"They" — and furthermore who the hell was they? — "feel that we who . . . live here, or who have been at Smokehill a long time, may have grown negligent through familiarity."

I didn't dare say what I was thinking: Do they think I might need rescuing? Because it had occurred to me that Dad didn't merely sound like he was assuming there might be someone monitoring our two-ways. He sounded like there was someone in the room with him, listening intently to every word.

"Your . . . youth has also been a source of concern."

"Oh," I said. It probably wasn't the moment to remind him that I had turned seventeen, which probably wasn't that much protection anyway.

After another pause Dad said, "Jake. Be careful. Be as careful as you possibly can."

I almost laughed but I was too scared. Be careful about what. "I will."

"I'll talk to you tonight," said Dad, and the two-way went dead.

I'd spent the last two years so paranoid that my brain went into killer overdrive like Dr. Frankenstein closing the circuit when the lightning storm struck his tower. And I was probably moving like Boris Karloff when I walked away from the table where the two-way sat. And that was exactly the problem: I was freaked, all right, but I couldn't think of anything intelligent to do about it. Sure, I could round Lois up and make a dash for it, but a dash where?

Even in the middle of summer you don't want to pack into Smokehill without knowing where you're going and what you're going to do when you get there. Even supposing I took the rifle with me on the assumption I could use it to feed us. You can get sudden, savage, dangerous storms any time of year in Smokehill, including midsummer — we'd had a Ranger concussed by a fist-sized hailstone once when I was a kid, and another one nearly drowned in a flash flood only a few years ago, and as I keep saying our Rangers are good — and Westcamp was the last, the farthest into nowhere, of the human-built-and-maintained full-service generator-op shelters in Smokehill. Although the cave network all over Smokehill would probably make any number of Neanderthal tribes delirious with joy I was a spoiled modern human and while a cave was better than nothing — especially, say, with lightning stabbing around looking for Boris Karloff I liked the four walls, roof, and closing door system. Cougars and bears lived in caves, and I didn't want to disturb any tenants either.

And what happened if Gulp followed us? Or if she decided I was running away from her? Trying to take Lois away from her?

Also I didn't think there was any way to wipe out the signs that I had been here at Westcamp with some, um, large animal. Even if it took them a while to figure out that if it was this big hairy secret it just had to be a baby dragon — and they'd have to be great creative thinkers to get that far, and I don't think they'd have been helped much by what there was to look at. Lois wasn't shedding yet and baby dragon dung doesn't look like anything we're trained to look for when we're trying (or pretending) to track dragon movements (especially a baby dragon fed on canned hash, rabbit soup, and venison stew). Still, whatever it was, was pretty good-sized and strange, and if they came looking for mc and I wasn't there, and there were signs of a large strange animal having been here with me. . .

No. It was worse than that. A lot worse. Because there were clear signs of Gulp's having visited the meadow — repeatedly, if they had any idea how to read signs — and while she was actually amazingly discreet about bodily functions there's no way to disguise that something the size of a dragon has been around a lot over a short space of time and in a constricted area — for example sure dragon dung disintegrates fast, but the ash sticks around a while longer, and dragon-dung ash is identifiable from other kinds. Dragons also scrape their big selves across the ground in open areas and scratch themselves on boulders as well as trees and take the occasional munch of leaves very high up too. (Do top leaves taste better? Or do dragons do it because they can?) Not to mention standard scale-shedding. Gulp did all these things. It was pretty amazing actually watching, instead of reading about it in a book, like checking off stuff on a list or something. I kept wanting someone to talk to about it. (And I had some imaginary conversations with Old Pete. And Mom of course. And Martha.) And Gulp spent probably more than the usual amount of time scraping along on her belly, to make herself small for us.

The only thing I could think of to do that might work had the drawback of being deranged and impossible. I had to convince Gulp to take Lois away with her — and convince Lois to go. I felt my heart break — crack! snap! — but I was now so preoccupied with Lois' safety I barely noticed. Or maybe if my plan had seemed more plausible I would have been more miserable about it.

The small rock in my head was rolling around thudding into things, which is to say that Lois was worried because she knew I was worried. I looked down at her. The rock stopped, got hollow on top, and began to teeter back and forth, which meant that she was suggesting that I sit down and let her get in my lap (oof ) for a while, for mutual comfort and support. I sat down, on the floor beside the table where the two-way stood (suddenly it looked like some malign alien thing glaring at us), with the door still open from where we'd been playing outside while I waited for morning check-in time. It was a beautiful day, with the sky going on forever in all directions but in a friendly way, and the trees with Smokehill's signature spires and accordions of stone sticking up through them, stretching almost as far as the sky.

I put my arms around Lois (this was getting harder and harder) and she started to hum one of her soothing hums. It sounded like a lullaby. To be more precise it sounded a lot like one of the Arkhola lullabies I sang to her when I first noticed that she was trying to mimic human speech. I sang that one because the melody only had about four notes in it which is about the limit of my capability. Or Lois', although she was probably mimicking my singing ability too.

I sat there listening to her and thinking how Gulp had been almost completely silent around us, after that more-than-terrifying initial roar, and I wondered all over again if that's because dragons, or grown-up dragons, usually are silent, or whether she was still trying not to scare us (after that more-than-terrifying roar). Even at a whisper, the voice out of something that size was probably pretty extreme. Or was it that living with humans had taught Lois to make mouth noise which was now so totally ingrained a habit that like all the other ways she was growing up wrong, it was going to be one of the reasons Lois never fit in with other dragons, despite Gulp's best efforts (maybe Gulp was as dragons go soppy and sentimental and any other dragon would know better than to try) and maybe dragon culture or dragon safety or something required silence and . . .

It took several minutes for it to occur to me that Lois had asked me to sit down and let her get in my lap, and that I'd done it and hadn't thought twice about it. Or that she was humming a recognizable human melody (in fact she carried the tune a lot better than I did) — and I had recognized it.

A lot had happened in the last month.

So maybe my plan wasn't totally impossible and deranged.

Gently I dumped Lois back out of my lap again, and for some reason picked up the two-way too and clipped it on my belt. Usually I left it at the cabin, but it was some kind of token that morning — or my only source of breaking news. Then I led her to the meadow. Dad hadn't said that anyone was coming to rescue me. Would he know? Would they tell him? Would they let him tell — warn — me? What kind of warning would he have? How would they come? If they hiked in and they started now and they were in a hurry, I had maybe six days. But if they thought I needed rescuing, they might choose something else. The meadow would serve perfectly well as an emergency set-down for a helicopter.