But how could we risk it? (What had Gulp been risking? Was the sixth blob — was my dragonlet dangerously tainted or weakened by its contact with me?) And Katie was part of my family no matter whose sibling her new kid was going to be. But the dragons were a part of my family too, and the ties were . . . they weren't even unbreakable. They weren't even ties. They were a part of ME like my ear or my pancreas was a part of me. Like Martha was a part of me. The way the question kept presenting itself to me was, Who was I going to betray?
It was nearly getting to the point that the newlyweds and the almost-newlyweds weren't on speaking terms which would have been funny if it hadn't been us. And then Grace said softly into one of those dinner conversations that were only not getting loud and nasty through violent self-control of parties concerned, "Jamie married a midwife, you know."
Dead silence.
"Sadie's a midwife?" I said finally.
"You could see what she says — ask her advice."
What she said, of course, was "You're all nuts." But she still agreed to fly out and talk to us in person. Which was amazingly nice of her. Although I had the impression she hadn't decided whether to laugh or to bring a cattle prod to keep us at a safe distance. Maybe both. She'd only ever met any of us once, four years ago, on their way from Boston where they got married to their honeymoon in Hawaii — and they'd stayed here in Jamie's old bedroom, which was still a bit redolent of Lois despite a fresh paint job in the bride's honor. So she had a little idea of what she was getting into, and she came anyway.
It was my idea to take her straight out to Farcamp and Dragon Central and let her meet, uh, some dragons. Everyone else was still saying "hello." I was like at the end of my tether and starting to get rope burns.
She looked from face to face and said hesitantly, "Farcamp?"
I said, "Farcamp is where the humans stay when we want to spend time with the dragons. Dragon — er — Central is — er — next door."
She blinked maybe twice and said, "Okay."
But I knew that as soon as we all went to Dragon Central and I actually tried to tell my dragons what was going on, or at least finally let them pick up what I'd been trying to hide, they'd have to know how much I both did and didn't want. . . . My stomach hurt. The old scars throbbed, and the inside felt like someone had tried to light me up, mistaking me for a dragonlet with an igniventator.
Sadie didn't disintegrate nearly as much as most people and she pulled herself together really fast. Maybe it's the midwife trip. Which isn't to say she didn't have a rough time. Everyone does. She shook like a leaf and Martha had to hold her up when she saw her first dragon — lying just outside the cave mouth of Dragon Central. She — Valerie (Vhaaaaaahhhhreeeeee) — recognized Sadie as a new human and raised her head only a very little and very slowly, and didn't move the rest of herself at all, at first, till Sadie stopped clinging to Martha and at least half stood on her own feet again. And then Valerie unwound that long neck, which is one of the things dragons do, you're even used to how big they are, and then it's like that day Bud came to fetch me when his wings seemed to unfurl hundreds of miles: when they stretch their necks out toward you the neck goes on and on and on like the yellow brick road and however many times you've seen it you're briefly not sure if there's maybe a wicked witch involved this time after all.
Valerie brought her head about ten feet from us and Sadie gallantly held her ground. I went up to human-arm's length of her — it's no wonder I'm always surprised how big I am with other humans because I'm so used to being bug-sized next to a dragon — and she lifted her lip in what was now standard-dragon invitation to known-human-friend for a chat, and I put my hand there and she said something like, Hmmmm? which meant, more or less, A new one, huh? and I said yes, and Valerie said something like, And there's a purpose to this one, a different purpose, a new purpose? and I rubbed my hand over my face in the basic human "arrrgh" gesture and said something like z1k09&dflj;kgo*&^vx+iueaiiiimmbjdcudpf!!!! because this was so way beyond my powers of communication, and Valerie "laughed" and said, You'd better talk to Bud. (I don't know how the dragons managed to pick up what I call him, but I knew the dragon "word" — the tiny mind-spasm they used to name him to me wasn't his dragon name, and it felt like Bud . . . but that's more stuff I can't explain. They call Gulp Gulp to me too, and Lois I think is Lois, even in Dragonese.)
The two of us other humans each had a hand under one of poor Sadie's arms and we were both saying, Look, are you sure you're okay, you don't have to do this, you don't have to stay. It's hard on us old timers too, watching a newbie go through the initiation hazing and of course in this case we felt guilty because it wasn't her idea, we'd asked her to come. But she was saying, No, this is fascinating, this is amazing, don't you dare take me away, wow, I never imagined. . .
We got her down the long first tunnel and into the hearth-room, and she met Bud and Gulp and Lois. She had to sit down — there are a couple of decent human-chair-sized rocks near the hearth, with hollows where your bottom goes, full of shed scales: I had a furniture-moving party with a couple of dragons a while back — but even though she was a little floppy her eyes were obviously focusing as she looked around, and she didn't throw up or pass out or anything, which, trust me, is very good for a first timer. Martha did the out-loud version of why we were there with the hand gestures, which was as much for Sadie's benefit (yes we do talk to them, the rumors are true) and then I put my hand inside Bud's lip and tried not to shriek at him, and he did the dragon equivalent of murmuring "there, there" and the funny thing is I actually did feel a little comforted.
It sort of seeped in, the "there, there" — like the answer-feeling, like trying to find out the dragon word for "rock." It was like the misery was a specific quantity, like forty bales of hay, and someone had coolly backed in with a large truck and smuggled thirty of them away. When I looked at Martha she was wearing the same fragile haven't-smiled-in-a-long-time smile that I could feel on my face.
Sadie went really quiet when we got back to Farcamp though and I made coffee and offered the aspirin and thought about feeling better, and Martha held Sadie's hands like you might a lost little girl's (while the person at the info booth puts out an all-points for Mom and Dad over the loudspeaker). You could see Sadie kind of coming back to herself and the first thing she said was, "Light. . . we're going to have to do something about having enough light." And the second thing she said was, "You're going to have to give me a job, you know, if this gets out, they'll have my license off me so fast it'll leave tread marks."
Martha managed not to look at me triumphantly, but I said, or rather squeaked, "What if something goes wrong?" Sadie barely glanced at me — she was deep in thoughts of practical planning — and said, "Have a helicopter standing by, of course. You don't have to tell it what it's standing by for, do you?" Which in the new Smokehill was true, we didn't have to. We hadn't told the pilot why we were taking Sadie out here, for example. Mostly we still make everybody go the old slow route, including ourselves. But as soon as Martha got too big to make the hike she'd need the helicopter to get out here anyway. Anyone not on the Smokehill grapevine would assume it would whisk her away if she went into labor. Avoiding the question of why she'd want to be joggling around in a chopper going to Farcamp at all.