Rose bit her lip. That meant it was probably a true memory.
She’d almost forgotten that the reason Virgil had chosen them was because they resembled his birth parents so closely in personality. And that was the most in-depth memory she’d ever had of Virgil’s birth father.
His birth parents had chosen one another. They’d had arguments, too. And yet, through that whole quarrel, there had been a strong sense of affection, of devotion to one another. A strong sense of this-is-the-right-match-for-me.
Of course they weren’t the same people as Rose and Henry. They were only similar. And yet . . .
And yet . . . he loved her so much. And she felt the same about him.
Was that how Henry felt about her? Would she be capable of feeling that depth of emotion for him someday? Without jeopardizing who she was or what she wanted to be?
She wasn’t sure. But she hoped . . . she hoped . . . she hoped it was possible.
Henry returned home late that night, which, fortunately, was many hours earlier than Rose had expected or feared.
“How did it go?” she asked, opening the door to let her husband and Mr. Teedle in. “Is Ophelia . . .?”
“The dragon’s fine,” Mr. Teedle said, removing his bowler hat. He rubbed one of his eyes, looking weary. “Once she got out, she was willing to eat with no troubles. It was getting out of the egg that was the difficulty for her. She was awfully weak.”
Rose looked at Henry. “Did it help for you to be there?”
“Yes,” Henry said. He held his hands cupped with the wrists together. “I showed them this, which helped her eat.”
Rose felt a stab of annoyance. Mimicking a mouth with her hands had been her idea. Deinonychus parents had made crop milk for their infants inside their mouths, something humans could obviously not do, so pretending their hands were mouths had helped Virgil accept the uncomfortable situation at first.
Still, the important thing was that Henry had been able to help. And she was very glad the child was alive.
“I’m glad she’s with her parents,” Rose said aloud. “I’m glad she doesn’t have to live in the zoo.”
“She won’t have to go to the zoo, will she?” Rose asked.
Mr. Teedle hesitated. “Well . . . I don’t know about that. We’ll be providing food for her for the first few weeks, because she’ll need to be supervised carefully, but after that, it will be up to her parents to feed her. I’m not sure how they’re going to afford it, frankly.”
“They live in Harlem,” Henry explained. “Not a wealthy neighborhood.”
“That’s not all,” Mr. Teedle said grimly. “He’s a musician. They both are. Alice sings, and Willie plays piano. And sometimes they do art on the side. Apparently that’s how they make their money. I really don’t see how they can support a child on that, much less a carnivore. That’s just not something an artist can do!”
Henry’s face had gone thunderous.
Oh, dear, Rose sighed. He’s taking that personally.
“Artists are creative people,” Henry snapped. “They’re good at thinking up creative solutions. They’ll manage.”
“Of course they’ll try,” Mr. Teedle said, “but . . .”
“They’ll manage!”
Mr. Teedle looked somewhat baffled at this vehemence.
“Thank you so much for giving Henry a ride back home,” Rose said hastily. “It might be good for us to cut this visit short, as Virgil’s already in bed and we don’t want to wake him. Can we offer you some food before you head out again?”
Chapter 10: Special
It was only a week later that the invitation arrived. It was left on their doormat when Rose opened the door in the morning.
You are cordially invited to attend the debut performance of Ophelia Lawrence for an evening of dragon song. And then there was an illustration of a dragon hatchling, followed by the name and address of a Harlem vaudeville theater, as well as a time and tonight’s date.
To say that Rose was shocked would be an understatement.
“What in the world!” she cried, reading it the first time.
Henry looked over her shoulder. He scanned it through, and then he started to laugh. “That’s brilliant! They need a way to make money, so why not have people pay to see the baby? That’s what the zoo would do, anyway!”
Virgil looked up from his breakfast of chicken mixed with raw egg and water. The zoo! He wanted to go to the zoo. Could he go to the zoo to see Violet now?
“No zoo for two weeks,” Henry said. “That’s your punishment for destroying the pram.”
Virgil was VERY SAD! Virgil was going to shred his food and throw it all over the kitchen!
“Do that, and you won’t get any more breakfast.”
Virgil was sulking. Virgil was sullen. Virgil’s parents hadn’t let him go to the zoo for ages. Virgil wanted to smear food on the floor. Virgil was going to smear food on the floor. Virgil was smearing food all over the floor.
Henry went and fetched the tipped-over food bowl in one hand. With the other, he picked up the struggling dragon and carried the boy to the time-out box in the bathroom.
No! Virgil was sorry! Virgil didn’t want to be in the box! Virgil was saaaaaaaaaad!
Henry shut the door to the bathroom just in time to partially muffle an earsplitting scream.
“If that’s dragon song, I already hear enough of it,” Rose announced.
Henry snorted with laughter. “I’m guessing it has to be better than that. Well, what do you think? Do you want to go?”
“I confess I’m curious,” she admitted. “Even though I’m not sure how much the tickets cost.”
For some reason, that made Henry chuckle. “You’re never not curious. All right, then. We’ll go.”
