Dragonhaven (7 page)

“I'm going to Northcamp, day after tomorrow,” said Billy. “If you want to come with me you can hike on from Northcamp alone and meet me back there the next day.”

Northcamp was one of the permanent camps, and it was five days' hike from the Institute, after the first day in a jeep as far as the jeep track went. I didn't get that far in very often—never in the last almost-three years. This was a really nice offer. “Great,” I said, trying to mean it and almost succeeding. “Thanks.”

Billy gave me a look that suggested that he knew what I was thinking, and it made me wonder if he felt about his troubles—whatever they were—not so much different from how I felt about mine. Maybe we both needed a dog.

 

But by the time we were ready to leave, I was up for it, maybe as much as I'd've been if I was only twelve and Mom was there to wave me off. Dad didn't—waving wasn't his style—besides, he was at his desk, like he was always at his desk. I don't mean that as bad as it sounds—we'd had breakfast together and he cross-examined me about what I was going to do in the park by myself and what to do if anything happened. We both knew that if I didn't know it all already he wouldn't be letting me go, but it was a ritual, like waving.

The answer to most of those if-anything-happens questions was “call Billy on the two-way, and stay put,” so it wasn't like it was as grisly as Dad's cross-examinations when they were on stuff like algebra and Latin. I suck at languages but Latin's the
worst.
Maybe “call Billy and stay put” should have made me feel more like a kid too, but it didn't. That's how everybody goes into the park, with a two-way, and someone—a Ranger—always there to listen on the other end. Even Billy didn't go anywhere without someone to check in with. Anyway Dad gave me a hug on the way to his desk and told me to come see him the minute I got back, which should be about two weeks from now. Of course Billy would make me call Dad every day while we were gone, but that was okay too.

Our jeeps were as beat-up and held together with string as everything else at the Institute but the best Land Rover in the world wouldn't get far in Smokehill. Katie drove us in with Martha, deeply envious, in the backseat with me (Eleanor didn't come: one of her few weaknesses is getting carsick, although riding in the back of a Smokehill jeep is more like walloped-by-tornado sick) and late afternoon they let us off by the Lightning Tree, which is one of our landmarks, and a lot of walking trails going all over the park start there. Another way to look at it is that it's maybe one of the (few) good things about never having any money—we couldn't afford to put in any more road even if we wanted to.

“Good luck,” Martha said quietly. Martha was
born
polite, it's like she knew she was going to have Eleanor as a little sister in less than six years and needed to get practicing being nice immediately. Martha is two and a half years younger than me so she was maybe close to her first solo, if she wanted to. I knew she was envying me right now. Maybe it was just the idea of getting away from Eleanor for two weeks.

Billy and I did about six more miles before we camped for the night, and that's good going, believe me. I slept like a log, and woke up as stiff as one too, from sleeping on the ground. I didn't do it enough. Billy's older than Dad, but he didn't creak out of his sleeping bag. I did.

Four days later I felt about four years older when we made it to Northcamp and I got to sleep in a bed again. The grim little bunk beds at all our permanent camps aren't very welcoming, but they look pretty good after five nights on the ground. So does the hot water after you get the generator going. Northcamp smelled funny the way any building does that's been shut up for too long—a little dusty, a little moldy, a little mousy—but we cranked open the windows and got a fire going in the woodstove (and the mice living in the kindling box were
not
happy, speaking of mousy) and it was pretty nice.

I admit I had a few butterflies in my stomach the next morning—in spite of Billy's cornmeal pancakes, which I swear must be the best in the world—but five days' camping with Billy had reminded me that I still knew how to do everything I needed to know how to do, and I was ready to go by sunup and I went. I wanted to cover some ground. I wanted to make as much of a thing of my first solo as possible, so they'd let me do it again. Which meant I had to make the right kind of thing of my first solo or they'd never let me do
anything
again. I wanted to come out here for weeks and study dragons. I wanted to come out here for weeks and find some dragons
to
study.

I had my radio and a compass (and a squirtgun and a flare), the weather was perfect, and I'd been drilled since I was tiny to recognize Rangers' marks. And while Northcamp was a long way into the park by my standards, the area was well used and well designated by the Rangers. There was no way I could get lost if I even half kept my head. There were no grizzlies around here, and you only had to think about wolves later on in bad winters. It was, in the old Institute joke, a walk in the park.

I really poured it on. I covered twenty miles that day. I knew it because I got to Pine Tor, which is nineteen and three-quarters miles from Northcamp, and another Ranger landmark. (I'd never seen it before except on the charts.) Yes, it was stupid of me, and even I knew it. Sure, I was walking on broken trail, but the emphasis is more on the “broken” than the “trail.” Northcamp is a long way from the Bonelands but it's still all pretty ankle-breaking going. And if I missed getting back to Northcamp next day because I was too tired and beat up, it would be a
huge
black mark against me, and all the grown-ups would give me lectures, especially Dad, and they'd all be
disappointed
, which is the worst thing grown-ups do to kids—can't they just yell at you and get it over with?—and it would be a long time till they let me go out alone again. Like maybe next century or when pigs fly, etc. But I
had
to go as fast and as far as I could. I'm not going to try to explain it because I can't. But I had to. I'd get back to Northcamp the next day somehow.

The thing that makes it seem the dumbest is what was I tearing over all that landscape
for
? I was so busy watching where to put my feet and for the next Rangers' mark that I barely looked around. I could have steamed by any number of dragons—or grizzlies—and never noticed. And our park is beautiful. Wild and strange and alien and not very friendly to humans, but very, very beautiful, if you aren't freaked out by it. Lots of people are. Some people find the Institute as much as they can handle—the Institute with its smell of dragon, and shed dragon scales on sale in the gift shop, and the five million acres out back sort of
looming
. Even as wilderness parks go, Smokehill is pretty uncivilized. It's supposed to be, but it can still kind of knock you over with it.

