Maybe that really is how they do it. Didn’t old-time railroad engineers out west strap kaleidoscopes over their locomotive dragons? Wouldn’t surprise me if they now make dragons live in virtual reality headsets. On talk radio, Teddy Patriot said they make the whisperers in power plants stroke the dragons in a weird way, almost like sex, turning them on. I don’t know if I believe that. In school, they’re still teaching children that dragons enjoy music, literature, and art. Joey used to mock that one as the “Scheherazade theory of dragons.”
I’ll never know the real answer. Dragon-whisperers, if they aren’t torched to charcoal in the line of duty, retire only when their minds have been burned away, which is almost worse.
Joey came home at thirty, but he looked like a man twenty years older. He didn’t recognize me or Mom; he didn’t laugh or cry; he ate when food was held to his mouth, and wasted away when it wasn’t. His mind was like a sieve dipped in water. No matter how many times I showed him old family photos or Mom made his favorite dishes, his eyes remained blank and his speech a nonsensical babble. His heart stopped beating eight months after he got home, but he was really dead long before that.
I have no idea what horrors he had suffered; what he had seen and could not unsee.
There was a generous pension, of course, but no way to make the dragons or the company that sucked the life out of him pay what they really ought. The contract and the laws were impenetrable. Assumption of risk. Willing suspension of rights.
Attacking a dragon is a crime. And I won’t ever do anything illegal. But short of that?
July
Zoe
[The camera is on her as she walks, keeping pace. From time to time we see tourists gathered around some empty lot, necks craning, phones ready. Uniformed officers stand behind police tape to keep the crowd at a distance.]
The tourists want to see it happen again, up close. Now that we have a bona fide attraction in town, the selectmen are terrified. They want the President to send in the minutemen. (Shakes head.)
No, I still don’t know why the dragons have come to Mannaport.
But, I think I’ve made a new friend, or maybe two.
It started before Independence Day. The town manager and the selectmen, still trying to figure out a way to make some profit from our “useless” dragon infestation, had settled on tourism. They sent a photographer around to take pictures and hired a consulting company to brand the town as the “Dragon Garden on the Bay.” Tour buses came to town twice a day from Boston and Portland, and there was talk of partnering with the cruise ship companies too.
I didn’t like the idea. I was afraid that the tourists would scare the dragons. Most had settled around abandoned lots and foreclosed houses, living off insects and vegetation. Some of them had even learned to leave their dung in one place, where the sanitation company could cart it off in weekly rounds. I thought the dragons and the people of the town were figuring out how to live together in peace. I didn’t want that process interrupted.
But there was an even bigger threat than tourists.
An anti-dragon group had been organizing: parents worried about dragons rotting their children’s minds, bored people looking for something to do, property owners fed up with the mess. They called themselves the Knights of Mannaport and shared ideas online about how to drive the dragons out.
I lurked in their forum under a made-up name. When they decided to use the Fourth of July celebration for “Operation St. George,” I made plans of my own.
Near sunset, while many families were heading to Skerry Field for the fireworks display, the Knights got into pickup trucks and minivans. From all around town, they drove toward the abandoned lot on Hancock, home to one of the largest flocks of little dragons.
I got there just before sundown. The yard was covered in thick, lush grass as tall as my chest, while the house, half of its roof gone and gaping holes in three walls, sat quietly in solitary decay. Dozens of little dragons were already roosting in the ruin or the yard. While a few flapped their wings and opened their eyes, cooing at my approach, most remained asleep.
I ducked down among the grass, out of sight. The soil gave off an acrid odor, not unlike feral cat colonies. As the dusk faded, more bird-sized dragons returned from foraging. They found places to perch, tucked their heads under a wing or a clump of grass, and went to sleep.
I could hear the snores of those nearest me, a faint, even wheezing. A cool breeze whisked away the sweat on my forehead and brought some relief from the stifling summer air. I shivered involuntarily, suddenly remembering this was the house where a man had been shot a couple years ago over an opioid deal gone wrong. The sirens and the flashing blue lights rushing down the street had woken me up.
Pain gripped my heart like a fist. I couldn’t breathe. I fought hard to keep the darkness that threatened to awaken in my mind, to burst through the locks on the mental vault I had sealed it in, the piles of psychic rubble I had piled on.
I couldn’t think about her couldn’t just couldn’t couldn’t.
Bright beams pierced the darkening evening, sweeping through the air above me like luminous lances. The humming of electric engines subsided; the lights went out. Slamming doors and footsteps. Urgent whispers. The Knights had arrived.
I heard the sounds of heavy objects being unloaded. The vehicles were filled with extra power cells, spools of wire, and home-defense electric prods. Their plan was to cover the lot with a net of charged wires and then wake the sleeping dragons with a few well-placed firecrackers.
The more of those nasty creatures electrocuted, the better, someone had posted in their forum.
Poetic justice to use dragon-generated electricity to kill dragons!
My cousin is a lawyer. He thinks that if we do it this way, we can argue to the judge that the dragons flew into the wires on their own, so it wouldn’t count as assault.
I got up from among the thick grass.
“You can’t do this,” I said. I was so scared and riled up that my body shook as much as my voice.
The startled Knights, lit only by the glow of a distant streetlight, stopped. After some confusion, a man stepped out from the crowd. I recognized him from his picture on the forum: Alexander.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Stopping a mistake,” I said.
“The dragons don’t belong here,” he said. He stepped closer so that I could see the grief and rage on his face. “They hurt people. You don’t know.”
“Not these,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm.
“Yes, these.” I heard the pain in his voice, the helplessness of loss and the inability to explain.
I felt equally helpless. I didn’t know how to describe seeing the dragons forage over a park in late afternoon. I didn’t know how to explain why I felt like smiling and crying when I heard the dragons chirp and cheep at night.
So I picked up the whistle hanging around my neck and blew into it, as hard as I could. It was so loud I thought I was never going to stop hearing it, like the sirens in my nightmares.
Around me, the yard and ruined house disintegrated into a maelstrom. The little dragons, awakened by my shrill whistling, bolted into the air. Wings darkened the stars; claws trampled the grass. A cacophonous chorus joined my whistle, and the pungent smell of wild urine saturated the air.