Hours later, when they arrived at the vaudeville theater, the man taking tickets took one look at Virgil and shooed them in without taking their money, insisting that they had seats reserved for them inside. They soon discovered that this meant three parterre seats in the center of the front row. Four other seats were reserved around theirs.
“Why four people?” Henry wondered. “Who else is coming?”
“Relatives?” Rose guessed.
“Of Alice and Willie’s? Not likely.” Henry gestured with his head. “I mean . . .”
Rose glanced back and saw what he meant. All the front rows were filled with white people. All the colored members of the audience were in the back rows.
“That hardly seems fair,” she said.
“It is what it is,” Henry shrugged, putting Virgil on his lap.
Five minutes later, a colored man ambled casually up to the front row and sat in one of the reserved seats next to them.
Rose gasped before she could stop herself. She glanced at the back row. She glanced at him. She glanced at Henry. She glanced back at the man.
The man grinned and held out his hand. “Name’s Johnny. I’m Alice’s big brother. Yeah, I’m sitting up front tonight. I’m the one who negotiated their pay, and I told the manager I had to sit in the front row for their first performance, or no deal. He wasn’t too happy about it, but he really wanted Ophy.”
Henry shook the man’s hand. “‘Ophy’?” he repeated. “Is that Ophelia’s nickname?”
The man grinned. “According to my sister, no, but according to me, yes. Sounds less stuck-up than Ophelia, right?”
Rose was spared the need to answer that she preferred the full name by the arrival of Violet’s father.
“Harrison!” Henry called, waving. “Was one of these seats reserved for you?”
Harrison Jones veered over and joined them. “Apparently so.” He stopped and gave the colored man an odd look.
“He’s Alice’s big brother,” Henry explained. “He’s sitting with us.”
“Yeah, I guessed that,” Harrison said, carefully sitting in the empty seat next to Rose rather than Johnny. “Why?”
“Because I am,” Johnny said. “I’m not missing my niece’s fi
rst performance. Only the people in the first few rows will be within range. And you can just get used to it, ma’am,” he added to a scandalized-looking woman off to their left.
The woman got up and walked off in a huff.
“So who’re the other two seats for?” Henry asked.
“Oh, Alice wanted all the dragon parents to get to be here for this.”
Rose sucked in her breath in horror. Bessie and Francis!
Harrison smirked. “Those two? There’s no way they’re going to come. Much too good for vaudeville, I bet you.”
Rose profoundly hoped that was true.
Fortunately, it seemed that Harrison’s assessment was true. There was no sign of the wealthy couple as the first act started.
The first act featured a comedian whose jokes had Johnny and Harrison laughing uproariously. Next up was a woman in a beaded dress who sang in a high soprano. She was closely followed by a man and woman performing an Irish jig, then a man with a trained elephant.
Then came the fifth act.
A piano was pushed on stage, and Willie followed. He was the first colored person to walk on the stage so far tonight. Then Alice came out carrying a tiny yellow dragon.
She wore a long black sheathe of a dress, much simpler than the current fashion, and Ophelia wore what appeared to be an even simpler black tube of fabric, a fact which made Rose stare. Much as she believed in treating Virgil the same as a human infant, she would never have thought to put clothing on him. Doing so seemed faintly ridiculous.
There was a murmur of excitement across the audience. This was definitely what a lot of them had come to see.
Willie started playing, and the first thirty seconds of the song was an energetic ragtime melody that got Virgil so excited that he breathed fire straight in the air, causing screams of delight from the people behind them, who no doubt thought this was part of the show.
Rose fiercely remonstrated Virgil not to do that again in the quietest whisper she could lace with fury.
And then Alice started to sing.
Her singing voice was a reverberating alto that seemed to fill the whole room. It seemed nothing like the quiet voice she spoke with. And then even Rose’s jolt of surprise at that was completely drowned out by Ophelia joining in.
The dragon’s contribution was a small hum. In tune, but only one note, held out for long periods between her parents’ interlacing melody and harmony. That could, perhaps, have been considered a song, but nothing special.
No, the special part was the colors.
In a wave around Ophelia, the room shifted around them, pulsing between normal colors and strange ones that Rose could not name. The pulsing started out in rhythm with the music and then rapidly lost the beat, which was probably not intended. But it hardly mattered.
In what seemed like no time at all, the song was over, and the spell broken.
Exclamations and chattering swept across the first few rows.
“Holy Hannah,” Henry said, letting out an explosive breath. “She’s a tetrachromat.”
“A what?” Harrison and Johnny asked.
“It means she can see four colors,” Henry said. “We can only see three. In this case, I think the fourth one is infrared.”
“Is that normal for dragons?” Alice’s brother asked.
“No,” Rose and Henry said simultaneously.
“How would you know?” Harrison Jones asked. “We’ve only ever met two dragons before.”
“We know because we’ve seen the memories of hundreds of other dragons, courtesy of Violet and Virgil,” Henry said. “None of them have shown colors like those. If Ophelia can do that . . . she’s got a talent that’s probably rare.”
After a few minutes to let the murmurs from the crowd die down, the family of musicians began a second song. This time, Alice stepped off the stage and walked down to the audience, carrying Ophelia in her arms, so that the colors could reach more members of the audience than the first few rows.
