Anyway. However boring — and painful — scrubbing up to go to the Institute was, I had to do it. I had to go on leaving Lois by herself so she could be left (of course I worried about stressing her till she had a heart attack or whatever dragons have, and died; from my perspective at the time we could have afforded to lose a few staff members, they were only human) and I had to start going to the Institute as soon as I could and keep going because it would have looked even weirder than it did — about my conversion to early Rangerhood I mean — if I never came. And if the "nightmares" hadn't cleared off pretty soon, they'd've had a psychologist in to test me for echoes, and I'd probably've resonated like a cave full of bats. Besides, there were the school testers and I really didn't want to get on their suspicious side. So I went up to the institute every day and tried to be as conspicuous as possible so it seemed as if I was up there more.
My time at the zoo and the orphanage of course got cut down to almost nothing. Eric was really pissed off (surprise) and tried to make out that I didn't really want to be a Ranger, I was just looking for a way to get out of doing any work, i.e., at his zoo, because I'm a teenage boy and teenage boys are always lazy and dishonest. (Made you wonder what kind of a teenager he'd been.) But hindsight even makes Eric being his normal super-avoid-worthy self look different. Eric was the head of the zoo and the orphanage — if anyone would know about an orphan baby dragon, it would be him — and all he was doing was kvetching about that worthless lump Jake . . . like maybe he had a suspicion it would be a good idea to distract anyone from wondering if the worthless lump had a reason for disappearing, besides being a lazy and dishonest teenage boy?
I did start cleaning odorata's cage again. The smell was still awful but it wasn't as overwhelming as when I lived like a human being rather than an australiensis mom, and as another sign that I had lost my mind I began to notice how beautiful the damn critters are, no matter how they smelled: The parrot-green and crimson-and-yellow frills on the big male are really amazing, and if you can hold your breath long enough to appreciate it the way he flaps 'em around is almost choreography And I was used to taking really violent showers these days so the prospect of another one after I took the last radioactive odorata barrowload to the pit where we buried the stuff was no big deal.
It's funny though — another thing that's funny — I got all kind of loosened up about all the things in the zoo. They were what they were and they were probably pretty interesting, even if they weren't dragons. I almost missed having some herpetologist around studying the Effect of the Tourist Gaze on Draco something-or-other-ensis. Hey, you lizards, how's it going? Eaten any nice celery/rhubarb/beetles/snails lately? But the zoo was happening on another planet, which was almost like relaxing I'm only a visitor and boy do I not belong here.
But not belonging here was an advantage, dealing with f.l.s. I'd smile at them and let what they said (because smiling only encourages them) roll over me. I found myself nodding calmly to a major f.l. one day from sylvestris' cage, saying mmm hmm as I kept on with my shovel. He was talking about how something or other, I don't remember which one he liked, is the real dragon, and most of that stuff at the tourist center about australiensis is just hooey to pull the tourists in, everyone knows australiensis is extinct, because when's the last time anyone's ever seen one, and it wasn't like that even when it was alive . . . but then his wife interrupted to say that something had killed that poor man and it was criminal the way the Institute was flogging the story about his death to draw media attention when any half intelligent person knew that there'd been some human screwup and they just didn't want to admit it and. . .
I was starting to straighten up over my wheelbarrow and reconnect with my surroundings and I don't know what might have happened next but Eric came along and snarled at me to stop standing around wasting time when I was supposed to be cleaning that cage and then the f.l. and his wife turned on him and said that that poor boy should be taken away from this den of scoundrels and liars and given to good honest folk who would try to reverse the effects of the warped and wicked Smokehill brainwashing . . . but I'd picked up the handles on my wheelbarrow and was trundling as fast as possible out of earshot, and I hope Eric had a good time. Those letters to congress people about cutting off our funding never mention Eric, so he must actually know how to weasel. More hidden depths in our Eric.
I might still have gone stir crazy, trapped in the cabin with increasingly hyperactive Lois and only brief nerve-twangling paroles up at the Institute and the zoo — the dragon dreams, for better or worse, did begin to tail off as Lois started climbing out of the sling more and I started going to the Institute regularly — but then for a while the more active she got the harder it was to leave her because she wouldn't stay buried in her nice smelly sheets any more. For a few days there this looked like it was going to be Jake's Last Straw and one day as I was trying to leave and I'd only just got her buried and (apparently) settled but she'd started to cry before I got to the door, and I don't remember what I said but it was in the "aaaaugh" category.
Grace said mildly, "Children are like that sometimes," and I said, "But she's not a child, she's a dragon, and what if — " And Grace said, "Every mother says, 'But my child. . . .' That's how it works."
"But I'm not her mother," I wailed, hearing in my own voice that I sounded like a baby myself, crying for a toy or an ice cream. "That's the point."
"You're the only mother she's got," Grace said, smiling, "just like Eric was the only mother Julie had." Julie was the first, and only, Yukon wolf cub any human had ever successfully raised and successfully released into the wild — without getting eaten in the process, that is. Even Yukon wolves thought twice about Eric, although Julie had left a few marks. "Go on, Jake," said Grace. "I'm here. Lois will be fine."
I wanted to say, How do you know she'll be fine, but I didn't. I went. And she was fine. Even if that was when I had to start really working at wearing her out so she'd actually sleep while I was gone.
So what is the point of living on the edge of five million acres of wilderness if you spend all your time inside four walls? But Billy took me out with him every chance he could invent, and while as Lois got bigger walking around carrying her got harder, Billy was really clever with his sling making and at the point I really wasn't going to be able to carry her in front any more she hoisted herself up another of those developmental stages, and agreed to ride on my back, and even more exciting, over the T-shirt. I think this must have been the moment when she would have started looking out of her mom's pouch sometimes, if her life had been normal; because she used to look over my shoulder (and snorkel around in my hair, making it stick together with smelly dragon spit) and (except for the spit) that was kind of fun, although it meant Billy had to be even more careful where he took me. Having a large bulgy restless stomach was bad enough, having an obviously exotic animal riding in your backpack is something else. Although I don't believe anyone could have recognized Lois as a dragon yet (she looked more like the Slug That Ate Schenectady, only lumpier), still, she was obviously something pretty strange, and anyone who caught us would have wanted to know what, and why whatever it was wasn't safely at the zoo in a cage being studied.