Theodore's Skin

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Until I was ten, we raised wyverns. Before that it was griffins, but they were all gone long before I was born. When I was nine, we lost the wyverns to the turning. That was a bad year. Most of the ranches with mortgages were foreclosed. We owned our family’s ranch free and clear, but still there was no work to do, no money to spend, and nothing in the valley to spend it on. Businesses closed and people moved away. Late at night, when Ma and Pa thought I couldn’t hear, they talked about where we might have to go and what we’d do next.

Thank goodness for dragons.

I had just turned ten when the scraggly man came through town. Our last wyvern had died that morning. She hadn’t gotten sick for so long, we thought maybe she was immune. The McLintocks still thought they might save a few heads at their ranch. Mr. McLintock said plagues usually left survivors, with no telling before or after why some died and others didn’t. But when I walked into the stables that morning, Dany had shed her skin…before she was ready.

That was how the turning started. All wyverns shed their skin, but normally they have a healthy new coat underneath ready to greet the world. Whole shed wyvern skins could fetch a hefty price at the market. But Dany’s skin had peeled and fallen from her sides in ragged tatters. Beneath was a glistening pink and red tenderness. Dany wailed at the merest touch of the air and dust mites.

The first time Pa had gone out to the stables with the gun, Sally had asked Ma what Pa was going to do. Sally didn’t ask anymore. She just kept eating her porridge, with barely a start at the sound of the shot.

“It’s done,” Pa said to Ma, as he came back into the kitchen.

Except what he meant was that we were done.

I helped Pa load the scraps of Dany’s skin into the truck, and we drove towards town.

“Where are we going to go, Pa?” I asked.

“To the market,” said Pa. “Mr. Zucker still pays for skins. With so few skins left, even these scraps might fetch us something.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Pa was silent for a long moment.

“Your mother wrote to your Uncle Tim,” he finally said. “He can put us up for a while. And there’s work to the south,” said Pa. But wherever Pa found work, it wouldn’t be home and it wouldn’t be ours.

In town, we met the scraggly man. He was scraggly, with scraggly hair, a scraggly beard, and scraggly clothes. He drove a scraggly truck. Whatever was in the back of the truck was covered with a canopy. I saw the scraggly man and his truck parked in the lot outside the Mr. Zucker’s store, and while Pa walked towards the door with a grim look on his face, I saw the scraggly man fix his eyes on us. He walked over to us across the parking lot.

“Good morning, good sir and young lady,” said the scraggly man.

Pa reached for his pocket—he always used to toss a coin to a pauper when he could—but his hand withdrew empty. We had no coins to spare now. The scraggly man read his meaning.

“No, no, good sir,” said the scraggly man. “You mistake my intentions. I am no beggar. I pull my own weight and always have done…ever since I was out of diapers.”

“Good morning,” Pa said coolly. Pa also moved between the scraggly man and me. He waited a moment for the scraggly man to reply. The scraggly man just stood there holding his hat. Pa took my hand and turned towards the door to the store.

“Wait! Wait!” called the scraggly man. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Quinten O’Shaughnessy, Dragon Lord, at your service.”

“Good for you,” said Pa, without looking back.

“Please, sir! Just look at my wares. I promise it will be worth your while!”

A squawk came from the back of the scraggly man’s truck. Pa still held my hand, but my neck snapped around at the sound.

“Are those wyverns?” I asked.

“If they are,” said Pa, “get them out of here at once. The turning has burned through all the wyverns in the valley.”

“The McLintocks still have a few,” I said.

“Not for long, I reckon,” said Pa.

“No,” said the scraggly man, “not wyverns…dragons!”

Dragons! I thought, but I held my tongue. Pa was on edge, I could tell, and that put me on edge, but my own sense was that the scraggly man was strange, but not bad exactly. Still, I was glad Pa was between the scraggly man and me.

“Dragons?” said Pa. “The last dragon died years ago in a zoo up north.”

“Not the last,” said the scraggly man. “I have some of the last several here in my truck, if you’ll please just have a look.”

The scraggly man bowed towards his truck. Another squawk.

“Those are wyverns,” said Pa, walking over to the scraggly man’s truck. “Get them out of here, before it’s too late.”

Pa pulled open the scraggly canopy to reveal a truck bed full of…dragons.

You can tell quickly. Dragons and wyverns both have scales, wings, and four legs. But in wyverns, the forelegs and the wings are the same limbs, like bats. Dragons have four full legs like dogs or cats, and their wings grow separately out of their backs. What the scraggly man had in the back of his truck were dragons. Pa knew what we were looking at as well as I did. The dragons weren’t in cages. They were just loose in the truck.

What neither Pa nor I expected was for one of the dragons, a bright green one that reminded me of a dyed Easter egg, to look straight into my eyes with its own big round soft brown eyes. I couldn’t help myself.

“Ooooh!” I said, a sound that Pa said only girls and women could make for babies, puppies, and kittens. The green dragon ran toward me and stopped just short. It looked up at me with open curiosity. I started to hold out my hand but remembered my manners and my common sense.

