It must have looked pretty, uh, peculiar. I knew Dad and Martha and our lot wouldn't be worried — a little taken aback maybe, but not really worried — Martha told me later there was a lot more screaming at that point (even if I wasn't a princess or a virgin and furthermore had obviously gone willingly, which your average evil villain dragon type presumably wouldn't have found nearly so much fun) but that may have been Bud's takeoff. I couldn't see it, obviously, but I could feel it. I imagine the laws of physics would tell me that he'd've lost all his momentum even by landing long enough to pick me up, which probably took about a minute, but from where I was lying, he sprang back into the air again because he hadn't lost all that momentum. He flung his head back — so it's a good thing he had closed his mouth again — gently — although some of his side teeth had little low crags on the inside like vestigial premolars or something, and I could get a grip on these with my hands.

And I felt-facedown in the dark of his hot resiny-organic-fire-smelling mouth — every muscle in his body slamming down against the earth while his wings unfurled and unfurled and unfurled till I imagined them stretching across all of Smokehill to the Bonelands and then clapped forward to scoop the air violently out of the way so we could just dive upward — you know all those stories about all the mega-Gs pressing the fearless astronauts into their padded flight seats on takeoff, speaking of old-fashioned rockets that sit upright on their tails . . . well, I swear I had all those Gs and I can sure swear I didn't have a padded flight seat. I felt like all my brains were about to be shoved out through my face, and my heart would punch a hole through my breastbone in a few seconds. The middle of me was pretty well held together by large teeth, but then there were my legs, that were simply going to come off and get left behind.

And then we were airborne. I felt him level off and he parted his jaws again ever so slightly, and I, trying not to be any more absolutely clumsy than I had to be under the rather awkward circumstances, dragged my heavy, stiff, semi-detached legs the rest of the way into his mouth. This was not a hugely fun process. Bud, big as he is, still had to counterbalance my heavings and floppings and I was way too aware of how far down the ground was as Bud twitched his head and sideslipped. It's not at all drooly, a dragon's mouth. A bit damp, but it's more like what you might call humid, because it's so hot. A sort of jungle experience, only without the vines and the monkeys (and the poisonous snakes and spiders and whatever). I managed to lay myself down along one side, between teeth and jawbone, like an extra-large plug of chewing tobacco, and I won't say it was comfortable including for Bud (Chewing tobacco doesn't kick and thrash), but it could have been worse.

It was a long flight. He set down only once, after only about half an hour or so, near a stream where we could both have a drink; and then I climbed up his shoulder and neck and lay down in that hollow at the base of the skull, and the space there on Bud was a lot more comfortable for me at my runty but inconvenient human size than the space on Gulp was, I don't know if it was from being bigger or being male, or maybe I was just more used to riding dragons by then (although in fact I don't ride dragons, barring emergency) but I half curled up and half went to sleep. I didn't even get cold, although it was cold, and the breath from Bud's nostrils was steaming like a (very large) teakettle.

But even though I was dozing I was aware that we just kept going on and on and on — the sky cleared in time to see the sun finish setting and then the moon rose, a blazing big full moon, and then it rose up farther and over us, and the stars wheeled along with it, and still Bud was flying, no racing, over the landscape. Whatever I've pretended to understand about the laws of physics, I doubt that they're all suspended for the flight of dragons, and I imagine something Bud's size, to keep flying at all, has to fly at some speed. But it was more than that. Bud was pouring it on. The thrust — the bang — forward of each downbeat of those enormous wings had an almost audible THUNK about it, like feet hitting pavement; when I peered ahead the wind clawed at my eyes. We were on our way to whatever we were on our way toward as fast as Bud could take us. Which is why I imagine, it was Bud himself who came for me. Although I would have had trouble throwing myself into the mouth of almost any other dragon.

When I raised my head and looked forward (eyes watering in the gale) I could just see Bud's head, an outline of a craggy red-flecked moving blackness in the surrounding smooth moonlit gray. We were out over the Bonelands by now — pretty well nothing as far as you could see in any direction except rock and shadows. Bud's blistering urgency, which had settled to a kind of intense dull roar once we'd started, came back again, like spikes of flame surging up out of banked embers. The moon was getting low and dawn wasn't too far off and I picked up that we had to get there, wherever there was, before the moon set, and it was like suddenly Bud kicked into some final burst of overdrive and my scalp was getting peeled off, the seams on my clothes were going to part any minute, and I wasn't just curled up and dozing any more, I was hanging on for dear life.

At last we slowed and banked and began to come down. I couldn't see what we were coming to, and for a moment I didn't care, because I'd been wondering just how much this flight had taken out of Bud, and as he tried to organize himself for landing in a space that had plenty of room even for an eighty-plus-foot dragon, I realized just how exhausted he was. His wings would barely hold him — us — and he juddered and jerked like a plane running out of fuel, and when he landed he landed like a wrecking ball, and the Boneland dust whirlpooled up around us. I'd been pretty well dug in where I was, and I bounced, and my neck was probably going to hurt a lot pretty soon, but I was still clinging on. Bud — ? I said, frightened.

Go, he said. Go. There was more to it — I assume it was something about "I'm okay don't worry about me," and his voice, or his signal, or his space, still sounded like Bud, and if this urgency to get me here was something he was willing to half kill himself to make happen, the least I could do was whatever he'd brought me here for.

I climbed down, and a dragon I knew slightly, Opal (Oooooaaaaaaalllllll), was right there, fairly dancing with impatience, and I looked at her, and looked at Bud, and they both pointed their noses in the same direction, so I went thataway. Thataway was a lump of black rock sticking up out of the deserty flatness of the Bonelands; the kind of lump of rock that makes you think "caves," where the Bonelands are, by reputation full of, although us humans don't know much about them, bar the little that a few foolhardy speleologists have mapped. I could feel that I was going toward dragons before I could see them . . . and then I could feel Gulp . . . and then Lois . . . and there were at least three more, dragons I didn't know so well, like I didn't know Opal.

Lois came running out toward me, silvery-coppery in the moonlight, and I was getting off her something I'd never had before, and if I'd been able to make sense out of any dragon it should have been her, but again, all I could pick out of it was URGENT URGENT URGENT NOW NOW NOW. She chased after me like a sheepdog, but I was half walking and half trotting as fast as I could, and all my bones ached. It had been a lot harder on Bud; but I was near the end of my pathetic human strength too, stiff and bruised with it, and half stunned with sleeplessness.

When Gulp raised her head I could finally make her out from among the weird shadows. Some of my slowness to take it all in was just how tired I was. There was enough moonlight, now that I saw what I was looking at, to see that she was . . . orange and maroon and crimson. And I at last realized, although they must all have been trying to tell me, that I'd been brought to witness Gulp's babies being born: and I broke into a shambling run. I didn't know anything about moonset, I didn't know anything about anything, but I finally had a clue. . .