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Natasha jumped as the burner phone vibrated in her pocket. She reached for it, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder as she fumbled to answer.
“Hello?”
Three numbers were programmed into the phone, but none had real names saved against them. Natasha was never sure whose voice she was about to hear when a call came through.
“Natasha. It’s Harry. Are you alone?”
Harry Weatherall. Natasha still couldn’t believe she was in communication with the public face of and the money behind Tipping the Scales, the national dragon rescue network. The borderline illegal, some would say “terrorist”, network. She always put that thought out of her mind.
“Harry, hi! I’m alone. I mean, sort of. I’ve just left work. I’m walking through the car park.”
“Talk to me until you reach your car. How was your day?”
“Same as always. We sent the latest report up to the Executive this afternoon.”
“That’s good for us to know. Have you reached your car?”
Natasha tucked the phone under her chin while she searched for her car key. “One more second.” After finding her keys, she unlocked the car and slid into the driver’s seat, then switched on the ignition to get the heater running. She’d spotted a sprinkling of snow on the tops of the Brindabellas that morning. Despite rumours that it sometimes snowed at ground level in the city, the dustings on the peaks in the national parks were all she’d ever seen in her eight years in Canberra.
“Okay,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“How do you feel about going out in the field tonight?”
“I . . . what? I’m not . . . Why me?”
“We need an extra pair of hands and there aren’t many available to get to Canberra at short notice. You’re already here. Do you remember the report about the Ice Breather nesting near Perisher?”
“The one they wanted to get rid of before the ski season opened?”
“That’s her. Don’t want an overprotective dragon mama in your ski fields when thousands of tourists are about to descend, do you?”
It would be spectacular, Natasha thought. “They certainly wouldn’t.”
Natasha remembered the report Harry referred to. An Ice Breather this far north was unusual. She’d settled in one of the colder parts of the region, but it was still warmer than the dragon breed preferred, especially when they were nesting.
“The X is scheduled for next week, so we’ve been trying to move her on. She got one of our guys right in the chest last night and I can tell you, her ice breath hasn’t suffered despite her location. We can’t afford to miss a night trying to get her to leave so it’d be a real help if you could come out with us.”
“X” was short for “extermination” and it was how Harry and the rest of Tipping the Scales referred to the dragon culls that the Government department Natasha worked for organised. Up until now, Natasha’s entire role had been to send intel through to Harry and his people. She’d never had any inkling she’d end up in the field.
“I can come,” Natasha said. “But I won’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want to screw it up for you.”
“You’ve had your training.”
“That was one weekend.”
“You learned everything you needed to. I promise. And you’ll have some of our best people with you. What do you say?”
Natasha paused. She’d never seen a dragon in the wild before. This would be a fantastic chance, and she’d be helping rescue it at the same time. On the other hand, if anyone from work found out . . . Leaking the odd report to TTS was one thing. Taking part in a dragon rescue mission was quite another.
She took a breath. “I’ll do it.”
“Fantastic. Get home and rug up as warm as you can and have something to eat. I’ll send someone to meet you at Poet’s Corner in Civic at six-thirty. They’ll be using the codes we taught you.”
“Poet’s Corner?”
“You know, the open-air place with the statues? Near the comic shop.”
Natasha couldn’t place the statues but knew the comic shop so she figured she could find it easily enough. “All right. I’ll be there.”
“Beautiful! Good luck!” Harry terminated the call before Natasha had a chance to even consider changing her mind.
***
All the way home, Natasha wondered if she was making a mistake. In the end, she kept coming back to the drone footage on YouTube of one of the government exterminations. The poor dragon had put up a good fight, but he’d become tangled in the net dropped from a helicopter. The image of the beast struggling went through Natasha’s head every time she sent a report of a confirmed dragon location to her superiors. She hated it, but a job was a job. When her previous role had been found surplus to requirements, she’d been redeployed to this one. Joining Tipping the Scales made it a little more bearable while she tried to find work elsewhere, and Harry had remarked more than once that the intel she provided was a great asset to the group. She still felt a warm glow in her chest when she remembered the first time he’d thanked her over the phone, gushing about how much work they’d be able to do with the information she’d passed on.
