The Dragon Seller: A Tale of Love and Dragons Page 4

  "Hey, buddy".

  He had smooth dark brown scales, the color of the desert just before dawn, the antique bronze of a Greek shield. And no horns on his head, like Mustangs. The wings were still attached to his back and you could barely make them out, but this was normal. Dragons make their first attempts at flying during their second month, and a year has to go by before the muscles in the shoulders are fully developed.

  "What can I call you?" I asked him as I pet his back.

  With a soft push I bent him on his side and touched his tail. On instinct, the dragon curled it around my finger, hanging onto it. A dragon's tail grasp is powerful, even in specimens that are just born. I picked him up from the incubator and went toward the infirmary.

  "Now, my dear, let's give you a check-up", I told the being that was hanging upside-down, "Then we'll pick out a name for you. You know, I was thinking of something big, like "Draco Maximo". Huh? What do you think?"

  "Waaa! Waaaa!"

  "Okay, but let's not start showing of..."

  In the infirmary I went through the basic tests. I had already noticed his egg was smaller than average, and in fact even Draco seemed to be sub-standard. When I put him in the biometric scanner, the computer measured and weighed him. As I had imagined, from the tip of the tail to the face the dragon was only 6 inches long, and weighed 7 ounces. To give you an idea, Deirdre, the Mustang matriarch, at birth was 9 and a half inches long and weighed almost 13 ounces.

  Measurements aside, however, the baby dragon seemed healthy and lively. He wouldn't stop climbing on the back of my hand, tickling me with his clawed paws, and kept on with his Waaa!

  I knew he was hungry. In the Brooding Room I had already prepared an extra carbohydrate baby food, a whitish mush I give to newborn dragons during the first few days. I fed him with a small measuring spoon until he was full, and then I brought him back to the incubator.

  I didn't trust putting him in the Flight Garden. He was still too small and being a new species, I couldn't foresee the other dragons' reactions. I decided to keep him separated for at least three weeks, waiting for him to become a bit bigger.

  The Pink French (Dragons Manual)

  Species Name: Draco Occidentalis Francus

  Length: between 24 and 30 inches max.

  Weight: 6.5 - 7.7 lbs.

  Wing span: 39 inches max.

  Tail: 10 inches.

  Average life span: 30 years.

  Color of scales: light pink, with various white stripes.

  Eye color: light blue.

  THE PINK FRENCH IS ONE of the latest dragons that has appeared in the XiLong catalogue. The Chinese production house created this family of dragons upon a commission by the CEO of Saint Laurent, Roland Bergè, who wanted a dragon for personal companionship. The result is the forefather of the Francus family: Elegance.

  Elegance is the first dragon in the world to have light pink scales, with delicate hints of white on the dorsal area, on the tail and on the paws. From the start it was a docile but intelligent specimen, perfect for domestic relaxation as well as for social outings (don't blame me, I'm just copying their catalog here).

  After a few years Pink French sales were opened up to the public, but the Francus remains a "luxury" dragon, whose eggs cost around nine-ten thousand dollars each. They're considered the modern and flying version of pocket poodles from the beginning of the century. Lots of famous people have a Pink French, including a string of top models, a dozen Hollywood stars and the princess of Sweden.

  Their price is justified by the aesthetic characteristics of this dragon. The Pink is a "pretty" dragon. A dragon to admire. If you want to impress your girlfriend with an engagement present that isn't the usual diamond ring, there's nothing that says "I burn with love for you" more than a pink dragon. At least that's what today's fashion magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair say. From personal experience I can tell you that not all girls - or guys, for that matter - prefer a dragon to a precious stone to wear on their finger to show off to their friends (you can show off a Pink too, but it's not the same thing).

  Their totem plant is the Asian Persimmon, but if domesticated they also like other types of fruit like apples, grapes, strawberries and apricots. They have a carbohydrate rich diet, and like all dragons they feed on rice, spelt and other cereals. The Manhattan with grey scales and the Italian Velluto are the luxury variations by Seryu and GeNext, similar to their competitors the Pinks under various aspects (and if possible even more expensive).

