The Story of Owen (13 page)

And the dragon slayers came. They left their small towns to the fire and went to Michigan for a paycheck. By 1920, there were more dragon slayers concentrated in one area than there had been since the Romans burned Masada, and still the dragons multiplied. Ford hadn't stopped making cars, and now that more people were driving them and burning gasoline to do it, there was even more carbon for the dragons to hunt. Michigan became a series of fortified towns and cities, as close to the factories as they could get, because that's where the dragon slayers were paid to do their work. There has never been an accurate accounting of fatalities, but modern scholars guess that between 1903 and the start of the Great Depression, at least a hundred thousand people were killed by dragons or dragon fire.

The Depression bought Michigan some time. When the market collapsed, production was greatly diminished. More important, fewer people could afford to drive. Ford struggled to pay his dragon slayers, but he understood that they had to stay, or he would lose his factories entirely. By some miracle of finance, he managed to hold out, and when the war contracts began to make his factories viable again, Ford went back to work.

This time, Ford could only hire dragon slayers who had already completed their military service, and with the government's attention firmly overseas, the situation in Michigan quickly became untenable. By the end of the war, there was
nothing that could be done, though Ford tried by offering more money to any dragon slayer who would come and work for him. Michigan went on for a few more years, desperately holding off an ever-increasing number of dragons while producing more and more of the very substance that drew them in.

In 1947, while the Detroit Red Wings were losing the Stanley Cup to the Maple Leafs in Toronto, Henry Ford was eaten by a dragon. He was old and his mental state was questionable, but he at least had the wherewithal to call for the army and the evacuation of the state before he died. Over the next few years, and at great cost, Michigan was abandoned. The Red Wings never returned and became the un-home team of the National Hockey League. Their logo served as a warning everywhere they went: the wheel, for the car that had brought Michigan up, and the wing, for the dragons that had brought it down.

This is the legacy of the once-great State of Michigan: a burned and ruined stretch of land that had once been green and free of poison. The lakes survived, only to serve as hatching grounds for generations of dragons to come. The Upper Peninsula, mostly unscathed but still perilous, fell nominally to the control of Wisconsin, but no one ventured there. Canada lost access to Manitoulin Island, due to its proximity to the fallen state, and was forced to strengthen its watch along the borders as well. Ford's factories stood only as husks, monuments to greed and lack of government oversight, and the brave souls who looked upon them from the questionable safety of Windsor quailed at the sight.

On Monday, Owen joined me for lunch as soon as the bell rang instead of going to the cafeteria. He sat in the corner, elbows on his knees, eating a sandwich and looking at his shoes. I let him stew for about two minutes before I couldn't take it anymore.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Everyone knows why I wasn't at that party,” he said. “Everyone knows that I was home because my father was home, which means he wasn't patrolling.”

“Owen, that's ridiculous,” I said. “Your dad is usually in Exeter on Saturdays, so even if he'd been out, he still wouldn't have been in the right place, and you're sixteen! You don't have to slay anything yet.”

“I know that,” Owen said. “But that's not how it will look.”

“It was a stupid thing to do, lighting that fire,” I said. “They'll probably never figure out who did it, and I feel awful about that boy, but if you had been there, what would you have done?”

“Nathan,” Owen said. “His name was Nathan, and he's in my gym class.”

I quieted down and turned back to the piano. Clearly there was no making him feel better, even though I maintained that there was nothing he could have done.

“Were your parents mad?” he asked after another long moment passed.

“No,” I said. “I mean, they were shocked, because they realized I had been at that farm when they read it in the paper, but they weren't mad at me. I told them I was the one who insisted the fire get put out, and that Sadie and Alex helped, and then I told them that Sadie and I left right after.”

“I'm glad you did,” Owen said.

“Well, look at it this way,” I said. “It's at least as much my fault as it is yours. I was actually there, for starters, and even though I knew there had been a fire, I didn't call anyone to report it. I just left and let Sadie braid my hair for the rest of the night.”

