The Story of Owen (8 page)

“I'm not fighting dragons!” I said. “I'm pretty sure they're not even going to let me watch until I'm older. They're just planning ahead.”

Mum and Dad exchanged a glance, and I knew I'd stepped in it. They were all for me planning ahead, but they preferred it to be more along the lines of picking a university, or something equally unlikely to get me set on fire.

“Siobhan,” Mum said after a long moment. “You know your father and I support you and your music. And I know you think that the Thorskards have the best intentions, but we're your parents. It's our job to think about your safety.”

“Believe me,” I said. “I am thinking about my safety. And it's just dinner tomorrow.”

In the end, Hannah had to call them and tell them that she and Lottie would be supervising us. My mother somehow managed to get her to promise to teach me how to use a sword as part of the bargain, which was not something I would ever have anticipated. Mum and Hannah took a more or less instant liking to one another, by virtue of the fact that they were both possessed of a goodly amount of common sense. Once she got over being starstruck, Mum got on well with Lottie too. I don't think she anticipated spending afternoons having tea with one of the more famous married couples in Canada, but when it became apparent that Hannah and Lottie had adopted her, Mum more than rose to the occasion. For his part, Dad only insisted that Owen come over to our house for dinner a couple of times as well. I think Dad was more worried about teenage hormones than he was about the dragon slaying, which Owen thought was terrifying and I thought was actually kind of funny.

And that's how I went from Siobhan McQuaid, unassuming music lover, to Siobhan McQuaid, dragon slayer by proxy. It's not a particularly epic tale, though I could make it into one if you would rather (and I probably will, if I am ever asked to write
an autobiography), but it's what happened.

The sword fighting turned out to be quite a bit of fun, once the agony of muscle development produced actual muscles. I'd never been much for sports before, preferring music to running around, but at least carrying a bari sax around prepared me for the weight of a sword. I was shorter than Owen was, and a bit stockier so my balance was good, but he had several years of practice on me. He trained with a sword that was nearly as tall as he was. Even with both hands on the hilt, I couldn't hold the tip up off the ground for very long. His actual sword was shorter and a bit lighter, but by training with the heavier one, he built up more stamina. The sword Hannah gave me was one she'd made for Lottie's physical therapy. It wasn't exactly light, but it was manageable, and by the end of October, I'd gotten used to carrying it around when I wasn't at school, strapped to my back so I wouldn't trip over it (but where it could whack me in the head with the pommel if I turned too quickly).

Before Owen, I'd spent most of my Saturday afternoons playing piano or poking away at my compositions. Now, rain or shine, I spent them in the practice ring in Owen's yard, facing off against Hannah or Lottie, or more rarely Owen himself, with Lottie's old broadsword in my hands. I'd probably never actually get close enough to a dragon to use anything I was learning, but it made my parents feel better, and it meant that when I watched Owen drill, finding rhythm and rhyme in the growing symphony of his motions, I could more accurately describe what he was doing. The axiom “write what you know” was a bit forced in my case, but I didn't really mind, once my arms stopped feeling like lead weights while I played the organ on Sunday mornings.

The last week of October was bright and sunny. Children prepared their Hallowe'en costumes two sizes too big in case the weather turned, and the farmers collected the last of their crops, one eye on the ground and the other on the sky as they sat in the high combine seats or drove the gravity bins between field and silo. Hannah was taking advantage of the chilly air to work in the smithy in the mornings, and so I watched while Owen trained with Lottie. The sky was absolutely clear, except for the smoke from Hannah's forge, and I was so used to seeing it now that it didn't make me nervous anymore. Fortunately for me, Lottie was always on guard, even when she was crossing swords with her nephew, and so when the dragon decided that Hannah's smithy looked like a good target, Lottie was the one who saw it coming.

The dragon came down on us from the west, which meant it must have flown over Trondheim on its way. Since Lottie had spotted it with enough time to spare, she sent Owen racing for their real swords and yelled for me to run and get Hannah out of the smithy. I was in such a rush that I forgot my backpack on the ground by the training ring. Dragon drills at school had left me with the habit of dropping everything when the alarm was given, and it wasn't until Hannah had smothered the flames in her forge with the water she typically used for quenching and locked us both in the dragon shelter just outside the smithy door that I even missed it.

“How are you so calm?” I asked her. She was sitting on the old red chesterfield that Lottie had put in the shelter, but I was too anxious to sit. This was the closest I'd ever been to a dragon
attack, and I knew that, outside, Owen and Lottie were using their swords for real and that there was nothing I could do to help them.

“Practice,” Hannah said. I looked at her and realized that even though she looked at ease, her fingers were laced together and white at the knuckles. “I do this a lot, you know.”

“Do they usually make you go in the shelter, or is that just because I'm here?” I asked. I wanted her to talk more than I've ever wanted anyone to talk in my whole life.

“It depends,” she said. “If it's just Lottie and me here, then I stay with her. She's not as fast as she used to be, but she refuses to hide if a dragon comes. If Owen or his father is here, then I'm down here by myself. Frankly, it's nice to have company.”

“You're welcome,” I said, and wished I had my backpack so I could scribble dissonant and nonsensical notes onto the staff paper I always carried in the front pocket of it. It might stop them from skittering on my skin.

There were a few moments of silence, until the tension got the better of me again.

“How did you and Lottie meet?” I asked. “For real, I mean. Did she really just walk into your dad's smithy?”

