A Boy and His Dragon (23 page)

Sometimes I think Beings should never have taken to the shadows.” He didn’t say what a tragedy it was, but it was in his face, in the slow gesture he made at Arthur with his hand out and his palm R. Cooper

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up, as though he wanted Arthur to fix it. Arthur realized that he was frowning and shaking minutely with a very real fury, because he
wanted
to fix it and couldn’t.

He swallowed and moved on, because Bertie would see that on his face, and whatever Bertie thought, Arthur wasn’t any kind of warrior. “Is that what it’s about?” He was glad he hadn’t read any pieces about that yet. It was going to upset him even more. It might even be why Bertie had been putting off finishing certain chapters.

“In a way. You see… I think they still exist, Arthur.” Bertie jumped to his feet with sudden burning, restless energy. “In those children. Through them. Other groups of the same time start telling stories of besting the dragons—and of the Vikings trying to conquer them for that matter, but also dragons. But not this culture. This culture, as several groups did elsewhere in the world, became the People
of
the Dragon. The people of the
red
dragon. They embraced their dragons, and not only for their power. They didn’t just revere them, they implied descent from dragons and worship of them in the very name they gave themselves. They loved their red dragons, and I can only think of one good reason why.”

“A big, over-the-top gesture?” Arthur guessed, though it wasn’t a totally blind guess. Bertie spun back around.

“Exactly. I knew you’d get it.”

Bertie had hinted about those gestures before, but Arthur still didn’t completely understand what he meant. But he held still as Bertie slid back over to get himself a cigarette and then exhaled a small stream of fire so the end of the cigarette caught. He took a small puff from the other end in the next second and only then looked up to see Arthur staring at him.

Bertie looked apologetic. “In my human form, that’s close to the best I can do,” he explained, as if the small size of the fire was why Arthur had been startled. The precision in the little jet of flame was impressive. Arthur had to wait a second for his heart rate to slow back down and then absently revised his mental list of dragon facts to add
can definitely breathe fire
.

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“Back to the red dragons?” he croaked. It wasn’t the herbs making him dizzy anymore. Bertie began to walk as he continued his lecture.

“I can only speak for myself, of course, but I’ve talked to others of my kind all over the world. If we have one weakness, it’s our
treasure
.” The word itself shook with meaning. The smoke seemed to get heavier. Arthur shivered where Bertie couldn’t see.

“Is this about your possessiveness?” His voice was low and dry, but Bertie didn’t seem to notice that either.

“It’s not greed.” He shook his head and made a sad, disappointed noise. “Not like you mean it.” Arthur tried to keep up, but if Bertie did that fire trick again while Arthur was standing up, he was probably going to fall to his knees and ask him to do it in his real form. He had no doubt it would be terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

“I didn’t say that,” he protested slowly, but Bertie still wasn’t looking at him.

“Cold blood doesn’t mean without feeling. Dragons actually fall in love quite intensely.” He was leaning over the fireplace with one hand on the mantle. Arthur was hypnotized. “We fall in love with a passion and reverence to match any human. It is another reason we are often discussed in tandem with weres. Weres mate, and it’s a quick, instinctive process. We don’t, not in that way, but our attachments are just as deep.” He turned abruptly, with no warning at all, and the best Arthur could do was blink and sit up.

“There is nothing, you see, that we would not give to our beloved once they are discovered.”

Those eyes were fixing him to the spot. Arthur wet his lips.

“So you’re saying they lost their treasure? They just… gave it away to someone?” He put a hand to his chest then wasn’t sure why and dropped it to his leg, only to suddenly become aware of how hard his blood was pounding. “That’s surprising, even as a romantic gesture.” He stumbled over his words when Bertie’s tongue made an appearance, darting out to the corner of his mouth. Arthur did his best to think clearly. “The stories always said it was hard for R. Cooper

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dragons to let anything go. And that’s a sacrifice anyone would hesitate to make.”

Bertie gave him a long, sharp look before taking an equally long drag from his cigarette and then exhaling to let the smoke circle Arthur. Arthur remembered the drawing of a tiny human wrapped up in the coils of an attentive serpent.

