I didn't piss myself when the dragon raised its head and looked at me again, but I don't know why. Beyond fear, I suppose, but I couldn't have stood up or walked away if that had been what my life depended on, so it's a good thing it didn't. Lois, having made her point, turned her back on the big dragon and flounced back to me. The pressure in my head moved again, and this time it seemed to me there were two different pressures sort of emerging from a general background of thumping and whanging — like Nessie and one of her boyfriends rising out of the stormy water of the loch to swallow your boat, oh well at least you can stop bailing — the great big one that was trying to make my head explode, and the little one that was the tiny jerky knot thot had been there before. (I hadn't thought of it as tiny before thought. )

The great big one was ANGER ANGER ANGER but it was turning, changing, now more like a prism turning in bright light, but blinding bright light, so it hurt to look at it, and becoming SORROW SORROW SORROW The little one was more like, oh help eek eek eek oh help which I understood completely.

Uh-huh. I understood completely.

I'd never read anywhere that dragons are telepathic. Maybe anything the size of a dragon that has a good brain can put out big unmissable vibes, if you hang around one long enough, which most people don't. Old Pete's journals never mentioned headaches particularly though — I didn't think? If I got out of this alive I'd have to check. But Old Pete might not have mentioned it even if he had skull busters; mere human foibles didn't interest him.. . . And I knew Lois awfully well, in my clueless human way, even if it was good scientific practice not to make too many assumptions. Don't we read each other's human emotions all the time? Don't you often know what your dog is thinking? ("I wonder if I could pinch that chicken off the counter in the kitchen before he noticed?")

So I knew that Lois' flouncing was phony. She was still terrified — as was I — but she was making a much better show of it than I was. I tried to look back at the big dragon as it looked at me, but it wasn't only terror that made me prefer to look at Lois. Her last few steps were not flouncy at all, and she dragged herself over the ridge of my crossed legs as if they were a mountain, and collapsed exhausted in their circle. I didn't try to pull my shirt over her again (one of the seams had parted the last time, so it would have been easier), but I did put my arms around her, and then I did look back at the dragon. Hey, big dragon, yeah, we're a family. You can like it, or you can fry me. I wasn't sending the message in words. But I was putting out vibes as hard as I could.

The dragon looked at us for a while — with big shiny dragon eyes, only from where I was sitting, underneath the surface gleam these eyes were bottomless blackness. It felt like a very long while, but I don't think it was. And then, very slowly and carefully, it settled down, and farther down, butt end first, then front end, till its body was flat on the ground, curling its front legs under it rather like a cat, with its enormous snaky neck arched, and its nose (and fire-spouting mouth) still aimed at us. Finally it stretched its neck out on the ground too, but then at the very last minute it turned its head so the nose (and mouth) was aimed a little to one side of us, and tipped up slightly on the cheek. It rolled its only visible eye back toward us to check that we were paying proper attention (I at least was totally riveted), opened its mouth a crack, and gave a long, long, long sigh. There wasn't even any smoke. The vast gentle backdraft of its breath smelled rather like chili powder.

I had to name the big dragon too, because she kept coming back. Also because I was sure she was a she too, and you can't go on calling something that isn't an it, it. I had no better excuse for believing that she was a she than I did Lois, mind you. I never saw her pouch, any more than there were any findable slits, sacs, or bulges on Lois' rapidly expanding anatomy, which, since Lois went on liking having her tummy rubbed, I went on getting a good look at. (Every time I did this I thought of Martha.) But she just was a she, and the next step was that she had to have a name. So I named her Gulp, because that's how she made me feel, no matter how many times I saw her. Uh-oh. Big dragon's back. Gulp. The fact that I was stiff as a plank for most of a week after Lois knocked me down — I had not fallen well — didn't help my attitude any. Neither did the claw marks on my poor much-abused stomach.

A full-grown dragon can't sneak up on you gracefully but I think she was trying to be tactful. She landed at a distance — and no, the earth did not shake; pheasants make almost more of a thump, but the wind her wings made was pretty spectacular — and then sort of ambled toward us, and as soon as she got to the edge of our meadow — meadowy part of our meadow, I mean, as opposed to the boulder-field end — she went down on her belly, as small as she could make herself, which wasn't nearly small enough if you're asking me, but she gets points for trying. Rattly things, big dragons. Folding up her wings was a sort of loud rustle, clitterclatterclitter, even from the far end of the clearing, and folding her up made a soft slightly clanky thunking noise, although again she hit the ground with no more noise than a sheep lying down.

And for all I know the apparent attempt to be slow and gentle was as much for her benefit as ours — trying to relate to something like me, whose proportions are all wrong from a dragon perspective, maybe made her feel queasy, aside from what she might think of humans in general, which, at a guess, wasn't too positive either. And it made sense if you're something the size of a young hill hanging out with something the size of a fat wolfhound (skin problems, short bowlegs and peculiar skull development optional) you need to try and find some kind of compromise. Since her neck was half as long as the entire meadow (well nearly) she still had a lot of negotiating room.

And she was hot. Zowie, was she ever hot. But it's funny though, it wasn't as overwhelming as you might think. You know how the closer you get to a fire the hotter it gets and if you're cold and you're longing for the heat you're like always trying to decide how close you can get before your eyelashes singe and your cheeks flake off? She was more like an electric blanket turned on high. So grown-up dragons develop temperature control maybe — although I wasn't offering to rub her tummy. She was almost attractively hot, like a hot water bottle that never cooled off. Except that she was the size of 1,000,000,000,000 electric blankets and had teeth as long as my legs. Not to mention my graphic memory of her flamethrower.

The way she smelled was kind of the same. It was a monster smell to go with the monster critter but it wasn't a bad smell, exactly, even if you slightly felt that if you peeled it off the dragon somehow, and then it like fell on you, it would probably crush you just as thoroughly as if the dragon itself sat on you. It was intense. Of course the famous Smokehill dragon smell was always a lot stronger once you got into the park away from the Institute — but here was living fire-breathing proof that the famous Smokehill smell was definitely dragon.

I tried not to run to the other end of the meadow from wherever she was as soon as she arrived, but I somehow always found myself at the point farthest from her kind of soon after. It gave Lois lots of exercise galumphing between us. Ha. She didn't always come at the same time and she didn't always stay for very long, but she came every day after the first. Every day. Every day I got out of bed with a knot in my stomach and wondered if she'd be back. Gulp. And she always was. Gulp. We weren't always in the meadow when she arrived either but like being called into your dad's office to get yelled at — I mean when you know that's why you're going — I used to turn around from wherever we were and trudge back there, if we weren't there, to get it over with.