“You should really go inland,” Nita said. “There are all kinds of nice goats and things for you to eat up there, much nicer tasting than us.”
“Seriously,” Carmela said. “Just go on back there in the forest and take a seat, and your server will be with you shortly!”
The dragon looked peculiarly at Carmela, and its tongue went in and out several times more. Nita held her breath.
Finally the Komodo dragon turned and lurched away, uphill, toward the scraggly forest above the beach. Nita let out a long breath and shot Carmela a look. “You’ve been spending too much time in those restaurants at the Crossings.”
Carmela shrugged. “Being nice never hurts…”
“You’ve got that right, anyway,” Nita said. “Let’s get down there before we have to have that conversation with one of Mister Dragon’s buddies.”
The two of them headed downslope to where the track gave out. Shortly they were picking their way among the cracked yellow boulders toward the group on the beach. “Neets,” Carmela said, “I hate to tell you this, but there’s another dragon down there.”
“Where?”
“Under the dinosaur.”
Nita peered ahead. “It’s okay. Too busy to notice us, I think. Anyway, don’t you see someone familiar?” She took back the bag of tomatoes.
“Who?” Now it was Carmela’s turn to peer.
“Where do you— Ronan!” Carmela took off toward where that tall, slim shape was lounging on top of a big boulder in black jeans and a black T-shirt, and doubtless paying the price for it in this weather; but he looked as casual as if he were sitting on a block of ice.
Nita grinned as she negotiated the rocky stretch between herself and the wizards sitting on the rocks by the edge of the bay. Kit was there in T-shirt and baggies, perched on an even bigger boulder than the one where Ronan Nolan had stretched himself out. Nearby, on a lower, flatter stone, a smaller shape sat cross-legged— younger, much darker, wiry, in swim trunks and a floppy white tank top: Darryl McAllister, one of the newer wizards of Nita’s acquaintance, a neighbor from over in Baldwin. The three of them were watching yet another Komodo dragon, bigger than the one Nita had spoken to, and also keeping an eye on the huge, shimmering, golden-green shape bending down over the dragon: one that, to Nita’s way of thinking, seemed much worthier of the name.
If someone had stood an African elephant next to that great shape, the elephant would have been taller, but the saurian, sheathed in a handsome, pebbly, gleaming hide, would have been much bigger. Though Mamvish’s shoulders stood no more than twenty feet from the ground, they were nearly ten feet apart, and each leg was as thick as the trunk of the forty-year-old maple in front of Nita’s house. Those legs bent twice, in a double elbow— one of them bending backward about eight feet from the ground, and the second one about four feet above it. Each leg ended in a six-toed paw, as broad compared to the leg as the foot of a cat, and each toe had a massive, metallically glinting claw retracted partly into it. The hind legs were like the front ones, though the hip joints were higher than the shoulders, and the tail that trailed away behind them lashed and coiled, gesturing more expressively than any Komodo dragon’s tail could.
At the other end, the saurian’s long, oval head peered down at the smaller one of the Komodo dragon sitting between her huge forefeet. The massive jaws in that huger head opened, exhibiting teeth that gleamed like pale metal, and a broad, black tongue. Around the words that she spoke, like the breath behind them, came a low, moaning hiss like a house’s central heating system complaining of too much pressure in the radiators. But the voice itself spoke the Speech in a surprisingly high register, like a flute’s or clarinet’s.
As Nita got closer, she could see how subtly changing colors ran and shimmered underneath the gemmy bumps and pebbles of the hide, shifting slightly with the words and the volume at which they were spoken. “Let me put it again in a way you can understand,” the voice said… while sounding as if its owner wasn’t sure this could be done. “There’s nowhere else for you to live in these seas! The two-leggers are encroaching on your territory. No matter how well the ones who come here right now are treating you, sooner or later some will come who don’t mean you anything like as well. You’ll have nowhere else to go! And there are much better places for you to be, with no two-leggers, with nothing but people like you—people who’re interested in you and want you to live somewhere safe! If you’ll just let me show you—”
The Komodo dragon between Mamvish’s feet looked up at her and opened its mouth, emitting a similar hiss, though a much smaller one. By way of the Speech, Nita heard it say, I’m hungry.
Mamvish rolled her eyes in frustration. This was worth seeing, since it wasn’t just the eyeballs that rolled; the entire socket containing each one went around in a large and wobbly circle. “You can eat any time,” she said. “Please pay attention. We’re talking about something important here—”
A juicy little deer would be nice right about now, said the Komodo dragon …and it turned ponderously around and lurched away out of Mamvish’s shadow and up the beach, toward the underbrush that sprang up under the eaves of the forest.
Mamvish watched it go. “You stupid, stupid things,” she hissed, “why do I keep wasting my time?” She stamped all her feet in annoyance. “It’s your lives I’m trying to save here! Your whole rijakh’d species’ lives! …And all you can ever think about is food! If you came home with me, you’d be superstars; your species would be comfortable and safe forever! And now I wonder why I’m bothering trying to take creatures home who’re so merthakte dumb! Powers that Be in a bucket, have you ever seen the like of these people? Time after time you come umpteen thousand light-years to make them the offer of a lifetime, and every time they ignore you. They don’t have the brains to come in out of the Sun; they—”
The tirade went on. Somewhat distractedly— for Mamvish was using a completely new and interesting subset of words in the Speech— Nita made her way over to the boulder where Kit was perching. As she scrambled up beside him, Nita found herself wondering whether there was a separate “bad language” section of the wizard’s manual, and why she’d never thought to go looking for it. Am I really that much of a geek? Oh, god. Kit was looking elsewhere, as if embarrassed. Darryl was listening with fascination: Ronan had leaned all the way back on his boulder with his hands under his head, his eyes closed. Because of Mamvish, or Carmela?— for Kit’s sister was sitting there, trying to keep her attention evenly divided between Mamvish and Ronan. For the moment, Mamvish was winning.
“What took you so long?” Kit said under his breath. “You missed everybody. Half the wizards we know have been here, and a lot we don’t.”
“Want to understate some more? Half the wizards on the planet have been here!” Darryl said from the next boulder over. “A real mob scene. And some real heavy hitters. Check this out!” He scrambled over toward them, holding out the WizPod he used these days to carry his wizard’s manual. “Jarrah Corowa was here, and she even gave me her autograph!” He pulled a glowing page sideways out of the WizPod and into the air, showing Nita the tracery of Speech characters there.
“Wow!” Nita said, for a wizard’s autograph, depending on how much of the wizard’s personal information it contained, could be worth a lot more than just a keepsake of meeting someone who was famous for their way with a spell. “Nice going!”
Kit rolled his eyes in a good-natured way at Darryl’s excitement. “Fang was here, too,” he said. Nita let out a breath, sorry to have missed an old friend in wizardry, the orca who’d sung the part of the Killer in the Song of the Twelve. “How is he? He came way out of his way to get here.”