It wasn't unheard-of for a dragon slayer to have his or her own smith, though most of them had company connections that took care of their swords and armor. Dragon slaying wasn't as expensive as it had once been, but having a legacy helped. I knew from magazines that Lottie and Hannah had been together since before their time in the Oil Watch, but they had kept the bulk of their relationship deservedly private. I felt awkward asking and was about to rescind the question when Hannah answered.

“I was sixteen when Lottie and Aodhan came to my father's smithy in Ohio for the first time,” Hannah said. “They were fourteen and twelve. Their mother had come to commission a sword from my father, who was quite famous in his own right, and we hit it off immediately. I knew I was going to be a smith, and I wanted to serve my country, but they didn't want me. When I met Lottie, I saw another way.”

“I didn't know you were American,” I said. That was quite a piece of gossip for the magazines to have omitted, and I wondered how that secret had been kept.

“It was big news before your time,” she said. “And I'm not. Not anymore, anyway. I defected when I was eighteen. The Canadian Forces sponsored my entrance based on my merit and reputation as a smith.”

I thought about it for a second. There was no law that said a Canadian dragon slayer couldn't have an American smith. In fact, our armies usually cooperated in that regard anyway, since Canada had a smaller talent pool. And defecting was a very serious decision.

“Oh,” I said softly as realization dawned. Hannah had chosen not to join the American army because of the policies that led to Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The Americans had lost a perfectly capable smith, and we had gained another piece of Lottie's legend.

“Times change, thank goodness,” Hannah said, a not entirely happy smile on her face, “but yes. I joined your army because I couldn't be in mine and still be myself. Two years later, Lottie went on her tour in the Oil Watch, and I was good enough to get myself assigned to the Middle East with her. The rest you know.”

“I'm glad you're here,” I told her. “Even though it must have been hard.”

“Most worthwhile things are hard,” Hannah said. “But thank you.”

I sat beside her on the chesterfield, calm enough to stop pacing, and she reached out to squeeze my hand. Her fingers were calloused and burned from decades at the fire, and I was pleased to see that my own hands were starting to pick up callouses of their own, rough spots that showed where work had been done and muscles had been earned. I squeezed back.

“You want to know the real reason I can be so calm when they're out slaying dragons?” Hannah asked.

“Yes,” I said. I really, really did. Anything that would help to silence the discordant notes that ran up and down my spine.

“I'm calm because I know I've done everything I can,” she explained. “I've spent hours making sure their weapons are perfectly suited to their use. I know what they've eaten for breakfast. I've watched them train until they can't stand up anymore, and I've watched them stand up anyway and start again. I know that they are the best at this, and that sometimes they just need me to get out of the way.”

“What did Owen have for breakfast this morning?” I asked, without really thinking about it.

“Lucky Charms,” Hannah said. She giggled. “And bacon.”

“I'm not sure that makes me feel any better,” I said, laughing too. “But at least I know he had something healthy for dinner last night.”

“That's the spirit,” Hannah said.

There was a terrific crash directly above us, and I flinched in spite of my best efforts. Hannah still had hold of my hand,
and she tightened her grip at the noise. The shelter was underground, adjacent to the garage and across the yard from the smithy. I hoped that the house was still intact.

“Don't worry,” Hannah said, guessing from my expression what I was thinking. “Lottie will have made sure that Owen drew the beast away from anything too flammable before they engaged it on the ground. The house will be okay and the smithy probably will be too.”

“This is my first real dragon attack,” I admitted. There had been a lot of drills at school, and nights spent in our dragon shelter. One time when we were driving home from London we got diverted off of Highway 4 because Exeter was on fire, but this was the closest I'd ever come.

“I think you're doing well,” she said. “I was an absolute wreck for months after Owen was born, even though Lottie and Aodhan had the whole Oil Watch, and then the other dragon slayers in Hamilton, as backup.”

There was a knock on the heavy metal doors of the shelter—a sound so unexpected that I jumped. When I realized what the sound meant, I collapsed in relief against the cushions on the chesterfield. It was over.

“Let's go see the damage,” Hannah said lightly, but I could tell she was a little bit on edge.

We climbed the stairs and unlatched the doors. Presumably, the shelter had once been a root cellar or some kind of basement access, but the Thorskards had reinforced the entryway to make it as dragonproof as possible. With the latch undone, Hannah was able to push one of the heavy doors open, and I squinted against the bright autumn sunlight.

Lottie's face was red and she was breathing hard as she
leaned on her good leg. Owen was winded too. In one hand he held his sword, stained black with dragon's blood, and in the other was the smoking ruin of my backpack. I deflated a little bit. So much for the essay I'd spent two hours outlining by hand, because Mr. Cooper was a traditionalist who believed in good penmanship.

Behind them, dead on the ground, was the dragon.

Lottie followed my gaze from her to Owen, to the dragon, and to my backpack, and she smiled when I sighed.

“Don't worry, Siobhan,” she said as if this happened all the time. I got the feeling it was probably going to. “I'll write you a note.”

I met Aodhan Thorskard ten minutes after the first time I touched a dragon. I'd seen pictures of Aodhan before, of course, and had even spoken with him on the phone a few times when I'd called to talk to Owen, but this was the first time we had ever met in person. He arrived in the driveway in his beat-up old Volkswagen minivan just as Lottie and Owen finished cleaning their swords and Hannah finished checking the pair of them over for injuries. I wondered at first how he had managed to show up so soon after the dragon's defeat, but then I saw the flashing lights on the roof of the van and realized that he must have been tracking the dragon himself when it made for the smoke pouring out of Hannah's smithy.