I can’t begin to tell you what a long day that was. I was aching all over, particularly my head, and tired into my bones. I don’t think I’d ever realized what that phrase meant before. It’s a good thing I’ve been trained since I was a toddler to follow Rangers’ marks because I was doing it mindlessly, not thinking because I couldn’t think. There was no thinking left in me. And it’s ridiculous to say that something the size of a day-and-a-half-old dragonlet weighed, but it did. It weighed more than my backpack did somehow. I suppose it was just that I couldn’t stop worrying about it. I worried about whether or not it could breathe, because I had to tuck my sweatshirt in over my shirt to make sure it didn’t fall out while we were moving, but mostly it wasn’t anything so logical. It was just worry worry worry about everything. Worry on legs. Worry walking. Worry staggering and lurching.
I didn’t anything like cover twenty miles that day. I think I did about ten, which under the circumstances is amazing. I decided after the first stop to feed my new responsibility that if it could live with human body heat it could probably live with human-body-heat food, so I put the pot of broth under my shirt too. The idea that I had to stop and make a fire every half hour was a whole lot too much. And I was sure I should be feeding it more often than every half hour anyway, I just couldn’t. Fortunately the broth pot was small. Mind you my shirt had not been made to hold both a dragonlet and even a small pot of broth so I had to tuck the pot sort of down my pants which made walking harder, and cradle the dragonlet with one hand so it didn’t fall down the hole, and the pot leaked. Well, so did the dragonlet. After a while I stopped paying attention. Ordinarily I don’t think I’d’ve been able to ignore getting increasingly covered with runny infant dragon poop but there was nothing ordinary about that day. If I hadn’t kept telling myself “Billy will know what to do” I’d never have been able to make myself keep moving at all.
When sunset came I pulled myself together enough to look for the next Ranger mark so I’d know exactly which way to go in the morning. Besides, camping near one was almost like company. Human company. I knew that tomorrow was going to be even worse than today had been. I mopped myself up as well as I could out of the nearby rill while a new pot of water was heating over the fire. I didn’t even try to put the dragonlet down this time. Sometimes I think personal hygiene is kind of overdone but I would have loved a hot bath. And lots of soap.
I had to clean up carefully, moving the dragonlet around so it didn’t get any nasty cold water on it, and it wasn’t thrilled with the operation anyway, from the amount of scrabbling and peeping, but when it was broth time again it settled right down and started to suck and swallow. I felt kind of funny about that. I mean, it was already learning the system. It was a dragon for pity’s sake. But at two days old it was already learning what to do, and I was pretty sure a finger and a camping spoon wasn’t the system it was born to expect. I’d tried using a piece of shirt (more shirt gone) as a nipple, but that didn’t work so well, or it couldn’t suck the broth out of the cloth, or something; the cloth just got soggier and soggier and it kept letting go to try and grab one of my fingers again. So we went back to the old system. My finger was getting almost as sore as my stomach.
But when I thought about how much worse tomorrow was going to be, it never crossed my mind to hope the thing would die and let me off.
CHAPTER THREE
I was so tired I fell asleep leaning against a tree with the dragonlet belly up in one sleeve and a potful of broth propped between my legs. A weird sort of distant whoosh and a sudden splash of light woke both of us. I opened my eyes slowly, for a moment having no idea where I was or what was going on. The dragonlet was trying to turn itself over so it could dive back into my shirt. Absent-mindedly I helped it while I looked at the big orange streak…in the sky…over the rocks and treetops…the old brain was trying to churn out some kind of recognition….
A flare. A Ranger’s flare. And it would be Billy, wondering where I was, if I was in trouble. Knowing that I had to be in trouble, because I wasn’t back at Northcamp when I should be. And probably even more worried because I hadn’t radioed—I should have radioed in last night—I didn’t even have mine turned on so I’d hear him trying to call me. I’d forgotten all about my radio—all about “radio Billy and stay put.” That’s how tired and crazy I was.
Everything is harder when you only have one hand and are using the other to keep a dragonlet in your shirt, even if you’re busy talking to yourself and telling yourself how to do stuff. (Some of the time I seemed to be talking to Mom. Sometimes I seemed to be talking to the dead dragon, except she was alive. Sometimes they seemed to be there too, and to be talking back. Like I keep saying: tired and crazy.) Eventually I turned the backpack upside down and shook it hard, and everything fell out, including the two-way and my three flares. The two-way bounced and made a nasty clank when it hit the second time. Oh well. Flares are less breakable and perhaps easier to use one-handed. I managed to wedge one between two stones. Then I clutched the empty backpack over the dragonlet in case the flare freaked it out through my shirt, and yanked the flare open.
Rangers really are amazing. I guess I was on the right trail so it wasn’t like he had to do a big search, and the moonlight was blazing bright again tonight in a clear sky, but even so. Billy was there by midnight. You try following an almost invisible path in bad country in the dark for nine or ten miles. I didn’t even hear him coming, so I didn’t have to worry about what big animal was about to eat me and the dragonlet, although getting eaten would have let me off another six months of every-thirty-minute feedings. Getting eaten was probably the nicer death. Or maybe I didn’t hear him coming because I was talking again. I used to talk to my orphans at the zoo—most of us do (“Theeeeere now, isn’t that gooooood?” and other inane remarks)—but not like this. I couldn’t shut up. I think talking kept the whole gruesome situation at a little distance so I didn’t quite finish going crazy. That and keeping myself awake, of course. Also if the dragonlet peeped why shouldn’t I answer?
Billy was just suddenly at the edge of the firelight like we’d been together all along and he’d been gone briefly to have a pee or collect firewood or something. Maybe it’s just I was crazy by then, but I looked up between spoon-tipping and spoon-tipping (and mutter and mutter) and said, “Oh, hello, Billy,” and went back to the dragonlet. It fell asleep between one spoonful and the next, the way it usually did now, and although I woke it up when I turned it over to put it back in my shirt it peeped one burpy peep and instantly crashed again. Then I looked up at Billy who was still standing there like Cinderella’s fairy godmother had turned him to stone.