“You should have seen my first time.”
“Yeah, well.” She sucked up another basterful and gave it to me; I went on feeding. “Did you read those articles?” she asked. “Did you see the books? And the sketchbooks?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t have time.”
“You really should check them out. And that rock thing? Do you know what it is?”
I shrugged. “I can guess.”
“Petrified, right? Some kind of egg?”
I nodded.
“What kind?”
Shrugged again. “I’m pretty sure it’s the same as the lizard’s, only older. The egg markings were almost identical.”
“Right. And what kind of lizard, exactly, is it?”
“Taj and I web-searched lots of lizards, and it doesn’t match any of them. ’Course, we don’t know anything about lizards. It could be out there. But like I told you before, I’m thinking it’s a cryptid.”
“A cryptid. Meaning, you have no clue.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Bryn. I have an idea. If your mom found an egg, other people might have found some, too. Maybe somebody knows what they are, but they might not want to put it out there in the open. It could be illegal.”
Right. The black market. Like Taj was talking about.
“But I’ve got a full-out yen to know what this thing is,” Sasha said. “It’s creeping me out. I mean, does anybody know these things exist? Or is your guy, like, flagrantly from Mars? I want to know. Don’t you?”
A tingling in my mind. The critter had tipped up his head, was studying me. Kenning. I looked down into those bright green eyes, searching for something, some clue to what bound us together.
Heck yeah, I wanted to know. I nodded.
“Okay, then,” Sasha said. “’Cause I think I know someone who can help.”
We drove past the main part of town until we came to a street of buildings tagged with graffiti. Sasha pulled up in front of a dingy storefront. TATTOOS it said on the window. MUTANT, TRIBAL, TRADITIONAL.
This wasn’t one of those upscale salons like you saw near the university, boutiques with names like Body Electric and Ink Dreams. This place didn’t even have a name, unless you counted Tattoos.
Two ’tants came out as I watched. Eyes clouded with whitish ’tant contacts—cataract chic. Skwebbing like gills on their necks.
Radioactive Fish was blaring so loud it rattled my teeth, but I heard a buzzer go off as we stepped inside. From way back behind a beaded curtain door, someone yelled, “Just hold on a freaking minute!”
I smelled incense and, beneath it, a faint chemical odor. We wandered past a couple of wooden benches bolted to the floor, to a far wall papered with pictures of tattoos and skwebbing. Skwebbed fingers and skwebbed toes. Skwebbing from earlobes to neck. Neck skwebbing that looked like gills. Even underarm skwebbing, like flying squirrel wings.
It was ersatz, some kind of polymer. But you couldn’t just whip it in and out again, like earrings. It was stuck there, anchored to your real skin, until somebody cut it out.
How would you even put on a shirt if you had those wing-looking deals? I wondered. But I didn’t ask.
The whole ’tant phenom started with that spate of web-fingered, flipper-toed babies in Texas and Iowa a few years back. That, plus the cancer spike and the swarms. Basically, it’s an in-your-face protest at the raging geotox our parents and grandparents have stuck us with.
The music ramped down.
“Hey, Sasha.”
I turned to see him coming through the beaded curtain. Early to midtwenties, maybe. Skinny. Close-set eyes. Thin, stringy beard. He was kind of hard to look at because of the tattoos on his neck and arms—the ’tant kind, all crusty and skin cancery. He’d skwebbed his earlobes to his neck in long, pleated folds that ended in gill-like flaps.
“Hey, Gandalf. This is my friend Bryn I told you about.”
Who would name their kid Gandalf?
He put out a skwebbed hand. I shook it gingerly. We followed him down a hallway, past a row of curtained doorways, to a small, cluttered office. He scooted some cardboard boxes across the floor and stacked them, teetering, in a corner; he jammed a heap of papers and books onto a shelf next to boxes of packaged needles, bright plastic bottles of ink, and tubes of skwebbing polymer. Now at least there was room for us to stand.
Also on the shelves I saw something that looked like a dried-up toad, something that looked like part of an armadillo, and something I’d have sworn was a monkey skull.
Gandalf sat, woke up his computer, and swiveled around to face Sasha. “So where’s this thing?”
