Protect, Gauda insisted.
I have no weapons, Will thought in frustration, wanting to obey her, wanting to defend, protect. He tried to direct the camo’s attention to the stalker, but nothing would distract it from Gauda’s voice.
Then he remembered the oldest weapon in the world.
He recognized the warmth at his knee, and pulled it out of the inner pocket of fur. It glittered in the dragon-fire with its own dark, inner fires. The warrior below lifted his spear, drew his arm back to throw it at the rider, and Will dropped the dragon-dung on his head.
He saw, in one final, brief moment, the warrior staggering, the spear slipping from his hand; he rubbed his head, then stared furiously, bewilderedly upward, searching the dark and the snow for flying soldiers and invisible dragons.
Then he was gone. Night was gone. The noise, the shouts and terrible cries, the flourishes of trumpet and drum and elephant trunk, the sear of dragon-flame unrolling like silk shaken across the dark, stopped. The cold stopped. Will’s breath stopped.
He was back in the classroom, sitting at a desk. The room was empty but for Professor Seeley, seated behind his own desk and tossing the petrified dung lightly in his hand, waiting, apparently, for Will to return to the future.
“Very good, Mr. Fletcher.”
Will glanced down; the cloak of little animals had vanished along with everything else. He gazed at the professor wordlessly, blinking, trying to see what it was he had done.
“Was it?” he asked finally. He shifted a little; his bones still worked, if not his brains. “What did I do? I didn’t do much.”
“You brought something very, very valuable back from the past.”
“I don’t know what. Last I saw of that stone, I dropped it on some stranger’s head.”
“You brought back a question.”
Will stared at him. “You mean like, why did you send me there in the first place? I haven’t a clue. I don’t feel that I’ve flunked the test as much as I feel I haven’t even started it yet.”
The smile that swept across the old professor’s face startled him. “Yes! Yes. Exactly, Mr. Fletcher. You have brought the magic of the past into the present. Now what will you do with it?”
“Is this part of the test?” Will asked fuzzily.
“No.” He tossed the stone suddenly to Will, who flailed wildly but managed the catch. “It’s life.”
Will, mesmerized once again by the dark, lovely colors glittering constantly over the lump, remembered the camo-dragon in his head, and then the powers guiding the dragons. His eyes widened. He breathed. “Shit.”
“Indeed, Mr. Fletcher. Sydney Culver will be looking for you. Twenty-two centuries into the past, you caught the eye of the future. And a charming eye she has, too.”
“What should I do?”
The professor scratched thoughtfully at his chin. “Well. You rode the camo-dragon. You must have learned something.”
Will stared at him. “Did you really send me back there?” he demanded. “How did you—how could you—Or did you just re-create the world you wanted me to see? In my head?”
“With Ms. Culver in it?”
“But how—all that snow, those mountains—”
“Stones have very long memories, Mr. Fletcher . . . You simply saw what was there, beneath the surface. You possess some very unusual talents. You camouflage them very well. You hardly recognize them.”
“What should I do?” Will asked confusedly.
“Finish your tests, get your degree. Who knows, after that? Maybe go and work for the War Department. Be a saboteur for peace.”
“But—” He stopped, possibilities fanning through his head. “She’d know,” he said abruptly. “She’d recognize the camouflage. And I’m not that heroic.”
“You rode the dragon, Mr. Fletcher.”
“So did she.”
“But you looked out of its eyes. Into its heart.”
“How do you—” He stopped again, gazing at the aged professor, wondering suddenly about his very long life, what those ancient eyes had seen and out of what dragon’s vision. “There’s so much I don’t know . . .”
The old wizard smiled again, inordinately pleased about something Will couldn’t see. “The perfect place for you, Mr. Fletcher. The perfect place to begin.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers
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We Don’t Talk About the Dragon
Sarah Gailey
Hugo Award winner Sarah Gailey (www.sarahgailey.com) is an internationally published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their nonfiction has been recently published by Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Tor.com. Their most recent short fiction credits include Fireside Fiction, Tor.com, and the Atlantic. Their debut novella, River of Teeth, was a Hugo and Nebula Award finalist. Their recent books include their debut novel, Magic for Liars, and a young adult novel, When We Were Magic.
Cecily is six years old, and there is a dragon in the barn.
Cecily knows what you are thinking. You are thinking that something will have to be done about the dragon. You are thinking that a dragon should not live inside a barn, and that this story will be a story about what is to be done about the dragon.
But you’re wrong. Nothing needs to be done about the dragon, because there’s no problem with having a dragon in the barn. Cecily knows that this is true, just as she knows that she must never discuss the dragon with anyone in town. She knows it’s true because it has always been true. It will always be true.
The dragon is not to be discussed. If Cecily brings up the dragon over the dinner table, her mother will reach over and shake her by the back of her collar, and then after the plates are cleared, her father will give her A Talking-To about her attitude. He will make her feel very aware of the fact that he is big and she is small and he is strong and she is not. She will go to bed with a knot in her belly, and she will toss and turn all night, and she will wake up afraid.
Cecily does not want to wake up afraid, so she doesn’t bring up the dragon except in sideways looks she shares with her brothers and her sister. Once, she tried to share a sideways look with her mother. That did not go well. Cecily has learned to be careful with her, too.
There is a dragon in the barn, and it is just the way things are.
Cecily is eight years old, and there is a dragon in the barn.
Going near the barn is hard. The dragon radiates anger, a kind of hot oppressive anger that looms tall and thumps heavy. Cecily knows this because every time she goes near the barn she feels hot and sudden fear. The red paint on the outside of the barn is peeling like an all-over scab, and the big barn doors loom too tall for no reason Cecily can see, and the whole thing sits on Cecily’s father’s land like a stain on a new dress. The grass around the outside of the barn is green, which doesn’t make any sense, because the barn is so hateful and cruel that everything near it should be blighted.
It is Cecily’s turn to feed the dragon. She chews on a sourgrass stem and stares at the barn from a distance, holding a bucket of iron shavings that her father brought home from the foundry where he works. He says that he works there because it’s the best way to get iron shavings for the dragon, and whenever he says this, Cecily’s brothers slide each other those forbidden sideways looks, because they know that when they are old enough they will have to work at the foundry, too. They will be the ones coming home at dusk, sweating and scarred, their pockets full of iron scraps to drop into the bucket by the kitchen door.