The Story of Owen (17 page)

“So what do we do?” I asked. Lottie and Hannah exchanged another glance.

“First of all, we make sure that Lottie doesn't burn the crème brûlée,” Hannah said.

“And after that,” Lottie took over, “after we celebrate Owen's first dragon slaying, we start looking for that hatching ground.”

“You're not going to tell anyone?” I asked.

“Who would we tell?” Hannah replied. “We didn't have a lot of allies in Ottawa before we moved out here. Now we have fewer still.”

“But,” I started to protest, and then Lottie cut me off.

“We'll handle it, Siobhan,” she said.

Owen didn't say anything, but he took a drink of his hot chocolate, and I saw the glimmer of resolve in his eyes.

“Just tell me what you need me to do,” I said. “And I think your oven is on fire.”

We ordered Chinese food instead.

Technically speaking, Owen was not supposed to slay dragons by himself just yet. It's not like this was a conversation we actually sat down with Lottie or Aodhan and had out loud. It was more of an implied directive. Owen had helped Lottie slay half a dozen dragons and had finished one off with her as the bait, but he was still in training and, theoretically, should not have started going on solo missions at least until he was in grade twelve. Most of the dragon slayers in the Oil Watch had only slayed dragons under carefully controlled circumstances before their enlistment. Once they joined up and were deployed to an oil field somewhere, they trained with veterans until they had mastered the solo battle. Apparently, fate decided that Owen was operating on a different schedule.

It was a sunny day near the beginning of December, as I have mentioned before, when I saw the Viking in Owen shine through. It was cold, but it hadn't snowed yet, and the grass was bent and brown. When he hung up the phone and asked me if I
wanted to come with him, I didn't hesitate before saying yes. It was instinctive. “Siobhan, want to go to the movies?”; “Siobhan, did you want a tuna sandwich?”; “Siobhan, do you want to come and watch me slay a dragon?” I said yes without thinking, and we were in the car before I started to regret my decision.

Aodhan must have been desperate to call home, I thought as the car started. Hannah and Lottie were gone, off to Toronto for a week to talk to their few remaining (and frustratingly undisclosed) old friends about hunting for the hatching ground. Owen was the only backup his father had, and if he was busy fighting a larger dragon, there was really nothing for it but to ask for Owen's help. It was a sight better than the old days, I'll admit. If we'd had two dragons at the same time and had to send to Queen's Park for a dragon slayer, there might not have been anything left of Trondheim at all by the time he or she arrived. Still, Owen and I weren't exactly the cavalry.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked as I pulled the car out of Owen's driveway and turned onto the highway that would take us toward Trondheim and the dragon that waited for us there. “I mean, I know we're limited in terms of people in the field right now, but … really.”

“I know,” he said. For the first time, I noticed that he was very pale, and he was clutching the hilt of his broadsword very tightly. I hoped we didn't go over a bump, or he might poke the sharp end through the floor. “And I'm sorry, but there's no way I could have carried all this on my bike.”

In spite of my nerves, I laughed. Owen smiled, and I wondered if that had been his intent all along. It was certainly easier to drive while laughing than it was to drive while I was on the edge of hysterics.

“So what's the plan?” I asked, switching to cruise control.

“I'm making it up as I go,” Owen said.

“You're really not making me feel better.”

“What if we leave the car running, wait for the dragon to attack it, and then I charge?” he offered.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “First, this is
my car
and I need it. Second, there's a bari sax in the trunk, and I think the school might have issues with their fire insurance if you willfully get it destroyed. Third,
it's my car
and you can't feed it to a dragon!”

“Pull over!” Owen said, and I slammed on the brakes. “And turn off the engine. I'll come up with something else.”

I swerved to the side of the road and turned the engine off. There was a fairly good breeze, so the exhaust would clear quickly. I could only hope that the unappetizing color of my car would work in my favor and the dragon would ignore it. The same breeze that dispersed my exhaust was propelling a cloud of ash and soot toward us, and I knew that the dragon was on its way. Owen went for his seatbelt and I popped the trunk.

