20. Raising Baby
“We have to call him something else,” I told Marge, for the umpteenth time. “Baby is simply not a fit name for a dragon.”
“But Ed, he’s such a cutie pie,” she insisted, as she gently scratched our dragon’s tummy. He lay limply on his back across her lap as she sat on the sofa, his neck, tail and legs outstretched, his eyes shut and mouth open wide, showing huge fangs and a long, red, forked tongue. The enormous eagle-like reptilian talons that were his four feet lay open, but even in rest hinted of hideous power. The claws at the tips of his talons were as solid and sharp as steel spear points. He lay with the base of his neck over Marge’s lap, as that was the only part of his neck, back, or tail not covered with sharp spikes. The spikes of his back were shredding the four layers of canvas tarp that were hopelessly trying to protect the sofa, but that couldn’t be helped and didn’t much matter. Baby was family.
“Cutest dragon in Wisconsin,” Marge bragged.
“Only dragon in the world for centuries,” I noted. “We have it made. What could possibly go wrong?”
I sat relaxing on the other side of the room, where I had been dozing until a short time ago. I couldn’t yet tell if the dragon was awake or asleep, but his eyes were closed.
Baby was growing fast. In only six weeks since a wood sprite named John Smith gifted the dragon egg to me and it hatched, Baby had already become several feet longer than the sofa, and must have weighed at least four hundred pounds. “He’ll hardly fit inside the house by the end of summer vacation,” I noted, and the end of our vacation from our teaching jobs was only couple of weeks away.
“We’ve still got the garage,” Marge said.
And the woods out back, I was supposed to say next. We had been over all of this many times before, and I decided to save us time by skipping ahead a few steps. “Hiding him is only one problem, you know.”
“He likes the raw beef,” Marge said, moving us along quickly to discuss our second problem with Baby.
I nodded in agreement. Of course the big lizard liked it. We had tried dog food first, than upgraded to the higher protean of cat food, and finally to raw beef. He ate more of it every week. Currently Baby ate a bloody twenty pound chunk of cow every other day, at two bucks a pound. He swallowed it whole, such that the whole bloody mess, bones and all, moved visibly down his throat in moments, all forty dollars’ worth of it. At least he could have the decency to savor it a bit, I figured. “We’ll run out of money long before we run out of garage or woods.”
“We’ll think of something. We just need to enjoy him while we can.”
“Guess so,” I conceded, stumped, as always.
That’s how this daily conversation always ended.
Baby stretched, opened his eyes, lazily turned his head and looked at me quizzically with coal-black eyes. “Blurp,” he said, contentedly.
“He wants to go out and explore the woods out back,” I responded.
Marge smiled. “And how do you know that?”
I shrugged. “You know how.” It was the damnedest thing, but since the beginning there were times when I could sense exactly what Baby wanted. I figured that we had bonded somehow, when Baby left the egg and crawled to me. Even when we were separated by miles of distance I could often tell what the dragon was thinking about … which was usually food.
Worse, Baby could tell what I was thinking. Many times, the dragon anticipated where I was and what I was doing around the house. I had explained all of this to Marge a dozen times, but she still asked about it. “Spooky, isn’t it?” I noted.
Marge smiled. “Just remember which one of us you’re married to.”
“I’ll try. He’s the spiky, scaly, green one, right? Maybe with tinges of red and yellow? And eyes that change color?”
“Well, I can tell what he wants to do too, you know.” True, Marge usually knew what Baby wanted, even though direct mind to mind communications were reserved for me. She gave his tummy one more scratch. It didn’t seem likely that the lizard could feel much of her scratching, even though his relatively small, quarter-sized, diamond-hard mostly emerald-colored tummy scales, but he obviously enjoyed her attentions anyway.
Baby flexed his neck, lifting his spike-encrusted head close to Marge’s face, where a foot of red forked lizard tongue flicked out and gently licked her cheek, while his parting jaws gave us another glimpse of impossibly huge, sharp, white fangs.
Baby’s reptilian head was the size of a leopard’s, only longer, and with much bigger, toothier jaws. The often black eyes were bottomless pits that gave not a hint of reflected light, but still somehow provided a glimpse of what burned behind them: a keen alien will and intelligence that perhaps would have been alarming, had Marge and I not been the thing’s adoptive parents. Logically, Marge should have been terrified of the creature, but she merely smiled. Me, I could be afraid for him, but not of him. After all, I was his papa.
I stood up, signaling that I was ready to go.
Baby simultaneously raised and twisted his spike-studded tail and head, leveraging so that the whole of him rolled gracefully off of Marge and the couch and landed standing on all four clawed feet with a gentle thud, without even gouging Marge or the floor. He was thoughtful that way.
Rising up upon his tail and rear legs, and bending down a bit such that he and I were eye-to-eye, he repeated the message that he wanted to go outside. He could turn doorknobs himself, but lately he had been accidentally breaking them off. That was not surprising, as his strength seemed to be doubling weekly. He lifted up the front end of the Ford the other day, probably just to show off. But he already understood that breaking things tended to annoy his parents, so he tried to avoid destructive occurrences.
“OK,” I thought in return to him silently. Baby responded by trotting to the backdoor, thoughtfully doing it on the padded centers of his feet, instead of on his clawed talons, so that he didn’t dig more scrapes and holes into the floor.