  Okay, this is the official version.

  Now I'll tell you the truth: the Pink French are troublesome dragons. Pretty? Yes. Fascinating? Yes. Intelligent? Absolutely. But they're also as mischievous as drunk Irish elves. The luck of humanity is that their dimensions are really small, so the mess they can make is very little. When I hired Roger as an assistant, I called Sheela to introduce her to him, but the kid was too occupied admiring the "red dragons with the horns" in the Garden, so cool and "Rock and Roll", to consider a small pink dragon.

  Big mistake.

  Sheela got offended and spent the whole week meditating on her revenge. One day a girl came into the store, Jenny something, a cute brunette who was also a classmate of Roger's at high school. Roger had invited her to show her the dragons and hit on her (once again, I have nothing to do with this, those two fools did it all). So, Roger was being cute with this Jenny and while the two were talking at the counter, Sheela arrived. She landed on Roger's head and dropped a nice smelly liquid "present" on his hair. The girl started cracking up, Roger tried to chase the dragon around the whole store, but it's hard to grab a dragon without a pair of wings.

  And from that day on there's been an ongoing feud between the two.

  The Little Dragon and Raleigh Tompson

  "The Burning, that's what the farmers call the invisible incendiary force that sometimes accompanies Drought. But what we have here is not a weather phenomenon. This monster that attacks during the night has enormous teeth and long claws. It's a creature in flesh and blood. Nobody has been able to see it up close. The tales of the rare witnesses agree it's big, very big. The local authorities think it could be a wild dragon, maybe a Mustang that escaped from an eccentric owner, but Antone Davis, representative of the Dragon Breeders, excludes the possibility that there could be a dragon, domestic or wild, capable of such destruction".

  Lee McDonald for "IdahoStatesman.com" - The case of the Fire Monster

  NEWBORN DRAGONS USUALLY DO three things: eat, make messes (they poop everywhere), and sleep. No more or less than their animal counterpart, or human for that matter. And then, of course, they grow.

  During the first few days I had set an alarm and every three hours I went to the baby dragon to give him his food and clean the incubator. Then, without Roger seeing me, I would go back to managing the store. The second and third day went by peacefully for the little Draco, but there was something strange in him, something I couldn't grasp.

  I took a sample of one of his scales to analyze it. As for the majority of reptiles, his scales were made of beta keratin, while the pigments that gave the surface that bronze effect were particular. In fact, I had never seen them.

  But it wasn't this detail that perplexed me. In the evening, before leaving, I assured myself that the incubator was clean and had enough water. Then, I would lock the room to avoid Roger wandering in. In the morning, upon my return, I would find the dragon sleeping in a corner of the dome, and every time I asked myself "what has changed since yesterday?".

  When he was seven days old I brought him into the infirmary and put him through the regular check-ups. After delicately untying his tail from my finger, I put him on the bio-scanner connected to the computer.

  "Stay here and be a good boy while we see how much you've grown", I murmured.

  The scanner swept over the dragon once, while I kept him occupied by letting him bite my nails, and after the second sweep it showed me this data: length, 8.3 inches. Weight, 12 ounces.

  I under
stood what had eluded me. Draco had grown 0.3 inches and 0.7 ounces each day. A crazy amount! Upon reading that data I opened my eyes wide.

  "It's not possible".

  I had the scanner do the test again, hoping the machine was broken.

  If he keeps up this rhythm, I thought, in a year he'll be four meters long. Four meters! There aren't any dragons that big.

  At that point, where would I keep him? The Flight Garden was 345 square feet, it wouldn't be enough to hold him. Fortunately, I said to myself, their growth stops around six months. Even so, as an adult, my dragon would be three times bigger than Deirdre. When the scanner finished, it showed me the same results.

  "Crap, it looks like I'll have to buy extra feed, next month".