That was why she knew that she was making the right decision tonight. TTS’s work was important, and if her presence was required to ensure the mission could continue, then she would be there.
Two hours later, clothed in thermals, a thick coat, a beanie and gloves, Natasha arrived in Civic and located the statues Harry had mentioned. For a few minutes, she sat on one of the nearby benches, drumming her fingers on one knee and jiggling her leg. Then she stood, pacing around the area, keeping an eye out for someone who might be another dragon enthusiast. She returned to the statues and was reading the plaque underneath the bust of a poet named Judith Wright when a hand on her arm made her jump.
“Nice night for music,” the man said in a low voice.
For a moment, Natasha forgot the code she’d been taught, and wondered what the man was on about. Then the reply came to her. “I’ve got to practise my scales.”.
“My concerts always crash and burn,” the man agreed, grinning. “Natasha?” She nodded. “I’m Dominic.”
“Good to meet you,” Natasha said, though it sounded almost like a question with a squeak on the last syllable. Suddenly it was real. This man, whom she’d never met before, was going to take her on a risky flight out to the mountains, where she could be attacked by an angry dragon. And if word got back to her bosses, she’d lose her job.
“The car’s not far. Let’s go,” Dominic said, all business.
He turned and started walking but Natasha was frozen to the spot. What was she doing?
“Dominic, I . . .” she began, but when he turned around with an expectant expression on his face, she knew she couldn’t back out.
“Coming,” she said, and jogged a little to catch up to him.
They drove in silence so Natasha took the time to gather her thoughts. In the short time she had been at home, she had found the notebook from the Tipping the Scales training weekend, where she received a crash course in TTS field operations. The training had been non-stop, teaching them how to set off flares and harness themselves into a helicopter in order to lean out of the doors during a flight. Natasha had scribbled down everything she could remember in case she ever needed it again.
They’d spent the first morning sitting in a circle in Harry’s expansive living room while they learned the basics. The key thing about TTS missions was that it was too dangerous to try to get close to a dragon, so the crews returned to dragon resting sites night after night, harassing the dragon until it decided to leave. If everything went to plan, there would be no dragon at the site a week or two later when the government exterminators showed up.
“And if they leave, will they go far enough?” someone had asked.
Harry nodded. “Research shows that if their territory is threatened to the point where they leave, they will put as much distance between them and the threat as possible. Of course, we have no way of tagging them to monitor that, so we have to hope for the best.”
“It’s a lot of effort for ‘hope for the best’,” someone else remarked.
“I’d rather make the effort than not, wouldn’t you?”
Harry sent them outside for the lesson in flare ignition soon after. When someone asked if the flares were ever spotted by observers on the ground or in other aircraft during the mission, and whether the organisation ever got in trouble, their instructor had shrugged.
“Harry takes care of complaints about that sort of thing.”
“How?”
The trainer cocked an eyebrow. “With his money.” That was all she said on the matter, and she distracted everyone by thumping the bottom of the flare, igniting it.
Natasha closed her notebook when Dominic pulled off the highway and onto a gravel road. He pulled over and punched a code into a keypad and a gate opened ahead of them. Before them was a large, concreted area with a helicopter at one end. Dominic parked the car and he and Natasha disembarked.
“Leave your stuff in here,” Dominic instructed. “We’ll have everything we need up there.”
As they crossed the tarmac, a person wearing black under a hi-vis vest was doing checks on the helicopter. Two others stood nearby. Dominic led Natasha over to them.
One of the figures turned as they approached. “Here she is!”
Butterflies swirled in Natasha’s stomach. She’d met him on the training weekend, but it hadn’t cured the awe she felt every time she thought about the work Harry enabled.
“Just keep it cool,” she whispered to herself.
“Natasha, good to see you again!” Harry said, beaming at her. Then he turned to his companion. “Michaela, this is Natasha. She’ll be taking Rob’s spot tonight.”
