Burn

by Patrick Ness

  Sarah turned back to Jason. “We could tell the truth.”

  Jason rolled his eyes, as he did every time she brought it up. “A dark-skinned girl and a Japanese boy accidentally kill a policeman who is then just conveniently eaten by a dragon, who will almost certainly deny everything—”

  “We don’t know that—”

  “We’d be strung up before we ever even got arrested.”

  “This isn’t Mississippi—”

  “It’s not a bomb,” Miss Archer said, slapping a newspaper down between them. Sarah was so startled she cried out, causing Miss Archer’s already supercilious eyebrows to rise even farther. “You all right, Sarah?”

  “Just . . . You startled me.”

  “It’s not a bomb,” Miss Archer said again. “It’s worse.”

  “What’s not a bomb?” Sarah said, still shaken.

  Miss Archer tapped the newspaper. “The Soviets. It’s a satellite.”

  “A what?”

  “A machine that orbits the planet. Sends radio waves.” She slowed down for emphasis. “Takes pictures.”

  At this, Jason finally looked up. “They’re going to spy on us.”

  “What else? They’re going to be able to look right down at us. Any time.”

  Sarah and Jason shared a look.

  “Eisenhower won’t stand for it,” Jason said.

  “And they won’t stand for Eisenhower not standing for it,” Miss Archer said, biting her lip with worry. “And that’s how war begins.” She saw Sarah looking aghast and immediately changed the subject. “How’s the jaw?”

  “Sore. But not broken.”

  “Count yourself lucky. I had an aunt who broke her jaw and had to have it wired shut. She could only drink soup for three months.” Miss Archer got a dreamy look. “Though she did lose thirty pounds.”

  “Will there really be a war?” Jason asked, still looking at the paper.

  “I hope not,” Miss Archer said, in a serious voice, which it turned out wasn’t the answer Sarah wanted to hear.

  “You should ask him about the satellite,” Jason said as they walked home. “Dragons aren’t going to like being spied on either.”

  “I told you, I can’t get near him.”

  “I would believe that if you were an idiot, Sarah, but you’re not and we both know it.”

  This backhanded compliment made her blush, which in turn made her angry. “Why would he even know?”

  “Because he’s Russian.”

  “With no Russian accent. And he’s worked on farms for who knows how long. It’s like asking your dad about current affairs in Japan.”

  “First of all, my dad was born in Tacoma—”

  “I know, Jason—”

  “But he does keep up to date with what goes on over there.”

  She stopped in the road, noticing with a shudder that it was the same spot where Kelby had accosted them days before, when Kazimir had done the first of what turned out to be a number of unexpected things. “Where would a dragon get that information? Dragon newspapers? Dragon newsreels at dragon picture shows?”

  “We don’t know how they communicate—”

  “And like you said, we have more important things to worry about.”

  Jason deflated a little. He looked up at the sky at what were so clearly snowclouds they might as well have had a label on them. They’d been threatening for a day, having ambled down from Canada, but it finally looked like they were ready to start making serious snow.

  “Freaky times, huh?” Jason said, then he dropped his voice to a whisper. “I killed someone.”

  “We did.”

  “It wasn’t your hand on the gun.”

  “He wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for both of us.”

  “Yes, he would’ve.”

  “And that would have been better? That he get you alone? And beat you to death with no witnesses? He was a bad, stupid man.”

  “A bad, stupid man who I killed.”

  He looked so sad there seemed nothing at all to do except kiss him, right there, out in the open, in the middle of the road.

  “Ow,” she said.

  “Jaw?”

  “That was nearly broken by a man who would have murdered you.”

  “Sometimes you just have to feel bad about a thing. Sometimes that’s the only thing that makes you human.”

  This, she understood. Good God, did she. She carried the pain of her mother around her like an undershirt. No one could see it, but it covered her body.

  They pulled apart as they heard a car coming up the road.

