I've never seen anything like the way Bud landed. There was so not enough room for him. It looked for a minute like he was going to fly straight through the open gate after all — fortunately the tourists were all paralyzed for that minute — and then at the last possible instant, or maybe slightly after that, he reared up, not unlike the super humongous, four-legged version of a bird stalling to land on a branch — and the wind from his wings was terrific, and he had all four of those legs thrown out in front of him and you could see the dagger tips of those demolition-grappling-gear claws sparkling in the murky, oppressive light — and as he landed, he threw himself backward, just to stay in place, and it was like a tornado and an earthquake all at once, plus the massive boom of those wings, which he whipped together with a noise like thunder: and even so he was all kind of piled up on himself because there wasn't ROOM.
I felt Martha kiss my cheek and her hand briefly in the small of my back as I bolted away from her, into the hurricane and the thunder and the earthquake and the claws, because Bud was saying now now NOW NOW and he hadn't actually finished landing, or perching, or settling on his tail like an old-fashioned rocketship, and he curled his neck down toward me as I ran as fast as my little short human legs could carry me toward him. He curled his lip at me and I just about got the message so that when he opened his mouth just wide enough I already had a foot on his lip and was groping for purchase with one hand — I've said that dragon teeth are wide-spaced. Well, I have to say they're not quite widespaced enough when you're throwing yourself between them, and it was not at all comfortable as I belly flopped into his mouth — what do you call it when you don't impale yourself on the points but get stuck between the uprights, like someone falling into a spiked fence? That's what happened to me. I had aimed toward the front as his mouth opened, simply because that was the end nearest the ground, but since he then promptly closed his jaws over me I was just as glad that I wasn't back nearer the hinge where he'd have to concentrate more not to squash me.
It must have looked pretty, uh, peculiar. I knew Dad and Martha and our lot wouldn't be worried — a little taken aback maybe, but not really worried — Martha told me later there was a lot more screaming at that point (even if I wasn't a princess or a virgin and furthermore had obviously gone willingly, which your average evil villain dragon type presumably wouldn't have found nearly so much fun) but that may have been Bud's takeoff. I couldn't see it, obviously, but I could feel it. I imagine the laws of physics would tell me that he'd've lost all his momentum even by landing long enough to pick me up, which probably took about a minute, but from where I was lying, he sprang back into the air again because he hadn't lost all that momentum. He flung his head back — so it's a good thing he had closed his mouth again — gently — although some of his side teeth had little low crags on the inside like vestigial premolars or something, and I could get a grip on these with my hands.
And I felt-facedown in the dark of his hot resiny-organic-fire-smelling mouth — every muscle in his body slamming down against the earth while his wings unfurled and unfurled and unfurled till I imagined them stretching across all of Smokehill to the Bonelands and then clapped forward to scoop the air violently out of the way so we could just dive upward — you know all those stories about all the mega-Gs pressing the fearless astronauts into their padded flight seats on takeoff, speaking of old-fashioned rockets that sit upright on their tails . . . well, I swear I had all those Gs and I can sure swear I didn't have a padded flight seat. I felt like all my brains were about to be shoved out through my face, and my heart would punch a hole through my breastbone in a few seconds. The middle of me was pretty well held together by large teeth, but then there were my legs, that were simply going to come off and get left behind.
And then we were airborne. I felt him level off and he parted his jaws again ever so slightly, and I, trying not to be any more absolutely clumsy than I had to be under the rather awkward circumstances, dragged my heavy, stiff, semi-detached legs the rest of the way into his mouth. This was not a hugely fun process. Bud, big as he is, still had to counterbalance my heavings and floppings and I was way too aware of how far down the ground was as Bud twitched his head and sideslipped. It's not at all drooly, a dragon's mouth. A bit damp, but it's more like what you might call humid, because it's so hot. A sort of jungle experience, only without the vines and the monkeys (and the poisonous snakes and spiders and whatever). I managed to lay myself down along one side, between teeth and jawbone, like an extra-large plug of chewing tobacco, and I won't say it was comfortable including for Bud (Chewing tobacco doesn't kick and thrash), but it could have been worse.
It was a long flight. He set down only once, after only about half an hour or so, near a stream where we could both have a drink; and then I climbed up his shoulder and neck and lay down in that hollow at the base of the skull, and the space there on Bud was a lot more comfortable for me at my runty but inconvenient human size than the space on Gulp was, I don't know if it was from being bigger or being male, or maybe I was just more used to riding dragons by then (although in fact I don't ride dragons, barring emergency) but I half curled up and half went to sleep. I didn't even get cold, although it was cold, and the breath from Bud's nostrils was steaming like a (very large) teakettle.
But even though I was dozing I was aware that we just kept going on and on and on — the sky cleared in time to see the sun finish setting and then the moon rose, a blazing big full moon, and then it rose up farther and over us, and the stars wheeled along with it, and still Bud was flying, no racing, over the landscape. Whatever I've pretended to understand about the laws of physics, I doubt that they're all suspended for the flight of dragons, and I imagine something Bud's size, to keep flying at all, has to fly at some speed. But it was more than that. Bud was pouring it on. The thrust — the bang — forward of each downbeat of those enormous wings had an almost audible THUNK about it, like feet hitting pavement; when I peered ahead the wind clawed at my eyes. We were on our way to whatever we were on our way toward as fast as Bud could take us. Which is why I imagine, it was Bud himself who came for me. Although I would have had trouble throwing myself into the mouth of almost any other dragon.
When I raised my head and looked forward (eyes watering in the gale) I could just see Bud's head, an outline of a craggy red-flecked moving blackness in the surrounding smooth moonlit gray. We were out over the Bonelands by now — pretty well nothing as far as you could see in any direction except rock and shadows. Bud's blistering urgency, which had settled to a kind of intense dull roar once we'd started, came back again, like spikes of flame surging up out of banked embers. The moon was getting low and dawn wasn't too far off and I picked up that we had to get there, wherever there was, before the moon set, and it was like suddenly Bud kicked into some final burst of overdrive and my scalp was getting peeled off, the seams on my clothes were going to part any minute, and I wasn't just curled up and dozing any more, I was hanging on for dear life.