CHAPTER THREE

I was so tired I fell asleep leaning against a tree with the dragonlet belly up in one sleeve and a potful of broth propped between my legs. A weird sort of distant whoosh and a sudden splash of light woke both of us. I opened my eyes slowly, for a moment having no idea where I was or what was going on. The dragonlet was trying to turn itself over so it could dive back into my shirt. Absentmindedly I helped it while I looked at the big orange streak . . . in the sky . . . over the rocks and treetops . . . the old brain was trying to churn out some kind of recognition. . .

A flare. A Ranger's flare. And it would be Billy, wondering where I was, if I was in trouble. Knowing that I had to be in trouble, because I wasn't back at Northcamp when I should be. And probably even more worried because I hadn't radioed — I should have radioed in last night — I didn't even have mine turned on so I'd hear him trying to call me. I'd forgotten all about my radio — all about "radio Billy and stay put." That's how tired and crazy I was.

Everything is harder when you only have one hand and are using the other to keep a dragonlet in your shirt, even if you're busy talking to yourself and telling yourself how to do stuff. (Some of the time I seemed to be talking to Mom. Sometimes I seemed to be talking to the dead dragon, except she was alive. Sometimes they seemed to be there too, and to be talking back. Like I keep saying: tired and crazy.) Eventually I turned the backpack upside down and shook it hard, and everything fell out, including the two-way and my three flares. The twoway bounced and made a nasty clank when it hit the second time. Oh well. Flares are less breakable and perhaps easier to use one-handed. I managed to wedge one between two stones. Then I clutched the empty backpack over the dragonlet in case the flare freaked it out through my shirt, and yanked the flare open.

Rangers really are amazing. I guess I was on the right trail so it wasn't like he had to do a big search, and the moonlight was blazing bright again tonight in a clear sky, but even so. Billy was there by midnight. You try following an almost invisible path in bad country in the dark for nine or ten miles. I didn't even hear him coming, so I didn't have to worry about what big animal was about to eat me and the dragonlet, although getting eaten would have let me off another six months of every-thirty-minute feedings. Getting eaten was probably the nicer death. Or maybe I didn't hear him coming because I was talking again. I used to talk to my orphans at the zoo — most of us do ("Theeeeere now, isn't that gooooood?" and other inane remarks) — but not like this. I couldn't shut up. I think talking kept the whole gruesome situation at a little distance so I didn't quite finish going crazy. That and keeping myself awake, of course. Also if the dragonlet peeped why shouldn't I answer?

Billy was just suddenly at the edge of the firelight like we'd been together all along and he'd been gone briefly to have a pee or collect firewood or something. Maybe it's just I was crazy by then, but I looked up between spoon-tipping and spoon-tipping (and mutter and mutter) and said, "Oh, hello, Billy," and went back to the dragonlet. It fell asleep between one spoonful and the next, the way it usually did now, and although I woke it up when I turned it over to put it back in my shirt it peeped one burpy peep and instantly crashed again. Then I looked up at Billy who was still standing there like Cinderella's fairy godmother had turned him to stone.

Billy slid out of his backpack very, very carefully and set it down very, very carefully. I don't know if he was trying not to disturb the dragonlet or whether he thought I'd gone off my rocker and had to be treated gently. I noticed distantly that he was acting peculiar but couldn't put it together somehow. I'd also forgotten that I was covered in dried blood, birth slime, dragonlet pee and poop, wound salve, and who knows what else. So he may also have thought I was injured.

He squatted down slowly beside me. "Hey, Jake," he said. "What's that?"

I actually didn't know what he meant for a moment. "Uh-oh, you mean the dragonlet. It's a baby dragon. Oh!" — because I was beginning to remember that Billy being here was a kind of reentry into the real world. "There's a dead dragon . . . and a dead, uh, poacher, I guess . . . just beyond Pine Tor. The dragon had just given birth. All her babies were dead." I had to stop and swallow. "Except this one."

I feel a little better about being as crazy as I was, thinking about it now, because Billy didn't really register the poacher or the dead dragon — why I was sitting there with a dragonlet. It's not that he looked surprised or anything — Billy doesn't do surprise — but all he said, slowly and unbelievingly, was, "It's a dragon."

"Yeah," I said, coming back a little farther into the real world. "It doesn't look like one, does it? I suppose I only knew because they were — " I had to stop and swallow again. "It eats all the time. You can get a better look at it when it wakes up again. Which it will. Soon." I sighed. "I'm sorry I missed getting back tonight. I know I've blown it. But I'm . . . so tired."

Billy was silent for a minute. I can imagine, now, what he must have been thinking. Nobody had ever so much as seen a dragon giving birth. It was Old Pete who figured out, working backwards from seeing dog sized dragonlets for the first time, why the dragon whose pouch they fled for when they saw Old Pete for the first time had changed color for a few hours about a year ago. No one — no human, not even Old Pete — had ever seen just-born dragons — let alone kept one alive for thirty hours and counting. I was some kind of eco-naturalist hero. Except that what I'd done would also get me thrown in jail for the rest of my life if anyone found out about it . . . and get everyone who knew about it thrown in jail for the rest of their lives too. It might even shut down the Institute — or Smokehill itself. There were always a few people rumbling away about dragons being a danger to society, and writing to the money guys in Congress who kept Smokehill alive about child poverty and cures for cancer and other things more important (they think) than dragons.

Smokehill is actually really precarious, although I know that's kind of hard to get your brain around when you're looking at several million acres of rock and dirt — and that fence. The Bonelands — the deserty part — are probably their own best defense, but developers would love to get their hands on the prettier bits of Smokehill, and the government would love to get their hands on the money developers would pay them, if they could find a good excuse to break their promises to us — and there might be gold here after all. And now I might have provided the excuse the government wanted. My not having made it back to Northcamp by nightfall would have been the last thing Billy was thinking about at that moment.

It's no wonder I kept talking to myself. I wasn't keeping myself awake, I was drowning out thoughts like these.

And that's still leaving out the poacher. A dead human killed by a dragon.

On the other hand there'd be no way that Billy would ever have told me to let something that had the possibility of living die without a struggle, and he wouldn't care whether it was a dragon or a caterpillar, so that part of it was all right, as far as it went. But I had put everyone in deep deep trouble by what I'd done automatically — automatically as a result of having been Billy and the other Rangers' willing slave from the age of two. What I'd done was exactly what every Ranger would have done. And they'd have done it automatically too. Hey, our Rangers bring back orphaned or injured gray squirrels. They'd bring back rats, if we had rats. Well, we do, but our Rattus are Rattus maculatus and R. perobscurus, and endangered.