She looked pointedly at me. She’d asked me beforehand if I’d be willing to show him the egg. She’d told me he’d talked his way onto an encrypted black-market site. He surfed it out of curiosity but claimed he sometimes dropped clues to the police, if there was cruelty or something. She said he had environmental cred—a degree in environmental studies and a history of protesting with EcoFury.
But now I stalled. Could I trust him? “No one can know,” I said.
“I won’t tell a soul,” Gandalf said. “Scout’s honor.” He held up three fingers in a mock salute, then wiggled them around, showing off the skwebs.
Sasha slapped at his hand. “Cut it out, Gandalf. She means it.”
“Ouch! Jeez, Sasha, that hurt!” Gandalf cradled his hand.
“Promise,” Sasha said. “Hope to die.”
“Okay, I promise.” Sasha glared at him. “Hope to die,” he said. He made a face at her, then turned and smiled at me.
“Listen, he’s my cousin,” Sasha said. “I wasn’t going to tell you because it’s … well, whatever. I just wasn’t.”
Gandalf hung his head. “She’s ashamed of me,” he said. Messing with her. “She’s too smart for the rest of us. National Merit whatever.”
Sasha didn’t bite. “So I’ve known him forever. I even know his real name, don’t I, R—”
“Shut up!” Gandalf warned.
“—alph,” Sasha finished.
Ralph. That explained a lot.
Sasha grinned. “He won’t break his promise ’cause he knows I’d tell his big sister, and she’d frag his drive.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gandalf/Ralph said. “So, the thing?”
I slipped off my backpack. Pulled out the egg. Unwrapped it.
Gandalf’s face went still, but I heard his intake of breath. He reached out his hands; I gave him the egg. He rotated it one way and another under the gooseneck lamp on his desk. Fingered its fissures and bumps.
“Do you know what it is?” Sasha asked.
“I might,” he said.
“Well, what? A petrified egg of some kind, yes?”
He turned to me. “Where did you get it, can I ask?”
I hesitated, then shook my head. I didn’t want to tell him. Not yet.
“Need-to-know basis,” Sasha said.
Gandalf shrugged. “Okay, I can respect that.” He turned it once more in his hands before he gave it back to me, then spun around to his computer and started tapping at the keys.
“What kind of egg?” Sasha asked.
He didn’t answer. Kept tapping.
“Damn it, Ralph! I hate when you do this—when you know something I don’t and you have to milk your little drama to the bitter end.”
Gandalf grinned at me and rolled his eyes. He typed a password in a rectangular box and waited as the screen went black. Another box popped up. He typed a second password, longer this time. Waiting. Finally, a complicated graphic came up on the screen—of animals, spaceships, da Vinci–looking sketches. He clicked on the eye of an echidna or something, which opened up a page with numbers swimming across it. He clicked on a number. The site opened up on an auction-like format.
Wow. That was some serious encryption. I bent down to see better. Yeah, it was an auction, all right, but this wasn’t toaster ovens and minivacs.
Strange Rock with Embedded Manmade-Like Part
: Of Alien Origin?
Lizard Skeleton Reptile Skull Bone Taxidermy.
Griffin Claw 3 ⅛ Inches, Real Taxidermy.
“Yeah, right,” Sasha said. “I’ll just bet it’s real.”
“Wait,” Gandalf said. Scrolled on down the site.
Fossil Baltic Amber Wasp Inclusion.
Walking Cane Pure Unicorn Ivory, Authentic.
“Right, uh-huh,” Sasha said.
Powdered Black Rhino Horn, Aphrodisiac Properties.
“Whoa, is that ever illegal,” Sasha said.
Gandalf shrugged. “Interesting, though, huh?”
More like scary, I thought.
Scrolling, again. Fossil Dinosaur Finger Bone Hell Creek.
Real Human Shrunken Head Papua New Guinea.
Shrunken head? Sasha and I looked at each other. Jeez.
Scrolling. Jurassic Archaeopteryx Skeleton Authentic.
Coprolite Sauropod Dinosaur.
“What’s coprolite?” Sasha asked.