“I better be prepared,” I told Marge, as I snatched up my hat for the coming hike. No need for mosquito and tick repellent; the bugs didn’t seem interested in Baby, or in me when Baby was with me. The water canteen and walking stick would prove useful to me though, so I grabbed them.
“While you’re gone, I’ll go on a quick shopping trip for more beef,” said Marge. “What should I get him at the library?”
“Renew the Moby Dick CD, he wants to hear that one again.” Baby emitted a slight growl that reminded me of his other library request. “And get him some more Shakespeare, for sure.” The big lizard was especially fond of Shakespeare.
“I don’t think they have any more Shakespeare CDs,” lamented Marge. “Should I get books instead?”
I hesitated. Baby could read to himself, but if we didn’t want another library book to be destroyed by his sharp claws, someone would have to turn the pages for him. Usually Marge got out of that chore by doing housework, and I ended up doing the page turning. It was a very boring job, but it was probably good for Baby to do his own reading, and the big lizard flashed me a wide-eyed pleading look that was obviously meant to garner sympathy. “I guess so,” I conceded, being a good parent.
“We spoil him,” Marge noted.
“Yah think?” I acknowledged sarcastically. “Probably because…” I began carelessly, before I caught myself. My eyes met with Marge’s. “It’s not your fault,” I blurted awkwardly, but the damage had already been done.
“Right, it’s an incurable medical condition and isn’t my fault,” Marge said without much conviction. “So it’s nobody’s fault, per say.”
I sighed. She was infertile, that was the long and short of it, though actually no medical cause had been isolated. She was attractive, intelligent, a wonderful person, and I loved her more than anything else in the universe, but nothing else mattered as much to her as this: she wanted to be a mother. Maybe even more than I wanted to be a father.
“Of course it’s nobody’s fault,” I agreed, as I exited the back door to
quickly end the painful discussion. “Blame Heisenberg or some other deceased scientist for God playing dice with body chemistry, if you need to blame somebody.” I scanned the area but saw nobody, so I mentally signaled Baby to join me outside.
“I’ll phone the adoption agencies again too,” Marge promised, before Baby gently pushed shut the door behind himself with his tail like a good dragon.
As we walked past my flower beds towards the woods I wondered, not for the first time, what harboring a dragon might do to our parent suitability profile rating at the adoption agency. We were trying to adopt a child. We quickly discovered that adopting a child is an awkward and lengthy process, even though with all the kids out there that needed parents it should be much easier.
We knew that we were making progress though, because the agencies recently said that we had a ‘good’ profile. As far as we could tell, that meant that we had a reasonable income, were in the right age range, and were absolute nobodies. No jail records, no newspaper exposés, no notoriety, no nothing. But no adoption so far, either. Such were the problems that I tried to leave behind at the house.
As he often did, the dragon led the way through our stone ruins in back of the yard before entering the forest. What they were the ruins of, I had no idea. They consisted of a forty-foot wide circle of seventeen huge rocks that must have weighed a couple tons each. The locals called it Devil’s Gate. Indians must have done it, they figured. It seemed to serve no practical purpose whatsoever, but Baby seemed to like it. I thought it was neat too; it’s what attracted me to this particular patch of Wisconsin in the first place.
As the dragon and entered the wonderful isolation of the forest, I tried to focus on interesting trees and ferns, but bigger issues still nagged at me.
“I can help,” said someone.
I looked all about in a panic, but saw and heard no one. Other people seldom visited our forest, and most animals that were able to had wisely cleared out of this part of the forest weeks ago to escape being eaten by the new green super-carnivore in the neighborhood. Not counting a couple of foolhardy squirrels and birds in the canopy overhead, there were only myself and Baby in the vicinity.
“But only if you wish it, of course,” added the voice.
It took another few moments for me to realize that I sensed words but no sound. The words simply entered my consciousness.
“Telepathy is the word you’re searching for,” Baby remarked telepathically.
“You’ve been reading the dictionary again,” I retorted out loud. “And my mind.”
“Of course.”
After some reflection telepathy seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to me. Baby could read, was obviously smart, and the two of us had some sort of mental connection. Up to this point we had exchanged feelings and simple, wordless awareness. Full-fledged telepathy was the obvious next step beyond mere empathy. “Why haven’t we communicated like this before?”
“There was no need. But I sense of late that you are deeply distressed.”
“You are perhaps the primary reason,” I thought. “Do you sense my silent words clearly?”
“Yes, I can read your conscious thoughts clearly and I know that I’m the most immediate reason for your distress. However, until I am larger and can competently fly, I am vulnerable. Hence I remain dependent upon you my Father, and upon Marge, my Mother.”
“True, we do consider you to be part of our family. I suspect there is some manipulation on your part involved?”
“Yes, but very little. I have somewhat dampened your natural fears and loathing of creatures reptilian, but that is all.”
“I thought so. That explains our sudden fondness for snakes, lizards, and turtles, even though we both used to be totally creeped-out by them. But I do believe that in balance our warm feelings for you are genuine enough.”
“Yet you seek other children. Children of your own species. I can understand that.”
“True. We’d really like to change diapers and that sort of thing. And now you say that you can help with that? How?”
“I would enjoy the companionship of a sibling. I could capture one for you.”
“Capture a child?” He had ‘said’ it with a straight face, but then again most of his facial expressions were totally expressionless to begin with.
