obediently pulled sweats on over my jammies, put on my puffy coat, and, pulling on my red rain boats, slipped silently out the window to join Dragon in the cold night air.
It was around 4:30 a.m., and all of the planet seemed asleep. The moon hung noiselessly and lit a protective path for us as Dragon glided smoothly through the inky stillness. Dragon’s wings wooshed in and out over the little houses, and I considered how crazy it was that no one in any of those little cutouts below knew that at that moment, a European Arrowtail was flying over them.
I saw a familiar building: we were heading for Beecher.
The sprawling rectangles grew before us as we soundlessly dropped closer to the cold ground awaiting us. Dragon swooped down behind the school; a single floodlight in the parking lot that abutted the rear field lit a large circle. From the basketball court behind its circumference, I saw a small figure moving in the shadows.
The figure stepped inaudibly into the floodlight’s glow as Dragon landed us abruptly in the cold, moist grass. I slid off his warm scales and shuddered in the night’s disrupted breeze. I strained to track the figure’s movement in and out of the shadows; I could make out a woman’s frame coming gracefully toward us.
“She has something for you,” Dragon whispered, “something that will help you in the Seventh.”
I walked nervously forward, my red rain boots squeaking inelegantly as I approached the mysterious figure. Dragon gave me a sort of blind confidence, I had discovered. While I enjoyed my actions finally being as bold as my speech, I wasn’t so sold on this weird surge of confidence. Possibly I was fond of my old friend Fear; it always kept me safe, anyway.
“Eve Archer, you are ready,” a familiar voice said as I approached.
“Ms. Neally! Oh, wow, it’s you,” I felt my entire body loosen in relief, “and that book! Oh my god, did you know what it can do? Did you give it to me on purpose?”
I staggered toward her like an old friend. She backed up, her face looking sterner than I’d ever seen it. But perhaps my dear librarian just wasn’t in the greatest of moods at 4 a.m. … when she must meet a student in the school courtyard for some reason. Yeah, I’d be a little out of sorts too, I decided.
“You mustn’t be of a careless mindset,” she cautioned, “you have but little time. Are you prepared to transport?”
The darkness, the shadows cast by the single streetlamp, her serious tone … I didn’t know what to do. But I didn’t dare panic. I couldn’t. I felt oddly drawn to my librarian, this tiny woman whom I had assumed was just the world’s most intense introvert and nothing more. But now, with her small frame not yielding to the breeze or fright of darkness, I was so wildly intrigued and yes, very drawn to her.
“Yes, I am, um, prepared,” I blushed as I looked at her.
“I have the aquamina for you. For the right host, it is a protectant, a salve, but you already knew that.”
I nodded, so wildly confused and but so fascinated.
“I knew that, yes,” I stammered, hiding my dumb grin.
Ms. Neally offered her hand with some reticence. She sighed heavily and looked the other way. I frowned. Why did she seem so against this now? I was just following her lead.
I looked to Dragon, who had been inching away from us the whole time. He folded and unfolded his arms, shifting his weight back and forth as though he couldn’t find a comfortable position to stand in. Seeing him so antsy amused me. For the first time, Dragon looked, dare I say it, awkward.
“Are you actually ready, child?” Ms. Neally’s quiet voice startled me.
“Who, me? For sure! I mean, yes. Yes, I am,” I said with a shaky voice as I straightened my shoulders.
She grabbed my hand and pressed her palm against mine. I felt the gem. She winced, her small frame visibly tightening in a shiver.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
“You’re … you’re welcome,” I said.
As she walked stoically back toward the school, I looked back at Dragon. His eyes were transfixed on the petite woman. Her shoulders were rolled proudly back, her arms in front of her with one hand cradling the other so as not to disrupt the spot the gem burned into palm. Her gait was even and measured, her hips making her long plaid skirt sway side to side as she moved. Dragon took in all of this, and I swear he sighed a little forlorn sigh. He caught me studying him and blushed. Hard.
“Dragon,” I hissed, “Dragon, do you have a thing for Ms. Neally?!”
His eyes widened and he held a talon to his mouth. He checked that she was fully out of earshot.
“What? Who? Oh, now don’t be crass. Oh, come on. My goodness. Who? I can’t fathom such silliness. What? Oh, such nonsense,” he rambled.
