Burn(8)

“I merely bring a message,” the dragon said.

“I ain’t seen you round these parts,” Kelby said. “And I don’t like making the acquaintances of new dragons.”

“How interesting. The sentiment also applies to dragons about officers.”

Kelby drew his gun, but kept it pointed at the road.

“I said get your claw off my vehicle.”

The dragon seemed to smile again. How does he do that? Sarah wondered. There was the slight curl of a lip, obviously, but when a dragon smiled, it made you really realize how much of a smile was in the eyes. Or eye, in this case.

An eye it turned to Jason and Sarah. “Good mammals know when to return home,” the dragon said, as it lifted its claw, leaving not so much as a scratch in the deputy’s paint. Sarah didn’t need a second hint. She pushed Jason down the road in front of her, passing the dragon, who returned his attention to Deputy Kelby.

“A Russian dragon,” the deputy said. “In my town. With the way the world is today. You a Communist, claw?”

“I am a dragon,” the dragon said simply.

“You a threat to my country?”

“I do not know. Are you a threat to mine?” the dragon said, and again, even though Sarah couldn’t see his face now that she and Jason were heading fast to their respective farms, she could have sworn the dragon was still smiling.

Once she was sure Jason was as good as back at his own farm, Sarah cut through a line of trucks to make it to her own. Spectators from local farms, checking to see if the rumor was true that Gareth Dewhurst, of all people, had hired a blue. It was. The dragon was already back from whatever business it had exchanged with Deputy Kelby; she could see it in the field, burning trees and digging up stumps.

“Your daddy lost his mind?” one of them, Mr. McKeegan, said, but in a friendly way.

“Does that seem likely to you, Mr. McKeegan?”

“No,” Mr. McKeegan chuckled. “I don’t suppose it does.”

“This is going to cause trouble,” another one, Mr. Svoboda, said. He wasn’t friendly at all.

“That seems possible,” Sarah said politely, looking back to where Deputy Kelby was pulling in at the end of their long drive. A general groan went up among the farmers, each of whom started heading back to their trucks. Kelby was not a popular man.

Sarah was already in her bedroom by the time Deputy Kelby finally made it to the house. “What can I do for you, Deputy?” she heard her father say outside, loud and annoyed as he came from the barn, his voice not happy at all.

She didn’t try to eavesdrop. No time. Kelby was a jerk, but he was right, there were chores to do, always, every moment on a farm. She’d have to face her father if he finished before she did. She changed out of her old school clothes into dungarees and rubber boots that made her look like a temperamental boy, but it wasn’t like she had many options.

She went out the back of the house, grabbing the buckets she needed for the hogs and the chickens, filling them with feed from the granary, then heading over to the pens. The hogs were waiting for her. Three of them, all sows, Eleanor, Bess, and Mamie. They snuffled as she approached, greeting her in that way of hogs that sounded absolutely nothing like “oink.”

“Here you go, girls,” Sarah said, emptying feed into the trough. None of them were pregnant now. They’d sold the last batch of piglets to the butcher in the summer and were wondering how they were going to pay Mr. Svoboda to bring his boar around in a few months to get them pregnant again. Maybe that’s why he’d been so cross. She scratched each of them between the ears as they ate, which she knew they liked. “They’re just pigs,” her father always said. “Pigs who recognize me,” she never quite replied.

Chickens next. They didn’t recognize anyone, not even each other. She tried to love them, but honestly, she’d met smarter celery. “Get back,” she shouted, shooing them from the pen door. She eyed the rooster, who always thought she was a threat that needed attacking. She hadn’t bothered naming him, but the chickens were all Martha. All of them, collectively. The Marthas. It was just easier.

“That stupid man,” she heard her father say as he came around the house. She knew he’d seen her because that’s not what he would have said if he thought she couldn’t hear him. “Did he bother you?”

She kept scattering chicken feed. If she stopped, even for one second, the rooster would start kicking her boots. “He tried.”

“You stay away from him.”

She gasped at the injustice. “How am I supposed to walk home? Over the mountains?”

“None of your sass.”

“That’s what he said to Jason.”

Her father’s temper changed. “He go after Jason?”

“It was going to be bad, too, until you told the dragon to come fetch me.”

“Fetch you?” Her father looked surprised. “I didn’t tell it anything.”

Sarah stopped scattering feed. “Then why . . . ?”

They both looked out toward the far fields. The dragon was currently pulling a large boulder into the air, then flinging it with almost contemptuous ease into the larger forest. They actually felt the thud when it hit the ground.

“He probably shouldn’t be doing that,” her father muttered, and she noticed the dragon was back to a he. “The dragon said I’d sent him?”