home that afternoon. I asked Uncle Seb, but instead of answering he awkwardly stared down at a squiggly line he traced in the gravel with his boot.
“Philippa heard you guys fighting,” I said, emboldened by the knowledge of my pending dragonlord status.
“Never mind that,” Uncle Seb muttered, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then tell me,” I challenged, taking a step closer. “You and my mom were best friends or something – every story she tells is about you. You used to fly with my dad. Er, Philippa’s dad, I mean. Why –”
“I said you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Uncle Seb cut me off brusquely, his breathing harsh under his glare.
My confident posture recoiled; I backed up into Dragon, accidentally stepping on one of his talons. He let out an odd little hiss, then immediately apologized. Uncle Seb walked a few paces, turned, and crossed and uncrossed his arms.
“I’m sorry too, Egg. My fight’s not with you. Or your mom. It’s … complicated.”
“So simplify it for me, then,” I said.
“I will. I will, I promise. I need to make things right with your mom first. Don’t stress, little Egg,” he brightened at the end, but his smile was still sad.
“Don’t call me Egg. And fine,” I added, softening a bit, “but that just means you owe me more pie.”
“Deal,” he said.
He gave me a searching smile. In the sunlight, his eyes glowed the same bluish-green as my mother’s and I wondered what secrets they held. I wondered why he was able to take a turbo-prop plane beyond the confines of Earth and defy everything I knew about space travel. I wondered if he had ever taken my mom on these trips, if they and my nana used to go on holiday with dragons and elves. My mind floated away into a fantasy of a young Seb waiting with my mother anxiously in front of a Christmas tree while my Nana presented them with lasers and a pet alien with googly eyes on the end of bright-pink antennae while a baby dragon played in the corner.
“Oh, that’s a jolly sight!” Dragon’s guffaw broke my reverie. “Sebastian, old chap, I think you ought to let her in on a little more of your goings-on. She’s equipped with quite the imagination, this dear child!”
I blushed. Hard. I looked away to hide my crimson face.
“Drahk, I told her I didn’t want to talk about it right now.”
Dragon responded in Latin. Uncle Seb swore. More Latin. More swearing.
“Fine! You know best, don’t you. For the record, I think this is a bad idea. Premature. Premature and bad. But, alright then,” Uncle Seb shook his head and disappeared into the shadows of the open hangar.
I shifted my weight awkwardly, uncertain if I was meant to follow. I looked inquiringly at Dragon. He winked. Like that helped explain anything.
“Here. This ought to get you started. But,” Uncle Seb said as he emerged again, “proceed with caution.” He cradled something in his hands. He gingerly presented a small, very worn, very thick book with a beautifully aged brown leather cover and a tattered green binder that was more tape than binder. “Your family history and your nana’s notes on inter-dimensional portals.”
I took the prized objects carefully in my arms and stared in disbelief. Here I was, basically holding the secrets to my soul. Me, Eve Archer, who couldn’t be bothered to replace a broken shoelace or floss regularly, was just entrusted with the top-secret innerworkings of a dragonlord legacy.
I plopped down right then and there, ignoring the dingey gravel leaving its dust on my pants, and hungrily opened the small leather tome. I gasped as I rifled through its hundreds of pages.
“It’s a journal?!” I squealed.
Dragon straightened and frowned, turning his head to Uncle Seb.
“Does this journal include, the, um,” he trailed off.
“Yep,” said Uncle Seb.
“And the bit about the, uh,” he added.
“Oh yes,” Seb responded.
“Even the parts about, er, you know,” said Dragon.
“Even those parts,” Seb nodded.
“Oh my,” Dragon’s eyes grew large and he blushed.
“Well now I really gotta read this!” I announced excitedly, as this exchange between them had my curiosity firing relentlessly.
Dragon chuckled and he and Uncle Seb went back into the hangar and started inspecting some sort of propulsion fuel or something, exclaiming how it had Martian patents pending blah blah blah. Normally their uniquely odd brand of shop talk would intrigue me, but I had never been presented with anything from my family’s past before!
But as eager as I was to delve into this ancient diary, I couldn’t get my brain to settle down and focus on actually reading. I skimmed, frantically turning frail pages as if on a desperate search … But a search for what? Suddenly, my mind quieted and my eyes came to rest on a single entry, dated 15 years ago, toward the end of the thick journal. That revving excitement drained from me all at once as I read.
My heart started pounding, a whirring filled my head. I blinked and reread the brief passage, the little weathered journal shaking in my now-unsteady hands.
My Sebastian is inconsolable. He won’t leave the hospital, even though the coroner has come and gone. They’ve moved the body. But he sits in the waiting room in shock, letting the nurses pile blankets on him in sympathy. Eamon is gone, and he knows it is his fault. I didn’t get to him in time, and this damned aquamina is sitting here, useless like me. How do I tell my daughter that plane crashes happen, that it could have been worse? But what’s worse than losing your husband? How do I tell her that sweet Philippa doesn’t have her daddy now?
I closed the old journal. I felt hollow, empty, yet full of shame over this discovery. This was not information I wanted. Stories of my great-great-great grandmother captaining a water dragon through the Nile, that is the story I wanted. Heroic tales of women doing the impossible and pioneering space travel, that is what I wanted to learn from these aged pages. Not that my uncle killed Philippa’s dad in a fluke plane crash.
I was cold. I felt betrayed. I looked up at Uncle Seb, laughing with Dragon so nonchalantly as they worked together on the little plane. Was that the same plane? How long had he kept this secret? When did he tell my mother? Surely this is why they weren’t close, why he only existed in pictures and wistful memories around our house, save for the few heated encounters I could recall.
I closed my eyes, scrunching up my face as I concentrated hard on speaking to Dragon telepathically. I opened my eyes; they darkened when they settled on Uncle Seb. I didn’t want him to hear me, nor did I want to talk to him. I closed my eyes again and shook my head back and forth as if to shake the vision of Seb in a fiery plane crash from my person.
“Dragon, I want to go,” I breathed internally. “Please.”
I saw his dark head look up, the luminosity of his scales catching the midday sun. I could feel him searching me. I looked down, still feeling an irreconcilable shame and betrayal.
He nodded politely to Uncle Seb, who waved and hollered goodbye to me. I put my hand in the air in a weak response but couldn’t bring myself to look at him. Dragon trotted over to me. I knew he discerned the source of my distress, and I knew, gratefully, that he wouldn’t say anything on the subject unless I initiated the conversation.
Dragon whisked me into the air, and we flew home. I sang every Beatles song I could remember to keep my thoughts occupied and away from Dragon’s prying telepathy. I noticed a few minutes into this that he was bobbing his head and flapping his wings in time to whatever song I was humming internally as we flew. This elevated my mood considerably. I sighed and smiled, thankful to have both Dragon and the insanely wonderful music of The Beatles in my life. (It really is the little things.)
When Dragon left me in my backyard, he was still tapping his talons and lightly singing she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah; she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah as he launched back into the sky. His head was bobbing in time as he disappeared in a shimmering mist.
That was his coolest exit yet.