  The little dragon was observing me with his head cocked to the side, his green eyes alert and curious. I took him off the scale-scanner and brought him back to the incubator. When I took him off my finger and saw him crawl on the padded surface I noticed that three weeks were too many. In just a short time he would grow so much as to occupy almost half the glass dome. I decided to move him into the only multiple incubator I had, which had a diameter of more than a foot and a half.

  Here, at least, you'll be comfortable for another week, I thought. But then I'll have to move you into the Flight Garden, for sure.

  I still didn't know how the other dragons would react to his presence. It wasn't really the Outbacks that worried me, they're docile and playful dragons, whose most important occupation during the day is that of flying from one branch to the other or swinging upside down, taking naps. No, the real problem was the Mustangs, and Deirdre. The matriarch had a harem of six males, and three younger female dragons that couldn't wait to take her place. The cherry tree where they lived was a court in constant political ferment. Pranks, betrayals and blatant shows of strength followed one another, day after day, perpetrated by these little Machiavellians with blue scales.

  Many people have an idealized view of animals, in their whole. They don't think they're capable of being assholes. "My dog loves me" is a sentence you hear often, but nobody ever says "my dog is a real asshole". Trust me, if you spend some time observing my dragons and how they act among themselves, you would understand what I mean right away.

  Sometimes the Mustangs made me shiver, seriously. I'm talking about organized bullying; favorite branches destroyed or burnt; mafia style ambushes.

  And do you know what the funny thing is? With me Deirdre was wonderful. Every time I went into the Flight Garden she was always the first one to come land on my arm and lick my cheek, making Sheela jealous. She loved me, just like your dog or cat loves you. But with the other dragons? A bitch with an iron fist.

  That's why I hoped I could keep Draco far from the claws of my terrible Mustangs for as long as possible.

  During the second week I continued to check and measure him. In the store, meanwhile, business was going slow. I sold just one Outback for four hundred dollars and every time I came out of the Brooding Room Roger raised his eyebrows. He was starting to ask himself why I spent so much time in there.

  Then, when Draco was already eighteen days old, I discovered something that turned my world upside down. That same day I met Raleigh Thompson.

  It was June 5th, a month and a half had gone by since my trip to Omaha, and I was playing with Draco in the incubator. The little dragon was now more than a foot long, and even if his wings were attached to his back, he moved as fast as a lizard. I had noticed he was starting to bite the rubber padding, so I had brought him an edible stick to nibble on and a small red ball as a toy. I knew he was bored, all by himself at night, after closing time.

  "Give me five more days, ok?" I placed the objects on the bottom and pulled my hand away. "Then I'll put you in the Flight Garden and the Blue Borgia will keep you busy".

  Draco lightly touched the edible stick with his tongue, and didn't find it interesting. He did the same with the ball, he moved it with his snout and seeing it roll away he started to chase it. The ball bounced against the glass and went back. Draco stopped it with one of his paws and tried to bite it, but it was too big for his mouth.

  "Mraugh!"

  Bothered by the ball's resistance to being eaten, he shook his head and tried to keep it still. But the treacherous ball slipped away from him and when the little dragon tried to get it back, he actually pushed it beyond the incubator's edge with his paws. The ball fell on the floor and bounced a couple of times, ending up under a cot.

  Draco was boggled, with his paws still in the air and his jaws half open.

  "Oh, where did the ball go? Where is it?"

  Without thinking about it I was indicating the floor, the spot where the ball had actually rolled away to. Draco first stared at me, then he got closer to the incubator's edge and looked in the direction my arm was pointing in. I raised an eyebrow.

  Is he really doing what I think he is? I asked myself. Perplexed, I bent down to pick up the ball.

  The fact that he had looked in the direction I was indicating could have been a coincidence, sure. But if it wasn't so? If he had done it on purpose? A couple of decades ago researchers proved that dogs can understand some information on the surrounding environment from our gestures.

  It's called “social inference”.

  One of the experiments consisted in showing the dog two cups and hiding an object under one of them, and then indicating it. The dog observes the gesture and immediately goes to the cup that was pointed out. It's an ability that some primates don't have. But a dragon isn't a dog.