“After I come into more of my powers, I can get you anything you want.”
“Very nice of you, but no, that would be wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Wrong. Bad. Not the right thing to do. Against the rules.”
“Wrong. Yes, I well understand the dictionary meaning of the term, but often have difficulty comprehending its applicability. The application seems somewhat arbitrary. Is it wrong like eating cats?”
“That’s it exactly.” A couple weeks earlier, Marge had remarked that lately she hadn’t seen the stray cat that used to hang out at our place. I confronted Baby and discovered that he had been eating anything short of Marge and myself that he could catch, including the cat. I hadn’t told Marge, of course, but I had given Baby a stern lecture and increased his beef feedings.
“You never adequately explained that rule,” said the dragon. “The cat was especially tasty. In fact, human concepts of rules and morality are rather difficult for me.”
“Those things are difficult for anyone to understand. Besides, you are only six weeks old.”
“Six weeks out of the egg, but sentient for several thousand years in the egg. Then of course, I also have ancestral memories of more than a hundred dragon generations to draw from. By use of such memories we dragons gradually mature mentally in the egg long before hatching.”
“Wow!” was all I could think to say. ‘Weird’ was another thought I had.
“In some respects, I am truly an infant, though an ancient infant; but that is rapidly changing.”
“Do you understand the problems that you present to Marge and me?”
“Not entirely. When I reach sufficient maturity I will simply seek out my own kind. That will end any practical inconvenience that I may present to you and Mom at present. Of course I will return to visit you whenever I can.”
“That will have to do, I suppose, though we’ll of course miss you. Three questions. When will you be mature enough to leave us?”
“In only two hundred to three hundred Earth days, given adequate feeding. Beef is adequate, though the amount will of course need to increase as I grow larger.”
“Swell,” I said. Two hundred days did seem to be an amazingly short time for an infant to mature. On the other hand, it wasn’t anywhere near short enough, from a budget point of view. “How big will you be at that point?”
“Still quite small, from a dragon perspective. Seventy to ninety feet long, approximately.”
“Great,” I remarked. Being a science teacher, I did some quick math. If Baby’s current proportions held up, he would weigh over a hundred tons when mature enough to leave us. Until he totally outgrew it, he could wear our single-car, single-dragon garage like a turtle shell. I tried to envision our garage walking about, with huge clawed feet shuffling along underneath, a monstrous neck and horned head sticking out the front, and a long spiked tail trailing behind. Though technically he would still be hiding in the garage, he would probably be sort of conspicuous.
Worse, if Baby’s appetite held up he would need to eat several tons of meat every day or so when he was grown enough to leave, the equivalent perhaps of a small herd of cattle or two or three elephants. How many burgers was that? Eighty thousand rare quarter-pounders at each sitting? That would be millions of dollars worth of meat between now and then! Wonderful.
I would also likely have to redo our stone driveway several times over, at several thousand dollars a pop. Baby insisted on lying stretched over the driveway for a couple of hours every night. At first I thought he was simply absorbing heat from the sun-warmed stones but he was also eating the driveway. Somehow he selectively absorbed minerals from the stones th
rough his skin, decimating them. Growing patches of my driveway were now crumbling sand.
“Food will be a problem?”
The big lizard was certainly perceptive. “Very true,” I agreed. “We’ll need to work on that one for sure.”
“What is your third question, Father?”
He had probably read all of it in my mind already, and was simply being courteous. “Where do you plan to find others of your own kind? Maybe we could take you to them early? Like this afternoon?”
“Not recommended. I would be too small to defend myself from older males. As to where they are, I would have thought it obvious. From my ancestral memories of past dragon generations, it is evident that there are several dragon warrens on each continent of Earth. From what I have seen of how advanced human civilization has become, you must surely know precisely where the dragon warrens are located. Simply show me a map with their locations, and I’ll fly to the nearest warren when I am ready.”
Dragon warrens? Suddenly Smith’s words came back to me. What had he said? That Baby was from Earth’s past? That dragons were extinct in this time frame?
We had been walking deeper into the forest, but now Baby came to a dead stop. “Extinct!” His eyes looked deep into mine as he tried to read my mind again for some shred of hope, but through my head ran a jumble of fairy tales and facts about dinosaur extinction. My confused thoughts probably weren’t very assuring.
The conclusion the Baby reached must have been devastating to him. He was the only real dragon that I knew of; that anyone knew of for hundreds of years, if ever. Baby’s eyes blazed red as he raised his head to the sky. Out of his mouth spewed a twenty foot column of bright red flame and a horrible, piercing, screaming roar that sounded to me like a mix between a sick lion and a giant vacuum sweeper.
After a few minutes of that, Baby sagged like a partly deflated balloon as he and I walked slowly through the forest, circling aimlessly for a couple of hours before finally heading back towards the house.
We didn’t communicate much more. I didn’t know what to say. What do you tell someone who has just learned that they are the last remaining member of their species? When I did say anything, Baby wouldn’t answer me, but I could sense that he was angry, confused, and feeling helpless. What’s more, due perhaps in part to our mental connection, I felt exactly the same way.
Marge was back from the market and library already when we finally returned to the house, and she presented a huge slab of raw meat to our dragon friend as we entered the back door. Baby hadn’t eaten in two days and should have immediately gulped it down. Instead, with a whimper he dragged himself past her and the beef and made for the living room.