Michaela shook Natasha’s hand, smiling. “We haven’t got much time, but I want to give you a quick refresher before we leave.” She picked up a bucket so full it sloshed water over the sides. In her other hand, she carried two flares. “Let’s just run you through the basics.”
Natasha nodded and was glad she’d reviewed her notes. Michaela led her over to the edge of the tarmac and set the bucket down. She talked through the process of setting off the flare, miming the actions as she did. When she was done, she handed the flare to Natasha and nodded. Natasha held it out in front of her and went through the motions a few times, talking herself through it in her head. Line up the arrows until they click. Punch the end. Swap hands—don’t hold the hot part.
She took a breath and did it again for real. She’d known it was coming but still she yelped as the flare ignited and warmed beneath her hand. As she moved it to the other hand, she coughed, the smoke catching in her throat before the wind had the chance to carry it away. As the flare burned out, she relished the warmth it emanated before dropping it in the waiting bucket of water.
Michaela watched her detonate a second one just to be sure she knew what she was doing, then she nodded again, satisfied. “All right. You good to get yourself set up in the chopper?”
Natasha nodded, full of apprehension.
“Great. Let’s go.”
Natasha was harnessed when Dominic joined them a few minutes later, climbing up into the cockpit. Michaela fitted Natasha with headphones and microphone and then pulled her own over her ears.
“Just waiting for the all-clear,” Dominic’s voice came through the headset. He went through the pre-flight checks, then the helicopter gave a shudder as Dominic started the engine. The shriek of the helicopter's engine penetrated through Natasha's heavy headset. A minute later, the helicopter rocked back and forth from tail to nose as it took to the air. Natasha’s stomach lurched and she took a deep breath to keep the queasiness at bay.
To stave the feeling off, she focused on seeing her first real-life wild dragon. She remembered everything she knew about Ice Breathers, how they had evolved for the cold climate, sucking in snow and ice, letting it accumulate in a chamber near their diaphragms until they expelled it again. The target could be buried in a snowdrift if they didn’t get away in time.
They hadn’t travelled very long when they passed over Canberra. As they passed over Lake Burley-Griffin, the water reflected the lights on the foreshore and the stars in the sky. Parliament House passed by underneath soon after. In the next few minutes, the lights became sparse as the suburbs gave way to national parks.
“It’s about three-quarters of an hour’s flight to the site,” Dominic said. “She’s built her nest in a valley between two peaks. Not the easiest spot to manoeuvre through but we’ve managed it the last couple of nights.”
As they flew, Michaela ran Natasha through what she’d be doing. They’d each take a door, and Dominic would advise them when he was flying into the wind, so they could light their flares without the smoke obscuring his view.
Finally, Dominic announced that they were approaching the nest site. He circled low. Michaela got out of her seat and went to the window on her side of the cabin, so Natasha stood, too. Michaela made the walk look easy, but Natasha stumbled before she could grab onto the handrail near the door.
She peered through the glass and her breath caught. The dragon was below them.
The Ice Breather stared up at them, eyes glinting in the bright light. She bared her teeth and stretched her wings out to their full length. Puffs of vapour emerged from her nose. Drone footage could never capture the litheness of a dragon’s neck, or the way their wings appeared translucent under the helicopter lights.
“I’ve got the recording ready,” Dominic told them. “If you open the doors now, in another ten or fifteen seconds, we’ll go.”
Cold air stung Natasha’s face as she pulled the door open. The helicopter’s lights illuminated the snow and sludge on the mountainside below. She was wearing plenty of warm clothing, but the cold sneaked its way under the fabric regardless, little pinpricks of ice against her skin. She swallowed and held fast to the guardrail, waiting for instructions.
“This will be loud,” Michaela warned.
Natasha nodded but she had no time to prepare herself before Dominic activated the recording of the high-pitched screech of a dragon’s attack cry, blasting it through speakers mounted on the outside of the helicopter.
“Flares!” Michaela called.
