“Why, thank you,” the beast said. In a slightly different voice, it added with a note of wonder, “Am I?”
“You’re a dragon!” the elephant rumbled.
“A dragon is a mystical creature of great power,” the beast replied in a stilted tone. Again, in the different tone, it added, “Of course, silly!”
“Jing-Wei?” the lion asked.
“And Fai,” the beast said in a boy’s voice. In Jing-Wei’s voice, it continued, “We are here.”
“What are you going to do?” the lion asked, glancing up at the gossamer, rainbow-shaded wings of the dragon as it hovered elegantly above them.
“Learn,” the boy’s voice answered. Jing-Wei’s voice continued, “But first we’re going to my village and telling your people to stop!”
“Of course,” Li Fai agreed. “We will tell your people that the mamokh grass and the kerdveydza bush are where we store our memories and keep our connection to the planet. They must stop rooting them up and destroying them, so that we can remember that we are at peace.”
“I never knew that!” Jing-Wei’s voice exclaimed. “I’m sorry that we took away your memory.”
“We could not tell you—we’d lost the grass and the bushes that kept those memories,” Li Fai replied.
“So we will tell the villagers and they will stop,” Jing-Wei said.
“With your permission,” Li Fai said, the great dragon head bowing to the animals beneath it.
“How can we stop you?” the elephant wondered.
“Words work,” Jing-Wei’s voice said, with a hint of her usual irritation.
“Can I come along?” the eagle asked.
“Only if you can keep up!” Jing-Wei’s voice cried. And the dragon was gone, darting out of the cave of miracles. Its luminescent body lit the night sky and it gave a strange cry—a chorus of two voices echoing perfect joy.
We have to eat soon! Jing-Wei thought, even as the ground disappeared beneath them. Oh, my wings! They’re going to start complaining any moment now!
The demon Li Fai snorted in amusement but said nothing. Together, the two beings in a dragon’s body raced the moons to the village of the small bird.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers
....................................
The Dragons
Theodora Goss
One day, the dragons came.
It was on a Tuesday, she remembers. It was
the sort of thing that would happen on a Tuesday,
which is an unsatisfying sort of day,
not the beginning of the week, nor the middle,
without the anticipation of a Thursday.
A troublesome sort of day.
And there they were, sitting on the back porch railing,
where she had hung boxes for geraniums
that summer. But now, since it was November,
there were no geraniums—only dragons, quite small,
the size of a Pomeranian or Toy Poodle,
but of course with scales, which shone with a dim sheen
in the gray light of a rainy Tuesday morning.
Seven of them—green, blue, red, orange, another orange,
a sort of purple, and a white one that seemed smaller
than the others, the runt of the litter. It shone opalescent.
They were damp with rain, and obviously
too young to be out on their own. Had someone abandoned them,
the way people sometimes leave dogs at the edge of the woods?
Or were they feral, born to a wild mother?
She couldn’t just leave them there. As soon as they saw her,
the white one started a piteous baby roaring
and the green one joined in, showing the interior
of its pink mouth, like a geranium with teeth.
But when she opened the porch door, they just sat there,
staring at her with iridescent eyes.
What did dragons eat? She had no idea,
so she put half of last night’s Chinese takeout
in a bowl outside the porch door.
The rest she put into another bowl, inside
the open door, then went to get ready for work.
By the time she returned, in her suit and sensible pumps,
they were curled up on the sofa, already asleep,
except for the blue one, which hissed at her, not in anger,
she thought, but simply to let her know it was there.
The bowls were empty.
They continued to be trouble.
The orange one burned a hole in the carpet, or was it
the other orange one? They were so similar,
initially she could not tell them apart.
But eventually she learned to distinguish them
by their quirks and personalities—
one was just playful, the other more mischievous.
She gave them all names: Hyacinth (that was the purple),
Orlando, Alexander (after her brother,
who was a software designer in San Francisco
and sent her pictures at Christmas of his apartment
decorated with plastic poinsettia).
Ruby (a little too obvious, but it suited her),
Dolores and Delilah (the orange ones),
and little Cordelia, the runt, who affectionately
clawed apart her favorite afghan
while trying to climb the armchair into her lap.
She tried calling the ASPCA
and the local veterinary clinics, but no one was missing
a clutch of dragons. The receptionist at one clinic
thought she meant geckos.
What in the world was she supposed to do with them?
The nearest shelter said it had no facilities
for dragons, sounding a little incredulous
over the phone. Meanwhile, they scratched the furniture,
got tangled in the hangers while creating
a nest in her closet of scarves and panty hose.
She could not leave out a pair of earrings, or coins
in a jar for laundry and parking—anything shiny.
They would begin to hoard it, hissing at her
when she approached to take back her watch or car keys.
Her bills for Chinese takeout
were astronomical.
She took sick leave when Orlando and Alexander
both caught pneumonia and had to be nursed back to health.
(She finally found a vet who would treat dragons,
a younger guy trying to establish a practice.)
“I’m not sure about dosage,” he said, as he gave her
a prescription for antibiotics. “About the same
as for a golden retriever? But it’s just a guess.
Aren’t they getting a little big, for a place
of this size?” And she had to admit he was right.
Now when Ruby curled up next to her
as she watched Casablanca, the red dragon
took up half the sofa. Her sort-of-boyfriend,
Paul, who worked in the tax and bankruptcy group,
started complaining. She understood his perspective—
the dragons had never liked him. Hyacinth
always bellowed when he came over, Delilah
peed on his baseball cap, and Dolores chewed
a corner of his briefcase. “They’re dragons,” he told her.
“They’re dangerous—what if they bite someone? You’d have
a lawsuit on your hands. I really don’t know