But what I was thinking as the water got hot and I could smell the meat cooking is that we’ve always shared the dragons’ dinners. Old Pete had figured out what dragons liked best of what he could offer them while he still had them in cages and fortunately there was enough of it that could live here. This wouldn’t be a dragon haven if dragons only thrived on rhino and Galapagos tortoise, neither of which would do well at Smokehill. And Old Pete ate what the dragons ate because the dragons were the important thing. We still do and they still are.
This smelled like deer, but would sheep be any better? I’d just picked up the first couple of packets. I didn’t care.
So I sat there and looked at my supper and thought, Even if it’s still alive, how am I going to feed it? We don’t know anything about dragon milk, or dragon juice, or whatever, even if Mom makes it from eating wild sheep and so on.
I put my hand into my shirt and the dragonlet woke up at once, if it had been asleep, wriggled around like crazy, and managed to attach itself to one of my fingers, sucking so hard it hurt. So it was still alive and it was hungry. If I’d been thinking clearly I’d’ve known it was alive, though, because it was so hot. It was hot enough that when I unbuttoned my shirt to get it out there was a red mark on my stomach. It didn’t like being out of my shirt; it let go of my finger and started, I don’t know, mewing, kind of, a tiny, harsh sort of noise that I didn’t want to think sounded like a scream of absolute terror, and trying to burrow back where it came from.
I was tired, and hungry myself, and my head really hurt, and I was all wound up about what had happened, and about the fact that I had landed myself with an orphan dragonlet that I hadn’t a clue how to take care of, and how it was all going to be my fault when it died and I already felt as if everything that had happened was my fault—even though I knew that was stupid—and when it died too I’d never forgive myself and go crazy or something. I was way out of my depth. I wasn’t a mother dragon and I didn’t have aclue. Oh yes and what I was doing was totally illegal. Don’t ask me who makes the laws or why they don’t like get together sometimes and notice if the laws make any sense. But while it’s illegal to hurt or kill a dragon it’s more illegal to try and save a dragon’s life.
Dad tried to explain it to me once, that it’s about noninterference—like the way big parks (including this one) let lightning-started fires go ahead and burn everything up because it’s part of the natural cycle. Okay. Maybe. But people get bent about dragons in ways they don’t get bent about other natural cycle stuff. Apparently the witless wonder who was pushing for the dragon legislation got so bent about the anti-harminga-dragon part of the bill that he pulled all the stops out getting really vicious language into the anti-preserving-a-dragon’s-life part of the bill. The result is that trying to raise a baby dragon would be like the most illegal thing you could possibly do, next to assassinating the president maybe, and is probably one of the extra reasons the Institute has to beg for money, because we might do something illegal with it, like learn how to save dragons.
Well it would all be over soon and it would be dead and I would be crazy and Dad would have to put my gross baby-dragon-yucky clothes through the washing machine because I would be in a padded cell and couldn’t do it myself.
I rebuttoned my shirt except for one button over the belt, muttering to myself, or to it, and tucked the dragonlet back in, tail first and belly up, with its head near the opening. It stopped struggling and lay there like it was peering out through the gap and looking at me. Its eyes were open—unlike a puppy or a kitten’s—but they were blurry like they didn’t see much, like a baby bird’s. They were also a funny purplish color. It was really ugly all over, not just the eyes, sort of bruise colored, not just purplish but also yellowish and greenish, as well as smushed-looking and crusty with dried whatever.
“You are the ugliest damn thing I have ever seen in my entire life,” I said to it, clearly, like I wanted it on the record what I thought, and I swear its blurry purple eyes tried to track where the sound was coming from and it made a little grunt like an acknowledgment.
Have you ever tried to raise a baby bird or a raccoon or something? Something, you know, easy. They die a lot. We’re way too good at raccoons—that’s Eric again—since our successes are now bringing their great-great-great-grandkids for evening handouts behind the Institute—but we all still sweat when the Rangers bring in new orphans. And even with Eric’s voodoo and all the info every bird society or raccoon society or beetle society (that’s a joke) can give us (actually we wrote some of it), so you know exactly what to do and you do it…they still die. A lot. And it hurts. And that’s when you even know what they eat and for stuff that is at least already, you know, born. Which a new dragonlet isn’t, not really.
I locked open my camping spoon and dipped up some of the meat broth, gave the dragonlet my finger to suck again, which it was happy to do, and poured some broth in the gap between its mouth and my finger. You’d think I’d know better, but remember I was pretty deranged.
Of course most of the broth went all over me and the dragonlet, but some of it must have gone down its throat because it choked and gargled and then I knew I had killed it. I whipped it out of my shirt again and held it up head down in the air and it gacked and gagged and then started mewing again and trying to get back in my shirt. Poor awful little monster. I’d be crying here again in a minute. This time I unbuttoned my sleeve and stuck it in tail first (against the thin skin on the underside of my forearm and let me tell you its body heat hurt) till only its face was showing, and I cupped my hand around its head and it subsided, and I swear it looked traumatized, ugly and weird as it was.
I was still muttering. Now I was saying things like “it’s okay, stupid, relax.” I’m not sure if I was talking to myself this time, or the dragonlet. I stuck a finger from my cupping hand in sort of the side of its mouth to give it something to suck on and tipped just a drop or two of broth into its mouth. (This was way more awkward than I’m telling you.) It went gulp and went on sucking. Oh hurrah. A lot of your orphans just won’t try to eat and that’s that. So the dragonlet wasn’t going to die of starvation, it was going to die of being poisoned or of not getting enough of some kind of vitamin because deer broth isn’t anything like close enough to dragon milk. As I say, no one knows what goes on in those pouches.