“You can't move fast enough with the sax!” he shouted, throwing his shield out of the car and pulling on his leather gauntlets. He didn't wear armor, but once he had unfolded himself and his array of weapons from the car, he pulled on a leather tunic that would protect him a bit from tooth, nail, and fire.

“I'm getting my sword,” I shouted back, wishing I'd worn better shoes. “I'm not going face-to-face with a dragon without my sword.”

“Good idea,” he said and set his own sword in his hand. He tried to smile. “But stay back. If you get hurt, my aunts will kill me.”

“They'd have to beat my parents to it,” I said. I reached into the trunk and pulled out my sword. It so looked small out here in the open. In the training ring, it looked like a tool. Next to Owen's sword, it looked like a toy.

“It's just a small one,” Owen said, more to himself than to me. “I can do this.”

“Yes,” I said, and he looked at me for as long a moment as he dared. “Yes, you can.”

The air got thick with smoke then. None of the dragons that had attacked Hannah's smithy were soot producers, but I'd seen more than enough of them on Discovery Network specials. They were harder to fight, because they obscured the air, but every dragon had a weakness, and soot producers did not do well with sound. Owen was slamming his sword against his shield, careful to hit with the flat so he wouldn't dull the blade, and above us, the dragon roared its displeasure just as the wave of blackness engulfed us both.

“Siobhan!” Owen yelled.

“Just slay it!” I yelled back. “I'll be fine!”

I ran back to the car and prized the hubcap off the back tire with my sword tip. I plunged back into the soot, pulling the collar of my shirt over my mouth and nose, and started beating the hubcap with my sword. It didn't make quite as much noise as Owen's did, but it did free him up to think about things like hitting the dragon instead of hitting his shield, so I called it a win.

I heard a whistling noise and jumped back, seconds before the dragon's tail came hurtling out of the soot and whipped past my face. I flinched even farther away from it, trying not to think about the damage it could cause if it hit me, and tried
to make more noise. I heard a thump as the dragon landed and hoped that it was only a matter of time before Owen would finish the job.

There were flashes of fire in the soot, which was a good sign. Dragons can't produce soot and fire simultaneously, so every time Owen provoked it into breathing fire at him, the air around us cleared. Before long, the grass in the ditch was burning, thankfully on the side of the highway opposite where I'd parked, and the air was much clearer. I got a good look at the dragon and decided that if this was a small one, I never wanted to be close to a big one.

Owen didn't seem to mind. He dodged spurts of flame like an expert, moving quickly and cleverly, luring the dragon onto the tarmac, which wasn't flammable. I heard a car pull up behind me and stop, and when I turned around, I saw that the driver already had his iPhone out to record what was going on. At least he was smart enough to stay in the car.

“Honk your horn!” I yelled at him, hoping he'd hear me through the glass. I waved my hands around to emphasize my point. He seemed to understand me, because he started to honk—loud, long noises that sounded like a duck was being murdered in the most horrible way imaginable.

Other cars were arriving on scene, and before long more car horns (and, presumably, smart phones) joined the chorus. I wasn't sure how I was going to represent them in the song I was already composing on autopilot, but I decided to focus on the problem at hand instead.

I turned back to Owen, who was taking advantage of the dragon's discomfited state and approaching it from the rear. The dragon's wings were flared, and Owen ran underneath
them. His daring paid off, and he slid his sword into the dragon's chest before it had time to turn on him. The dragon screamed loudly, once, shattering the glass in Mr. iPhone's front windshield and making me drop my sword and the hubcap so I could cover my ears. Then it collapsed onto the road, wafting up a cloud of soot as it fell.

Owen pulled his sword out of the dragon's chest, and I held my breath until I saw the wound. He had managed to keep the damage minimal and deadly, and very little of the poisonous gas in the dragon's system escaped into the air. I blew out the breath I'd held and smiled as Owen turned to me. He was smiling too, and it was a moment before he realized that we'd accumulated an audience and switched back to his game face. Almost solemnly, he held his sword aloft, and the car horns sounded again, this time in celebration.

