Carrie Vaughn - Voices of Dragons

Brow furrowed, her mother studied the folder. “I just want to know how someone walks across the border and talks a dragon into letting him ride around on its back. Or maybe it was the dragon’s idea.”

“Maybe it was both,” Kay said, and flinched when her mother looked sharply at her. Blushing, she continued, hoping it sounded like innocent speculation. “Maybe they talked about it. Maybe they’re, you know, friends.”

After a pause, Mom said, her tone sardonic, “I suppose that would explain it.” She set the folder aside.

Kay felt as if she’d escaped a trap. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Until we figure out who it is, there’s not a whole lot we can do. Except keep better watch on the border. Obviously.”

Kay realized her mother probably had not had the best day ever. “I can cook dinner. Do you want me to make something?”

The look of relief and gratitude on her mom’s face startled her. Making dinner was such a little thing in the end.

“That’d be great,” she said. “God, I don’t even know if we have anything to cook, I haven’t been to the store in weeks.”

“There’s always pasta.”

Her mother smiled. Then her phone rang again. She took a deep breath and answered it. Kay could tell from the tension in her mom’s voice that she was barely keeping her temper in check.

“Yes, sir. No, we don’t have any more leads on who the trespasser is. Yes, I’ve considered that the suspect isn’t crossing the border, but is living over there. Well, sir, how do you propose investigating that possibility without violating the border?” Her voice had become shrill, and she took a breath before continuing. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Making dinner wasn’t enough, Kay thought, pouring a jar of pasta sauce into a pot to simmer on the stove. If she really wanted to help her mother, she’d tell. She’d tell her everything.

Then what would happen? Kay couldn’t imagine. And that was why, in the end, she kept quiet.

The next day at dawn, three dragons perched on a cliff ledge less than a mile from the border. The sentinels stood upright, wings tucked close, faces turned toward human lands, barely moving. One of them would shift a hind claw or stretch its neck for a moment. One was a deep ocean blue, shimmering to black and gray as the light shifted. One was green, the color of a cartoon dragon, like you’d expect a dragon to be, except the green turned lighter and lighter, almost becoming a creamy yellow on its legs and belly. The third was mottled brown, camouflaged like a lizard. CNN kept a box in the upper right corner of its broadcast showing the scene, just in case they did something. News crews returned and took over Silver River. Network commentators couldn’t say enough.

Kay kept watching the dragons, noticing how they were different from Artegal—this one a little stouter, this one’s tail a little shorter, this one larger. She wondered at how many different colors there were. In Dracopolis , the dragons had been drawn in at least a dozen colors, every pigment the artist had. Did a dragon inherit its color from its parents? Was it random? What did a dragon’s color say about it, if anything?

Jon called her early. “I’m not going to school. Mom and Dad want me to stay home. Just in case.”

“Just in case of what?” Kay said.

“I don’t know.” He sounded frustrated, not actually excited about getting a day off school. “It’s like they think it’s the end of the world or something.”

Maybe it was. But the dragons were just sitting there, watching. “Maybe the dragons just want to remind us they’re out there.”

“What do your parents say?”

“Mom’s pretty stressed out. She left really early. She started getting calls as soon as the dragons showed up.”

“I’m sorry I won’t be there. I really wanted to see you.”

In case it was the end of the world, she thought. So they could be together. But surely things couldn’t be that bad.

“If they were going to do something, they’d have done it already,” she said, trying to convince herself.

“Maybe we can get together this evening, assuming my parents let me out of the house.”

Kay’s father hadn’t left yet. They had breakfast together—juice, toast, cereal—and she told him about Jon’s call.

“So, you going to let me stay home?” she finished.

Grinning, her father explained. “If the sheriff’s daughter doesn’t go to school, people will think the worst. It’ll be mass hysteria.”

She hadn’t looked at it like that. It was a little unfair, in her opinion. She pouted. “I’m not that important.”

Jack Wyatt got a funny look on his face, a kind of half smile, furrowed brow, and sad gaze. It lasted only a moment. It was gone before Kay could ask what was wrong.

Then he looked into his cereal bowl with his usual amused expression. “I guess you lost the parent lottery. Sorry, kiddo.”

“It shouldn’t matter that I’m your daughter. I should be able to do what I want to. Right?” Like speed on the highway, like stay out late with her boyfriend…

“Kay, after high school you can move away to where nobody knows you’re the sheriff’s daughter. Until then, you’re stuck with it. And if being the sheriff’s daughter means that maybe you can make a difference, like showing people there’s nothing to get in a panic over, don’t you think you ought to do it?”

This was a long-running argument, the unfairness of being Jack Wyatt’s daughter. If she really hated it that much, she supposed she could have run away from home. But she didn’t hate it that much.

She sighed. “I’ll just have to go out and be a role model then, won’t I?”

“That’s the spirit,” he said, smiling.

A lot of kids weren’t at school. Their parents apparently thought it was the end of the world. In first period, a third of the seats were empty, but class went on as usual.

Tam showed up.

Kay said, “You couldn’t convince your mom it was the end of the world?”

“I didn’t think of it,” she grumbled. “I bet I could have. And you?”

Kay took on a fake-official tone of voice. “As the sheriff’s daughter, I’m a role model to the community.” She rolled her eyes.

“Wow. Sorry. So that’s why you never speed.”

In the cafeteria at lunchtime, the librarian had brought in a TV on a cart and turned it to the news. The room was quieter than usual, and not just because so many people were gone. Conversation was subdued.

The three dragons hadn’t moved.

Someone in a uniform came on the TV. Labeled General somebody-or-other, he’d just arrived at Malmstrom Air Force Base from the Pentagon to deal with the crisis. Kay couldn’t hear what he said.

The news didn’t say anything about photographs showing someone riding a dragon. Despite her mother’s fears, the pictures hadn’t leaked yet.

“All those drills we do,” Tam said, watching Kay watch the TV, “I never thought we might actually have to do it for real.”

Kay shook her head, tried to think positive. “We’re not there yet.”

For days, the dragon sentinels didn’t move. They might have been statues perched on the mountainside. Some people wondered if they were really the same dragons, if maybe new ones arrived to stand watch while no one was looking. But someone was looking at them constantly, and they didn’t move, didn’t eat. Dragons, somebody on one of the news shows said, were timeless. They’d reappeared after World War II, just as they’d always been, unchanging. They could sit on that mountain forever, looking down on Silver River. Kay noticed that much of what people said about dragons on TV wasn’t based on reality, but on old stories, half-baked legends, and old cultural memories rather than real knowledge. She kept wanting to argue with people.