“What’s wrong with Baby?” she asked, worried, as we followed him.
“He’s very upset,” I explained rather dismissively. “I think that we want to be alone for awhile.”
“We want to?” she asked. “We? What’s wrong with you?”
“Did I say we?” I asked. But yes, I was upset too, I suppose it was as plain as the frown on my face.
Baby squeezed behind the sofa, pushing it out several feet from the wall to create adequate room to curl up on the floor. When he lay down he couldn’t seem to get comfortable, but circled around again and again, like a dog might when fixing a spot in tall grass. The spikes and scales of Baby’s back shredded sofa and wallboard, until he finally settled down and was still. After a few moments of whimpering all that we could hear was slow, steady dragon breathing. The big lizard was sound asleep.
Totally exhausted and miserable, I plopped myself down on the sofa and shut my own eyes, determined to take a nap that would last forever.
“You too? What gives?” Marge felt my forehead for fever, but apparently detected none.
I was exhausted and depressed. I mumbled for her to simply leave us alone.
“Why are your words slurred?” Marge inquired. “Have you been into the brandy again? Both of you?”
Too many questions. I didn’t feel like telling her what had happened, I didn’t feel like doing anything but sleeping and forgetting my problems. I had never felt so tired in my life, and I knew that maybe things would be better again if I slept for a few centuries. I felt myself drift away.
Suddenly I was looking down from somewhere on high at a lush green valley. I felt comforted and secure, as though I had come home. I focused my attention on the valley floor far below, and as though I were looking through binoculars, I could see herds of deer and elk. The sight made me hungry, and I flapped my huge leathery wings, readying myself to take flight from the entrance of my cave and swoop down upon the yummy elk.
Wait a minute. Wings? Cave? Yummy elk? Something wasn’t quite right. Dimly, I thought that I heard a voice, a familiar human voice, calling my name again and again.
With a shock I woke up, feeling cold and wet, to find Marge standing over me holding an empty bucket that still dripped cold water onto my face. “What the hell!” I sputtered.
“Thank God, Ed!” Marge said, as she kissed my forehead. “I couldn’t wake you! I was so worried!”
“I was sleeping? So what gives?”
“That was my question after you returned from your walk and before you sacked out on the sofa. Remember?” She pulled me up into a sitting position. “Now talk!” It was an order, not a request.
I glanced behind the sofa where Baby was still curled up and in deep sleep. I sensed a powerful compulsion to sleep still emanating from the snoozing lizard. But dragons could sleep for eons in a dream world, I realized. That made sense for them; how else could a thinking being survive for thousands of years in an egg? I was obviously linked with Baby and being pulled into his sleep and comforting dreams. Not good!
I fought to stay awake with renewed determination, and was finally able to outline to Marge what had happened in the woods. “Hey, quit poking me,” I complained, after I had finished and was drifting back into sleep again.
“So you can hibernate with Baby for a couple of centuries while I pay off the mortgage myself? I don’t think so.” Marge poked me in the ribs again as my eyes drifted shut, hard enough to bruise me black and blue. “Now tell him what I tell you to say!”
“Hah? Why?”
“So that Baby hears it, dummy. Use your mental link with him. If he’s as smart as you say, you should be able to reason with him.”
“Hah?”
“Tell him that there is hope. Not all the dragons are gone. He’s alive so there have to be more dragons somewhere, and his Momma and Papa will help him find them.”
“We will?”
“Just say it all to Baby. Do it out-loud so that I know you’re doing it.”
I repeated it, or something like it, about ten times, with Marge periodically poking me and dumping more cold water on me. Gradually it became easier to stay awake, until finally when Marge tried to soak me with yet another bucket of water I diverted it behind me and onto Baby. Then I repeated Marge’s mantra one last time.
“Do you really believe there are more dragons?” Baby asked, as he raised his sad wet head to look me in the eyes.
“I honestly don’t know for sure,” I admitted, “but you are here and alive, so it’s likely that there are other dragons somewhere. I don’t think you should give up just because we don’t yet know where they might be.”
“And you and Mom will help me find them?”
I turned to Mom. “He just called you Mom again and he wants to know if we’ll really help him find the other dragons.”
“Of course we will.” She reached behind me to Baby and patted him affectionately on the head, while taking care not to cut herself on any jagged horns and spikes.
“You have doubts, Father,” stated Baby perceptively, as he returned his attention to me.
“Aside from the fact that we have no idea where or how to look, much of my doubt is just because it could take a lot of time and money,” I explained. “We’ll do our best, but I’m just not sure our best will be good
enough.”
“I’m sure we’ll do just fine,” insisted Marge.
“During my sleep I sensed that I have been detected by someone that needs my help,” said Baby.
“Who?” I asked silently, as I didn’t want to alarm Marge.
“I don’t know yet, Father,” he replied.
Four days later Baby had more answers as we went on our forest walk. “It is a young human girl with powers that lives in great fear.”
“Fear from what?”
“Her stepmother, the wicked witch.”
I didn’t believe in wicked witches, but then again I didn’t believe in sprites or dragons either.
“They are coming here soon, drawn by my growing powers and perhaps by the Gateway.”
“Gateway? You mean that circle of rocks in the backyard?”
“Yes.”
“That’s really a gateway? A gateway to where?”
