Dragon's Song

by Emily Martha Sorensen

  Unless, of course, one’s path through a crowd became obstructed by a man who would not move aside to let one’s pram through, even when one asked said man politely, and then several more times with increasing temper, to please do so.

  Director Campbell had already reached the other cage and was now speaking with Ophelia’s parents. It was maddening that she could not hear a word.

  Rose finally resorted to pushing the man physically aside. He stumbled forward, blinked, looked at her reproachfully, and then turned back to stare forward at Violet’s cage.

  Rose fumed as she stormed forward with the pram.

  Virgil was happy! Virgil was excited! The other baby was going to hatch, and he was going to play tail-face with her!

  “That’s not going to happen today, Virgil,” Rose muttered under her breath. “Your hatching took several hours, and Violet’s took most of a day. Besides, you were not permitted to play with her until she was over a week old, in case of fragility.”

  Virgil wanted to play tail-face! Virgil wanted to play tail-face!

  They reached the edge of the crowd and neared the three adults conversing. Disappointingly, it seemed the conversation had been short and Rose had missed most of it.

  “. . . provisionally,” Director Campbell was saying. “But I’ll send someone over twice a day to check on her health, and if there’s any sign of malnutrition, she’ll be coming back here for good. The dragon’s health is of prime importance.”

  “Yes, we agree.” The quiet man looked profoundly relieved. He nodded rapidly. “We only want what’s best for her.”

  “Hmmm.” Director Campbell gave both of the parents a suspicious eye flicker. “Yes, so do I. Very well. Come with me. We’ll make the arrangements. Good day, Mrs. Wainscott.”

  He barely nodded his head in Rose’s direction before he stalked off. Ophelia’s parents followed him, though the woman stopped to give a slight wave and mouth, “Thank you.”

  Rose took a deep breath and stared at the silent egg.

  “I’m glad you have your parents now,” she said.

  Ophelia didn’t respond.

  “I’d like to think I helped a little,” Rose added.

  The egg didn’t respond.

  Rose’s eyebrows drew together. It was most infuriating. First she had been cut out of the entire conversation, and now even the egg was ignoring her. All right, this was perhaps not her personal concern, but she had a right to want to know what was going on with a new dragon egg, didn’t she?

  Never mind what Henry’s answer to that question would be.

  Virgil’s mother was just like Virgil’s aunts! He had spent time with them yesterday! Virgil’s mother was nosy!

  “I am not nosy!” Rose exclaimed.

  An impression of her younger sisters’ mischievous giggles bubbled up from her son’s pram.

  Nosy! Nosy! Virgil’s mother was nosy! Virgil thought it was very funny!

  “Interested is not the same as inquisitive!” Rose insisted.

  Nosy! Nosy! They had broken into Virgil’s grandfather’s study yesterday. He had been very upset to find them going through all his things. He had called them nosy. Virgil thought that was very funny. Nosy! Nosy!

  It would seem, Rose thought with disgruntlement, that there are disadvantages to asking one’s family to watch one’s child for a day.

  For a change of pace, and because she had no eagerness to return home to face the household chores she knew awaited her, Rose chose to take the slightly longer route of 5th Avenue, rather than her usual path through Central Park.

  This proved to be a mistake.

  “Oh, Rose!” a familiar voice called from behind her.

  Rose’s shoulders tensed. She knew that voice all too well. She turned around slowly to face her dreaded compatriot.

  “Hello, Mrs. Bailey,” she said stiffly.

  “Oh, never mind that, call me Bessie,” the woman said grandly, adjusting her hat. It was adorned with a peacock feather twice as tall as her head. “It’s a lovely day for a walk, isn’t it? Philomel and I are out enjoying it.”

  Rose glanced behind the woman, and sure enough, there was the nanny, thirty paces behind her, pushing a shiny pram that contained a large, dusky orange egg with brown spots. The egg was much too far away to be within telepathic range.

  “I see you and your son are spending quality time together,” Rose said sarcastically.