  How can he be capable of social inference?

  I scratched the back of my head. It was impossible. Or maybe not? After all, it was a million dollar dragon.

  At that moment the door bell rang.

  "Don't you move", I said with the red ball in one hand. "I'll go see who it is and then we'll play some more".

  Lost in thought, I went into the hallway and ran into Roger. My assistant had a broom in his hand, and was holding it like a stick.

  "Roger, a customer came in, did you notice?"

  "Um, I was going to change the light bulb in the infirmary, mister Ports".

  "And you need the broom for...what?"

  "Oh, the broom is for her", answered the young Roger. "She's hanging on the lamp and won't let me change it".

  “Her” was obviously Sheela. They had never gotten along, her and Roger, and a day didn't go by when they didn't try to get into each other's way.

  If someone had filmed those two, I'm sure a fun sitcom would have come out of it. Something along the lines of "Stoned Willy Coyote against Beep Beep Pink Dragon". I'm sorry to say, but theirs was an uneven fight. Between the two, poor Roger almost always got the worst of it.

  "Don't worry about it", I said, "she'll get down by herself sooner or later".

  But that morning Roger didn't want to listen to me. He grasped the broom even tighter and shook his head.

  "I'm at a good spot now". He showed me the broom and raised it in the air. "I think I can convince her with this".

  He turned around and reached the door to the infirmary.

  "Okay, Sheela. Rock and Roll", he said going in. A hissing answer echoed around the room.

  It's going to end up bad, I can feel it, I thought. But I didn't have time to pay attention to those two, a customer was waiting for me. I shrugged my shoulders and went into the store.

  At the counter, a girl of about twenty was browsing through some brochures on organic feed. She was the most beautiful girl that had ever set foot in my humble store. Almost as tall as me, athletic figure, big brown-green eyes.

  "Sorry for the wait", I said giving her a good look.

  She had an elegant jacket on top of a white shirt and a pair of tight jeans. Her dark red hair dropped down from her shoulder and ended just barely touching her breast, gathered in a braid.

  "Don't worry about it, no problem", she answered. And she put her hand out toward me.

  "I'm Raleigh Tompson, from
the botany department".

  I sat there looking at her for a moment, as if enchanted, then I shook her hand. Her skin was soft and smooth.

  "P-pleased to meet you, I'm Jack. Jack Ports".

  She smiled at me and my heart nearly skipped a beat. It was a smile that could have resurrected a corpse. Raleigh emanated a sense of security and confidence that bewitched you instantly. I really hoped she wouldn't notice the smell. That morning, before playing with Draco, Roger and I had cleaned the lower walkways and perches in the Garden. That's right, you guessed it: dragon poop. And you know something? Dragons are cool and legendary, but there's nothing mind-blowing about their shit. It smells like rotten rice and boiled broccoli.

  "Welcome to my store. What can I do for you?" I opened my arms toward the shelves. "Are you looking for information? Do you want to buy a dragon?"

  "Actually, no", answered Raleigh. "I'm professor Abrams' assistant".

  She said those words like they should have meant something for me.

  "I don't understand", I said.

  I stared at her like a deer in headlights, absolutely embarrassing. I really didn't understand. Who was professor Abrams?

  "We talked last week", she added, "about you lending us three dragons".

  A light bulb went off in my head. I understood what had happened. Roger, God damn you!

  I cursed my part-time assistant in silence.

  "Oh, right. Of course, of course", I nodded visibly (I still felt like an idiot), "you must have spoken with Roger. He's a bit absent-minded and sometimes he forgets to tell me things. What type of loan?"

  "It's for an experiment", Raleigh explained. "We're trying to determine the environmental impact of the "Draco Occidentalis Australis" species on the north American ecosystem. In Idaho there's only three sellers that have "Australis" specimens. One of them is you".

  In reality there were four, if you counted old Smith in Caldwell. But his was more of a hobby than a job. He raised them in his home.