“I don’t know yet, though as I mature further I’ll gain access to that knowledge. But it evidently attracts entities with powers, including dragons and perhaps witches.”
Maybe it also helped explain why a sprite named John Smith vacationed next-door to us. And why he liked our backyard so much.
In the coming days Baby spent most of his time in the forest by himself, romping about and munching on squirrels and other plump small game. Meanwhile, I continued to worry about our growing Dragon problems. Baby’s beef meals were up to 25 pounds of beef every other day. I had begun to think of local small furry creatures in terms of their being worth two bucks a pound in reduced beef rations.
The school year started at last, and Marge and I resumed teaching school. Marge had it easy teaching innocent little kindergarteners, while I was stuck with teaching middle-school science to hellions with erupting hormones. Meanwhile Baby was up to over eight hundred pounds and starting to grow wings. Marge and I were more broke than ever and our adoption efforts were still on hold. Oh, and Marge informed me that we had new neighbors. A woman and child had moved into the old Thornhill farm up the road.
One of my science classes included an eight year old protégé. Laurie Krantz was her name. A cute little blonde kid. Her classmates were 6 years older but she was obviously smarter than anyone else in the class, including me.
“You have power,” she told me after class one day, as nonchalantly as if she were describing the color of my shoes.
“Power? What do you mean?”
“My foster mother and I will be coming to your house someday soon, to find its source. I wanted to warn you.”
“Source?”
“The being that you have living in your house and garage and woods. She can’t see it; her vision is being blocked by it somehow. She wants to try to scry your secret source from close up, so we’ll probably visit your home. She wants to have the source for herself.”
It was like a blow to the stomach. Baby! She was talking about Baby!
“Be careful of her; she is pure evil. That is my warning.”
“Who is evil?”
“My foster mother is an evil witch, as I’ve told your friend. Please don’t tell her about the warnings that I’ve given to you and to him. She would hurt me. She’s done it before.”
The thought of anyone abusing this small child was incredibly repugnant. “Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But if you do have problems with an abusive parent I can certainly get you help.”
“No, don’t even try to help me, people who do that just end up dead. She used my abilities to find your friend, but scrying is her specialty. She watches me through her scrying most of the time, and sometimes resides within me, but she isn’t with me right now because she gets very tired sometimes from trying to scry your friend.”
“She gets tired doing what, exactly? What do you mean when you say scry?”
“Witch stuff. She tries to see him and get into his mind. I have to go now,” she said, as she abruptly turned and quickly walked away.
She looked back at me as she went out the door and flashed me a pixie smile.
I was of course totally freaked out. I kept my eyes open for Laurie for the rest of the school day, but I didn’t see her again. As I drove home, I looked for Laurie and/or her evil foster witch, but again drew a blank. What did an evil step-witch look like, anyway?
“My day went fine; how was your first day back in the saddle?” Marge asked me later, after she gave me a welcome home kiss.
I didn’t want to worry her. I decided not to tell her about Laurie and the wicked foster witch business. “I’ve got them all sitting on the edges of their seats,” I dead-panned. “My classes are experiencing a thrill a minute. They ignore their raging hormones and focus entirely on science.”
“Tough one, was it?”
“I’m totally doomed. How are things on the Baby front? Where is the big green guy? We have to talk.”
“No idea. You have the mind link with him; you tell me.”
I closed my eyes, and pictured Baby in my mind, and thought “come home Baby,” a few times.
“I’m coming,” the dragon finally replied.
Ten minutes later the lizard stepped through the back door and kitchen, and into the living room. I had replaced round knobs on the back door with a handle-sort of latch, so that Baby could come and go without human help and without breaking any more doors. Only problem was, he could barely squeeze through the doorway anymore. The next step would obviously be to get double-doors wide enough to admit grand pianos or baby dragons, but within a few weeks more Baby would have to stay entirely in the garage anyway, I reckoned. By then even if he could still squeeze into the house he’d be so heavy he’d crash through the floor into the basement.
“What’s that growing out of your back?” Marge asked Baby, as she greeted the big lizard with a hug and in return got licked in the face with a slimy red foot-long length of lizard tongue. “Is that the wings that Ed tells me about?”
“That’s them,” I confirmed.
“Blurp,” agreed Baby. He trotted into the living room and lay down contentedly on the three new jumbo-sized dog pads that Marge had sewn together. She was still working on a much bigger one for the garage, where Baby was already spending more and more of his time, and I was working on getting his cable HDTV out there. The lizard raised his head and looked me with red-pupiled eyes. “Who is Laurie?” he asked.
I told both Marge and Baby about Laurie.
“She has seen Baby then,” Marge concluded.
“I don’t think so,” I countered, “but she and her foster mom know something is up. And what exactly did she mean when she said that I have power?”
“We are connected, you and I,” Baby noted. “As a result you have been infused with some of my powers. Also, you had powers of your own to start with; I could sense it from the beginning.”
“What powers?” I protested. “I don’t have any powers!”
“You’ve been really good in the sack lately,” noted Marge. “Not that you weren’t OK before.”
“OK?” I objected.
“You are stronger now, Ed,” injected Baby, “and have magic powers also. Your powers will grow as mine grow.”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“Alright, better than OK then,” Marge responded.