“Fossilized crap. Oh, here we go.” Gandalf pointed at the screen.
Fossilized Hadrosaurus Egg.
Fossilized Raptor Dinosaur Egg.
He clicked on the pictures of each one. The Hadrosaurus egg had a lot of tiny cracks in a random, crinkly pattern. The raptor egg was capsule-shaped, with a bumpy texture.
“I don’t think that’s it, either one,” I said.
“Wait a minute, what about …” Gandalf clicked through more screens. Pulled up a picture of another egg.
And there it was. Exactly.
“What’s it say?” I asked.
He scrolled down. “Nine inches across and six inches deep. Ovoid. Alaskan provenance. Kenai.”
Okay, that would fit.
“But what kind is it?” Sasha asked.
Gandalf scrolled up. Sasha and I leaned in closer: Petrified Dragon Egg.
“What the—” Sasha said.
“Like, Komodo dragon?” I asked. “Chinese water dragon? Or …”
“Doesn’t say,” Gandalf said. “Just ‘dragon.’ Wait a minute, though. Let’s try something.” He clicked a few times and the screen morphed to display five things: the griffin claw, the unicorn cane, and the three fossilized eggs.
Bidding on the griffin claw was up to $24.95. The unicorn cane, $75. The Hadrosaurus egg was up to $2,500; the raptor, $3,800. On the so-called dragon egg, though, bidding stood at $200,000.
Two hundred grand?
For a couple of heartbeats, no one said anything. Then Gandalf quirked his eyebrows, turned to me. “What does that tell you?”
I thought about it. “The griffin and the unicorn are fake.”
“Right,” he said.
“The Hadrosaurus and the raptor are probably real.”
“Uh-huh. What about the dragon egg?”
“Somebody thinks it’s real,” I said.
Gandalf nodded. “Yup. And they also think it’s a dragon.”
19
AS IN DRAGON DRAGON
EUGENE, OREGON
Gandalf walked us to the car. “Hey,” he asked me, “how many of those things do you have?”
“Just the one.”
“Anything else of that nature? Fossils of any kind?”
“No, nothing,” I said.
“Can I ask where you got it?”
“Already asked and answered,” Sasha said. “You’re not thinking of narcing us out, are you, Ralph? Her mom’s a professor. They’re going through legal channels.”
“Then why didn’t her mom come today?”
“Would you choke? We’ve got it handled.”
Gandalf ignored her. “’Cause, Bryn, if you ever want to sell it … I know some people.”
“What!” Sasha stopped, stared at him. “What are you saying? You’re not involved with those puss-maggots, are you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve made a deal or two.”
“Are you serious? You’re an environmentalist. That’s poaching. It’s illegal.”
“It’s not hurting anything. These things are dead already.”
“Wait a minute,” Sasha said. “You’re off the parental dole, aren’t you? Aunt Alma’s cut you off.”
He hunched there on the sidewalk, like a scrawny baby buzzard. “I have a job,” he said. “But I have plans. So anyway,” he said, turning to me, “if you ever—”
“I can’t believe you, Ralph. I can’t—” She turned to me. “We’re getting out of here. Now.”
We climbed into the car. Sasha cranked up the engine, pulled into the street, and slammed her fist into the steering wheel. “Rat piss!” she said. “Toad suck! Phaging bastard whore!”
I turned back, but Gandalf wasn’t there anymore, not where he’d been. He was crossing the street behind us. Moving fast.
“I don’t believe it! We grew up together. I thought he’d be okay.” Sasha took in a deep breath, blew it out. “This whole little outing was a mistake. I hate to say it, but I don’t trust my own dear cousin. He is way too excited about that egg.”
We didn’t talk for a while. I stared out the window, watched the shops go by, watched the neighborhood segue from full-out seedy to college-town hippie-funk. There was a funny vibe in the car. Like one of those virtual fences for dogs where their collars zap them if they cross a certain line. There was something we weren’t saying. Not going there. Not crossing that fence line, either one of us.
Thing is, you wouldn’t pay two hundred grand for an egg from a Komodo dragon or a Chinese water dragon. At least, I didn’t think you would.
