“Oh!” she said, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. How terrible! The tiny baby dragon, dead in its egg that way, never to see light or feel the air. “Oh, no. The poor little thing!”
Meseret’s vast eye turned to Lucinda again, a red-gold ball with a thin black slit that went all the way from the top to the bottom. The buzzing in Lucinda’s head intensified, as though whatever was stuck in there had just discovered there was no way out and was beginning to get angry. Lucinda tried to look away, but the eye seemed to glow in the dark room so that even the great bulk of the dragon itself began to fade into shadow and the glowing golden orb was all she could see, burning like a coal, like a tiny sun.
Something pushed at her thoughts again, a feeling of anger and despair so powerful and so alien that it seemed like an electrical storm inside her-Lucinda could almost feel lightning crackling and sputtering in her skull. Everything went swimmy behind her eyes-red, black, red, black, whirling and whirling.
Why was the ceiling suddenly sideways? Why was she standing pressed against a wall, held by some kind of flesh magnetism? Why was Haneb floating on his side before her, his face full of alarm?
“Miss, miss, you okay? Have you hurt?”
She groaned and closed her eyes. She couldn’t push herself off the wall, but with her eyes closed, it felt less like a wall and more like the ground. She opened her eyes again. Now it made sense. She was lying on her back. Haneb was bending over her.
“What happened?”
“You fell. Have you ill, miss?”
“Oh, God, do I have what the dragon has? Am I going to die?”
Haneb actually smiled. The flash of white, extending to both sides of his ruined face and creasing the scarred side in a surprising way, allowed her for the first time to see him without seeing his wounds first. “No, miss. You not going to die. Not from dragon illness-people don’t get it. I think just it is very hot for you today.”
Before Lucinda could reply, Meseret let out another deep, grumbling noise. For some reason this one seemed less despairing, more like… a warning.
“Oh,” Lucinda said, staring at the dragon. “Look!”
Meseret was up, swaying unevenly as if she had not stood in a while, but still up on her stout legs. The crest of her back, which had only stretched a yard or two above Lucinda’s head when the beast was lying down, now arched high above like a suspension bridge. Meseret lifted her head, her huge nostrils sucking air. The dragon bumped hard against the bars of the pen, making them rattle and creak, then opened her mouth and growled. Lucinda stumbled back with her hands over her ears, doing her best not to scream. It’s just like King Kong, she thought, terrified. “She’s trying to get out!”
Haneb clutched her arm. “She doesn’t get out. She is tied and the pen keeps her wings close. And she is not angry at us.” He tugged Lucinda toward the door.
“So why are we running away?”
“We are not running from her.” Haneb’s smile was long gone, but his teeth were still showing like the snarl of a frightened dog. “Alamu comes. Her mate.”
Meseret threw back her head and belched out an immense, rolling cloud of flame and black smoke that rippled through the metal struts on the ceiling. Even from two or three dozen yards away, Lucinda could feel the heat like an oven door suddenly swung open.
“But why is she angry?” Lucinda squealed. It was true-she could feel the dragon’s fury coiling like a hot wire in her thoughts.
“Because he will take the egg if he can,” said Haneb, fumbling at the door. “He will eat it. Hurry now.”
“But he can’t get in, can he?”
“Look up.” He pointed toward the ceiling with his padded glove. There were two huge skylight windows among the struts. “Alamu is smaller than her. If he gets onto the roof he will come through easy.”
Lucinda helped Haneb wrestle open the heavy door. It felt like a nightmare, one of those dreams where you run but can’t escape. “We must quickly let Mr. Gideon know,” Haneb said as they stumbled outside. He yanked off his hood. His black hair was damp and his scarred face shiny with sweat. The two of them began to run away from the Sick Barn, headed back toward the main house. The air outside the barn had a strange smell-acidic and prickly.
“What can Gideon… ” she began, then fell silent as a nightmarish shape came around the nearest corner of the house.
Alamu was not even half Meseret’s size, but terrifyingly faster in his movements than the female dragon. He was covered with copper and black scales that gleamed like a rattlesnake’s back in the clear morning light, and as he reared up to more than twice Lucinda’s height, the dragon flashed curving claws like bunches of ivory bananas. He turned his wedge-shaped head sideways, examining them, then dropped back down suddenly and stretched his head forward, squinting in exactly their direction. Haneb jerked Lucinda to a halt. “Quiet,” he hissed. “ And do not move! ”
She couldn’t have moved at that moment if she’d wanted to.
The dragon’s wings unfurled, slow and beautiful like a butterfly’s emerging from a cocoon. Then, his thin body suddenly whipping into the air, the monster came flying straight at them.
He was on them before they could even duck. For a moment Lucinda could hear nothing but her breathing and the rush of her blood, then something cracked past them like a snapped towel-a towel big as a missile. Alamu flew over their heads, his sand-colored wings rippling along their edges, then folded those wings so swiftly that he plummeted to the ground and landed with a thump that Lucinda felt in her bones. Now that he was between them and the greater safety of the barn, Alamu began walking toward them, his head held low.
Haneb, holding Lucinda’s hand in a painful grip, shoved her behind him and said, “Back! Go back into that canning shed!”
“What?” She looked over her shoulder and saw a small wooden shed a dozen yards away, built next to one of the farm’s many wells. The door was off. She couldn’t imagine it keeping the dragon off her for more than a few seconds.
“Go!” he cried. “Please, miss, but go slow!” And then he stepped forward and away from her, clapping his gloved hands with a muffled thump and calling out, “ Ha! Ha! Ha! ” to the dragon, over and over. Little shudders ran down the length of its neck. Now Alamu was watching only Haneb, a snake watching a hopelessly trapped mouse.
Lucinda backed into the doorway of the shed, but couldn’t bear to step inside where she wouldn’t be able to see what was happening. Haneb had stopped again and was standing utterly still as the dragon stalked toward him on its hind legs, head extended on a line with Haneb’s own. As Alamu breathed in and out, little flames danced around his nostrils.
The creature paused and sniffed delicately at the air all around the unmoving Haneb, who had dropped his hood somewhere in the excitement. Lucinda was terrified the monster would engulf the small man’s poor disfigured face in fire. Was this what had happened to him before? Were those dragon-scars?
Alamu’s long head moved closer on the supple neck, a yard of bone and teeth and muscle, the air in front of the nostrils rippling in the heat. The copper and black scales caught the light, glittering. The mouth opened, showing the curving fangs and a snaky black tongue.
From somewhere far away came a deep, flat ringing-a bell, but not quite like anything Lucinda had ever heard.
The dragon stopped, alert and listening A moment later it snorted and turned away, then began to run across the open space beside the Sick Barn, each step as heavy as the pounding of a sledgehammer, until suddenly it leaped into the air and sailed away from them again, tail lashing, a serpent wriggling across the sky.
Lucinda heard herself breathing out. Haneb had dropped down to sit on the ground and was staring at his hands as though he was astounded to discover he owned a pair. Lucinda ran from the shed, shading her eyes as she looked up. Alamu flew fast but the sky was big and clear: as he headed away over the house toward the reptile barn and the far pastures, she had a last view of the dragon, sunlight glowing through his translucent wings.