“No, no, I’m talking about my magic powers,” I explained ineptly to Marge. This sort of confusion happened quite a lot lately, as a result of my sometimes carrying on simultaneous conversations with both Marge and Baby.
“Fragile male ego today, Eddy?” Marge asked. “OK then, you’re magical in the sack and always have been. You’re my magic macho power man. My big, bad, magic fella. There-there, is that better?”
I explained to her what Baby had told me.
“What magic powers does Ed have?” Marge asked Baby directly, after she stopped laughing. “What can he do that’s special? Besides what he does to me, I mean.”
“It’s up to you to find out,” Baby explained to me. “You
have to try things out for yourself and see what happens. Mom may even have some powers, as we are also very close.”
“That sounds totally ridiculous,” said Marge, after I had relayed Baby’s words to her, “but then not very long ago I would have said the very same thing about wood sprites and dragons.”
Baby pathed nothing more for the moment, but as Marge and I sat together on the sofa watching him, his body slowly levitated until he hung suspended in mid-air three feet off the floor. His eyes were white with red pupils, indicating that he was unusually pleased.
“Now that’s what I call magic!” I remarked.
“The wings will mostly be just for show,” Baby explained. “Flying is a mostly done with the mind, and I’m learning fast. I used it to catch squirrels today, but don’t tell Mom about the squirrels.” He drifted down to the floor again, where Marge gave him a congratulatory hug.
“I’m so proud of you!” she gushed. “Our little lizard is growing up!”
“Blurp,” agreed Baby contentedly, as she scratched under his chin. Even standing on four feet, he was taller than Marge or myself, I noticed.
Another week went by. Meanwhile Baby added another couple hundred pounds or so, including full-sized wings that he used mostly at night to help him fly God-knows where. I could sense where he went when I tried, but avoided doing that very often, since it only led to more worry about the big lizard, for often he was many miles away. Besides, often now he came home full, and when that happened we could skip his forty pound beef meal and save ourselves eighty bucks. He had to be killing deer or raiding nearby farms, I assumed, but I avoided asking questions or even thinking questions.
As to my having any sort of unusual powers besides telepathic communications with our dragon, I didn’t notice any. One day I tried flying by jumping off the roof of the Ford, but gravity easily won that silly trial. I was damn lucky not to have broken a leg.
Laurie attended my science class but didn’t overtly approach me again, though she still often stared at me with big, wide, sad, penetrating eyes. If those eyes allowed her to see others clearly, they also allowed others to see her. They revealed a deep, painful sadness, as though she suffered from some terrible trial. The ordeal of having an evil witch for a foster mom, I assumed.
At other times, her eyes seemed darker and deeper, as though someone else was inside her, someone unspeakably evil. A mocking sort of smirking smile accompanied the evil eyes. I assume at such times she essentially was the witch. Nothing else I could think of could account for such a transformation.
The other kids seemed to not quite know how to treat her, and so they mostly avoided her. She was both a little kid compared to them, and unusually weird, particularly when she was witch-possessed. When she was herself I tried to treat her the same as I treated her fellow students, but it was tough. Not only was she brilliant, but once you got past her fear and misery she was a good kid, at least when she wasn’t totally possessed by her evil witch of a foster mother.
The poor kid sure needed a break, but I wasn’t sure what to do to help her. I couldn’t very well tell my peers at the school or the police or social services that I suspected that Laurie was at times being possessed by her foster-witch. But increasingly, I felt compelled to somehow help her, if I could only figure out how.
Good or evil, you could tell simply by looking into her eyes that she was a force to be reckoned with. At least the other kids didn’t seem to pick on her, probably in part because she had the rotating innocent/evil thing going on.
As to looking for other dragons, I tried doing that on the internet and found a lot of games and weirdoes, but that’s about it. I began to worry even more about Marge, Baby and myself. I also increasingly worried about Laura.
It was with some trepidation that two weeks into the school year I found a personal note attached to one of Laurie’s homework assignments: “Be on guard,” is all that it said.
On guard? Against what? Holes in my socks? I kept a watchful eye for the rest of the school day, but nothing unusual happened. On top of that, it was Friday, so by the time I drove home I had convinced myself that everything would be alright until at least Monday. I was wrong.
First, as I entered the house the wind picked up, and I noticed a towering wall of dark clouds closing in. No storms were forecasted, but it looked like we would be getting one anyway. Spooky.
“Where is Baby?” Marge asked.
I focused on our scaly green friend, and found myself seeing through his eyes. He was evidently high up in a nearby tree, watching the road. It was an unusual thing for him to be doing, and I wondered what had captured his attention. Though it was still hours until dusk, the threatening storm-clouds were bringing early darkness, and there were a lot of leaves to see through and around, but through the wind-whipped leaves we could sense something alive moving in our direction on the road.
Then due to a flash of lightning and huge dragon eyes I/we suddenly saw them clearly. “We have company coming,” I warned Marge. “Our new neighbors.”
Marge dashed about the house like a mad-woman, straightening out pillows and rushing dirty dishes to the kitchen, while I calmly walked to the front door and opened it moments before they could ring the doorbell.
Thunderous lightning and a gust of damp chilled air accompanied the woman through the doorway, past me, and into the living room. Except for maybe air-brushed center-fold pseudo-women to be found in various publications that my wife hasn’t let me buy since I’ve been married, the witch was the most exotically beautiful woman I have ever seen. Blonde, blue eyed, and long legged, she must have been exuding pheromones by the ton.
