Dragon's Egg Read online

  “Besides, it’s not like she would actually follow through and get all the degrees that would be necessary,” Henry went on blithely.

  “Watch your tongue,” Rose’s father growled. “Follow-through is not that girl’s problem. Abominable stubbornness is.”

  “That’s only if she wants to get the degrees,” Henry said. “She doesn’t really, you know.”

  What? Rose gaped indignantly.

  “Then you don’t know her at all,” Rose’s father snapped. “She hasn’t shut up about it since she was nine years old. Wish I’d never bought her that book about dragons.”

  “That’s just it. She didn’t originally realize how much work it would be. Now she can’t back down because her pride is at stake. Think about it: why hasn’t she applied for a scholarship, if she’s so stubborn and she wants to do it?”

  Because I don’t want to take the money away from students whose parents can’t afford their tuition! Rose thought furiously. My father can pay, so he should do it!

  “Hmmm,” Rose’s father said. There was a flipping sound. “I win.”

  “Do you want to play again?” Henry said. “I’ll up the bet to ten cents.”

  Sara squeezed between Louise and Rose with a fresh glass in her hand. “What did I miss?”

  “He lost the first round, and now he’s upping the bet,” Louise informed Sara. “I don’t think Papa likes him. He beat him in the first round.”

  “Ooh! If Papa doesn’t care if he comes back, he’ll squash him in every round. I wonder how long he’ll last,” Sara grinned, putting her glass against the door and pressing her ear to it.

  “No, thank you,” Rose’s father said stiffly. There was a scraping sound, then several pounding footsteps. Rose dropped the glass and scrambled out of the way just in time.

  Her sisters didn’t. They tumbled into the room as the door swung open.

  “Hello, nosy twits,” Rose’s father rumbled.

  “Hello, Papa,” the girls chorused innocently.

  “Rose!” her father snapped, looking around. “There you are. Let’s talk about those classes you want to take.”

  Chapter 10: Effrontery

  “Please tell me that worked,” Henry said, as Rose stepped out of her family’s house, half an hour later, in something of a daze.

  Rose spun around and shot him a glare. How dare he loiter around after her father had kicked him out of the house? Had he no sense or dignity?

  “Hold on,” Henry said, putting his hands in front of him. “I’m sure your sisters told you what I said —”

  “They didn’t have to,” Rose said coldly. “I heard it myself.”

  Henry stared at her for a moment. “Eavesdropper!” he cried.

  “Talking behind my back!” Rose shot back.

  “All right, I was,” Henry said, his mouth twitching. “But did it work?”

  “Did what work?” Rose asked suspiciously.

  “Did he agree to let you take the classes you want to take?” Henry asked, slowly and patiently.

  Rose stared at him for a long moment. Her anger dissolved. “You did that on purpose?”

  “Of course I did,” Henry said. “I didn’t mean any of that nonsense. Wasn’t it obvious?”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Rose said slowly. “But I suppose if it had been, it wouldn’t have worked.”

  “So it did work?” Henry asked, his eyes brightening.

  Rose glanced back at the house nervously. She indicated with her head and started walking back in the direction of her apartment. She hoped her sisters hadn’t been listening at the windows. Henry followed at a loping pace.

  Once they were a safe distance away, Rose picked up the conversation again as they walked.

  “He immediately started arguing with me about all the things you said. I kept protesting, because he kept trying to rebut arguments I’d never said or even believed, but that just made him more vehement. It was rather bizarre to have him insisting that I do something I’ve been begging him to let me do for ten years.”

  “So you’re taking the classes you want to next semester?” Henry grinned.

  “I hope so,” Rose said, twirling her finger through a bracelet on her wrist. “He’s insisting on helping me rearrange things . . . because apparently I can’t possibly choose the ideal class schedule on my own . . . but I think that’s just because he wants to feel useful.” She glanced over at Henry as they kept on walking. “That was a rather brilliant idea.”

  “It was your idea,” Henry shrugged. “You said he liked to talk people into things. I figured that meant it would be helpful to put him on your side, instead of against you. I was just hoping it wouldn’t backfire horribly.”

  “You mean, like the effrontery at the museum?” Rose asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “And like telling my family we were engaged when we weren’t?”

  Henry’s face twisted. “Yes. Like that.”

  Rose smiled.

  “In all seriousness,” Henry said, looking over at her, “what are we going to do about the egg? We can’t just leave him sitting there forever.”

  “I think,” Rose said seriously, “we need to first arrange a place to bring him. Then we can worry about relocating him.”