“Not exactly.” Bertie’s gaze was heavy. “I’m saying that humans by far outnumber dragons, and unlike weres, we possess considerable magic. There is magic in my fingernails, in my blood, in my every so-called golden scale.”

Arthur bit back a noise but Bertie’s stare didn’t waver.

“Magic enough to make us a threat to some ancient governments or to make us worth more to many dead than alive, to fools who don’t understand the greater magic is in what we give freely. Magic enough to make children possible, as it is for fairies, in addition to our changed physiology when we’re… like this. What I think, Arthur my pearl, is that those red dragons took the beliefs of our culture to heart and intermingled with their humans, the humans who understood them, who loved them in return, until the only parts of them living on are in the genetic code of their descendants and the names of villages, even of the people themselves.” Bertie took another pull from his cigarette and Arthur took the opportunity to look away into the fire. It didn’t slow Bertie down.

“There isn’t much difference between your genetic code for example, Arthur, and that of your ancestors. In a very basic way, they are still with us. It’s very romantic.”

“It could have been for survival,” Arthur commented to the flames, in a faint but reasonable voice. He sensed that Bertie was going to give him another lecture on how unromantic he was, and he let his body slide down on the couch cushions. Arthur wasn’t going to argue what was romantic and what wasn’t. “But why would they do that? I don’t understand. Other dragons didn’t, or not to that point of extinction.”

“In my notes—” The amusement in Bertie’s voice was very close. Arthur turned just as Bertie insinuated himself onto the seat A Boy and His Dragon

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next to him. “—I remark that they were living much closer to humans than many other groups. In addition, throughout this time, there were many outside attacks and invaders. Dragons are long-sighted; they knew changes would come, yet they chose to stay.

Only one thing would make them. They wanted to ensure their treasure… their humans… would live on.”

“But wouldn’t the invaders take their treasure?” Why else would they even go there, except to take everything the land and the people and the dragons had to offer? Someone should have stopped them.

“Arthur.” Bertie’s rare, gentle smile flashed across his face, silencing Arthur before he could say anything else foolish. But it was a brief smile, and then Bertie’s shoulders fell. “You still don’t understand.” He paused and then wrinkled his nose. Arthur almost lifted his chin at the insult, but whenever Bertie was hesitant like this, Arthur found himself leaning closer instead, hoping for more information, and this time was no exception.

Bertie straightened, getting to his feet and looking down at Arthur without a trace of a smile.

“Would you like to see something, Arthur?” he asked coolly as gray clouds filled the space between them. “It might help.” He looked like a king, and though he phrased it as a request, Arthur wasn’t sure it was; the tilt of Bertie’s chin was regal, making his words formal. Arthur glanced away from the steady stare and then back when it didn’t leave him.

“I’m not afraid,” he insisted, because Bertie was talking about his treasure, he had to be, and that was serious, “but….”

“You see?” Bertie’s smile returned and Arthur could move again. He wanted to reach up, take the hand Bertie offered him.

“Anyone else would know I meant gold and jewels and the like and would be leaping from their seat to get a closer look, but not you, Arthur. Not you.”

Bertie’s palm was dry though his hand was hot. Arthur felt it close around his and then he was on his feet and following after an impatient, anxious dragon. He kept his eyes on their hands because R. Cooper

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he wasn’t sure where else to look, at least not until they were up the stairs and he was somewhere he hadn’t been before.

He looked around as they moved down a dark hallway and noticed stacks of books on the floor and a few dishes, but then returned his attention to Bertie, who kept turning to look back at him with a question in his dark eyes. They passed a few doors that Arthur doubted had ever been locked, but he barely glanced over and then forgot all about them when Bertie stopped at the end of the short hallway and pushed the last door open.

It wasn’t locked either, Arthur noted, and inhaled with a loud gasp when Bertie let go of his hand and stepped aside so he could enter the room on his own.