  “Yes, it’s glorious, isn’t it?” Bessie beamed. “Sometimes it gets a little stuffy at home, so I thought he’d benefit from a change of scene.”

  He hasn’t hatched yet! Rose wanted to scream. He can’t see the scene!

  This prompted her son to poke his head up through the blankets and make commentary.

  Virgil could see the scene! Virgil liked seeing the scene. Virgil was clawing the blanket! Virgil liked clawing the blanket. Virgil’s claw was caught in the blanket. Virgil’s claw was caught in the blankeeeeeeeeeeet!

  Rose wrenched the enormous curved back claw out of the hole in the cloth he had burned earlier today.

  “Did I tell you what I learned about dragons yesterday?” Bessie asked in her most officious tone.

  Please don’t. Rose smiled brittlely.

  “I learned that dragons are warm-blooded. It means their blood is hot instead of cold. That’s why they breathe fire. Did you know that?”

  Rose stared at the woman, flabbergasted. That’s not what it means! It has to do with how their circulatory systems are arranged!

  “I see you didn’t,” Bessie said smugly. She glanced down at Virgil, and then wrinkled her nose. “Ugh! Don’t you ever have that blanket washed? It’s filthy! One would think you don’t care about his health at all —”

  “It was very nice to see you, but I simply must be going now,” Rose said rapidly, bursting forward and taking off at a run.

  There was only so much of Bessie she could cope with in one day.

  Chapter 8: Shrill

  Before the week was out, Henry had the results of the two tests he had studied so hard for.

  It was not the best news Rose had ever heard.

  “I passed one of them!” he said triumphantly, his face bright, as he entered the apartment. “That means I have a chance of passing that class this time! Since the other one’s a lost cause, I’ll just stop going to that one and take it again next semester.”

  Rose tried very, very hard to suppress a long sigh. “Shall we set aside a time every week for you to study for the one you’re going to make the attempt to finish?”

  “No, I’ll just do it when I need to,” he said.

  “Regular studying would probably help,” she hinted.

  “I’d rather not,” he shot back. “Besides, I have three other classes this semester that I need to do well in. I might pass the math one or I might not. How are yours?”

  Rose was silent. She supposed he would only be irritated if she complained about the A minus she had received for her most recent test, even though she had been greatly displeased about it. “I am going to need to study more carefully.”

  “So, no change, then,” Henry said, rubbing his shoulders. “How is Virgil?”

  Virgil had behaved! Could he come out of the box now?

  “What’s this?” Henry asked, glancing down the hallway. “What box does he mean?”

  “The new time-out box,” Rose said sharply.

  Virgil didn’t like this box! The box was very boring! Could he come out of the box now?

  Henry headed down the hallway to the bathroom and opened the door. Rose followed him. Virgil was inside a wooden crate that was inside the bathtub. Wet towels were draped over everything flammable, including the back of the door.

  “You realize that the crate is flammable, right?” Henry asked.

  “I realize that if he burns it down, I’ll buy another one.”

  “Awwwwww, poor thing,” Henry crooned, leaning down and scooping up the dragon. “Is Mommy being mean? Of course you can come out. You’r
e not going to set anything on fire now, are you?”

  “He had better not,” Rose said darkly. “He burned the pram this morning.”

  Henry paused. “He did what?”

  “He burned the pram,” Rose repeated. “And he did it on purpose, too. He was commenting on how much fun it would be to have it on fire before he breathed fire on it. I am very upset with him right now.”

  Virgil’s father shouldn’t listen to Virgil’s mother! Virgil wanted to stay out of the box! Virgil’s mother was being mean!

  Henry swore under his breath.

  Rose agreed with the sentiment, though she wouldn’t use such language herself. “So I asked our neighbors if they had a box we could keep, and they gave me that one. I told him he could stay there for a good long while.”

  Alarm radiated off their son as he wriggled in Henry’s arms to get his attention.