  “I was thinking I’d take him home,” Henry said.

  “Do you have roommates?” Rose asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ask them how they’d feel about you bringing in a baby with a capacity to scream telepathically?”

  Henry hesitated.

  “I thought not,” Rose said. “I doubt my roommates would be any more enthralled about the prospect.”

  Henry paused. “Marry me,” he said.

  Rose stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Marry me,” he repeated. “If you marry me, we can move in together, and we’ll have a place to put him.”

  “That’s not very romantic,” Rose said.

  “It’s not romantic,” Henry said, “it’s practical. But I hope it could be more, in time.”

  “My father hates you, you know,” Rose said. “You really did sabotage yourself this time. I doubt he’d give his permission.”

  Henry winced.

  “But maybe,” Rose said. She paused, and smiled. “Probably.”

  The next day was a quiet one. Rose and her roommates went to church in the morning, where Penelope sang off-key and Natalie made a big show of putting two dollars in the collection plate. Then, as soon as they got home, Natalie turned on the radio and Penelope pulled out stacks of homework, both seeming to forget their earlier piety.

  Rose didn’t tell them about Henry, or the dragon egg. How could she? It was still too new, too private. She stayed in her room for most of the day, thinking.

  Monday afternoon, she met Henry outside of the Museum of Natural History fifteen minutes after lunchtime.

  “Are we ready for this?” Henry asked. “They might kick us out again.”

  “If you feel a snide remark coming on, keep your mouth shut,” Rose told him.

  “I wasn’t trying to be rude before!” he protested.

  “I remind you of a certain long string of epithets.”

  Henry hesitated. “Fair point.”

  “Have you spoken with your professors about using the empty laboratory?” Rose asked.

  “I spoke to the dean. He gave me two weeks. I have the key.” Henry pulled a long string out from under his shirt, with a key dangling from it. “I know it’s not ideal for you, because City College is an hour and a half walk away . . .”

  “You want to be a parent more than I do. It’s only fair that you have closer access than me.”

  They stared up at the building.

  “Of course, this is all predicated on whether or not we can get him out of there,” Rose said. “It might take months before they’re willing.”

  “And by then, we’d be married,” Henry said.

  Rose bit her lip. She’d given him a tentative yes this morning, but her s
tomach still clenched whenever she thought about it. She hoped she’d be more willing to consider setting a date soon, because two weeks wasn’t long. They should probably be looking for an apartment already.

  Henry took her hand. She looked down. Then she nodded, and they walked up the stairs to the museum.

  Nobody stopped them from entering the doors, so they headed straight for the stairs. They were nearly on the third floor when they spotted Director Campbell on his way down.

  “Oh, no,” Henry moaned. “Here we go again . . .”

  “You!” the director shouted, pointing at Henry. His eyes were bloodshot and wild. “Get upstairs! Get upstairs right now!”

  “What?” Henry looked dumbfounded. “I thought you were going to kick me out.”

  “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve slept?!” the director shouted. “Thirty-six hours! It’s asking for you. It’s screaming for you. It won’t stop screaming for you. Make it stop!”

  Henry didn’t need to be told twice. He raced up the stairs, two at a time.

  Rose hesitated. “Are you all right, Director Campbell?” she asked. There were circles under his eyes that were dark enough to use as inkwells.

  “That thing has to get out of my museum,” the director said wildly. “No one can go up to the fourth floor. I keep trying to calm it down. It won’t calm down! It needs to leave!”

  “Can we get that in writing, sir?” Rose asked tentatively.

  The director fumbled through his pockets, yanked out a notebook and pen from an inner pocket, and scribbled something down. He ripped off the piece of paper and handed it to her. Director Campbell authorizes taking the living dragon egg out of the museum, it said, with a signature at the bottom.

  Rose sighed with relief. It wasn’t everything they would need — it wasn’t even permanent custody — but it was enough to start with.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said politely, nodding her head.

  Then ran up the rest of the stairs to help her fiancé with the screaming baby.

  Chapter 11: Everything

  “You know, I never really thought I’d be looking forward to the day my first child hatched,” Henry said, running his hands over the leathery surface of the egg. According to Mr. Teedle, it felt softer to touch now than it used to. The other eggs were all hard and slick. Rose couldn’t compare herself because she hadn’t been allowed to touch them.

  “It was your idea,” Rose said, paging through her textbook. She was doing her homework here because it was a better use of time than sitting around doing nothing, and the egg didn’t care what she did, as long as she was here as long as possible. “Don’t complain.”

