Mrs. Hollins asked Lucky to stand next to the kitchen doorway. The old woman stood on a stool and, using a ruler to guide her pen, marked a spot on the trim showing how tall Lucky was.
“Why do you want to know how tall I am?” Lucky asked.
“Because I am a curious lady. And I do curious things.” And she left it at that. Mrs. Hollins wrote something else down in Old Countryish. She didn’t explain to Lucky what it meant.
They took the mechanical lift down to the sub-basement, where Mrs. Hollins checked on sentient metals growing in their glowing incubators. One was getting restless inside its warm womb, forming itself into a shiny hand one moment, and then a monster, and then a single eye.
“That’s enough out of you,” Mrs. Hollins said, tapping on the glass. The metal collapsed into a molten heap.
Lucky looked closely through the glass.
“How does it do that?” she asked. Her dragon peeked over the rim of Lucky’s shirt pocket, and then dived for cover. He was a very frightened dragon.
Mrs. Hollins shrugged. “It’s sentient. It can do what it wants.” She gave the lump a narrowed look. “It can also do as it’s told, no matter what its opinion is on the matter.” The mass bubbled meekly.
Lucky moved a safe distance away from the mass, and let the dragon crawl out onto the table. The dragon sniffed around for a bit, but stayed close to Lucky’s hand. Her dragon needed her. She knew this with a deep certainty. She looked at Mrs. Hollins. “If it’s sentient, does that mean it has a soul?”
Mrs. Hollins startled. “Why no. What a mad idea! Lots of beings of Mind are lacking in Soul. Surely you’ve seen politicians on the news.” Lucky hadn’t, but decided not to tell Mrs. Hollins that.
“Well,” Lucky said slowly, “how do you tell if something has a soul?”
Mrs. Hollins gave a hard look at Lucky, and then at the dragon, and then at Lucky’s shoes, which were roomy now, and had begun to flop a bit around her feet. “An educated guess,” she said. “And God help you if you’re wrong.” She looked back at the dragon, which was now the size of an apricot. “Give it back,” she said sternly. The dragon ran up Lucky’s arm and dived into the security of the pocket. Lucky didn’t know what, exactly, the dragon was supposed to give back. The dragon whimpered. “I mean it,” Mrs. Hollins said. The dragon sighed and then relaxed. Mrs. Hollins patted Lucky on the shoulder. “It’s important to set expectations and boundaries,” she said. “In all relationships. But, of course, you know that.” Lucky pretended she knew what that meant. She followed Mrs. Hollins back into the mechanical lift. As they descended into the sub-sub-basement, her shoes regained their fit.
Lucky had never been in the sub-sub-basement before. The light was blue and green down there, as though they were underwater. Several screens that looked like portholes blinked on the wall. Mrs. Hollins had several such porthole screens on the main floor, maybe ten at most, but down here, they numbered in the dozens. Lucky gaped at them all. Like the upstairs porthole screens, each one here showed images of a laboratory. Most looked like normal labs, but some appeared to be submarine labs or in deep caves. In one, the scientists looked as though they were floating. Two showed animals in lab coats and three others showed scientists in hazmat suits with strange things, like extra heads or four arms or a fabric-covered, very large tail extending from the rump. Lucinda assumed it must be some kind of strange television show.
“Put the dragon on the table,” Mrs. Hollins said. “I want to take its picture.”
“What for?” Lucky asked.
Mrs. Hollins pointed at the porthole screens. “As you know, my colleagues are . . . well, they are all very far away. But they, like me, are a curious bunch. They will be very excited to see your wonderful dragon. Because of science.”
Lucky nodded happily. She loved science. She scooped the dragon out of her pocket and set him down on the table. The dragon instantly began to cry, its silent tears pouring into a sizeable puddle. Lucky felt her heart would break. Mrs. Hollins didn’t seem to notice. “Lucinda, darling, why don’t you sit next to your dragon. I’d like you in the picture as well.”
Mrs. Hollins wheeled her camera over. It was a giant thing, much different than any camera Lucky had ever seen. It swiveled on casters and its brass exterior shone with polish and elbow grease. Mrs. Hollins climbed onto the seat. She flicked the switch and sent the camera’s mechanisms whirling.
“Hello, colleagues,” Mrs. Hollins said. Instantly, the figures in the other porthole screens looked up in interest. They inclined their faces toward the screens. “This is Lucinda. She lives next door to me on Earth, er—I mean.” She cleared her throat. “That is to say. We live on a block in a city that happens to be on the planet Earth, which is a normal thing to report in genial conversation, as it is the planet where we all live.” Mrs. Hollins paused for a moment. Her cheeks grew red. “There are other normal and regular things that I might mention regarding fingers and toes and the color of the sky, but that is not why I’ve asked for your professional input. It seems that Lucinda has accidentally created a dragon. We have heard of such things happening, obviously.”
Mrs. Hollins looked at Lucky. “It’s because we’re scientists.”
“Oh,” Lucky said, trying to sound knowledgeable. “Of course.”
Mrs. Hollins returned to the camera. “But not for a long time. Indeed, after the last incident, I daresay that all of us assumed that we never would again. And yet, here we are. This young lady is entranced by the dragon, which is typical, and, Lucinda, darling, we all are very curious to hear the whole wonderful story of how your perfect dragon came to be. Please tell us everything from the beginning. Leave nothing out. Including, and this is important, who else was in the room. Proceed, dear.”
Mrs. Hollins adjusted her glasses, recalibrated her camera lens, and inched the large contraption forward. The dragon dived for the side of Lucky’s hand and grasped her skin in his talons, holding on tight. Lucky could feel it shaking. Every figure in every porthole screen pressed their faces to the glass, their eyes large with wonder.
Lucky told her story. She left nothing out.
Later that night, Lucky lay in bed, staring blankly into the dark. She didn’t have her dragon. But Mrs. Hollins had said, and, Lucky conceded, rightly so, that the dragon was not housebroken yet, and that she had a very sick and delicate mother at home. What if the dragon wandered off at night? What if it grew? What if it scared someone? Could Lucky’s mother’s heart take it? Probably not.
Lucky wept at the thought of leaving her dragon and wept as Mrs. Hollins firmly took it out of her hands and closed the door. But now . . .
Her room was mostly dark. There was a streetlight outside her window, leaking yellow onto the floor. She knew if she went to the window, she’d see Mrs. Hollins’s house, and the odd, multicolored lights randomly blurting from the cracks, like always. Lucky assumed this had something to do with being a scientist.
Mrs. Hollins was good at inventing things and solving problems. This was something that engineers did. Mrs. Hollins was building a terrarium. Mrs. Hollins was building a carrying case. Mrs. Hollins was going to solve the problem. Lucky trusted Mrs. Hollins, and knew she should be relieved. But with her dragon gone, she didn’t feel much of anything. It was as though the arrival of the dragon was so monumentally awesome that all her feelings—past, present, and future—had been siphoned into it, leaving nothing else behind. Lucky lay in bed and did not move. She didn’t sleep. She didn’t worry. She didn’t feel anything at all. She simply experienced the absence of her dragon like a missing limb—a phantom that ached. More every second.