  Virgil had behaved and he hadn’t sneezed on purpose and it wasn’t his fault that he’d accidentally set the pram on fire and also he’d behaved. He didn’t want to be in the box anymore and he had behaved and his mother was being mean and he was going to behave!

  “What are we going to do?” Henry groaned, setting the objecting dragon back in the crate. “We need a pram.”

  “I know,” Rose said grimly. “We can’t take him anywhere without a conveyance to put him in. Quite apart from people staring, he is getting increasingly heavy.”

  Could Virgil play in his bucket now?

  “NO!” both of his parents shouted.

  Virgil was very sad! He was going to cry!

  “If you scream, we’ll shut the door,” Rose told him.

  Virgil was going to cry even louderrrrrrrr!

  In less than a minute, he was alone in the bathroom with the door closed.

  “So,” Henry said, raising his voice to be heard over the shrill howls, “what do we do next? I suppose we could have him crawl everywhere.”

  “Would you let a six-month-old human crawl all over the sidewalks of New York?” Rose queried.

  Henry frowned. “No, I wouldn’t. Health concerns aside . . .”

  “Health concerns aside . . .” Rose agreed.

  All sorts of disasters might happen if Virgil were allowed to roam free. He might scamper off and get lost. He might be kidnapped by some unscrupulous person. He might run into the road and collide with a car or a horse. He might sneeze upon a nearby leg, causing panic and injury. Essentially, there were all kinds of safety hazards that would be associated with his locomotion being under his own power out in public, and none of those could be addressed until the boy was old enough to have something resembling common sense.

  “There’s such a thing as a leash,” Henry suggested.

  Rose cringed.

  “I mean, it would be cheaper than a pram.”

  “And it would make him look like a pet, and it would not address half of the health and safety concerns, and given that he isn’t even close to walking upright, I don’t think he has the stamina to crawl for the same distances we walk every day.”

  Henry sighed. “I know, I know. So what do we do?”

  “I’ve asked all of our acquaintances I could think of if they had a spare pram,” Rose said.

  “Did any of them?”

  “No, but perhaps I have forgotten someone.”

  “Your parents?” Henry suggested.

  “I asked them first. Mama gave away their baby things a long time ago.”

  “My parents?” Henry asked.

  “I haven’t called them yet, but you’re welcome to. I did call your brother, who says they don’t have an additional one.”

  Henry’s brother had given them the original pram.

  “If he doesn’t have an extra one, my parents won’t, either,” Henry said. “I assume you asked the neighbors?”

  “I did, and unsurprisingly, none of them did. I was lucky enough to have gotten hold of the crate.”

  “I suppose we could ask the Baileys . . .”

  Rose didn’t even try to hide her horror at the prospect.

  “I mean, they certainly have money.”

  “They certainly do. And I’m certain we do not have a strong enough acquaintanceship to ask them to buy something for us,” Rose said flatly. “Quite apart from the fact that I would not want to ask anyone to buy things for us, I have no desire to be in Mrs. Bailey’s debt. I would sooner buy a brand new pram ourselves.”

  “Well, is that out of the question?” Henry asked.

  Rose hesitated. The correct answer was, Any unnecessary money spent is out of the question as long as you’re going to keep failing classes and having to retake them. But that was not something she could say.

  “Hang on!” Henry said, snapping his fingers. “A wagon! My parents have an old one I used to use as a child.”

  “It would be wood,” Rose objected.

  “It would be free,” Henry retorted.

  “But if Virgil combusts it . . . how great would the nostalgic loss be? I wouldn’t want him to destroy one of your favorite toys from childhood.”

  Henry shrugged. “I’d be very annoyed, but not heartbroken. I liked it, but I’m not nostalgically attached to it. Besides, think about how much smaller than a pram it would be. We could fit it in a closet rather than keeping it in a corner, so Virgil would be less able to reach it to sneeze on it in the first place.”

  It was a good solution. Rose opened her mouth to agree, but then the phone rang.

  Henry ran to answer it. “Wainscott residence, Henry speaking.”