People got out of their cars to cheer and congratulate him, and Owen shook hands with all comers. I noticed that his hands were shaking, but no one else did. And then Aodhan was there, pushing through the crowds to get to his son. Aodhan caught Owen in a bear hug, lifting him—sword, shield and all—clear off his feet and swinging him around. The sound of cheering grew even louder, and then Aodhan set Owen down and reached into his pocket for his phone to call the disposal squad and an ambulance in case anyone had cuts from the glass.

Our audience returned to their cars, realizing that the show was over. Dead dragons don't smell very nice, even when they've been slayed properly, and there was the grass fire to consider. I could hear the sirens as the emergency crews approached. Aodhan hadn't been the only one to call them, which was nice to see, since, iPhone or no, coverage was
still unreliable. I looked at my car and was relieved to find it was safe. I was making my way toward it when Owen caught my arm.

“Epic enough for you?” he asked. He was shouting, and I realized we should both get our ears checked. He looked absolutely elated, and I could hear the triumphal march that would end the song. I supposed he deserved it.

“Definitely worthy of song,” I told him.

“Quick thinking about the hubcap and the car horns,” he told me. “That was really helpful.”

“Hey, we're a team,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “We are.”

That was the first time either of us had actually said it out loud, and when I tell Owen's story to strangers, it's usually how I begin.

Come, gather round, the poets say, and hear the words I sing. There are tales of kings and emperors, tales of queens and knights. But above them all is the story of St. George and the Dragon, and for my bread tonight, I will tell it to you.

The Romans were a cruel breed of men, who conquered all the world they could reach. If any dared rise against them, they would bring to bear the fire of the Empire, which they boasted was greater than any dragon could unleash. They burned across the world, from Britain and Gaul, to Egypt and Canaan, and everywhere they went, they stole dragon slayers for their legions.

The Romans were as clever as they were cruel, and they did not set their captive dragon slayers to slaying in the lands they had once called home. A dragon slayer stolen from Gaul could expect to be sent to Palmyra. A dragon slayer from Jerusalem might find herself in Hispania. There they would be set to their craft, unschooled in the subtleties of the native dragon
population, and many of them died needlessly as a result. The Romans sent their scholars to learn all the ways of dragonkind, the better to train the transplanted dragon slayers, and by this price in blood we have our modern knowledge of Europe's dragons.

Some of these scholars were not Roman-born, but chosen on account of their intelligence and abilities. One of these was Georgios of Lod, who marched with the legions to see the world and had won honor on the battlefield, both for himself and for Rome. He was sent to Silene, in Libya, to study the dragons there, and when he drew close to the city, he beheld a terrible sight.

Silene's proud walls stood within a stone's throw of a great lake. The city founders had done this a-purpose, and used the water from the lake to provide for the people. Their plans had gone badly awry when a large dragon had also chosen to make its home in the water, and the people of Silene had sent their dragon slayer out to do battle.

The dragon slayer, it is widely said, was of Gaulish descent, used to fighting dragons amidst tree cover, with a sword. He was unfamiliar with the terrain, with the type of dragon he faced, and with his own lance. The result was the death of the dragon slayer, but not before he managed to wound the dragon, fouling the lake by means of the botched blow. The dragon retreated to the spring that fed the lake, leaving the people of Silene to sacrifice a sheep to distract it every day, in order to access the spring themselves and not perish from thirst.

The city soon expended its sheep, and then its goats. They went without fresh water for many days, but it was not the rainy season, and they knew they would have to attempt the spring
again. A decision was made that young women from the city would be sent in place of the sheep (this was before it was determined that dragons had no preference when it came to what kind of people they ate), to distract the dragon and lure it from the spring. Georgios arrived just as the young woman in question, the daughter of the magistrate (who, by all accounts, was a lovely girl when not being sacrificed to a dragon), was being forced out of the city gates by a mob.