“You do! Oh my gosh,” I gushed, “Dragon has a crush!”
“Had,” he corrected. “Er, that is, I did not and do not.”
I skipped around him and made kissing sounds at him, giggling with so much delight. Dragon was puttering about, thoroughly beside himself.
“Dragon and Ms. Neeeeaaaally! You looooove her!” I teased.
“Now that is quite enough,” Dragon blushed. “Let’s not be preposterous.”
“What’s that? I can’t hear you over all of this loooooove,” I taunted.
“Now really, Evechild, I –”
“Dragon looooves Ms. Neally! Dragon looooves Ms. Neally! Dragon loooooves –”
I was cut off by a deafening roar. Imagine some incredible choir of the loudest lion you ever heard, a 747-jet taking off, and the blaring horn of a naval ship overtaking all the airwaves of Earth for a moment. This sound shook my bones and pierced my eardrums and rumbled in my lungs. I fell forward, holding my hands over my ears.
“I. SAID. ENOUGH.”
The roar turned to words. That booming sound had come from Dragon. I stayed kneeling forward, my palms frozen on my ears. I was closing my eyes for some reason. They flashed open, and I felt my blood pumping.
“What on earth is wrong with you?!” the words shot out of my mouth decisively and angrily as my hands dropped and I hopped up. I walked right up to Dragon’s face. Our chests were heaving in time with each other.
“My school is, like, right THERE. And there’s a billion houses around us THERE,” I barked, gesturing side to side. “Anyone could have heard you! Or seen you! Or seen ME.”
Dragon’s breathing slowed and he gazed out to the large stone school building just beyond us. The front of the Beecher Junior High was lovely, pillared and angled with giant windows and cool columns. Its backside, though, was flat and nondescript; groups of rectangular windows spotted its gray façade and three sets of green-painted windowless doors flowed along the base of its width. There was a grassy hilled field and a set of basketball courts separating us from where the cloistered masses learned. But no trees to keep us from view, no structures to obstruct the source of that roar; we were banking on night’s blanket keeping us hidden.
“I am sorry, Evechild. I – I pride myself on being even-tempered, truly. I suppose matters of the heart illicit emotional reaction, but there is no excuse for my … well, for my losing my coolness, as your peers might say,” Dragon said quietly and penitently.
The phrase “losing coolness” made me giggle. I definitely needed to find some peers on whom to use this hip jargon. I laughed out loud then. My upset dissipated, and I breathed in deeply and exhaled. Dragon saw this and visibly relaxed. His eyes softened and he looked at me for a long time as if searching for something.
“Have you ever been in love, Evechild?”
“What?! Gross, and no!” I shot back.
Dragon chuckled and looked down,
“There are many forms of love, of course, but a whole, all-encompassing, life-giving love…” Dragon’s hushed voice trailed off.
“I love my mom,” I responded quietly, trying to offer something to Dragon’s woeful dialogue.
Dragon smiled and walked to where I was standing. I felt the rush of wind from his wings stretching open and closing again. He rested his talons around my shoulders.
“Ah, yes,” he murmured, “but she loves you back.”
I looked up at him then, and I watched a single tear creep out of his large beautiful eye and roll swiftly down his scaled cheek. It left a glistening line, like the gossamer string of a spider’s web gleaming against a dark rocky backdrop.
“I’m guessing there’s a story there?”
Dragon smiled again, but this time his smile was small and pitiful. It tugged my heart and I felt compelled to hug him. But how does one hug a dragon?
“I appreciate the thought, I truly do,” Dragon said with a little laugh.
“Stop reading my thoughts and tell me what happened!” I cried.
“Ours is a love story that spans a century … how much time do you have?”
“Eh, I should probably try to change into real clothes before the bell rings,” I glanced upward, noting that the sunshine was starting peak under its night cloak on the horizon. “Maybe we just start walking home and you tell me on our way? Beat the sunrise?”
Dragon looked at me askance with a funny smirk.
“You chide me for roaring in proximity to your classmates, yet now you suggest we simply perambulate down the streets of this lovely suburban clime, as young schoolgirls are so often seen astride their dragon chums…”
“Ok, ok, I get it! Point taken!” I laughed good-naturedly. “Dragon, I think you were almost sarcastic.”
