The Story of Owen (26 page)

“But dragons are so much bigger,” she pointed out. She did this a lot faster than I did, and I tightened my stance to compensate.

“True,” I said, “but the important thing is to get a foundation. Mum tells me I made up my own songs when I was little, but it wasn't until I learned the notes and how to write them down that I was able to really make music. I think it's the same for dragon slayers. You have to learn the basics before you try it with fire.”

Sadie finished sixth in a flurry that left me too busy to talk, and then held her sword up in salute. I mirrored back.

“Do you really think I'll ever try it with fire?” she asked.

“I think you could,” I said. “I mean, eventually. With more practice. I'm no expert, but I've been watching a lot of swordsmanship since the fall, and you're a natural.”

“Has Lottie noticed?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I told her. “We don't get much time to talk anymore. They're all really busy.”

“Has Owen noticed?” Her voice was so quiet I nearly didn't hear her.

Her question flustered me, and therefore I said the first thing that popped into my head.

“He might if you invited him over instead of calling me.”

“I didn't want to put him on the spot,” Sadie admitted. “I could call you both next time, if you think that would help.”

“It might,” I said. “But trust me when I tell you that you're probably going to want to tell Owen in very precise terms what you're trying to do.”

“I don't really know what I'm trying to do,” Sadie said. “I mean, at first I thought I just wanted to date him, but then I realized that I wanted more than that.”

“How much more?” I asked. “Because there are rules about that sort of thing, and Owen has his own code I can't really tell you about, because it's not common knowledge.”

“You mean the fact that his mother lives in Venezuela?” Sadie asked.

“Um, yeah,” I said.

“Because you can find that out on the Internet in about ten seconds, if you know where to look,” Sadie said.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, you should still talk to him. Because I'm sure the Internet isn't really comprehensive.”

“I know,” Sadie said. “But that's not even what I meant by
more
. I look at Hannah and Lottie, and see everything they've accomplished together, as a team, and I want to be part of something like that, something more than the Guard, even though that's a really good start.”

It hit me like a ton of bricks. Sadie wasn't looking for a boyfriend or a meaningful charity or an easy way to quell the voice inside her that called for civic pride. She wanted to be a dragon slayer in her own right, working with others like Owen and Lottie and even me, but she wanted to hold the sword herself, and face the fire so that others didn't have to. I had no idea if this was part of what Lottie had planned on, but I was almost positive she wouldn't be averse to the idea.

Sadie was watching me with a nervous expression on her face, like she was worried I was about to shut her out of the world she wanted into so desperately. Instead, I smiled at her.

“You know,” I said with exaggerated lightness, “Hannah
makes me carry my sword with me all the time. My real sword. The sword that used to be Lottie's. It's in the trunk right now. If you wanted, I could maybe go and get it for you.”

Sadie didn't have to answer, and before long, I was watching her swing through all the forms by herself, because my sword would have killed any of the wooden practice ones. I took advantage of the time to watch her without worrying about my own form. She was much better than I was. I could mirror all the movements, thanks to months of practice and hard work, but Sadie made them her own, and moved through them with a sense of the natural that I couldn't achieve. She might not have been born to a dragon slayer family, but she was born to be a dragon slayer.

“It's a lot heavier,” she said. “But I like it!”

“I'll come over after Guard practice every day, if you like,” I told her. “And when you work up the courage to talk to Owen, and then to Lottie, about it, maybe Hannah will make you a sword of your own.”

“You really think they'll be okay with it?” she asked. “My wanting to be a dragon slayer?”

“Lottie is the most open-minded person I've ever come across,” I told her. “And Hannah loves people who make their own decisions.”

“What about Owen?” she said.

“He might be jealous that you're better than he is,” I said with a smile.

“That's not what I meant,” she said.

“I know,” I told her. “I don't think he's ever given much thought to having a girlfriend. He hasn't told me straight-up, but I get the impression he doesn't want to put a kid through
what he's gone through, and he also doesn't want to mess with some girl's feelings.”

“And they say chivalry is dead,” Sadie said, rolling her eyes.

“Well, I don't think you'd be ‘some girl,'” I told her. “I think if you're both honest, it would be okay.”

“And you wouldn't mind?” she asked.

“Don't take this the wrong way,” I said slowly, “but I'm still half convinced that dragon slayers are crazy. I'm good with my music and my friends and family. I'm not really looking for anything else.”

Sadie looked at me for a long moment, as though trying to determine if I was telling the truth or just humoring her. Whatever she saw must have answered her questions, because she smiled and raised the sword again.

“Do you mind if I keep going?” she asked. “I've got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Go ahead,” I told her, and went over to the picnic table to sit down and watch.

She started with the forms again, but when she reached the end, she kept going into free form, shifting her aim from the imaginary person across from her to up where a dragon's hearts would be. I could hear the first notes of her symphony in the wind, and see the rhythm in the floodlights that reflected off of her sword.

One of the challenges in describing the weekends that Owen and I spent traipsing around the countryside with Aodhan is that it's difficult to pass along what Aodhan taught us without making it sound like I am reciting some kind of textbook. No one wants to put up with that in their spare time. While we were busy practicing for soccer and the Guard during the week, the two of us continued to travel around with Aodhan, cramming our homework into Sunday evenings and stretching our spares as far as they would go in order to keep up with the workload. Busy as we were, and as much as we learned, none of it was particularly story-worthy.

Emily was busy too. Since she didn't have quite the same parental supervision problem we did, she was actually able to keep researching the hatching ground, using both the Saltrock archive and the Internet boards as her primary media. Most of the time, she didn't even have to do the research herself. She would just ask a question or put forth some kind of theory,
and the other members of the chat room would fall all over themselves to answer her (or “him,” depending on the ID she was using at the time). She didn't join the Guard, but she did keep track of the news surrounding it, and using her reports we made various changes in the Charter leading up to the Wingham game, after which we were pretty much set.

