Carrie Vaughn - Voices of Dragons

If Kay had been about to cry herself, she was now shocked to stillness.

After a long while, her mother stilled, but Kay suspected it was exhaustion and lack of oxygen rather than spent grief that made her stop crying. She remained curled up in Kay’s arms like a child, sniffing and clinging desperately to Kay’s shirt. Don’t go , the gesture said.

At one point, she noticed Deputy Kalbach looking at them. Then he bowed his head and walked away.

Kay didn’t know how long the two of them stayed frozen in that tableau. She was aware of Kalbach blocking the end of the corridor and of a reporter shouting at him. Then the doctor, the same who had told her about Dad, sat by her and whispered close to her ear—so her mother wouldn’t hear.

“Kay, I know this is very difficult. But can you take her home? We’re going to have to move him soon.” She nodded to Mom. Translation: Get her out of here before they pull the body out of the room.

Kay almost shook her head. No, of course she couldn’t take Mom home. Mom was the grown-up, Kay was the kid—she wasn’t expected to do anything. But Mom wasn’t doing anything right now. Her eyes weren’t even seeing.

So Kay nodded, taking her mother’s arm. “Mom, we have to go. Come on.”

Mom had aged years in moments. She walked hunched and wouldn’t let go of Kay, who kept her own mind numb and focused on the task at hand.

With one arm around Mom’s shoulder, she approached Deputy Kalbach and touched his shoulder. “Can you take us home?”

The young deputy nodded quickly.

Then came the gauntlet.

More reporters had arrived. More injured had been brought in, and their families and colleagues filled the emergency room. Word spread. It couldn’t help but spread in a town like this when something terrible happened. People would have to take only one look at them, Kay with her face a rock and Mom huddled in her arms, to guess what had happened. She recognized faces, heard her mother’s name called out, but she didn’t react, didn’t respond. A flash went off, someone taking a picture. Deputy Kalbach was their shield. Kay felt his arm across her back, pulling them both into the sphere of his protection. His other arm stretched out before them, cutting across her vision. It deflected all comers. Reporters shouted at her. She didn’t hear a word of what they said. Only Kalbach’s voice saying, “Move aside. Please, get out of the way. Clear the way.”

The journey to the door outside was chaos. A blur. Kay kept her gaze forward and absorbed none of it.

She sat with her mother in the back of the patrol car. Mom still leaned on her, still seeming unable to hold herself up.

Kalbach kept looking at them in the rearview mirror. He started, “Kay, I—”

“Don’t say anything,” she said, closing her eyes. If he said anything, she’d break, and she couldn’t break. She had to take Mom home.

The air still smelled like smoke, and the sky over Silver River still glowed orange, fires still burning. She remembered the news report: The fire could have swallowed the town in seconds.

She asked the deputy, “Do they know how the fire started?”

Her mother stirred in her arms, straightening, turning her tear-and-soot-streaked face to the window.

“It was them,” Mom said, nodding in the direction of the border.

The dragons circled. The next morning, three of them flew just over the river, banking sharply when it looked like they might pass into human territory. The sight of them made people cringe, as if they wanted nothing more than to run and hide. Lock themselves behind castle walls. Like mice in view of soaring hawks.

Kay watched the news on TV. Several people, mostly firefighters, had been injured in the blaze that destroyed two of the four buildings in the administration complex. Only one was killed. Sheriff Jack Wyatt’s face appeared in newspapers and on TV screens all over the world, and the eulogies poured forth from people who never even knew him. It was because he was a cop. They could use words like hero without knowing anything about him.

The president went on TV to declare the attack an act of aggression. Several of the more shrill pundits called it war. These were the same ones who questioned why humanity had ever agreed to the Silver River Treaty in the first place, and argued that an international coalition should launch an assault to reclaim the vast territories so blithely handed over all those years ago. We could have wiped the dragons out then, they said, and we can do it now. The time of the dragons is over, was over millennia ago. This is the age of humans.

Kay watched the dragons from the living room window. She felt like her brain hadn’t turned back on yet. She couldn’t think of Artegal at all. She kept wondering what happened next, and her mind kept going blank.

Mom had taken sleeping pills. She was still asleep, curled up on her bed in her clothes. Kay had taken her shoes off, put a quilt over her. She didn’t know what else to do. The phone had been ringing all morning. She finally turned it off. And her cell phone and her mother’s.

A trio of news vans were parked on the street outside, and a crowd of reporters milled around them, everyone wanting interviews with the family of the first person killed by dragons since the treaty. Sixty years of tension stretched to the breaking point.

She scrolled through the missed calls on her cell phone and on the house phone, wondering who she should talk to and what she would say. She didn’t know how long her mother was going to be out of it, and she didn’t want to be in charge. She wanted to talk to her dad. Her parents may have been workaholics, both of them, always out doing their jobs. But they always answered their phones when she called. Her father had always taken her calls. She almost called him now, just to see. Maybe it had all been a mistake.

Kalbach had set up a rotation of deputies to stand guard outside the house and keep the reporters at bay. She could tell him if she needed anything. She could call any of the deputies. Some of them had already stopped by to deliver food, casseroles and salads, dishes covered in tin foil with instructions for heating. Kay wondered why. She wasn’t hungry. Kalbach said that was just what people did when something like this happened. When she was hungry, she wouldn’t have to think about what to eat, the food would be right there. It didn’t make sense to her.

Jon and Tam had called. She didn’t call back because she didn’t know what she’d say to them.

She finally lay on the sofa, wrapped herself in a blanket, watched the news, and waited for her mother to wake up. The world would start moving again when her mother woke up and told Kay what happened next.

Her father hadn’t hurt anyone. He hadn’t bothered anyone. He’d worked to keep the border safe. The dragons should have burned the air force base. They should have talked to people. They should have been talking all along, like her and Artegal, and none of this would have happened.

Now, none of them would talk with each other ever again.

That afternoon, the air force started bombing, almost as if they’d planned it and had been waiting for the opportunity. The excuse.

Kay could hear it. If she hadn’t known the cause, she might have thought it was thunder—a distant, roiling storm, part of dark clouds lurking on the horizon. But this was too steady to be thunder. She could almost time it. Jets flew overhead from Malmstrom, and thirty minutes later, rhythmic thunder echoed from the mountains. At night, the glow of fires burned on the distant, mountainous horizon.

The day after, many families not only kept their kids from school, but left town entirely, cars packed with essentials—computers, pets, clothing, whatever would fit. Everyone assumed that the dragons would retaliate again and that they’d come to Silver River first.