

  “No, I can’t speak for her,” he was saying. “Yes, it would be nice to all be a family together. No, you’ll have to ask her that question, not me.”

  “I’m here now,” Rose said.

  A feeling of joy burst up from the display case. The dragon sent her a flash of bubbly, happy memory of Henry’s mind returning, and then a similar memory of his father returning from hunting — had that been a Tenontosaurus?

  Rose shook her head. No. The dragon’s memories of his father, or the tantalizing glimpse of a Tenontosaurus tilletti from the shard of his father’s memory that had been included, were not important right now.

  “You told us I reminded you of your mother,” Rose said. “Why?”

  A feeling of confusion bubbled up from the display case.

  Rose tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and tried a different approach. “Can you show me what your mother was like?”

  A mix of eagerness and sadness, and then —

  She was picking up several rock specimens carefully in her claws and sorting them according to classification. Some of them would be suitable for public display in the vast rock collection c
ave later.

  And then —

  She was irritated that a feathered pest had interrupted her work. She wasn’t hungry, so she swiped it away with her tail. Her father, who had flown by despite all her wishes, informed her that she should have kept the thing for later. She wished he’d mind his own business and leave her alone.

  And then —

  The seasons had changed. She hated change. It always made her grumpy. She flicked the egg with her tail to get him to stop asking the same question for the billionth time, and wondered if the child had gotten the same maddeningly inquisitive nature that had made her parents so incessantly weary with her.

  Her husband rolled the egg over with his claw and sleepily explained the answer to the question for the billionth time.

  And then —

  The egg was crying silently, forcefully. It was the first time his father had left to hunt since the child had gotten old enough to wake up. He had been a surprise, this baby, much earlier than she had wanted, but she’d get used to him. Perhaps she shouldn’t let him know she thought him a pest sometimes. Quiet, quiet now, little one . . .

  The flashes of memory ended.

  Rose burst out into hysterical giggles. The dragon child was right: the two of them had been extremely alike.

  Chapter 5: Element

  “So . . . did he answer your question?” Henry asked. His hands twisted a little, like he was nervous. Perhaps he was.

  “He did,” Rose giggled. Why couldn’t she stop laughing? “Perhaps you ought to ask why you remind him of his father.”

  Henry shook his head. “No, thanks. I’d rather not live in the shadow of somebody I can never replace.”

  For some reason, that struck Rose as hilarious, and she let out a long spurt of laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” Henry asked. “What did he show you?”

  “Oh, he just — it’s just — I — I don’t know!” Rose started to cry. It came out in choking sobs.