  “You have to be kidding,” Jason whispered, as they saw it was the sheriff’s own patrol car.

  “Just stay calm,” Sarah said, though it was fake bravery. She felt her whole world sliding away as the sheriff pulled to a stop and rolled down his window, like the ground was crumbling and there was nowhere to run. But it wasn’t to Jason he spoke.

  “Your daddy hired a dragon, I hear,” he said.

  Gareth Dewhurst didn’t trust the dragon, which was only prudent. He was never going to trust any dragon, and when Hisao Inagawa said it was a blue—from where? Who’d ever heard of a blue anywhere in this godforsaken state?—Gareth hadn’t even believed him, had thought his abrupt, frequently unlikeable neighbor was teasing him, which, knowing Hisao Inagawa, seemed improbable.

  But a blue it was. Story on the blues was that they were mischievous, snide, imps. Everyone knew reds were imperious, would treat you like lowly subjects in a royal court even when you were paying them a single gold coin to dig you a new latrine. But blues were intelligent troublemakers.

  “Where the hell did you find a blue?” he’d asked Hisao, way back when it first came up.

  “The broker I got that red from a few years back recommended him,” Hisao had said. “Said he’d just shown up one night, asking for work.”

  “Don’t you find that odd?”

  “Since when have either of us been able to afford to refuse something just because of its oddness, Gareth?”

  Which was true. Which was fair. After Gareth had married Darlene, it was something that had become even truer and fairer. Hisao Inagawa—difficult, angry, stern Hisao Inagawa whose life the government had, to put it delicately, screwed over pretty hard—had at some point become Gareth Dewhurst’s closest friend, for what it was worth, because Gareth was the only other person in Frome who might understand that.

  So Gareth had contacted Hisao’s broker and been told, yes, there was a dragon looking for work, and yes, that dragon was a blue, but no, they were actually hard workers, and any reputation they might have had was built on such little actual knowledge as to be close to worthless.

  It was only after Gareth had handed over what was damn near his last ten dollars to the broker for his commission that the broker gave him the letter.

  “What’s this?” Gareth had asked.

  The broker shrugged. “Came here, had your name on it. Letter of recommendation, probably. Some of the claws have them sent along.”

  “That’s an ugly word,” Gareth said, distracted, opening the envelope.

  He read the letter.

  And now, right now, on this cold just-February day, he watched the blue dragon work in the second field, having completed initial clearing on the first far faster than Gareth had expected. He’d assumed the job would take a month, but this dragon would be done in under two weeks. This damnable dragon who had done not a single thing wrong in the time it had been working on the farm. This dragon who, indeed, seemed to have saved his daughter during an encounter on the road with the missing and not much missed Deputy Kelby.

  This dragon Gareth had been asked to kill for five thousand dollars.

  We know you are a peaceful man, the letter—which he’d now read countless times—began. We know you want nothing more than to provide for your daughter. We know that this has not been easy for you since the death of your wife.

  We also know, it further said, of your distinguished War r
ecord. You are a man of action, Gareth Dewhurst, especially your noted exploits in France.

  How did they know any of this? And who were “they”? The letter had no name, no postmark, nothing but a simple sheet of paper with clear, printed handwriting.

  We do not believe we are asking this of a man who would perform this action cavalierly or with any pleasure. We believe this is why you are the right man to ask. We certainly understand that you will hesitate and that there is a good chance you will refuse us. We would, however, implore you not to.

  This imploring had taken the shape of five hundred of the five thousand dollars showing up in his bank account, free and clear, the letter told him, regardless of his final choice. It was an outrageous windfall, and even though the farm was so far in debt it wouldn’t even come close to saving it, five thousand might. Might even be enough to have a little left over to buy his daughter a damn jacket that would fit her. It filled him with shame to see how badly he was failing to keep her even properly dressed.

  The letter said the death of the claw should look like an accident. Dragons were protected by the same treaty that protected humans. If one side could just go around killing the other, then war was inevitable, and mutual annihilation followed.