Standing very small beside her, almost unnoticeable in her foster-mom’s voluptuous presence, was Laurie. I glimpsed her frightened little face, but my eyes were quickly drawn back to her foster-mom.
“You must be Edward Graham,” the woman drawled with a silky southern voice, as she reached out and shook my hand. Her touch was electric. “Laure says that you are her favorite teacher, and I can see why, you’re so handsome.”
“Uh, uh,” I mumbled dumbly. Blood flow had been diverted from my brain.
“I’m Lanandra Namtset, your new neighbor. Call me Lan.” Her voice was sweeter than honey.
“And I’m Marge Graham,” my wife announced, as she muscled her way around in front of me. “The handsome guy’s wife. Call me Mrs. Graham.”
“Of course you are,” the centerfold woman said dismissively, as her eyes stayed on me, but then shifted briefly to the living room floor, and to Baby’s dog pads. “You must have a rather large dog.”
“No, that’s mine,” I claimed. I walked to the middle of the room and plopped down onto Baby’s floor-pad, which had roughly the surface area of a king-sized bed. From my prone position I noted again that our visitor was wearing the shortest skirt I had ever seen.
“That looks so comfortable,” the sex goddess drawled, licking her lips suggestively, causing my heart to race yet faster. “How practical and sexy that looks. And how inventive, to feature dog beds in your decor.” The voice was so soothing, but she whipped that last part towards Marge, along with a smirk. How I noticed that was pure chance, for most of my attention was still focused on legs, but I did glance somewhat higher from time to time.
“Good place to bed dogs, I suppose,” she added, nodding towards Marge. “But then you also have an occult nexus point in your backyard. Do you find the stone circle interesting? Were you thinking of doing something with it?”
I was dimly aware that my wife said something, but I had no idea what it was, nor did I much care. Rather, my total focus was on Her, Her body, Her voice, and anything else about Her. She was a perfect sex goddess, and she obviously wanted me as much as I wanted Her!
“She beguiles you,” said Baby’s voice in my head. “Close your eyes. See directly with your mind.”
Close my eyes? Damn unlikely! I had never seen anyone so beautiful!
“Close them,” Baby insis
ted, “if only for a few moments. Then you can open them and see her more clearly.”
But I was already seeing her very clearly! Suddenly I seemed to be of two minds, my eyelids suddenly heavy as lead, wanting to close, though at the same time I wanted to do nothing but watch Her, and have Her join me on the dog pads, join in the biblical sense.
“Only for a few moments,” Baby repeated. ”Close them. Now.”
I allowed my eyes to close. After all, it would only be a few moments before I opened them again and looked upon curvy perfection. However, my train of thought immediately began to shift, and I felt disoriented, as if I was waking up from a dream.
“See her with your mind,” Baby prompted.
OK, but what the heck did that mean? I tried to focus on what was around me, without looking, and heard Marge and the visitor talking about something meaningless.
“Block out all sound,” suggested Baby.
I thought deeper and clearer before letting my mind again push outwards. I could sense Baby’s help, subtly guiding my efforts. I soon found that I was aware of things in a way I had never imagined before. The floor, the furniture, and other objects were like shadows. Marge and the visitors seemed to glow as if fluorescent, Marge and the girl in one shade, and Lan in another. Marge and the girl appeared bright and cheerful, while Lan was beginning to look dark and nasty.
Actually, Lan didn’t look like Lan anymore. To be more precise, she looked like two Lans. On the outside was the image of an impossibly perfect and beautiful seductress that was solid as a wisp of smoke, while inside was something old and wrinkled and hideous and in the shape of a putrid, silver haired old crone with blood-red eyes.
So nasty was the image that it jarred my eyes and ears open. I hoped that the ugly crone would disappear, but she didn’t.
“Enough games and small talk,” said the witch, her voice suddenly cold. “You know why I’m here. Where is your source of power? Give it to me now and I might let you both live.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Marge.
“I think you should leave now,” I stated sternly.
She looked at me with surprise, but soon sported a wicked smile. “You resist me, I see. But I will only leave here with the baby dragon, fool!”
Dragon! She said dragon!
“Yes! Now I know what your secret is!” she boasted. “I can smell reptile all through this house! The legendary dragon is the only reptile with such magic powers, and only a baby dragon could possibly fit into a house.” She turned on Laurie, her smile morphing into snarl. “You knew it was a baby dragon and didn’t tell me, or I’d have come for it sooner! You have delayed me again and again, girl! Now you’ll pay!”
The witch reached for Laurie with a bony hand but she dodged away and ran out the back door, chased by the cursing crone. Followed by Marge, I chased after them, towards the backyard and Devil’s Gate. A green glow lit op the far-backyard and I knew it was Baby, waiting for us to join him in the stone circle.
Just ahead of me in the backyard the witch paused and lifted a scrawny arm high. My momentum carried me past her as a brilliant bolt of lightning from the black storm clouds struck her. The impact of the lightning knocked me off my feet and rang my bell, but the grinning witch stood tall with eyes blazing red as she absorbed the lightning. The beautiful shell was completely gone and only the crone remained.
Marge was suddenly beside me, helping me up. Behind us little Laura stood trembling in fear. The three of us were between Baby and the witch, with me in front, facing the crone. I didn’t intend to let her get past me to reach Marge, Laura, or Baby.
