The Story of Owen (9 page)

“Dad!” Owen said when Aodhan killed the engine and the lights and got out of the van.

He was tall, like his sister, and significantly broader. He looked like he could wrestle a dragon, not just slay it, and win
handily. His shield, which he had pulled out of the passenger seat as he climbed out of the car, glinted silver in the afternoon sun, but I knew it was made of titanium. It was enormous, and it still covered less than half of his body when he held it. His sword was strapped firmly to the roof rack of the minivan because it was so long that if he'd carried in on his person for any length of time, he would probably trip himself up on it. He didn't match the voice I'd spoken with on the phone in the least, all cello where he ought to be bassoon. Or possibly bulldozer.

“Owen,” Aodhan said. He didn't speak loudly, but he had the sort of voice you couldn't help hearing. Probably because he actually sort of was a giant in real life (though likely not quite tall enough to jump over drive sheds of any size), and people tend to pay attention to giants, even the ones who don't drive around with large swords strapped to the roofs of their cars. “I see you managed it.”

“Owen was great, Aodhan,” Lottie said.

“I was the bait, Aunt Lottie,” Owen pointed out. “You're the one who got it.”

“True,” Lottie said. “But I'm not as fast I used to be and you made sure the beast went exactly where I needed it to be. Plus, I only snagged its first heart. You got the second one.”

“It was already dead,” Owen said, so quietly I think I was the only one who heard him.

“I'm sure it was an epic battle,” Hannah said. “But can I go back to work now? I was right in the middle of something when I was interrupted.”

“I'm not sure that's a good idea,” Aodhan said. He gestured over his shoulder at the dead dragon. “I slayed that one's partner
not too far from here, and there may be more in the area. I think you should lay off anything that makes a lot of smoke until we get the bodies cleaned up.”

“Bollocks,” said Hannah.

“Oh, cheer up,” said Lottie. She rolled her neck and it cracked with distressing volume, though it didn't seem to bother her. “I haven't gotten to do that in weeks!”

“I'm so happy for you,” Hannah said sarcastically, but there was a smile on her face that belied her tone. “I do love hiding in the bunker while you have all the fun.”

Lottie grabbed Hannah's hand and pulled her in for a kiss. She was happier than I had ever seen her, and I realized that even though dragon slaying had been Lottie's job, and a dangerous one at that, she had genuinely enjoyed her profession. I wondered what it would be like—to lose something you love so much and have to live surrounded by constant reminders of it. I hoped that I would never find out.

“And Siobhan!” Lottie said, her arm still around Hannah's waist. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, there wasn't much to be afraid of in the shelter. And yours is a lot more comfortable than the one at my house.”

“We built it knowing that we might have to spend a lot of time there,” Owen said. “On account of the smithy.”

“I picked out the chesterfield,” Aodhan said. “I thought it was bouncy.”

I had a sudden vision of Owen's gigantic father jumping up and down on the sofa, waving his ridiculously large sword around while a dragon tried to claw its way into the bunker, and started to laugh somewhat hysterically. I tried to stop, but every
time I thought I was regaining control, my giggling would start up again.

“It's all right, honey,” Hannah said. “That happens to everyone their first time. Let's go have some tea while Aodhan calls the disposal unit.”

One of the other effects of having a dragon slayer move to town was that Trondheim also got its own dragon disposal unit instead of having to rely on the province. Dragons couldn't just be buried or burned, they had to be taken care of properly, beginning with the killing stroke. This was one of the first things I'd learned when Lottie started teaching me to use a sword. You can't just hack at a dragon. For starters, its scales are very hard, so if you whack its spine too many times, you'll end up with a dull sword and your hair on fire. The best idea is to stab the dragon's softer underbelly close enough to its hearts that you can kill it with a single blow.

In the old days, dragon slayers used lances from horseback to do this, but pavement and subdivisions aren't really practical for horsemanship. Even the rural areas around Trondheim didn't really have enough space to make it work, and so the broadsword has become the most common weapon for the modern dragon slayer. The exception to this was in the prairies in Canada and the US, where wide-open spaces allowed for old-style jousting tactics. The federally employed BB—or Mounties, as they were more commonly called—favored the lance tactic because they had so much ground to use in a fight. Occasionally, dragon slayers have been known to use longbows
or crossbows, but the precision required, not to mention the size of the arrowhead, makes the weapon impractical in most locations. The broadsword is made long enough that the dragon slayer can maintain distance from the dragon, and sharp enough that it can slice one or both hearts cleanly.

A botched dragon slaying can be something of a disaster. Since dragons enjoy feeding on carbon emissions and do so whenever possible, a messy dragon slaying with multiple leaks can cause upheaval in a local environment. After Rome defeated Carthage, for example, the legionnaire dragon slayers went out of their way to butcher dragons improperly in the area around the fallen city. The resulting desert eventually spread to cover most of North Africa. Sometimes, an uncontrolled slaying is unavoidable given the severity of the dragon attack, but for the most part, dragon slayers try to be as particular as possible when slaying dragons. Broadswords require some degree of closeness to use, but if dragon slayers switched to heat-seeking missiles or some other kind of ballistics, the results could be catastrophic.