You’d have to be thinking dragon, as in dragon dragon. You’d have to be thinking wings. You’d have to be thinking fire.
Wouldn’t you?
There’s a lot of delusion out there, online. People who like scamming other people, and people who want to believe. Walking Cane Pure Unicorn Ivory. Griffin Claw. People were actually paying for that junk.
But Sasha and I, we’d seen some stuff other people hadn’t. We’d seen the critter himself, not just the petrified egg. And honestly? He was seismic weird. His feet, for one thing. They looked more like bird feet than reptile feet, with long, sharp, curving claws. I wanted to call them “talons.” I’d web-searched lots of lizards lately, and not a single one had feet like that. Then there were those patches on the critter’s back, where the skin/fur hadn’t come off. Right where wings would be, if he had them. And the burning smell. How would you explain that? Logically, I mean.
I wished I could shrug it off. Just lock it in a box called “impossible.” But I knew firsthand that some so-called impossible things are real.
“Hey,” Sasha said. “Isn’t that near your house?”
I looked where she was pointing. We’d come into my neighborhood now, houses with driveways and lawns. Up ahead, a thin column of blue-gray smoke twisted up into the sky.
It was very near our house. Maybe a little way behind it, or …
Dad’s studio.
Sasha pulled into the driveway. We jumped out and set off running. And there it was—billowing now—rising up from the shed roof.
Smoke.
I got there first, found the key on the ledge, threw open the door.
Inside, the air swirled with sooty smoke and ash. I could see the fire now, a patch of bright blue flame on the ceiling.
I felt my way along the shelves toward the critter’s box. He wasn’t there. Could he have climbed out, maybe, or fallen? I got down on my knees, groped under the shelves, behind the wheel, in the space between the refrigerator and the kiln.
Nothing.
I reached for him in the kenning way and felt a panicky little tingle.
Here. Someplace. But where?
I sat back on my heels. My eyes burned. “Do you see him?” I asked.
“No.”
A sudden flare of bluish light, directly overhead.
“Holy crap,” Sasha said.
It was the critter. Floating. Just floating in the air above us.
Breathing fire.
20
PULSE WORK
AN ISLAND IN THE KODIAK ARCHIPELAGO
Anna Eluska stood in the doorway of her cabin, gazing across the sea in the direction of the Kenai. Now it begins, she thought. She could make out the dark, indistinct shape of the boat that lurched toward the island through the heaving waves. So long between boats, this year. The storms had been bad, the sea white with churning froth all winter.
It wasn’t until Easter that her grandson Peter had been able to cross. To find the man whose name she had found on a card in the woman’s coat pocket. The man who was a professor at that university in Anchorage.
Would it be this man coming back to the island with Peter? This professor, Dr. Jones? Or would it be someone else? Some kinsman of the woman? Some friend?
Anna glanced back at the woman who lay sleeping on the bed. She had been here since autumn, broken in so many places after her fall. The woman’s breath came loud and slow and ragged. By the light of the oil lamp, Anna could see the chiseled gauntness of the woman’s cheekbones, the blue veins under translucent skin at her temples, the dark circles ringing her closed eyes. When Peter and his friends had brought her here, the woman’s pulse had been fainter than the wing beat of a moth. Anna had feared that she would die.
But she hadn’t. Not yet.
The woman’s bones had knitted, but her pulse still wasn’t beating true. After the healing teas and poultices Anna had made for her. After the hours of holding her in the warm steam of the banya. After the pulse work with Anna’s hands, practiced in the healing ways—feeling here, and then there, just feeling and feeling.
Still not quite balanced. Still not quite right.
Outside, the boat disappeared behind a wave that danced and smoked with sea froth. The boat reappeared, a little closer. And now the faint buzz of a motor threaded in among the other sounds—the cries of the cormorants, the whuff of the wind, the slow rasp of the woman’s breath.
What new energies would be entering the village? Anna wondered. Forces for harmony? Or for discord?
Anna gazed out to the west, toward the dim mountains across Shelikof Strait. Another storm, boiling in across the sky. Whoever came here on that boat, they wouldn’t be leaving soon.
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