“Did you really?” Owen asked. He looked a bit startled.

“Well, not exactly,” I said. “There was a thing with the curling iron.”

“Did you paint your toenails and talk about boys too?” He had perked up a little bit, so I almost let him get away with teasing me like that.

“Well, we mostly talked about you, to be honest,” I said. “At least at first. When she came to pick me up she had a bunch of questions, and then at the party, all the kids wanted to know all about you.”

“What did you tell them?” he asked.

“That you sleep with a giant teddy bear,” I said.

“You did not,” he said, “because if you did, then you'd have to tell them that you saw me in bed, and that would lead to other questions that you don't want to answer.”

“Dammit!” I said. “I knew I should have led with something else.”

He laughed again, and I felt I had done my job as dragon slayer morale improver as well as was required. I turned back to the keys again and started to play. It was a new song, one that had been pulling at me since Sunday morning when Dad had read the news article about Nathan's death over breakfast. The bass didn't translate particularly well to the piano, but you could accomplish a similar effect by playing intentionally discordant tones. Now that I was feeling better, I didn't want to remind myself how the sound had felt.

“Dad and Aunt Hannah went out on Sunday afternoon and got it,” Owen said, when it became apparent that I wasn't actually going to play anything. “The dragon, I mean.”

“Was it still at the Taggerts'?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But it left a trail. It flew so low that it left broken corn stalks all the way into the trees, and then they just tracked it down until they had it pinned.”

“Why did Hannah go out at all?” I asked. “I mean, no offense to her, but corn dragons aren't something your dad should need help with, especially not one that's just, um, eaten.”

“Dad's been taking Hannah out on short trips lately,” Owen said. “For practice.”

“For practice?” I asked. Then I put the pieces together. “So that she can help Lottie slay dragons.”

“Exactly,” Owen said. “And me too, should it come to that.”

I thought about Lottie facing a dragon on her own, and
my blood ran cold. When she had been at full power, that unrestrained trumpet soaring into the sky, she hadn't needed help from anyone. Except, she'd always had help. Hannah had made her swords since they were eighteen and sixteen, and Aodhan had always been her backup. Presumably, Lottie's mother had also helped her, if only while she was in training. Lottie and Aodhan had been born after their mother's days as an active dragon slayer. She had died of natural causes while they were on tour with the Oil Watch in the Gulf, but that didn't mean that Lottie had been tragically deprived of a mother. Living to old age was something of an accomplishment for a dragon slayer, and sixty-five wasn't fantastic, but it was nothing to sneeze at. It was entirely likely that, if I kept up my association with the Thorskards, the story would end with just Hannah and me.

“Will there be a memorial?” Owen asked.

I was so lost in my thoughts of his, his father's, and his aunt's mortality that it took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about.

“For Nathan,” he clarified, just as I caught up. “In Hamilton, if a kid got eaten by a dragon, there was usually a memorial.”

“Yeah, there'll be something,” I said. “I'm not on the Assembly Committee, and they're the ones who usually plan that sort of thing. It'll be later in the week.”

“How do they usually go?” Owen asked.

I abandoned the piano completely, turning all the way around on the bench to look at him. He had relaxed a bit but still sat hunched over his knees. If I couldn't convince him not to feel guilty, and it was clear I couldn't, I guess telling him all the gruesome details was the next best thing.

“Ms. Ngembi will make an announcement that we're to go to the gym instead of to class. Probably on Wednesday, but maybe tomorrow,” I said. We hadn't done this so far this year, but it was a familiar ritual. “Everyone sits on the floor. It's a short assembly, so they don't bother with the chairs. The teachers will stand at the back, and some of the older kids will pull out the bleachers, even though they're not supposed to.