Natasha pulled one out of her jacket pocket. She curled her arm through the guardrail so she could use both hands to line up the mechanism, then bashed the end of the flare on the outside of the helicopter. It roared to life, the smoke billowing behind them.
As the helicopter swooped downwards, the dragon rose to her hind legs and snapped at them, head thrashing as the smoke engulfed her.
Once the flare had died down, Natasha dropped the casing, letting it find a home in the snow to cool down. Dominic turned the chopper around and headed back for a second pass. The noise from the speakers blared again, compounded by the real dragon’s cries below.
They dove close to the dragon again and Michaela and Natasha let off another pair of flares. Once they were past the nest, Dominic slowed the helicopter and turned off the dragon recording. Natasha swallowed and took a moment to catch her breath, loosening her grip on the guard rail, and flexing her fingers a few times to get the blood flowing again.
“Any movement?” Michaela asked.
“Not that I can see,” Dominic replied, then, “Oh, no, hang on. She’s on her way.”
The attack cry came again, but this time the sound wasn’t coming through the speakers. When Natasha leaned out the door, the dragon was in full flight. It would have been a majestic sight if she hadn’t been coming right for them, her eyes blazing in the helicopter’s headlights.
Dominic revved the engine, turning them to face the dragon. He turned on the recording again and then warned, “Hold on to your stomachs.”
Natasha didn’t know what that meant but it sounded dangerous, so she pulled herself inside. The helicopter plunged downward and her stomach lurched, only catching up to the rest of her a moment later. Once the helicopter was flying level again, she stuck her head outside and watched, wide-eyed, as they sped underneath the dragon and then out from under her tail.
By the time Dominic turned around, the dragon had done the same. Natasha held her breath as they tore towards each other.
“Dominic . . .” she squeaked, desperate to know that he had a plan.
But if he did, he was too late to act on it.
The dragon opened her mouth wide and a flurry of ice and snow spewed forth towards them. Dominic jerked the helicopter to the side but not quite fast enough; Natasha’s side of the cabin took the brunt of the blast. She lost her grip on the handrail and was flung back towards her seat. Her head cracked against the headrest and whipped forward. She groaned, yanking off her headset to silence Dominic’s string of profanities in her ear.
As Dominic pulled them back on course, Michaela swore from where she’d fallen on the other side of the cabin.
Natasha refitted her headset so she could communicate with the others and pulled herself up, wincing at the pain in her hip and backside. She was going to have some nasty bruises tomorrow. She made her way over to Michaela and held out a hand.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Damn it,” Michaela replied. “That hurt.” She grabbed Natasha’s hand and hauled herself up. “All right, Dom? What’s happening?”
The helicopter had slowed right down. Dominic focused the headlights on the dragon’s nest. The dragon was fussing around her egg.
“Come on,” Michaela muttered. “Pick it up and get out of here.”
A minute ticked by and Natasha started to think they hadn’t been successful. But then the glint of scales caught in the headlight as the dragon took flight.
“She’s got the egg,” Dominic confirmed. Natasha wasn’t sure how he could tell, but she took his word for it. “She’s out of here. Heading south.”
“Good,” Michaela replied, and then added in a softer voice, “Get out of here, sweetheart. Go somewhere they’ll treat you better. Or, better yet, where there aren’t any humans to bother you at all.”
They watched in silence for a few minutes until they could no longer see the dragon’s scales illuminated in the headlights.
Michaela took a deep breath and shook herself. If Natasha wasn’t mistaken, Michaela’s eyes were a little misty. Natasha didn’t mention it.
“Okay,” Michaela said. “Take us home, Dom.”
“Roger.”
For a while no one said anything. Natasha stared through the window, even though there was little to see in the darkness. She tried to slow her breathing.
“How are you feeling?” Michaela asked.
In reply, Natasha held up one hand to show how it was shaking now that she had nowhere to focus her adrenaline. She grinned and Michaela returned the expression.