“May I,” I asked the scraggly man. “Is it safe.”

“Perfectly safe, young miss. Please.”

I held my hand out towards the green dragon. I felt Pa tense beside me, but he did not stop me. The green dragon came forward and sniffed my hand. A forked tongue came out of its mouth and licked my fingers. The next thing I knew the dragon had leapt into my arms and was making a soft sound like the roar of a far-away furnace.

“Where did you get these?” said Pa.

“Did I not mention?” said the scraggly man. “I’m a dragon lord.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they know their own kind, and I know their kind. But I can’t afford to feed them as they deserve, so I travel the lands trying to find them good homes.”

“Why are they loose?” said Pa. “They’re not even tied down.”

“No need for ropes and cages when you’re a dragon lord, sir.”

“So,” I said, the green dragon licking my cheek, “you’re hoping we can give some of these dragons a good home, Mr. O’Shaughnessy?”

“Please,” said the scraggly man. “Dragon Lord O’Shaughnessy.”

“Do they shed their skins?” asked Pa.

“They certainly do.”

“How often?”

“Once a season.”

Pa stared at the green dragon and thought for a moment. The green dragon stared back and fluttered its wings but stayed in my arms. Pa’s eyes flicked to me.

“I don’t need you giving me the big eyes, too, Fern,” Pa said.

The big eyes? Had I been giving Pa the big eyes?

“We don’t know anything about the care of dragons. This is wyvern country.”

My heart sank.

“I have just the thing!” said the scraggly man. He went around to the cab of the truck, opened the door, and leaned inside. He came back out with a book.

“All you need to know is in here, good sir,” said the scraggly man.

Pa took the book. I peered over his arm to read the cover: The Care and Fueling of Dragons, by Dragon Lord Quinten O’Shaughnessy.

Fueling? I wondered.

Pa leafed through the book.

“How much are you asking?” said Pa.

“I’m willing to let them go for room and board,” said the scraggly man.

“You mean you want to us to put you up at our house?”

“No, bless you, no! I mean room and board for the dragons. As many as you can feed!”

“How can you afford to give away dragons? What do you live on?”

“Dragons are my vocation, sir, not my livelihood. I work to keep dragons, not the other way around. But I can’t keep all of them, not forever.”

“We still have bags and bags of wyvern feed,” I said. “And nobody to sell it to. We could give it a go, Pa.”

“You’re bewitched by that creature, Fern,” said Pa. “I can see that bright as day.”

“We could at least keep the ranch while we try.”

“How much do they eat, compared to wyverns?” Pa asked the scraggly man.

“A little less when they’re young, a little more when the older,” said the scraggly man.

“How old do they get before they begin to eat more?”

“Three or four years. These are barely more than hatchlings, mind you.”

“Please give me a moment,” said Pa.

Pa walked away from the scraggly man’s truck. I turned to follow and realized I was still holding the green dragon. I turned back to the scraggly man and put the green dragon down in the bed of the truck. The scraggly man nodded, and I followed Pa who was waiting for me. As I walked away from the truck, the green dragon leapt down and followed at my heals. I stopped.

“Let him follow you, if that’s what he wants, young miss,” said the scraggly man. “Just bring him back to the truck when you’re done.”

I couldn’t help grinning as I followed Pa into the general store, the dragon close behind. Mr. Zucker owned and managed the store, and now he was the last person in the valley who would still buy wyvern skins. Canned goods and bags of potatoes and such lined the shelves. Mr. Zucker did his best to keep the place clean, but there was no stopping the dust of that summer. Spots on the shelves where cans had recently been removed showed as circles of darker wood surrounded by faint fields of white. Mr. Zucker stood by the cash register, so there was no need to ring the bell. Mr. Zucker looked up from a newspaper on the counter as we entered.

“Good morning, Bill,” Mr. Zucker said to Pa. “Good morning, Fern.”

“Good morning, Charlie,” said Pa. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Name it.”

“Do your trading tables include the going rate for dragon skins?”

“There’s no market around here, not for a long time,” said Mr. Zucker, “but I might be able to find something for back east. They’re rarer than hens’ teeth now. No new ones for decades.”

Mr. Zucker pulled a book the size of an atlas from the back room and placed it on the counter.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” said Mr. Zucker, “why the sudden interest in dragon skin prices?”

The green dragon stood on its hind legs with its forelegs on the side of the counter. Its head peered over the top at Mr. Zucker.

“Oh, hello there!” said Mr. Zucker. Then he noticed its four legs. “Is that…? Where did he come from?”

“From the man in the truck out front,” said Pa. He was carefully looking over a page in the book covered in columns and numbers. Mr. Zucker just kept staring at the green dragon.

“Thanks, Bill,” Pa finally said. He walked back outside, and I followed. We went up to the scraggly man who was sitting on the tailgate of his truck. He sprang up as we approached.

“We’ll take four,” said Pa.