He pantomimed brushing his shoulders off in response, his mighty talons lightly flicking the air above his scaly shoulders while he closed his eyes in an arrogant smirk.
I stared at him, dumbfounded.
“Oh my gosh. I can’t believe you just did that!” I chortled.
“We have time yet,” he said, looking to the sunrise. “Sit with me for a moment.”
We sat in the grass and looked out at my school. It was an odd juxtaposition just then – me on the outside, next to the very creature I had doodled pictures of for the better part of six years, staring at that prison of academia. I couldn’t tell if I missed it or not. Drawing pictures of dragons had gotten me in trouble there. I was told to focus, to pay attention, to take this seriously, to stop causing trouble, to be kind. It was a lot of reprimands for someone who avoided speaking – or interactions of any kind.
“We’ll get you back to your life,” Dragon said, “We just have to save it first.”
“I don’t know that I want to go back to that life,” I whispered, scared to admit this aloud.
“No?” Dragon’s eyebrow raised as he looked at me.
“No one gets me in there. I have to do things like gym and peer tutoring – which everyone calls peer tooting, by the way, that’s the level of humor I’m dealing with. I’m so good at so many things, but then my essay is longer than it’s supposed to be or my art project didn’t follow directions or my math test had too many doodles on it … it’s dumb and lonely in there. I’m – I’m all alone. All the time,” I felt myself blinking back tears.
I didn’t intend for this moment to turn into a therapy session, but finally saying all of that out loud felt weirdly good. That refreshing feeling, though, was quickly quashed by embarrassment swiftly setting in.
“I mean, it’s fine. I have friends or whatever. It’s fine,” I mumbled, using my fist to brush away those stupid tears.
I slouched forward, leaning on my knees, my shoulders hunching up around me as if to protect me from more stupid feelings accidentally swooping in.
“Hey! We were talking about you! What the heck, Dragon. Stop using my dumb emotions as your distraction!” I said, glad my voice sounded good-natured, for a I was definitely a bit annoyed.
“Hmm? Me?” he said coolly.
“Yes. You and your epic love saga,” I clasped my fists and brought them up to the side of cheek and made kissy lips mockingly at him.
“No,” he said simply.
It was enough to shut me up.
I hugged my knees into my chest with one hand and opened my other to inspect the blue gem. It was warm in my palm, its briolette angles soft rather than sharp. I was so focused on not letting Ms. Neally see my nerves that I hadn’t even asked why I was given this stone. I suddenly felt very, very dumb.
“Um, Dragon?” I ventured finally, “Why did we come here in the middle of the night, and why did Ms. Neally give me a rock?”
Dragon didn’t answer. He was still gazing into the brightening horizon, like the path Ms. Neally walked somehow left a shadow of her that he couldn’t tear himself away from.
“She’s gone, Dragon, geez,” I said, my tone accidentally a little snarky. “Can we get back home? I don’t really want to be here when the sun’s all the way up and people start being, you know, awake and stuff.”
Dragon still didn’t say anything. He bowed down in front of me and offered an outstretched wing to help me get atop his back. The morning breeze made me shudder.
“Yaël Neally is the Grand Librarian. The universae bibliothecarii, and I have always loved her. But, same old story, I’m afraid … she’s much older than I, and of a much higher station. Obviously,” Dragon murmured quietly, dejectedly.
I stifled a giggle. Dragon and Ms. Neally? My Ms. Neally? Whose names is apparently Yaël? In her tiny heels and tweed skirts was ancient and important? To the universe?! What “same old story” is that?
“She is the greatest warrior I have ever known. The only thing quicker than her mind is her blade,” Dragon’s tone grew uncomfortably perkier as he lifted off the ground and set us soaring into the waning night sky.
“Ok, you just calm down, big guy,” I said, nervous about the speed we were picking up.
Dragon continued extolling all the creepy virtues of my librarian. If ever I got back to Beecher, I definitely needed to find a new refuge now. The library, alas, is ruined forever for me now.
You want to know how to make flying on the back of a dragon long and awkward? Have that dragon start talking about all the reasons he has the hots for your tiny, previously silent school librarian, who’s apparently super old and likes killing.
Now that’s awkward.