  “Oh, I’m not complaining,” Henry said. “It’s just . . . sometimes it’s still surprising. You know?”

  “I know,” Rose said. She wrote down a note in the margin of her textbook, and turned the page.

  “I want to give him everything,” Henry said longingly. “I want to give him the world.”

  “You don’t own the world,” Rose said tartly. “But there is something that we probably ought to give him.”

  Henry sat up straighter. “What?” he asked.

  “A name. We can’t keep calling him ‘the dragon’ or ‘the baby’ forever.”

  “Good point,” Henry said. “We do know the gender already.”

  Rose shut her textbook. “What do you say, dragon?” she asked. “Shall we give you a name?”

  A name! He didn’t know what a name was. Was it something to eat? He looked forward to learning how to eat. Crunch crunch!

  “What kind of name would suit him?” Henry asked thoughtfully.

  “I suppose we could go with something descriptive,” Rose said. “Spiny or Spiky or . . . no.”

  “No,” Henry said. k`1`2

  “No. That sounds too much like a pet’s name.”

  “A human name, then,” Henry said. “Are there any you like?”

  “James. Or John. Or William. How about you?”

  “Commodore, Virgil, and Bartholomew,” Henry said promptly.

  Rose stared at him. “You have strange taste in names.”

  “The girl names I like are Louvenia, Glendora, and Pleasant,” Henry added.

  “I can’t tell whether you’re serious or joking.”

  “Oh, I’m perfectly serious.”

  Rose wrinkled her nose.

  “How about we use one of your names, and one of mine?” Henry asked.

  “Virgil’s not bad,” Rose said. “That could be a first name. How about for a middle name?”

  “I guess the least boring one is . . . James?”

  “All right,” Rose said. “Virgil James . . .”

  “. . . Wainscott,” Henry added.

  Rose shivered. Somehow, adding in the last name made it seem real.

  “What do you think?” Henry asked the egg, running his hands along its orange-and-brown surface. “Are you Virgil James?”

  He was something. He was happy. He was hungry. No, he wasn’t hungry. He didn’t know how to be hungry. He was going to wiggle his toes.

  There was a knock on the door to the laboratory. Rose got up to answer it.

  Mr. Teedle stood there, his face pale. He held a rolled-up newspaper in his hands.

  “Have you two seen this?” he asked in a shaking voice.

  “Has news gotten out about Virgil already?” Rose asked, alarmed.

  “Virgil?” Mr. Teedle looked confused.

  “We named the dragon,” Henry said.

  “Oh. No, news has not gotten out about this dragon egg. The museum’s still not planning to release a press statement until he’s been hatched. But look.”

  Mr. Teedle unrolled the newspaper and thumped it on the table. On the front page, in bold letters, it declared, DRAGON EGG HATCHES AT MUSEUM!

  Rose stared at the paper blankly. There was a picture of a Deinonychus antirrhopus dragon egg with a tiny snout just starting to protrude from the top. She glanced at the caption underneath the picture. “The Dragon National Monument?” she said slowly.

  “Where the eggs were found,” Mr. Teedle said, breathing heavily. “They have sixty of them on display. A vacationing couple passed by one of them, and . . . crack!”

  Virgil liked that noise. He repeated it. Crack! Crack!

  Rose stared at the picture. She stared at the egg. She stared at Henry.

  “Then that means,” she said slowly, “that it’s not just one dragon egg that’s alive . . .”

  Mr. Teedle nodded. “All of them are.” k12

  Next Book:

  As their wedding day fast approaches, Rose’s nerves hit their peak. More and more, she finds herself drawn to the other dragon eggs, pleading with them to hatch so that she won’t be the only mother to a baby dragon in New York City.

  But when one of other eggs finally does awaken, the second dragon bonds with someone Rose would never have expected . . . and who does not seem suitable as a parent.

  You can get it here.

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  Sign up for my mailing list and get a copy of “Dragon’s Dawn,”

  a mailing list exclusive short story set in between Dragon’s Egg and Dragon’s Hope!

  As the daughter of a landowner, Raneh lives in a world of clearly defined roles and rules. She’s supposed to get married, gain status, become a landowner herself, and definitely not have magic. Seeing as it’s forbidden and all.

  Too bad she has it anyway.

  On top of that, a suitable courtship does not seem to be forthcoming, her younger brother is a social embarrassment, her younger sister is better at everything than she is, and . . .

  And the Ruler’s coming to visit.

  You can get it here.

 

 

 
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