It wasn’t that it was a spectacular performance. Ophelia’s contributions were rough, off the beat, and frequently sloppy. In addition, all she ever seemed to do was overlay her memories of this room on top of everybody else’s, which was how she was making the colors seem to change back and forth for them.
Still, it was enough. It was sufficient.
This was definitely a performance that would pull in enough crowds to keep a hungry, small yellow dragon fed.
Chapter 11: Family
“No, we have to,” Henry insisted. “We have to tell them what they missed. They need to go so that they can see it before the show’s booked solid.”
“It was their own fault for being too snobbish to show up,” Rose said acerbically. She had no wish to see the Baileys.
“We still have to tell them,” Henry said. “It doesn’t matter if you dislike them, Rose. Their son might very well be one of Virgil’s friends in the future.”
Rose held back her temper only because she knew it was true. Virgil and his games like “claw face” could not be trusted around human infants. If he was going to have any playmates in young childhood, and perhaps even afterwards, they would have to be dragons.
Of course she hoped that the other eight eggs waiting in the American Museum of Natural History would hatch at a rapid pace, but there was no guarantee of that. It was entirely possible that the only dragons awake in New York City in their generation would be Virgil, Violet, Philomel, and Ophelia. And if that happened, a continuing acquaintanceship with Bessie could not be avoided, no matter how much Rose might wish it.
“Oh, very well,” Rose said testily. “We can drop in to tell them, if you insist.”
It was strange how quick a walk it was from Harlem to 5th Avenue. The two seemed like they ought to be worlds apart, and yet in less than half an hour of walking, you could move from one to the other with ease.
As they reached the door to the Baileys’ home, Rose flinched at the thought of deliberately initiating contact. But Henry was holding the handle of the wagon where Virgil was curled up sleeping, so she steeled herself and moved forward to knock.
Virgil jolted awake at the noise, and he let out a loud yowl. Then his eyes drooped, and he settled back into sleep.
A maid answered the door. “I’m afraid Mrs. Bailey is not at home,” she said politely. “It might be best to come back later.”
“Very well,” Rose said, happy to take the offered reprieve.
“No, don’t send them away!” a voice shouted from within the house.
A wild-eyed woman with disheveled hair came bolting down the stairs and pushed past the maid. She looked as if she had not slept in two days.
“How do you get him to eat on his own?!” Bessie screamed. “He won’t take food from anybody but me! Not even Francis! He told the experts to go away, and he wouldn’t stop screaming until they did! And he bit the nanny, and she quit!”
“Hang on,” Rose said slowly. “Am I to understand that Philomel hatched?”
“Yes! And he’s a nightmare! How do you fix it?!”
“Fix . . . the fact that he’s hatched?” Rose asked blankly.
“YES! I LIKED HIM BETTER IN THE EGG!”
Henry stepped forward. “It sounds like you need some help. I’ll volunteer,” he said very politely. There was a slight shake in his voice. “Rose, if you would be so kind?”
He held out the handle of the wagon. She took it, not sure why he wanted to switch places. “You want me to carry Virgil’s wagon inside?”
“Oh, no,” Henry said with a gleam in his eyes, and she realized he was trying very hard to keep a straight face. “I can’t imagine two fit-throwing infants in there would be helpful right now.”
“No,” Bessie said, wild-eyed. “No, no! Take him away!”
Rose could barely contain a straight face herself. Imagine Bessie asking her to leave!
She couldn’t possibly be more delighted to surrender this hatching to Henry.
“Very well,” Rose said demure
ly.
The wild-eyed harridan who bore little resemblance to the haughty gentlewoman who had plagued Rose over the past weeks stormed inside the house, ranting and yelling and howling about how terrible parenthood was, and why hadn’t anybody ever told her that dragons were as bad as normal babies?!
The door slammed, and Rose waited until she was sure the woman was well out of earshot.
Then she doubled over and laughed and laughed and laughed.
Next Book:
There's a new dragon visiting from Chicago, and she's green, like Virgil! Unfortunately, this might cause a few small problems nobody anticipated.
As well as a few revelations and surprises.
And all while Rose is trying to figure out what to give her husband for Valentine's Day.
You can get it here.
Henina tends to irritate people. She can’t help it — she’s bad at shutting her mouth. So when a prophecy is made that someone will stop the war, she figures she’s the worst possible choice.
Too bad.
The Fates have their sights set on her, and it will take all her cleverness and quite a lot of offending the king to foist the prophecy off on somebody else instead.
But she can do it. After all, there are a lot of potentials to choose from.
You can get it here.
The villains are dead. The world is at peace. And now the magical girls want to conquer it.
Chronos has the power to see the future, and that’s the future Chronos foresees. All she wants is to get a good night’s sleep, so she decides to have a simple conversation with the fated ringleader in hopes that it will set that horrible future straight.
But Kendra is not an easy person to convince. Kendra wants to save the world. And if she has to cram that down the world’s throat, well, so be it.
Dragon's Song Page 5