Trondheim used to rely on the army or the RCMD for dragon disposal before the Thorskards moved to town. It took days, sometimes, during which further environmental damage could occur. When the town and county councils realized that having a dragon slayer would result in more dragon carcasses, they started discussing options. They got bogged down in the bureaucracy characteristic of municipal cooperation, until the volunteer firefighter chiefs stepped in to assume the responsibility. This was deemed practical by all the councils on the grounds that, more often than not, fighting fires and disposing of dragons ended up happening simultaneously. Also, it was cheaper. Our local disposal units were therefore relatively new
to their jobs and made up predominantly of farmers and local business owners. No one could fault their effort, though. My dad thought that it was probably because it was their own fields and homes they were protecting, and he was probably right.

Their response time was also very good, and they pulled into the driveway with a large flatbed truck and a small crane before the kettle had even boiled. We stayed inside with our tea while Aodhan went outside to supervise. Dragon slayers working with civilian backup wasn't terribly commonplace. It had been once. There were clear historical examples in Greek and Roman times, but during the Middle Ages a Transylvanian dragon slayer named Vlad III Dracul had taken to impaling local peasants as dragon bait, which kind of soured the dragon slayer/villager relationship. The situation was improving, but some less progressive individuals still saw the
Dracula
novel as a cautionary tale of what happens when a dragon slayer goes rogue. It was nice to see Aodhan getting along so well with his support crew.

“You really are okay, Siobhan?” Lottie asked. She still hadn't let go of Hannah's hand. I wondered how much of her euphoria was related to adrenaline.

“I didn't do anything,” I reminded her. “I didn't even see the dragon until it was dead.”

“She was a champ, Lottie,” Hannah said. “We just talked while we waited, calm as you please. And still asking intelligent questions to boot.”

“Eventually you'll get to watch,” Lottie said to me.

“I figured as much,” I replied. I wasn't exactly looking forward to it, but after today I knew that I'd much rather watch than be stuck belowground waiting for news. “It would be hard
to describe something I haven't seen.”

“Exactly,” Lottie said. “Though that shouldn't stop you, once you get really good.”

“You mean I get to just make things up?” I asked. “Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of keeping track of how Owen does?”

“No, that's for real,” Owen said. “But you can make things up when you talk to other people. Feel free to make me sound cooler than I am.”

“That's not very hard, dear,” Hannah said, but she was laughing when she said it.

“For example,” Lottie said. “When you get home and your parents say, ‘What did you do today at Owen's?' you could tell them a story about how fabulously brave we were while we fought. Eventually, you'll understand Owen's fighting techniques well enough that you won't actually have to watch him to know what he's going to do. It's all a question of style.”

There was clearly more to being a bard than I'd originally thought. I have to admit, I kind of liked the idea of embellishing stories and learning to tell where embellishments had been made. Hannah had already explained a bit of it to me, in the bunker, though I hadn't realized it at the time.

The door opened and Aodhan came inside. Owen got up to get his father a mug of tea, and I was struck again by how tall Trondheim's Own Dragon Slayer was. If Owen grew up like that, we were going to be very fortunate indeed. The dragons would probably hide from him, if only they were smart enough to learn fear.

“Hello, Siobhan,” Aodhan said as he took a seat at the table. “It's nice to finally meet you face to face.”

He held out his hand and I extended my own to shake it. I
was only slightly afraid that he was going to crush my fingers, but his grip was gentle as he shook my hand.

“Likewise,” I said.

“How is Owen's schoolwork coming along?” he asked.

“He's doing much better,” I said. I was never particularly comfortable talking about Owen when he was right in the room with me. It made me feel awkward. “We're about to start
Heart of Darkness
in English and we have an algebra test coming up, but aside from that we're pretty much clear.”

“And history?” Aodhan asked. I was starting to get the impression that he really didn't like being an absentee father, but it was the nature of his job so he caught up whenever he could.

“That I'm actually good at,” Owen said. “Or I will be until Mr. Huffman moves on from dragon-related topics, anyway.”

“Oh, that reminds me!” Lottie said, finally relinquishing Hannah's hand to reach for the pen and paper that sat underneath the phone. She scrawled a quick message and handed it to me. “There's your note for what happened to your backpack. Owen will bring you a new one on Monday. We'll replace anything you lose to the cause.”

I looked at the note in my hand and read the hastily scrawled words:
Please excuse Siobhan McQuaid from this essay, as it was burned up by a dragon. L. Thorskard.
I looked up with a smile on my face. “You realize that Mr. Cooper is going to keep this forever, right?” I said. “The other teachers will probably be jealous.”

“Don't worry too much about that,” Aodhan said. He laughed, rolling broad and deep, finally a sound that matched his appearance. “Dragons tend to be equal-opportunity homework burners. There will be plenty of other notes.”

He was right about that.

It went almost exactly the way Lottie said it would. I arrived home, safe and sound, and short one backpack, which, to my surprise, my mother did not notice right away. Her eyes scanned me quickly, checking for burns or other signs of impending dismemberment, as she always did when I got home from Owen's house, and when she found none, she hugged me and asked me about my day. My father, who was finishing dinner in the kitchen, yelled that I should wait until we were all seated so that I could tell them at the same time, and so I did.

This is the story I told my parents.

“I was practicing with Lottie, like she promised,” I said.

“What is she teaching you?” asked my father.

“Today it was mostly evasion,” I told him. It had the benefit of being more or less true. “That will be my main job if I ever get stuck with Owen and a dragon. I am supposed to get out of the way.”

“I don't mind that at all,” said my mother, and I nodded. I
was no dragon slayer, and I didn't ever intend to be, but learning to run away properly was definitely a skill that might come in handy.

“Me neither,” I said. “Anyway, she was teaching me to dive and roll, and then to do it holding a sword. I'm pretty sure the goal is to not cut off my own head while I do it.”