We didn't tell anybody till it was all over — and we were back from our honeymoon. Dad's a JP so he could read the words, and Eric somehow got a license to do the blood test. Don't ask me how. Katie cried. Eleanor didn't. Eleanor said, "Great. I can have my room back." To Eleanor's tremendous credit, she'd let Martha and me drive her out of their cabin kind of a lot, so we could have the room — they shared a bedroom — a couple of hours in the afternoons sometimes, when Katie was on duty somewhere too so the house would be empty. It wasn't worth trying anywhere else at the Institute — and out at Farcamp and Nearcamp and Dragon Central privacy doesn't exist.

We had the wedding at Dragon Central. This was so great a piece of serendipity it made the whole wedding business even more . . . something. None of the adjectives will do here: great, wonderful, amazing, terrific. Maybe I should just say vvooooaativ like a dragon. But about twenty of us Smokehill lifers creeping off to do . . . something? No way somebody — some wrong body — wouldn't have noticed and maybe said something to some other wrong body and . . . but twenty of us lifers going to do some kind of private something at Dragon Central? Sure. Everyone goes all hushed and respectful and admiring and wishing they were a member of the magic circle too. It was . . . great. Plus having Bud and Gulp and Lois and some of the others there — watching the latest unintelligible human ritual.

I don't remember ever talking about a honey moon in Paris. Martha's always wanted to go to Paris and I've never wanted to go anywhere (no dragons). So we were going to get married . . . and then we were going to go to Paris. It was simple. I'd thought fine, I'll survive Paris because I'm going to be there with Martha, and she really wants to go, and I'll catch it from her. But I fell for Paris myself — loved it almost as much as Martha did. I kept thinking about being a freak who's barely been out of Smokehill, who's never even been on a plane before (two freaks, only Martha's always known the rest of the world existed, and she's visited her grandparents in Wisconsin a couple of times), and how Paris might have been Mars to us, and if this is what Mars is going to be like, well, those astronauts are going to have a great time when they get there, and I hope the lichen puts on a good welcome.

Dad's wedding present included five nights at this amazing hotel . . . all he'd said was that he'd "take care of it" . . . and I mean amazing. Reception was nearly as big as the Institute tourist hall and a lot grander, and our room was nearly big enough for dragons. There was one afternoon I'd actually gone out alone because Martha had admired this ring in a jeweler's window and — when did I ever go anywhere, right? — I hadn't bought her a ring although Katie had bought us plain gold wedding rings at a jeweler's in Cheyenne because she said (mildly outraged) that we had to have wedding rings and we didn't have to wear them after if we didn't want to. Rings hadn't occurred to me so then I thought that I hadn't done it properly (after all I'm Jake the Clueless Wonder Boy) so I was watching Martha fixedly like a dog watching you palming a dog biscuit, for any sign of wanting anything I could buy her in Paris, although it didn't have to be a ring. And there was this ring . . . so I went out to buy it, I can't remember what I told Martha I was doing.

When I got back she was just getting out of the bath and came out of the bathroom wrapped up to the chin in these huge pink towels so you couldn't see anything of her but feet and face, and her hair tied up on the top of her head all wet and curly, and she said something like, You know, Jake, you're doing really well here in Paris pretending not to miss your dragons every minute and only me to keep your attention . . . and she dropped the towels. I will remember that sight of her — the long golden afternoon light through the window blinds streaming over her like golden ribbons with every curve and hollow highlighted, and the white light from the chandelier in the bathroom haloing her from behind — I'll remember the picture she made when I'm on my deathbed and die happy. Oh yes, and she liked the ring. She wears it all the time. I'm still wearing the ring Katie bought.

It's true I was really glad to see my dragons again. Even after Paris. So we got back to Smokehill and then Dad released the news and everybody outside was pissed off that we hadn't let our wedding be turned into a circus, and we went off to Dragon Central till the uproar quieted down. And then we got a cabin of our own outside the Institute — a new one (and yes, our Rangers came and sang for us, and I sang, well "sang," a little bit too because Whiteoak has been teaching me some Arkhola), beyond the fortress, which has become office and official dragon-studying visitor space, although everyone calls it The Fortress — which was great, having our own house, although we still spent most of our time at Dragon Central and Nearcamp.

We pack in some human food and a change of clothing, but that's all. The dragon caves remain dragon. Which among other things means you have to be fit and strong enough to climb up and down the dragon "stairs." They're mostly okay at Nearcamp, but the ones at Dragon Central, while they aren't as bad as I'd thought when Gulp was transporting Lois and me, are still pretty hairy for us midgets, and at the foot of a few of the cliffs I still had to ask for some tactfully-placed boulders for scrambling. Once you get to the big main fireplace room there are always plenty of shed scales if you don't feel like sitting — or lying — on rock. And warm water in the sulfur pools.

And the answer to drafts in caverns full of dragons is to a dragon. Of course you have to choose one who'll remember not to roll over on you — and you say "please" first. Bud will uolirld :c wing a little and let you — well, Martha and me — sleep under that, which is pretty amazing. A dragon wingtip is surprisingly light, but you ran IM the hot blood whooshing through it. Like sleeping under a waterbe, l. The first time we got stranded by a blizzard it was maybe a little dark — I will never learn to love windowless underground caves and purple firelight — but we were plenty warm enough. And there was plenty of toasted sheep to go around.

Sleeping with dragons is useful too — you know your brain waves change when you're asleep. You pick up dragon stuff when you're asleep that you can't when you're awake — well, I knew that, from that first time I spent with Lois at Dragon Central with probably every dragon there except Bud and Gulp (and Lois) wanting me somewhere else. But the wanting-me-out-of-there, and the mortal terror, made the subtler stuff hard to recognize. Especially through the Headache. And then in the early days of Farcamp when I was spending every minute I could get with the dragons it sometimes got to be a little too much — well, I mentioned it five years ago, about not wanting to wake up some day and discover I'd started growing spinal plates. But with Martha with me it was suddenly okay — it was good. I stopped losing being human, you know? No matter how far into the dragon labyrinth I went.

And it also makes sense, about brain waves, in a way that a lot of stuff about dragons does not. But this doesn't mean we're going to start having a human dormitory at Nearcamp, so don't bother asking. You'd never sleep through the headaches anyway.

Martha and I got married two and a half years ago. That's a really good time to remember. Back a little farther, to when I finished writing this book the last time, that isn't so good. Five years ago is about the start of the really rough year or so I had learning to let go of Lois — and her to let go of me. There's some of that starting to happen at the end of what I wrote back then.