  As he listened to the voice on the other end of the line, Henry’s face went pale.

  “Just a minute,” he said, and pulled the phone away from his ear. “Hey, Rose, can you spare me for the rest of the day, and perhaps tomorrow, as well?”

  “Why?” Rose asked, startled.

  “The new little girl dragon is hatching, and it looks like there may be trouble. Something to do with her waiting too long to hatch. They want as many people there as possible who can help, and since I have experience taking care of Virgil . . .”

  Rose’s heart squeezed. “Yes. Go.”

  Chapter 9: Specimens

  Mr. Teedle came and picked up Henry ten minutes later. He barely spared a moment for a greeting before the two left.

  Rose watched them go with a number of mixed feelings. First, she hoped desperately that the problem was not as severe as it sounded, and that Henry would be of some use. The only thing that mattered was that the child be born healthy.

  But she had other, less charitable feelings, as well.

  She was rather upset that Mr. Teedle had asked for Henry’s help, and not hers.

  Of course she understood that it would make no sense to ask both of them to come, because one of them had to remain behind with Virgil. Having another dragon underfoot at the new dragon’s hatching would no doubt complicate matters rather than aiding them.

  But still. What made Henry more qualified to help than her? Rose had spent as much time with their son as he had. She was also the one who was studying dragons, and the one who had taken more of an interest in Ophelia in the first place.

  Not to mention that Mr. Teedle had known her far longer than Henry. In any matter involving dragons, he should have thought of her first.

  Moodily, Rose prepared Virgil’s usual dinner of chicken, water, and raw eggs, wishing as she always did that the boy would learn to eat a cheaper meat, such as pork.

  She walked down the hall to the bathroom, where she found her son curled up in a ball with his tail tucked around him, snoring softly.

  Rose smiled wryly. A few hours ago, she had wanted nothing more than for him to take a nap and leave her alone. Now that she wanted him awake, of course he was sleeping.

  Virgil stirred, and his eyes opened.

  Why was Virgil’s mother sad? Where was Virgil’s father?

  “Oh,” Rose sighed, sitting down at the edge of the bathtub, “I got left out of something that I would have liked to have be
en invited to. Your father went to help.”

  Virgil was sad for his mother. Virgil was sad to still be in the box. Could Virgil get out of the box? He was behaving.

  “Yes, you are,” Rose said, reaching in and picking him up. She held him in her arms, stroking his smooth and slippery scales. Sometimes things happened that put the events of her life in perspective. If nothing else, Virgil had hatched safely. He had been born healthy. That was a privilege that not all parents were given with their children.

  Please be safe, Rose told Ophelia silently, even though she knew the thoughts would not reach at this distance. Please be healthy. If anyone deserves that, they do.

  It wouldn’t be right for them to lose two children. Nobody should even lose one.

  Had Virgil’s birth parents worried about losing their son this way? Had they ever realized that their son might, instead, lose them?

  Virgil rubbed his tail on her arm as she stroked her hand down his back. He remembered his birth parents. He would show her one of their memories.

  A memory from Virgil’s father welled up, taking hold of her senses and gripping her in its all-absorption. Rose gasped as she recognized the familiarity of the scene.

  He sneakily left the fire pit unscrubbed. He hated scrubbing the fire pit. Maybe his wife would do it for him.

  Uh oh! His wife had noticed, and she was very annoyed.

  It was his turn to scrub the fire pit, and he knew it! And he’d used one of her rocks to carve a picture into it! They were specimens, not pretty things!

  It was a pretty specimen, and it would be much better as a carved rock than put boringly in a row in the vast rock collection cave!

  Oh, now see what he did? The egg was whining that they were fighting again!

  He could calm the baby. He was good at it. He’d show the baby a memory . . .

  The memory faded, and Rose came to herself again.

  “Was that a true memory?” she asked. “Or did you add to that one?”

  Virgil didn’t know what she meant. Did Virgil’s mother like his old father’s memory? He had forgotten all about it till now.