I really poured it on. I covered twenty miles that day. I knew it because I got to Pine Tor, which is nineteen and three-quarters miles from Northcamp, and another Ranger landmark. (I'd never seen it before except on the charts.) Yes, it was stupid of me, and even I knew it. Sure, I was walking on broken trail, but the emphasis is more on the "broken" than the "trail." Northcamp is a long way from the Bonelands but it's still all pretty ankle-breaking going. And if I missed getting back to Northcamp next day because I was too tired and beat up, it would be a huge black mark against me, and all the grown-ups would give me lectures, especially Dad, and they'd all be disappointed, which is the worst thing grown-ups do to kids — can't they just yell at you and get it over with? — and it would be a long time till they let me go out alone again. Like maybe next century or when pigs fly, etc. But I had to go as fast and as far as I could. I'm not going to try to explain it because I can't. But I had to. I'd get back to Northcamp the next day somehow.
The thing that makes it seem the dumbest is what was I tearing over all that landscape for? I was so busy watching where to put my feet and for the next Rangers' mark that I barely looked around. I could have steamed by any number of dragons — or grizzlies — and never noticed. And our park is beautiful. Wild and strange and alien and not very friendly to humans, but very, very beautiful, if you aren't freaked out by it. Lots of people are. Some people find the Institute as much as they can handle — the institute with its smell of dragon, and shed dragon scales on sale in the gift shop, and the five million acres out back sort of looming. Even as wilderness parks go, Smokehill is pretty uncivilized. It's supposed to be, but it can still kind of knock you over with it.
I didn't see anything that day but ordinary eastern Smokehill landscape, and little stuff like squirrels, and a few deer and wild sheep. But the weirdest thing is that by the time I got to Pine Tor I had this huge harrowing sense of urgency, instead of feeling good and tired and pleased with myself — and maybe deciding to go a last leisurely quarter-mile farther to make it twenty miles and then find a nice place to camp didn't register with me at all. I was so wired I couldn't stand still, despite how tired I was. I had to keep going. Where? What? Huh?
I have to say I'd made unbelievable time. That sounds like bragging but it's important for what happened. I got to Pine Tor and it was still afternoon. I stood there, panting, looking around, like I was looking for a Rangers' mark, except I'd already found the one that was there. I wasn't even very interested in the fact that Pine Tor itself looked just like Grace's — Billy's wife — drawing of it and so it was like I had seen it before. It was like I was waiting. . .
Waiting. . .
I knew what the smell was immediately, even though I'd never smelled it before. The wind was blowing away from me or I'd've smelled it a lot sooner. My head snapped around like a dog's and I set off toward it, like it was pulling me, like it was a rope around my neck being yanked. No, first I stopped and took a very close look at where I was. Pine Tor is big, and I needed to be able to find not just it again, but the right side of it. I was about to set off cross country, away from the Rangers' trail and the Rangers' marks — the thing I was above all expressly forbidden to do — and I had to be able to find my way back. Which proves that at least some of my brain cells were working.
It wasn't very far, and when I got there I was glad the wind was blowing away from me. The smell was overwhelming. But then everything about it was overwhelming. I can't tell you . . . and I'm not going to try. It'll be hard enough, even now, just telling a little.
It was a dead — or rather a dying — dragon. She lay there, bleeding, dying, nearly as big as Pine Tor. Stinking. And pathetic. And horrible. She wasn't dying for any good reason. She was dying because somebody — some poacher — some poacher in Smokehill — had killed her. If everything else hadn't been so overpowering that alone would have stopped me cold.
I was seeing my first dragon up close. And she was mutilated and dying.
She'd got him too, although it was too late for her. When I saw him — what was left of him — I threw up. It was completely automatic, like blinking or sneezing. He was way beyond horrible but he wasn't pathetic. I was glad he was dead. I was just sorry I'd seen him. It.
There were a couple of thoughts trying to go through my head as I stood there, gasping and shaking. (I was shaking so hard I could barely stand up, and suddenly my knapsack weighed so much and hung on my back so clumsily it was going to make me fall down.) We don't have poachers at Smokehill. The fence keeps most of them out; even little halfhearted attempts to breach it make a lot of alarms go off back at the Rangers' headquarters and we're allowed to call out a couple of National Guard helicopters if enough of those alarms go off in the same place. (Some other time I'll tell you about getting helicopters through the gate.) It's happened twice in my lifetime. No one has ever made it through or over the fence before a helicopter has got there — no one ever had. Occasionally someone manages to get through the gate, but the Rangers always find them before they do any damage — sometimes they're glad to be found. Even big-game-hunter-type major assho-idiots sometimes find Smokehill a little too much. I'd never heard of anyone killing a dragon in Smokehill — ever — and this wasn't the sort of thing Dad wouldn't have told me, and it was the sort of thing I'd asked. Nor, of course, would he have let me do my solo if there was any even vague rumor of poachers or big-game idiots planning to have a try.
The other thing that was in my head was how I knew she was female: because of her color. One of the few things we know about dragon births is that Mom turns an all-over red-vermilion-maroon-with-orangebits during the process, and dragons are green-gold-brown-black mostly, with sometimes a little red or blue or orange but not much. Even the zoos had noticed the color change. Old Pete had taken very careful notes about his mom dragons, and he thought it was something to do with getting the fire lit in the babies' stomachs. It's as good a guess as any.
But that was why the poacher'd been able to get close to her, maybe. Dragons — even dragons — are probably a little more vulnerable when they’re giving birth. Apparently this one hadn't had anyone else around to help her. I didn't know why. Old Pete thought a birthing mom always had a few midwives around.
You don't go near a dying dragon. They can fry you after they're dead. The reflex that makes chickens run around after their heads are cut off makes dragons cough fire. Quite a few people have died this way, including one zookeeper. I suppose I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about the fact that she was dying, and that her babies were going to die because they had no mother, and that she'd know that. I boomeranged into thinking about my own mother again. They wanted to tell us, when they found her, that she must have died instantly. Seems to me, if she really did fall down that cliff, she'd've had time to think about it that Dad and I were going to be really miserable without her.
How do I know what a mother dragon thinks or doesn't think? But it was just so sad. I couldn't bear it. I went up to her. Went up to her head, which was like nearly as big as a Ranger's cabin. She watched me coming. She watched me. I had to walk up most of the length of her body, so I had to walk past her babies, these little blobs that were baby dragons. They were born and everything. But they were already dead. So she was dying knowing her babies were already dead. I'd started to cry and I didn't even know it.