Tad Williams - The Dragons of Ordinary Farm

“Quickening, it is called,” said Mrs. Needle with a certain cold authority. “But what does that matter? The conceptus has been lifeless each time. There is no life to quicken.”

“It’s just… ” Now Lucinda was embarrassed. What had seemed so clear when she had touched the dragon’s thoughts now seemed strange and dubious when she had to explain it, especially with Mrs. Needle staring daggers at her. “It just felt like she thought there was something she was supposed to do. She thought about breathing on it-breathing fire. But there was something wrong with the shell. Meseret needs to eat something to make the shell… I don’t know, right. Some kind of dirt, or rocks, or… something.”

“Some kind of dirt?” Mrs. Needle summoned a tight smile. “Surely you misunderstood, Lucinda. After all, you were terrified-struggling for your life… ”

“Now, hold on, Patience,” said Gideon. “Animals eat all kinds of things to help themselves. Remember when we kept losing the first basilisks until we found out they needed rocks in their stomach to grind up the bones of their prey?” He turned to Lucinda and Tyler. “They eat mice and lizards and whatnot-just gulp ’em down, swallow ’em whole,” he informed them with a certain relish, then looked around the room. “Where’s Haneb? He’s the one that came with the dragons-if anyone’ll know, he will.”

“He did not want to come in to breakfast,” said Ragnar.

Of course he didn’t, Lucinda thought. He’s afraid he’s in trouble.

“I will find him,” said Mr. Walkwell. It was a pleasure to see him turn and go out the door so swiftly, so gracefully, instead of limping like an accident victim. She hoped he would keep his boots off from now on-around the farm, anyway.

Mr. Walkwell returned in only a few minutes with Haneb beside him, looking as though he was trying to become half his ordinary size.

“Haneb, what are you cowering for, boy?” Gideon boomed. “We need your help. We want to know about what the dragons ate back in your country.” He turned to Lucinda and Tyler. “It’s part of Turkey now, but a long time ago Haneb’s people, the Hittites, had much of it to themselves.”

Haneb still looked startled and fearful. “Ate?”

“Yes, ate, confound it! Did they eat stones? Anything unusual like that?”

He kept his head down as he thought, his hair masking the scars on his face. He had worked hard to avoid Lucinda’s gaze. “No stones,” he said at last.

“Nothing strange at all?”

Haneb winced. “I am sorry, Master Gideon. I am thinking.” He frowned and looked as though he was about to burst into tears. “Sometimes they ate Earth-flax…,” he said at last.

“Earth-flax? What is it? Describe it!” Gideon demanded.

Haneb waved his hands. “It is like ordinary flax, but it grows in the rock, not in the ground. You can make cloth of it and the cloth cannot be burned.”

“By God, he’s got it!” shouted Gideon, making Haneb jump so badly that only Mr. Walkwell’s steadying hand kept him from falling over. “ Asbestos! My goodness, Lucinda, you’re right!”

“I am?”

“The mother dragons must eat it to make their eggs fire-resistant. Then they heat the eggs up. Some animals lay eggs and sit on ’em-dragons turn on their internal flamethrowers and quick-roast ’em!” Gideon smacked the table and scowled. “But what are we going to do now? How can we find out whether it can still be hatched? We don’t have any asbestos. We ripped it all out a few years ago. Had to, or the inspection boys would have been down on us from the county.” He shook his head. “I wish we’d saved some…”

“Meseret won’t breathe on anything for a while, anyway,” Ragnar pointed out. “The medicine has made her sleep.”

“Perhaps we could make a sort of flamethrower from pipes and the blacksmith bellows Mr. Walkwell uses to fix the wagon,” Colin said excitedly. He seemed to have forgotten that a short while ago his entire future had hung by a thread. “But we’d have to paint the egg with something that would work as well as asbestos… ”

A throat was loudly cleared. Everybody turned to see Sarah standing in the doorway with Pema, Azinza, and the cavegirl, Ooola, who had spent the last several days following them like a wide-eyed feral cat. Ooola caught sight of Tyler and smiled a brilliant smile at him.

Sarah’s round cheeks were flushed red, but if she was embarrassed to be the center of attention she still spoke strongly and plainly. “If you want something warmed but not burned, why not try talking to the people who do that every day? The girls and I will take some of that very nice paper made of hammered metal… ”

“Aluminum foil, it is called,” said Azinza with queenly condescension.

“Yes, aluminum foil, and we will wrap it around the egg as though it was a plump turkey. Then we will put it in the oven where we can make it just as hot as we choose for as long as we choose.” She shrugged. “If it does not offend any of you, that is.”

After a moment’s startled silence, Gideon laughed and clapped his hands. “Wonderful! Sarah, you are a genius. That is just what we will do. I should say about four hundred degrees… ”

“Perhaps three hundred,” Sarah said kindly. “It will take longer, but be safer.”

“As you say, as you say.” Gideon struggled up from his chair, waving a piece of waffle on the end of a fork. “To the kitchen!”

Tyler and Lucinda were packed but reluctant to leave, although it was beginning to get close to the time when they’d have to. They hung around the kitchen, as did most of the rest of the farm’s inhabitants, all finding excuses to make frequent visits to the scene of the experiment. Even Haneb worked up the courage to come watch. At last, about two hours after they had first put the shiny bundle into the oven, Sarah cracked the door, peered in, and said, “I think something moved!”

She and Ragnar, both wearing oven mitts, wrestled the egg out onto a bed of towels on the floor and began to peel off the aluminum foil. A spiderweb crack had formed on the top. As Lucinda and her brother stared, it bulged in the center, and then a piece of the shell popped loose and fell to the towel. She could just hear the cracking of the shell over everyone’s murmuring voices. She wondered if the heat was necessary to make the egg brittle enough for the baby to break it.

Another piece fell off, then another, and a moment later the whole top of the egg cracked loose and swung outward as though hinged. A head snaked out that was no bigger than a small dog’s, a tiny version of Meseret with a blunter snout, but with colors that were brighter than hers, horizontal stripes of black and gold. The infant dragon pulled itself awkwardly out of the wreckage of the eggshell and walked a few staggering steps on its wing-pinions before stopping to rest, its throat pulsing in and out, its striped tail coiled around it. The golden eyes looked blearily around, then seemed to focus on Lucinda. For a moment, she could almost feel its simple, wordless thought: ?

No, I’m not your mother, she tried her best to tell the newborn. You’ll meet her soon.

Someone put a hand on Lucinda’s shoulder. It was Gideon, his hair standing up again so that he looked like a scarecrow that had been out in the wind too long. He had his other hand on Tyler and an expression on his face so strange that it gave Lucinda shivers. “I have not treated the two of you as well as I should have,” he said. Everyone in the kitchen fell silent. Gideon cleared his throat and continued. “But this… the young dragon we thought we’d never see… it makes me realize… ”

As Gideon fell silent again, someone made a noise like a grunt of pain. Lucinda saw Colin Needle standing half in shadow, half in sunlight from one of the big windows, watching. He had his arms wrapped tightly around himself and even from across the kitchen Lucinda could almost feel his envy and unhappiness.