It was a bedroom, Bertie’s bedroom. Arthur recognized that much from the large, custom-made bed. It was of a cherry-colored dark wood and low to the floor, surrounded by the kind of heavy velvet curtains that people in past eras had used to keep warm in cold castles of stone. The curtains had been pushed aside to reveal a multitude of pillows spread out over the bed, and the wall beyond the bed where an antique, full-length looking glass was resting by a chest of drawers of the same dark wood.

Arthur took in all of that between one blink and the next, and then he turned his head to look over the rest of the room, what was filling up the rest of the room.

It was impossible to see it all in one glance or even two. He stared until his eyes were burning and then stared some more. Bertie turned on the light, but he didn’t need to. Everything was so bright that it was blinding with it on. Even the reflection in the mirror was just another light among so many.

“This is….” Arthur couldn’t finish, and though he lifted his chin when he felt Bertie move behind him, he couldn’t quite tear his eyes from the treasure piled high in front of him. It was a scene from the Arabian Nights, or exactly what anyone would think of if asked to describe a dragon’s hoard. He could see coins of many sizes and metals from countless regions, each one probably just as valuable for its historical significance as it was for the gold or silver or bronze it was made of. There were some precious stones cut and set A Boy and His Dragon

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into jewelry—tiaras, crowns—and others with raw, jagged edges, as if they’d been torn directly from the walls of a mountain cave.

He counted seven swords before he stopped counting, and one suit of armor without even a hint that black smoke had ever touched it. Rolled up rugs, bolts of fabric, busts, and books were just more things to stare at, to try to calculate their value, their age, their significance. There
were
scrolls, obviously fragile even from a distance and set atop the stool beneath a large harp. There was another crown dangling from the top of the harp.

Arthur swallowed and then slowly turned to find Bertie. He found his gaze instead, hot on him in the reflection from that antique mirror, watching Arthur react to the sight of his treasure.

If this was even all of it
, Arthur thought, just slightly hysterically, like he’d been to find similar items collecting dust downstairs. He wondered if there was a basement somewhere filled with heavy gold, and swallowed again.

“Why would you show me…? It’s incredible, Bertie, incredible…. No, I mean, look at all of this.” He stopped and forced himself to breathe and then say it again. “Why would you show me this?”

What had Kate said about the treasure when he told her he’d be working for a dragon? She made a joke about stealing it, because that was what most people thought of. Most people would have come into this house looking for this. They would have leapt to see it, just like Bertie had said. It hadn’t even occurred to Arthur. He’d been focused on the chance of finding a discarded scale.

He looked into those eyes, intensely black even at a distance and mirrored in glass.

“I know I said this before, but others need to see this.” Now that he had found his voice again, there was no stopping him. “The historical value alone”—he gestured blankly—“is incalculable.” He would have held his breath if he could have, to wait for that raging stillness that meant earthquakes or Bertie upset, but it wasn’t there this time. Bertie had heard; he
had
to have heard, standing as close as he was, but he wasn’t moving away.

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“You shouldn’t give this away,” Arthur was not entirely aware of what he meant, only that he could tell that Bertie loved it, that he slept in the same room with it, his treasure. He kept it close to him, and the expression on his face was all pride, so bright with love and pleasure that Arthur wanted to shut his eyes to it because all of that was for some gold. But it was spectacular, remarkable, unlike anything else he’d ever seen, short of pictures of King Tut’s tomb.

“You can’t give this away. You can’t and you shouldn’t, not for anyone.”

“Oh, Arthur.” Bertie’s happiness sang through his words and slid lovingly down the back of Arthur’s neck to warm him beneath his clothes. “If you say so.”

Arthur frowned at him, as fiercely as he could with so much greed and hunger staring back at him and breath like hearth fires leaving him flushed. The rest of what Arthur had been going to say stuttered out.

“But if you want to share your knowledge, if you want others to see this, we could find someone to help you preserve and display it, if you don’t trust me.”

The heat at his back grew stronger, closer, but Arthur didn’t move when he felt and then saw Bertie’s hand curling carefully over his hip. His breathing stalled, but he kept still, even as Bertie gently pulled him back.