Like we had in the fall when I had started my sword fighting lessons, we fell into a pattern. School, Guard, and soccer during the week, and random tours of the area on the weekend, with as much conspiracy stuffed in around the edges as we could fit. If it was a symphony, then it was the part in the middle when most of the audience fell asleep, except it was getting harder and harder to get anything like decent sleep in Trondheim and Saltrock, because the dragon sirens sounded nearly every night. Dragons were spotted, trailing fire through the dark, and Aodhan almost never came home at all because he was so busy on patrol. The news out of Northern Ontario was grim, with more RCMD slayers called to duty than ever recorded, and Emily reported that there were a growing number of survivalist websites, as well as theories about a possible evacuation. Owen's grades started to slip again, but no one really cared this time. The teachers were giving him participation marks for the classes he was missing, and I didn't tutor him anymore. All we ever did was train, or hide.

Lottie came to school in late March, after the Wingham game, to give a talk about what to do when a dragon attacked. It was all things we already knew, but with the formation of the Guard, it was worth repeating. She organized the younger students into teams, making sure that a member of the Guard was responsible for each team and knew how to lead them to safety.

“What if we're at home?” Robert's younger brother Adam called out. “We don't have a dragon shelter.”

“Then find out which of your neighbors has one,” Lottie said. “Now is not the time to keep that kind of thing secret. We need to work together.”

“Are you going to be able to stop it?” Alex asked.

It wouldn't have shown up to many people in the room. Hannah knew, and so did Owen, and I could see the edges of it around Lottie's face, but no one else could tell. They couldn't see the stress and the worry—the fear, even—that with her injury she wouldn't be able to do enough to help. The mute was out, Lottie was in full dragon slayer mode, and almost no one noticed that it was an act.

“We will,” Lottie said, clear trumpet ringing. “My brother and my nephew will, and we have friends we can call if the government is moving too slowly. We will not let the dragons run us out of here.”

There was a rumble in the crowd, but Lottie was already moving forward. She put up photos of dragons, species after species, and made sure to remind the students what their weaknesses were. It was a trifle macabre, but the entire student body listened to her every word.

“And if you see an
ornus
,” Lottie concluded. “Run. Run as fast as you can and hide. Don't stop for your phone or your purse or your dog. Get to a shelter immediately, and once you're safe inside, use the landline in the shelter to call for help. You can see a soot-streaker coming from a goodly distance, so take advantage of that.”

The kids in the audience were dead quiet when she finished, and it took her a moment to realize that she had probably scared
them. She walked forward to the edge of the stage, leaning on her cane, and even though I knew it was a difficult manoeuver for her, she sat down on the skirt with her legs dangling over the side. All of a sudden, the mute was in the trumpet, and she was just Lottie again. A dragon slayer still, but a person too, and a person who could help.

“I know it's hard,” she said. She sounded like everyone's mother, and every kid in the room relaxed, even if the teachers didn't. “We've lost property and stock and, yes, people, but you guys are doing everything right. I'm just here today to remind you of that, and to encourage you to keep going.”

“What's the most important thing to remember?” Sadie called out from near the back of the gym. She was wearing short sleeves, and I could see the new muscles in her arms.

“Don't panic,” Lottie said. “We have brains that we can use to think and reason and form logical plans. Dragons are just mindless creatures. If you use your brain, you can outwit them, but to do that, you can't panic.”

Ms. Ngembi decided that would be a good note to end on and stepped out onto the stage to thank Lottie for coming. Lottie couldn't get back to her feet without sliding down onto the floor, so they shook hands somewhat awkwardly, and Lottie made a face so that everyone laughed. Then she and Hannah headed home while the rest of us went for lunch.

“She talks a good game,” Owen said quietly in my ear as I stood at the back of the gym and waited for the crowd to subside. Emily squeezed in beside me, and Owen nodded at her. “But she's afraid.”

“There aren't any other dragon slayers who can come,” Emily said. “Even if she asks for help and plays every card she
can and calls in every favor.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because all the government dragon slayers are being sent to Sudbury and Thunder Bay as soon as they're sure the snow is melted for the hatching season up there,” Emily said. “And everyone else is tied to their contracts. If we didn't have Aodhan already, we'd get no one.”

“It must be Manitoulin,” Owen said. “Saltrock isn't the dragons' only target. They're going north as well.”

“And the federal government likes the paper mills and the nickel mines more than they like the salt,” I said. “We need a plan.”

“Tell me about it,” Owen said. “The Guard was a good start. It makes me feel better about leaving town all the time, knowing that at least people are organized and can hide properly, but it's not enough.”

“We need to do something on the offense,” I agreed. “There's no point in putting all our best players in to play defense and guard the keeper. We need someone to attack midfield.”

Emily stared at me. Owen laughed.

“I think you've been watching too much soccer,” he said.

“Sometimes you need a good sports metaphor,” I told him airily. “Music won't always do. If I told you we needed more bass and countermelody and less canon round, you wouldn't know what I was talking about.”

“That is true,” Owen said. The gym had finally cleared, and we headed for the door. “But we still need to think of something.”

“Tonight after practice,” I said. “I'll drive all three of us to
your house and we can come up with something.”

“Hannah and Lottie will be there,” Owen reminded me.

“It's time we start working together,” I said, quoting Lottie deliberately. Emily nodded. “You'll be seventeen in three weeks, and I'll be seventeen in May. I don't think we can wait for it to be official.”