“Just be warned, you will crash so hard tonight,” Michaela said. “Get Dominic to drop you at home. Go back to the collection point in the morning to get your car.”
They landed back where they had started. Harry was waiting for them. “How did we go?” he asked, a hand out to help Natasha down to the tarmac. Now she was standing on them, her legs were like jelly. She leaned on Harry until she could support herself.
“We did it,” she said breathlessly.
“Well done!” Harry’s eyes were shining. “I knew you had it in you.”
“I didn’t.” A hysterical giggle rose in Natasha’s throat and burst out of her. She swayed on her feet and Harry took her by the shoulders, giving her a broad smile.
“Time for you to go home to bed,” Harry said. “We’ll debrief tomorrow.” He guided her towards Dominic’s car.
Natasha turned around, looking for Michaela. She was trailing behind, talking to Dominic.
“Michaela, thanks for getting me through tonight,” Natasha said.
Michaela nodded in acknowledgement. “You did a great job. Maybe we’ll see you again.”
“I hope so.”
Michaela smiled. “Goodnight Natasha.”
Soon enough, Dominic was driving back onto the main road, Natasha in his passenger seat. He tuned the radio to a classical music station and Natasha let the music wash over her as she leaned her head against the window. The next thing she knew, Dominic was shaking her by the shoulder to wake her up. They were entering Canberra again, the lights of the northern-most suburbs twinkling as they drove down the Federal Highway.
“You’re going to need to tell me how to find your place,” he said.
“Right,” Natasha said, shaking her head to clear it. She told him where to turn off the main road and then directed him through the suburbs until they reached her street.
When she reached her flat, she had no energy to change her clothes, so she just pulled off her jacket and outermost layers and flopped into bed in her thermals. She was asleep within a minute.
***
“Natasha, can I see you in my office?”
Natasha gulped. “Sure.”
She stood and followed her boss, Stuart, into his office. He closed the door behind them, motioning for her to sit at the meeting table across from his desk. Her stomach churned as she took her seat.
“Did you have a good weekend?” Stuart asked, his back to her as he did something on his computer. Natasha tried to work out if it was a trick question. Did he know? Was he trying to bait her into admitting where she’d been? Or was it an innocent question? She racked her brain, trying to think of anything else she might be called into Stuart’s office to discuss.
“Um,” she finally said. “Yeah, it was fine. Didn’t do much. You?”
“Oh, you know, bit busy,” Stuart replied, then pushed his chair back so that Natasha could see his computer screen. “Anything you’d like to tell me, Natasha?”
Natasha stared at the high-resolution photo on the screen. It showed her leaning out of the helicopter, about to strike a flare on the outer shell. She hadn’t realised she’d been grinning like that.
“How . . .” The rest of the sentence died in her throat. Her mouth had turned dry and the words wouldn’t come out.
“Someone was flying a drone over the Snowys on Friday night. They thought we might want to know about the people disturbing a dragon we had marked for termination. Imagine my surprise when I saw your face in some of the photos.”
Natasha wanted to say something. Deny it was her in the photo. Defend herself. Defend the dragons. Tell him that this entire government policy was wrong. But her throat was constricted. All she could do was take a shaky breath.
“What happens to me now?”
“As I’m sure you’re aware, this is a serious breach of our code of conduct. Your termination papers have already been signed by the director. Your dismissal is effective immediately. You have until the end of the day to clear your things and leave.”
“Thank you,” she said, nodding. It seemed like the professional thing to say, even though she hadn’t the slightest idea what she was thanking him for. She stood and walked out of Stuart’s office, determined to leave with her head held high. Helping the dragon had been the right thing to do. She wouldn’t regret that.
Packing up didn’t take long. She hadn’t personalised her desk so she only needed to remove a mug and jar of instant coffee from her drawer and stuff them into her bag. With one last glance around the office, she walked out, not stopping to say goodbye to anyone.
The knowledge that she was now jobless was yet to hit her, and all she could think as she walked out into the sunshine was that she was glad to be leaving the job she hated. Her one regret was that she hadn’t been able to leave on her own terms.
