When Women Were Dragons(76)

“Your mother?” she faltered. Her large, dragony eyes partially closed. She interlaced her talons together as though in prayer.

“Dead,” I said through my teeth.

The dragon sank her face into her paws, her talons pressing against her skull. She began to sob. Her tears exploded in puffs of steam the moment they hit the ground. Her body shook, and the ground vibrated through my feet. “When?” she asked without looking up.

“Long time.” I almost spat it. “It’ll be three years in June.”

“I should have known,” the dragon whimpered. “I should have felt it.”

“I agree,” I said, my voice all barbs and venom.

If that dragon was hoping for sympathy, she was crying in front of the wrong teenager. I reached down into the gravel border along the sidewalk and grabbed a good-sized rock. I chucked it at the dragon’s belly. It bounced off. She didn’t seem to notice.

“You left us!” I shouted at her. “You left my mother alone. You left all of us alone. You abandoned us, and for what?” My voice cracked, and I’m sure the neighbors could hear, but I decided not to care.

“She should have come with us.” My aunt’s dragon tears continued to stream, great boiling buckets from her elongated eyes that splattered on the walkway. Steam clouded the yard, massing into a thick, white cloud, offering us a modicum of privacy. “Maybe she would have lived. When I saw it was just you and Beatrice in that little apartment, I hoped . . . well. I hoped that she had followed us later.”

“She never would have left Beatrice and me alone. Never. Not in a thousand lifetimes. She loved us and cared for both of us. She hung on to every single day. My mother was more mother to my sister than you ever were. She was the only mother Beatrice ever knew.”

My aunt shifted her body, resting on her back haunches and uncurling her spine toward the sky. The undersides of her wings were red. Her needle-sharp teeth shone like gold. “That isn’t true,” she said. Her long eyes looked at me closely. I felt as though they could see all the way inside. “You’ve been her mother as well. I can smell her all over you. You have held her and fed her and loved her. Taught her right from wrong. Washed her hands and read her stories. Haven’t you? She’s yours, and you are hers.”

“Beatrice is my sister,” I said automatically.

“Poppycock,” my aunt said. “You may not be her mother. But you’re her mother. That’s just the fact.”

Sirens approached. They were getting closer. I looked behind me and saw a pair of eyes peeking around the edge of the curtain in one of the neighbors’ houses, squinting through the low cloud. Mrs. Knightly, if I remembered right. I never did like her.

“I must fly,” my aunt said. “I’ll be back. Tell Beatrice I’m coming.” She brought a taloned paw to a treacherous mouth and blew me a kiss. And then she launched into the sky, causing such a quake in the sidewalk I nearly lost my balance.

“DON’T BOTHER,” I yelled. “WE DON’T NEED YOU. WE DON’T WANT TO SEE YOUR FACE. WE ARE FINE ON OUR OWN.”

“WE’LL SEE,” my aunt yelled back as she skimmed over the tops of the trees. Her scales glinted and shimmered and shone. And then she was gone.



I sat on my father’s front steps for a long time. I knocked on the door and rang the bell. No one answered. The curtains were drawn. And the house seemed—sterile, somehow. Or not sterile, exactly—but in stasis. The house didn’t seem to breathe. No toys in the yard. No pictures taped in the windows. Nothing to indicate that children lived there.

I didn’t particularly want to talk to my stepmother. But I did find myself wanting to talk to someone.

Across the street, Mrs. Knightly continued to peek around the edge of her curtains. She was the lady who tattled on me if my knee socks were down and tattled on me if she saw me wipe my nose with the back of my hand and tattled on me when she saw me push a neighbor boy down after he made fun of Beatrice. I wasn’t sure of her opinion on dragons, but I certainly knew her opinion of me. It wouldn’t take long for her to phone my father at work. It wouldn’t take long for him to arrive.

Ten minutes, as it turned out.

He stopped on the walkway and dropped his briefcase on the ground.

I hadn’t seen him since that day we moved into the apartment. He seemed . . . it was hard to say. He was like a drawing that was partially erased. The lines of his body were smudged and faded. His hair was almost gone—had he been balding before? I couldn’t remember. His face was grey.

“Alexandra,” he said. His voice was fading too.

“It’s Alex,” I said. “Did you know—”

“When did you realize it was her?”

“Just now. She was sitting right there.” I pointed to the broken chair. “I saw something flying over the houses and I followed it here.”

He frowned. “You must not have seen the paper. There was a photograph. Of Marla. A week ago. They published a retraction and an apology the next day. Called it a hoax, which of course was nonsense. I knew her instantly. I don’t know how. It was blurry and distant, but there she was.” His gaze slid over to the broken remains of the chair and the spongy grass in a crater of melting snow. “So she came here, did she?” I nodded. He nodded back. “Makes sense. She liked it better here than her own sad house.”