I didn't see anything that day but ordinary eastern Smokehill landscape, and little stuff like squirrels, and a few deer and wild sheep. But the weirdest thing is that by the time I got to Pine Tor I had this huge harrowing sense of
urgency
, instead of feeling good and tired and pleased with myself—and maybe deciding to go a last leisurely quarter-mile farther to make it twenty miles and then find a nice place to camp didn't register with me at all. I was so wired I couldn't stand still, despite how tired I was. I had to
keep going.
Where? What? Huh?

I have to say I'd made unbelievable time. That sounds like bragging but it's important for what happened. I got to Pine Tor and it was still afternoon. I stood there, panting, looking around, like I was looking for a Rangers' mark, except I'd already found the one that was there. I wasn't even very interested in the fact that Pine Tor itself looked just like Grace's—Billy's wife—drawing of it and so it was like I had seen it before. It was like I was waiting….

Waiting….

I knew what the smell was immediately, even though I'd never smelled it before. The wind was blowing away from me or I'd've smelled it a lot sooner. My head snapped around like a dog's and I set off toward it, like it was pulling me, like it was a rope around my neck being yanked. No, first I stopped and took a very close look at where I was. Pine Tor is big, and I needed to be able to find not just
it
again, but the right side of it. I was about to set off cross country, away from the Rangers' trail and the Rangers' marks—the thing I was above all expressly forbidden to do—and I had to be able to find my way back. Which proves that at least
some
of my brain cells were working.

It wasn't very far, and when I got there I was glad the wind was blowing away from me. The smell was overwhelming. But then everything about it was overwhelming. I can't tell you…and I'm not going to try. It'll be hard enough, even now, just telling a little.

It was a dead—or rather a dying—dragon. She lay there, bleeding, dying, nearly as big as Pine Tor. Stinking. And pathetic. And horrible. She wasn't dying for any good reason. She was dying because somebody—some poacher—some poacher in
Smokehill
—had killed her. If everything else hadn't been so overpowering that alone would have stopped me cold.

I was seeing my first dragon up close. And she was mutilated and dying.

She'd got him too, although it was too late for her. When I saw him—what was left of him—I threw up. It was completely automatic, like blinking or sneezing. He was way beyond horrible but he wasn't pathetic. I was glad he was dead. I was just sorry I'd seen him. It.

There were a couple of thoughts trying to go through my head as I stood there, gasping and shaking. (I was shaking so hard I could barely stand up, and suddenly my knapsack weighed so much and hung on my back so clumsily it was going to make me fall down.)
We don't have poachers at Smokehill.
The fence keeps most of them out; even little half-hearted attempts to breach it make a lot of alarms go off back at the Rangers' headquarters and we're allowed to call out a couple of National Guard helicopters if enough of those alarms go off in the same place. (Some other time I'll tell you about getting helicopters through the gate.) It's happened twice in my lifetime. No one has ever made it through or over the fence before a helicopter has got there—no one ever
had
. Occasionally someone manages to get through the gate, but the Rangers always find them before they do any damage—sometimes they're glad to be found. Even big-game-hunter-type major assho—idiots sometimes find Smokehill a little too much. I'd never heard of anyone killing a dragon in Smokehill—ever—and this wasn't the sort of thing Dad
wouldn't
have told me, and it was the sort of thing I'd asked. Nor, of course, would he have let me do my solo if there was any even vague rumor of poachers or big-game idiots planning to have a try.

The other thing that was in my head was how I knew she was female: because of her color. One of the few things we know about dragon births is that Mom turns an all-over red-vermilion-maroon-with-orange-bits during the process, and dragons are green-gold-brown-black mostly, with sometimes a little red or blue or orange but not much. Even the zoos had noticed the color change. Old Pete had taken very careful notes about his mom dragons, and he thought it was something to do with getting the fire lit in the babies' stomachs. It's as good a guess as any.

But that was why the poacher'd been able to get close to her, maybe. Dragons—even dragons—are probably a little more vulnerable when they're giving birth. Apparently this one hadn't had anyone else around to help her. I didn't know why. Old Pete thought a birthing mom always had a few midwives around.

You don't go near a dying dragon. They can fry you
after
they're dead. The reflex that makes chickens run around after their heads are cut off makes dragons cough fire. Quite a few people have died this way, including one zookeeper. I suppose I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about the fact that she was dying, and that her babies were going to die because they had no mother, and that she'd know that. I boomeranged into thinking about my own mother again. They wanted to tell us, when they found her, that she must have died instantly. Seems to me, if she really did fall down that cliff, she'd've had time to think about it that Dad and I were going to be really miserable without her.

How do I know what a mother dragon thinks or doesn't think? But it was just so
sad.
I couldn't bear it. I went up to her. Went up to her head, which was like nearly as big as a Ranger's cabin. She watched me coming. She
watched
me. I had to walk up most of the length of her body, so I had to walk past her babies, these little blobs that were baby dragons. They were born and everything. But they were already dead. So she was dying knowing her babies were already dead. I'd started to cry and I didn't even know it.

When I was standing next to her head I didn't know what to do. It was all way too unreal to want to like
pet
her—pet a dragon,
what
a not-good idea—and even though I'd sort of forgotten that she could still do to me what she'd done to the poacher, I didn't try to touch her. I just stood there like a moron. I nearly touched her after all though because I was still shaking so hard I could hardly stay on my feet. Balance yourself by leaning against a
dragon
, right. I crossed my arms over my front and reached under the opposite elbows so I could grab my knapsack straps with my hands like I was holding myself together. Maybe I was.