"Answering questions" is a euphemism for saying "I don't know" a lot punctuated by trying to waffle gracefully. ("Do you really talk to dragons?" for example. You know I am going to chicken out of turning this over to a publisher at the last minute.) But the new post-Lois breed of dragon fanatic calms down immediately when I show up, like a chick under a heat lamp, which is useful. So then after I didn't answer questions for a while ("Why is there a dragon flying in?" "We're just clearing space for everyone's safety") I signed about a million autographs which always makes me feel like such a jerk.

It still took an awful lot of time to get everybody out through the gate. As would happen, we had a couple of world-champion whiners that day, as well as an unusually frisky assortment of demon children. It was really tempting to say, "Right, on your buses, you're out of here." But we'd let them back in when Bud had done whatever he was doing (I'd been trying not to imagine this) so meanwhile why not let them have the chance of most people's lifetime and see a real live dragon up close and personal? Although the Rangers were ready to deflect any rebel faction. Also, the grumps were right, they had paid their entrance fees.

Or you could call it a calculated risk. It's not uncommon for a busload of tourists to see a flying dragon any more, but it's nothing you can count on. But it brings 'em back, hoping to see one, or even hoping to see one again. No matter how hard you're hoping for a puppy for your birthday you don't know till that morning and the wobbly box with air holes and ribbons around it going "mmph mmph oooooo" that it's happened. Seeing Bud should be the puppy and the triple-chocolate six-layer birthday cake of longed-for surprises. With any luck every one of the tourists standing around in the parking lot would rush back through the gates after and sign up to be life members of our Friends. Including the grumps. Converts are always welcome. We still need as many people to love us as we can get. Dragons are still fashionable right now, but fashions change.

This is also a good example of how we think about our dragons. We weren't worried about how the dragon would behave. Especially not after I told Dad it was Bud.

When the last of the tour buses came out through the gates (they were still slow even now we had money to keep them running properly), I went back inside again and waited on the, er, landing pad, and tried not to chew my fingernails. I've never been a fingernail chewer but it felt like a moment when a brand new bad habit might be in order. Martha came out to wait with me — tucking her hand under my arm and keeping me from fidgeting myself to pieces — and Dad, and a few of the Rangers, and Eric. The tension level was so high even the premium-class grumblers shut up. Maybe it was sinking in that they were going to see a dragon.

I've told you that our fence does weird things to your eyes (this includes standing outside the gates looking in). One of the things it does is make a low heavy cloud cover even lower and heavier. It was cloudy that day. I began to feel Bud getting close — feel the urgency of him — before anybody could see him. And then when he finally did break through the clouds he seemed already right on top of us. The tourists gasped and one or two of them screamed. Well, think about it: eighty feet is a tennis court plus some extra feet of tail or three tourist buses end to end and now here it is flying at you, and among other things, however much we're beginning to learn or guess about the way dragon bones are made so that dragons aren't as heavy as they look, they're still waaay too big and heavy to fly — any sane person looking at one could tell you that. Okay, planes fly, and they're even way-er too big, but we all learned about how those stiff wings are built so the air rolls over and under 'em and gives 'em lift. Dragons' wings flap like birds' wings flap — like the biggest bird out of your worst nightmare's wings flap. And the dragon smell comes at you like a spear — I don't know why a smell is scary, but it is. So when a dragon is directly over you, well, even if you're me and you're kind of used to it, your medulla oblongata is still telling you "the sky is falling, you're about to die, run like hell."

Bud looked blacker than ever against the blurry, swirly gray background, and the red eyes and threads of red that flicker over some of his scales I'm afraid make him look a little like some evil dragon out of a fairy tale, the kind that eats princesses — and he is a lot bigger even than Gulp, and while every one of those tourists may have had a copy of that panorama postcard of Gulp and me clutched in their hot little hands, here it is not only enormously live but EVEN BIGGER. I'm impressed there wasn't more screaming.

And speaking of eating princesses, as he swooped the last little way toward us, he kept turning his head back and forth like he was choosing which princess-substitute he was going to snatch first. For anyone whose brain was still working it probably looked like he was looking for me — the announcement had been that Bud was coming for me, and there I was; maybe the tourists were expecting me to wave — but I knew better. He knew exactly where I was. I wasn't the problem. He was trying to figure out where and how to land. I've said this was the only possible place for him to land — I didn't promise it was going to be possible. And when I saw all of him overhead like that ("The sky is falling! You're dead meat!") I thought, "He'll never make it. What do we do now?" — because by now I felt as urgent as he did — I'd sucked up enough of his urgency that I felt all squeaky — stretched like an over — inflated balloon, and whatever it was he wanted, I had to do it, even if it meant sprouting (smaller) wings myself and flying after him.

I've never seen anything like the way Bud landed. There was so not enough room for him. It looked for a minute like he was going to fly straight through the open gate after all — fortunately the tourists were all paralyzed for that minute — and then at the last possible instant, or maybe slightly after that, he reared up, not unlike the super humongous, four-legged version of a bird stalling to land on a branch — and the wind from his wings was terrific, and he had all four of those legs thrown out in front of him and you could see the dagger tips of those demolition-grappling-gear claws sparkling in the murky, oppressive light — and as he landed, he threw himself backward, just to stay in place, and it was like a tornado and an earthquake all at once, plus the massive boom of those wings, which he whipped together with a noise like thunder: and even so he was all kind of piled up on himself because there wasn't ROOM.

I felt Martha kiss my cheek and her hand briefly in the small of my back as I bolted away from her, into the hurricane and the thunder and the earthquake and the claws, because Bud was saying now now NOW NOW and he hadn't actually finished landing, or perching, or settling on his tail like an old-fashioned rocketship, and he curled his neck down toward me as I ran as fast as my little short human legs could carry me toward him. He curled his lip at me and I just about got the message so that when he opened his mouth just wide enough I already had a foot on his lip and was groping for purchase with one hand — I've said that dragon teeth are wide-spaced. Well, I have to say they're not quite widespaced enough when you're throwing yourself between them, and it was not at all comfortable as I belly flopped into his mouth — what do you call it when you don't impale yourself on the points but get stuck between the uprights, like someone falling into a spiked fence? That's what happened to me. I had aimed toward the front as his mouth opened, simply because that was the end nearest the ground, but since he then promptly closed his jaws over me I was just as glad that I wasn't back nearer the hinge where he'd have to concentrate more not to squash me.