“Have your parents heard anything?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s all just wait and see.”
“Even if they did attack the town,” Jon said, “it’s not like we’re all going to die. We can run. We can hide out, fight back. That’s what people did in the Middle Ages before the dragons disappeared, right?”
So, neither of them was really thinking about climbing. She’d gone almost a half an hour without thinking about the dragons and what could happen, and in a moment Jon had come up with the worst case scenario.
“Can we talk about something else?” She untied the rope from her harness and handed it to Jon for his turn up the rock face.
“Sorry. It’s just kind of hard not thinking about it, you know?”
Kay didn’t want to fight the dragons. She didn’t want to see those old films come to life, with the fires, bombs, and crowds of people running in fear. It would mean never talking with Artegal again, never flying again. She didn’t want to have to be afraid of him. But it was like her mother kept saying—they didn’t really know anything about the dragons. Could Kay say she knew anything about dragons, or just Artegal?
“What if we could talk to them? I keep thinking we ought to find a way to talk to them.” She was blushing. Talking around the issue, so close to blurting out what she’d been doing.
“But how?” he said.
“I don’t know. Maybe someone should just…walk across the border.” She’d never been so close to telling anyone.
Jon shook his head. “Somebody would shoot you. Or eat you.”
If she could trust anyone with the secret, it would be Jon. He wouldn’t tell anyone, she was sure. But she wasn’t sure how he would react. He certainly wouldn’t be happy. But he might not be curious, either. He might freak out, and he might tell someone—for Kay’s own good, to protect her. He’d tell someone for all the right reasons.
“I don’t think there’s going to be a war,” she said.
“Why not? Does your mom know something?”
“No, I just think it would be too weird.”
“Yeah, it would,” he said. “Hey, can you hand me a little chalk? I think I’m out.”
She scooped a handful and handed it to him. She rubbed the chalk on his hand, and he squeezed her fingers before pulling away.
Hooking the belay to her harness, she anchored for him, studying him as he knotted the other end of the rope to his harness and started his climb. The muscles of his arms flexed under his T-shirt, his strong fingers keeping a sure grip on the rock. His skin shone with sweat, and his face flushed with the effort. His smile was wry. He looked really good. She was lucky, dating one of the best-looking guys at school. Lucky to be dating someone who thought it was cool to go rock climbing on a warm winter day.
Silver River settled back to normal, mostly. Most of the news vans and crews that had arrived to cover the situation packed up and left. The sense of relief was plain—people tended to smile a little too big, laugh a little too hard, for the next week or so. A few more cynical people said that the dragons were just biding their time, lulling the town into a false sense of security, and that the air force ought to bomb them first, before it was too late. Everyone else felt like they’d avoided a disaster. They could still see dragons flying around the mountaintops, far to the north.
She counted down the days to the next meeting with Artegal. She was grateful that she hadn’t been grounded or had her driver’s license confiscated after her run-in with her father. This time, she carefully constructed her story of going hiking. Asked permission in advance. Promised not to shut off her cell phone. Promised to keep an eye skyward and come home at the first sign of trouble. That said something, if her mother was still worried about trouble.
Alibi in place, she raced to the trailhead and the usual meeting place.
There was a chance he wouldn’t be there. She had no idea how the crash and its aftermath had played out on his side of the border. That was part of why she was so anxious to talk to him. What had the dragons really thought of it all? The pundits on the news shows could only speculate.
The creek was mostly frozen. Icicles, lattices, and sprays lined the bottom of the log bridge. On this sunny day, the whole scene sparkled like diamonds. Kay crossed the bridge, then paced to keep warm, bundled up in her parka, hands in her pockets.
If he didn’t show, she couldn’t even leave him a note, on the chance someone might find it. If he didn’t meet her, maybe that would be for the best. Maybe they’d both be safer if he stayed away and they never met again. But then she’d always wonder. She’d always worry that he’d been grounded, whatever dragons did to ground someone. But her heart ached at the thought of never flying again, of feeling the high wind scouring her face, and of looking down on the world as if it were a map.
She heard a brushing sound, like a branch dragged across soft earth. The creak of trees, like in a wind—but there wasn’t any wind. It was a dragon moving on foot through a forest.
Then Artegal appeared, his head leading, snaking forward on his long neck, arms and wings pulling him along. She had almost forgotten how bright his scales were, the way the mottled sunlight played off them, the way they shimmered in light and shadow, like sunlight on the ice. Her heart raced in fear at the sight of him all over again.
He saw her, blinked, and sighed, a noise like a growl. “You came.”
Her smile was thin. “So did you. I guess that means things aren’t so bad?”
“Elders understand. An accident, not an invasion.” He rumbled a growl, qualifying the statement. “Was a long argument, though.”
“Did you tell them? Did you talk to them about what happened?”
He settled on his haunches, pulling his wings close, and his lids grew heavy. Almost like a wince, Kay thought. Like he was trying to decide what to say. “I wasn’t there. Not old enough.”
“So you couldn’t—” She stopped herself. She couldn’t expect Artegal to have an influence on the dragon elders any more than she could influence her own government.
“I did what I could,” he said, fog curling from his nostrils as he sighed. “And you? Did the pilot tell?”
“No,” she said. “No one’s said anything about it.”
He grumbled, in either agreement or relief, or was simply sighing again. He looked at her, looked at the sky. “What now?”
She knew what was probably the safest thing to do—stop doing this. Stop meeting at all. Hope nothing more happened. But that didn’t feel like the right thing to do. “My mom works for border enforcement, and the thing that frustrated her most is that we didn’t have a way to talk to you guys, to explain what happened. She thought if we could just explain, everything would be all right. Instead, we sat around waiting for something bad to happen, for you to attack. If something like this happens again, we can keep talking. You and me. We have to.”
The lip curled, scales flashing. “Agreed.” Then he purred. “And the flying?”
She’d been thinking about that far too much. Because she was pretty sure she had the same gleam in her eyes that he had in his. “I don’t see how we can get away with that again. I don’t know how we got away with it before.”
“You don’t want to,” he said.
“No, I do,” she said quickly. But the consequences. It wasn’t the falling off, the getting in trouble, the lying she was having to do to keep this secret. This was so much more than staying out after curfew or getting pulled over by her sheriff father. This involved the rest of the world. “But if we got caught…I’m not sure people would understand. That we’re—”
“That we’re friends?”
She scuffed her feet in the dirt and looked up to the bright blue sky, wanting to go back there. There was still so much she hadn’t seen. But she didn’t know what she was getting into.