“When everyone's settled, Ms. Ngembi will make us all stand up for ‘O Canada,' and when that's done and everyone's seated again, she'll tell us the school-safe version of what happened. Because it was such a dumb thing to do, she might have some strong reminders about fire safety, but she'll mostly stick to telling us about Nathan.” I paused for a moment. “You know, she might not have known him that well. She might have one of the teachers who transferred in from Saltrock do that part. But anyway, once she's done she'll remind us that we stand for St. George, and that we must all be careful, and as dragonsafe as possible. Then she'll send us off to class, and it will be quiet all morning, but by lunch time everyone will be back to themselves.”

“That's how it went in Hamilton,” Owen said. “Sometimes there were candles, and we had a different mascot, so there was nothing about St. George, but it was basically the same.”

“What makes me angry is that everyone will act like it was this terribly sad thing,” I said.

“It is sad,” Owen said. “Someone died.”

“It's not sad, it's
stupid
,” I said. “I was at that party. If Jerry hadn't come with the hose, if Alex hadn't been willing to run back and forth with the bucket, if Sadie hadn't agreed with me when I made a fuss about it, I could have been eaten instead!”

Owen looked taken aback. I was a bit surprised myself. I hadn't been aware I'd felt this strongly about it until the words came out of my mouth. But once I started, I couldn't stop.

“Everyone knows not to light fires, to stay inside if it's too dark to see incoming soot-streakers,” I said. The jangling notes I hadn't wanted to play before rattled in my veins, and I wove my fingers together to keep them from playing notes that weren't there. “We were right next to a cornfield, and the stalks were more than six feet high! And they lit a fire, and someone died, and tomorrow morning we're going to have to pretend it was a terrible accident.”

Owen waited a moment, to be sure I was done, I guess, and then leaned forward.

“Do you know why Lottie jumped that morning, the last morning on the Skyway?” he asked.

“To get to the dragon,” I said. Everyone knew that.

Owen shook his head. “You never chase a dragon,” he said. “You track it, maybe, if it can't see you, but as soon as you're its target, it only looks away if something makes it.”

I thought about that morning on the Skyway, the fight I hadn't seen until long after it was over. I had been so polite, had never asked. I had relied on the news, on little Amelia, all those miles away at the top of the Escarpment. I had no idea why Lottie jumped that morning, but now that I was pressed to think about it, I had a guess.

“There was someone on the bridge … with a camera phone, standing next to their idling car, and the dragon went for them instead,” I said.

“And Lottie jumped without thinking about it,” Owen said. “And it's this great tragedy, a career cut short by heroism,
and no one knows how stupid it really was.”

“No wonder your dad didn't want to deal with all that stuff,” I said. “At least cows and chickens are smart enough to run away.”

“Write the song,” Owen said. “Write a song for Nathan that no one is ever going to hear, the song about what actually happened. Maybe if we do this right, someday it'll mean something.”

I turned again, and he came and sat beside me on the bench. I put my hands on the keys, and the music was there. I didn't stop to write any of it down. There wasn't any reason to. No one would ever care that Nathan had died for someone else's mistake, because they were too drunk to go into the drive shed to warm up.

“Do your best to die of old age,” I told him.

“I'll try,” he said.

When the bell rang, I got up to get my backpack and caught him looking at my feet.

“Where did you get those?” he asked.

“Sadie loaned them to me,” I said. “She thinks they look good, but I've been tripping over everything all morning.”

“They aren't that bad,” Owen said. “I mean, they're nearly practical. If you could walk in them.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“You know what I meant,” he said.

“Yes, thankfully, or I'd probably be insulted,” I said.

“What did you tell them, at the party?” he asked again. “About me?”

“I told them you were a dragon slayer.”

Because it was the truth.

When my parents accepted that I was going to be spending a good portion of my time driving a dragon slayer around the county, they insisted I get better fire insurance. It was a pretty good idea, even though I couldn't really afford it. Until I started tutoring Owen, my primary source of income had been playing the organ on Sunday mornings and the small honorarium the hospital paid me to play piano for patients on Wednesday evenings. When Hannah found out, she insisted that I start keeping track of my mileage and expenses. I thought this was probably a good idea, until my dad found the spreadsheets I'd made up and started to obsess over them as only an accountant could.