  We will not reveal ourselves to you, Mr. Dewhurst, not even after the action is finished. The balance of the money will simply appear in your account. You may explain it to the authorities as you see fit. We will never resurface to contradict you.

  Were they Believers? Gareth didn’t know much about the religion, but everyone knew the death of a dragon was the worst sort of blasphemy to a Believer. They’d sooner kill themselves, and occasionally had. But who else had the kind of money in this postwar decade besides churches and the government?

  Know, sir, that this is a bad dragon. We do not say this lightly. Nor do we say it in the way that people often speak negatively of dragons—of their supposed indolence, of their pettiness and greed, of their dangerous superiority. We mean that this specific dragon will act in a way that will bring danger, not just to the world in general, Mr. Dewhurst—though it will—but to you and to your daughter, personally.

  This sounded like prophecy, which he knew Believers trafficked in, but again, no Believer would ever even conceive of harming a dragon. This had to be some sort of bizarre con, though a very expensive one, even if the five hundred dollars was all that came from it.

  You must do this before February’s third Sunday. If you do not, so much more will be lost than you ever thought possible, Mr. Dewhurst. We suspect you are not a man to be convinced by an anonymous letter and a little bit of money in your bank, so we ask you to watch for the signs. Does the dragon take an interest in your daughter? Does she take an interest in the dragon? Does she begin to keep secrets from you?

  It had, she had, and she obviously did, but so what? How was any of that not to be expected between a curious girl and an unexpected beast? For all that humans resented dragons, it was ninety percent sheer jealousy at their power. No wonder there were religions around them. No wonder Sarah’s school friends would sometimes argue about what dragon they’d like to be. Adults did it, too, just more discreetly. All of that was normal. But then came the question that moved this whole thing from baffling speculation into something else altogether.

  Does she ever come to mysterious harm?

  How could they know? Unless they were the ones who hurt her and had always planned to? Unless they scared her so badly she would refuse to tell him the truth, even when he threatened Jason, who a blind man could see she was fond of?

  Either whoever wrote the letter could see the future, which was absurd, no matter what the Believers claimed, or this letter and offer wasn’t a bribe.

  It was blackmail.

  Someone was offering him a huge amount of money to kill a dragon.

  Someone was (possibly) threatening his daughter if he did not.

  Gareth Dewhurst hadn’t felt this much impotent rage since the death of his wife.

  Through the window, he watched the dragon breathe fire on the day’s toppled lumber. A controlled stream of heat and light and flame, like a welder’s arc, too bright to look at directly for long. That was supposedly how they died. A rupturing of that organ. The main reason their skin was so hard to pierce, to protect this part of them that made the impossible, horrible miracle they breathed.

  But there were ways. Ways that could be made to look like an accident.

  And then what? Gareth Dewhurst wondered.

  A question he’d found no answer to in the past weeks and days. A question he still had no answer to when Sheriff Lopez came driving onto his farm, his daughter in the passenger seat.

  “I am armed, dragon,” Sheriff Lopez said. “I have bullets that will harm you.”

  Kazimir looked, as always, slightly amused. The sheriff, Sarah, and her father stood about twenty feet away from where he rested at the edge of the field. Smoke still twined in the air from the burnt lumber.

  “Are we declaring weapons?” Kazimir said. “For my list is long.”

  “It’s a courtesy,” said the sheriff. “My state of being armed is implied to all humans, but I declare it to dragons so that there are no surprises.”

  “There are always surprises, officer,” Kazimir said. “That is the nature of the word.”

  “He always talks like this,” Sarah’s dad said to the sheriff, then to Kazimir: “The sheriff wants to ask you some questions about the disappearance of Deputy Kelby. You remember him, don’t you?”

  “You met the deputy on the road out there, I gather,” the sheriff added.