That feeling changed over the next few days when she had to start explaining to people that she’d been fired. It didn’t get any easier facing each shocked expression and answering the exclamations of “Oh my god, what happened?” even if she did answer with “I don’t want to talk about it.”
A week later she was drowning her sorrows in a mug of hot chocolate at a café in the city. She’d chosen an outdoor table underneath one of the tall gas heaters and took a perverse pleasure from the heat beating down on the back of her neck. She knew she’d have to be careful with money until she found a new job but after such a rotten week, she deserved a little treat.
A shadow fell over the table, and she looked up. When she recognised the figure standing over her, she scowled. “What are you doing here?”
“May I?” Without waiting for an answer, Harry Weatherall pulled out the seat across from her and sat. Natasha went back to stirring her hot chocolate.
“How have you been?” he asked.
“How do you think?”
“Natasha, I want to apologise. The photos that were sent to your director . . . they were sent by someone else we thought was working for us. We have contacts dotted all through the government, as you know but . . . turns out this one was a double agent.”
Natasha looked up. “Who was it?” In her mind she went through a list of her former colleagues, trying to remember if she’d ever witnessed any suspicious behaviour.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Harry. “I feel responsible, so I’d like to offer you compensation.”
“What kind of compensation?” What could Harry offer her that would help her situation? She wouldn’t say no to a decent amount of money. The longer she could stretch her savings the better.
“I’d like to offer you a permanent position with Tipping the Scales if you’d be willing to take it. You’ve done good work for us, and you know how impressed Michaela and Dominic were with your first flight. You won’t have to go out in the field all the time if you don’t want to. There’s admin and other desk work at our offices, just like any other. Or we could train you up if you did want to be out there more. It’s up to you. We’d love to have you.”
Natasha swallowed. Harry made it all sound so straightforward. That was how she’d ended up on the mission in the first place. It was so easy to nod and go along with whatever he said. But did she want to work for TTS full time? Sure, saving the dragons from extermination was important to her, but could she commit to an organisation that walked the fine line between legal and illegal?
She looked back down at her hot chocolate.
Harry stood up, clearing his throat. “I’ll let you think about it for a bit. There’s no rush of course.” He slid something into the centre of the table. When he removed his hand, she saw it was a sim card in a small plastic bag. “The first number on here will reach me. Shall I leave it with you?”
Natasha didn’t reply but closed her own hand over the sim. Even if she didn’t take the job, she wouldn’t betray Harry’s trust. The new number would be safe with her even if she decided not to take him up on his job offer. She glanced up at Harry and nodded. He returned the nod and left her alone.
She gulped down the rest of her hot chocolate and settled her bill. As she walked back to the Canberra Centre car park, her mind travelled back and forth between the memory of the captured dragon on YouTube and the one she had helped to save. She remembered the wide grin on her face in the photo on Stuart’s computer screen. It had been exhilarating, and the result had been worth it. Harry said she could do that more often.
Who was she kidding? She didn’t need time to think about it. If she called him now, Harry might still be nearby and they could discuss the particulars of the new job.
She sat down on a bench near the escalators and pulled out both the sim card and her TTS phone. Sliding the back cover off the phone, she swapped out the sim cards and turned the phone back on. As soon as the home screen loaded, she called the first number listed in the contacts.
Harry answered after two rings. “Hello, Natasha. That was quick.”
“I’ve made my decision.”
“I hoped it wouldn’t take too long. Will you be joining us?”
“Absolutely, Harry,” she said. “Sign me up.”
About the Author:
Emily lives and works on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. Her modern-day retelling of the Nutcracker was featured in the 2019 anthology "Christmas Australis" and is now book one of the Drosselmeier Industries series of fairy tale retellings available online.
In her non-writing life, she has a Masters of Museum and Cultural Heritage studies and works as a reference librarian. She has also studied drama and commits a lot of her time to local choirs and community theatre productions.
The New South Wales outback is dry and inhospitable, a place where only the hardy survive.