“I don’t need any of you anymore,” the witch screamed. “Get out of my way!” A stream of blood-red fire erupted from her fingers and shot towards the three of us.
I turned and wrapped myself around Marge and pushed both of us directly in front of Laura as the flames hit. To our astonishment the flames died when they struck us. I felt a warm breeze on my back and that was all.
The witch was obviously astonished too, and gawked at us with her bulging witch eyes.
“Dragons are resistant to witches’ flame,” explained Baby, “and so are you and Mom.”
Meanwhile Laura ran on to the ancient circle of stones. Baby stood in the middle of the circle on his hind legs, a half-ton of glowing green dragon, his magnificent bat-like wings spread wide, his usually black eyes glowing bright green.
The watching witch screamed in frustration and rushed towards us. I was never inclined towards physical altercations. I had a fight with another kid in the third grade, but that was the full extent of my fighting experience. But these were desperate times. I figured to body-tackle the scrawny little crone before she reached us but she shot up and over Marge and me, out of our reach. Guess what! Even without brooms witches can fly.
So can dragons. Baby rose to match the elevation of the witch as she closed on him, with little Laura riding on the stretch of his back at the base of his neck where there were no spikes.
“It takes an adult dragon to use the Gate, dragon!” snarled the witch. “You don’t have the power yet to use it,” More bolts of lightning streamed from the black clouds to strike her, and she diverted that energy at the dragon in the form of witch’s flame.
Baby didn’t even flinch as cascades of red flame struck him and disappeared. “I do now, thanks to you, witch,” he pathed.
There was a bright flash of light and they were all gone: dragon, witch, and little girl.
Marge and I ran to the circle, calling to Baby and Laura, but they were gone. The black clouds quickly faded too, and sunshine returned.
Marge and I stood holding each other, crying. We were alone again.
“I’m pregnant,” Marge blubbered, between sobs.
“What?”
“Being with Baby cured any health problems, including my infertility. I went to the doctor and confirmed it.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
“But it won’t be the same without Baby,” she said tearfully.
Just then there was a loud popping sound and Baby and Laura reappeared at the center of the circle. Marge and I ran to give them joyful hugs, while being careful not to stab ourselves on dragon spikes and so-forth. I helped Laura slip off of baby and she and Marge soon stood sobbing and hugging each other.
“What the hell happened?” I asked the big lizard.
“Laura and the witch gave me enough energy to power the Gate. Coming back was more difficult, but we managed.”
“What happened to the witch?”
“The good news is, we teleported into an occupied dragon warren.”
“You found more dragons? That’s wonderful!”
“Grown up dragons that I needed to flee for now; they reacted violently to the intrusion of a juvenile. I’ll only use the Gate to return to them after I’m more fully grown. The bad news is, they didn’t like the witch either, and witches evidently have no defense against dragon fire. I absorbed enough dragon fire from the adults to power a return through the Gate, but the wicked witch is dead.”
“Well ding-dong!” I noted cheerfully. The four of us, soon to be five, stood hugging each other for a long time: me, Marge, a juvenile witch and dragon, and another young tax exemption on the way. Marge and I had our family, and now we would obviously live happily ever after. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
****
Return to Contents
About the Author and Pending Novels
In addition to short stories, I have four essentially completed novels that I plan to sell as modestly priced e-books over the next few months. These need to be tweaked and re-formatted, and that will take some time, as I have other high-priority personal projects that are currently on-going. Retirement is proving to be a lot of hard work. I am also compelled to continue work on several other novels that are in various stages of completion.
The four completed novels to be published near term are as follows:
<
br /> Blue Dawn Jay of Aves takes place on the distant planet Aves. This novel is a result of my fascination with birds. Aves is a ‘Goldilocks’ planet inhabited by birds, insects, trees, and other selected fauna and flora that outwardly appear to be perfect copies of Earth life forms, but are each twelve times greater in size in terms of linear dimensions. The planet is being colonized by Earth humans, with ensuing consequences that threaten both Aves birds and humans. The hero is an exceptional young blue jay named Blue Dawn Jay; the heroine is a human scientist.
The Shrinking Nuts Case began as a short story. Private detective Jake Simon is a crude, rude, flawed hero, with a beautiful, more intelligent assistant that aids him when he takes on a strange case involving magic-capable beings from a parallel universe. Many complications ensue, including a missing billionaire, mobsters, elves, and the small problem that Jake has been shrunk in height from six-foot-two to two-foot-six.
Mysteries of Goth Mountain began as a short story titled Cube. The novel involves ancient secrets kept hidden by the Goth family (including the hero Johnny Goth) and a reclusive Native American tribe. Characters introduced in the short story If Einstein Could Fly are featured.
Government Men is the most complex and ambitious work. The unlikely hero is an inept DoD civilian scientist who leads the effort to save Earth from impending doom. The large cast includes mythical, supernatural, scientific, and alien characters, including an unlikely reincarnation of the author himself. Perhaps more unusual, the novel is also included within itself.
Two of the novels involve dragons, two involve unicorns, three involve space aliens, three involve magic or paranormal capabilities, all include love stories, and one includes a talking cat.
Gary J. Davies, Mechanicsville, Maryland, October 2013
****
There Goes the Neighborhood Page 22