  At this, Kazimir looked at Sarah, though she kept having to remind herself she was the only one who knew the dragon’s name. “I didn’t tell them,” she found herself saying, then was deeply embarrassed by the skeptical glance the sheriff gave her.

  “Indeed she didn’t,” he said. “It was the deputy himself. Said you’d been insubordinate.”

  “As I am not his subordinate,” said the dragon, “how would it be possible to act in any other fashion?”

  “Enough of this,” Sarah’s father grumbled. “Did you kill the deputy?”

  “Mr. Dewhurst,” the sheriff warned.

  “I did not,” Kazimir said, almost casually. “Who is saying that I did?”

  “No one, Mr. . . . ?” The sheriff left a blank for Kazimir to provide his name. A cue the dragon either didn’t understand or pretended not to.

  The sheriff was not obviously unkind. He’d driven Sarah down to her farm and had been respectful in his questions to her about the dragon: if she had ever known it to leave their farm, if she had in particular known its whereabouts the night Deputy Kelby was thought to have vanished. She’d offered no information that would have incriminated anyone. If the Sheriff had thought she was being evasive, he didn’t show it, just mentioned that he’d known her mother slightly. “A smart lady. I was sorry to hear of her passing.”

  “So was I,” was all Sarah was able to say in return.

  “We found a dragon footprint,” the sheriff said now. “Well, half a footprint. In the dirt by the alley behind Al’s diner, not too far from where Deputy Kelby’s patrol car was parked. As there are no other dragons working in this county right now to my knowledge, and as that footprint is too small to be a red—”

  “It is interesting, this word ‘small,’” Kazimir said, opening his wings some. “It is accurate to say that I am smaller than my red brethren.” He stepped forward, like he did that night at the gas station, making himself look enormous, terrifying. “It is inaccurate to say that I am small.”

  Sheriff Lopez held his ground with a smile. “I mean no offense. I merely want to confirm that it’s yours and to hear your explanation for making it.”

  “I cannot confirm, not having seen it, but I have, yes, walked through your town in your sleeping hours. You know little of my kind, but where I come from, we are famous for our curiosity.”

  “And where do you come from?”
/>
  “To the point at last,” Kazimir said. “You would like me to say that I am Russian, as if the nations of men have any meaning to a dragon. You would like to think that I am a spy, if not a murderer. I am neither, Officer, and do you know why?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Because I will outlive you,” Kazimir said, simply. “If I took a human life, my own would end, but why would I bother when my life is so much longer than yours? I win by simply outlasting you. For the same reason, why would I ever care about the fate of your nations, except when they would limit the freedom of mine? Why would you ever be so significant to me?”

  “You work for us,” Sarah’s father said, and she could hear the anger. “You want our gold.”

  “You work your hogs,” Kazimir said. “Yet you want their meat.”

  Sarah winced. This did not feel at all like the right thing to say.

  “And do you want our meat, Mr. Dragon?” the sheriff said.

  Kazimir lowered his head on that long neck, careening it down to their level. “It does not suit the stomach,” he said. “Too much grit.”

  “Did you kill Deputy Kelby?” the sheriff asked. “Are you a spy?”

  “No,” Kazimir said.

  “No to which?”

  Kazimir only smiled.

  There had been little more after that. The sheriff had no real evidence or, it seemed, any real belief of a connection between the dragon and the death of Deputy Kelby.

  “But that might not matter to some people,” the sheriff told Kazimir. “I’d be careful, if I were you.”

  “I am always careful around men,” the dragon had answered. “You are dangerous animals.”

  After that, Sarah and her father walked the sheriff to his car.

  “Do you really think it was the claw, Sheriff?” her father asked.

  “Not especially. We found a human tooth in the alley and signs of a scuffle. The deputy no doubt finally said the wrong thing to the wrong person.”

  He tipped his hat at them and left. They watched him drive away. She and her father were alone. Like they always were. Like they had been since her mother had passed.