Burn(2)

It flew over them.

He, thought Sarah. He flew over them. The only reason she didn’t think She was because her father had slipped when he first mentioned the hiring. “It’s not illegal,” he’d said, which Sarah knew, “but there’ll be trouble no matter what. We keep quiet until he’s already working and no one can stop him.”

Sarah was unsure what had happened in the intervening week to move so firmly from he to it.

Beyond the light of the gas station, the dragon remained a silhouette as it circled, but even so, Sarah was surprised by its size. Fifty feet from wing tip to wing tip, possibly sixty.

The dragon was small.

“Dad?” she said.

“Hush, now.”

They watched it fly over them once more, then take off again into the sky. This meeting place wasn’t so surprising, nor was the hour. Enough light and civilization to make the man feel safe, enough darkness and lack of other humans to make the dragon feel the same, what with everything her father had rightfully said about potential trouble. Even so, this dragon was clearly more cautious than most of its kind.

When it finally landed, she saw why. She also saw why it was so small.

“He’s blue,” she said, breaking several of the rules her father had set down.

“I won’t tell you to hush again,” he said, not turning around, for his eyes were only on the dragon now.

The dragon was blue. Or a blue, Sarah corrected herself, and of course, not actual blue but the blue of horses and cats, a dark silvery gray that tinged into blue in the right light. What he was not was the burnt blackish red of the Canadian dragons she’d occasionally seen working farms or flying over the mountains in the distance, making their trips to who knew where for who knew what purpose.

But a blue. A blue was Russian, at least originally, in heritage. They were very rare; Sarah had only seen them in books and was more than a little surprised she hadn’t heard any local rumors of this one. A Russian dragon was also troubling for other reasons, what with Khrushchev, the Premier of the Soviet Union, threatening to annihilate them pretty much every week these days. Dragons didn’t get involved in human politics, but having this dragon on their farm wasn’t going to make the Dewhursts any new friends either.

It had landed just outside the ring of light from the gas station sign, the ring of light Sarah and her father stood well inside. The ground hadn’t shaken when the dragon settled—a gingerly step to the dirt from the air as it stopped its glide—but it did shake as the dragon came forward now, its head and long neck angling down low, the claws at the end of its wings hooking into the ground at each step, those great wings flaring on either side, making itself look bigger, more threatening.

When it finally came into the light, she saw it only had one eye. The other was scarred over, indeed seemed to have rope-like stitching holding it shut. The surviving eye led the rest of its body toward them until the dragon stopped and inhaled two big gusts of breath. Sarah knew it would do this. Their noses were sharper than a bloodhound’s. It was rumored they could smell more than just odor, that they could smell your fear or if you were lying, but this was probably the same old wives’ tale about them being able to hypnotize you.

Probably.

“You are the man?” it said. The words rumbled from so deep in its chest that Sarah almost felt rather than heard them.

“Who else would I be?” her father replied, and Sarah was surprised to hear a buried note of fear there. The dragon’s eye narrowed in suspicion. It clearly didn’t understand her father’s answer, something her father saw as well. “I am the man,” he said.

The dragon looked him up and down, then cast its eye over Sarah.

“You will not speak to her,” her father said. “I only brought her as a witness, since that’s what you require.”

This was news to Sarah. A witness? Her father had made it seem like coming along had been her own irritating idea.

The dragon kept its head low but arched its neck, looking for all the world like a snake about to strike. It brought its nose close to her father, so close it could have eaten him in a single snap.

Though that rarely happened anymore.

“Payment,” it rumbled. A word, not a question.

“After,” her father said.

“Now,” said the dragon, spreading its wings.

“Or what? You’ll burn me?”

Another low rumble from the dragon’s chest, and Sarah panicked for a moment, wondering if her father had gone too far. This dragon had lost an eye. Perhaps it didn’t feel bound by the—

Then she realized it was laughing.

“Why does the dragon no longer kill man?” the dragon asked, a smile curling the ends of its mouth.

It was her father’s turn to be confused. “What?”

But the dragon answered its own question. “Society,” it said, and even in the nonhuman (and for that matter, non-Russian) accent, even in its lack of a soul, Sarah could hear the amused bitterness with which it spoke the single word. “Half,” the dragon said, negotiating now.

“After,” her father said.

“Half now.”

“One quarter now. Three quarters after.”

The dragon considered, and for a brief moment its eye was on Sarah again. It can’t hypnotize you, she reminded herself. He can’t do that.